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Unsettling the Household: Act VI (of 1901) and the Regulation of Women Migrants in Colonial Bengal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Samita Sen
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The advent of capitalism has traditionally been associated with a transformation of the economic and political functioning of the family. Capital is presumed to weaken, certainly to modify, gender and age hierarchies by undermining the productive role of the household. The labour market takes over the organization of work and age of consent legislations undermine parental authority in order to create the new legal subject capable of entering “free” labour contracts. The family, though it remains outside the norms of capitalism, primarily undertakes the physical and social reproduction of labour within the capitalist sphere. Such a transformation of the “family” is, however, not inevitable. In nine-teenth-century India the colonial state, though avowedly committed to a free market in labour, in practice often upheld familial claims on women's labour and sexuality. As a result, gender and generational controls within the family were enhanced rather than weakened.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 41 , supplement S4: “Peripheral” Labour? Studies in the History of Partial Proletarianization , December 1996 , pp. 135 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1996

References

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4 O'Malley, L.S.S., Bihar & Orissa District Gazetteer, Saran (Patna, 1930), p. 86Google Scholar.

5 Sen, Samita, “Women Workers in the Bengal Jute Industry, 1890–1940: Migration, Motherhood and Militancy” (Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1992)Google Scholar. For a discussion on the role of remittances and the links between the jute working class and the rural economy, see Omvedt, Gail, “Migration in Colonial India: the Articulation of Feudalism and Colonialism by the Colonial State”, Journal of Peasant Studies, VII, 2 (1980)Google Scholar.

6 For the Bombay cotton textile industry see Chandavarkar, R. S., The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940 (Cambridge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the Calcutta jute industry, see Sen, , “Women Workers in the Bengal Jute Industry” and Goswami, O., Industry, Trade and Peasant Society: The Jute Economy of Eastern India, 1900–1947 (New Delhi, 1991)Google Scholar.

7 Banerjee, “Working Women in Colonial Bengal”.

8 O'Malley, Bihar & Orissa District Gazetteer, Satan, p. 30.

9 Report of Dr Dagmar Cuijel on the conditions of Employment of Women Before and After Childbirth, 1923, unpublished, West Bengal State Archives (hereafter WBSA), Calcutta. Commerce Department Commerce Branch, April 1923, B77 (hereafter Curjel Report).

10 Indian Factory Commission, 1891. The proportion of women in the jute labour force began to decline from the 1920s. Sen, “Women Workers in the Bengal Jute Industry”.

11 The Workmen's Breach of Contract Act (Act XIII of 1859) was strengthened and reinforced by Act VII of 1873 and Act I of 1882.

12 In the first batch there were some 6,000 men and 100 women. For more details see Tinker, Hugh, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830–1920 (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar.

13 Reddock, Rhoda, “Freedom Denied. Indian Women and Indentureship in Trinidad and Tobago, 1845–1917”, Economic and Political Weekly, XX, 43 (1985)Google Scholar;Beall, Jo, “Women under Indenture in Colonial Natal, 1860–1911”, in Peach, C. and Yettovec, S. (eds), South Asians Overseas. Migration and Ethnicity (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar.

14 These ratios changed over time and for different colonies several times in the nineteenth century: Brereton, Bridget, “The Experience of Indentureship 1854–1917”, in Guerre, John La (ed.), Calcutta to Caroni (Longmans Caribbean, 1974)Google Scholar. Also see Moore, Brian L., “Mating Patterns and Gender Relations Among Indians in Nineteenth-Century Guyana”, Guyana Historical Journal, III (1991), pp. 1–12Google Scholar.

15 Lord Salisbury to the Governor-General of India in Council, 24 March 1875; Report of the Indian Jute Manufacturers' Association (Calcutta, 1899).

16 Reddock, “Freedom Denied”.

17 Ibid. Also see Tinker, A New System of Slavery.

18 Mukherjee, Radhakamal, The Indian Working Class (Bombay, 1945), pp. 15–20Google Scholar.

19 For a well-documented account of this migration see Chattopadhyay, Haraprasad, Internal Migration in India. A Case Study of Bengal (Calcutta, 1987)Google Scholar. The other major stream of migration to Assam was from East Bengal. Peasant families resettled in Assam to undertake the reclamation and cultivation of waste land. The low wages in the tea plantations could not attract these peasant migrants or the local peasantry. There was also a concentration of tea plantations in North Bengal. Ostensibly these were supplied by “free” migration as opposed to the indentured migration that obtained in Assam.

20 The “free contracting” system came to be regulated from 1863 by the Inland Emigration Act (Bengal Act III of 1863).

21 WBSA, General Emigration, January 1862, A6.

22 Curjel Report.

23 WBSA, General Emigration, October 1889, A139–40.

24 The colonies usually appointed agents in Calcutta and Madras who contracted out recruitment to sub-agents working o n commission. The tea planters employed licensed labour contractors wh o were called arkathis and Garden Sardars, reliable workers who were paid fees and costs to bring more workers directly to the gardens. The arkathis were professional recruiters, while the latter were supposed to recruit only from local and family networks. Planters sometimes preferred sardari recruitment because it made labour supervision more effective. The government argued in favour of sardari recruitment on the grounds that it eliminated fraud. From 1919 only the Garden Sardari system was allowed. There were two types of sardars – those who worked independently and those who worked under the control of Licensed Local Agents appointed by the Tea District Labour Supply Association, other recognized associations and individual employers. The Act VI of 1901 granted these latter some special concessions under Section 91: Annual Report on Inland Emigration under the Assam Labour and Emigration Act VI of 1916 (Calcutta, 1916).

