Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India, 1830-1980 [Illustrated] 019809230X, 9780198092308

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Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Title Pages (p.i) Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830–1980 (p.iii) Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830–1980

(p.iv) Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in India by Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, 1 Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001, India © Oxford University Press 2014 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted Page 1 of 2

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Frontispiece

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Frontispiece (p.ii)

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Dedication

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Dedication (p.v) To the memory of Sarajubala, Namita, and Birendra Kishore Chaudhuri, who sheltered me in the most trying time of my life (p.vi)

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Illustrations

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

(p.ix) Illustrations Tables 1.1 Bullock cart in the districts of Bengal, 1925–26 26 1.2 Compensation paid for trees cut down for the laying of railway lines 51 1.3 Land acquisition for the Eastern Bengal Railway, 1859–60 56 3.1 Variation in the husker’s share of clean rice in eastern India 134 3.2 Changing size of the rice mill in Bengal, 1903–39 149 3.3 The changing distribution pattern of rice mills in Bengal, 1920–50 153 3.4 Statement of accounts for indigenous manufacturing of sugar, 1899– 1901 160 5.1 Property of a well-to-do cultivator in the early 1860s 251 5.2 Unemployment created by the rice mill in Bengal, 1916–40 253 5.3 Number of carts passing along Grand Trunk Road between Magra and Bardhaman, 1843–44 261 (p.x) 5.4(A) Bullocks and ploughs in the rice-milling districts of Bengal, 1920–41 264 5.4(B) Carts and bullocks available per cart in the rice-milling districts of Bengal, 1920–41 265 5.5(A) Bullocks and ploughs in the non-rice-milling districts of Bengal, 1920–41 267 5.5(B) Carts and bullocks available per cart in the non-rice-milling districts of Bengal, 1920–41 268

Figures 1.1 Cane suspension bridge 63 2.1 The brazier working with his machine 99 2.2 Traditional brassware manufacturing 103 2.3 Blacksmith 109 2.4 Conch shell–cutting machine 115 Page 1 of 2

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Illustrations 3.1 Early rice mill 148 4.1 All India Hosiery Manufacturing Company 199 C.1 Old and new modes of transport 296

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Preface

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

(p.xi) Preface THE AIM OF THIS BOOK IS TO TRACE the interrelationship between technology and village society, a question which historians of rural India have largely failed to confront so far. The earlier scholar in the field must have stumbled at the silence of official records. To break this silence, I have looked beyond official archives and largely used local-level sources. ‘Technology’ is the keyword for the twenty-first century. From the pre-historic period to the industrial revolution and the space age, the term has been used to refer to a wide range of applied knowledge. Each age has its own technology, either advanced or backward, in relation to time and space. A particular technology might be useful to one society, but unusable for another that is at a higher stage of development. With restricted mobility, societies in earlier times were isolated from one another and used different technologies in different locations. This isolation ended with colonialism, which interlinked the backward and advanced areas of development in an unparalleled way. Since technology was the primary ‘tool of the empire’, colonialism unleashed a process of technology transmission to the colonies. This was a two-way movement: from the mother country to the colonial metropolis, on the one hand, and followed by its movement to the periphery, on the other—a process ensuring the victory of European (p.xii) imperialism, a triumph of technology in reality.1 But the impact of technology on colonial society has hardly been studied so far. The present work explores how colonialism brought in its train forms of technology that changed the society in rural India. Here, technology refers primarily to the means of transport and manufacturing developed in the West, following its industrial take-off. While new technology was brought into India by the British for the consolidation of their control, it also flowed through corporate Page 1 of 7

