Jain Tamilian Labour

8/12/2019 Jain Tamilian Labour

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Thmil ian a b o u r n d Malayan

Plantations 1840 1938Ravindra K Jain

This article deals with he continuities anddiscontinuities etween ecruitment flabourfor migration within TamnilNaduand to other countries, specifically, Malaya and then ooks at the process of labour control in both the 'enclaves' and the

'hinterland'. A briefdiscussion of the articulation heory and the deproletarianisation heory o explain theprocess oflabourmigration and control between TamilNadu ndMalayafromn irca 1840 to 1938follows with apostscript on the ethnographyof colonialism.

RECENT historical research makes it abun-dantly clear that the emigration of labourfrom Tamil Nadu in the 19th century, itsrecruitment or plantations and other com-mercial agricultural enterprises within In-dia (e g, in Mysore) and outside, viz, inBurma, Ceylon and Malaya, and the mecha-nismof its control and circulation are part ofa single historical plot. This is the colonialambience in which these movements took

place and the growth of capitalism whichthey signalled. Indeed, with regard o Tamilemigration beginning n the 19th century, twould be correct o say that we can delineatea Bay of Bengal area [Baker 1981] forming,as a whole, a part of the British colonialempire with plantation 'enclaves' of capi-talist development and a 'hinterland' fromwhich the circulating labour force was de-rived [I3reman 1984]. Especially since the1880s the valleys of Tamil Nadu beganproviding in large numbers their surpluslabour orce to tea, coffee and rubber stateson the western Ghats and to Ceylon andMalaya, and for rice farming in Burma[Baker 1984: 179].

My perspective on Tamil migrant abourin this paper is derived, on the one hand,from the hinterland of Tamil Nadu fromwhich this labour originated and, on theother hand, from Malaya where an increas-ing number of Tamiilians were employed onplantations rom mi d- 19th century onwards.Such a 'split-vision' (encompassing Indiaand Malaya) is essential because of certainsalient characteristics of this migration andlabour control. We shall first deal with thecontinuities and discontinuities betweenrecruitment for migrations within Tamil

Nadu and to other countries, specifically,Malaya and then look at the process oflabour control also in both the 'enclaves'and the 'hinterland'. This account will befollowed by an exanmination f the 'articula-tion theory' [Omvedt 19801 and the'deproletarianisation heory' [Brass 1990]to explain the processes of labour migrationand control between Tamnil Nadu and Ma-laya from 1840 to 1938.'

EARLY RECRUITMENT ND MIGRATIONTO MALAYA

Before delineating the pattern of emigra-

tion from TaniilNadu

to Malaya (1840-

1938), we may note the position regardingrecruitment nd migration flabourinTamiINaiu in the early 19th century. The cruciallinkages here are between the respectivecaste affiliations of the landholders andagricultural abourers on the one hand andthe customary patterns of landownershipand attached abour on the other. There is adivergence of interpretation etween non-Marxist and Marxist scholars on the nature

of these linkages. In the former perspectivethere is emphasis on the leadership role ofthe dominant andholders; hey are depictedas an elite with high culture , responsiblefor maintaining peace in the villages andmediating between the world of the villageand that of the state royalty. Especially thewet zone of cultivation is depicted not aland of rustic warrior-peasants, ut of twodistinct peasant strata: one owned land butdid not labour the other laboured withoutowning even, in many cases, rights to itsown labour power... they conprised twostrata, indeed two classes, defined objec-tively by relative access to the means ofproduction, and subjectively by their casteidentity [Ludden 1985: 93-94]. Despitethis fundamental leavage Ludden contin-ues to designate the landholders and theagricultural abourers as two strata f thepeasant community. Castewise the formerare uniformly, in Tinnevelly district,brahminsand ellalasand he atter paraiyanand palla.

In Marxist clholarship, n the other hand,the structure f caste and viewed as ideologi-cal and social structural rops to the funda-mental socio-economic cleavage betweenthe joint landholders of the wet villages

('mirasidars') and their collectively heldpopulations of agreistic serfs ('pannaiyal'and 'padiyal'). The former are mainlybrahmin and (some) non-brahmin and thelatter are overwhelmingly untouchables(paraiyan and palla). T1here re also, in thewet villages of Tanjore district, co-sharingtenants (the 'ulkudi' and 'payakars'); heyare of the non-brahmin astes like the palli.I-However, he joint control of villagelandsand joint rights over the serfs attached tothese lands is of the heart of the mattcr-rather than regarding the village servantsand artisans, who continue to have jointobligations and rights vis-a-vis the land-

holdingmasters, s the coreofa 'jajmanitype'relationship Pocock 1962]. Menon (1983)has argued that these categories of servantsand artisans represented essentially servilepopulations homologous to the agreisticserfs. It is only that-having been definedlargely in terms of ritual inclusion and ex-clusion-the village servants and artisanshave outlived as interacting caste-groups nthevillages, the transformationofjointown-

