Coolie Drivers Or Benevolent Paternalists? British Tea Planters in Assam and the Indenture Labour...

Modern Asian Studies 44, 1 (2010) pp. 29–51. C! Cambridge University Press 2009doi:10.1017/S0026749X09990059 First published online 18 September 2009

Coolie Drivers Or Benevolent Paternalists?British Tea Planters in Assam and the

Indenture Labour System"

RANA P. BEHAL

Associate Professor, Department of History, Deshbandhu College,University of Delhi, New Delhi

Email: [email protected]

AbstractThis paper traces the evolution of the indenture labour system in the teaplantations of Assam and, simultaneously, the shaping of the attitudes of Britishplanters towards the labour force. Also explored are: the significant fact thatonly a small number of British managerial personnel were in charge of ahuge migrant labour force; how the need to step up tea production for thecompetitive world market while keeping down costs—i.e. labour costs, beingthe main production cost—fostered an exploitative labour system, with planterstaking frequent recourse to physical and economic coercion; and the ensuingextra-legal1 measures needed to keep the labour force under control. The paperalso demonstrates that the colonial state was in full cognizance of the injusticesof the labour system. Legislation by the government had laid the foundations ofthe indenture system and, while there were provisions for protecting the interestsof labour force, these were on the whole ignored, with the state turning a blindeye to the planters’ use of physical and other extra-legal measures. One instanceinvolved Chief Commissioner Henry Cotton, who attacked the injustices of thesystem. This attack was silenced swiftly, and the stance taken by Viceroy Curzonas the incident played out is a clear pointer to the government’s willingness, toside with tea-industry interests at all costs.

" The generous support of the Trustees of the British Indian Golden JubileeBanquet Fund and the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge University, UK, byawarding me the L.M. Singhvi Fellowship during the summer of 2005, has enabled meto carry on research for this paper. The late Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, then Directorof the Centre, provided intellectual stimulus and the warmth of friendship duringmy stay. This paper is dedicated to the memory of this outstanding historian of thelabour history of South Asia. I am also grateful to Professor Basudev Chatterji and DrPrabhu P. Mohapatra for their valuable comments.

1 These ‘extra-legal’ measures included: constant surveillance of living quarters oflabour, referred to as ‘coolie lines’, detention of labour without informing the districtauthorities, various forms of physical coercion, including flogging, etc.

29

30 R A N A P . B E H A L

Introduction

Writing about labour relations in the tea plantations of Assam duringthe indenture era, Sir Percival Griffiths, the official historian of theIndian tea industry, argued that benevolent paternalism characterisedthe planters’ attitude towards their labour force in the nineteenthcentury. Griffiths rationalised the coercive indenture labour regimewithin the context of the completely dependent labour relationshipthat was a feature of the indenture system.2 Since Assam was an alienplace for the migrant labourer, who came from a great distance to workon the plantations, he was placed in a relation of complete dependencyvis-a-vis the manager:

Every aspect of garden life had the manager as its focal point. He built thecoolies’ houses, he established the market and regulated prices, he suppliedrice when necessary . . . . Such a system developed a sense of responsibility andbrought out the best in any naturally humane manager . . . . Their methodswere rough and ready and sometimes included personal chastisement, butthere is little doubt that the lot of a tea garden coolie was a lot better thanthat of the ordinary Indian labourer at that time.3

Interestingly, Griffith acknowledges that this relationship of totaldependency could lead to managerial excesses, as occurred during theearly phase of the industry during the ‘tea mania’ of the 1860s:

The manager, was clad in the authority of the ruling race during the heydayof British power . . . . If the unscrupulous European adventurers who flockedto the tea industry during the boom of the sixties had continued to form animportant element in the managerial personnel, circumstances would indeedhave led to a reign of tyranny. Fortunately, tea-garden managers in the lastfew decades of the last century were drawn from a better class of society andso the system which grew up was as a rule not tyranny, but paternalism.4

Obviously Griffith located the coeval development of paternalismand rationalisation of the tea industry in direct opposition to themanagerial tyranny of the irrational phase of ‘tea mania’.

Contemporary colonial officials, though fully supportive of theBritish capitalist venture in Assam, were less sanguine in their

2 Rana P. Behal and Prabhu P. Mohapatra, ‘Tea and Money versus Human Life:The Rise and Fall of the Indenture System in the Assam Tea Plantations 1840–1908’in E. Valentine Daniel, Henry Bernstien and Tom Brass (eds), Plantations, Proletariansand Peasants in Colonial Asia (London: Frank Cass, 1992), pp. 142–172.

3 Sir Percival Griffiths, The History of the Indian Tea Industry (London: Weidenfeldand Nicolson, 1967), p. 376.

4 Griffiths (1967), History, p. 376.

C O O L I E D R I V E R S O R B E N E V O L E N T P A T E R N A L I S T S ? 31

assessment of the indenture system. J.B. Fuller, a senior Governmentof India official, and later the Chief Commissioner of Assam, observedin 1901:

The truth is of course that serious abuses must occur under a labour systemwhich is something of the nature of slavery, for an employee who can bearrested and forcibly detained by his master is more of a slave than a servantand that these abuses are the price which has to be paid for the greatadvantages which has resulted from the establishment and growth of thetea industry in Assam.5

While participating in the 1901 debate on the Assam Labour andEmigration Bill in the Central Legislative Council, Viceroy LordCurzon was equally emphatic:

It is an arbitrary system, an abnormal system . . . . But it has been devised notin the main in our interests but in the interests of an enterprise with whichthe Government of India could not but sympathise, namely, the effort to openup by capital and industry the resources of a distant and backward province.6

Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India, was quitecandid in a private communication to Lord Curzon:

I agree with you that the present labour system is a modified version ofslavery, and reacts prejudicially upon the masters. It is only justifiable on theplea that without it the tea plantations could not be worked, as outside thehalf savage tribes from whom the coolies now come, it would be difficult toinduce the ordinary Hindu to volunteer.7

The contemporary non-official critics of the labour system in theAssam tea plantations also characterised it as a system of slavery.Dwarkanath Ganguli, an important Brahmo Samaj activist and JointSecretary of the Indian Association in Calcutta, wrote a series ofcritical articles on the labour system in the Assam tea plantationsin the Calcutta newspaper Bengalee.8 Another powerful contemporarycritic, the English missionary Reverend Charles Dowding, describedthe indenture labour system in Assam tea plantations as ‘thinly

5 Government of India, Department of Revenue and Agriculture, Emigration, ‘A’Proceedings (hereafter Emigration ‘A’), No. 6, File No. 90 of 1901, p. 2, NationalArchives of India (hereafter NAI).

