Tea-garden community
The Tea-garden community is a term for a multiethnic, multicultural group of tea garden workers and their descendants in Northeast India. They are primarily concentrated in the modern state of Assam, where they have been notified as Other Backward Classes and are loosely referred to as Tea Tribes. They are the descendants of peoples from multiple tribal and caste groups brought by the British colonial planters as indentured labourers from the regions of present-day Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh into colonial Assam during the 1860-90s in multiple phases to the newly established tea gardens. They are primarily found in districts with a large concentration of tea estates, such as Upper Assam districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Charaideo, Golaghat, Lakhimpur, Sonitpur and Udalguri, and Barak Valley districts of Cachar and Karimganj. The total population is estimated to be around 7 million, of which an estimated 4.5 million reside in residential quarters built inside 799 tea estates spread across tea-growing regions of Assam. Another 2.5 million reside in the nearby villages spread across those tea-growing regions. They speak multiple languages, including Sora, Odia, Assam Sadri, Sambalpuri, Kurmali, Santali, Kurukh, Kharia, Kui, Chhattisgarhi, Gondi and Mundari. Assam Sadri, distinguished from the Sadri language, serves as lingua franca among the community.
A sizeable section of the community, particularly those having Scheduled Tribe status in other states of India and living mainly in the village areas other than tea gardens, prefers to call themselves "Adivasi" and are known by that term in Assam, whereas the Scheduled Tribes of Assam are known as "Tribe". Many tea garden community members are tribals such as Munda, Santhal, Kurukh, Gonds, Bhumij, among others. According to the Lokur Committee they formed around 20 lakh. They have been demanding Scheduled Tribe status in Assam, but the tribal organisations of Assam are against it, which has resulted in several clashes between them and deaths.
History
In the 19th century, the British found Assam suitable for tea cultivation and wanted to increase their revenue by planting tea plantations, so they brought labourers from different parts of the country to clear large tracts of forest and make tea gardens. Tea garden workers were brought to the tea plantations of Assam in several phases from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century from the tribal heartland of central-eastern India as indentured labourers. During the 1840s, tribal people throughout the Chota Nagpur Division were revolting against expanding British control, and the scarcity of cheap labour to work in the expanding tea industry of Assam led the British authorities to recruit primarily Tribals and some backward-class Hindus as indentured labourers to work in Assam's tea gardens. Thousands of people recruited as labourers died of diseases during the journey to Assam, and hundreds who tried to flee were killed by the British authorities as punishment for breaching their contracts.Recruitment
At the start of tea plantations in the province, the Assam company had brought in Chinese staff, around 70 at its peak, and paid them four to five times more wages compared to local labour. The former were dispensed with in 1843 and labourers from Assam were the only ones working in the plantations until 1859 which was around 10,000 vis-a-vis the requirement for 16,000-20,000 for existing cultivation. Most of these were then recruited from the Kachari tribe of the then Darrang district, and peasants from nearby villages during their agricultural slack season.In 1841 the first attempt was made by the Assam Company to recruit labourers from outside the province. In this attempt, 652 people were forcibly recruited, but due to an outbreak of cholera, most of them died. Those who survived fled. In 1859 the Workmen's Breach of Contract Act was passed, which instituted harsh penalties for indentured labourers who broke their contracts, including flogging. It alleviated the scarcity of labourers on the plantation by recruiting from outside Assam through contracts. "Arakattis," or brokers, were appointed to recruit labour from outside the area. In 1870, the "Sardari System" was introduced to recruit labourers.
Majority of the labour force was recruited from areas such as Chota Nagpur, Santal Parganas, Bengal Presidency, Central Provinces, and Madras Presidency. Most came from the tribal communities of Chottanagpur and Santhal Parganas and constituted 59 and 50 percent of the total men and women respectively in 1878. These consisted of the Mundas, Oraons, Kharias, Kols, Bhumijs, Santhals, and castes such as Kurmis, and Murasis. This was followed by communities from Orissa, Central Provinces, Palamu district in then Bihar, and Madras Presidency. They consisted of those classified as semi-aboriginal castes such as the Ghasis, Bauris, Turis, and Goraits, A smaller number were recruited from low-caste Hindu communities like the Bhogtas, Rautias, Chamars, and Dusadhs.
