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Commercial recruiting and Informal Intermediation: debate over the sardari system in Assam tea plantations, 1860–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2009

SAMITA SEN
SAMITA SEN*
Affiliation:
School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700 032, India Email: samitasen@yahoo.co.uk
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Abstract

This paper engages with Rajnarayan Chandavarkar's argument that the importance accorded to the intermediation of sardars/jobbers in colonial labour arrangements followed from the perception of the Indian peasant as static and immobile, requiring especial effort at recruitment, but that, over time, employers grew resentful of the power and control acquired by these intermediaries. Drawing on this insight, the paper examines the role of sardars in the recruitment system of the Assam tea plantations and the ways in which they were promoted by the planters and the state in an attempt to loosen the stranglehold of professional contractors. The sardars were presented as the solution to abuses of Assam recruitment and portrayed as non-market agents recruiting within the closed world of kin, caste and village relationships. Towards the late-nineteenth century, however, a nexus developed between the contractors and sardars, which successive legislative interventions failed to break. Moreover, the notion that the sardar would be a more benign agent of recruitment was repeatedly proved false.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 1: The politics of work, family and community in India , January 2010 , pp. 3 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Chandavarkar, R.S., The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India. Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Argument scattered across the book. Also demonstrated for the jute industry, Sen, Samita, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, The Bengal Jute Industry, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 127–130Google Scholar.

2 Anderson argues that even in large–scale mobilization of labour in the nineteenth century, kin, caste and community relations remained important. Anderson, Michael R., ‘Work Construed: Ideological Origins of Labour Law in British India to 1918’ in Robb, Peter (ed.) Dalit Movements and the Meaning of Labour in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1993, pp. 87–120Google Scholar. Patterns of migration in north India generally bear this out. Assam migration is exceptional in offering an explicit debate in this regard. It shared with overseas colonial migration the influence of commercial recruitment.

3 Ghosh, Kaushik, ‘A Market for Aboriginality: Primitivism and Race Classification in the Indentured Labour Market of Colonial India’ in Subaltern Studies X. Writings on South Asian History and Society (eds.) Bhadra, Gautam, Prakash, Gyan and Tharu, Susie, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 8–48Google Scholar.

4 Kumar, Dharma et al. . (eds) The Cambridge Economic History of India, 2, c. 1757 to c. 1970, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, Part I, Chapter V by Visaria, Leela and Visaria, Pravin, p. 513Google Scholar.

5 West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata [henceforth WBSA] General Department Emigration Branch, January 1890, pp. 139–140. Discussed earlier in Sen, Samita, ‘Questions of Consent: Women's recruitment for Assam Tea Gardens, 1859–1900’, Studies in History, 18, 2, n.s. 2002, pp. 231–234CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

6 Oriental and India Office Collection, London [henceforth OIOC] V/26/670/82. Report of the Labour Enquiry Commission Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat Press, 1896 [henceforth LEC] p. 32.

7 Ibid. p. 13.

8 OIOC, V/27/820/34, Special Report on the Working of Act I of 1882, during the years 1886–1889, Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1890 [henceforth SRWA]. (p. 13)

9 Ibid. (in many parts of the report).

10 Most famously Morris, Morris D., The Emergence of an Industrial Labour Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854–1947, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965Google Scholar, again a general argument not a quote, page reference difficult. But the argument was first presented by the Indian Industrial Commission, 1918.

11 Breman, Jan, Of Peasants, Migrants and Paupers: Rural Labour Circulation and Capitalist Production in West India, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985Google Scholar; Ranajit Dasgupta, ‘Structure of the Labour Market in Colonial India’, Economic and Political Weekly, November 1981, special number, pp. 1781–1806.

12 de Haan, Arjan, Unsettled Settlers: Migrant Workers and Industrial Capitalism in Calcutta, K.P. Bagchi, Calcutta, 1996, pp. 237–246Google Scholar.

13 R.S. Chandavarkar argues that the ‘static’ argument was probably correct by the end of the nineteenth century as a result of the active role of colonial policy. Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan, Imperial Power and Popular Politics. Class, Resistance and the State in India, c. 1850–1950, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 23–24Google Scholar.

14 Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, p. 27.

15 These issues have been explored more fully in Sen, ‘Questions of Consent’, pp. 231–234.

16 The literal meaning of the term adivasis is ‘original inhabitants’. The British referred to them as ‘aboriginals’ or ‘tribals’. In the Indian Constitutions most of these communities are included under the category ‘Scheduled Tribes’. The term adivasis emerged out of self-assertion movements.

17 Sen, ‘Questions of Consent’, pp. 231–234.

18 Some of these issues were highlighted in my Sunil Kumar Sen Memorial Lecture at the Institute of Historical Studies, Kolkata, in 2005. In press, Quarterly Review of the Institute of Historical Studies.

19 SRWA, 1890.

20 Ibid.

21 WBSA, General Department, Emigration Branch, January 1890, pp. 139–140.

22 Ibid.

23 Letter No. 11 From the Government of India to Her Majesty's Secretary of State for India, 22 June 1889. Ibid.

24 The Committee had toyed with the notion of abolishing the contractor altogether expecting that as a result of licensed ‘Local Agents’, the contractor and the professional recruiter ‘would die a natural death’. WBSA Judicial Department, Judicial Branch, August 1893, A55.