6 Proceedings of the Central Legislative Council, 1901, Vol. XL, p. 139.7 Secretary of State for India’s Letter to Lord Curzon, 26 August, 1903, Letter No.

59, Curzon Papers, Microfilm, Acct. No. 1632, NAI. Original Mss Eur. F. 111/161-IOL, British Library, London (hereafter BL).

8 Dwarkanath Ganguli, Slavery in British Dominion (Calcutta,: Jijnasa, 1972), pp.1–56.


disguised slavery’.9 Both the contemporary supporters and the criticsof the Assam tea plantations were unanimous, from their differingperspectives, in their assessment that the indenture labour regimeestablished there during the ninteenth century was not very differentfrom slavery.

This paper argues that the indenture labour regime in Assam teaplantations was formally based on the modern industrial notion ofwage-labour. It was far from ‘paternalistic’ as described by Griffith.Labour relations under the indenture regime in Assam tea plantations,as reflected in the actions and attitudes of tea planters, displayedfeatures akin to Atlantic slave plantations. The other similaritybetween the two plantation systems lay in the export-orientation andindustrial organisation of agricultural production. However, unlikethe older southern American and Caribbean plantations, Assam didnot have a history of slave-based production. And unlike Caribbeanplanters, who transited from managing slavery to indenture-basedplantation production, the European tea planters in Assam hadno prior experience of managing slave-based production. Contraryto Griffiths’ assertion, it is argued that the early pioneers weretransfomed into coolie drivers precisely during the period when thetea industry grew into a corporate business organisation producing forthe world market. Here was a case of co-existence of an ‘irrational’ andinhuman labour regime producing for a modern ‘rational’ corporateworld.

This paper will also show that the colonial state was fully aware andsupportive of both these features of the indenture regime in Assam teaplantions. While the colonial state sought to ‘protect’ the interests ofthe labour force it also legitimised the exercise of extra-legal authorityby the planters. This balancing act was performed through variouslegislative interventions. A penal contract system, introduced in ActVI of the Bengal Council in 1865 and modified in 1882, stipulatedminimum monthly wages (Rs 5 for men and Rs 4 for women), a three-year contract (extended to five years later on), a nine-hour workingday, and a government inspector of labour empowered to cancel thecontract of labourers on complaints of ill treatment. The significantprovision of the Act lay in the sanctions for breach of contract bylabourers: planters were given powers to arrest, without warrant,

9 Charles Dowding, Tea Garden Coolies in Assam (Calcutta: Thacker, Spinks & Co.,and London: W. Thacker & Co., 1894), p. 31.


labourers who ‘absconded’, and imprisonment was the penalty forrefusal to work.10

Evolution of the Indenture Labour System

The British planters (the pioneers) arrived in the province from theearly 1840s as employees of tea companies. Their main task was to cutdown and open out those parts of the jungle in which indigenous teaplant grew most thickly. The historical accounts of the early years oftea plantations lay a fair amount of stress on the hardships of planters’lives there. The more productive tea tracks and tea clearings in upperAssam were often situated at considerable distances from each other,and the early planters spent much of their time travelling from onepatch of tea to another to supervise the work. The only means of travelwas by country boats, by dugout canoe along the numerous tributaryrivers or on the backs of elephants. Life was hazardous and hard forthose involved in the early years of clearing tropical forests for plantingtea in Assam. Hostile neighbourhood tribal and hill communities,wild animals and poisonous snakes, an unhealthy climate and diseaseand a lack of medical facilities often took a heavy toll of lives of theearly planting pioneers.11 Social isolation and seclusion added to themiseries brought on by physical hardships: ‘White women were asscarce as white elephants during early years. A few managers weremarried, but rarely an assistant.’12

The opening up and expansion of plantations generated demandfor labour. From the beginning, given the nature of its productionprocess which was highly labour intensive, the tea industry’s majorpreoccupation was acquiring labour, especially since the Assam valleywas very sparsely populated when the Assam Company commencedits operations. The initial experiment of importing Chinese labourfor planting proved a fiasco.13 Serious efforts to procure labourlocally were also not very successful. In scantily populated Assam

10 For more details see Behal and Mohapatra, ‘Tea and Money’ (1992), pp. 145–150.

11 John Weatherstone, The Pioneers 1825–1900: The Early British Tea and CoffeePlanters and Their Way of Life (London: Quiller Press, 1986), Ch. III.

12 Ibid., p. 77.13 Assam Company Papers (hereafter ACP), MS 9925, Vol. 1, Proceedings of

Committee in Bengal, 15 February, 13 March, May and June 1840, pp. 87–144,Guildhall Library, London.


the offer of very low wages and growing competition for labour fromgovernment infrastructure projects rendered plantation employmentunattractive.14

Failure to procure labour locally necessitated the search for labourfrom neighbouring Bengal. These efforts constantly ran into trouble,with recruited workers deserting after arrival on the plantations,or not reaching their destination after being dispatched by boatsfrom the recruiting areas, thereby incurring a loss of the advances.15

Thus, maintaining the supply of labour remained a problem duringthe first two decades of plantation set-up (1840–1860). However,the use of physical coercion or other forms of extra-legal meansto control and tame the workforce (characteristic features of thelater indenture system), did not appear to be in practice during thisperiod. The concern over jeopardising production of its enterpriseduring this early stage of development made the Assam Company’smanagement cautious. Even though they did not offer higher wages asan inducement to prevent workers deserting, the Company’s Directorsinstructed the Superintendent of its plantations in Upper Assam, that:

they positively forbid any violence on the part of the assistants to the nativesof the country or to the coolies of the Association and on any such case beingformally reported immediate dismissal will most assuredly be the penalty.16

All this was to change with the dramatic events of first half of the1860s.

From the 1860s Assam tea plantations experienced spectaculargrowth and expansion. Viceroy Lord Canning’s generous offer of landfor tea production at throwaway prices under the ‘Fee Simple’ rulestriggered off a massive speculation boom in the tea industry, knownas ‘tea mania’.17 From only six registered companies and 51 teagardens in operation by 1860, ‘tea mania’—marked by the doublingof tea prices and soaring profits—caused the number of tea-producingcompanies to rise to 86 by the end of the boom in 1865.18

14 ACP, MS 9925, Vol. 4, 18 July 1846, 13 March, and 18 July 1847, pp. 1014–1136.15 ACP, MS 9925, Vol. 2, August 1841–July 1844, pp. 350–454.16 Ibid., p. 112.17 Government efforts to speed up further grants of wastelands brought about

a change from the Old Assam Rule of 1854 to Fee-Simple rules in 1862 offeringoutright sale of land at highly concessional rates, transferable and inheritance rights.For details see Mohammed Abu B. Siddique, Evolution of Land Grants and Labour Policyof Government: The Growth of the Tea Industry in Assam 1834–1940 (New Delhi: SouthAsian Publishers, 1990), pp. 19–26.

