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On the Move: Circulating Labor in Pre-Colonial, Colonial, and Post-Colonial India

Part of: Labour History and the Case against Colonialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2006

Ian J. Kerr
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Abstract

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In 1770 a British official in Madras observed groups composed of men, women, and children who formed “a kind of travelling community of their own under a species of Government peculiar to themselves, with laws and customs which they follow and observe wherever they go”. These itinerant, coveted groups of earth and stone workers – “even courted by Princes” – circulated from worksite to worksite where they dug tanks (small reservoirs), ditches, and wells, and built roads and fortifications. They lived close to their worksites in “temporary hutts which they throw up for the occasion, and always chuse a spot distinct from any village, wandering from one place to another as is most convenient”.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 51 , Issue S14 , December 2006 , pp. 85 - 109
Copyright
2006 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis

Footnotes

A draft of this paper was presented at the International Workshop, “Towards Global Labour History: New Comparisons”, at the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, New Delhi, November 2005. I am grateful to those whose efforts made the conference a success and my attendance possible. I benefited from helpful critics at the Delhi conference, and from an editor of this collection, Rana Behal. Prasannan Parthasarathi, Niels Brimnes, Adapa Satyanarayana, and Ian Petrie kindly identified useful sources. Katy Hunt provided invaluable assistance. A Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada) Standard Research Grant supported my research.