BONDAGE IN FREEDOM Colonial Plantations in Southern India c. 1797-1947

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March 2002
BONDAGE IN FREEDOM
Colonial Plantations in Southern
India c. 1797-1947
K. Ravi Raman
Working Paper No. 327


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BONDAGE IN FREEDOM
Colonial Plantations in Southern India c. 1797-1947
K.Ravi Raman
Centre for Development Studies
Thiruvananthapuram
March 2002
This is a revised version of the paper originally presented at the
international seminar on Slavery, Unfree Labour and Revolt in Asia
and the Indian Ocean Region held at the the Institut American
Universitaire Avignon, France during 4-6 October 2001. The author
had greatly benefited from comments by the participants notably Martin
Klien and Gwyn Campbell. An earlier draft of the paper was commented
upon by K P Kannan.
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ABSTRACT
Opposing views persist with regard to the emergence of plantations
in southern India and the transfer of slave labour to these plantations:
the abolition of slavery as an end in itself and, second, as a means to an
end. In spite of the fact that slavery had been abolished by the
mid-nineteenth century, workers on plantations found themselves no
better off than slaves and bondsmen - so intensive and painful was the
ill treatment meted out to them. The workers with their newly realised
freedom from the feudal relations spared no means to revolt against the
new Masters. Yet, a truly systemic transformation failed to materialise.
The present paper attempts to unravel the constituents of changing
forms of bondage and the coercive/disciplinary strategies adopted by
the planters which in effect gave rise to a new labour regime. It also
attempts to unravel the way in which the reborn ‘slaves’ unleashed their
resistance at the capitalist work sites.
JEL Classification: B25, N30, N50, N55
Key Words: slavery, plantations, colonial state, punishment, labour,
outbursts.
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Slavery and its abolition in India were quite distinct from that in
other parts of the world. First, it was a centuries-old institution internal
to the feudal caste system in India. Second, its abolition signalled not
the end of the Empire but its beginning in terms of certain imperial
assets such as plantations. While the similarities between the plantations
in colonized India in the nineteenth century and the much older Atlantic
plantations are confined to their nature of commodity production and
ownership of foreign capital, they differ in that the former did not have
a legacy of slave-based production save in a few instances. When
capitalist plantation production made in-roads on a massive scale into
colonized southern India in the middle of the 19th century, it necessitated
a mass of labour which had been made ‘free’ in a double sense: free of
any means of subsistence, and free to sell their labour power. Yet, the
bondage - bondage in freedom - remained for decades; with respect to
the feudal Masters in the countryside first, and later the planter patriarchs
in the high ranges. The present paper attempts to unravel the constituents
of changing forms of bondage and the coercive strategies adopted by
the planters to discipline the newly liberated agrestic slaves and in
effect to ensnare them in a new form of bondage. It also attempts to
reveal the way in which the bonded workers unleashed their power of
resistance at the capitalist work sites.
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Abolition of Slavery: Divergent Views
Radically opposing views exist in academic circles with regard to
the emergence of plantations and the transfer of slave labour - the
historically disadvantaged social section of the Indian caste system
currently termed as dalits - to these plantations: the abolition of slavery
as an end in itself, and, second, as a mean to an end, namely the setting
up of capitalist plantations.
The first interpretation figures prominently in studies by social
anthropologists (Srinivas, 1965; Heijele, 1967:71-126). While
dismissing the possibility that slavery had been abolished with the
intention of providing cheap labour to the newly emerging plantations,
they treat it rather as a sequence in social evolution which lent meaning
to the abolition of slavery. Heijele, for instance, does not mean to say
that slavery was abolished with a view to serve the planters’ interests;
on the contrary she argues ‘that the emancipation of slaves became
significant in the context of the emerging plantations which provided
the freed labour with an alternative means of livelihood’. In his study of
the ‘Coorgs’, Srinivas raises essentially the same point, maintaining
that doing away with slavery had had but little effect until the opening
of the coffee plantations. Once these plantations had been established,
the cash paid by the planters cut the bonds binding the slaves to their
traditional masters. By attributing a purely religious humanism to the
activities of the missionaries, Robin Jeffrey too, in effect, appears to
subscribe to the above perspective (Jeffrey, 1976:44-57).
The second interpretation holds that Christian and humanitarian
efforts in favour of the abolition of slavery were, in fact, primarily
meant to create the free labour market that was required by the European
capitalist planters. Though not explicitly stated, most of the proponents
of this perspective (Kurup,1984:187-99); Uma Devi, 1989:70-79;
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Houstart & Lemercinier, 1978:25-43) treat the abolition of slavery as a
mere piece of legislation with the hidden intention of providing cheap
labour to the plantations. Other studies on slavery and slave castes in
Kerala, however, hold the view that the abolition of slavery was hardly
motivated by economic gains, but rather by a religious moralism on the
part of the missionaries and political pressure from the British
Government (Saradamony, 1980; Kusuman, 1973; also see Banaji,
1933:80-131; Barbosa, 1865). Striking a balance between the two major
streams of thought, Kooiman stated that “for the LMS missionaries there
was nothing more humanitarian than to enable the people of Travancore
to share the blessings of a capital development” (Kooiman, 1991:63,
1989).
It has to be noted that from the middle of the 18th century,
movements had been afoot in England calling for the abolition of
slavery, largely in response to a series of slave rebellions taking place in
the colonies. Its ramifications came to be seen in India as well in the
influential methods adopted by the Evangelists to combat the evils of
slavery and to convert the out-castes into Christianity. When the British
Parliament yielded to the abolishment move, it amounted to a nearcalamity
in colonies like British Guyana where the British authority
had to pay a compensation to the planters for the loss of their slaves
(Reno, 1964:5) To claim that the move for the abolition of slavery was
mooted with the far-sighted and highly calculated motive of a creation
of labour for a not-yet established industry would be a little too farfetched.
However, the colonial State and global capital were shrewd
enough to detect a beneficial element in terms of economic interests in
the activities of the missionaries which in turn made them support the
religious moralism of the latter.
The only large-scale plantation in southern India on which the
slaves as such were to work was that of the Anjarakandy spices plantation
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set up by the East India Company in 1797. After assuming charge as
overseer of the plantation, Murdoch Brown, in an application to the
President and Commissioner of Malabar, stated that in consequence of
the inadequacy of labour supplied to the plantation by the Tehsildar, he
was constrained by many a problem. Accordingly, Brown had purchased
about 45 Pulayar women and children whom he had found ‘very useful’
on his estate. From the evidence collected by T.H. Baber, the Judge and
Magistrate of north Malabar, it appears that the children employed on
Brown’s plantations were in fact kidnapped: they were forcibly taken
from their relatives at midnight, clothes were thrust into their mouths,
and they were carried to Alappuzha where Assin Ally, the agent secretly
employed by Brown resided; from there they were taken to Mayyazhi.
In order to avoid any chances of identification, they were removed of
their kudumas or such other distinguishing marks of their respective
castes, and were disguised as Mappila children and given Mappila
names (Banaji, 1993:60-61).
Slavery was legally abolished by the mid-nineteenth century -
in Madras Presidency, where it appeared in its cruellest form, in 1843 to
be specific, along with the abolition in other colonies; in Thiruvithamkur
it was abolished in 1853; soil slaves were thus theoretically liberated to
become ‘free m/women’. However, neither did this lead to the emergence
of a free labour market nor were these ex-slaves employed in the
plantations. Quite a few of them continued to be attached to the land
and entered another phase of slavery in indentured form with their old
masters, with little departure from the old adima relationships (Logan,
1951: 149-153; Tremenheere, 1892);1 some had settled on land provided
1 Even after the legal abolition of slavery, slaves were ‘bought, and sold and
hired out’, see William Logan, Malabar (1887), Vol.1 p.153. As late as
1892, H.Tremenheere, the Revenue Collector had recommended to the
Government that the ‘Untouchables’ called the panchamar should be freed
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by the State, and it was largely the remainder that was recruited for work
on the emerging coffee and tea plantations from the middle of the
nineteenth century onwards, and on the rubber plantations by the early
20th century (Griffith, 1967; Speer, 1953; Ravi Raman, 1999a; Baak,
1997; Lovatt, 1972; Tharian & Tharakan, 1986:199-229). Women were
employed in maximum numbers in tea and to a lesser extent in coffee,
and even lesser in rubber; the gender division was in tune with the
colonial interests (Ravi Raman, 1999 b).
