Revolt 1857 and reactions of Tea labourers in Assam

[9] UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE MOVEMENT IN ASSAM FROM 1921 TO1947: Revolt 1857 and reactions of Tea labourers in Assam

Labour Planters Relations: The relationship between management and labour in the colonial plantations can aptly be described as that between masters and slaves in systems of production based on bonded labour. The plantation system was geared to exploit labourers to the maximum possible extent in order to maximize profits for the owners. Labourers were purchased by gardens from contractors and were kept under surveillance at all times to prevent their escape from the drudgery of the gardens. There was no scope for the labourers to bargain over their wages or to shift to a garden offering higher wages, as laws were made to prevent mobility of labour, making desertion of a garden by its workers a crime, and out to be ruthlessly exploitative and inhuman. In such oppressive conditions, it is not surprising that labour protests in the form of sporadic strikes and riots became. a feature of tea plantations in Assam since the 1840s. The Kacharis employed by the Assam Company held the monopoly of tea cultivation. Assam till 1850, went. on strike in 1848 and surrounded (gheraoed) the Company's office at Nazira demanding 3 months' arrears of pay1 .  The company was compelled to assure them of regular monthly payments and cleared up their arrears. The strike convinced the Company's Directors that local tribal workers could not be forced to accept harsh terms of work, because they could afford to desert the Company's work at any time and go back to their villages or find better employment in the PWD and elsewhere.2   The company's Superintendent at Nazira told the Board of Directors at Calcutta that the "Cachari coolies should not be depended on; and efforts must be directed to recruit Bengali coolies.'' 3 In 1857 the Sepoy Mutiny had its effect on the Assam plantations also. Believing that English rule was to end soon, ten ' thousand local workers of the Assam Company struck work and deserted the Gardens⁴. The government took strong action ·and deported the local contractor Madhu Koch in 1858 for seven years' rigorous imprisonment and he died in deportation.⁵ Others were given one to four years of imprisonment. From 1839 onwards the planters made elaborate arrangements for recruitment and transportation of labourers from Chotanagpur and neighbouring areas. The underlying assumption was that migrant workers brought under indenture from distant places could easily be worked at very cheap rates because ., they would not have much of a chance to escape: The British planters did not seem to be interested in creating a labour force based on a rational management of labour. They bought labour at a high cost but spent very little to maintain it. A cheap and subservient labour force with no desire of betterment in life was the planter's ideal⁶.  The impoverished and uprooted migrants were compelled to revolt when circumstances became unbearable for them. In 1859, the workers of Negheriting Estate near Jorhclt went on a mass strike under the ·leadership of a Brahmin migrant from the United Provinces, named Dube, demanding an increase in wages. The planters suppressed the strike with military help. The leader was sentenced to 3 months in prison and others were awarded 6 months' imprisonment⁷.

Sometimes the labourers would even approach the courts for redressal of their grievances, but often it proved to be futile and counterproductive. Even in the courts it was the planters' writ that ran, as Debicharan Barua said in 1886: because the majority on the jury is selected from a class of men strong in race prejudices and ignorant of the first principles of jurisprudence - I mean the class of planters ... and this very system is one of the reasons why our poor coolies are so oppressed in Assam⁸. Lord Curzon too had occasion to condemn the planters' abuses: On many plantations, harsh and cruel and abominable things go on and the coolies get nothing like the wage which is stipulated for by the law. It is also true that when cases of planters and coolies come before the District magistrates, or before the Sessions Judges, or even before the High Court, there is one scale of justice for the planter and another for the coolie⁹. The tea planter was no different from the indigo planter about whom it was said, The Planter is above the law: He laughs at it, he defies it.¹⁰ Evidence of labourers approaching the courts against the planters is to be clearly found in many of their folk songs that still survive¹¹. More than the low wages it was perhaps the brutality of planters in dealing with workers that provoked the workers to riot at times. Sir Henry Cotton observed, There is a growing tendency among the coolie class to resist a blow by striking a blow in return, and this soon leads to serious results ... but this very tendency.¹²  

 

 

References: 

1.       H.A. Antrobus, A History of the Assam Company: 1839-1953, Edinburgh, 1957, p. 389; Amalendu Guha, op. cit., p. 15-16

2.       H.A. Antrobus, op. cit., p. 484-85.)

3.       Prasenjit Choudhury, Asamar Chahbonua Aru Unoish Satikar Bidwat Samaj, (in Assamese), Guwahati, 1989, p. 20.) . 

4.       H.A. Antrobus, op. cit., p. 96. ) 

5.       .Amalendu Guha, op. cit., p. 5; Ganesh Chandra Kurmi, "chah Shramik aru swadhinatar gana andolan", (in Assamese), in Rajen Gogoi (ed~), Chah Janagosthir Cinta Cetana, Asam Sahitya Sabha, Jorhat, 2001, pp. 241-256 )

6.       R.K. Kar, "A Panoramic View of the Tea and Ex-Tea Tribes of Assam", in Thomas PullopiiiH (ed.), Identity of Adivasis in Assam, New Delhi, 1999, p. 25.  

7.       Ganesh Chandra Kurmi, op. cit.  )

8.       Quoted in Amalendu Guha, op. cit., p. 56. ) 

9.       B.B. Mishra, The Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modem Times, New Delhi, 1978, p. 379). 

10.    Prasenjit Choudhury, op. cit., p. 36.  .

11.    Ganesh Chandra Kurmi, op. cit) .

12.    http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/29105/9/09_chapter%202.pdf