Documentary revisits Kerala fisherfolk’s struggle for trawling ban

A documentary screened at the 18th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Keralam is revisiting the protests that led to the state’s seasonal trawling ban. Shawn Sebastian’s Salt of Resistance examines the struggle of traditional fishing communities before Kerala introduced a 52-day monsoon trawling ban in 1988. Kerala became the first state in India to impose such a seasonal fishing restriction, according to the report.

The film uses memories of fisherfolk, activists from the Swathanthra Matsya Thozhilali Federation, nuns and journalists who covered the protests. Sebastian said he had not known about this part of the ban’s history before working on a longer documentary about Kerala’s coastal past. Traditional fisherfolk began mobilising in the 1980s after what the documentary describes as years of inadequate government action and support, alongside repeated accidents at sea.

Abdul Raziq, who was a young protester, recalled that welfare measures rarely reached coastal communities. The protests extended across Kerala’s coastal belt and eventually helped bring about the trawling ban, as well as welfare measures including pensions, equipment subsidies and assistance for children in coastal schools. The documentary also examines the involvement of nuns, including Sister Alice of the Win Society in Alappuzha.

Their participation prompted wider debate about the role of the church and liberation theology. The film suggests the church initially focused more on welfare handouts than protests aimed at empowering fishing communities. The festival screening also featured Billam, Anand Rama Krishnan’s documentary about traditional fishers on a Lakshadweep island.

Those fishers use simple equipment and inherited ecological knowledge, while opposing modern or unscientific practices they say damage reef resources. Billam includes underwater footage and follows the community’s dependence on long observation of the sea and its inhabitants. It also records changes in the islands linked to climate change, connecting present environmental pressures with the concerns raised by Kerala’s fishers decades ago.