18 Griffiths, History (1967), pp. 61–99.


The industry survived the collapse of the ‘tea mania’ boom and,through rationalisation, was quickly transformed into a well-organisedcorporate structure. This took the form of transfer of the managementof tea gardens to British managing agencies, a process initiated bythe Assam Company placing its gardens under the management ofSchoene, Kilburn and Company. A number of smaller gardens wereamalgamated into large-scale enterprises under managing agents, andby the end of the century, the seven top managing agency housescontrolled nearly 61 per cent of all tea gardens.19 By the end of thecentury, plantations in Assam had acquired just under half-a-millionacres of land: the area under tea cultivation increased from 26,853acres in 1872 to 204,285 acres in 1900, and production increased from6,150,764 lbs in 1872 to 75,125,176 lbs in 1900.20 The experience ofthe ‘tea mania’ years had shown that while the availability of land andcapital had presented no difficulty, labour had been a critical problem.The planters needed a cheap and pliant labour force that could workunder a strict production regime. Between 1871 and 1900, an intens-ified search outside the province led to the importation of 750,000migrant labourers from distant places in Bihar, Orissa and Bengal.21

Elsewhere22 I have argued that the structure of power hierarchybased on coercion and extra-legal authority which dominatedproduction relations in tea plantations for so long, evolved during the1860s with the introduction of the indenture system at the height ofthe speculative boom. This was also the period that shaped the attitudeof European planters, both as individuals and as a class, towardstheir labour. Their isolation and secluded existence in the plantationswas now exacerbated by the huge demographic gap betweenthemselves and their migrant labourers. By the end of the nineteenthcentury approximately 1,000 European planters were living amonga population of over half-a-million labourers. To preserve their

19 A.K. Bagchi, Private Investment in India (UK: Cambridge University Press, 1972),pp. 161–162; Behal and Mohapatra, ‘Tea and Money’ (1992), p. 145.

20 Papers Regarding Tea Industry in Bengal (Calcutta, 1873); AgriculturalStatistics of British India, relevant years; Rana Partap Behal, ‘Some Aspects of theGrowth of the Tea Plantation Labour Force and Labour Movements in Assam ValleyDistricts (Lakhimpur, Sibsagar and Darrang), 1900–47,’ unpublished Ph.D. Thesis.Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 1983, p. 34.

21 Report of the Assam Labour Enquiry Committee, 1906, p. 83.22 Rana P. Behal, ‘Power Structure, Discipline and Labour in Assam Tea Plantations

Under Colonial Rule’ in Rana P. Behal and Marcel van der Linden (eds), India’sLabouring Poor: Historical Studies c. 1600–2000 (Delhi: Foundation Books, Delhi, 2007),p. 156; Behal, ‘Some Aspects’, Ch.1.


authority, the planters devised the indenture regime to keep theirworkforce docile, disciplined and intimidated, enforced by legislationfrom the colonial state—thus providing the stamp of legitimacy.23

Under this regime, the planters were not merely employers of wagelabour, they occupied a pivotal position around which revolved thelives of the entire plantation community of assistants, supervisory staffand labourers. Behind the assertion of authority over their labourerswas the assumption of an inherent inferiority of the labouringclasses. Therefore, terms like ‘coolie’, ‘primitive’, ‘jungly’, ‘slothful’,‘scoundrel’ and ‘absconder’ emerged in planters’ vocabulary whenreferring to labourers. Such perceptions evolved among Europeanplanters sometimes at the very outset of their journey to take uptheir post in Assam plantations. Describing the woes of steamer travelen route to Assam, John Carnegie, a young British arrival, bitterlycomplained of ‘mosquitoes . . . and worse than all we have 500 coolieson board the dirtiest brutes in creation swarming with lice and onehad cholera last night, what with coolies, mosquitoes and lice I shan’tbe sorry when this is at an end . . . ’.24 His brother Alexander, too,did not take long to assume the attributes of authority and power ofthe master, writing soon after becoming Assistant Manager in a teagarden in Tezpur:

I am now in a jungle, a sort of small king among the niggers. Counting womenand children I have charge of about 450 people, an awful queer lot the mostof them are. They are always getting ill and I am doctor . . . . I have splendidrecipe for spleen and have cured a lot of chaps and dysentery too, two of themare dead but they die here very easily so they don’t think much of that . . . .They not only died, they absconded in a tiresome way.25

For the newly-employed migrant labour the sudden upsurge of teaplantation expansion brought only immense suffering and sometimesdeath. As the 1868 report of the Commissioners, appointed by theGovernment of Bengal to enquire into the affairs of the tea industryin Assam, put it:

In the mad race of speculation, when fresh clearances were made, and acreupon acre covered with tea, to meet the terms of contract entered into withthe promoters of new, or to satisfy the shareholders in old companies, no one

23 Behal and Mohapatra, ‘Tea and Money’ (1992), pp. 142–143.24 Letters of John and Alexander Carnegie to their parents from Tezpur and other

Assam tea plantations, 1865–66, Mss Eur/c/682, fifth letter, dated 17 February 1866,OIOC, BL.

25 Ibid., 4 April, 1866.


has suffered more than the unfortunate labourer, for the opening out of newTea Cultivation has been too often synonymous with disease and death.26

Shortage of food compounded the problem. There was very littlesurplus food produced in the tea districts and the poor means ofcommunication did not help. One official report summed up theconsequences of such a situation:

. . . when large number of coolies were imported to meet the demand causedby the excessive extensions of the era of speculation, the importation of fooddid not keep pace with the increase of mouths and the machinery for thedistribution of available food was quite insufficient. The consequence wasthat tens of thousands of the imported labourers died from disease which Ifirmly believe was brought on or aggravated by want of proper food, while theothers were so enfeebled that their labour quite failed to repay the employerthe cost of importing them.27

The figures of mortality and desertion during those years bear ampletestimony to the abominable conditions of the labourers depicted incontemporary accounts. Between May 1863 and May 1866, about84,915 labourers were imported into the Assam tea gardens. Butthe returns for 1866 showed only 49,750 as working on the gardens.The remaining 35,165 either died or deserted. A larger number ofdeserters also seemed to have died of hunger or exhaustion in thejungles.28 In the tea gardens inspected by the Commissioners in 1868,the average rate of mortality ranged from 137.6 per thousand to 556.6per thousand.29

Added to these miseries were the growing physical coercion and eco-nomic exploitation exercised by the planters. The practice of floggingas a form of physical coercion to control labour appeared as an asser-tion of extra-legal authority of planters. To them it seemed quite nat-ural that labourers who deserted or disobeyed should be flogged. Afterall, the company had invested so much money in bringing them to thegardens. In a letter to the Government in 1872, W.A. Stoddard, Man-ager of the Maphock Tea Estate in Sibsagar district, demanded that:

. . . all agreement labourers after punishment for default be returned to theiremployers to complete their contracts with the terms of absence added on . . . ;and that on a second offence of any once convicted labour should be whipped.