Those who had entered a second phase of slavery as attached
labour continued to remain thus for many years, pledging themselves
to cater to the needs of the prevailing wet-rice cultivation under their
former masters. In the last part of the nineteenth century, the major slave
castes (Pallar, Pariayar, Cherumar, Malar, Holeyar etc) constituted 12-
20 per cent of the total population in the Madras Presidency (Kumar,
1965:49-63), and continued to exist as agricultural labourers in the
decades to come, thus displaying the perpetuation of the congruence
between caste and class with caste remaining the ‘very part of the
material reality’ of the society (Omvedt, 1994; Illaiah, 1996). However,
they were not free to leave their landlords during the off-seasons in the
plains. The workers could move up the hills and work there for a specific
period only after paying back their debts to their masters and
money-lenders. For this and for meeting other expenses they would
make use of the advances received from the kanganies, the
institutionalised intermediaries. In certain regions, however, the ex-slaves
from serfdom through the provision of land and educational facilities. The
new relationships that emerged after legal abolition came to exist in various
arrangements under different names, for instance, pannai in the Kaveri delta
and padial, suvasi, siruvedu and koottuppayir in Chingleput. On Chingleput,
see Sundari 1985); van Schendel, 1991:117-18). For the continuation of the
Padiyalar system in the early 20th century, Thomas and Ramakrishnan,
1940; for recent literature see Temperely, 2000; Brass 2000).
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even resorted to desertion in their bid to work for cash wages on the
plantations (Srinivas, 1965:19). The landlords however, were adamant
in their efforts to retain their hold on these ex-slaves, not wanting to lose
control over them permanently (Ford, 1896). In certain cases, the
landlords simply did not allow the wives to accompany their husbands
going to the estates as they might have feared that if the wives went
along, the men would never return. In Malabar, for instance, the landlords
provided the women with huts and allowed their men to go to work on
plantations on condition that they return in time for rice cultivation
(Logan, 1951:149). In Thiruvithamkur the caste-Hindu landlords
complained against the planters taking away their Pulayar - the hitherto
rice-slaves - without their consent.2 With respect to one such case -
concerning the Cherumar of Malabar who were geographically closer
to the Wayanad plantations, one European planter wrote:
these men practically paedial slaves, they are attached to
the soil and are completely in the power of these landlords.
Without his permission the Cherumar dare not leave their
squalid estate, for the Malabar land owner fears that if
once he loses a hold over them, he will never regain it
(Ford, p.56).
The spread of plantations precipated the process of pauperisation
with the adivasis being evicted from their own homelands and the
peasantry buckling under the pressure of adverse government legislations
such as an increase in land revenue; they were then inevitably drawn to
the plantations which seemed to promise them a better life. The adivasis,
violently detached from their communal property, formed a major source
of labour supply for the early plantations. Various adivasis - the Kanikkar
2. When rubber cultivation began in the early 20th century, in turn leading to
an increase in demand for more Pulaya l abour, the landlords as also the
local press began to voice such complaints. See Planters’ Chronicle, 1907:.38.
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and Muthuvar of Thiruvithamkur, the Badagar and Thodar of Nilagiri,
and the Naicker, Paniyar and Kurumbar of Wayanad - whose rights over
the primaeval forests had been recognised for ages, were the first to be
threatened by the upcoming plantations. As Samuel Mateer would have
us believe, these indigenous people simply could not resist the ‘onward
march of a superior race’ (Mateer, 1883)3 . Though a few of these adivasis
even sought employment on plantations of their own accord they were
largely disinclined to work for the Europeans (Thurston, 1909:63-64,
67; Mateer, p.66). Those who were either unwilling to work for the
planters or could not be accommodated in the plantation work force,
were driven further and further away. As we closely follow them we see
that the planters, backed by the state, were ultimately successful in
creating a work-force out of even these groups who had been initially
averse to such employment. The KDHP, the largest plantation not only
in southern India but also in the whole world was built by banishing the
local tribal community, the Muthuvas, from their traditional pasture.
Some of the Muthuvas strongly resented this. As in the case of
Thiruvithamkur in the early 1840’s, one of the pioneering planters in
Nilagiri suggested that the movement of the Thodas be restricted and
that the shifting cultivation of various other tribes be curbed. While the
Badagas were reduced to becoming potato cultivators, the condition of
the Thodas further deteriorated. The process of encroachment and
usurpation of the entire Nilagiri region by the Europeans in general and
the penetration of foreign capital in plantations in particular, destroyed
3 We do not intend to reduce the importance of the lead taken by their
brethren in their struggle against the Europeans in the Wayanad forests.
popularly known as the Pazhassi rebellion or the kurichiar lahala and other
innumerable instances of tribal revolts from other regions of the world. The
kurichiar and kurumber of Wayanad revolted against the British policy of
collecting land revenue in cash instead of in kind. This was in fact the
beginning of the peasant revolt in Malabar in 1812. (Chopra, Ravindran,
Subrahmanyan, 1979, 132-5). As their situation steadily worsened, so also has
their struggle become endemic. For a recent resume, see Ravi Raman (2002).
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the socio-economic fabric of all these adivasis, to the extent that they
were dispossessed of their communal property and deprived of even a
means of bare subsistence (Ravi Raman, 1998). The depeasantisation
and dispossession of tenants by the landlords and the State through a
series of pro-Imperial policies added to the ranks of the landless
agricultural labourers ready to be recruited to the plantations. As caste
hierarchy coincided with economic power, with the lands being in the
hands of the caste-Hindus, the Dalits and such other backward-caste
people who laboured on these lands invariably came under threat of
eviction.4
The many riots among the people, particularly the clashes between
the upper castes and the oppressed also forced the latter to move up the
hills. By the mid-nineteenth century there was an outpouring of
depressed-caste migrants from the “labour catchment areas” in various
parts of Tamil country, Bihar, Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and the Konkan
Coast: the threat to subsistence was the major reason behind this push
(Chakravarty, 1978:249-328). The breaking out of famine and pestilence,
and their utter poverty pushed the Paraiyar and other depressed-castes
out of their villages into the hills (Manickam, 1977:87; Lovatt, 1978:12);
many of them who had been converted to Christianity secured
employment in the hills with the help of missionaries (Bhowmik,
1981:58); others, encouraged and supported by the missionaries
migrated both within the country as well as to overseas plantations. The
movement of Mysore-based labour to the plantation belt gradually waned
with the end of the famine causing a shortage of labour even in Mysore.
The planters were then compelled to recruit workers from the already
4 The land owning castes included the Brahmanar, Vellar, Reddy, Kapu etc of
the Madras Presidency and the Nairs and Syrian Christians in Thiruvithamkur.
For a discussion on the concentration of lands in the hands of caste-Hindus
and Hindu temples in Thiruvithamkur, Kochi and Malabar, see Varghese,
1970:185-98.
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emerged ‘labour catchment areas’ of Salem, Madurai, Ramanad,
Tirunelveli, Tiruchirappalli, Tanjavur and Coimbatore. They were
recruited - largely on a family basis by the kanganies. The complexities
of the caste structure in the plains thus do not seem to have been reflected
as such in the caste-class reality in the plantations. This common
background ought to have helped them forge a common class identity
but this was not to be, for obvious reasons. However, the fact that the
lives of the Dalits and the other Backward communities in the plains
had been full of hardships and utter misery brooks no argument - so
intense was the degree of oppression they had had to suffer at the hands
of the caste-Hindus. But did the shift to the plantation work sites really
improve the lot of these masses? Judging from the experiences they
underwent at the hands of the European planter, it would seem that what
had actually transpired was only a change of Masters.
Once the workers reached the estates, they were confronted with a
system of hierarchy, with the ‘planter’ at the top and themselves at the
bottom. This hierarchy may be placed in three broad categories, viz.,
the white Superintendent and the Visiting Agent as the representative of
the absentee owner at the top (Macfadyen, 1954:270); the supervisory
staff consisting of a group of functionaries such as factory assistants,
clerks, the watch and ward and the kangany in the middle; and the mass
of workers, the ones directly involved in the process of production, at
the bottom. While the capitalist-managerial class in plantations was
composed of European estate owners, Anglo-Indians or local savarna
administrators and foremen of intermediary castes, the workers were
almost entirely dalits thus exhibiting a strong resemblance to the larger
social milieu that they existed in. Thus the plantations represented a
system of hierarchical control where labouring women (and men too)
were hegemonised by the patriarchs of class, caste and gender. This
represents a situation in which caste and class converged, the
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overwhelming majority of the workers belonging to the depressed
castes.
Once mobilized from their place to the work-place, the large bodies
of workers had to be segmented and organised. First, the workers, the
adult males and females, and children even at the age of seven to eight
were divided into three groups: permanent labour in the estates,
permanent labour outside the estates and temporary labour. Secondly,
the work pattern was segmented. For instance, in tea, the operations
comprised plucking, pruning, weeding, forking, draining, processing
and so on. The work of plucking leaves was largely assigned to women;
men were also involved in plucking, particularly in times of shortage of
women labourers. However, men were generally given those types of
work which required ‘physical exertion’. This included the maintenance
and upkeep of the estate viz. pruning, draining, forking, and the like.