ership into private property n land.Coming to the emigrants from the vil-lages of Tanjore and Tinnevelly-and cau-tiously generalising for Tamil Nadu as awhole-in wet areas it is precisely the 'un-touchable' castes of paraiyan and palla andthe non-brahmin castes like the palli (orvanniyar)-respectively agreistic serfs andtenant shareholders-who migrated toCeylon and Malaya. Already suffering thebreakdown of 'joint' arrangements withencroachingcolonial egulations, hese popu-lations have been designated cooly inTamil Nadu itself [Menon 1983: 158] andthere are interesting nsights about the corn-tinuity of labour organisation and recruit-ment of these categories between TamilNadu and Malaya. As we shall see later,concurrently with indentured labour andincreasingly at the beginning of the 20thcentury, caste specific gangs were recruitedby 'kanganies' sent for this purpose fromMalaya to the villagesofTamil Nadu. Therewere paraiyan nd pal a kanganiesas well asthose of non-brahmin castes like the palli.We may wonder how it was that agreistic-serfs of the untouchable caste had a leader-ship pattern such that there emerged job-bers/recruiters f those castes. In this con-

text it is noteworthy hat there was a patternof this sort back in Tamil Nadu. As Luddenputs it:

Gang Labour...would be demanded bymirasidars f labouring aste groups as awhiole.A pal a headman would be charged oraise work gangs when needed, and wouldreceive special status by his position. Insome villages, hepalla headman might haveorganised the entire production, process,workingforonc large abscntee laindownerorupon temple land, a situation that seems toLinderlie he 17th century 1Tamil olk drama,Mukkudal Pallu', whose hero, as headman,

seems to have had considerable skill and

some social status [Ludden 1985: 92].

Economic and Political Weekly October 23, 1993 2363

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Of considerable interest is the pattern ofcontinuity between those 'dry' villages ofTamil Nadu, e g, in Tanjore district wherethe kallar caste comprised the dominantsmall landholders and also'became headkanganies and kanganies super obbers andordinary obbcrs) in rubber estates in Ma-laya like Pal Melayu [lain 1968]. As a caste-group the Kallar were aggressively non-brahmanical in their mores and had the

reputation f being fiercely independent. nTamil Nadu there san interesting historyofthe 'taming' of the kallar wlho were tradi-tionally village watchmen to their eventualenlistingby the Britishlauthorities sacrimi-nal caste. It is little wonder that headkanganies and kanganies of the kallar castehad a reputation of being dominant andpowerful on Malayan estates to the extentthat he European manager durai' followedrather han preceded him during the annualfestival.

Also, in the evolution of plantation pat-tern of authority during the 20th centuryfirst he head

kangany was dropped and atereven the kangany was made definitely sub-servient to the Asian supervisory staff. Inthis process the kangany was deliberatelycast by the employers as the punitive oun-terpart of the European manager whoseimage became the benevolent father fig-ure Jain 1970: 217]. This is an interestingrepl catiop of the transformation f the kal arwatchman nto a criminal n Tamil Nadu: asV Samar-aweera as observed apropos theprosecution of the kangany or disobediencein Ceylon, the estate)superintendentswereconsciously marking out kanganies forprosecution in order to provide an ex-ample to the labour force in general; it isas if the kangani's influence over theworkers heightened his culpabilitySamaraweera 1981: 150- 51].

Even the earliest recorded abour migra-tion from India to Malaya seems to havetaken place in response to the colonialists'requirement of cheap servile labour. Theestablishment of a British port at Penang in1786 was soon followed by the growth of anIndian colony. In 1787, Light suggested thegovernor general-in-council n India shouldsend him a supply of 100 coolies 'as theprice of labour in Penang was enormous'.

This request was not met but a similar pro-posal shortly thereafter or a supply of 'ar-tificers' was granted and a group of 25Bombay artificers anded in Penang in July1787,[Sandhu 1969: 47]. Writing in 1794,Light referred pecifically to the Tamil popu-lation (called 'chuliahs' or 'klings') inPenang comprising cool ies' and shopkeep-ers, and numbering about one thousand.According to him the majority were onlysojournerswho by trafficand various kindsof labour obtained a few dollars with whichthey return o their homes and are succeededby othters' Jackson 1961: 8].

We would immediately note one charac-teristic feature of this earliest 'coolie' mi-gration o Malaya, namely, the occupationalcomposition of a group omprising abourersand shopkeepers also note the earlier arti-ficers' from Bombay). All this shows, asTawney has remarked or China [Tawney1932] and Breman generalises for the southand south-east Asian region in early colo-nial times there s no reason for acceptingthat mobile labourers were peasant cultiva-tors cut off from land Breman 1984: 23J.As a first step, these migrants were peoplewho were largely labourers even in thecountrysidc. Secondly, wc need not pre-sumc that there cxisled a strict dichotomybctween the rural and urban provenance ofthese migrants. As 'cox)lies' they did thework of haulage, etc, either in the rural orurban areas. 'Iherefore, here is an elcmentof truth n the opinion expressed in somecarlycolonfal writing hat he 'coolies' wererecruited from and near ports and towns.The reason being that this was an already

mobile population as between rural andurban areas as well as between differentrural areas. This was an enduring tructuralcharacteristic f 'coolies' in the early colo-nial period both in India and in distantcolonies inhabited by east Indian. The pointto note here s that not only at the beginningof indenture but also at its end, the labourer-immigrants were basically 'coolies' notpeasants.