26 Government of Bengal, Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire intothe State and Prospects of Tea Cultivation in Assam, Cachar and Sylhet, 1868, p. 49.

27 Papers Regarding Tea Industry, p. xvi.28 Ibid., p. XIX.29 Commissioners’ Report, 1868, p. 44.


He added that flogging was useful, ‘especially without hurting theman much, the quiet, firm systematic way the government floggingsare conducted’.30 Often there were cases of tying up and floggingof labourers who were really physically unfit to work. Flogging as aweapon of control and disciplining labour, was becoming a commonpractice in the Assam tea gardens.31

That such ‘tyranny’ was not confined only to ‘unscrupulous Europeanadventurers’ of the 1860s, as Griffiths asserted, is clear from theobservations and comments of later British officials. At the turn of thetwentieth century Henry Cotton, the Chief Commissioner of Assam,reported the case of a woman labourer who was flogged for trying toescape from the garden. Another woman was flogged on suspicion ofhelping the others to escape. He also came across a case in whichlabourers were confined for a number of days in a ‘prison-house’ inthe tea garden and were mercilessly beaten up, with the result thatthree of the labourers had their arms broken.32 As late as the 1920sa British trade union delegate reported that ‘we witnessed a groupof men, women and children working away together, while five yardsaway was a planters’ young assistant proudly hugging the whip’.33

Flogging was not the only means used to deter desertions, defianceof authority or ‘shirking’ of work by withdrawing labour. In day-to-day plantation life, at the workplace and the Sahib’s bungalow,physical beatings and showering abusive language became a ‘natural’routine for the planter to enforce discipline as well as punishment forabsconding. George Barker, a planter in Assam, recalled his recipefor dealing with ‘shirking’ labourers in his garden during the 1880s:‘Various forms of punishment—from a good thrashing to makinghim do two or three times the amount [of work] over again—areinflicted . . . .’34 In the case of malingering labourers, ‘the judiciousapplication of the cane quickly convinces the coolie that he has madea mistake in imagining that there could be anything the matter withhim’.35 Planter W.M. Fraser recollected his experiences during the1890s of a senior manager chastising women labourers for faulty leaf

30 Ibid., p. 44.31 Papers Regarding Tea Industry (1873), p. xxi.32 Henry Cotton, Indian and Home Memories (London: Fisher Unwin, 1911), p. 266.33 A. Purcell and J. Hallsworth, Report on Labour Conditions in India (London: Trade

Union Congress General Council, 1928), p. 35.34 George Barker, Tea Planter’s Life in Assam (Calcutta: Thacker, Spinks & Co.,

1884), p. 130.35 Ibid., p. 267.


plucking: ‘The ground become strewn with bad leaf, while from onewoman to the other went the admonishing Thomson, his tongue andhands fully employed.’36

Other strategies involved immobilising migrant labour within theconfines of the plantations.37 The private right of planters to arrestlabourers under the penal system became an important tool incontrolling their workforce. This practice, passed to legitimise theindenture regime in the Assam plantations, originated under section33 of the Act of 1865 and remained in force under Act I of 1882 as wellas under Act VI of 1901.38 Under these Acts, captured runaways andrecalcitrant labour could be arrested and held within the plantation-erected phatak, or private ‘prison’. F.A. Hetherington, a young assistantmanager, recorded in his diary on 23 January 1903 that one of hisgarden coolies ‘Gora returned from Tezpur, having been flogged byBrown and kept in futtock on the garden for a week’.39 For the workers,the phatak symbolised the indenture regime based on the penalsystem.

The Assam Chief Commissioner, J.B. Fuller, was convinced thatamongst the coolies the whole plantation system was commonlyregarded as a phatak.40 To prevent desertions, the labourers were madeto live in closely guarded areas. The labour force of a large gardenwas divided into some half-a-dozen or so villages called ‘coolie lines’,containing a maximum of 1000 or 1200 labourers. Each village wasput under the charge of a couple of ‘line chowkidars’ or watchmen,who were responsible for everyone turning out at the proper timein the morning, and for the ‘orderly’ behaviour of the coolies in thelines.41 Edgar reported that hill men were specially employed to trackdown ‘absconders’ with the promise of a reward of Rs 5 per head. Dogsalso seemed to have been specially trained for this purpose, practicesreminiscent of those employed in British-owned plantations in Jamaica

36 W.M. Fraser, The Recollections of a Tea Planter (London: Tea and Rubber Mail,1937), p. 15.

37 Behal and Mohapatra, ‘Tea and Money’ (1992), pp. 145–161; Behal, ‘PowerStructure’ (2007), pp. 143–172.

38 Government of Assam, Department of Revenue-A (hereafter Revenue-A), Nos77–117, August 1904, Assam State Archives.

39 F.A. Hetherington, The Diary of a Tea Planter (Sussex, UK: The Book Guild Ltd.,1994), p. 77.

40 Revenue-A, Nos 77–117, August 1904.41 David Crole, Tea: A Text Book of Tea Planting and Manufacture (London: Crosby

Lockwood and Son, 1897), pp. 195–197.


during the seventeenth century.42 If an absconder was caught he wastied up and flogged, and the reward paid to his capturer was deductedby way of fine from the absconder’s future earnings. But severe floggingoften meant no future earnings. ‘[O]ften runaways enfeebled by theirsufferings in the jungles, died under or from the effect of the floggingsthey received when caught.’43 Despite the threat of severe physicalcoercion and restrictions in mobility placed on labourers, desertionsremained a major source of worry for the planters. Reverend Dowding,using figures published in the official immigration reports, arrived atthe conclusion that the rate of desertion was ‘60.8 per mille’ of teagardens.44