Children were given light work such as hoeing, removing creepers and
parasites from the bushes, and so on. The labour process on the
plantations was arduous and exhausting. Work was extracted from the
labourers with a machine-like precision, any fault detected being dealt
with severely. The most exacting of these rules was related to time: the
estate gong/siren signalled the time for everything that the workers did.
They rose from bed at 4.30 or 5 a.m., gathered for their daily roll-call and
inspection5 at 6 to 6.30 a.m., and then it was a hard day’s toil upto 5 p.m.
in the evening. Women workers were put to work, each of them being
allotted lines of bushes to be plucked. These lines were straight and
continuous up and down, and were specially designed to ensure that no
bush in the field was missed. It was a “ready method of apportioning
5. In the words of Foucault, “an ostentatious form of examination”, Foucault
(1977): 188. For an interesting analysis of agronomic discipline on Sri
Lankan tea plantations using Foucaultian methodology, see Valentine (1993):
568-600.
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tasks”: a pruner was assigned a task of pruning a certain number of
bushes, 80-100 bushes in Nilagiri and 120-140 bushes in Annaimalai
for example. Moreover, this system of tea planting facilitated the
immediate detection of culprits whenever bad work was done (Pinches,
1924:32). It was the planters’ contention that only “close control over
plucking” would ensure the production of quality tea (Kothari, 1952:68).
Father, mother and children working together in the very same fields
was not an uncommon sight; they worked barefoot, defenseless against
the elements, not even the children being exempted from work in times
of bad weather.
Work thus proceeded with clock-work regularity, any instance of
default being punished with the awarding of half-name - meaning halfpay
for the day’s work or even total pay-cuts (Rege, 1950:140). However,
time limits were often stretched to suit the planter, and workers were
generally forced to work beyond the stipulated hours, often on empty
stomachs. Even at the end of such an exhausting day, the labourers were
not free to relax as they wished - they were denied all access to country
liquor - even toddy - and they thus went without either a smoke or a
drink, all in the name of discipline. Even the children were not spared
and were often subjected to ‘corporal punishment’ in this drive to extract
maximum work, the Kanan Devan Plantations being notorious for such
practices.
Punishments: Hard as Nails
In spite of the fact that slavery had been abolished by the
mid-eighteenth century, workers on plantations found themselves no
better off than slaves and bondsmen. The distinction drawn between
slavery and the actual conditions of work that existed on plantations
was so subtle as to escape the comprehension of the harassed workers -
so intensive and painful was the ill-treatment meted out to them. The
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planters went to great lengths to keep such incidents under covers. It
took some socially concerned individuals and the vernacular press to
bring these dark secrets out into the open;6 stories related by those who
had actually experienced such travails provides shocking confirmation
of such early reports as in the case of their north-eastern counterparts.
However, the planters could not drive the workers too hard as they
formed the very pillars of their newly-made fortunes. This led the
plantation-owner to adopt a unique mode of labour control which
comprised diametrically opposed tactics - coercion and paternalism,
the proverbial carrot and stick policy.
The European planters were ‘inhuman and cruel’ in their
punishment. Even tying the workers up and brutally thrashing them, a
practice akin to the punishment meted out in the Assam Plantations and
in other colonies was not beyond them. When one worker died, another
would appear in the same name (Krishnan, 1952:6). This was chiefly
due to the fact that plantation workers under colonialism were not
expected to have names, but were meant to act as ‘depersonalised agents’
for capital accumulation (Post, 1989:29). Cases against workers if at all
‘registered’ were never proved. When one such case was reported to the
District Magistrate in Munnar in 1903, the verdict given went in favour
of the planter concerned (Manorama, 1905:2). Other coercive
punishments were equally barbaric; the European planters themselves
confessed to such ruthless punishments. Offending workers were
punished by lowering them into shallow, muddy water while they choked
and struggled for breath. This form of punishment called `ducking’ was
6. The Madras based Swadesamitran, the Mysore-based Nadegannadi and
Kerala-based Kerala Mitran, Manorama etc. were some of the local journals
and newspapers which articulated these issues. Whenever the press came
out with the truth, a public withdrawal of the same was insisted upon by the
planters. See Madras Mail, Aug. 20, 1925, p.11.
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viewed as the masterpiece of plantation craft (Elliot, 1871:288-89) in
dealing with troublesome workers.
The workers were “herded like cattle into ill-constructed
ramshackle buildings” (Daniel, 1991) and the planters often kept them
under constant watch and ward, thwarting any attempt at escaping by
night. Rods and whips were freely used on those who dared to run away
and were unlucky enough to be caught in this attempt . They were often
captured and brought back, at times with the help of trained dogs. The
kanganies/maistris too played their role in keeping the workers in
bondage. In the words of an European planter based in Annaimalai, the
workers, to quote:
were in fact slaves, and were treated as such by their
maistris, whose only concern was how much money they
could pocket before they died on them. It is a fact that
this type of maistry used to lock his coolies in the lines in
the evening and only let them out to work next morning,
irrespective of whether they were sick or well.
Mohammedian maistris with Hindu coolies were the
worst in this respect (Griffiths, p.404).
Those workers who dared to question their employers or to claim
their rights were severely chastised. Any worker who left the plantation
premises without prior permission was invariably labelled an absconder:
this included any attempt on the part of the workers to seek better
employment elsewhere. If such workers were caught working in other
estates, it was the workers themselves who were held liable for
punishment (Daniel, 1991; Rajamony, 1995), not the kanganis nor the
planters, whose intolerable practices had been responsible for driving
them away in the first place. That bondage remained a harsh reality is
evident from the ‘Slavery case in the Travancore Highlands’ wherein
one of the workers kidnapped the child of another worker in a bid to free
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himself from bondage. In delivering his judgement in this case, the
Sessions Judge, P Raman Tampi spared no words to expose the labour
regime in the European plantations. To quote:
.......... the evidence in the case lends colour to the
impression that slave traffic is carried on with helpless
children and credulous adults to their doom. The boy
Avutha, for instance, was treatedto a cup of coffee and
sweet meats and decoyed from Manakumam(his village)
without the consent and permission of his mother and
elderly brother. Once attached to an Estate as coolies, the
defenseless creatures are deprived of all individuality and
freedom and looked upon as chattels. It is a pity that such
conditions should prevail in modern days when we hear
so much of philanthropic endeavors to elevate the
depressed classes. The arms of the law are unfortunately
not strong enough or long enough to reach the worst
offenders. It is permissible to doubt whether the
encouragement of the labour contract system by statute is
not mainly responsible for this regrettable state of affairs7 .
However, the Sessions Judge Raman Tampi was strongly rebuked
by the British Resident through the Dewan and the Supreme Judge and
was forced to make a promise that he would henceforth exercise greater
care in the pronouncements of his judgements.
The estates themselves were situated in splendid isolation. This
helped the planters to keep the workers in even greater isolation;
punishments and cruelties were perpetuated with casual ease under such
conditions. Even outside their work-place, for instance in the weekly
markets, the workers remained under the watchful eye of their employers,
7 For a detailed description, see Crown Representative’s Records, R/2/882/
108; Baak 1999:145-6; Planters’ Chronicle 1913:579)
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not even being allowed the luxury of a smoke after a hard day’s toil.
Often, on their way back home, they were blackmailed into parting with
whatever little money they might have earned.8 And, what is more, they
were stopped from attending even the funeral rites of their near and dear
ones.9 In such an atmosphere of intense segregation where the workers
were totally cut off from the outside world, the development of trade
unionism was greatly hampered..The maltreatment of the women workers
who constituted more than half of the total work force on the plantations
in southern India was in no measure lesser than that towards the men
folk; at times they were subjected to ‘secret punishments’ (RCL, Written
Evidence, p.201).
Chain of Anti-labour Rules
In colonial India, ‘administration and exploitation went hand-inhand’
and the plantation sector was no exception to this rule. The
coercive apparatus of the colonial State was extensively used to keep
labour under control and to exploit the workers mercilessly. The State
was all the time willing to remove any practical difficulties faced by the
planting community, even to the extent of modifying some of the
existing rules and regulations in its haste to weigh in on the authority of
capital. The judiciary, backed by a series of Acts and Regulations, and
the police backed by the colonial bureaucracy were the two major
means through which the planters sustained their hegemony. As is well
known, in the wider context, the British established a powerful colonial
8 In the General Body Meeting of the Wynad Planters’ Association held on 1
March 1899, it was reported that the cherumar from Malabar “had asked
for cheques payable at Kozhikode rather than take cash, as they had been
blackmailed on the road”, as reported in Planting Opinion, ‘Wyanad’,
March. Vol.VI, No.10, March 1,1899, p.184.
