On the move: Circulating labor in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial India

International Review of Social History

Volumn 51, Issue SUPPL. 14, 2006, Pages 85-109

  Kerr, Ian J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33751322450     PISSN: 00208590     EISSN: 1469512X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020859006002628     Document Type: Review

References (88)

1. British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections [hereafter OIOC], George Paterson, MS Eur.E379/2, "The Paterson Diaries," entry dated 23 November 1770. The diaries cover the years 1769-1775. Paterson, a keen observer, was the secretary to successive East India Company naval commanders-in-chief.
2. OIOC, Paterson Diaries, 23 November 1770.
3. Because migrant labor and itinerant labor are commonly used, I deploy both as rough synonyms for circulating labor. However, I do suggest that migrant labor is not the best label for many of the groups discussed in this paper.
4. Jan Lucassen, Migrant Labour in Europe 1600-1900: The Drift to the North Sea, Donald A. Bloch (tr.) (London, 1987), p. 1.
5. My brief summary of the European literature is derived from Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen, "Migration, Migration History, History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives", in Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen (eds), Migration, Migration History, History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives (Berne, 1997), pp. 9-38. "State-centrism", "modernization-centrism", and "Euro- or Atlantocentrism" are terms used by the Lucassens.
6. Leo Lucassen, "A Blind Spot: Migratory and Travelling Groups in Western European Historiography", International Review of Social History, 38, (1993), pp. 209-235, 210.
7. This article is reprinted in Leo Lucassen, Wim Willems, and Annemarie Cottaar, Gypsies and Other Itinerant Groups: A Socio-Historical Approach (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 135-152.
8. Leo Lucassen, "Eternal Vagrants? State Formation, Migration, and Travelling Groups in Western-Europe, 1350-1914", in Lucassen and Lucassen, Migration, Migration History, History, pp. 225-251, 225.
9. Leo Lucassen, "Lucassen and Lucassen, Migration, Migration History, History, pp. Ibid., pp. 225-227.
10. The ambitious synthesis by Lydia Potts, The World Labour Market: A History of Migration, Terry Bond (tr.) (orig. publ. 1988; London, 1990) testifies to the weakening of "Euro- or Atlantocentrism" and the continued force of "state-centrism".
11. Jan Bremen, Of Peasants, Migrants and Paupers: Rural Labour Circulation and Capitalist Production in West India (Delhi, 1985);
12. Jan Bremen, idem, Footloose Labour: Working in India's Informal Economy (Cambridge, 1996);
13. Ravi Ahuja, "Labour Unsettled: Mobility and Protest in the Madras Region, 1750-1800", Indian Economic and Social History Review [hereafter IESHR], 35 (1998), pp. 381-404;
14. Ravi Ahuja, idem, "Labour Relations in an Early Colonial Context: Madras, c.1750-1800",
15. Modern Asian Studies, 36 (2002), pp. 793-826.
16. Ahuja, "Labour Relations in an Early Colonial Context", p. 793.
17. David Ludden, "History Outside Civilisation and the Mobility of South Asia", South Asia, ns 17 (1994), pp. 1-23, 3. Research by an anthropologist like P.K. Misra also gets "ghetto-ized".
18. See P.K. Misra, "The Study of Nomads", in Surajit Chandra Sinha (ed.), Research Programmes on Cultural Anthropology and Allied Disciplines (Calcutta, 1970), pp. 151-197.
19. David Ludden, "Caste Society and Units of Production in Early-Modern South India", in Burton Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds), Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia (Delhi, 1996), pp. 105-133, 109.
20. Dirk H.A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput & Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850 (Cambridge, 1990).
21. Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "Introduction: Circulation and Society under Colonial Rule", in idem (eds), Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia 1750-1950 (Delhi, 2003), pp. 1-22, 3.
22. Weavers also moved in the search for better economic opportunities. See Douglas E. Haynes and Tirthankar Roy, "Conceiving Mobility: Weavers' Migrations in Pre-Colonial and Colonial India", IESHR, 36 (January-March 1999), pp. 35-67.