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Preface bodies and individual enterprises. Analysing the context and result of technology induction into rural society, a social history of technology in brief, thus remains the principal theme of this book. The study is based on Bengal, ‘the British bridgehead’, a region which corresponds to present-day Bangladesh and West Bengal. Since British Bengal also included Bihar, Orissa, and Assam for intermediary periods, these areas have also been referred to frequently by way of illustration. Bengal was the gateway to technology transmission in India, with Calcutta serving as the hub of technology diffusion for more than a half of the Indian subcontinent. The earliest specimen of Western technology was the steam engine, which reached Calcutta almost immediately after it had been patented in England. In 1820, the Baptist Mission installed it for their printing press in Shrirampur, while Fort Gloster emerged as the first steam-powered cotton mill of India a decade later. A more elaborate use of steam power took place in the semiautomatic Calcutta Mint, considered among the best in the world at that time. Steamboats flowed on the Ganges to the jaw-dropping surprise of yogis and fakirs all along its journey up to Allahabad. Soon, steam-driven flour mills sprouted in Calcutta to meet the demand of its European population, while indigo and sugar factories appeared in the districts. Telegraph and the railways changed the intensity of technology induction into India. In 1905, Asia’s first— and the world’s second—elevator was installed in the city. In 1915, ‘more than 16,000 Bijou portable typewriters were sold in the course of twelve months’ in Calcutta.2 Apart from these relatively well-known facts, there also took place the lesserknown transmission of technology from Calcutta to the interiors. It all started with the East India Company’s (EIC’s) desire to increase the productivity of artisans, making them work with (p.xiii) long staple cotton, better silkworms, and fly shuttle looms. Of the more visible early induction of technology to rural areas, two were most notable—the iron suspension bridge and the steam engine. Iron bridges, or loha pools, slowly came up across creeks and canals, improving road connectivity in the interior, just as steam engines changed old manufacturing works. This work contextualizes the dominant historical discourse of colonial India— poverty. Notwithstanding her new, elite breed of politics and the diverse changes introduced by the British, Bengal was still characterized as ‘hungry Bengal’. Technology had improved the quality of life in the West, but the Indian village remained embedded in poverty. A whole set of questions thus arises: What had neutralized the regenerative role of technology? Why did it fail to accelerate development? What was the nature of the technology inducted here?

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Preface In the West, the interface between the ‘centre’ evolving the technology and the ‘periphery’ receiving it helped expand the base of technological growth. With increasing interaction between the core (advanced economies) and the periphery (backward areas), technology became more and more effective as a development catalyst with multiplying effects. Colonialism comes into the discourse here. As a dependent economy, India received new technology through various channels of colonial interactions. The manner in which technology was introduced—slow, piecemeal, and superimposed (blocking the knowledge part of it)—failed to generate a free interplay between London or other core areas and Calcutta as a colonial metropolis. Scholars have discussed how in such a situation indigenous private enterprises had been stifled and made to play second fiddle to British interests. What remains unexplored is how the people in rural areas behaved in this context. The first chapter, ‘From Bullock Cart to the Railways’, discusses the crucial transition from the old to the new system of transport. As the most important area of technology build-up, it served as the primary instrument of rural change. The new system of transport comprising roads, river bridges, steamships, and the railways ended the isolation of the village. The chapter begins with an outline of the old system of roads and river transport. The discussion rejects (p.xiv) the earlier notion of immobility and unilateral direction of trade between the village and the town. While the use of the steamboats was largely a demonstration of technology, it was not the same case with the railways. The construction of railways required a massive acquisition of land, which was not an easy task. There were cases of litigation by both native and European landowners, as also village-based opposition. In the contemporary context of widespread tension over the acquisition of land for industry—especially Special Economic Zones—it is pertinent to ask how the colonial government managed to acquire vast tracts for the railways. How did the people, who had been asked to hand over their land, really respond? Did they readily accept the package offered to them? If not, what was the nature of their protest and how did the government react to it? The survival of a large artisan sector in rural India remains an unresolved puzzle of Indian history. The second chapter, ‘New Tools in Old Hands’, deals with this issue. The process of technology transfer from the West commenced with the EIC’s introduction of fly shuttle looms in the late eighteenth century. Gradually, the process accelerated with colonial trade bringing in not just machine-made products to replace the handmade ones, but also new tools, raw materials, designs, and concepts, followed by new machines in the early twentieth century.

