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Cultural Context and Contractual Relations: The Madras Planters' Labour Law and the Rise of the Plantation Maistri, 1904–1927

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Barbara Evans
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Extract

In examining the development of colonial capitalism in India historians have increasingly recognized the importance of specific cultural contexts in determining the character of the emergent industrial sector. In particular, the impact of pre-capitalist mores on the recruitment, organization and supervision of industrial workers has been an important concern. In the Calcutta jute industry, for instance, Dipesh Chakrabarty has concluded that the authority of factory sardars was derived largely from a pre-capitalist culture with “a strong emphasis on religion, community, kinship, language, and other similar loyalties”. Similarly, Ranajit Das Gupta's exploration of the industrial labour market in north eastern India has revealed that “indebtedness, primordial loyalties and relations of personal dependency were extensively used to keep labour under control”. Studies of trade union development have also acknowledged the enduring importance of the cultural milieu carried by workers to the mills, mines and plantations of colonial India.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , April 1997 , pp. 73 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1997

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References

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8 Although the term maistri is commonly translated as labour contractor, this definition is far too narrow. Aside from recruiting labour, it was usual for a maistri to be responsible for both the supervision of his workers on an estate and for their welfare needs. Planters made a clear distinction between maistris and professional labour contractors who merely delivered workers to estates. The terms maistri and kanganny were used interchangeably on south Indian plantations.

9 The Madras Planters' Labour Law, Clause 10.

10 Ibid, Section 3, parts (a) and (f).

11 Ibid., Sections 30, 31, 33, 35.

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29 Reports M.P.L.L., 1907, G.O. No. 418, A. R. Knapp, Acting District Magistrate, Malabar, to Chief Secretary to Government, 7th Feb. 1907.

30 Ibid., 1925, G.O. No. 934, J. A. Thome, District Magistrate, Malabar, to the Secretary to Government, Law (General) Department, 13th Feb. 1925.

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48 Ibid.

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72 Interview conducted with Mr R. Menon, Chairman of Tea Estates India Ltd. (a division of Brooke-Bond) at Coonoor, 18th Feb. 1987.

73 U.P.A.S.I., P.D.S.I., (Coonoor, 1948), p. 90Google Scholar. The Badaga were an indigenous tribe in the hills.

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77 The index is based on the prevailing daily male wage rate. Wage rates were obtained from: Report on the Conditions of Tea Garden Labour in the Duars of Bengal, in Madras and in Ceylon, (Shillong, 1904), p. 12Google Scholar; Reports M.P.L.L., 1920, E.F. Thomas, District Magistrate Malabar to Secretary to Home (Misc.) Department, 19th Feb., 1920; U.P.A.S.I., Annual Proceedings,1921, p. 102Google Scholar. Grain prices are annual district averages taken from Madras District Gazetteers, Statistical Appendix for the Nilgiri District, (Madras, 1905), p. 15Google Scholar; Ibid., (Madras, 1915), p. 20; Ibid., (Madras, 1928), pp. 26–7; Ibid., (Madras, 1933), p. 23.

78 The standard government seer of 2.057 lbs has been employed throughout the text. In the imperial system of weights 1.4 seers is equal to 2lbs 140z, and to 1.3 kilos in the metric system. It is important to note that female wages were approximately two thirds that of their male counterparts both in money terms and in grain purchasing power. In the Nilgiri adult female labour was at least as common as adult male labour. (R.E.C.L.P.I., op. cit., p. 115.) Since the earnings of young children were negligible on estates, a woman who had dependents but no adult male to contribute to the support of her family was most vulnerable to any decline in real wages.

79 Reports M.P.L.L., 1921, G.O. No. 585, G.W. Wells, Acting Collector of the Nilgiris, to Secretary to Government, Home (Miscellaneous) Department, 15 March 1921.

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81 Report on the Conditions of Tea Garden Labour in the Duars of Bengal, in Madras and in Ceylon, op. cit., p. 12; Reports M.P.L.L., 1920, G.O. No. 554, E. F. Thomas, District Magistrate of Malabar, to Secretary to Government, Home (Misc.) Department, 19th Feb. 1920.

82 Planters' Chronicle, 01. 1907, p. 95Google Scholar. The reduction was effected in response to a poor tea crop and low prices for tea exports. Note that Table 2 is based on the assumption that wages did not fall below 5 annas per day.

83 Pate, H.R., Tinnevelly, (Madras, 1917), p. 193Google Scholar; Prices and Wages in India, (Calcutta, 1923), pp. 160–1Google Scholar; Gopinath, R., “Aspects of demographic change and the Malabar agrarian economy, 1871–1921”, Economic and Political Weekly (01. 1987), PE 35.Google Scholar Note that Gopinath has relied on oral evidence to establish agricultural wage rates between 1914 and 1916.

84 The practice of giving “half-name”, and by implication a half-day's pay, as punishment for the worker's lack of diligence or late arrival at roll call, was common on South Indian plantations. [R.E.C.L.P.I., op. cit., p. 133; Daniel, P. H., Red Tea, op. cit., pp. 99–101Google Scholar.] Examination of Tamil language primers indicates that these practices, and variations on them, were probably transposed from Ceylon where they were widespread on tea estates. [Wells, W. G. B., Cooly Tamil as Understood by Labourers on Tea and Rubber Estates, 3rd ed., (Colombo, 1921), pp. 29, 35, 50, 54, 56, 59.Google Scholar]

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87 U.P.A.S.I., Annual Proceedings,1910, p. 129Google Scholar.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid., 1920, p. 5.

90 Ibid., 1916, p. 7.

91 Proceedings of the Council of the Governor of Fort St George, 5th 04 1916, p. 727Google Scholar. A further 5,000 Piramalai Kallar labourers were sent to Anamalai estates in the 1920s under the Act. (Arnold, David, Police Power and Colonial Rule, Madras 1859–1947 (Delhi, 1986), p. 153Google Scholar.)

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93 Ibid., 1920, p. 6.

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99 Wickizer, , op. cit., pp. 58–62Google Scholar.

100 U.P.A.S.I., Annual Proceedings,1921, p. 102Google Scholar.

101 Planters' Chronicle, 2nd 10 1920, p. 664Google Scholar.

102 Ibid.

103 Report of R.C.L.I., op. cit, p. 998. Annual settlement remained common in the Nilgiris until at least 1946. Although local labour had traditionally been paid on a weekly basis, this was rare amongst migrating workers. [R.E.C.L.P.I., op. cit., pp. 149–51.]

104 Ibid., p. 999.

105 Ibid., p. 140.

106 R.C.L.I., Evidence, Vol. VII, op. cit., Part II, p. 333Google Scholar.

107 Ibid., p. 196.

108 Report of R.C.L.I., op. cit., p. 998.

109 R.C.L.I., Evidence, Vol. VII, op. cit., Part II, p. 196Google Scholar.

110 Ibid., pp. 376, 383.

111 Reports on M.P.P.L., 1924, G.O. No. 793, Law (General) Department, J. A. Thome, District Magistrate, Malabar, to Secretary to Government, Law Department, 13th Feb. 1924.

112 Ibid., 1914, G.O. No. 589, M. Young, District Magistrate, Nilgiris, to Chief Secretary to Government, 14th Feb. 1914.

113 Report of R.C.L.I., op. cit., Recommendations.

114 R.C.L.I., Evidence, Vol. VII, op. cit., Part II, p. 206.Google Scholar

115 Ibid., pp. 215, 318.

116 Ibid., p. 371.