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- Convenors:
-
Andrea Major
(University of Leeds)
Crispin Bates (University of Edinburgh)
- Location:
- Room 211
- Start time:
- 27 July, 2016 at
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
Relationships between caste/tribal identities and labour mobilisation, exploitation and activism are controversial and complex. This panel explores how collective identities have been used to control labour, and how they have been challenged, renegotiated and reclaimed by those opposing its abuse.
Long Abstract:
This panel focuses on the relationship between real and imagined caste and/or tribal identities, labour mobilisation and labour exploitation in colonial and postcolonial India, and the Indian labour diaspora. It will look at how various caste/tribal identities have been constructed by the upper-castes, colonial and postcolonial authorities, and social activists, and at how these have been deployed to control, manipulate, or oppose certain forms of labour. More importantly, it will also examine how workers themselves have utilised, contested, and reframed these ascribed identities in order to influence labour conditions, shape personal and collective outcomes, and challenge dominant narratives. Various groups have sought to (re)negotiate control over both their physical labour and their individual and collective identities, through migration, social activism, unionisation, industrial action, cultural production, and a reassertion of the dignity of labour. By exploring these processes participants will seek to move beyond persisting stereotypes and present a more fluid and historically contingent interpretation of the relationship between caste, labour and identity.
Prof. Crispin Bates and Dr. Marina Carter (University of Edinburgh) - Uncasting and Recasting the Indian Labour Migrant.
Dr. Andrea Major (University of Leeds) - 'Slave Castes', 'Coolies' and Colonial Discourses of 'Unfree' Labour.
Dr. Charu Gupta (University of Delhi) - Dalit Masculinities: Constructing the Labouring Body in Colonial North India.
Prof. William Gould (University of Leeds) - 'Criminal Tribes', Labour Mobilisation, Industrial Action and Cultural Production.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between debates indentured labour migration and wider interpretations of caste slavery, debt bondage and other forms of 'unfree' labour in India, in order to critically analysis the colonial assumptions that underpinned the emergence of the 'coolie' stereotype.
Paper long abstract:
Analogies between the so-called 'coolie trade' and slavery emerged almost as soon as the system of Indian indentured labour migration was implemented. High mortality on the early indentured voyages, long contracts, poor conditions and harsh labour regimes were all considered to replicate the experience of slavery, whatever the theoretical protections of contract labour. Assumptions about India's inexhaustible reserves of manpower, and raced, classed and gendered images of passive, ignorant, and abused Indian 'hill coolies' went largely unchallenged in abolitionist discussions of indenture that focused primarily on the impact of immigration on social and labour conditions the destination colonies. Yet early discussions of indenture were also deeply embedded in contemporaneous debates about the migrants' place of origin, taking place as they did at the same time as debates about the delegalisation of slavery in India. By analysing debates about indenture alongside orientalist tropes about the labouring Indian, and ongoing colonial debates about the conditions of servitude in India, this paper will explore how particular colonial stereotypes of the passive 'coolie' emerged, and why it came to have such longevity, despite indentured migrants themselves increasingly challenging this imposed identity.
Paper short abstract:
Caste and the Indian labour diaspora continues to be a much mythologised and controversial subject. The paper will attempt to unpack past and present stereotypes and generalisations in colonial, nationalist and post-colonial discourse on Indian Ocean labour migration, with particular reference to Mauritius.
Paper long abstract:
Beginning with an analysis of data on the recruitment of North Indian migrants indentured to labour in overseas sugar colonies immediately post 1857, the paper will attempt to unpack past and present stereotypes and generalisations about 'low castes', 'high castes', 'disappearing castes' 'withering away of the caste system' and 'castelessness' in diaspora. Myths raised and reframed in colonial, nationalist and post-colonial discourse on Indian overseas labour migration will be re-assessed, with particular reference to Mauritius.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses how different collective identities are constructed, contested and used in negotiations over justice and representation of tea plantation labourers in Assam by different interest groups engaged with the welfare and development of the labourers.