INDENTUREECRUITMENT

The period rom the mid-1840s to 1910 ischaracterised by the indentured mmigra-tion of Indian abour recruited o work onMalayan plantations. t has been estimatedthat between 1844 and 1910, some 2,50,000indentured Indian labourers entered Ma-laya. This figure also includes estimates oflabourmigratingonverbal ontracts. nden-tured migration thus formed some 13 percent of the assisted labour, 9 per cent of thetotal labour and nearly 6 per cent of thewhole Indian migratioy into Malaya up to1957 [Sandhu 1969: 811. Unlike other partsof the 13ritish mpire, in Malaya the recruit-ment of indentured abourers was done byspeculators or the employers themselves,

either through heir own or private agents inIndia. The indenture ystem literally meanta legally enforced debt bondage. This sys-tem came to replace slavery as the primarymcthod of supply and maintenance f labouron the West Indies sugar plantations andwas extended from there to newly develop-ing plantations n Ceylon and Malaya. InMalaya too this labour was first used forsugarcane cultivation since it needed 'atleast one unit of Indian labour per acre'compared with the work on coffee, pepperand gambier estates. Even the canc plantedin Malaya came from the territories of

Mauriti s and Bri ish Guiana. Also the plant-ers had learnt the industry there. The sugarplanters of Penang and Province Wellesleywere already old hands when it came todealing with the bonded south Indian abouron the estates. It is hardly surprising thatuntil the end of the century they remainedstaunch champions of the indenture ystem.

An examination of the political economyof south India allows thescholartoavoid theexcessesofeithera nationalisticoran apolo-geticcolonialist interpretation when assess-ing the first phase of Indian labour migra-tion to Malaya. The nationalists have arguedthat agreistic serfdom and unprecedentedincrease in the number of agriculturallabourers were the twin 'creations' of colo-nial rulc in south India. Both these mythshave been effectively demolished. KathleenGough demonstrates that 'slavery' was apre-colonial Tanmil nstitution, and DharmaKumar'sworkconclusively establishes thatthe number of agricultural abourers n theMadras presidency remained more or less

constant between the beginning and the endof the 19th century. On the other side, thereis no real basis to support he rosy picture ofthose planters and officers in Malaya whowrote that the Tamilian's sojourn to thearchipelago meant a virtual trip to para-dise-to the land of freedom and plenty.Indeed, though the late 19th century Tamilpeasant may have genuinely looked uponemigration as a way out of poverty anddestitution, he/she was definitely not aspir-ing to 'freedom'. If at all, he/she was look-ing for substitute mechanisms of bondedsecurity and patronage as the customaryones disintegrated. The crucial question iswhetheremigration oMalaya provided hemsecurity and certainly the bulk of evidencefor the indentured phase suggests that itfailed.

The heavy mortality rate among immi-grant Indian abourers and the high figuresfor desertions are two clear indices of theirdisillusionment. The death rate among the-newcomers in some areas appears to havebeen as high as 80-90 per cent. Desertionswere frequent, n spite of severe penalties fcaught. For example, there were no less than610 desertions out of a labour orce of 1,026indentured mmigrants n Gula estate, Perak,alone in 1895.

The indentured ystem, despite the penalprovisions contained in the contract, failedto ensure a regular and reliable labour sup-ply for Malayan plantations. Even as aninstrument of exploitation it was anachro-nistic and counter-productive. Despite itslast-ditch defence by the heavy-handedsugarplantersof Penang, Port Wellesley and Perakright till the end of the 19th century, theindentured ystem was declining by the endof the 191Os. Perhaps he single most perni-cious feature of the system was the condi-tion of 'anomie' it created for the labourer.

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This was grasped by the more progressiveplanters experimenting with the crops ofcoffee and rubber. Although the successorto the ndentured ystem was as much gearedto ensuring the subordination of the southIndian labourer in Malaya, yet there wasgreater emphasis on family migration andthe ensconcing of the migrant abourer n aprotective over [Stenson 1980:24]. Planta-tion owners preferred he system because itprovided better abourcontrol on the planta-tion tself. The abour-contractoror anganytook over most of the functions of controland supervision, and the labour force oftenrecruited rom the same village or kinshipgroup-would act as a more tightly knitunit. As we have seen, the open, widespreadrecruiting ssociated with the indenture ys-tem could not, at the level of wages paid tothe workers, produce sufficient labourers nthe way that tlhe abour-contractors ouldthrough heir links with the village areas ofrecruitment. As Charles Gamba puts it, in-denture proved economically unsuccessful

and socially unsatisfactory. Furthermore... itdid not satisfy the great demand for labour[Gamba 1962: 5].

KANGANY ECRUITMENr

We shall not here go into the details ofprocedure whereby labour was recruited bythe kanganies on Malayan plantations. Suf-fice it would be to say that from circa 1910to 1938 this was the dominant form oflabour recruitment and control on Malayanplantations. The kangany as an agent ofcontrol of Tamil labour both in 'on' and'off' work situations outlasted the period ofthe second vorld war and remains to thisday-without being a recrui er-the super-visor or foreman of gangs of labourers.

