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Sardars, Jobbers, Kanganies: The Labour Contractor and Indian Economic History*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2008

TIRTHANKAR ROY
TIRTHANKAR ROY*
Affiliation:
Economic History Department, London School of Economics and Political Science
*
† E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

A figure in part a foreman, in part a headman, and in part a recruiting contractor, formed an indispensable part of labour organization in mills, mines, ports and plantations in nineteenth-century India, and in the tropical colonies where Indian emigrants went for work. Historians have explained the presence of such a figure by the needs of capital for intermediaries, or needs of labour for familiar relationships in an unfamiliar environment. The significance of the labour agent for economic history, however, seems to go beyond these needs. The universal presence of a worker who embodied a variable blend of roles prompts several larger questions. Was the labour agent an institutional response to an economic problem? Were modern forms of agency rooted in older modes of labour organization? The scholarship discussed the gains for employers. Were there costs too? This paper is a preliminary attempt at framing these larger issues. I suggest here that the agent had roots in the traditional economy, and represented an incorporation of putting out and the authority of the headman inside modern work sites, and that this incorporation of traditional authority in a modern setting gave rise to contradictions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 5 , September 2008 , pp. 971 - 998
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of the paper was presented in a panel titled ‘Colonialism and Labour’ at the 14th International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, August 2006. I thank participants at the panel for a useful discussion. A part of the research was carried out at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, in June 2006, while I was on a fellowship funded by the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development.

References

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7 Balachandran, in ‘Searching for the Sardar’, correctly notes that there is circularity in culturalist explanations: the agent can be seen as both a cause and an effect of a cultural distance.

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22 For example, Jain, R.K., ‘South Indian labour in Malaya 1840–1920: Asylum stability and involution’ in Saunders, Kay (ed.), Indentured Labour in the British Empire 1834–1920 (London and Canberra, 1984), pp. 158–182Google Scholar, on Malaya. For recent works on the kangany, see P.E. Baak, ‘About enslaved ex-slaves, uncaptured contract coolies and unfreed freedmen: Some Notes about ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ labour in the context of plantation development in southwest India, early sixteenth century-mid 1990s’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 33 (1999), 121–157; and Wenzlhuemer, R., ‘Indian labour immigration and British labour policy in nineteenth-century Ceylon’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 41 (2007), pp. 575–602CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28 Servants, Sirdars and Settlers.

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30 Ibid.

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33 Griffiths, Percival, The History of the Indian Tea Industry (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1967), pp. 633–634Google Scholar. In this case, the transportation problem was solved by a combination of railway, steamboats and bullock carts, and not railway alone.

34 The best general account of the agent in the tea gardens is Griffiths, History of the Indian Tea Industry, pp. 267–296.

35 ‘[A] common story [in Jubbulpore] ]is that oil is extracted from the bodies of coolies’, India, Assam Labour Enquiry, p. 57.

36 According to one professional agent, ‘most of the people free recruited under the present system have been phuslaoed [tricked] by the recruiters’, India, Assam Labour Enquiry, p. 5.

37 A European Magistrate of Ranchi remarked that ‘the recruiters keep up connection with local badmashes [miscreants]’.37 As one contractor explained, ‘if I tell the ways [of enticing a coolie without inviting the Magistrate's suspicion], I may suffer in consequences’. Ibid., p. 8.

38 Ibid., p. 10.

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40 ‘Absenteeism’, usually a result of some workers leaving for their villages without taking leave, was the principal example cited by the millowners to show that the quality of labour was inadequate. The reliance on the jobber rested on this feature. What is not clear, however, is whether absenteeism was the cause or the effect of the dependence on the agent.

41 India, Assam Labour Enquiry, p. 238.

42 ‘The Dooars are more popular than Assam because people can come back when they like’, E.M. Whitley, S.P.G. Mission, Ranchi, before India, Assam Labour Enquiry, p. 13.

43 Ibid., p. 5.

44 For one example, India, Assam Labour Enquiry, p. 4. On women's migration to Assam, see also Sen, S., ‘“Without his consent?”: Marriage and women's migration in colonial India’, International Labor and Working-Class History, Vol. 65 (2004), pp. 77–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 India, Assam Labour Enquiry, pp. 23–24.

46 Ibid. p. 77.

47 India, Assam Labour Enquiry, p. 171, A.B. Hawkins, Assam Oil Company.

48 India, Assam Labour Enquiry, pp. 46, 50.

49 Griffiths, History of the Indian Tea Industry, pp. 280.

50 Ibid., p. 46.

51 Ibid., p. 52.

52 India, Assam Labour Enquiry, p. 41.

53 India, Assam Labour Enquiry, p. 151, E.W Pickard-Cambridge, planter.

54 India, Royal Commission on Labour in India, Vol. VI, Part II, Evidence recorded in Assam (Calcutta, 1931), p. 103, J.H. Copeland, Manager, Cinnamara Tea Estate.

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57 India, Royal Commission on Labour, Vol. VI, Part II, p. 113, C.K. Bezbaruah, Manager, Boloma Tea Estate.

58 Chandavarkar, ‘Industrialization in India before 1947’. See also Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capitalism.

59 Morris, Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force, pp. 129–153.

60 ‘A Retired Mill Manager’, ‘Hints on the management of cotton mills’, Indian Textile Journal, Vol. 14 (1903), p. 81.

61 India, Royal Commission on Labour in India, Vol. I, Part I, Written Evidence Recorded in Bombay Presidency (Calcutta, 1931), p. 296, Bombay Textile Labour Union.

62 Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capitalism, p. 196.

63 Morris, Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force, p. 136.

64 India, Royal Commission on Labour in India, Vol. I, Part II, Oral Evidence Recorded in Bombay Presidency (Calcutta, 1931), p. 431.

65 ‘A.: If a jobber moves from a mill he will take the labour with him. . . . Q.: Does he take the labour with him because of their affection for him or because of bonds of other kinds? A.: Bonds of other kinds . . . there is no affection about it’. Evidence by R. Blackwell, J. Parker, J.B. Green, Bombay European Textile Association, India, Royal Commission on Labour in India, Vol. I, Part II, p. 332.

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68 ‘A Retired Mill Manager, ‘Hints on the management’, p. 81.

69 Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capitalism.