The Strategic thinker…..
A well-written essay indeed, as usual! Since it claims that I laid my hands on ‘Footprints’ first, sans denial, let me add to the deliberations we have had on this in the evenings. This one is from the perspective of a literary interpretation of the Man-Aerya Beedu Lakshminarayana Alva, as perceived by my thoughts after reading ‘Footprints’.
To me, Aerya Alva, as I would like to address him, comes across as a man with manifold influence and privilege. Born into a wealthy and influential family, his influence on the community was incredible. The book begins with his preface on how he chose to step down from the role of a leader of a community, as he chose not to get into conflicts with the powerful and mean. The history of the Bunt community today has it that he would not have had this circle of influence had he continued to be the President of a Sangha. On the contrary, his style of leadership had him understand the nuances of the time, situation and context in which he lived, and he weaved his way through to emerge as a strategic leader through his writings and leadership style. Aerya Alva read and referenced books from the Sangha and met people and networked with people, both men and women, and he lists them all in the books with gratitude. His network had seamlessly stretched beyond what the Sangha President could have otherwise given him.
The early sixties were the cusp between colonialism and the newly gained freedom of our country. The governments were only paying attention to stabilising what they had regained. Amidst all this were the struggles of the Bunt community sandwiched between the pre-independence era life and the battle to safeguard their lands from being lost during the Land Reforms Act.
Moving on to his chapter on the social base of the Bunt community, Aerya Alva’s understanding of the community is different from the ones that we generally read about. While Aerya Alva continues to hold onto the spine of the Bunt community, being a matrilineal community, he gives us a varied understanding of how the Bunts, as one of the castes, superseded the rest of the castes, by mere administrative, decision-making skills, understanding and empathy towards the other communities. History has Rani Abbakka, who had the support of the Marakalas (fishermen), the Billavas (Poojarys) and the Bearys when she fought the Portuguese. This categorisation by Aerya Alva in his book “Footprints” of the Immigrants to Tulunadu, starting from the Jains to the Havyakas to the GSBs to the Foreign invasions, brings out beautifully how the Bunts survived it all, and adapted to their changing culture, yet retaining their roots, rituals and customs. Aerya Alva brings this out beautifully as he subtly but consciously integrates a section on the ‘Daiva’ culture in between the narrative of the various communities that cohabited Tulunadu. Not to miss an important section in the same chapter is the section on joint family and the ‘Guthus’ (administrative homes) and ‘Beedus’ (manors) and of how they sustained the customs and traditions of the community.
My sphere of interest lies not in the mention of the fine administrators, visionaries and selfless Bunt men that he sketches, but in how Aerya Alva, as a single leader, ensured that the Aerya Beedu remained intact despite the turbulence of the chaotic period that he lived in. He was always aware that the Mandala, in this case, the Aerya Beedu, survived the chaos. This Mandala, or the Nucleus, had to be untouched for the family to flourish. Hence, as the matriarchal head of the family, he built alliances with neighbour families: Bellipady, Badagabettu, Yedthare, Kodialguthu…the list can go on. The beehive administration of the Aerya Beedu continued under him and after. This leads us to another section in the same chapter on Bunt marriages, well woven into the chapter titled ‘Bunts: a bird’s eyeview’. Marriages, Aerya Alva had well understood, were the basis of strengthening alliances in and around powerful neighbourly homes. All his family's girls were married into powerful homes, and the alliance of the Beedu continued as the ‘Mandala’ was a powerful nucleus.
As a leader, he followed the policy of ‘dana’; dana or gifts in terms of help, in terms of empathy, in kind and at times by reconciliation. Conciliation also came from the fact that he chose to build a home for himself. This way he was a true aliya and a loyal husband to his wife. He forged alliances for himself by connecting with people from all walks of life. He safeguarded his family ties and lands by ensuring his daughter remained in the family. He was a strategic thinker, and when India woke up to life, he supported the Harijans as the situation demanded that he work with at least one of the manifold problems that the society was facing. This way, he created a niche, an identity for himself.
With Aerya’s strategic thinking, the future turned out to be the way it is today, and he achieved greatness. This is where strategists influence their close circle of followers.
To conclude, Colin. S. Grey writes: “Some patterns might be similar across various strategic cultures, but each strategic culture has its own values, ideas, and patterns of thinking which influence its strategic behaviour and make it distinct. Strategic culture is the context that surrounds and gives meaning to strategic behaviour, and this behaviour is affected by culturally shaped or “encultured” people, organisations, procedures and weapons. (“Strategic Culture as Context: the First Generation of Theory Strikes Back”). One of these ‘encultured’ people was Aerya Alva.
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