The role of the kangany as a recruiter nthe macro-structure f Indian immigrationto Malaya has been outlined in detail bySandhu 1969) and Parmer I 960). We shalcomment on a few salient features of thistype of iimmigration, specially as reflectedin the microcosm of a 'typical' rubber statein Malaya, alled Pal Melayu [Jain 19701. InPal Melayu, even the earliest Tamil workersseem to have been brought from their vil-.lagesin the Madraspresidency y kanganies

rather han under indenture. Planters otherthan those running sugar plantations hadtwoprincipal objections o recruiting nden-tured servants on estates. First and fore-most, they were an unselected lot, poor inphysique and unable to do outdoor work.Many were weavers, dhobies, 'coolies' andother workers with no experience n agri ul -ture. Soon after arrival in Malaya, theybecome 'hospital birds' and were thereforea liability for the estate and the government.Also, their recruitment hrough agents andsubagents in Tamil NadaL as costly. Thelalw enabledl planters o recover from a ser-

vant witthin he three-year period of con-tract, ess than halfof the total amount penton recruitment. But nevery estatc there wasa large number of deserters from whomnothing could be recovered, and legal pro-ceedi ngsagai nst them only increased abourcosts [Jackson 1961: Chapter X].

We have examined n detail the caste andkinship composition of kangany-recruitedgangsof labourerson Pal Melayuand ound,even in the early 1960s, the Tamil residentlabour force comprising of nearly a dozen'ki ndreds-around-kanganies'. Thesekindreds mushroomed around a solid coreof the kanganies' close relatives. As alreadynoted, these kanganies were mainly of non-brahniin castes but some belonged to theadi-drivida, paraiyan and palla castes aswell. All kanganies. belonging to non-brahmin astes such as the vanniargounder2and kallarwere, withoutexception, nvolvedin actual cultivation as ryots in their ances-tral villages in India [Arasaratnam 1970:261. The solid core of ki nsmen-recrLi s who

came with them to Malaya also belonged tothe peasant stratum. Besides the fact thatthese recruits, unlike the indenture recruitswho were invariably coolies', were of thepeasant stratum, they were also 'family-recruits'. This last feature refers to the factthat these kanganies and core recruits hadspread out their assets and responsibilitiesbetween the rubber estate in Malaya andnatal village in India as members of house-holds. lJence a significant contrast in thesocial character f these immigrants nd theearlier indenture mmigrants was that theindividualistic anomie'-markedexistenceof the latter type of immigrants had beenreplaced by a vibrant socialised type ofexistence of kangany recruits IJain 1970:Chapter 6]. This rather han bondage versusfreedom is the significant difference be-tween the ndentured nd kangany-recruitedimmigrantswlhocame o labouron Malayanplantations.

Besides kangany recruits and indenturedcoolies, there was a tlhird ategory of 'localrecruits', consisting of ex-indentured coo-liesfromestatesand locally born children ofcoolies. These were the two earliest catego-ries of local recruits; subsequently thenumber of local recruits was augmented

also by the independent, c, non-recruitedassisted migrants from India. A local re-cruit, gcnerally, was a 'free' Tamil cooliepar excellence. But independence and self-reliance were not precisely the virtueswhich planters n those days lookcd for ina coolie. Indeed they remained vehementcritics of the indcpendent-mindedness oflabourcrs in the government works andattributed t to the system of local recruit-ment and indirect supervision. Only fouryears after the findings of the governmentcommission (1890) came to light a planterwrote:

Scarcely less desirable is the local recruit.He arrives here a humble-minded, quiet,almost naked savage, and in a few monthstime you see him walking along with acheroot in his mouth, attired in a gaudycostunme, with a hat on one end and a pair ofshoes on the other, looking in at every liquorshop he passes and indulging in such amuse-ments as pulling the patient Chinaman'spigtail or driving a pair of bullocks as hardas he can urge the poor beasts on through thebusiest partof town. All this isdue to the fact,that as an individual lhe s quite out of touchiwith his European employerwhoonly knowshim as one of his sub-contractor's gang andwho has probably never spoken a word tohim since his arrival. On estates, the man-ager knows every coolie by name, pays himhimself, supervises all his work in personand subjects him to the strictest discipline;but on the roads and railways where thecoolie's immediate boss is probably a na-tive, himself well-schooled in the devilriesof his country, the result is that the cooliedoes everything in his power to imitate himand soon becomes a useless undisciplined

blackguard [Planter 1894: 4546].In the essay from which this quotation is

taken the 'planter' makes several sugges-tionsby which a regularlaboursupply mightbe assured, but for understandable reasonshis grasp of the kangany system as it subse-quently developed in Malaya was imper-fect. A kangany on the estate did in factbecome a kind of a native boss but even hewas kept directly subservient to the Euro-pean employers. Subservience was consid-ered an essential attribute in the labourforce, including the kangany.

Here we should distinguish between thekangany 's functions as recruiter and as fore-man-supervisor. Originally the kanganycombined both these functions. However,we should further distinguish between hisrole as a recruiter from Tamil Nadu villagesand as a local recruLiter. rhe latter rolebecame significant after the 1920s. He hadearlier been a specialist for bringing labourersover to an estate like Pal Melayu through themaze of agents, depots, ships, camps, in-spectors, and clerks. But concurrent with theimmigration of these labourers, described inthe estate statistical register as 'coast re-cruits'-coolies brought over to Malayafrom the Coromandel coast of India byKanganies-there was a steadily growingstream of Indian immigrants described ingovernmnent eports as 'unassisted' and 'non-rccruited-assisted' imnmigrants Price 1960:30-33].