9 Royal Commission on Labour (hereafter RCL) Report, pp.402-03.
Restrictions were imposed on those attending the funeral of the workers
even in the 1950s. See Minutes, GBM of KDPA, Aug.3, 1955, p.178.
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bureaucracy and a uniform Indian Penal code, the Criminal Procedure
Code and the Indian Evidence Act to bring the entire civilian society
under the Imperial legal system.
The Breach of Contract Act, 1859
As the workers were indentured to a particular estate for a fixed
period of time for specified wages, breaches of contract were punishable
by criminal law. The earliest instance of the exercise of coercive power
by the European master class came in the form of the Workmen’s Breach
of Contract Act VIII passed in 1859. This was in response to the demands
of the Calcutta Traders’ Association and similar business interests. It
was first proposed to limit the Act to Presidency towns alone but it was
later extended to other districts of the Presidency as well. The Act made
any breach of contract - including all contracts and agreements whether
by deed, in writing or by word - a criminal offence, punishable with
imprisonment (Das, 1941:11-41).
The employers were allowed to choose between the options of
either demanding fulfillment of the said contract or of repayment of the
money advanced. Besides the power embodied in the Breach of Contract
Act, other provisions for enforcing labour contracts were contained in
the Indian Penal Code, and the Madras Act V of 1866 (Planters’ Enquiry
Committee, 1894:24-33). Though the Act was for the benefit of
employers in general, it was the European planter class all over the
country which used it to the greatest advantage. The planters in the
Princely States also made use of the provisions of the Indian Penal
Code and other rules corresponding to the Breach of Contract Act. Besides
the power exercised through the Breach of Contract Act, the planters
also made use of the Civil Courts to discipline labour. The kanganis,
too, filed cases against workers through the Civil Courts. In Nilagiri
and Thiruvithamkur, where tea dominated, the number of such cases
21
instituted successfully was considerably high (Planters’ Enquiry
Committee, p.41) and it was under the Criminal Breach of Contract Act
(Regulation 1 of 1040) – largely modelled on the labour legislation in
British India10 - that the planters in the latter region exercised their
hegemony leading to a situation in which ‘free and unfree labour
alternated each other’(Baak, 1999).
The planters continued to press for further amendments in the
existing Acts in their quest for greater power over labour; they particularly
sought the introduction of an extradition procedure to get around the
constraints put forth by the political geography of the land. The necessity
for either radical changes in the existing Acts or the passing of a fresh
Act was strongly put forward by the planter class, and the colonial State
responded positively. In 1877, for example, the Government of Madras
had stated:
...planting industry in Wayanad is suffering from a
substantial grievance in the absence of a simple and
complete remedy as regards breaches of contract caused
by desertion of labourers or fraudulent practices on the
part of the maistrimar. Government are therefore now
disposed to give the planters all the assistance in their
power consistent with adequate protection to their
employees (Planters’ Enqiury Committee, p.39) .
In 1894, the Planting Member of the Madras Legislative Council
prepared a Draft Estates Labour Bill which aimed at a further subjugation
of the workers. The colonial authorities did not press for the passing of
the Bill; however, an Enquiry Committee was appointed in 1896 with
the consent of the Viceroy. The Committee comprised wholly of
10 For an examination of the varied trajectories of labour legislations in British
India and princely state, see Rammohan (1996)
22
Europeans with specifically the Resident in Mysore as Chairman and
two members, one nominated by the Madras Government and the other
nominated by the planters’ associations. The Committee highlighted
the necessity of persisting with the prevailing systems, and emphasised
the importance of the services rendered by the maistris. It also pressed
the State for further amendments in the existing rules and regulations;
the various planters’ associations continued to emphasise the relevance
of such regulations, particularly with respect to extradition.11 The final
outcome was the passing of an Act in 1903, namely the Madras Planters’
Labour Act, largely based on the Assam Labour and Emigration Act of
1901. By this time, the already existing Coffee Stealing Prevention Act
(1878) was in force, making workers and maistris found in possession of
freshly picked coffee liable to punishment.
The Madras Planters’ Labour Act was anti-labour to the core.
Ignoring the plight of the workers, it actually undermined the interests
of the working class. This naturally aroused public indignation. Typical
of this was the banner of protest raised by various local newspapers -
Swadesamitran from Madras, Kerala Patrika from Malabar and
Nadegannady from Mysore - which exposed the misdeeds of the planters
and the kanganigal. According to the Kottayam-based Manorama, the
Act ‘has made the position of the labourers worse than that of slaves’
(Manorama, 1903).
11 In the General Body Meeting of the KDPA (Feb. 16, 1899), it was decided
to apply pressure on the Government on thequestionofextradition.
To quote one planter:
... extradition into native states is of the first importance to us, it should be
made as direct and single as possible, and the controls round about procedure
in force in criminal cases avoided - a Labour Act would be of little or no use
to us unless extradition is also given.
Quoted in Planting Opinion, ‘Kanan Devans’, Vol.IV, No.10, March 1,
1899, pp.184-85.
23
To quote Nadegannady in 1903:
From the time the cooly signs the contract of services to
the time of the expiry of the term, he is completely at the
mercy of his rich and powerful master who may have him
sentenced to three months imprisonment on the charges
of negligence in work or of absconding from it. Another
hardship is that the months spent in jail are not included
in the term of the contract. The European masters, if guilty,
are on the other hand given only nominal punishment.
The officers who are to enforce the provisions of the Act,
the planters, the persons who drafted the Bill and those
who revised it are all Europeans” (Nadegannady, February
10, 1903).
More than 150 amendments to the Bill were proposed in the
Madras Legislative Assembly; none in favour of labour was approved.
Even the reciprocal obligation that labourers should also be given the
right to recover from the planter the wages wrongfully withheld was
rejected by the planting community.12 Prosecutions under the Madras
Planters’ Labour Act became widespread. In Nilagiri, more than 1,000
cases were being filed against the workers every year; in 1919 the number
was as high as 3,228. The number of cases filed against the workers in
Wayanad was also quite high- around 2,000 in the year 1919.13 When
the Labour Department of UPASI began assisting in the settling of cases
against workers from the year 1914, the number of cases rose at an
alarming rate. This central agency helped to unify the planters through
12 For such details, see Planters’ Chronicle, March 1907, Vol.2, No.2.
1 3 In fact, three years after the implementation of the Act, the cases filed in the
court of the sub-Magistrate of Vaithiri alone were 191, of which 125 cases
were complaints against maistris and the remaining against the workers, see
Planters’ Chronicle, March 1907: 60-61.
24
a monopolistic structure of control, enabling them to get labour at cheap
rates and also to control it effectively. It also precluded the possibility
of a competitive determination of wage rates in the labour market.
Planters, Police and Workers
From the year 1904 onwards, the planters resorted to the
maintenance of cavalry units in almost all the planting regions. The
Southern Provinces Mounted Rifles with its headquarters at Munnar,
Kozhikode, Thirunelveli and Bezwada functioned as the planters’ own
private army and helped in the maintenance of law and order and internal
security; it also served the Imperial power as and when required as in the
quelling of revolts such as the Mappilla rebellion of 1921. As time
passed they were equipped with better weapons and artillery only to
help further terrorize the planting regions.14 The State too, actively
participated in enforcing the various rules by establishing a wide network
of police and armed forces, a system which was then centralised by the
British Government; the police in turn mutely followed the instructions
of the colonial bureaucracy. The setting up of police stations at the
request of the planters, increased deployment of police in planting
regions, providing for the personal services of planters and so on were
some of the means by which a such a network was established; this was
over and above the organising of the judiciary in various centres.
The workers were punished by illegal policing and whipping
not only by their former employees, but also by their new
1 4 It would be foolish on our part to assume that these private armies went out
of existence along with direct colonialism. A resurrection of this practice is
now evident in the Assam plantations of the 1990s with the formation of the
Plantation Protection Forces. As in the colonial times, these repressive
measures receive full state backing in a manner that puts independent India
to shame.
25
masters.15 The police was largely occupied with pursuing runaway
workers who were duly arrested and produced before the Magistrate. As
early as the 1860s, the Inspector General of Police suggested that the
police be either freed from this irksome duty or that the planters be
made to pay for their services, but neither demand was heeded (Arnold,
1989:156). A considerable number of warrants continued to be issued
and workers were continually brought back by the police to be tried.
Not less than 1,400 such cases were executed in Mysore State alone in
the period 1891-1895. For a smooth functioning of this system, an
extensive network of police stations and outposts were set up in the
planting regions as well as in places from where the labour was sourced.
