Linkages - Global and Local

South Asian Labour

Movement meant first of all the physical mobility of people who became labourers. This dislocation constituted the founding moment of the historical experience of labour. These movements were not merely local taking place within short distances, or of short duration, but were often very long distance and for long periods of time (often permanent), in other words: they assumed a global dimension. It is not surprising then to find that the movement of labour into the capitalist enterprises in the early nineteenth century South Asia was coeval with the large-scale movement of South Asian labour into the capitalist plantations overseas. Historically speaking the local and global processes of movement of South Asian labour were inseparable. While an enormous amount of literature which has documented this linkage now exists, we feel that there has been inadequate theorization about the consequences it had for the constitution of the working class experience and especially for the second meaning of the term "movement".
The Labour movement has traditionally meant the movement of the workers organized under trade unions or political parties. In the traditional sense then the labour movement has encompassed only a relatively recent, and then only a section, of the totality of historical experience of the movement of labour. How do we then characterize or recover the significant collective experience of labour, which is absent in the traditional discussions on the labour movement? In what way can we speak of a labour movement before and beyond the pale of "labour movement" in case of the South Asian labour? Without denying the tremendous importance of the emergence of institutionalized labour movement we have to avoid the pitfall of a whiggish interpretation of the"pre-history" of the labour movement. Even within the traditional ambit of the labour movement much greater attention has been paid to the colonial and the national state as the significant context which shaped the movement, while the local and global contexts have been inadequately conceptualized. We suggest three themes here that may be discussed usefully under a broader rubric of what we have called "linkages" of global and local contexts of South Asian labour.

Law and public sphere
In an important way the experience of the labour under capitalism in South Asia has been marked by the institution of law governing the relation of employers and employees. There is strong tendency in labour studies to view the institution of law as no more than an epiphenomenon of the basic relations of capitalist exploitation and thus having but a minimal effect on the labour movement. Yet the practical struggle of workers to alter the conditions of their life has always been directed towards a change in the form and content of the legal relations under which they labour. Nothing illustrates this more than the present opposition of the organized labour movement to the so called "exit policy" and other deregulatory measures of the liberalization process underway in South Asia. Yet the institutions of law always had a global component to them.To cite only a few examples: the abolition of slavery in Britain in 1834, the institution of indentured labour laws in India and subsequently in the British, Dutch and French colonies in Asia,Africa and West Indies; the adoption of the eight-hour working day, the establishment of International Labour Organization and the labour codes that came in its wake and so forth. Similarities and differences in the legal regimes around the world where South Asian labour had been indentured, have deeply shaped its collective experience. The global context of law was of course modified in its practice in and application to in the local context.

The Labour Process
A second theme of linkage would be that of the capitalist labour process, namely techniques of production that emerged in a global context and were often modified and applied or blocked altogether according to local exigencies. Even though the labour process has been recognized as having consequences for the structure of workers' consciousness and the character of the labour movement, this is a relatively less conceptualized and studied aspect of labour in South Asia.

Class and Community
The final theme of the workshop will explore the vexed question of class and community. At first glance these two concepts appear to be mutually exclusive in both time and space. Community is presumptively the pre-modern, pre-capitalist form of workers' experience which is gradually being replaced by the class experience based on common economic interest of workers. Spatially too community and its various manifestations such as religious, linguistic and ethnic identity appear to be linked to the local context, while class is drawn into the global context. Historical and contemporary research has negated many of this assumptions without, however, providing an adequate theory to replace it. We would urge the participants to concentrate on the linkages between these two concepts, the processes that mutually reinforce, construct and even contradict each of these two poles of experience. The workshop will include participants pursuing contemporary and historical research on South Asian Labour both at home and abroad.

For further information please contact:
Dr Prabhu Mohapatra
Research Fellow International Institute for Asian Studies
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands
Tel: +31-71-272227
Fax: +31-72-274162