25 From P. Nolan, Secretary to the Government of Bengal to the Secretary to the Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Calcutta, 14 July 1888, WBSA General Department, Inland Emigration Branch, August 1888, A5–7.

26 Annual Report on Labour Immigration into Assam for the year 1887. WBSA, General Department, Emigration Branch, January 1890, A139–150.

27 Report from Mr E.N. Baker, Officiating Deputy Commissioner, Manbhum, 1887. WBSA Judicial Department, Judicial Branch, August 1893, A55.

28 P. Nolan, WBSA General Department, Inland Emigration Branch, August 1888, A5–7.

29 LEC, 1896, p. 35.

30 Ibid., p. 32.

31 According to Streatfeild, the emigrant received a very small proportion of this price, the bulk going to middlemen. Letter No 457 C. R. from H.C. Streatfeild, Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi to the Commissioner of the Chota Nagpur Division, Ranchi, 13 April 1899, WBSA, Emigration Department, Financial Branch, April 1899, A62–128.

32 LEC, 1896, p. 32. The Commission suggested that the fee be fixed at Rs 50 for contractors and Rs 100 for licensed recruiters.

33 Mr Grimley was then the Commissioner. LEC, 1896, p. 33.

34 H.C. Streatfeild, WBSA, Emigration Department, Financial Branch, April 1899 A62–128.

35 OIOC V/24/1217, Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1886.

36 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1887.

37 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1886.

38 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1887.

39 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1889.

40 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1882.

41 H.C. Streatfeild, WBSA, Emigration Department, Financial Branch, April 1899 A62–128.

42 SRWA, 1890, pp. 6–8.

43 Between the years 1881 and 1884, the number of certified garden sardars had steadily increased, but in 1885 the gains were reversed. There was a noticeable drop in contractors and garden sardars. Annual Report of Inland Emigration, 1885.

44 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1886.

45 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1887.

46 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1890.

47 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1889.

48 Annual Report on Inland Emigration, 1883, p. 4.

49 Ibid., p. 12.

50 Mr Kennedy, Deputy Commissioner of Sylhet, SRWA, 1890, p. 13.

51 H.C. Streatfeild, WBSA, Emigration Department, Financial Branch, April 1899 A62–128.

52 From C.C. Stevens, Commissioner of the Chota Nagpur Division to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, 28 February, 1888. WBSA, Judicial Department, Judicial Branch, August 1893, A65–66.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Letter No. 317 G from H.F.J.T. Maguire, Officiating Magistrate of Burdwan, to the Superintendent of Emigration, Calcutta, 15 February, 1890. WBSA, Judicial Department, September 1893, B 842 – 857, File J R/8 of 1890, Serial 4–10, 12–15, 26, 27.

56 Letter No. 23 J.G. from N.S. Alexander, Commissioner of the Burdwan Division, to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, Revenue Department [through the Superintendent of Emigration, Calcutta], 28 January, 1890. Ibid.

57 Annual Report on Labour Immigration, 1887.

58 P. Nolan, WBSA, General Department, Inland Emigration Branch, August 1888, A5–7.

59 H.F.J.T. Maguire, WBSA, Judicial Department, September 1893, B 842–857.

60 From A.P. Macdonnell, Officiating Secretary to the Government of Bengal to the Commissioner of the Chota Nagpore Division, No. 281, File 20–A7, Calcutta, 18 July, 1882. WBSA, General Department, Inland Emigration Branch, July 1882, A1–7.

61 Letter from J. Ware Edgar, Officiating Commissioner of Chota Nagpore to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, General Department, No. 293 Cr, Ranchee, 21 June, 1882. Ibid.

62 Letter from A.W.B. Power, Deputy Commissioner, Lohardangga to the Commissioner of Chota Nagpore, No. 976G, Ranchee, 19 June, 1882. Ibid.

63 Ibid.

64 The literal meaning of this phrase in Hindi is: by Government Order.

65 The phrase is in Hindi. The literal meaning is: government jobs. The implication is that they were being hired by government.

66 Ibid.

67 J. Ware Edgar, Ibid.

68 Ibid.

69 Letter from A.P. Macdonnell. Ibid.

70 Decision signed by A.W.B. Power, Deputy Commissioner of Lohardangga, 1 June, 1882. Ibid.

71 Letter from A.W.B. Power, Deputy Commissioner of Lohardangga to the Commissioner of Chota Nagpore, No. 971 G, Ranchee, 17 June, 1882. Ibid.

72 Letter from A.P. Macdonnell. Ibid.

73 Chatterjee, Indrani, Gender, Slavery and Law in Colonial India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999Google Scholar. For more elaborate discussions of some of these issues, see Sen, ‘Questions of Consent’ and also ‘“Without his consent”? Marriage and Women's Migration in Colonial India’ in Rick Halpern et al. (eds) special issue International Labour and Working Class History, 65, Spring 2004, pp 77–104.; and ‘Migration and Marriage: Labouring Women in Bengal in late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’ in Shakti Kak and Biswamoy Pati (eds) Exploring Gender Equations: Colonial and Post Colonial India; Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 203–230.

74 Sen, Samita, ‘Offences Against Marriage: Negotiating Custom in Colonial Bengal’ in Nair, Janaki and John, Mary (eds), A Question of Silence? The Sexual Economies of Modern India, Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 77–110Google Scholar.