Consequent upon this, the planting regions, though thinly populated,
came to be amongst the most heavily policed in rural Madras. The
Nilagiri district was a particular case in point. With a total area of less
than a thousand square miles, it had 13 police stations for 1,00,000
people by the year 1880. By 1910, Nilagiri had 436 policemen in a
ratio of one for every 259 inhabitants and for every 2.2 square miles
(Ibid.). As against this in the plains district of Tiruchirappalli, there was
only one policeman to every 1,604 inhabitants and every four square
miles. The other planting regions such as Wayanad and Annaimalai
were also ‘disproportionately heavily policed’, the former with a
substantial share of European policemen.
UPASI made a representation to the Madras Government seeking
a change in the existing procedure followed for the execution of warrants.
The immediate reason behind such a move by UPASI was the large
1 5 It goes without saying that the condition of the workers from southern India
and their inhuman subsistence in overseas plantations such as those in the
West Indies, north-eastern Sumatra, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Mauritius
were deplorable to the extreme (Guha, 1954: Bose, 1954; Gupta, 1994;
Breman, 1989; Stoler, 1985; Naipual, 1969).
26
number of warrants that remained unserved.16 Finally, a consensus of
opinion was reached among the colonial administrators, obviously, in
favour of the planter class: it was decided that warrants should
thenceforth be ‘issued and endorsed to the police through the Labour
Department’, the latter undertaking to furnish correct information to
the police about the whereabouts of the warranties. This was intended
to enable the police to execute the cases without delay or missing and
thus the proportion of cases settled increased enormously: it rose from
45 per cent in 1916 to as high as 89 per cent in 1922 (UPASI Proceedings,
1922:40). Occasionally, the services of the police were provided for
individual planters by the State for which the former was required to pay
a prescribed amount. The payment was often prompt. In one incident in
Thiruvithamkur, the police was sent to a Scottish Indian company in
Agasthyamudi, which owed the State a sum of Rs. 240. With respect to
such dues outstanding the Dewan suggested that in future, payment in
advance might be insisted upon. In spite of such slackness on the part of
the planters, the colonial authorities introduced fresh measures in their
favour. For instance, in Mysore it was agreed that an Inspector of Police
would visit the house of each of the European planters once a month to
hear complaints, if any (Madras Mail, 199:7). The planters’ associations
even offered rewards to the police for the detection of culprits and
thefts of plantation produce (Madras Mail, 1895:5) and the police in
their turn happily acknowledged the receipt of such rewards though
they had been earlier subjected to the wrath of the planters for their
1 6 Non-service of warrants was a major subject of discussion in the general
body meeting of the various planters’ associations. With respect to the
Wynad Planters’ Association, see the Minutes, GBM of WPA (dt.Nov.8,
1911) as reported in Planters’ Chronicle, Vol.VI, No.47, Nov.25, 1911,
p.723; GBM dt. Oct.16, 1907 in Planters’ Chronicle, Vol.II, No.18, Nov.19,
1907, p.660; GBM dt. June 10, 1908 in Planters’ Chronicle, Vol.III, No.6,
June 6, 1908, p.137; GBM dt. Oct.8, 1913 in Planters’ Chronicle, Vol. VIII,
No.44, Nov.1, 1913, p.562. For a similar situation in Annaimalai, 1913:405.
27
‘neglect, torpidity and misconduct’. The rewards, either in cash or as
ornaments, for their ‘meritorious services’ (Maaclean, 1985:204) were
attractive enough to induce the police to arrest innocents on false
charges of desertion. In Madurai district in 1926, for instance, the Police
arrested a dalit woman and sent her for trial to Gudalore. When she was
found to be the wrong person, she was sent home at the expense of the
State.17 When the ‘criminal tribes’ began to be employed by the estates,
the UPASI insisted on a “cut and dried” scheme which would include
the establishment of police outposts and police help for the supervision
of workers.
The Breach of Contract Act was not repealed until 1926, neither
was the Madras Planters’ Labour Act until 1929, nor the Coorg Labour
Act until 1931 (Madras Legislative Council Poceedings, 1927:359;
RCL, p.355). The vestiges of penal contracts finally ceased to exist, that
too without much of a protest from the planter class. This apparent lack
of concern on the part of the planters clearly indicates the advantageous
position realised by them through the many internal changes that they
had brought about over the years. By that time the process of
disengagement of modes of production and the transformation of
17 The workers might have been further handicapped by the very caste
composition of the police force, it being heavily biased against them, as in
the case of their underrepresentation in the other public services. The paraiyar
who constituted a major portion of the Tamil populace as well as a significant
chunk of plantation labour, for instance, were grossly under-represented in
the police force which was dominated by the caste-Hindus; the former
constituted only 1.32 per cent of the police force in 1875, which dwindled
down to 1 per cent in 1880; the State justified its attempt to keep out these
low-castes maintaining that they were less ‘efficient’. For more details, see
Maclean, Madras Manual, pp.190-91; Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict,
pp.230-44; In one instance, it was reported that, even without an extradition
warrant, a local sergeant of the Sri Lankan police arrested three workers on
the pretext that they had decamped from an estate in Sri Lanka, see TNA,
Judl. GO No.623-4,1917: Deputy Magistrate of Ramanad to the Secretary
to the Govt. of Madras, dt. Feb.11, 1917.
28
temporary workers into a permanent captive work force was fast taking
place and the planters were sanguine in the knowledge that the workers
were now directly under the sway of capital. The workers also lost their
dual existence or what may be termed their amphibian character - with
one foot on the hills and the other foot on the plains - once they became
resident. As the workers settled down on the estates with their families
in the wake of an increased centralisation of capital, the relationship
between the two modes of production in terms of labour market and
levels of living snapped. i.e. the workers’ earnings from the outside
non-capitalist sector, where from they used to meet part of their cost of
reproduction, were either reduced or wiped out. Besides, with the workers
captive and resident, the planters could easily abstain from the market
forces determining wages, thus enabling them to continue with their
low-wage policy; wages on the plantations remained lower than in the
plains where the open market intervened. One of the reasons why the
planters were able to keep the wages on plantations stagnant at a low
level for a considerably longer period could be attributed to this.
Yet the question remains: Has the repealing of the penal code and
its related colonial code of relations ever given rise to an era satisfactory
to labour? Has it ever resulted in the creation of a free labour? Absolutely
not. The colonial system of production and the larger political structure
within which the worker had to function remained undisturbed. On the
one hand, the workers, by and large, remained unaware of the fact that
they could no longer be subjugated by such oppressive Acts; neither
did the authorities care to keep the workers informed of their changed
situation.18 On the other, the planters in certain regions continued to
1 8 Thomas, Collector and District Magistrate, Coimbatore admitted to the RCL
that he was unaware of any attempt to convey the message to the workers
that such Acts no longer existed, RCL, p.415..
29
assign the work of apprehending workers who deserted the estates. To
quote one woman worker, who testified before the Royal Commision on
Labour in 1931:
If I ran away before the completion of my term of agreement
a warrant would be issued and the police would come and
collect the money. Many people have come to the tea
garden from my village and they all say so. I have seen
the police come to the village and take back people. That
was one or two years ago (RCL, Oral Evidence, p.374).
What was more important was that by this time the workers had
been made captive at the capitalist work sites as part of the centralisation
of capital (Ravi Raman, 1991:243-67). The continuity in the labour
process and its reproduction was fully assured, and the planters wielded
a greater control over the workforce - particularly patriarchal authority
over women, who were also subjected to various forms of sexual abuse.
During the great depression of the 1930s, the workers were widely
retrenched, wages were cut, and new forms of exploitative practices
were introduced. As the plantations fast began to revive, workers were
re-employed but without any improvement in wages. During the second
world war, plantations prospered further and though formal trade unions
made their entry, exploitative and disciplinary regime continued.
To Neglect is to Illtreat
The entire judiciary continued to be structured with a view to the
creation of a situation wherein the Europeans ‘should not have reason
to complain of a difficulty in obtaining legal redress’. The various
District Magistrates who had been authorised by the colonial State to
report on the state of affairs of the workers rarely fulfilled their jobs; the
occasional official who filed an honest report was invariably reprimanded
from above as the Slavery case of Travancore cited earlier. For instance,
30
of the 19 registered factories in Nilagiri district only one in 1924, five
in 1925 and two in 1926 had been inspected by the Divisional
Magistrate, leaving the majority of factories without any official
examination. In the case of Thiruvithamkur, it was reported that
Magistrates `never came’ into the picture at all. And whenever they
were to send reports to their respective Governments, they invariably
continued to project a wholly satisfactory treatment of the workers on
the estates. Even when the Royal Commission on Labour was appointed
to look into plantation matters, the workers found themselves unable to
speak out, the planters having recruited the help of the police in their
bid to silence the workers. Moreover, trade union organisers like
Ramaswami Ayyangar were obstructed in their efforts to collect authentic
information on the conditions of labour in plantations.19 The Labour
Commissioner was another authority who was expected to provide a
true picture but he, too, proved to be no exception. As Shiv Rao, the
then President of the Madras Labour Union evidenced before the Royal
Commission on Labour, there had not been in his fifteen years of
experience even a single instance of a government official visiting the
estates and making an honest attempt to assess the living conditions of
the plantation workers (RCL, Written Evidence, p.200).