The other possible escape available to workers was to declinerenewal of their contract at the end of five years. However, most oftenthey were coerced or tricked into renewing it. Planters devised extra-legal mechanisms to prolong the period of indenture servitude. Barkerrecounted the difficulty of ‘persuad[ing] them to renew their contracts(Assamese bundibus)’.45 Crole’s observations reveal the nature of such‘persuasion’ adopted by the planter:

I have known cases where the planter has cunningly arranged so that the wife’soriginal four years’ agreement expires before the husband’s new agreementis fully served, and then the wife is told she must also take a new contractfor two years or else leave the garden, and of course she has to submit to theformer. Then when husband’s contract is worked out he is again forced torenew it, owing to his wife’s term not yet being expired. And so the businessis worked on the principle of a ‘little more bread for my cheese and a littlemore cheese for my bread’.46

In 1888, a Bengal Government official was shocked to find a planterorganising a polyandrous marital union between five time-expiredcoolies and a single woman brought in under the Act; in return eachman had agreed to re-engage in the same garden for a five-year period.‘The disposal in marriage of all imported female coolies,’ the officialnoted, ‘is regarded as a matter entirely within the jurisdiction of themanager.’47 Such exercise of power by the planters without explicitlegal sanction was regularly condoned by the colonial authority on the

42 Richard Dunn, The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713(USA: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), p. 248.

43 Papers Regarding Tea Industry, p. xxi.44 Dowding, Tea Garden (1894), p. vii.45 Barker, Tea Planter (1884), p. 173.46 Crole, Tea (1897), p. 205.47 Emigration ‘A’, File Nos 2–9, February 1889, NAI.


ground that the ‘tea planter as master of a large and irregular labourstaff must enforce discipline by occasionally severe measures whichneed not be looked into too closely, because they are substantially justand for the good of the general body of coolies’.48

To Western liberal critics of the plantation the rationale for theuse of extra-legal methods, unacceptable in the ‘civilised’ West, waswell articulated by Barker: ‘ . . . lengthy personal acquaintance withtheir idiosyncrasies is the only means of getting to understand theirmanagement . . . . There is no similarity on any one point in the twomodes of looking after European and Eastern labour . . . .’49 Barkerwas asserting a view shared by the highest in the colonial hierarchy.Lord Lansdowne, the Viceroy, in his farewell dinner speech deliveredat Royal Exchange, Calcutta, protested strongly against the practiceof pouring ‘inordinately strong doses of Western nostrums’ downIndian throats: ‘There is a tendency to apply British standards tosuch questions as the employment of labour in mines, in factories, andthe tea gardens.’50

Harsh treatment of labour and prevalence of extra-legal practiceson the plantations were justified on the grounds that the existing penallaws were wholly inadequate for maintaining ‘order’ and ‘contentment’among the labourers. Even the power of private arrest bestowed bylegislation in the person of the plantation manager was not consideredenough.51 The ‘tardiness’ and the ‘inefficiency’ of the police and thedistance of the magistrate from the gardens were cited as reasons forthe ineffectiveness of existing laws.

The tea industry experienced phenomenal growth between 1880and 1900: acreage under tea increased by 120 per cent, whileproduction of tea quadrupled. Indian tea acquired a leading positionin the world market, outstripping China tea in 1888 for the first time,and its share of the British market increased from 27 per cent in 1880to 54 per cent in 1901.52 This impressive growth took place in the faceof two important developments in the world market: first, the needto acquire the pre-eminent position in exporting tea for the Britishmarket, where the main rival was China, and second, the steady yetfluctuating decline of tea prices from 1878 onwards.53

48 Emigration ‘B’, File Nos 1–3, September 1893, para 4, NAI.49 Ibid.50 Dowding, Tea Garden (1894), p. viii.51 The Times, London, 2 September 1902, p. 6.52 Griffiths, History (1967), pp. 120–129.53 Behal and Mahapatra, ‘Tea and Money’ (1992), p. 145 and pp. 158–161


The planters’ twofold response was to expand production at anunprecedented scale while simultaneously attempting to cut costsof production, a strategy described in the Indian Tea AssociationReport of 1884 as the reduction of expenditure ‘by a more economicuse of the labour available and by getting better work from thecoolies’.54 In the phase of a downward drift of prices, such growthwas made possible by importing no less than one million persons intoAssam.55 By keeping wages below even the statutory minimum level,the strengthened penal contract system aided the intensification oflabour that contributed towards the reduction in production costsbut caused high mortality among the labour force. The annual deathrate among adult labour recruited under Act I of 1882 in Assamplantations was 5.4 per cent, while during the same period the figuresfor non-tea-garden population of a comparable age group was only 2.7per cent.56 In 1892, as Dowding’s estimates based on ImmigrationReports show, ‘57,000 people, or more than one-eighth of the wholegarden population of Assam, were dying at the rate of 7 per centper annum’. He attributed the high death rate largely to increasednumbers of new and unacclimatised coolies, in consequence of thelarger importation.57

Planters were constantly under pressure from tea companiesto increase production. Monetary incentives, such as bonuses andcommissions on profits, as well as, on failure, the fear of beingrendered unemployed, fuelled the drive for the intensification of thelabour process, for expansion of acreage by jungle clearings, andto keep up with higher production targets. Hetherington mentionsthat his senior manager Dunlop received £7,700 as profits and £400as commission from his employer, The Imperial Tea Company.58

While financial gains functioned as an incentive, ‘non performance’could lead to unemployment for the planters.59 For the managers thesecurity of their jobs, personal financial gains and further promotionsbecame synonymous with ensuring uninterrupted production and

54 Griffiths, History (1967), p. 12355 Annual Reports on Labour Immigration into Assam, Calcutta, 1880–1900.56 Government of India, Emigration ‘A’ Proceedings, Legislative Department,

1901, p. 97, NAI.57 Dowding, Tea Garden (1894), p. vi.58 Hetherington, Diary (1994), 14 July 1907, p. 151.59 Fraser, Recollections (1935), p. 40. Writing about unemployed planters he wrote,

‘at that time there were always in Calcutta in the cold weather twenty or thirtyplanters searching for jobs’. Failing which many ‘whacked the bottle’.


steady growth of profits for tea companies—mainly through theextraction of maximum work from labourers and by paying low wages.

