Coolies of Capitalism Assam Tea and the Making of Coolie Labour

261 Pages·2017·3.545 MB·English

by  NITIN VARMA

De Gruyter
Chapter Title: Front Matter

Book Title: Coolies of Capitalism
Book Subtitle: Assam Tea and the Making of Coolie Labour
Book Author(s): Nitin Varma
Published by: De Gruyter
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvbkjv0z.1
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Capitalism
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Nitin Varma
Coolies of Capitalism
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Work in Global and Historical
Perspective
Edited by
Andreas Eckert, Sidney Chalhoub, Mahua Sarkar,
Dmitri van den Bersselaar, Christian G. De Vito
Work in Global and Historical Perspective is an interdisciplinary series that welcomes scholar-
ship on work/labour that engages a historical perspective in and from any part of the world.
The series advocates a definition of work/labour that is broad, and especially encourages con-
tributions that explore interconnections across political and geographic frontiers, time frames,
disciplinary boundaries, as well as conceptual divisions among various forms of commodified
work, and between work and ‘non-work’.
Volume 2
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Nitin Varma
Coolies of
Capitalism
Assam Tea and the Making of Coolie Labour
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Cover: Workers on their way to Mornai Tea Garden in Assam, North India. [Mornai Tea Garden
was founded in 1890 as a combined business and mission initiative. Lars Peter Nielsen from
Denmark became the first missionary to serve as manager of the Tea Garden, from 1908 to his
death in 1918]. ©Danmission Photo Archive
ISBN: 978-3-11-046115-2
e-ISBN (PDF): 978-3-11-046317-0
e-ISBN (ePUB): 978-3-11-046128-2
ISSN: 2509-8861
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet
at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Typesetting: Michael Peschke, Berlin
Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck
♾ Printed on acid free paper
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
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De Gruyter
Chapter Title: Table of Contents

Book Title: Coolies of Capitalism
Book Subtitle: Assam Tea and the Making of Coolie Labour
Book Author(s): Nitin Varma
Published by: De Gruyter
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvbkjv0z.2
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
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Capitalism
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Content
Introduction   1
1 Tea in the Colony   15
1.1 Introduction 15
1.2 Discovery of Tea and the Skills of Chinese Work   16
1.3 Framing Plantations and encounters with the
Lazy Native Worker   21
1.4 Experimental Plantations and the search for
Immobilised Worker   24
1.5 Privatising the discovery and the emergence of the
Assam Company   27
1.6 Early Plantation enterprise and Kachari as the Ideal Worker   31
1.7 Assamese peasant as coolie labour   37
1.8 The Migrant Worker solution   39
2 Contracts, Contractors and Coolies   43
2.1 Introduction   43
2.2 Protection, Exceptionalism and the beginnings of the Assam
Contract   45
2.3 The ‘Protection’ of Private arrest and the construction of managerial
authority   52
2.4 Assam Contract and the ‘Protection’ of the Coolie   66
2.5 Act XIII and the Assam Contract(s) system   71
2.6 Contractors, Sardars and the Assam Contract System   75
2.7 Discourse of reform and the new contract regime   82
2.8 Practice of Free System   90
2.9 Free System in Surma Valley   93
2.10 Conclusions   100
3 Unpopular Assam   105
3.1 Introduction   105
3.2 Assam as a Lost World   108
3.3 Problems of Life and Work on the Tea Gardens   110
3.4 Songs and Oral Traditions of Tea Workers   115
3.5 Deception of Recruiters and the Fear of Assam   119
3.6 The ‘Choice’ of Assam   123
3.7 Conclusions   125
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vi   Content
4 Drink and Work   127
4.1 Introduction   127
4.2 Colonial Policy and Taxing the “Coolie Drink.”   128
4.3 Drink as Work Stimulant   129
4.4 Industrial Tea, Intensification of Work and the
Intoxicant Drink   132
4.5 Drink and the Emerging Working Culture   141
4.6 The Controls of Drink and Drinking Workers   145
4.7 Conclusions   148
5 Dustoor of Plantations   149
5.1 Introduction   149
5.2 Dustoor and Assam Tea Gardens in the late
nineteenth century   154
5.3 The Shifting Authority of Manager   158
5.4 The Rice Question   165
5.5 The Occasions of Tea Garden   168
5.6 Coolie Lines   174
5.7 Work Place, Authority Structure and Issues of Tasks and
Wages   177
5.8 Notions of Honour   193
5.9 Violence as Protest, Protest as Violence   196
5.10 A Collective Will to Leave   200
5.11 Conclusions   203
6 Gandhi baba ka Hookum   205
6.1 Introduction   205
6.2 Situating the Episode   208
6.3 Markets and New Networks of Information   211
6.4 Anxieties of Colonial State and Nationalists   212
6.5 The Legitimacy of the Manager   214
6.6 Changing Practices of Work, Life and Control on
Sylhet Plantations   218
6.7 A New Will to Leave   221
7 Epilogue   225
Bibliography   231
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List of Tables and Graphs
Table 1.1: Employees of the ‘Experimental Plantations’ in Upper Assam, 1840
Table 1.2: Tea Plantations and Production in the late 1850s
Table 2.1: Proportion of new immigrants in the workforce
Table 4.1: Productivity (Pound/Acre) 1885-1914.
Table 4.2: Migration from Central Provinces and Chota Nagpur related to growing Excise
revenue 1881-1900
Table 5.1: Field Tasks on Tea Gardens in late nineteenth century
Table 6.1: Labour Migration to Assam 1910-1921
Table 6.2: Mortality on Assam tea gardens 1917-1921
Graph 2.1: Labour Migration to Assam 1870-1881
Graph 2.2: Comparison of area under plantation, labour force and emigration on Assam tea
gardens: 1880-1900.
List of Figures
Figure 1.1: Manual and illustration on tea manufacture in Assam, 1838
Figure 2.1: Tea Garden in Assam from the 1860s
Figure 3.1: Photograph of a tea plucker
Figure 3.2: Visuals of women tea pluckers
Figure 4.1: Comparative Consumption of Indian and Chinese Tea, 1867 and 1907
Figure 5.1: Assam Tea Managers and Assistants
Figure 5.2: Pay Day
Figure 5.3: Mustering the coolies
Figure 5.4: Coolie Lines
Figure 5.5: Old and New Methods of Plucking
Figure 5.6: Plucking Tea Leaves
Figure 5.7: Hoeing the Field
Figure 5.8: Native Supervisors
Figure 5.9: Working in Tea Factory
Figure 5.10: Working in Tea Factory
Figure 5.11: Garden Token
Figure 5.12: Weighing Leaves in the absence of manager
Figure 5.13: Tea Manager Bungalow, European Assistants and Native Staff
Figure 6.1: Tokens on Sylhet Tea Gardens
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