Dangerous Labour: Crime, Work and Punishment in Kolar Gold Fields, 1890-1946

Studies in History

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 19-61

  Nair, Janaki ^a  

^a MADRAS INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES   (India)

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EID: 61149488325     PISSN: 02576430     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/025764309701300102     Document Type: Article

References (194)

1. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans., Alan Sheridan, London, 1977, pp. 220–21, 138, 221.
2. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Post-colonial Histories, Delhi, 1994, p. 18.
3. Megan Vaughan, Curing their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 8–12.
4. Ranajit Guha, ‘Dominance without hegemony and its historiography’, in R. Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies VI, Delhi, 1987, p. 236.
5. E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p. 262, 267.
6. Guha, ‘Dominance without hegemony’, p. 237.
7. Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton, 1981, p. 366. Conditions in KGF never matched conditions on Southern African mines, where adult male workers were frequently incarcerated in one or the other type of ‘total institution’, whether mining compound or prison. See
8. Charles Van Onselen ‘Crime and Total Institutions in the Making of Modern South Africa: The Life of “Nongoloza” Mathebula, 1867–1948’, History Workshop Journal, 1978, pp. 62–81.
9. The Mysore Coffee Stealing Prevention Act no. VIII of 1878 was an illustrious predecessor. It was designed to prevent thefts of coffee, i.e., to repress and punish the offence of receiving or disposing of stolen coffee near plantations, and included corporal punishment, whipping, in certain cases. Mysore Law Code, Vol. I. But by the early 1900s, hardly any cases were being reported under the special law, and only a few under the IPC (Proceedings of the Government of Mysore, June 1915).
10. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, New York, 1977, p. 187.
11. They were: Champion Reef, Oorgaum, Nandidroog, Mysore and Balaghat mines; the last was declared unprofitable in 1931, and property transferred to the Nandidroog Mining Company. Report of the Chief Inspector of Mines in Mysore (hereafter RCIMM), 1932–33, p. 7
12. The gold mining industry did not employ women underground, and only a very small proportion of the surface work was assigned to women. This contrasts with the accepted practice of using family-based labour in Indian coal mines and in the salt industry. Lindsay Barnes, Women Work and Struggle: Bowra Colliery 1900–1940, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, JNU, 1989; and
13. Michelle Maskiell, ‘Gender, kinship and rural work in colonial Punjab’ Journal of Women's History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1990).
14. At the same time, except for the men from north India employed in the watch and ward establishment, and the men from Kerala who were employed as carpenters, familial rather than single male migration was actively encouraged in KGF. M. A. Sreenivasan Labour in India: Socio-Economic Conditions of Workers in the KGF, Bombay, 1980, p. 5.
15. The rate of royalty was 5 per cent of the total gold mined between 1894 and 1940 and although this was a small proportion of the total profits, it was a significant proportion of the revenues of the GOM. Statistical Abstract of Mysore, 1926, Statement XXIII, Statistical Abstract of Mysore, 1923–48, p. 56.
16. Of this, the mining area consisted of 30 square miles. E.R. Sundarajan, Report on the Present Status of Birth, Death and Epidemic Diseases in Mysore District, Bangalore City and KGF with Suggestions for Improvement, Bangalore, 1929, p. 12.
17. Colin Simmons, ‘The creation and organisation of a proletarian mining force in India: The case of the Kolar Gold Fields, 1883–1955’, in Mark Holmstrom, ed., Wages for Work in South Asia, New Delhi, 1990, p. 104.
18. Charles Van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1933 London, 1976, p. 156. More generally on the compound system see pp. 128–194.