Paper long abstract:
While some ethnographies on tea plantations in the Indian state of West Bengal came up recently (e.g. Besky 2014), the study of tea plantations in Assam is, so far, limited to historical approaches. However, post-colonial Assam constitutes a particular research field regarding the region's socio-political landscape and the tea plantation labourers' social fabric. To this day, labourers are largely recruited from the Chota Nagpur Plateau to work for the tea industry in Assam. They belong to various ethnic communities such as Odia, Munda or Oraon. After the Indian Independence, the Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS) became the largest trade union in the Assam valley to negotiate over wages and labour issues with the tea planters. Next to it, the All Assam Tea Tribes Students Association (ATTSA) was among the most important groups to claim the protection of tea plantation labourers' interests. Both these groups are based on the conception of the labourers' identity in terms of their occupation as 'tea tribes'. In the late 1990s, however, other groups e.g. the All Adivasi Students' Association of Assam (AASAA) emerged. They challenge the legitimacy of former groups to represent the plantation labourer's interests and rely upon the collective understanding of the labourers as Adivasis. Based on extensive fieldwork in Assam since December 2014, the present paper analyses how different collective identities are constructed, contested and used in negotiations over justice and representation of tea plantation labourers in Assam.
Paper short abstract:
The paper tries to understand the relationship between caste and migration in Kerala, South India.
Paper long abstract:
My paper explores the relationship between migration and caste identities. Based on long term ethnographic work among workers migrating to Kerala from North and North eastern India, it explores how migration draws on caste based kinship relations. Migration for construction work and remittances are used to overcome dependence on income from agricultural work. It traces the role of caste in organizing work in construction sites and persistence of jobbers in disciplining of workers. Migration forms the basis of alliances between Dalits and other backward castes as they negotiate new destinations and work-places together. Based on fieldwork among migrant workers who formed an independent trade-union, it looks at their self identification as "hindi mazdoor" ( hindi workers) that signal to the formation of new fault lines of stratification and alliance. Identities based on caste, class and region/language are intertwined in the process of migration and in shaping labour practices and resistance.
Paper short abstract:
This paper charts the relocation of large numbers of formerly nomadic, itinerant, wandering or otherwise peripatetic communities, such as performers, minstrels, acrobats, palm readers, gypsies, herders, and other itinerant lifestyles into settled enclaves in the wake of the Indian Mutiny (1857-59).
Paper long abstract:
This paper begins to chart the relocation of large numbers of formerly nomadic, itinerant, wandering or otherwise peripatetic communities, such as performers, minstrels, acrobats, palm readers, gypsies, herders, and other itinerant lifestyles into settled enclaves in the wake of the Mutiny (1857). The ancestors of the performers of Budhan Theatre, for example, were settled into the spinning industry in Ahmedabad in the 1930s, when they were awarded a "free colony" in their present locale of Chharanagar.
In oral history they trace their lineage to the court of Maharana Pratap Singh of Mewar who was deposed by Emperor Akbar in 1567. For 300 years they wandered as itinerant performers, fortune tellers, and entrepreneurs of fortune. They were then surveilled, concentrated and settled under the provisions of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. How they got to Ahmedabad is the crux of the story, not recorded in oral history, and subject to a convoluted archival chase. This is one strand of how Street Theatre came into being, as itinerant performers began to practice their ancient craft in new urban settings.
Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to redefine the Indian migratory patterns by analysing the colonial Indian labour emigration to Ceylon which was largely kangany induced. The economics of advance-debt and its intricate linkages with the institution of Tundu as well as the labour regime will assume special focus.
