Abstract
The collection of these well-researched studies in honour of Sabyasachi Bhatacharya, a distinguished economic historian, has a bold agenda. It is not a ‘labour history’ in the conventional sense of just a history of ‘industrial’ labour, that is, a ‘wage worker who worked in the modern factory and was a member of a given trade union’ (‘Introduction’, p. xii). ‘Labour’ includes ‘hitherto marginalized, informal workers’ (p. ix). The organising concept of this symposium is labour’s ‘multiple identities’. The exercise stems from an awareness of altogether new questions that ‘labour historians’ have recently addressed. One of the essays thus sums up the recent trends in labour historiography. ‘The domain of labour history has enormously expanded as new and unconventional ground has been broken. This widening of empirical and conceptual ground, as labour history comes to encompass a larger and larger body of themes, is the most important and positive shift within the discipline of late’ (Aditya Sarkar, ‘The Work of Law…’, p. 248).
Themes of the essays are too diverse to be grouped under broader generic questions. All of them have, however, important new things to say. I intend mainly to specify them.
This review excludes the three essays on labour questions in countries other than India (Russia, China and Chile). Also excluded is Anil Persaud’s erudite essay ‘Transformed Over Seas: “Medical Comforts” aboard Nineteenth Century Emigrant Ships’. Indentured labour was employed wholly outside India, in the distant colonies of the British Empire. ‘Indenture was acting to satisfy plantation capital’s demand for able-bodied male labourers’ (p. 22).
Of the other eleven studies, six relate to ‘industrial labour’ proper.
Two essays—Prashant Kidambi, ‘Contestation and Conflict: Workers’ Resistance and the Labour Problem in the Bombay Cotton Mills, c. 1898–1919’, and Nitin Sinha, ‘Forms of Workers’ Protest amidst Dilemmas of Contesting Mobilizations: The Jamalpur Strikes of 1919 and 1928’—deal with the organisation of workers’ resistance.
Kidambi reconsiders an argument that ‘obscures the fractiousness of industrial relations in Bombay’ prior to the First World War and relates the phenomenon to ‘under-developed’ ‘political consciousness’ of workers (p. 107). It was the workers’ militancy that struck him. ‘The structural balance of power tilted in favour of labour’ from the late 1890s to the First World War, and ‘politics on the workplace grew increasingly fractious’ (p. 107). He relates it to specific historical circumstances. A major development was the gradual disappearance of the ‘chronic instability’ in the cotton textile industry from the 1890s onwards, caused by an outbreak of famines and epidemic diseases at the turn of the nineteenth century. Industrial production picked up, with the demographic recovery in the early years of the twentieth century and the ‘upswing in both rural and urban economies’. On the other hand, supply of labour did not increase as much as the resurgent industrial activity required. However, labour in Bombay was never again ‘able to gain such structural leverage over capital from the 1920s onwards’ (p. 123). Labour lost its position of advantage. Two main reasons were the increased availability of labour with the end of famines and epidemics stimulating population growth, and the ‘growing influx into the Bombay city from the countryside’ due to the ‘stagnation of the rural economy’ (p. 123). Simultaneously, ‘the urban economy experienced a prolonged depression and contraction’. Mill-owners had therefore no reason to complain about labour shortages.
Nitin Sinha argues how the two strikes, in 1919 and 1928, in the Jamalpur Railway Workshops, one of the oldest in the country, significantly differed in terms of ideology, mobilisation and organisation. The nature of the involvement of workers was different. Workers themselves initiated the strike action in 1919. The 1928 strike was basically thrust upon ‘disinterested’ workers. ‘The trade union’ imposed it ‘in order to express and resuscitate its own authority (p. 286). The ideology and organisation of the two strikes was strikingly different too. The political climate of the 1919 strike was distinctive. Its background was the Non-Cooperation–Khilafat movements. This accounts for its different ‘mobilizational pattern’. Sadhus (ascetics), who throughout had a crucial role in the rural mobilisation, explained to the audience the message of Swaraj and benefits of strikes in terms, ‘which were more intelligible than the logic of “capital” and “labour” as explained by the trade unions’ (p. 287). ‘Gandhi’s charismatic appeal and the idea of renunciation and sobriety struck a chord more easily than the logic of class, capital and labour’ (p. 291). Sadhus could also use in their day-to-day work the ‘organisational network’ of the Congress. The growing distance between Congress and organisations like the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha by the mid-1920s deprived sadhus of access to this network. Growth of socialist ideas within the Congress under Nehru from the late 1920s ‘may have further diminished the importance and status that these sadhus received earlier’ (p. 292).