Unasssisted immigrants were persons whopaid their own expenses to Malaya. Non-recruited-assisted immigrants were personswho obtained free tickets and bonuses toimmigrate on applying to the Malayan gov-ernment departments at Avadi andNagapattinam. A large niumber of theselabourers were also recruited by kanganniesbut locally in Malaya. There was a qualita-




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tive difference in the kangany's ties withthese recruits compared to his 'coastal re-cruits'. We have already considered thecoastal recruits and the way kangany be-came their patron,.linking Malayan estateswith villages in Tamil Nadu through ies ofcaste and kinship. As recruiter of local im-migrants hat nexus of the kangany becameloose. Whereas in the earlier system therewas a partially autonomous power-hierar-chy on plantations with head kanganies,kanganies and labourers, in the later phasethe kangany as local recruiter-cum-fore-man-supervisor became part of a larger bu-reaucracy, mmediately subordinate to theAsian estate staff 'kirani'. In the process,.the kangany also moved closer to his gang-labourers. The contrast between the earlierand ater phases is well brought about by theold labourers' stories concerning the over-weening power and authority of the earlierhead kanganiesand he 'democratic' eader-ship roles of the present-day kanganies Jain1968:166-67].

PATTERNS FCONTROL

Many of the details are lacking in theextinct historical record for reconstructingthe basis of labour control in Tamil Naduvillagesat the beginningof the 19th century.However, there are enough clues to posit acontinuity between the earlier forms of thepattern of labour control in ramil Naduvillages and on Malayan plantations.-It mayeven be said that the roots of the indenturedsystem lay in south India itself. For ex-ample, there is evidence that in the early19th century he pannaiyals had been forcedinto perpetual and hereditary bondagethrough a marriage-loan rom their mastersof, say 20 to 30 pagodas. At that time therewas no system whereby a labourer coulddischarge his oan by manual abour Kumar1965: 42-65]. The only change that ema-nated from the mid-19th century onwardswas the provision of written contracts ofindenture, which legally and temporallyspecified the term of labour against loan[Thomasand Ramakrishnan 940: 174-761.A system of voluntary debt-bondage wasalready prevalent amongst agriculturallabourersand owerpeasantryinTamil Nadu

at a time when their mnembers egan signingcontracts for indentured.labour n Malaya(and even earlier for Ceylon).

The highly regimented, segregated, resi-dential pattern of the various caste-groupsin Tamil Nadu villages was also replicatedon Malayan plantations. Irhere s a tendencyin the Indianist iterature o regard residen-tial segregation in 'ramil villages-espe-cially the confinement of the brahmin ntothe 'agraharam' nd of the untouchables n'cheri' as a characteristic ui geciteris of thecaste system. I-lowever, ecently it has heenargued on the basis of substantial evidence

that this residcntial segregation was inter-related to the pattern of joint landholding(by the higher castes) and joint agreisticserfdom of the owner, especially, untouch-able castes) in the pre-colonial village sys-tem of Tamil Nadu. It is particularly igni fi-cant to note that on Malayan plantationswhile there was a tendency or all labourers,whether non-brahmin r adi-dravida, o besettled in common labour-lines, he ownersand their representatives e g, the Europeanmanager and assistant) and the higher bu-reaucrats Asian estate staff) lived in pre-cisely segregatcd residential areas of theplantation. Also, the allocation of'free' butnon-owning labour ines to the 'lamil plan-tation labour s strongly reminiscent of theagreistic serfs (padiyal and pannaiyal) iv-ing on land, jointly at the sufferance of thejoint mirasidars of the village.

LABOUR ONTROL JNDER NDENTURE

Jan Breman 1984) has written about the

processes of regulation of labour on capitalist plantations n colonial Asia. These pro-cesses can be seen as fully operative inMalaya right from the beginning of theindentured ecruitment. Government uper-vision of the migration and conditions ofsettlement meant several things. Firstly, theIndian government refused to sanction in-dentured emigration rom any part of Indiaother han Madras. Secondly, while up to the1870s 'coolie' trade rom south Indian portsappears to have been carried on by Indiansthemselves employing Indian-owned sail-ing ships, subsequently, as in the othercolonies the monopoly over shipping, nowconverted to steam, was captured by Euro-peans. Thirdly, here was absence of familymigration resulting in an imbalanced sex-ratio among the Indian labour migrantsthroughout the 19th century. This is re-flected in the 1891 census, when there were18 females per 1,000 Indian males[Arasaratnam 970: 32].

Naturally, he residence of Indian abourimmigrants n Malaya was at this time bothtemporary and relatively short. As Bremanshows for the plantation nclaves of Asia ingeneral, the immigrants were not paid afamily-wage in Malaya; the cost of theirretirement nd reproduction as thus argelyborne by their homc villagcs in the 'hinter-land', and the entire process of immigrationwas circular. The AnnuLal eport n Emigra-tion from 1Madras, 900-01, giving figuresfor the highest ever cxodus from Mladrasupto that date also stated that over a 1.0-yearperiod 82 per cent of the emigrants camcback to thlcir homiie Tinker 1974t: 57-58].According to a rccent estimate [Sundaram1986: 1921, over the entirc period 1860 to1957, of the total emigration from India toMalaya of abIout ouir million, 70 per cent ofthis number eft Malaya vewrhe same period.