Paper long abstract:
In the Indian scenario there has been a strong tendency to view the migratory trends during the 19th-20th century as largely Indentured in its form, coercive and un-free in nature, Colonial-Europeans as its stimulator, predominantly Northern Indian or Bhojpuri region as its source, plantation labourer as its composition and as steering towards colonial landmasses in Caribbean and Pacific oceans as its region of production/destination. This paper seeks to complicate these parameters which conventionally define the characteristics of Indian migration by analysing the pattern, functioning and nature of the Kangany induced mobility.
The attempt is also to analyse the economics of advance-debt and its intricate linkages with the rise and fall of the institution of Tundu which, as I argue, functioned to 'promote' the mobility of an immobilised labour force inter-estate as well as across the straits. The indebtedness of the labourers commoditized them for the 'market' and denied them any agency over their mobility and production. The analysis of mechanisms for retrieval of labourers ever-persisting debts and how did it negotiate strained labour relations with the kin intermediaries, re-structure the category of family and produce a series of regulations, broadly aimed at restraining the excesses of informal regulations exercised by over-powered mediatory, is of immense significance.
Paper short abstract:
The paper is an attempt to enquire into the mechanism adopted by British Raj to employ tribal groups needed for construction works in colonial North East India. Deploying the various sections of hill tribes into collective identities helped the British to control the coolie labour force.
Paper long abstract:
The scholarship on colonial labour regime had been preoccupied by various forms of labour recruitment for tea plantation. Labour recruitment of coolies for colonial road construction has so far remains unstudied. This paper looks at how colonial official deployed collective identities to control the available local coolie labour and non-local labour needed for construction of roads and railway lines in colonial North East India. Different groups of local sources of labour were identified and mobilized along tribal lines such as the Nagas, the Khasis and the Kukis (Khongjais) which are collective identities. The colonial idea of conscription was contested and resisted by local people in two ways: (a) Armed resistance by the Khasis, (b) indirect protest by desertion. This resulted in acute shortage of local labour supply. The labour shortage was supplemented by non-local sources of labour. This included imported migrant labours like Santhalis (coolies), Nepalis (earthwork & stonework) and Pathans (mascular & good at blowing up rocks). Most of these migrant labours were sourced through labour contractors since the late nineteenth century. Prior to this period, the Rajas and local tribal chiefs were pressed into service to act as labour contractors but they were ultimately rejected in favour of more professional class of labour contractors. Tribal labours conscripted were extensively used in colonial pacification campaigns in North Eastern Frontier of India and global wars (both WWI and WWII). Colonial practices of raising Naga, Khasi, Garo, Lushai labour Corps had impact on ethnic formations in post-Independence India.
Paper short abstract:
I argue that iterative cultural and economic factors influence poverty for the Pardhi. Productive activity perceived to involve high-energy expenditure while economically attractive, can be rejected from unfamiliar body-techniques or in contexts where communities aim to preserve ‘body-capital’.
Paper long abstract:
From village-based research in central Chhattisgarh, this paper examines the curious case of the ex-criminal or de-notified Pardhi tribe, and its rejection of employment under NREGA - a public works programme expected to benefit them. The paper argues that there are iterative cultural and nutritional factors that influence poverty for this community, notwithstanding oppressive social and political relations. Productive activity perceived to involve high-energy expenditure, while seemingly economically attractive can be rejected in contexts where communities aim to preserve 'body-capital'. Furthermore, conventional classifications of what is considered routine unskilled work under NREGA may be rejected because of cultural unfamiliarity and unfamiliar body techniques. The economic and cultural history of the tribe as a nomadic community, which still bears some burden of the 'deviant' classification may further contribute to Pardhi rejection of public programmes.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how mobilisation around labour disputes in the late 1930s in western India implicated communities incarcerated in open prisons, becoming a means by which so-called 'Criminal Tribes' expressed insurgent forms of citizenship.