19. This is distinctly different from the point made by Harold Wolpe who discusses the complex articulations between modes of production in the South African case, where the Reserves were maintained and promoted as a means of ensuring the reproduction of the mining labour force at no cost to the companies. It was the growing crisis within these precapitalist reserves, Wolpe argues, that led to the articulation of an ideology of apartheid, which vastly increased the power of the state over the residence and movement of the labour force in South Africa. Harold Wolpe ‘Capitalism and cheap labour-power in South Africa: From segregation to apartheid’, in H. Wolpe, ed., Articulation of Modes of Production: Essays from Economy and Society, London, 1980, pp. 289–319. In the KGF case, miners did not necessarily derive support from families located on the land, yet although family migration was the norm, the family was not, at least until the 1930s, the basis for calculating the wages of miners. Indeed the whole mining camp, and especially the thatti houses to which I refer below, was imagined as the place for housing single, temporary, male workers. Nevertheless, some amount of company attention was focused on the health of the workers, although in very specific ways that did not include nutritional needs.
20. J.T. Hudson, ‘Some features of South African mining practice’, KGF Mining and Metallurgical Quarterly Bulletin (hereafter KGF Bulletin) Vol. II, No. 16 (1925), p. 105.
21. Jack Spalding and J.D. Dixon ‘Visits to Witwatersrand and goldmines in Eastern Transvaal, March 12–June 1, 1948’, section 24.1, mimeo, KGF Technical Library, KGF.
22. See for instance Arun Mukherjee, ‘Crime and criminals in nineteenth century Bengal’, Indian Economic and Social History Review (hereafter IESHR), Vol. 21, No. 2, 1984, pp. 153–83, esp p. 155; also
23. Janaki Nair, ‘Prohibited marriage: State protection and the child wife in Mysore, 1894–1930’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. 29, Nos. 1 and 2, January–December 1995, pp. 157–86.
24. In the words of J. A. Pringle, ‘… the Indian can be—and is—fined a rupee when an anna would fit his earnings and his offence much better …’ ‘Efficiency and economy in the underground department’, KGF Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 5, July–September 1921, p. 136.
25. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 93.
26. RCIMM, 1990, p. 16;
27. RCIMM, 1908, p. 7.
28. RCIMM, 1919–20, p. 8.
29. RCIMM, 1932–33, p. 8.
30. RCIMM, 1936–37, p. 28.
31. Anthony Caplan, ‘Heat exhaustion in KGF’, KGF Bulletin Vol. 9, No. 48, 1939, p. 113ff., reports the results of a study undertaken to determine the efficiency of workmen in humid temperatures underground.
32. RCIMM, 1932–33, p. 17, but there were similar statements in nearly every report.
33. Pringle, ‘Efficiency and economy’, p. 140, 132–33.
34. Thus all mining rules had to be made available in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi to cater to different segments of the workforce. RCIMM, 1898, p. 8.
35. In 1930s, a little less than half of all labour employed was contract labour a proportion that declined to 32 per cent by 1946. Sreenivasan, Labour in India, p. 7;
36. S.R. Deshpande ‘Report of an Enquiry into the Conditions of Labour on Gold Mines In India’, New Delhi, 1946, pp. 3–4.
37. Simmons, ‘The case of the Kolar Gold Fields’, p. 87.
38. The first examinations for blasters, mestris and engine drivers were conducted under the Mysore Mining Rules in 1901. RCIMM, 1901, p. 2.
39. For the role of the jobber in the Bombay textile industry see Richard Newman, Workers and Unions in Bombay, 1918–1929: A Study of Organisation in the Cotton Mills, Canberra, 1981;
40. Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940 New Delhi, 1994. For Bengal, see
41. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal 1890–1940, Princeton, 1990, esp. Ch. 3.
42. RCIMM, 1899, p. 22.
43. RCIMM, 1900, p. 16.
44. Sreenivasan, Labour in India p. 5; also File No. 125–07. Sl. No. 1–17, Police, KSA.
45. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 86–87.