Conditions of recruitment of labour from Bengal and Bihar were inhuman. Arakattis resorted to several fraudulent practices and physical force.
From 15 December 1859 to 21 November 1861, the Assam Company brought the first batch of 2,272 recruits from outside. From of the total, 250 died on the way to Assam. From 2 April 1861 to 25 February 1862, 2,569 people were recruited and sent to Assam in two batches via the Brahmaputra river route. During the journey 135 died or got drowned, and 103 absconded. Between 1 May 1863 and 1 May 1866, 84,915 labourers were recruited, but 30,000 had died by June 1866.
From 1877 to 1929, 419,841 recruits entered Assam as indentured labourers, including 162,188 males, 119,582 females and 138,071 children. From 1938 to 1947, 158,706 recruits came to Assam. They were brought to Assam through three riverine routes, two along the Brahmaputra and one via the Surma.
Under the Workmen's Breach of Contract Act of 1859, Sections 490 and 492 of the Indian Penal Code and the Labour Act of 1863, as amended in 1865, 1870 and 1873, runaway workers could be punished by the Government alone. Yet the planters themselves generally disciplined such workers, inflicting upon them punitive tortures of all kinds. For labour was too precious to be sent out of their tea gardens to police and jail custody.
Debarken Depots were used to carry the bonded labours. Some of the Debarken Depots in the Brahmaputra were Tezpur, Silghat, Kokilamukh, Dibrugarh, etc. Debarken Depots in Surma were Silchar, Katigorah, Karimganj etc. Labourers were brought in ships, in conditions that were far lower than required for the transport of animals. Steamers were overcrowded with recruits and it was highly unhygienic. These conditions led to the spread of cholera among the labourers which led to the death of many among them in the journey.
Under British colonial rule
After the journey, their life in the tea gardens was also difficult. Planters made barracks known as the Coolie line for the labourers and these were overcrowded. "Coolie" was a term used by tea garden authorities to denote labourers, and is now considered to be a derogatory term by the community.In these barracks, each tea garden labourer had barely twenty-five square feet of area for their personal use. Many of the tea gardens insisted on a morning muster of the labours. They were not allowed to remain absent in their duty for a single day even when they were unwell. The labourers did not enjoy any personal freedom at all, and were even forbidden to meet labourers working at other tea gardens. Prior permission from the manager of the tea gardens was necessary for the marriage of the labourers.
In addition to emigrant labourers, tea planters also forced labourers to increase the birth rate, so that each garden could garner enough labour force. Abortion was strictly prohibited.
The wages paid to labourers were very low. This forced the whole of family members to work in the tea garden.
From 1865–1881 men labourers were paid only ₹5 per month and women ₹4 per month. The situation remained the same up to 1900. It was only by an Act of 1901 that wages increased to ₹5.5 for men and ₹4.5 for women. Children's wages remained the same. These rates of pay compared extremely unfavourably with other manual work available: in the early 1880s an unskilled railway construction labourer earned ₹12 to 16 per month.
The tea garden labourers suffered under legal bondage. Their lives were governed by the Workmen's Breach of Contract Act. Under this act employees were liable to prosecution, and even imprisonment, for breach of contract. Inertia, refusal to work and desertion were likewise punishable offenses for which the workers could be flogged, subjected to physical torture and imprisoned under the provisions of this act. Flogging was common practice in the tea gardens. The then Chief Commissioner Assam Fuller commented on the condition of labourers, "...They were deprived of all their freedom and their derogatory conditions and atrocities remind one of the slaves running in Africa and the global slave trade."
In addition to this, the tea garden manager might abuse the workers physically. A tea garden manager in Darrang district caught a boy in an attempt at burglary, and he was beaten to death. His dead body was subsequently found with marks that showed that he had been cruelly beaten. In Cachar district, a boy was flogged to death because he did not salute the European manager. The most notorious incident was a shooting in which a tea garden labourer was killed by the European planter of the Kharial Tea Estate of Cachar in 1921 after refusing to provide his daughter as a concubine to the planter for a night. Facing such atrocities, many tea garden labourers often become insane. Many such sufferers were confined in the jail set up at Tezpur in 1876 for insane people.