The abjectly low wages and the operationof a 'truck system' for the supply offoodgrains and other essential items forindentured abourers on plantation resultedin a vicious cycle of poverty and exploita-tion. Other noteworthy features of theirabject living conditions were the crampedcoolie lines and indiscriminate mixing ofsexes in the living quarters or the coolies.

As late as 1910, estate labourers seem tohave been paid wages not per diem but ontask work basis [Jackson 1961: 111]. Per-haps the most acute trauma of regulationand control experienced by the indenturedlabour on Malayan plantations was the onerelated to their earliest experiences of set-ting forth to the new locale. The followingexcerpt froin an address by the controller oflabour describing the procedure in theNagapattinam amp in 1912 is fairly vivid:

By two o'clock in the afternoon... n the dayprior oshipping very man n the camp willhave haved, andi avehad his haircut...Thenthey are all lined up for their gingelly oil

bath. They squat on the ground with theirhanlds xtenided n front of them, while twoattendants, one w itlh a large tin of oil and onewith a dlipper, pass down the row, and givecacti coolie a hanciful of oil and as often asnot pour a quantity on tlheir hieads. Tenminutes are allowed for the rubbing of theoil, thiCIl t a given signial they' move down inbatches to the canal where five minutes isallowed for a good wash. At another signalthey march up to the drying ground whiletheir places in hlie an1al re taken by anotherbatch Parnier 96():541.Furthermore, after being removed from

the camp to the ship each emigrant was

given a 'tin ticket' bearing a number whichrepresented he estate to which he was beingdespatchied. Rcfcrring to an early period(1865), an assistant superintendant of po-lice, Madras, notcd in his diary, This morn-ing I accompanied the master attendant onboard one of those coolie traders waiting tostart for the straits. It was a beastly sight,coolies crowded together like beasts[Sandhu 1969: 791. On arrival n Malaya theimmigrants usually entered quarantine ta-tions for one week or longer before beingsent to depots and thence removed by theemployers' agents to the allotted estates.

rhe measures sted above and many moremarks of regimentation in the actual fieldsituation of immigrant labourers [Daniel1986: 7-8] signified a loss of self as in theasylum-type 'total institutions' [Goffman1961] or situations like those defined byFoucault where time penetrates the bodyandwithi t all meticulouscontrolsof power[Foucault 1979: 1521.

LIABIOUR :()N-I1ROL UIND}R KANGANY

As regards the debt-bondage of kanganyrecruits to the jobber ratiler than the em-ployer, llreman (198S4) has chosen to




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emphasise the elcment of continuity. Thisemergesclearlyinhisremarkson the power-relationship between the kangany and hismen since the kangany was hopelessly en-trenched as a representative f the manage-ment. Thus Breman emphasises kangany'srole in tying of labour rather than hismediation in the labourers habituation oindustrial climate (ibid) [Breman 1984:55]. While we agree with Breman that asimple functionalist explanation of thekangany's role as a middleman betweenlabour employers and recruits and, further,his image as a benevolent partriarch, oesnot take sufficient account of the punitiveaspects of his role as an employers' agent,there is scope yet of underscoring he cul-tural rather than the purely political-eco-nomicdimension ofthis relationship. andhusums up the situation with regard to thekangany's debt without of course, explicat-ing the cultural dimension inherent n it:

The labourer was obliged to pay within woyears he sum advanced o bring him to the

place of work. He could not bc compelled opay, since the law clearly allowed him toleave his ob with 30days' notice and did nothold him liable for any debt to the kangani,but in fact he would find it difficult to getworkat another lantation f he failed o pay,and he took the debt as a point of honour[Sandhu 1969: 91].Although, unlike Ceylon where the

kangany himself was the paymaster of hisgang in Malaya the employers paid wagesdirectly to each labourer, he cultural sanc-tion of bei ng honour-bound o repay he debtwascommon to recrui s i n Malaya as wel asin Ceylon. This sanction was directly re-

lated to the strength of village, caste and kinties between the kangany and his recruits,and is a structural eature of working classethos in India Chakrabarty 989]. The con-tractual bondage of the indentured recruitneeds tobe qualitatively distinguished romthe socio-cultural bonds tying recruits totheir kangany. The latter relationship wasperhaps less free than the former. As weobserved recently:

Family, kin and caste ties were preservedand respected muclh more in the kanganysystem than under ndenture. imilarly, pa-tron-client ies between he kangany nd hisrecruits-even where they left one estateand took up employmcnt n anotlher nderpressure of 'crinmping' uring periods ofhighi emand or abour-were an enduringfeature f the atter ystem. In broad erms,therefore, the system of recruitment ndsettlement f immigrant ndian abour s itobtained n Trinidad nd as was eventuallyestablished nMalaya ould be distinguishedas 'individualistic' n the former nd com-munal' n the latter. Paradoxical s it mayseem, i-n ociocultural atlher hfan olitico-economic terms, the indcntured ecrLuit nTrinidad had greater occupational reedomthlan his kangany-recruited ounterpalrt nMalJaya Jain 1988: 128].