23. My account is based on Robert G. Varady, "North Indian Banjaras: Their Evolution as Transporters", South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, ns 2 (1979), pp. 1-18;
24. and Laxman D. Satya, "Colonial Sedentarisation and Subjugation: The Case of the Banjaras of Berar 1850-1900", Journal of Peasant Studies, 24 (1997), pp. 314-336.
25. Romila Thapar, Early India From the Origins to AD 1300 (Berkeley, CA, 2002), p. 459.
26. Banjaras were migrant workers providing transportation services. However, they were not wage-laborers but rather groups of cooperating families with shared cultural traits, most of whom owned their means of production.
27. Satya, "Colonial Sedentarisation", pp. 314-336, stresses this theme.
28. Also see the wider-ranging, more-nuanced contribution by Radhika Singha, "Settle, Mobilize, Verify: Identification Practices in Colonial India", Studies in History, ns 16 (2000), pp. 151-198.
29. Dennis Weitering, "Carrying the Load Together: Mumbai Railway Coolies and their Quest for Labour, Income and Social Security", (M.A., University of Nijmegen, 2003), pp. 48-52.
30. Varady, "North Indian Banjaras", p. 11.
31. Varady, "North Indian Banjaras", p. Ibid., p. 4 and n. 35.
32. Neeladri Bhattacharya, "Predicaments of Mobility: Peddlers and Itinerants in Nineteenth-Century Northwestern India", in Markovits, Pouchepadass, and Subrahmanyam, Society and Circulation, pp. 163-214, 168.
33. Neeladri Bhattacharya, "Markovits, Pouchepadass, and Subrahmanyam, Society and Circulation, pp. Ibid., p. 168.
34. Catherine Servan-Schreiber, "Tellers of Tales, Sellers of Tales: Bhojpuri Peddlers in Northern India", in Markovits, Pouchepadass, and Subrahmanyam, Society and Circulation, pp. 275-305, 275-276.
35. Ahsan Jan Qaisar, Building Construction in Mughal India: The Evidence From Painting (Delhi, 1988), p. 11.
36. Ahsan Jan Qaisar, Building Construction in Mughal India: The Evidence From Painting Ibid. , p. 12.
37. OIOC, MS Eur. D317, Eliot Manuscript, pp. 211-213.
38. William Crooke, Religion & Folklore of Northern India, prepared for the press by R.E. Enthoven (new edn, New Delhi, 1926), p. 110.
39. J.H. Nelson, The Madura Country: A Manual Compiled by Order of the Madras Government (Madras, 1868), Pt 2: "Ethnology, Fauna and Flora", p. 88.
40. OIOC, Paterson Diaries, 23 November 1770, p. 98.
41. OIOC, Mackenzie Collection: General, vol. 59: Water Works in the Carnatic, "Appendix to the Memoir on Watering the Circars", by Alexander Dalrymple (London, 1793) in which a long extract from Sullivan's letter is found plus Dalrymple's comments.
42. Francis Buchanan, A Journey From Madras Through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, 3 vols (London, 1807), vol. 1, p. 310. Most writers hold that the Wudders originated in Telegu-speaking areas although some suggest they moved to what is now Andhra from places in what is now Orissa.
43. Francis Buchanan, A Journey From Madras Through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, Ibid., pp. 310-311.
44. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1979), pp. 93-94.
45. Bhattacharya, "Predicaments of Mobility", p. 168.
46. Satya, "Colonial Sedentarisation", pp. 314-336 makes similar observations about the pre- and early colonial Banjaras.
47. Nelson, The Madura Country, p. 88.
48. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, 17, Pt 1: Poona (Bombay, 1885), pp. 426-428. They were called "excellent workers, almost always working by the piece", but also "poor" and not inclined to take to "new pursuits".
49. Edgar Thurston, assisted by K. Rangachari, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, 6 vols (Madras, 1909), vol. 5, pp. 422-436.
50. The Wudders have been studied by Chandrashekhar Bhat, Ethnicity and Mobility: Emerging Ethnic Identity and Social Mobility among the Waddars of South India (New Delhi, 1984). His book draws upon some of the sources I use. It also provides a case study of a Waddar settlement in Karnataka (started in the mid 1940s) and the processes of Wudder sedentarization and upward social mobility.
51. Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Delhi, 1997) explores the processes of classification and enumeration.