The themes of four other studies are different.
Aditya Sarkar’s essay ‘The Work of Law: Three Factory Narratives from Bombay Presidency, 1881–1884’ is a refreshingly insightful study of the origins of the early factory legislation (the Acts of 1881, 1891, 1911). He questions the conventional explanation highlighting the role of the Lancashire cotton lobby, which presumed the protection of factory workers would ‘minimize the competition from the Indian mill-owners’. The Lancashire magnates perhaps thought the protection would restrict the mill-owners’ freedom of regulating the production in the way they judged best and thus affect their competitiveness. He does admit the role of the ‘machinations of Lancashire’ in the making of the labour legislation, but, he argues, it was a product of ‘complex forces’. He enumerates the vital ones (pp. 249–50). Even within England labour law was being ‘reformulated in less capital-friendly directions’. Activities of English philanthropists like Lord Shaftsbury and of social activist Mary Carpenter created a climate of opinion in favour of reformed labour legislation. A powerful pro-labour lobby became active in the Bombay city itself. The ‘proceedings’ of the Factory Commission of 1875 generated a new awareness about the world of factory labour and about the propriety of a protective factory law. Anyway, the first Factory Act of 1881 was too ‘weak’ a legislation to justify the Lancashire cotton lobby’s anxiety that a protective law would make Indian mill-owners’ position less competitive.
Dhiraj Kumar Nite’s study ‘Work, Family and the Reproduction of Life: The Phase of Early Industrialization in the Jharia Coalfields, 1890s–1940s’ examines how the change in the nature of employment of ‘family labour’ in the Jharia coalfields (included in the present Dhanbad district) affected the miners’ families and how they sought to cope with the changes. Initially, every one of the family—men, women and children—worked in the mines. A distinct change over the years was the gradual withdrawal of women labour from underground mining. The change, having much to do with ‘rationalization’ and ‘industrial restructuring’, had ‘disruptive’ consequences for the families. They were ‘both financial and emotional’. Entitlements to livelihood perilously shrank. Family life was disrupted too. The families, however, did not leave it at that. They sought ‘in different ways… to affirm and resuscitate their notions of home and family life’ (p. 99).
Emma Alexander Mudaliar’s study has a rather unusual theme: ‘The “Special Classes” of Labour, Women and Children Doubly Marginalized’. ‘Special classes’, a phrase used in ‘colonial labour formulations’ (p. 131) meant three things. It included just women and labour. More importantly, the two ‘classes’ ‘were bracketed together in terms of labour’, as if ‘labour history need not distinguish them as separate entities’. ‘Special’ also meant ‘marginal’. ‘Colonial perception of labour in traditional Indian society…barely acknowledged the role of female and child labour despite its crucial importance to the development of capitalist enterprise’ (p. 146). Mudaliar has a bold formulation to present. The colonial State’s notion of marginality of women and child labour was mostly ‘an appropriation of Indian categories’ (p. 146).
Nitin Varma’s essay, ‘For the Drink of the Nation: Drink, Labour and Plantation Capitalism in the Colonial Tea Gardens of Assam in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century’ is a study of the different attitudes of the colonial government and the plantation authority to ‘the drink question’ in the Assam Tea Gardens. Government consistently followed a policy of ‘maximum of revenue from minimum consumption’. It ‘taxed the coolie drink’ by restricting consumption of their ‘home-brewed stuff’ and making them buy the ‘legal liquor’. It worked on a curious logic. Homemade liquor was illegal. The liquor produced under its control was legal. It was the growing market of the ‘legal’ liquor that fetched Government increasing revenue. The plantation authority’s attitude to the drink question varied over the years. It had a different logic in changing its attitude. The change became necessary because of the changed nature of the plantation in the late nineteenth century. Earlier, a considerable part of the coolie labour was employed in the extremely exacting work of jungle clearance. Planters then permitted liquor drinking because it was a ‘stimulant’ to the overworked coolies. The attitude changed with a crucial change in the needs of the plantation. It was ‘the “time-work-discipline” of an entrenched plantation work culture, which was now at stake’ (p. 312). The prime need of the plantation now was ‘intensity’ of the labour process. Liquor was no longer a stimulant. It was intoxicating and ‘diseasing’ the coolies instead. It tended to destroy the vital work culture that now was needed.