Despite close ties of ascription betweenthe kangany and his gang on Malayan plan-tations, it should be emphasised that thecharacterisation of the kangany as jobberhas to be that he was the employers' agentamong his men. As regards he kangany onCeylonese and Malayan plantations, t hasbeen contended recently Heidemann 1990]that rather han assigning him a position inthe pyramidal organisational charts of thecompany below the Asian estate staff andabove labourers, he following 'intermedi-ary' position in the plantation ystem as awholedepictsthe situation more accurately:

Proprietor/Planter

Kangani

1LabourersThe kangany thus is an 'intermediary' n

the system; however, the kind of intermedi-ary that he is can be better understood n

terms of an analogy offered by Breman(1984:76), just as the comprador n colo-nial times had acted as the ocal pivot in Asiafor trade with the centre of the worldeconomy, so the jobber functioned as a linkbetween the capitalist employer and theworld of indigenous labour . And, again,though we may not agree with Hleidemann'scomplete argument hat he nstitution f thekangany replaced the caste system onCeyloneseand Malayan lantations, tshouldbe conceded that whereas in Tamil Naduvillages the dominant castes sought legiti-macy from he ritually pure' brahmin riest,tlhe egitimacy of the dominant kangany wasderived from the beef eating, 'polluted',white boss.

With regard to kangany recruitment,Stenson has remarked hat the ntroductionof this government-controlled system oflabour recruitment nd employment was apol tical masterstroke Stenson, 1980: 20].By the legal abolition of recruitment ofindentured abour in 1910 and by relyingupon free' labour brought nto the country,the Malayan governments ould claim quiteconvincingly that his was the most progres-sive system of labour supply in the Britishcolonial world. The apparent stabilisation

introdubed nto the ranks of Indian planta-tion labour in Malaya achieved a doublepurpose: on the one hand, vindication wasprovided o an organised ystem eminentlyacccptable as 'progressive' to the employ-crs and the employed alike and, on the otherlhand, he social and other extra-economicburdens on the south Indian labourer inMalaya were effectively concealed. 13ecauseof the resolution of thc former factors, arisine tide of criticism prevented he revivalof assisted labour migration o Fiji aftcr thefirst world war, and cut the link witlhCeylonin 1923; the flow of labrour o Malaya was

little restricted until 1938 [Stenson 1980:20]. Indian political opinion concentratedupon criticisino the manifest inequalitiesofflagrant racial discrimination in south Af-rica and Kenya, of indentured abour n Fiji,and of the 'tundu' system in Ceylon [Tinker1974: 29-100].

The concealment of the exploitation ofsouth Indian abour tiy in the fact that thisreserve army, instrumental n the develop-.ment of the Malayan jungle was not onlycheap but eminently replaceable. The essen-tially conservative function of the incipientstabilisation f south Indian plantation abourin Malaya of the 1920s is demonstrated bythe absence of abol tion movements compa-rable to those in Fiji and Mauritius. Thedifficul iesof obtaining and controlling northIndian abour was one factor which enabledthe conversion from a plantation o a small-farmer leasehold system in Fiji [Gillion1962: 138-41]. In Mauritius here had beenprogressive decline in the percentage ofIndians ivingon estate camps--44 percent

in 1861, 28 per cent in 1871, 15 per cent in1904 and 9 per cent in 1956 [Benedict 1961:38]. In Malaya, as late as 1965 the percent-age of labour in the gainfully occupiedIndian population was approximately 60 percent. Of these nearly 60 per cent were estatelabourers, the majority of whom lived inlabour-lines [Sandhu 1969: 255-56].

CONCLUSION

It remains for us to draw out the implica-tions of the account of migration, recruit-ment and control presented above. For astart, the Indian background to both migra-tionandcontrol of Tamil labouron Malayanplantations does not imply that there was acustomary continuity between early 19thcentury Tamil Nadu and Malayan planta-tions (1840-1938) as regards 'lived-in' ex-periences of the subjects involved. There s,on the other hand, a clear transition frompre-colonial relations to capi,talist elationsof production. The nature of this transition,however, is the crux of the matter. To desig-nate this as a process of 'depeasantisation' sobviously wrong; neither were the majorityof emigrants to Malayan plantations peas-ants (they were rather coolies') and even

those who were agriculturists of one kind oranother belong to a selective, lower stratum'peasantry' which was both highly mobileand stagnant. This combination of mobilityand stagnation was an outcome of the circu-latory nature of migration made possibleunder circumstances of overarching colo-nial rule both in the capitalist enclaves andlabour-supplying hinterland. Mechanisms

-of labour-bondage-through indenture andlater by means of jobber control- enuredthe existence, reproduction and replenish-ment of unfree labour under capitalist con-ditions.

2368 Economic and Political Weekly October 23, 1993



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Werc these mobile but bonded labourproletarians-cithcr existentially or poten-tially-and were they effectively 'deprole-tarianised' on plantations? n trying to an-swer this conundrum we begin to usecreatively the information provided on theIndian background o recruitment and con-trol. In contrast to, say, the Caribbeanblack ex-slaves after Emancipation 1834)the south Indians nvolved in various forms

of circulatory migration to the nearbydestinations of Malaya and C'eylon re-mained part of an 'attached' labour foce.They moved from agreistic serfdom inTamil Nadu to indenture boundedness andkangani debt-bondage in Malaya and.Ceylon. It is a moot point whether theprogeny of indentured east Indian labourforce in the Caribbean (the majority hail-ing from north India) would be called a'proletariat' or not-perhaps because ofthe load of their Indian culture and even-tual occupation as cane-farmers-theywould not so qualify; but the Tamil labouron Malayan plantations definitely showsno symptoms of free valuation and sale ofits labour power such that it may be de-scribed as an existential or potential pro-letariat. And, therefore, the question hereis that if the Tamil labour on Malayanplantations was neither at inception nor itsgrowth a proletariat, how can it have'deproletarianised'?