52. Thurston, Castes and Tribes, p. 434.
53. Thurston, Castes and Tribes, p. 434, Ibid.
54. The Criminal Tribes of India Series, No. 1: Rai Bahadur M. Pauparao Naidu, The History of Railway Thieves With Illustrations & Hints on Detection (4th edn, Madras, 1915), pp. 119-144.
55. Aloka Parasher-Sen, "Introduction", in idem (ed.), Subordinate and Marginal Groups in Early India (New Delhi, 2004), p. 5. Parasher-Sen includes tribes and foreigners among the "outsiders"; Satya, "Colonial Sedentarisation", provides a more harmonious picture of villager/nomad relationships, at least where Berar and the Banjaras was concerned.
56. T.N. Atre, The Village Cart; a translation of T.N. Atre's Gaav Gada by Ram Deshmukh (Mumbai, 2000). Nomads are covered in ch. 6, pp. 118-138. All quotations are from this chapter.
57. Arnaud Sauli, "Circulation and Authority: Police, Public Space and Territorial Control in Punjab, 1861-1920", in Markovits, Pouchepadass, and Subrahmanyam, Society and Circulation, pp. 215-239, 216.
58. Lucassen, "Eternal Vagrants", esp. pp. 225-227, 240-248.
59. See, as one example from a growing literature, Sanjay Nigam, "Disciplining and Policing the 'Criminals by Birth'", Pt 1: "The Making of a Colonial Stereotype - The Criminal Tribes and Castes of North India"; Pt 2: "The Development of a Disciplinary System, 1871-1900", IESHR, 27 (1990), pp. 131-164, 257-287.
60. Thurston, Castes and Tribes, p. 434.
61. Mysore Geological Department, Report of the Chief Inspector of Mines for the Year 1915-16 with statistics for the calendar year 1915 (Bangalore, 1918), p. 24.
62. Bhat, Ethnicity and Mobility, pp. 36-38.
63. Stephen Fuchs, At the Bottom of Indian Society: The Harijan and Other Low Castes (New Delhi, 1981), p. 57.
64. Thurston, Castes and Tribes, pp. 435-436.
65. General Report on the Census of India, 1891 (London, 1893), esp. pp. 103-112.
66. Royal Commission on Labour in India. Evidence, 2, Pt 2: Punjab, Delhi and Ajmer-Merwara: Oral Evidence [hereafter RLC, Oral Evidence] (London, 1931), pp. 138, 195.
67. Census of India, 1931: Delhi, Report and Tables (Lahore, 1933), p. 43.
68. Royal Commission on Labour in India Evidence, 2, Pt 1: Punjab, Delhi and Ajmer-Merwara. Written Evidence [hereafter RLC, Written Evidence], (London, 1931), p. 154.
69. Census of India, 1931: Delhi, Report and Tables, p. 43.
70. RLC, Written Evidence, p. 155.
71. RLC, Oral Evidence, p. 211.
72. RLC, Written Evidence, p. 154.
73. Written Evidence, p. 154. Ibid.
74. See Burton Stein, "Towards an Indian Petty Bourgeoisie: Outline of an Approach", Economic and Political Weekly, 26 (26 January 1991), pp. PE9-PE20.
75. RLC, Oral Evidence, pp. 134-135.
76. Ian J. Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj 1850-1900 (Delhi, 1995), pp. 196-226.
77. Ian J. Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj 1850-1900 (Ibid., p. 108.
78. Ian J. Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj 1850-1900 (Ibid., esp. ch. 4.
79. C.K. Johri and S.M. Pandey, Employment Relationship in the Building Industry: A Study in Delhi (New Delhi, 1972), p. 2.
80. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [World Bank], Bank Staff Working Paper no. 223, "Some Aspects of Unskilled Labor Markets for Civil Construction in India: Observations Based on Field Investigation", prepared by Swadesh R. Bose, November 1975, pp. 34-35.
81. Some Aspects of Unskilled Labor Markets for Civil Construction in India: Observations Based on Field Investigation", Ibid., p. 35.
82. A Treatise on Konkan Railway (Navi Mumbai, c.1999), p. 147.
83. W. Crooke, The Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, 4 vols (Calcutta, 1896), vol. 4, p. 95.
84. A Treatise on Konkan Railway, p. 148.
85. There was persistent speculation in the folklore/ethnological periodicals that these groups shared a common origin. For examples see Panjab Notes and Queries, A Monthly Periodical Devoted to the Systematic Collection of Authentic Notes and Scraps of Information regarding the Country and the People, R.C. Temple (ed.), 2 vols (1884).
86. My use of Marx's concept is discussed in Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, pp. 7-9.
87. Misra, "Study of Nomads", p. 151.
88. Ian Stone, Canal Irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological Change in a Peasant Economy (Cambridge, 1984), p. 58.