46. RCIMM, 1898, p. 21.
47. RCIMM, 1899, pp. 22, 23.
48. RCIMM, 1901–2, p. 23.
49. Nadegannadi, 5 November 1901, Native Newspaper Reports, (hereafter NNR).
50. Nadegannadi, 2 February 1904, NNR.
51. Douglas Hay, ‘Property, authority, and the criminal law’ in D. Hay, et al., eds., Albion's Fatal Tree, London, 1975, pp. 17–63.
52. The moral charge that subtends Hay's argument does not detract from its power, despite evoking the distaste of those wishing to hang on to the illusion of an ‘uninterested’ or ‘autonomous’ working of criminal law. See for instance John Langbein, ‘Albion's fatal flaw’, Past and Present, No. 98, February 1983, pp. 96–120, 331.
53. A jumper cooly moving about underground without a light fell from the 340 feet level to 540 feet and died instantly. RCIMM, 1898, p. 14.
54. Mysore Administration Report, 1906–7, p. 10.
55. Mysore Law Code, Volume I, Unrepealed Mysore Acts, 1850–1920, GOM, 1955.
56. Representation of Mr Richards, Proceedings of the Mysore Representative Assembly, (hereafter PMRA), 1907, p. 99; also, Arthur Gifford's representation in 1909,
57. PMRA, 1909, p. 144.
58. Address of the KGF Mining Board Representative, HMA Cooke to the Dewan of Mysore, Appendix A, PMRA, 1920, p. 169.
59. Nadegannadi, 4 June 1904; 3 September 1904; 25 August 1906;
60. Suryodaya Prakasika, 3 September 1906.
61. PMRA, 1906, p. 21.
62. For the link between judicial pardons and the preservation of class privilege, see Hay, ‘Property, authority and criminal law’, pp. 43–45.
63. Meena Radhakrishna, ‘The Criminal Tribes Act in Madras Presidency: Implications for itinerant trading communities’, IESHR 26.3, (1989), pp. 269–95, esp. p. 276.
64. RCIMM, 1913–14, p. 26.
65. RCIMM, 1915–16, p. 24.
66. RCIMM, 1924–25, Appendix, p. 6; 1925–26, Appendix 3; 1926–27, Appendix 3. The Woddars, or Odde, were gangs of tank diggers and quarriers of stone, executing a variety of earth works for which they were frequently employed by the colonial public works department, only a few of whom gradually came to be associated with professional thieving.
67. E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Vol. 5, Reprint, Delhi, 1975, pp. 422–25, 434–35. Korachers (or Koravas as they were sometimes known, which included the Kepmaris) earned the reputation of being professional thieves even when they were engaged in petty trading. According to Thurston, they ‘readily adapted themselves’ to travelling by railways and ‘the opportunities afforded for going quickly far from the scene of a recently committed crime, or for stealing from sleeping passengers’.
68. Thurston, Castes and Tribes, Vol. 3, p. 439. At least in the early part of the twentieth century the Handijogis, so called because they reared pigs, were not associated with thievery.
69. Thurston, Castes and Tribes, Vol. 2, pp. 323–24.
70. PMRA, 1923, p. 72ff.
71. RCIMM, 1929–30, Appendix 3.
72. RCIMM, 1906–7, p. 45;
73. RCIMM, 1910–11, p. 17.
74. Ve Sreenivasa Dass, Mysore Ilaka Kolar Thangavayal Ennum Gold Mines Sarantha Ulagumathi Kallukadai Innum Palavithiya Paadalaagiya Vazhinadai Nondichindu, Madras, 1909, pp. 10–11.
75. Thurston, Castes and Tribes, Vol. 3, pp. 472–73.
76. RCIMM, 1906–7, p. 45.
77. As cited in Sreenivasan, Labour in India; but the proverb is still current in KGF. ‘Ponam’ is the colloquial word for ‘pinam’/corpse.