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Preface Too much emphasis on the destructive role of technology has ignored its role in helping the artisan survive in an open market.3 Earlier works on artisans are mostly weaver-centric. Weavers, accounting for a third of Indian artisans, undoubtedly deserve the attention. But a singular emphasis on weaving, largely a nationalist legacy, created a simplified notion of all artisans sharing the weaver’s woes.4 Here the focus, therefore, has been shifted to the smith, with an emphasis on the new technology as the key factor to his survival. If colonial forest regulations and the import of iron had done away with the old iron industry, the new regime helped the smith expand his trade. The discussion in Chapter 2 shows how artisans, without formal training, adopted the new tools, raw materials, and machines that came in the wake of the colonial trade, and how this helped them survive in an increasingly hostile market. The next chapter, ‘Machines in the Periphery’, delineates the growth of rice, sugar, and oil mills. This was the single-largest sector (p.xv) of technology induction to the periphery. It all began with the early Europeans introducing steam-driven machines in indigo factories and sugar and oil mills. But neither sugar nor oil mills succeeded like the rice mill, which was the most extensive of all modern industries in Bengal. Unlike the rice industry in Myanmar, Bengal’s rice mills did not attract British capital. It was the local traders who were in charge of the mills until the 1920s; thereafter, Marwari traders from north India took over the reins. The rice mill caused the dislocation of the extensive network of huskers, peddlers, carters, boatmen, merchants, and financiers.5 Steam engines also affected the oil and sugar industries, with the old ox-driven oil mill disappearing faster than the old sugar factories. However, the small, newgeneration cane-crushing mills in the villages made it difficult for even the early European sugar mills to compete profitably. Rural Bengal was distinguished by a small but dynamic group of bhadraloks, a product of the University of Calcutta. A small class of English-educated elites, the bhadraloks had literally shaped the nineteenth-century Bengali mind. Their role in anti-colonialism and the politics of organization is well known. They inspired the Indian nationalist movement with their icons, ideologies, and anthems, but their role as entrepreneurs is still to be acknowledged. Most of them believed the productive technology of the West to be the best means to solve the problem of endemic poverty, preferring small-scale industry to largescale enterprises. From the school teacher to the petty clerk, everyone tried in his own way to introduce new technology in villages. Studying all these just as a part of the political programme of swadeshi6 ignores the important role of technology as a factor in itself, which was no less attractive to the youth than the ideology of anti-colonialism. A small Petter Oil Engine had inspired a group of boys to such an extent that they gave up their studies to Page 4 of 7

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Preface launch an engineering unit called House of Labourers. Later, when they illuminated the Comilla railway station with the power generated in their plant, it was hailed as a ‘new light’, as if lit to dispel the darkness of rural Bengal.7 Similarly, a petty clerk in a zamindar’s office pioneered free India’s burgeoning hosiery industry. A village mechanic ended the monopoly of an English firm by making a prototype of the huller machine, which helped spread rice milling. A boy from Calcutta Medical College sacrificed his lucrative career to turn (p.xvi) out small machines for artisans. The fourth chapter, ‘Technology Beckons’, deals with two of these very interesting cases. Chapter 5, ‘The Power of Steam’, analyses the impact of the steam engine on the rural economy. The railways realigned the pattern of rural settlement. There was a shift from the river that was till then the arterial highway of trade and travel; localities and bazaars now gravitated to the railway station. Old roads leading to riverbanks fell into disuse, while new ones were built to connect villages with railway stations. Together, the railways and the rice mills changed rural Bengal in a manner that was previously unimaginable. On the one hand, the railways helped carry coal to run steam-driven mills in the interior; on the other hand, by expediting and localizing the processing work, rice mills led to a massive outflow of grains from the village, thus giving the railways their much-needed return cargo to the port. As a result, the old pattern of rice trade changed; destitute women lost their husking jobs and rising prices of the staple often denied the poor their meal. The miller emerged as the largest dealer, buying paddy from the farmer and selling rice to a larger market. In folk imagination, the rice mill appeared as a diabolical agent of destitution and often a target of the mob frenzy. All this was true of entire eastern India, which is distinguished by a uniform rice culture. The book ends with the concluding chapter, ‘Village Society at the Crossroads’, outlining how all these factors transformed village life. In fact, society changed more than the economy. The new system of transport, especially the railways, broke the wall of isolation within which villages had previously existed. This break was not limited to a breach in physical distance; it also helped shape a new worldview. As people increasingly moved between rural and urban areas, with Calcutta exerting a powerful attraction and influence, new tastes, demands, concepts, ideas, manners, and etiquettes travelled to the interior. With the railways opening up the interiors, old service norms yielded to more objective market needs. Village society became increasingly fragile, much like the old family system based on the joint ownership of land. All of this, I believe, makes for a worthwhile subject of study. The changes discussed started roughly in the 1830s, which marked the beginning of the use of steam engine in industry and transport, (p.xvii) close to the time that saw the hesitant use of electric/diesel motors in farming and small irrigation. Page 5 of 7

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Preface Together they constitute the first phase of what could be called the technologyinduced paradigm shift in rural eastern India. Analysing long-term trends of rural change is also an important development imperative, as it helps identify the roots of some of the present-day problems. Finally, a few words about the sources used. The official record rooms have very little to offer on the subject at hand. But I have spared no labour to glean whatever little is available, spending more than a decade at the National Archives of India. This did not really help me detect the folk perception of the changes, which I wished to delineate. I thus approached the issue from a bottom-up perspective and explored a whole range of local-level sources. I have blended hard data with folk usage, oral traditions, songs, and sayings, as also vernacular literature, thereby infusing into the text both a life and a neglected source of historical insight. Notes:

