"Coolies, Recruiters and Planters: Migration of Indian Labour to the Southeast Asian and Assam Plantations during Colonial Rule"

Crossroads Asia Lecture by Rana Behal (University of Delhi) at ZELF in Berlin

The modern industrial capitalism and the consequent colonization of Asia, Africa, Caribbean and other parts of the world by the British triggered of a massive mobilization of Indian agrarian communities across these geographical localities. The growing demand for raw materials and tropical agricultural products in the West opened large scale sugar, tea, coffee and rubber plantations by the European capital for export. These plantations were set up as major enterprises by British capital in South East Asian colonies of Malaya and Ceylon and Assam, Bengal and South India in the British imperial system during 19th and early 20th centuries. I would talk about the pattern of recruitment and transportation of Indian agrarian communities from different geographical locations who went to work as labour in the South East Asian and Assam plantations during colonial rule. The emphasis will be on two important areas of labour mobilization: (a) the agencies of recruitment, i.e. the European recruiting agents, the indigenous kanganies, sirdars and arkatis; and (b) the nature and the process of transformation of the immigrant Indian agrarian communities while performing labour in the plantations.

Time and location: Centre for Development Studies (ZELF), FU Berlin on June 18, 2013, 12:15 p.m. in G 202, House G, GeoCampus Lankwitz