However, the State blindly accepted the often fabricated reports
of the colonial officialdom in spite of repeated attempts made by certain
members of the Legislative Council to refute such claims. The latter
maintained that the workers were ill-treated on the estates and declared
that an enquiry was essential. The authorities turned a deaf ear to such
pleas and thwarted attempts by the Legislative Members to set up any
1 9 The Royal Commission on Labour expressed its displeasure over the whole
question of the District Magistrate not allowing Ramaswami Ayyangar to
convene a meeting of the workers and to collect information to be submitted,
RCL, pp.419-20.
31
enquiries pertaining to conditions of labour on plantations. For instance,
in 1915, Mr. Rao Bahadur Kesava Pillai raised the issue of the
ill-treatment of workers on plantations in the Madras Legislative Council
and asked the Government to appoint necessary bodies to protect their
interests. The Government pointed out that the Magistrates of the various
districts were to look after such matters and that they had not been
informed of any such cases; the District Magistrate of Nilagiri, in fact
stated that the workers were being treated well.20 This was also the case
when the question of the distressed workers came up in the Madras
Legislative Council in 1924. Mr. Chidamber Nadar cited that a large
number of workers who had left the Annaimalai plantations were in a
desperate condition on the roads and requested the Government to
appoint an Inquiry Committee to deal with the problem. However, the
Home Minister was not desirous of appointing an authority as he was
convinced that the planters’ association itself had taken steps to take
the coolies back to hospital. The member then reminded the Minister of
the fact that leaving the issue to planting agents instead of employing
Government officials, would not be of much use, as the former would
only be ‘too eager to turn back the distressed coolies to their depots
rather than taking the trouble of hospitalising the workers’; planters all
over the world have been uniformly guilty of disregarding the law (Gadgil,
1971:53-54; 286-87). In the larger context, the interests of the Dalits
and backward communities also continued to be ignored, as made clear
earlier by M.C.Raja, one of the most powerful Dalit representatives in
the Madras Legislative Council. Though as part of the Montague-
Chelmsford Reforms the Dalit representatives were nominated to the
Madras Legislative Council, they were too small in number to be able to
influence legislation affecting the Dalits in the wider context, not to
2 0 For details, see TNA, Judl. GO No.3081, 1915, Despatch Abstract: Legislative
Council Questions - dt.Dec.9,1915.
32
speak of those on the plantations. Capturing the entire scenario, what
the Indian Patriot stated with respect to the high ranges in
Thiruvithamkur was equally true with regard to the other planting
regions was:
there have been cases repeatedly of planters being accused
of grave offences against natives of the country. The State
Government is helpless to protect its own subjects against
Europeans through its police and judiciary, and a large
European population, not amenable to local authority
and perfectly independent of it, must constitute a grave
danger both politically and administratively. We have
heard that no native can venture to hold up an umbrella,
nor a native officer can go there on horseback, without
fear of being molested (Indian Patriot, 1907).
The common social origins and the day to day material life and
the subjugation of the workers ought to have helped them forge a
common class identity, but this was not to be, for obvious reasons such
as the conflicting identities of caste and religion, differential wages as
part of the divide-and-rule strategy of the planters, the territoriality of
the workers including the compound setting and so on. The workers
spared no means to hit back against the new Masters - both individually
and collectively.
Early Outbursts
The earliest of these protests occurred on the very first plantation
itself - the Anjarakandy Cinnamon Plantation set up in 1797 with the
investment of the East India Company. The illegal usurpation of property
involved made the local populace suspicious of the motives behind the
attempts of Brown to raise the plantation. Brown was unable to collect
the requisite amount of pepper vines to start his plantation even after
offering an increased price owing to the lack of cooperation from the
33
local inhabitants (Haridas, 1980:20). To protect his property he had to
engage a special watch and ward. In spite of this, during the Pazhassi
revolts, a major portion of the estate was destroyed by the rebels to
whom it was the very embodiment of colonialism. Francis Buchanan,
after his visit to the estate in the first decade of the 19th century reported
that “the plantation has been molested by Nairs and the eastern part of
it has fallen in their hands so that for the protection of what remains, it
has been necessary to station an European officer with a company of
sepoys at Brown’s house” (Innes, 1915:418-19; Logan, 1989:529). The
workers in the estate also fought against the discrimination in wage
rates for local labour and labour from distant places. In 1799, they
threatened to go on strike demanding an increase in wages, equal to that
paid to the workers who came from Thalassery and Mayyazhi. Brown
was forced to yield though he later succeeded in reducing the wages
again with the support of the colonial administration.
There were many other instances of resistance/protests from among
the workers owing to the combined reasons of material deprivation and
the lack of a decent human treatment. In 1859, in Wayanad, an estate
writer was stopped by a few maistris and workers, who asserted that his
habit of preparing false accounts was improper. They threatened to strike
him and break his head. A similar incident occurred in 1905.21 Whether
this was consequent on the workers getting drunk as alleged by the
planters is not known, nor is it relevant. In one of the Kannan Devan
estates, the workers found the behaviour of the European Manager so
intolerable that they physically attacked him. On another occasion,
rubber estate workers hurled their European Manager into a barrel of
latex (Ravindran, 1972:116). As late as 1941, a European planter was
attacked by a number of workers in his estate and was severely injured
(Fornightly Report, 1941:5).
2 1 For details see UPASI Proceedings, 1905:86.
34
As Moore points out, “ throughout the centuries one of the
common man’s most frequent and effective responses to oppression has
been flight” (Moore, 1978:125). In plantations, the workers were fenced
in within the compounds of the estates even after the repeal of the
indenture system in 1915, and hence they were forced to resort to
desertion, a hard and tortuous road to escape. Desertion was reported
right from the beginning of the plantations in the mid-19th century.22
Whenever the workers left the estates of their own will, the planters
termed it ‘absconding’ and hence punishable by law. Desertion, which
came to be one of the commonest forms of protests in the colonial
enterprises, became rampant in the plantations in southern India in the
early 20th century (Daniel, 1992). The reasons often cited were the illtreatment
of the workers by the employers, poor rationing, and the harsh
weather in the hills. Once caught, they were driven back to the estates,
or jailed.
Whenever such expressions of collective protest could not find a
way out, the workers often let loose their anger through other means.
One European Manager who had earlier taken disciplinary action against
a skilled-worker was stabbed in the back by the latter by a hunting
knife. Another case is also worth revealing: a worker in Dakshin Kanara
cut his own left arm causing severe bleeding when his European
employer, in spite of repeated requests, refused to pay him his wages.
‘Weapons of the Weak’ (Scott, 1985) thus took the form of blood-letting
and self-immolation. This was in fact an individualised form of coercing
the planters to respect workers’ rights. It was also a warning to the planters
to be prompt in paying wages, at least in the future. But this small act of
2 2 In Wayanad, the District Magistrate found it imperative to modify the Breach
of Contract Act in the very same year of its passing in 1859 to contain
desertion also, see RAK, The Magistrate to the Deputy Registrar (Court of
Judiciary), dt.June 24,1859, Outward Letters written by the Collector of
Malabar in the Magisterial Department for the year 1859.
35
protest only brought more misfortune to the hapless worker who was
arrested by the local police on the charge of attempted suicide (Madras
Mai, `Occasional Notes’, 1896:4). One is led to suspect that scores of
such sporadic incidents of labour protest must have occurred, but
documentary evidence regarding this is scant. Of the ‘principal strikes’
that occurred in various parts of the Madras Presidency during the year
1921, none was on plantations.23 With the outbreak of the imperialist
World War in 1914, capitalist development in India was accelerated for
further colonial exploitation, the major offshoot of this being the growth
of industries such as cotton spinning and weaving mills, jute factories
and railways besides plantations. An intensification of colonial
exploitation was achieved through a process of speeding up of work
and the lengthening of working hours. However, a proportionate increase
in wages did not occur in any of the plantations until 1918. The post-
War rise in prices, particularly those of foodstuffs and cloth, unleashed
a wave of discontent among the workers. In India, the prices of food
grains alone went up by more than 90 per cent; in the planting regions
it was as high as 102 per cent. In the northern regions, tea-workers
boycotted the markets run by the planters and instead formed an
alternative market (Guha, 1976:135). This was also the time when the
workers on the Assam tea plantations were engaged in riots and strikes;
they were driven to it largely due to economic grievances and the
inhuman treatment at the hands of their employers.24 When the bazaar
merchants in Annaimalai in southern India abruptly stopped the usual
supply of rice and other items to the workers, probably in expectation of
a further rise in prices, the labourers boycotted work on the estates itself.