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores how mobilisation around labour disputes in the late 1930s in western India implicated communities incarcerated in open prisons, becoming a means by which so-called 'Criminal Tribes' expressed insurgent forms of citizenship. Examining the specific case study of the mill strikes in Sholapur during the regime of the Bombay Congress government in 1938 to 1939, it identifies emergent leaderships among the 'settlement' populations and the background to a distinctive identity politics that cut across other low caste mobilisations. This community assertion was to become significant later on, via modes of occupational and industrial skills, in the communities' claims to 'backwardness' or 'adivasi' status.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the inter-sections of labour exploitation and resistance in the context of the 1913 Satyagraha campaign in South Africa. This paper argues that indentured labourers despite their subjugated status challenged the South African state in 1913 despite their labouring status.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the inter-sections of labour exploitation and resistance in the context of the 1913 Satyagraha campaign in South Africa. The campaign spearheaded the first mass movement in South Africa. Under the leadership of Gandhi, the first non-violent mass movement which involved defiance of unjust laws, courting of imprisonment, bonfires, boycotts, marches and strikes. It brought together people of different religions and linguistic groups, as well as different social classes. The vast majority of resisters were indentured labourers, subjected to harsh working conditions and ill-treatment by employers. This paper critically examines the factors that spearheaded indentured resistance in 1913 and its overall impact on their labour conditions. This paper argues that indentured labourers despite their subjugated status challenged the South African state in 1913. They remained unfazed and were willing to endure imprisonment. Their steadfast resistance culminated in the Smuts-Gandhi agreement and the passing of the Indians' Relief Bill of 1914 which repealed the £3 tax. The indentured system provided the labouring class with an opportunity to assert their agency. This paper seeks to contribute to debates around labour, resistance and agency to better understand the indentured Indians' experience to Natal, South Africa.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I analyse how South Asian migrants accepted, adapted and rejected occupational identities ascribed to them before, during and after indenture in Suriname. I look at how distinctions of gender, caste, class, religion and age played their part.
Paper long abstract:
While the British and Dutch colonial authorities - who closely cooperated in the joint facilitation of the migration of indentured labourers to Suriname - wanted South Asian migrants to be and remain plantation labourers, these migrants often had other aspirations. In this paper I analyse how the migrants responded to the occupational identities ascribed to them through legislation, in British and Dutch colonial discourse, and by the Afro-Surinamese inhabitants in different phases of the process of immigration and settlement between 1873 and 1921. I look at how differences in gender, caste, class, religion and age enabled or hindered particular migrants in their labouring pursuits and how urban based high-caste and middle-class men became most successful. Moreover, I show how migrants dealt with competition in different social spaces such as the plantation, the countryside and the city. Sources that are analysed range from autobiographies to photographs and newspapers to the 1921 census.
Paper short abstract:
The reach of India’s soft power is debated and challenged. People of Indian origin in South Africa have sustained the heritage of Indian cuisine till present. Indian food remains as one of the most accountable ways in which it could be recognised as a contribution to soft power initiatives.
Paper long abstract:
Since the emergence of India as a major role player in the global arena, development of India's soft power has been seeking attention. The doyen Nye (1990) coined the term soft power nearly 2 decades ago and defines power as the "ability to affect others to get the outcomes one wants" (1990:61). His explanation of soft power is one of persuasive power, which is based on the concept of attraction and influence in relation to intangible power resources such as food, music, technology and Bollywood which can create ideologies and sustain various global institutions (Nye, 1990: 63). The migration of Indians to South Africa represented broad regional diversities of India and enhances the widespread sharing of soft power resources such as food. People of Indian origin in South Africa have contributed towards the food consumption patterns of many South African citizens, especially those living in the city of Durban. Various cuisines allow people to make connections as well as explore controversies that are not necessarily about food. Food is an expressive means through which identity can be articulated and reinforced, which People of Indian Origin (PIOs) in South Africa have creatively asserted. Anthropological studies accounts for a variety of cultural studies of food. A recent qualitative study applied the views of Nye (1990) and Long (2004) to its methodology to ascertain its usefulness in understanding issues of interlinkages among PIOs in South Africa.