Some scholars have argued Omvedt 1980]that abour migration, ts circular nature andthe mechanisms of its regulation and controlshow a highly specific articulation betweentwo sectors-the 'modern ' plantationsand mines afnd actories with the 'feudal'and traditional ongoing structures of theagrarian region. As Breman (1984: 122-23) has put it, the processes of differentia-tion emerging in the colonial period gaverise to at least two sectors, each more orlessconfined within itsown spatial milieuand social sphere but narrowly interwo-ven. The interaction between the two sec-tors occurred in terms of labour. Ratherthan labelling the two sectors as 'capital-ist' versus6non-capitalist' it is preciselythe interaction between both sectors thatunderscores the dynamic character of thetransformation process in the capitalist

plantations of colonial Asia. The 'lived-in' experience of Indiarnlabour rom TamilNadu migrating and reproducing on Ma-layan plantations belongs to this socio-historical framework.

POSISCRIP'r: THNOGRAPI Y OF COLONIALISMI

In the foregoing we have presented alargely factual account of immigrant Tamillabour on Malayan plantations. Implicit, ofcourse, in the above description has been acertain theoretical (or even epistemoloci-cal) stance. As a soc:ial anthropologist the

writer is axware hlat n the 1980s the rise ofcritical anthropology his meant: (a) thatpolitical economy and culture are sought tobe examined within an overarching rame-work [Marcus and Fischer 1986: Chapter ],and b) that anthropologists re ncreasinglyturning their attention inwards to a newdialogue with the 'other'. The latest chapterin the anthropology of colonial lormations[Cooper and Stoler 1989] clearly reveals

this trend. The authors contributing o thespecial issue of Americani EI/hitologim e-ferred o above are concerned not only withthe colonised but mainly (and refreshingly)with the colonisers. And in this latter preoc-cupation hey take into account not only theactual logistics of colonial rule but also thecognitive categories of rule and domi nance.The contrast between a purely logisticalkind of study and the one encompassingcognitive categories may be illustrated-totake an example suited to the present uni-verse of discourse-by studies like those ofTinker 1974, 1976 and 1977) and the onespublished ecentlyby Stoler(1986and 1989)and Breman 1989).

Our account may largely be seen to be-long to the Tinker genre. Not only that hereis little cultural analysis of the colonisersbut also there is an explicit realisation-tobor.row nd modify a chapter-heading romTaussig (1987)-as to who is riding whoseback in the colonial situation of immigrantplantation abour n Malaya. It is the whitewho rode the back of the Tamil coolies-analmost complete inversion of the 'whiteman's burden'. It seems to us that were we(from the 'third world' or the 'south') toundertake a cultural analysis of thecolonisers, it would run against the grain offeasibility-both of ideology and resources.Let us sound out that this is a middle or'dialogical position in the kind of discoursewe are having now; we are not dealing withthe categories of colonial rule and domi-nance as represented by the colonisers andwe are also not asserting that there is adistinctively Indian or 'third world' or'south '-oriented cultural analysis more ger-mane to the understanding f colonialism.Lest this be misunderstood, et us state whatwe are guarding against:

...even wlhen olonial regimes were begin-

ning to concede in the 1940s and 1950sthat indigenous leaders were capable ofrunning tates and organising economies,they did so in terms of modernisationand 'westernisation' and a European-.based concept of how states collected andused knowledge-that denied the validityof African and Asian forms of knowledgeperhaps ven more han onservative ormsof colonial rule [Cooper and Stoler 1989:6121.In the heyday of capitalist colonialissm tcould be assumed hat there was no otherp.ith available o the coloniall people thalnthat offered othemt yco oniallism.Withl he

decline of empire, however, hecultures ndpolitical ystems of the colonial people maywell undergo a renaissance nd may wellshiow hat contrary o the view of Europeansociology, thcse civilisations have wvi hinthem the capacity for change and develop-ment, ncludingeconomicdevelopment Rex1982:204].Statementssuch as these are unexception-

able, but they are cryptic and liable to betwisted-as they have been

[Lal1988] in a

cultural solipsist direction. The epistemo-logical situation about the colonial impactfor the third world scholars is, as said be-fore, dialogical.

Notes

1 This is the revised version of a paper pre-.sented t heConference n 'Capitalist lan-tations in Colonial Asia', Centre for AsianStudies, Amsterdam, September 26-29,1990.

2 About the Vanniar Gounder t cannot bevouched hat hey were all 'peasants'. They

comprised a section of the generic casteknown at the end of the 19th century as'palli'.Thesubstitution f the namevanniyaror vanniyan or palli was definitely relatedto a move towards sanskritisation f thiscaste and a symptom of their triving or akshatriya warrior) status. According toCox, the palli were a Tamil cultivatingcaste, included in his manual among'labourers'. hey are considered o be of an'inferior tatus' and a ink between udrasand outcastes Cox 1894:236-37]. On PalMelayu 58 per cent of India-born esidentswere from north Arcot district nd 51.8 percent of the households n Division I (56 outof 108) gave their caste as vanniar Jain1970:25 and 347].

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Now Updated Ver 1.2

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