2 3 For details see TNA,Law (General), GO No.1848, 1921.
24 The Hindu, ‘Assam Tea Gardens, Exodus of Labour: A Lurid Tale’, dt.
4.9.1924; Also see TNA, Law (General), GO No.3205, 1924; Guha,
1976:129-33.
36
Not less than five hundred workers, including women, incensed at this
denial of their basic ‘right to food’, struck work. They did not return to
their jobs until the merchants resumed the supplies the next day: the
workers were also beginning to get around their problems of conflicting
identities, slowly but surely articulating their protests in one voice.
History is replete with instances of such rural protests in market places
during these years, which in turn reveal the gradual crystallisation of a
spirit of resistance and the beginning of a continuous ‘murmur of protests’
among the deprived workers and peasants, particularly among the
'dalits’.25 By this time workers at large had begun to organise themselves
drawing inspiration from the working class movements that were
beginning to grow all over the world, as also by the intensification of
their exploitation during the period of Depression. With the kind of
severe oppression and misery that the workers were being subjected to,
the objective conditions for an awakening of the subaltern consciousness
were ripe. Yet, any manifestation of this kind of a political arousal failed
to materialise; nor did any systemic transformation occur even even
after the formation of formal trade unions under different political
banners in the late 40s and 50s.
Conclusion
The abolition of slavery in southern India had precious little
impact until the opening up of plantations when the cash wages paid to
the workers helped them to shrug off the ties binding them to their
traditional masters. Yet, the unfreedom of bondage in ‘freedom’ remained
for decades, with respect to the feudal Masters in the countryside first,
and later with the planter patriarchs in the high ranges even after the
25 With respect to south Indian countryside, see particularly, K.Gough, ‘Caste
in a Tanjore village’in Leach ed., Aspects of Caste, pp.11-60. Also see
David Arnold, ‘Looting Grain Riots and Government Policy in Southern
India 1918’, Past and Present, No.84, Aug.1979, pp.111-45.
37
workers were theoretically liberated from agrestic serfdom and
simultaneously incorporated into the larger world economy through
commodity production. As the plantations flourished and expanded, so
did the processes of pauperisation and immiserisation gain root making
cheap labour available for plantations. Though the workers came from
regions different in caste, language and culture, most of them had a
common social origin; they belonged to the depised sections of the
rural masses, particularly the historically underprivileged dalit group
whose ancestors had been slaves or the untouchables only a few decades
back. Thus the plantations represented a system of hierarchical control
wherein laboring women (and men too) were hegomonised by the
patriarchs of class, caste and gender. The colonial code of relations
maintained on plantations the world over was followed in every detail
in southern India too. Once the workers reached their work-place, they
soon found that the promises made by the kanganies were mere empty
assurances; more over, they had to suffer the most horrific kinds of illtreatment:
they were often badly beaten up and run-away workers were
caught by the police if not by trained dogs. A very systematic method of
punishment and chastisement was practised on the estates to ensure
discipline among workers, precision in work and the extraction of a
maximal surplus. The state machinery was manipulated to suit colonial
interests: atrocities perpetrated in the name of the Breach of Contract
Act, 1859 and the Madras Planters’ Labour Act, 1903 are telling evidence
of the same. Labourers working against capitalist interests were subjected
to rigorous punishment or had to forfeit their hard-earned wages or both.
Planting regions came to be heavily policed, thus helping the planters
to rule with a ruthless hand. Goaded by the incentives offered by the
State, the police often resorted to unwarranted arrests and illegal
detentions. The colonial State looked on in approval at these measures;
the dissenting voices of the peoples’s representatives were completely
38
ignored. Right from the beginning, plantation workers sought means
of protest and defiance both individually and collectively, much before
the formation of trade unions. Yet, any systemic transformation failed to
materialise.
39
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47
CENTRE FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
LIST OF WORKING PAPERS
(From 1991 onwards)
MRIDUL EAPEN Hantex: An Economic Appraisal.
September, 1991, W.P.242
SUNIL MANI Government Intervention in Commercial Crop Development:
A Case of Flue Cured Virginia Tobacco.
November, 1991, W.P.243
K. PUSHPANGADAN Wage Determination in a Casual Labour Market: The
Case Study of Paddy Field Labour in Kerala.
January, 1992, W.P.244
K.N. NAIR & S.P. PADHI Dynamics of Land Distribution: An Alternative
Approach and Analysis with Reference to Kerala.
January, 1992, W.P.245
THOMAS ISAAC Estimates of External Trade Flows of Kerala - 1975-76 and
1980-81.
March, 1992, W.P.246
THOMAS ISAAC, RAM MANOHAR REDDY, NATA DUVVURRY Regional
Terms of Trade for the State of Kerala.
March, 1992, W.P.247
P. MOHANAN PILLAI Constraints on the Diffusion of Innovations in Kerala:
A Case Study of Smokeless Chulas.
March, 1992, W.P.248
R. ANANDRAJ Cyclicality in Industrial Growth in India: An Exploratory
Analysis.
April, 1992, W.P.249
T.M. THOMAS ISAAC, RAM MANOHAR REDDY, NATA DUVVURY
Balance of Trade, Remittance and Net Capital Flows: An Analysis of
Economic Development in Kerala since independence.
October, 1992, W.P.250
M. KABIR, T.N. KRISHNAN Social Intermediation and Health Transition:
Lessons from Kerala,
October, 1992, W.P.251
48
SUNIL MANI, P. NANDAKUMAR Aggregate Net Financial Flows to India:
The Relative Importance of Private Loan vis-a-vis Foreign Direct
Investments.
August, 1993, W.P.252
PULAPRE BALAKRISHNAN Rationale and the Result of the Current
Stabilisation Programme.
November, 1993, W.P.253
K.K. SUBRAHMANIAN, P. MOHANAN PILLAI Modern Small Industry in
Kerala: A Review of Structural Change and Growth Performance.
January, 1994, W.P.254
DILIP M.MENON Becoming Hindu and Muslim : Identity and Conflict in
Malabar 1900-1936.
January, 1994, W.P.255
D. NARAYANA Government Intervention in Commodity Trade: An Analysis
of the Coffee Trade in India.
January, 1994, W.P.256
K.J. JOSEPH, P. NANDAKUMAR On the Determinants of Current Account
Deficits: A Comparative Analysis of India, China and South Korea.
January, 1994, W.P.257
K.K. SUBRAHMANIAN, K.J. JOSEPH Foreign Control and Export Intensity
of Firms in Indian Industry.
February, 1994, W.P.258
PULAPRE BALAKRISHNAN, K. PUSHPANGADAN Total Factor Productivity
Growth in Indian Manufacturing - A Fresh Look.
April 1994, W.P.259
D. NARAYANA, K.N. NAIR Role of the Leading Input in Shaping Institutions:
Tendency in the Context of Irrigation Uncertainty.
May, 1994, W.P.260
G. MURUGAN, K. PUSHPANGADAN Pricing of Drinking Water: An Application
of Coase Two-part Tariff.
December, 1994 W.P.261
MOHANAN PILLAI On the Mexican Crisis.
December, 1995, W.P.262
SUNIL MANI Financing Domestic Technology Development through the Venture
Capital Route.
December, 1995, W.P.263
49
T.T. SREEKUMAR Peasants and Formal Credit in Thiruvithamcore: The State
Institutions and Social Structure 1914-1940.
December, 1995 W.P.264
AMITABH Estimation of the Affordability of Land for Housing Purposes in
Lucknow City, Uttar Pradesh (India): 1970-1990.
March, 1996. W.P.265
K. PUSHPANGADAN, G. MURUGAN, K. NAVANEETHAM Travel Time,
User Rate & Cost of Supply: Drinking Water in Kerala, India:
June 1996. W.P.266
K.J. JOSEPH Structural Adjustment in India: A Survey of Recent Studies &
Issues for Further Research,
June 1996 W.P.267
D. NARAYANA Asian Fertility Transition: Is Gender Equity in Formal Occupations
an Explanatory Factor?