The ‘multiple identities’ of labour examined in the other studies include ‘convict labour’, ‘indentured’ coolie labour, ‘dalits’, and Musahars, a community of agricultural labourers of the ‘middle Gangetic Plains’, especially in the Gaya district of Bihar. Two types of convict labour have been analysed: one employed by the State in road construction and another in assorted works in the ‘Penal Colony’ of the Andamans. ‘Dalits’ included ‘those groups in Indian society that suffered from various levels of social and religious discrimination, particularly related to untouchability’(p. 168). Musahars, all untouchables and beyond the pale of the Hindu Varna system, were mostly agrestic serfs, that is, ‘bonded’ labourers. Apart from various types of agricultural work, they had a crucial role to play, throughout the peak agricultural season, in keeping the irrigation system in order, a vital necessity for paddy cultivation, which had long been ‘the dominant mode of economic practice’ in the middle Gangetic plains.
Chitra Joshi’s essay ‘Fettered Bodies: Labouring on Public Works in Nineteenth Century India’ shows how a considerable part of the labour employed by the State on ‘major road construction projects’ in the nineteenth century was convict labour directly controlled by the State. It of course was a ‘coercive labour regime’. The State did have a role ‘in the production and reproduction in different forms of coercive labour’ in areas of other ‘private’ enterprises (notably, tea plantations and indigo plantations). It was indirect. It made laws which ‘formalized’ the use of force and coercion over labour. The State’s control over labour employed in road construction was direct. A distinct feature of the ‘convict labour regime’ was ‘the elaborate system of surveillance and control’, because of the ‘continuously shifting’ locations of new constructions. Joshi argues that it ‘also had a legitimating logic’. ‘A system of forced labour that produces commodities for public good acquires a public sanction’ (p. 14) (In which sense was it ‘public’?) She does admit: ‘In India this sanction always had a fragile basis’ (p. 14).
Aparna Vaidik (‘Working an Island Colony: Convict Labour Regime in the Colonial Andamans, 1858–1921’) questions the ‘accepted wisdom that convict labour systems were unremittingly coercive….The coercive nature of its labour regime did not obliterate the process of negotiation’ (pp. 72, 73). Of the two parts of the study, the first, that is, the coercive nature of the labour process is well established. Her conclusion is unequivocal. It was the status of the Andamans as a ‘penal colony’ that ‘subjected the convicts to a high degree of brutality and harshness’ (p. 73). The second part seems tentative. It is largely an inference from the State’s ‘vision of developing an agricultural colony’ here (p. 57). The study does not tell us enough for us to conclude that the ‘vision’ created a countervailing agency, which substantially mitigated the ‘brutality’.
Rafiul Ahmed’s study (‘Mobility, Resistance and Identity: The Musahars of Middle Gangetic Plains) ‘mainly focuses on contemporary mobility processes’ (p. 197). This is notable. We need to know if the conditions that made the Musahar community more mobile in the recent past had some new features.