78. Simmons, ‘The case of Kolar Gold Fields’, pp. 114–15, Table 9.
79. RCIMM, 1908–9, p. 31.
80. RCIMM, 1913–14, p. 17.
81. RCIMM, 1930–31, p. 20.
82. RCIMM, 1916–17, p. 17.
83. RCIMM, 1924–25, p. 27, 20.
84. Chief Inspector of Mines to Secretary, Development Department, GOM, 19 May 1931, File No. 3–30, Sl. No. 78–81, 87, 88, 93, 99, 107–109, 121, 127, 131–33. Geology KSA. Such solicitude for the lot of the mining labourer, expressed in terms of the ‘equal’ measure in which a closed mine impinged on the fates of owners as well as workers, matched the ingenuity of the colliery owners of Britain, from which respectable ancestry the managing agents John Taylor and Sons were drawn. Although poor ventilation and gas explosions were an enduring feature of nineteenth century English collieries, owners never failed to claim that their (monetary) loss was greater than the workman's, who after all had only lost his life! See Karl Marx's extensive quotations of such exchanges in Capital, Vol. I, p. 634.
85. RCIMM, 1923–24, p. 19.
86. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 550;
87. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 144–45.
88. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, pp. 100–101. The path taken by the workman from his residence in KGF to his place of work became an object of scrutiny and regulation in 1903–4, partly as a way of enhancing discipline, but primarily to put the mestri in total command of his men, and therefore remain responsible for them. Such surveillance was too unwieldy to put into practice in the long run. RCIMM, 1903–4, p. 25;
89. Proceedings of the GOM, 1903, December.
90. RCIMM, p. 14, 1898.
91. RCIMM, 1914–15, p. 16.
92. RCIMM, 1924–25, p. 20.
93. RCIMM, 1918–19, p. 25.
94. RCIMM, 1920–21, p. 27.
95. Jack Spalding ‘Mine ventilation with conditioned air’, KGF Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 45, 1938?
96. RCIMM, 1923–24, p. 19.
97. Roger Horseley, ‘Accident prevention, past and future’, KGF Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 47, 1938, p. 100. Interviews with workers who had worked with carbide lamps in the 1940s revealed not only that gangs of workers had worked out a scheme of careful cooperation which enabled every worker to save a proportion of his fuel for home consumption, but that they developed an underground sense which enabled them to move around without lights if necessary. Interviews with Devanbu, Gnanaprakasam, and I. Subramaniam, 22 May 1995.
98. RCIMM, 1923–24, p. 18.
99. RCIMM, 1921–22, p. 31, emphasis added.
100. RCIMM, 1925–26, p. 26; also, 1936–37, p. 26.
101. RCIMM, 1908–9, p. 31.
102. RCIMM, 1908–9, Table on wages and salaries.
103. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, trans., Howard Greenfeld, London, 1990, p. 146.
104. There were occasional words of praise for the KGF miner who ‘has qualities which make him cheap at the price’ in Pringle, ‘Efficiency and economy in the underground department’, p. 136.
105. RCIMM, p. 19, 1898.
106. RCIMM, 1898.
107. File No. 31–37, Sl. No. 1–5, Geology, KSA; RCIMM, 1914–15, p. 19, 1920–21, p. 30; 1935–36, p. 35.
108. RCIMM, 1926–27, p. 21.
109. RCIMM, 1927–28, p. 25–26; 1935–36, p. 35.
110. L. Lubett, ‘The control of handjumper stoping on Nandydurg Mines’, KGF Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. 67, December 1947, p. 237ff.
111. see also RCIMM, 1936–37, p. 24.
112. Onselen, Chibaro, p. 67.
113. RCIMM, 1939–40, p. 10.
114. Caplan, ‘Heat exhaustion in KGF’
115. RCIMM, 1936–37, p. 26.
116. RCIMM, 1936–37, p. 10.
117. Sreenivasan, Labour in India, p. 68.
118. KGF Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 3, June–December 1932, p. 74.
119. Dave Douglass, ‘Pit talk in county Durham’ in Raphael Samuel, ed., Miners Quarrymen and Saltworkers, History Workshop series, London, 1977, pp. 297–348, esp. 334–35.