From 1890 onwards, cases of the use of physical violence againstlabourers were being recorded on a regular basis in the annualLabour Reports. These included cases of flogging, assaults on womenlabourers, severe beatings and confinements. Sometimes the severityof beatings or floggings resulted in the death of labourers. For example,in 1890 a case was reported when a coolie died of excessive beating bythe manager in Lakhimpur. The latter faced trial and was fined onlyRs 100. Similarly, in 1899 in Rangliting tea garden of Lakhimpurdistrict, a coolie boy was severely beaten and whipped to death by themanager. Police cases were filed but most of the guilty planters wereawarded small fines of Rs 5 up to a maximum of Rs 100.60

That this could go on unchecked for nearly more than three decades,despite the explicit provisions of the labour legislation, reflectedpoorly on the colonial state’s resolve to ‘protect’ the interest ofthe labourers. Was it because the colonial bureaucracy shared theplanters’ perceptions and attitudes towards the labour, or were thereother forces at work? These questions are discussed in the next section.

The Colonial State’s Approach

How did the colonial state and its bureaucracy respond to thesedevelopments? The question is relevant in the context of stateintervention in the form of the penal contract system through labourcontrol and labour legislation during the 1860s and 1880s. Thislegislation laid the foundations of the indenture labour system inthe Assam tea plantations.61 The overall perception, and officialjustification for labour legislation and the penal contract, was putforward by a senior official of the Assam Government in the followingterms: Labour legislation in the case of immigrants to Assam teagardens was as important as in the case of labour immigration tooverseas colonies. Since these immigrants were ‘extremely ignorant’and they were to travel a long distance, government interference andsupervision was necessary in order to prevent ‘overcrowding, diseaseand consequent mortality’. Because of the climate and unfamiliar foodin the new country the immigrants were liable to serious sickness.

60 Revenue-A, Nos 77–117, August 1904, NAI.61 For details see Behal and Mohapatra, ‘Tea and Money’ (1992), pp. 146–150.


Therefore labour legislation was necessary which would force theemployer to provide ‘requisite comforts, medical attendance and otherappliances for his well-being’. At the same time some regulationswere required to effectively enforce the provisions of contract betweenlabour and capital as it is ‘demanded by Justice’. It was argued thatthe employers had spent a lot of money to import the ‘coolies’ andprovided them ‘comfort’ as required by the law.

The employer is compelled by law to guarantee the coolie a minimum wage;and it is only equitable that the law should provide him with the means ofobtaining the due fulfillment of the contract by the coolie, whose only capital ishis labour, and who ought not to be allowed capriciously to withdraw himselffrom the service of the employer . . . . A penal labour law and governmentprotection to the labour are thus correlative terms.62

As to the brutalities and the ill treatment of labour as a featureof labour relations in Assam plantations, the official perception andattitude was summed up in 1888 by the Chief Commissioner of Assam,Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick:

With about nine hundred gardens employing upwards of 323,000 hands,there must, of course, be a certain proportion of bad men, perhaps evenof thoroughly depraved men, both among planters and coolies. There mustbe a certain amount of harshness and oppression, at times possibly evenof downright cruelty, on the one side, and of turbulence, conspiracies, andmaliciously concocted charges on the other; this, unfortunately, is humannature as displayed among all classes of men, and happily we have criminalcourts strong enough to deal with it; but speaking generally, the relationsbetween the employers and labourers seem to be fairly good.63

This was to become the general refrain of most official reporting byAssam civil servants. It became a standard practice in official reportageto mention cases of violence, physical coercion, and blatant use ofextra-legal authority by planters and at the same time to rationaliseit as aberrations or deny it altogether when confronted with non-official criticism. J.A. Craven, Deputy Collector, and the Head ofthe Santhali Deputation,64 when confronted with highly unfavourable

62 E.A. Gait, Assam Immigration Manual (Shillong, Assam Secretariat Press, 1893),p. 2.

63 Emigration ‘A’, Nos 36–39, December 1888, NAI; Henry Cotton, Indian and HomeMemories (London, 1911), p. 269.

64 A group of Santhal tribal headmen from the recruitment districts had beentaken on a tour of Assam tea gardens in 1894 by the President of the Assam Branchof Indian Tea Association, J. Buckingham, for the purpose of creating a favourableimpression amongst Santhals and to encourage them to migrate to Assam.


reporting by the Santhal tribal heads, his fellow members, dismissedtheir findings in his version of the report: ‘It is a fallacy to suppose thatthe Assam coolie is hard-worked and [an] uncared for serf, earning amere monthly pittance scarcely sufficient for the bare necessities oflife. He is far better off on a tea garden than in his own country.’65

Equally interesting were the official observations on the contentsof the Santhali Deputation findings: ‘The govt has received thenon-official view—not a pleasant one . . . it is a view of a free, highspirited and comparatively wild race, who cannot bear the thought ofcompulsion, or physical restraint or corporal punishment.’ However,even while deriding the ‘natural tendency’ of the deputation to ‘torevel in gruesome stories’, it went on grudgingly to concede that:

No one denies that there is a residuum of truth in these stories: instanceshave existed and have come to light of harsh treatment of sick coolies andof child bearing women, of corporal punishment inflicted for short work orwant of discipline, of heavy fines or by heavy tasks and by the impossibilityof getting overtime pay, of difficulties placed in the way of the return oftime-expired coolies, and so on.66

There were, however, others among the colonial bureaucracy withdifferent perceptions and attitudes towards the indenture regime.The Bengal civil servant J. Ware Edgar, and other members of the1868 Commission appointed by the Bengal Government, reportedwith candour and disapproval the incidence of high mortality, andthe brutal and inhumane treatment of migrant labourers on theplantation. Many civil servants posted in the recruiting districtswere extremely critical of the coercive system of recruitment forAssam plantations and held low wages as the main cause ofthe unpopularity of the plantations as an employment venue. SirAlexander Mackenzie, Lt. Governor of Bengal, accepted the findingsof the Bengal Labour Enquiry Commission without hesitation andrecommended the abolition of the ‘so-called free recruitment’ forAssam from the recruitment districts as well as a raise in the minimumwage to Rs 6 and Rs 5 from the then prevailing Rs 5 and Rs 4 for menand women respectively. The Enquiry Commission found that thewages ‘are kept too low in Assam’.67 However, these recommendations

65 Emigration ‘A’, Nos 1–3, September 1894, NAI. For more details on this seeBehal and Mohapatra, ‘Tea and Money’ (1992), pp. 156–157.

66 Ibid.67 Bengal Labour Enquiry Commission Report, 1895, pp. 11–19; Emigration ‘A’,

Nos 9–10, File No. 1, April 1897, NAI.


did not invoke any positive response from the Governments of Indiaand Assam.