October, 1996 W.P.268
D. NARAYANA, SAIKAT SINHAROY Import and Domestic Production of
Capital Goods from Substitution to Complementarity,
October 1996. W.P.269
NEW SERIES
W.P. 270 ACHIN CHAKRABORTY On the Possibility of a Weighting System
for Functionings December 1996
W.P. 271 SRIJIT MISHRA Production and Grain Drain in two inland Regions
of Orissa December 1996
W.P. 272 SUNIL MANI Divestment and Public Sector Enterprise Reforms,
Indian Experience Since 1991 February 1997
W.P. 273 ROBERT E. EVENSON, K.J. JOSEPH Foreign Technology Licensing
in Indian Industry : An econometric analysis of the choice of
partners, terms of contract and the effect on licensees’ performance
March 1997
W.P. 274 K. PUSHPANGADAN, G. MURUGAN User Financing & Collective
action: Relevance sustainable Rural water supply in India. March
1997.
W.P. 275 G. OMKARNATH Capabilities and the process of Development
March 1997
W. P. 276 V. SANTHAKUMAR Institutional Lock-in in Natural Resource
Management: The Case of Water Resources in Kerala, April 1997.
50
W. P. 277 PRADEEP KUMAR PANDA Living Arrangements of the Elderly
in Rural Orissa, May 1997.
W. P. 278 PRADEEP KUMAR PANDA The Effects of Safe Drinking Water
and Sanitation on Diarrhoeal Diseases Among Children in Rural
Orissa, May 1997.
W.P. 279 U.S. MISRA, MALA RAMANATHAN, S. IRUDAYA RAJAN
Induced Abortion Potential Among Indian Women, August 1997.
W.P. 280 PRADEEP KUMAR PANDA Female Headship, Poverty and
Child Welfare : A Study of Rural Orissa, India, August 1997.
W.P. 281 SUNIL MANI Government Intervention in Industrial R & D, Some
Lessons from the International Experience for India, August 1997.
W.P. 282 S. IRUDAYA RAJAN, K. C. ZACHARIAH Long Term Implications
of Low Fertility in Kerala, October 1997.
W.P. 283 INDRANI CHAKRABORTY Living Standard and Economic
Growth: A fresh Look at the Relationship Through the Non- Parametric
Approach, October 1997.
W.P. 284 K. P. KANNAN Political Economy of Labour and Development in
Kerala, January 1998.
W.P. 285 V. SANTHAKUMAR Inefficiency and Institutional Issues in the
Provision of Merit Goods, February 1998.
W.P. 286 ACHIN CHAKRABORTY The Irrelevance of Methodology and
the Art of the Possible : Reading Sen and Hirschman, February 1998.
W.P. 287 K. PUSHPANGADAN, G. MURUGAN Pricing with Changing
Welfare Criterion: An Application of Ramsey- Wilson Model to Urban
Water Supply, March 1998.
W.P. 288 S. SUDHA, S. IRUDAYA RAJAN Intensifying Masculinity of Sex
Ratios in India : New Evidence 1981-1991, May 1998.
W.P. 289 JOHN KURIENSmall Scale Fisheries in the Context of Globalisation,
October 1998.
W.P. 290 CHRISTOPHE Z. GUILMOTO, S. IRUDAYA RAJAN Regional
Heterogeneity and Fertility Behaviour in India, November 1998.
W.P. 291 P. K. MICHAEL THARAKAN Coffee, Tea or Pepper? Factors
Affecting Choice of Crops by Agro-Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth
Century South-West India, November 1998
W.P. 292 PRADEEP KUMAR PANDA Poverty and young Women's Employment:
Linkages in Kerala, February, 1999.
W.P. 293 MRIDUL EAPEN Economic Diversification In Kerala : A Spatial
Analysis, April, 1999.
51
W.P. 294 K. P. KANNAN Poverty Alleviation as Advancing Basic Human
Capabilities: Kerala's Achievements Compared, May, 1999.
W.P. 295 N. SHANTA AND J. DENNIS RAJA KUMAR Corporate Statistics:
The Missing Numbers, May, 1999.
W.P. 296 P.K. MICHAEL THARAKAN AND K. NAVANEETHAM
Population Projection and Policy Implications for Education:A
Discussion with Reference to Kerala, July, 1999.
W.P. 297 K.C. ZACHARIAH, E. T. MATHEW, S. IRUDAYA RAJAN
Impact of Migration on Kerala's Economy and Society, July, 1999.
W.P. 298 D. NARAYANA, K. K. HARI KURUP, Decentralisation of the
Health Care Sector in Kerala : Some Issues, January, 2000.
W.P. 299 JOHN KURIEN Factoring Social and Cultural Dimensions into
Food and Livelihood Security Issues of Marine Fisheries; A Case
Study of Kerala State, India, February, 2000.
W.P. 300 D. NARAYANA Banking Sector Reforms and the Emerging
Inequalities in Commercial Credit Deployment in India, March, 2000.
W.P. 301 P. L. BEENA An Analysis of Mergers in the Private Corporate
Sector in India, March, 2000.
W.P. 302 K. PUSHPANGADAN, G. MURUGAN, Gender Bias in a
Marginalised Community: A Study of Fisherfolk in Coastal Kerala,
May 2000.
W.P. 303 K. C. ZACHARIAH, E. T. MATHEW, S. IRUDAYA RAJAN ,
Socio-Economic and Demographic Consequenes of Migration in
Kerala, May 2000.
W.P. 304 K. P. KANNAN, Food Security in a Regional Perspective; A View
from 'Food Deficit' Kerala, July 2000.
W.P. 305 K. N. HARILAL, K.J. JOSEPH, Stagnation and Revival of Kerala
Economy: An Open Economy Perspective, August 2000.
W.P. 306 S. IRUDAYA RAJAN, Home Away From Home: A Survey of Oldage
Homes and inmates in Kerala, August 2000.
W.P. 307 K. NAVANEETHAM, A. DHARMALINGAM, Utilization of
Maternal Health Care Services in South India, October 2000.
W.P. 308 K. P. KANNAN, N . VIJAYAMOHANAN PILLAI, Plight of the
Power Sector in India : SEBs and their Saga of Inefficiency November
2000.
W.P. 309 V. SANTHAKUMAR AND ACHIN CHAKRABORTY,
Environmental Valuation and its Implications on the Costs and Benefits
of a Hydroelectric Project in Kerala, India, November 2000.
52
W.P. 310 K. K. SUBRAHMANIAN. E. ABDUL AZEEZ, Industrial Growth
In Kerala: Trends And Explanations November 2000
W.P. 311 INDRANI CHAKRABORTY Economic Reforms, Capital Inflows
and Macro Economic Impact in India, January 2001
W.P. 312 N. VIJAYAMOHANAN PILLAI Electricity Demand Analysis
and Forecasting –The Tradition is Questioned, February 2001
W.P. 313 VEERAMANI. C India's Intra-Industry Trade Under Economic
Liberalization: Trends and Country Specific Factors, March 2001
W.P. 314 U.S.MISHRA AND MALA RAMANATHAN Delivery Complications
and Determinants of Caesarean Section Rates in India - An
Analysis of National Family Health Surveys, 1992-93, March 2001.
W.P. 315 ACHIN CHAKRABORTY The Concept and Measurement
of Group Inequality, May 2001.
W.P. 316 K. P. KANNAN AND N. VIJAYAMOHANAN PILLAI The
Political Economy of Public Utilities: A Study of the Indian
Power Sector, June 2001.
W.P. 317 K. J. JOSEPH AND K. N. HARILAL India's IT Export Boom:
Challenges Ahead. July 2001.
W.P. 318 JOHN KURIEN AND ANTONYTO PAUL Social Security
Nets for Marine Fisheries-The growth and Changing
Composition of Social Security Programmes in the Fisheries
Sector of Kerala State, India. September 2001.
W.P. 319 K. C. ZACHARIAH, P. R. GOPINATHAN NAIR AND
S. IRUDAYA RAJAN Return Emigrants in Kerala:
Rehabilitation Problems and Development Potential. October
2001
W.P. 320 N. VIJAYAMOHANAN PILLAI, K. P. KANNAN, Time and
Cost Over-runs of the Power Projects in Kerala, November
2001.
W.P. 321 VEERAMANI C. Analysing Trade Flows and Industrial
Structure of India: The Question of Data Harmonisation,
November 2001.
W.P. 322 K. C. ZACHARIAH, The Syrian Christians of Kerala:
Demographic and Socioeconomic Transition in the Twentieth
Century, November 2001.
W.P. 323 V. K. RAMACHANDRAN, MADHURA SWAMINATHAN,
VIKAS RAWAL, How have Hired Workers Fared? A Case
Study of Women Workers from an Indian Village, 1977 to
1999. December 2001.
53
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By

Kalidas Shinde
PhD Scholar