120. Jean Leger and Monyoala Mothibeli, ‘Talking rocks: Pit sense amongst South African miners’, Labour: Capital and Society, Vol. 21, No. 2, November 1988, pp. 222–37.
121. Pringle, ‘Efficiency and economy in underground work’, p. 136.
122. Pringle's complimentary remarks were sharply challenged by C.N. Keith, (p. 145). Not surprisingly, we do not hear from the likes of Pringle again, since the KGF Bulletin thereafter scrupulously avoided publishing such articles in its pages.
123. RCIMM, 1899, pp. 16–17.
124. Anthony Caplan, ‘Heat exhaustion on the KGF’, KGF Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 48, December, 1939, p. 124. Referring to jute mill labour in Bengal, Dipesh Chakrabarty has explained why there were certain ‘blind spots’ in the employer's vision of labour conditions: ‘the workers' health became a question of epidemics and not one of nutrition; in this connection sanitation became a matter of interest but not the workers' general standard of living.’
125. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, p. 95.
126. RCIMM, 1899, p. 30, 29, 36.
127. RCIMM, 1904–5, p. 19.
128. The term was used by local KGF people and reported in M.A. Sreenivasan's report of 1931; however, the Mining Board, raised strenuous objections to the use of the term in the report, and it was dropped. File No. 369–30, Sl. No. 1–3, 9, Industries and Commerce, KSA. Contrast Sreenivasan, Labour in India, p. 51.
129. Sreenivasan, Labour in India, p. 53; the argument was repeated by the mining authorities in 1945, when the Labour Investigation Committee conducted its enquiry.
130. Deshpande, Report on the Gold Mining Industry, Delhi, 1946, p. 14.
131. Sreenivasan, Labour in India, p. 54.
132. Michele Perrot draws attention to the uses served by company-built workers' colonies in controlling strikes. Workers on Strike: France 1871–1890, New Haven, 1987, p. 254.
133. Sreenivasan, Labour in India, p. 44;
134. RCIMM, 1909–10, p. 25;
135. J. Fitzmaurice, ‘Sanitation’ KGF Bulletin Vol. 4, No. 23, January–June 1928, p. 171;
136. Administration Report of the KGF Sanitary Board, 1934–35, KSA, p. 8.
137. Administration Reports of the KGF Sanitary Board, 1924–36, KSA.
138. Sreenivasan, Labour in India, p. 55.
139. Mysore Mines Act, 1906, in Mysore Law Codes, Vol. I, pp. 539–40.
140. Caplan, ‘Heat exhaustion on KGF’, p. 119.
141. A. Caplan and J. Lindsay, ‘An experimental investigation of the effects of high temperatures on the efficiency of workers in deep mines.’ KGF Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. 65, September 1946, p. 87.
142. W.B. Rowntree, ‘Hookworm infestation’, KGF Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 49–53, p. 94.
143. Sreenivasan, Labour in India, p. 76, xii.
144. RCIMM, 1939–40, p. 27.
145. Mysore Mines Act, 1906.
146. RCIMM, 1906–7, p. 45.
147. RCIMM, 1909–10, p. 20.
148. RCIMM, 1910–11, p. 17.
149. RCIMM, 1913–14, p. 14.
150. RCIMM, 1923–24, p. 26; File No. 12–11, Sl. No. 1 and 3, Legislative, KSA.
151. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 275.
152. RCIMM, 1901–2, p. 2; see also
153. PMRA, 1907, p. 9;
154. PMRA, 1912, p. 194–5.
155. PMRA, 1907, p. 99;
156. PMRA 1912, pp. 194–95.
157. PMRA, 1916, p. 6.
158. Ramanna alias Koilan vs. GOM, 13 Mys CCR, p. 64 (1908); GOM vs. Annamalay alias Gundal, 20 Mys CCR, p. 292 (1915); Nadamuni vs. GOM 12 Mys CCR, p. 64, (1907). When enhanced vigilance could so easily be thwarted by judicial quibbles about the meaning of the term ‘residence’, the demand was immediately made to replace ‘residence’ with the word ‘presence’. PMRA, 1916.