The sharpest critique was the Chief Commissioner Henry Cotton’sAnnual Labour Report in 1900 on immigrant labour in the Assam teaplantations. This provoked a major controversy between him and theplanters. The general impression which most previous reports gaveabout labour in Assam can be summarised as follows: labourers werewell-fed and living in comfort; they were provided with proper medicaland sanitary facilities and with subsidised rations; labourers earnedenough wages; and finally, there was generally no tension betweenthe employer and the labourers. Cotton’s report of 1900, based onthe inspections carried out by local officials, presented an altogetherdifferent picture. It showed that mortality rate among Assam teagarden labourers in that year had been much higher than the previoustwo years. This was attributed to the scarcity of resources becauseof low wages among immigrants, as a result of which they becamevulnerable to disease.68 The report showed that wages paid to thelabourers were below the statutory minimum rates of Rs 5 and Rs4 for men and women respectively.69 The Chief Commissioner hadcome across numerous cases in which labourers in the fourth year oftheir agreement had not been paid the higher wage to which they wereentitled. He also noted cases in which rice had not been provided at thestatutory rate, and subsistence allowances had not been paid to sicklabourers.70 His report depicted the relations between the employerand the labourer as being far from cordial; in fact ill-feeling was clearlygrowing. Ten cases of ‘riots’ had been reported in that year alone.71

Cotton’s report received a hostile reception from the planters. Theyaccused him of distortion and exaggeration. A number of extractsfrom previous reports concerning wages, and labour relations werecited by the Indian Tea Association to show that Cotton’s report wascompletely biased and ‘fallacious’.72 Cotton conceded that his reportwas different from the previous ones but denied any bias, pointing outthat it was based on inspections carried out by local officials.73

68 Government of Assam, Annual Report on Labour Immigration into Assam, 1900,p. 3.

69 Ibid., p. 8.70 Ibid., p. 10.71 Ibid., p. 22.72 Emigration ‘A’, No. 6, File No. 90 of 1901, pp. 125–134, NAI.73 Minutes by the Chief Commissioner on the letter from the Indian Tea

Association regarding his report on immigrant labour in ibid., p. 170.


Cotton proposed an increase of minimum statutory wages for la-bourers through the Assam Labour and Emigration Bill in the CentralLegislative Assembly, giving reasons for this recommendation.74 Butthe hostility of the planters was not allayed by his reasoned argument.The Indian Tea Association (which wielded much political clout inthe province), the Centre, and London,75 organized protest meetingsand mounted pressure on colonial and home governments throughmemorials and deputations to the Secretary of State for India and theViceroy.76 The Anglo-Indian press in India, and The Times in London,launched blistering attacks on Cotton,77 one that acquired a person-alised tone when the nationalist press came out in support of Cotton.

The organized campaign against Cotton, both in England and inIndia, succeeded in putting pressure on the Government of India.Cotton’s report was dubbed by his seniors in Calcutta as an ‘anti-planter manifesto which would do more harm than good’. J.B. Fullerwas critical of Cotton’s public criticism of the planters over thelabour question because ‘by exciting class feelings they alienate fromus the leaders of the community whose assistance is of inestimablevalue in maintaining a proper standard of morality’.78 Fuller in factwanted the position of the managers to be protected and furtherstrengthened. He noted that ‘instances of organized rebellion andof attack on the managers are sufficiently numerous to indicate thatthe managers’ authority is none too secure’.79 It is interesting that thesame Fuller considered Cotton’s reports of labour-employer tensionas highly exaggerated. It summed up the state’s dilemma. The statewas committed to serve the interests of the planters; it also had toappear as the ‘protector’ of the labourers.80

However, the most interesting aspect of the Cotton episodewas the attitude and actions of the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, whose

74 Ibid., pp. 89–112.75 Behal, ‘Power Structure’ (2007), pp. 145–155.76 The Report of the Indian Tea Association, 1900, p. 6.77 The Englishman, 14 January, 11 and 23 February, and 7 March 1901; Capital, 21

February 1901; The Times in London brought out a series of articles on the subject.See also Behal, ‘Some Aspects’, Ch. IV.

78 Emigration ‘A’, Nos 6–8, File No. 90 of 1901, p. 2, NAI.79 Ibid., p. 6.80 The Calcutta press, including the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the Hindoo Patriot, the

Bengalee and others, strongly supported Cotton’s proposed wage increase. For adetailed study of the nationalist press’s campaign supporting Cotton see BipanChandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India (New Delhi, 1966), pp.372–375.


official communications through bureaucratic channels and his privatecorrespondence with Cotton and Lord George Hamilton, the Secretaryof State for India, on this subject are very instructive. These show thatboth Curzon and Hamilton were aware of the labour relations thatprevailed in the Assam tea plantations and of the attitude of the statebureaucracy. Curzon informed Hamilton on 24 July,1901 that he hadcome across cases in which English magistrates,

. . . who are entirely in the hands of the tea-planters, [and] have given the mostpartial and unjust sentences in cases between the planters or managers ofthe tea gardens and their coolies. If a coolie threatens or commits a technicalassault upon an Englishman, he is given a year’s rigorous imprisonment. TheEnglishman may thrash a coolie almost to death, or may criminally assaulthis daughter or wife, and he only gets a fine of Rs. 50.81

On another occasion Curzon enlightened Hamilton that suchpractices were not confined to the District and Session courts but wereequally true of cases ‘even before the High Court, [where] there is onescale of justice for the planter and another for the coolie’.82 Hamiltonin turn concurred with the Viceroy and admitted: ‘The miscarriage ofjustice in India in the High Courts, and the conduct of Magistrates,where coolies and Europeans come in collision, cause me greatconcern. It seems to me a very serious reflection upon the whole basisof our rule in India, which is to secure justice between man and man.’83

To Cotton, Curzon expressed grave concern on several aspects ofthe indenture regime on the plantations. Cotton found the tone ofCurzon’s early official and private pronouncements very supportiveand encouraging. ‘The utterances of Lord Curzon on this subject havebeen far stronger than my own.’84 In his private letter of 22 July, 1901,Curzon expressed to Cotton his ‘distress’ on cases of ‘miscarriage ofjustice’ that had come to his notice: ‘The sentence of 9 months uponthe man Gajhadar who assaulted or threatened Mr Oliver was a savage& inequitable sentence and is in violent contrast to the grotesque &inadequate fine of 60 Rs upon Mr. Black.’85 Curzon wanted Cottonto warn the judiciary, ‘ . . . if this reign of unjust and partial sentences

81 Curzon’s letter to Secretary of State, 24 July 1901, Letter No. 50, Curzon Papers.82 Letter dated 11 September 1901, No. 62, Curzon Papers.83 2 Secretary of State, George Hamilton to Curzon, 15 August 1901, Letter No.

