South Asian Labour:
By Prabhu Mohapatra
The workshop was formally inaugurated by Professor Otto van den Muijzenberg
representing the IIAS Board and Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Amsterdam. The central ideas of the workshop were threefold. First was to bring together
or "link" three themes in South Asian Labour history that have hitherto been pursued
independently, namely: pre-colonial labour; colonial labour; and overseas labour.
Secondly to explore the basic concepts of labour history, namely: class; community; and
gender in the framework of "linkages between and within the local and global contexts of
labour". These contexts could be institutional (state, global legal regimes, etc.) or spatial
(neighbourhood, factory, city, nation or overseas). Finally the idea of movement as both
the physical movement of labourers (migration) and as the collective action of the
labourers (labour movement) helped to explore the linkage between the process of
recruitment and settlement of workers on the one hand and collective and segmentary
consciousness on the other.
The papers presented at the workshop and the discussions were written from different and
often opposed methodological standpoints - a reflection of vigour and potentialities rather
than one of lack of direction.
The first session was devoted to the issue of the labour situation in South Asia in the late
pre-colonial and early colonial period. The issues of continuity and discontinuity across
the colonial divide in key categories related to labour namely, those of wages, contracts,
forms of organization of labour, and the impact of state power provided the subjects of
the papers and the subsequent discussion. Sanjay Subrahmanyam's survey of the labour
market in late pre-colonial India argued strongly against the implicit assumption in
historiography of an immobile and static situation in pre-colonial India, and illustrated his
point by examining labour conditions in certain key industries of the late pre-colonial
India. In his paper Dirk Kolff argued for the continuity of the mentalities that informed
the decision to migrate in pre-colonial Bhojpuri military migrants and the 19th century
contract-labour migration overseas. Prasannan Parthasarathy's paper, on the other hand,
tried to show that the assumption of a low wage customary economy in South India, in
the late 18th century was overdrawn and that real wage levels in South India specially in
the weaving industry, could have been higher than their British counterparts in the same
period.
Law and Labour
The next two sessions were devoted to issues of law and labour in the colonial period.
Labour laws often represented the clearest instances of the phenomena of global and local
linkages. In India labour laws were in some cases imported directly from the British
context and trimmed to fit the local situations, but, conversely, sometimes laws, framed
for specific situations in the local context (like indenture laws), gained wider currency in
other colonies. The dialectic of local and global was exemplified at the institutional level
in the interaction of the colonial state and international bodies (ILO), and also in the
links between different colonial governments and the British state. At the micro level of
industry, the exigencies of the control of labour or policing functions often easily
coexisted with the universalist (global) assumptions of the protection of rights of labour
and capital embodied in much law making. Papers by Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
on the making of labour laws in India in the 1920s in the context of the emergence of the
ILO, Patrick Peebles's exploration of the application of criminal breach of contract laws
in Ceylon for Indian labourers who were not under indenture, and Michael Anderson's
survey of the 19th century labour law making with its emphasis on policing functions of
law, all explored the dialectic of local and global context at the institutional level in
different ways. John Kelly's paper, focusing on two major strikes by Indian labourers and
cane farmers in Fiji, delineated the complex interaction of race and law that went into
defining the identity of the Indians in Fiji. While Ian Kerr's paper pointed out the tactical
and strategic need for control of labour and the local factors which inspired the making of
railway laws in India, Janaki Nayar's exploration of the way in which labour laws were
enforced on the Kolar goldfield alluded to the development of a disciplinary apparatus
forged for, but continuously modified in negotiatory practices by, the working class.
Class and Community
The whole of the second day was devoted to a set of papers that dealt with the central
question of the articulation of class and community consciousness among the workers. For
a long time it has been a common assumption in the historiography that labour in South
Asia seemed to be set apart by the presence of communal and sectional identities that
militated against a consciousness of a unified class. These "pre-capitalist" or "primordial"
identities were seen to have persisted and, some would argue, have been exacerbated by
the long history of capitalist industrialization in South Asia. The papers presented in the
sessions showed how simplistic it has been to assume "essential-cultural" or primordial
identities for workers. Because, as was argued in most papers, these identities were
historically produced and never simply assumed. What was of interest in most papers was
not the presence or absence of any particular identity but the ways in which the various
identities of the workers articulated with each other. Arjan de Haan and Subho Basu
explored the two different aspects of sectional identity among the jute workers of
Calcutta, namely those of religion and region. Dilip Simeon and Ranjan Ghosh's joint
paper on the Jharia coalfields looked at the way in which "community" identity forged in
the work places affected the production process as well as the organized collective actions
of the workers. Vijay Prasad's paper showed how the discourse of colonial sociology was
crucial to the production of the "identity" of the sweepers among the Churhas of the
Punjab. Chitra Joshi's paper on the world of Kanpur workers emphasized the ways in
which consciousness of temporality shaped identities of workers in a range of spatial sites
from the family to the factory and the city. A set of four papers dealt with the issue of
class and community among South Asian labourers away from their "home" context. G.
Balachandran's essay looked at the complex issue of race and solidarity reflected in the
uneasy relation between the British seamen's union and the Indian lascars on British
ships. Then Eric Meyer's account of the experience of a small group of Marathi Coolies
in Ceylon, Prabhu Mohapatra's on the Muharram festival among Indian labourers in
Trinidad and Rosmarijn Hoefte's paper on resistance among the Indian indentured
labourers on the Marienburg Estate in Surinam highlighted some of the complexities
involved in the formation of identities among the workers. It was clear from the range of
papers in the session that the identities of South Asian workers whether at "home" or
"abroad" were formed contingently and shaped by the struggle in the work places and
outside, and marked by the traces of the state power.
Indian Labour History
The final session on the last day was devoted to a discussion of the theoretical questions
related to labour, and a long and lively discussion followed the papers presented by
Dipesh Chakrabarthy, Raj Chandavarkar, and Jan Breman (whose paper was discussed in
his absence). Raj Chandavarkar's survey of issues in Indian labour history was important
in putting into perspective the so-called "peculiarities" of the Indian working class, be this
couched in the question of rural links or in that of sectional identities or in the alleged
corporatist character of labour. The issue of singularity of experience of South Asian
Labour was strongly posed by Dipesh Chakrabarthy who decried the attempts to read the
specific history of South Asian Labour through European lenses. Jan Breman's paper,
discussing the origins of the agricultural proletariat in South Asia and Southeast Asia,
argued that the Asian experience might illumine the European experience more than it has
been presumed until now.
The conference ended with a long deliberation by the participants about the future
research directions of labour studies in South Asia. As a first step it was agreed that more
regular contacts should be maintained between scholars on labour studies in South Asia
and a proposal for a South Asian Labour Studies Network has been mooted. There were
also proposals to set up an association for labour studies in India with the aim of
promoting research and publication on themes of labour. As a further step it was
informally agreed to hold a conference on labour history in 1997 in India to keep up the
momentum generated by this conference. It was also decided that for the time being Dr
Marcel van der Linden of the IISG would be the contact person before a proper network
can be set up of scholars interested in labour studies in South Asia. Jan Lucassen,
research director of the IISG, closed the conference with a stirring address that
emphasized the need for closer interaction between European and Asian labour studies.
For more information about the proposed network of scholars interested in Labour studies
please contact the address below.
Dr Marcel van der Linden
c/o IISG
Cruquiusweg 31
1019 AT Amsterdam
Tel: +31-20-6685866
Email: mvl@iisg.nl.
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