159. PMRA, 1922, October, p. 29, emphasis added.
160. PMRA, October–November 1928, p. 53, 55, 54.
161. Interventions of D.S. Mallappa, B. Narasinga Rao, PMRA, June 1929. Others who were harassed under Section 17, however, fully deserved their fate: one legislator remarked that people only went to KGF for ‘trade or theft’ so the police deserved all help in thwarting criminality rather than being restrained.
162. PMRA, June 1897, p. 20.
163. Janaki Nair, ‘Representing labour in Old Mysore’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 25, 28 July 1990.
164. Note of the First Member of Council. In 1946, Deshpande found that a good 70 per cent of the KGF labourers had served for more than 5 years in the mines, and of this, 40 per cent had served more than 10 years. Deshpande, Report, p. 6.
165. FR for the fortnight ending 15 January 1941, CRR, KSA; interview, Savaridoss, 5 January 1995; Devanbu, 4 January 1995.
166. Secret Notes on Mysore, September 1903, Resident of Mysore, CRR, KSA. 199 Communication from I. Loganathan, 22 May 1995. Smuggling of gold continues to be a problem to the present day and for the most part occurs with the active connivance of the senior officers. Interview with Savaridoss, Trade Unionist, 5 January 1995.
167. K.S. Seetharaman, Kolar Thangavayel Varalarai, 1956 Varai, KGF, 1989, pp. 58–59.
168. P. Srinivasan, Ennathu Varkay Varalaru Maraimalainagar, 1991, p. 281.
169. RCIMM, 1941, p. 25.
170. RCIMM, 1906–17, p. 45.
171. PMRA, 1923, p. 72.
172. The Inspector General of Police spoke in 1929 of the difficulty of producing evidence before magistrates, PMRA, 1929, June, p. 205.
173. RCIMM, 1927–28, p. 20, (emphasis added).
174. Subbachari vs. GOM, 3 Mys CCR, 1898, p. 124.
175. GOM vs. Subbachary 3 Mys CCR, 1898, p. 141.
176. Abdul Rahim vs GOM, 9 Mys CCR, 1904, p. 100.
177. Also Abdul Razack vs GOM, 5 Mys CCR, 1900, p. 185.
178. In re David 6 Mys CCR, 1901, p. 98;
179. In re Chowriappa 6 Mys CCR, 1901, p. 97;
180. In the matter of Nadamuni 12 Mys CCR, 1907, p. 64;
181. Venketa Reddy vs GOM, 10 Mys CCR, 1905, p. 80;
182. Munisamachari and 2 others vs GOM 12 Mys CCR, 1907, p. 75;
183. Chennappa alias Chengachari and another vs GOM 12 Mys CCR, 1907, p. 78.
184. The phrase is from E.P. Thompson's Whigs and Hunters, p. 26.
185. Sreenivasa Dass, Vazhinadai Nondichindu, pp. 10–11.
186. RCIMM, 1940–41, pp. 25–6.
187. Sreenivasan, Labour in India, p. 31.
188. Memmi, Colonizer and the Colonized, p. 151.
189. There were clear indications of the mining administration's fear of the gradual infiltration of labour organizers into the KGF area in the 1920s. C.N. Keith, ‘Presidential Address’, KGF Bulletin, Vol. 5, No. 26, April–December 1929, p. 38ff, said ‘I would like to see the professional labour leader banned at least from such comparatively primitive societies as those we have to deal with.’ p. 40.
190. See also E.P. Thompson, ‘The crime of anonymity’ in Hay, et al., Albion's Fatal Tree, p. 306.
191. Sreenivasan, Labour in India, pp. 36–37, 29–42.
192. Deshpande, Report, p. 21;
193. The Hindu 27, 1938.
194. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 224.