55, Curzon Papers.84 Cotton, Memories (1911), p. 275.85 Curzon to Cotton, 22 July 1901, Private Papers of Sir Henry John Stedman

Cotton (1845–1915), MSS EUR D1202/2. Correspondence between Sir Henry Cottonand Lord Curzon, OIOC, BL.


is to continue—light measure for the white manager, cruel measurefor the coolie—the Gov of India will most certainly intervene in someform . . . .’ And in the matter of Cotton initiating action against gardenson account of reported low wages Curzon wrote, ‘I quite agree withyour action in the case of a very bad garden where you detected a mostscandalous shortage of wages.’86

Cotton hinted at the planters’ reactions to his labour report statingthat:

I have gone at some length into particular cases of the year. I say nothingabout the attitude of the planters themselves & I am sure you realise it aswell as I do. Many a rotten garden will collapse but that the abolition of apenal contract will ultimately be to the benefit of the province and of theindustry generally I have little doubt.87

In reply Curzon assured Cotton that ‘planters will behave all rightat the proposed decision and that any conflicting sections will be keptunder proper restraint’.88

However, in the face of mounting pressure of the powerful tea lobby,through an organised and sustained campaign and supported by thecolonial bureaucracy, Lord Curzon changed his tune. He informed theSecretary of State that the ‘conflict between Cotton and the AssamPlanters has reached a point at which the whole of Province seems to beup in Arms against the CC, while the Calcutta Press, which is largelyinspired by the planters, is clamouring for his recall’.89 The huge publicsupport from nationalist quarters for Cotton on this issue furtherhardened Curzon’s stance. He now informed Cotton that his labourreport was ‘interpreted’ as a ‘declaration of war against planters’, andaccused him of being biased against planters.90 To the Secretary ofState Curzon admitted the truth of Cotton’s report: ‘I believe it tobe true that on many plantations harsh and cruel and abominablethings go on, and that the coolies get nothing like the wage which isstipulated for by the law.’ He also confessed that ‘in his endeavour toremedy both these scandals, I have earnestly backed up Cotton . . . .But when, to use a vulgar metaphor, he goes bald headed for the

86 Curzon’s letter to Cotton, 22 July 1901, Cotton Papers.87 Henry Cotton’s letter to Lord Curzon, 2 August 1901, Cotton Papers.88 Curzon’s letter to Cotton, 11 August 1901, Cotton Papers.89 Curzon to Secretary of State, 11 September 1901, Letter No. 62, Curzon Papers.90 Curzon’s letter to Cotton, 10 September 1901, Cotton Papers.


planting community at large, and presents them as a lot of inhumanmonsters who are capable of any crime, he is going too far . . . .’91

Both Curzon and Cotton were aware of the difficulties in persuadingthe state judicial and civil officers to enforce compliance of labour lawsand act impartially in relation to planters vis-a-vis labour. Planters andcivil servants had strong community ties and racial affinities throughregular socialising. Cotton summed it up well:

I was never oblivious of the peculiar difficulty which besets a Magistrate,a member of a small European community in a distant land, who may beplaying polo or bridge or billiards with a planter one month, or who may beserving under him as a trooper in the Light Horse, and who in the next monthmay be called on to try and punish him for cruelty to a contract labourer.92

Hetherington’s diary records a very active and vibrant social lifeamongst the small European community of planters and colonialofficials. His entry of 4 June, 1907 recorded that Gordon, the newDeputy Superintendent of Police, came and stayed overnight at hisbungalow.93 He also gives a graphic account of attending Light HorseCamp at Dibrugarh for a week where he was in the company of otherEuropeans, civilians, fellow planters and army men.94

Cotton was sacked—his ‘crime’ was joining forces with thenationalists against the planters and becoming an ‘agitator’. ‘I donot think that outside the Bengali Press, he has anywhere found anadvocate. The fact is that Mr. Cotton is not a man of sound or reliablejudgment or temper.’95 Cotton felt betrayed by Curzon who ‘savedhis own skin but deliberately flung me to the wolves’ when the Anglo-Indian press opened ‘floodgates of abuse’ against him. ‘In the faceof [the] rising storm of unpopularity from his own countrymen, LordCurzon quailed.’96

Conclusion

The indenture labour regime that evolved in the Assam tea plantationsfrom the mid-1860s shaped the perceptions and attitudes of its

91 Curzon to Secretary of State, 11 September 1901, Letter No. 62, Curzon Papers.92 Cotton, Memories (1911), p. 273.93 Hetherington, Diary (1994), p. 150.94 Ibid., pp. 144–146.95 Curzon to SS, 18 February 1902, Letter No. 16, Curzon Papers.96 Cotton, Memories (1911), p. 276.


managerial personnel—the planters—towards the migrant labourforce. The planters were expected to expand acreage and productionfor a fast-growing and competitive world market. Equally importantwas to keep production costs low to ensure profits for the teacompanies, in the face of price fluctuations. This was achieved throughadoption of labour-intensive production strategies that included extra-economic coercion for mobilising labour and extra-legal methods toimmobilise the migrant labour force within the plantations. Sincelabour was the main component of production costs the emergenceof a harsh indenture labour regime can be explained in the contextof the cost-conscious tea companies’ unwillingness to offer wageincentives and at the same time pressurising their workers intoincreasing production. The existence of an ‘irrational’ and inhumanlabour regime was not an aberration but very much a characteristic of‘rational’, modern corporate capitalism.

The colonial state played a very crucial role in the growth of the teaindustry in Assam. Apart from providing land at extremely lucrativeterms, and building the infrastructure to promote the interests of thetea industry, the colonial state’s help was particularly important in thecontext of mobilisation and control of the labour force. Its legislativeinterventions were meant to ‘protect’ the ‘ignorant’ and ‘illiterate’migrants’ interests and at the same time to ensure the complianceof indenture contract by inserting penal provisions. However, thecolonial state failed to implement the ‘protective’ aspects of the labourlegislation and overlooked and even condoned the extra-legal practiceson the part of the planters. But the colonial bureaucracy was after allnot a monolith: there were officials, such as Henry Cotton, who raisedthe issues of inequities suffered by the workers. Ultimately, however,the interests of the industry and its trade were of such importanceto the state that the brutalities of the indenture labour regime werecompletely overlooked.

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