Ahmed argues that the ‘mobility’ of the Musahars, at the time of his field enquiry, is only partially explicable in terms of ‘merely an economic strategy’, by which he meant ‘a rational response’ to the usual ‘push and pull’ factors. It involved a ‘political’ choice; it was a ‘strategy to resist the power of the dominant’ (p. 203). We need to know the class root of Musahars and of the dominant groups. As we have said earlier, Musahars were mostly ‘agrestic serfs’, tied agricultural labourers. The dominant groups were all landlords, depending on Musahars for labour in rice cultivation and for keeping the irrigation system in order. Musahars, invariably landless, remained tied to landlords, because of their credit ties with their employers. The findings of Ahmed’s field enquiry show that the primary ‘strategy’ for resisting the dominant was ‘flight’ from villages. The flight did mean a form of resistance to ‘domination’, because it meant defiance of the customary obligation of a debtor to repay debt to his creditor, and, more importantly, defiance of the brute force, often physical violence, through which the landlord sought to keep his Musahar tied to him. One Musahar, in response to a query from Ahmed, told him in so many words that his new job as a stone crusher at a quarry has ‘given him freedom…freedom from exploitation and sufferings at the hands of the upper caste maliks’ of his parental village. Indeed, the new breed of maliks in post-colonial Bihar was far more exacting. ‘The expansion of capitalist-agrarian relations’ led to ‘the emergence of middle-class landlords who were more vehement in openly using physical power to bend the Musahars to their own whims’ (p. 200). Still, flights of Musahars from their villages could not be contained. The failure of maliks to stop the flights was not at all a new thing. This happened in colonial Bihar too (and also in Tamil Nadu and Kerala), in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The main reason was the weakening of the old caste sanctions. The maliks’ power could be upheld mostly in a closed world and a closed economy. The Bihar economy opened up too. Ahmed himself found how the new employment opportunities became available in the ‘far-flung industrial and commercial cities of the north, even to the agricultural states like Punjab and Haryana’. This of course was a crucial pull factor. On the other hand, at least some Musahars, who returned to their villages, had substantial savings and this made it possible for them to confront their old maliks with a great degree of self-assurance.
Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay (‘Dalits and the Ideology of Work in India’) examines how the ‘dominant’ ideology of work in India affected the Dalits, and how the new Dalit protest movements, mostly in the cities, understood the meaning of work. By the ‘dominant’ ideology he means the hegemonic ideas, which largely determined how certain social groups came to perform certain types of ‘degrading’ labour. Dalits, for instance, who ‘suffered from various levels of social and religious discrimination, particularly related to untouchability’ (p. 169) were actually ‘coerced’ to do this type of labour. Upadhyay traces the evolution of these hegemonic ideas over a long period of time. Our note is limited to the distinctive development during colonial rule, which he calls ‘the dual labour regime’ (p. 160). ‘Colonial rule, with its ambivalent attitude to work and Indian social hierarchy’, ‘created’ (italics ours) this regime ‘for the subordinate groups which made them vulnerable in the rural areas, but provided them with relatively greater ideological and economic strength and freedom in the cities’ (p. 168). The origins of the new Dalit protest movements in the cities were traced to this strength and freedom. The movements did signify a new level of social awareness of Dalit leaders and writers, but they did not go far enough. They ‘radically’ questioned the hierarchies of the caste system, but ‘their contribution in questioning the dominant ideology of work has been much less pronounced’ (p. 168).
A crucial question remains to be answered. Was the role Upadhyay attributes to ‘colonialism’ in the creation of the ‘dual labour regime’ as decisive as he supposes? Can we conclude that the ‘creation’ had more complex origins, of which ‘colonialism’, that is, direct intervention by the State, was just one? Whatever the Colonial State’s attitude to ‘work and Indian social hierarchy’, the intervention had a peripheral role either in the entrenchment of the old coercive system or in undermining it.
Claudio Costa Pinheiro’s highly perceptive study, ‘Blurred Boundaries: Slavery, Unfree Labour and the Subsumption of Multiple Social and Labour Identities in India’ makes a significant methodological point. Historians, he argues, are not often careful about ‘how words, terms and expressions have directly affected the composition of historiographic discourse’ (pp. 188–89). A citation from Marc Bloch clarifies his point. ‘To the great despair of historians, men fail to change their vocabulary every time they change their customs’. Linguistics would help them in properly understanding social institutions. They can salvage ‘through the history of words the history of social realities which they reflect’ (p. 189). He briefly considers, as illustration, ‘certain aspects of labour forms in India and Portuguese colonies, comparatively, and especially those terms relating to forced labour’.
The essays reviewed above belong to two distinct types: labour relations in ‘capitalist’ industry and other labour relations wholly unconnected with industrial organisation. They are distinct. Their historical origins are different. Their functions are different. So too is the will and strategy of labourers to modify their relations with their employers. For instance, labour in public works (such as road construction) and in the Andamans Penal Colony, and the labour of agrestic serfs (such as the Musahars of Middle Gangetic Plains) were clearly distinguishable from industrial labour, in all these respects. The only thing common thing in the two types of labour is that they are all engaged in a labour process. A relevant question therefore is the appropriateness of mixing up the studies of these two distinct types.