25 Report on the Emigration from the Port of Calcutta to British and Foreign Colonies (Calcutta, 1909–1918).

26 Bihar State Archives (hereafter BSA), General Emigration, May 1885, Nos 6–8.

27 E. Van Cutsem, Emigration Agent for Surinam to the Protector of Emigrants, Calcutta, BSA, General Emigration, May 1885, Nos 6–8.

28 BSA, General Emigration, March 1885.

29 Lord Salisbury to the Governor-General of India in Council, 24 March 1875; Report of the Indian Jute Manufacturers' Association (Calcutta, 1899).

30 BSA, General Emigration, May 1885, Nos 6–8.

31 ibid.

32 In the 1840s, the Protector questioned 48 returning emigrants. Apparently, the men “reposed perfect confidence” that their wives and children were cared for in their absence. McFarlen argued that it was not uncommon for men to go away as sepoys, bearers or to Calcutta to do odd jobs: McFarlen, D., Memoranda of 48 Examinations of Mauritius Labourers returned to Bengal in the “Graham” (Calcutta, 1841)Google Scholar.

33 WBSA, Judicial Police, August 1873, A95–98.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Ganguly, Dwarkanath, Slavery in British Dominion, ed. Kunda, Srikumar, comp. K. L. Chattopadhayay (Calcutta, 1972)Google Scholar.

41 Sen, Samita, “Honour and Resistance: Gender, Community and Class in Bengal, 1920–40”, in Bandopadhyay, Sekhar et al. (eds), Bengal: Communities, Development and States (New Delhi. 1994)Google Scholar.

42 The Bengalee, XXVUI, 4, 22 January 1887, reproduced in Ganguly, Slavery in British Dominion.

42 Vidyaratna, Ramkumar, Kulikahini [Sketches from Cooly Life] (Calcutta, 1888), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

44 WBSA, General Emigration, January 1862, A6.

43 Ibid., July 1904, A6–15.

46 Ibid., January 1890, A139–40.

47 Ibid.,

48 WBSA, Judicial Police, August 1873. A95–8.

49 Ibid.

50 The term nika was derived from an Arabic word meaning marriage. In nineteenth-century Bengal, many Muslims called the first marriage shadi (meaning delight) and ritually celebrated. According to colonial officials, the second marriage was called nika and, even among Muslims, influenced by Hindu notions of second marriage being disgraceful, performed with less ceremony. Among the lower castes, divorcees and widows were allowed to remarry. Many of them (including some Vaishnava sects) seemed to have termed their second marriages nika, though they were also termed sanga or sangat or even sagai. Some colonial officials argued that such a second marriage was concubinage in the case of a divorced woman, but because of its wide acceptance it should not be made a penal offence: WBSA, General Miscellaneous, April 1874, Bl–15.

51 WBSA, Judicial Police, August 1873, A95–98.

52 Translated from Bharatmitra, 28, 29 and 31 October and 1, 2, 4 and 5 November 1913. WBSA, Finance Emigration, November 1915, B5–7.

53 Report of the Inter-Departmental Conference held in London in 1917 to Consider Proposals for a New Assisted System of Emigration from India to British Guiana, Trinidad and Fiji, WBSA, Commerce Emigration, July 1918, Al–16.

54 Ibid.

55 Statement, Alipore Court, 11 May 1911. WBSA, Finance Emigration, November 1915, B5–7.

56 Ibid., February 1913.

57 Sen, “Women Workers in the Bengal Jute Industry”.

58 Special arrangements had to b e made with the local Lady Dufferin Fund Committee. WBSA, General Emigration, December 1901, A23–30.

59 Report on the Working of the Inland Emigration Act in the Central Provinces for the Year Ending 30 June, 1905.

60 WBSA, Finance Emigration, December 1913, Al–3.

61 Extract from Capital, 9 February 1911. WBSA, General Emigration, January 1912, Al–32.

62 L. Grommer, Emigration Agent for Surinam to the Protector of Emigrants, 24 April 1914. WBSA, Finance Emigration, November 1915, A22.

63 WBSA, General Emigration, June 1903, A48–53.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid.

66 Italics in original. Ibid., June 1904, A48–53.

67 Ibid.

68 Italics in original. Ibid.

69 Ibid., August 1904, A87–9.

70 ibid.

71 Report on the Working of the Inland Emigration Act, (Calcutta, 1912).

72 Babu Ramdeo Chotham, Honorary Secretary, Marwari Association, to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, 5 August 1915. WBSA, Finance Emigration, November 1915, B5–7.

73 H.C. Streatfield, Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi, to the Commissioner of the Chota Nagpur Division, 23 September 1901. WBSA, General Emigration, December 1901, A50–62.

74 Emphasis in original. Ibid., July 1913, B57–65.

75 Ibid., June 1905, A18–32.

76 The Statesman, 15 October 1904.

77 WBSA, General Emigration, December 1901, A50–62.

78 T.S. MacPherson, Magistrate of Gaya to the Commissioner of the Patna Division. WBSA, General Emigration, March 1912, A9–12.