(1.) Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981), p. 4. (2.) S. Rungta, ‘Bowreah Cotton and Fort Gloster Jute Mills 1872–1900’, Indian Economic and Social History Review (IESHR), 22 (1985), p. 134, cited in Jennifer Tann and John Aitken, ‘The Diffusion of the Stationary Steam Engine from Britain to India 1790–1830’, IESHR, 29, no. 2 (1992), pp. 199, 207. The Otis lift is still functional in the Governor’s Palace, Calcutta (Museum display record). Somerset Playne, Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa: Their History, People, Commerce and Industrial Resources (London: The Foreign and Colonial Compiling & Publishing Co., 1917), p. 144. (3.) In 1947, 80 per cent of the manufacturing workforce was in the artisan sector. Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Social Organization of Artisan Production in India: Changing Role of the Market, Technology and Merchant-Creditor: 18th to 20th Centuries’, in Economic History of India, ed. B.B. Chaudhuri (Delhi, 2005), p. 107. (4.) D.B. Mitra, The Cotton Weavers of Bengal (Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay Private Ltd, 1978); Hameeda Hossain, The Company Weavers of Bengal (Delhi, 1988); S.K. Bag, The Changing Fortunes of the Bengal Silk Industry (Calcutta, 1989). (5.) In November 1968, a government organization reported that 76 per cent of the people in Bankura employed in the factory sector had been (p.xviii) working in the rice mills. Directorate of Cottage and Small-Scale Industries, ‘Small Industries Seminar in the Districts of West Bengal’, Bankura, Governmentt of West Bengal (Calcutta, 1969), p. 2.

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Preface (6.) S.K. Sen, Studies in Industrial Policy and Development of India, 1858–1914 (Calcutta, 1964); idem. Studies in Economic Policy and the Development of India, 1848–1926 (Calcutta, 1966); Reba Bhattacharyya and Sourin Bhattacharyya, ‘The Indian Economic Scene and Swadeshi Industries from Nabagopal Mitra to 1905’, in Concept of National Education in India (Calcutta, 1967); U. Chatterjee, ‘Swadeshi Industries of Bengal: 1905 to 1947’, in Concept of National Education in India (Calcutta, 1967), pp. 55–74; Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1905–1908 (Calcutta, 1977), pp. 56, 109–10, 124–32; Amit Bhattacharyya, Swadeshi Enterprise in Bengal, 1900–1920 (Calcutta, 1986). (7.) Supplementary Report on the Survey of Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1924, p. 8.

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Acknowledgements

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

(p.xix) Acknowledgements RESEARCH FOR THIS WORK INVOLVED extensive travelling in various villages, where I received spontaneous support from the local people, who graciously provided me with shelter in their homes, answered my queries for hours, and assisted with the collection of data. I express my gratitude to them, regretting my inability to acknowledge each one of them individually. The research constituting this work was financially supported at various stages of its development by the Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi; the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, New Delhi; the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi; and the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, in two phases. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers and officials for their supportive role in releasing the grants. Acknowledging my debt to Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri reminds me of a medieval Bengali couplet, Pitamata janma dilen, guru dilen goon; alona byanjanete jure dilen noon. (The life I owe to my parents is worth living today for the quality instilled unto me by my master. It’s like adding salt to the unsavoury broth to make it more palatable.) My respects to him and his wife, Tripti Chandhuri. Next to my teacher, the person who supported me most in the publication of this work is my scholarly friend Deepak Kumar. With his active encouragement he has sustained me through many a (p.xx) moment of frustration. I acknowledge my deep sense of gratitude to him and his wife, Neelam Kumar. I am equally thankful to the anonymous reviewers of Oxford University Press India for their valuable comments on the earlier draft of this book. Throughout the progress of this work, I received unfailing support from my research students and project assistants. I appreciate the sincerity and devotion shown by Soma Biswas, Saikat Guha, and Barnali Chatterjee. Others like Page 1 of 2

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Acknowledgements Subhendu, Gopal, Nabin, Sujit, and Ajoy helped me in planning and conducting field studies. I wish them all success in life. Himadri Banerjee, Anuradha Roy, Ranjan Chakraborty, Ratna Sanyal, Ujjain Bhattacharyya, Chhanda Chatterjee, and Kumar Rana helped me with books I needed to consult. I must also acknowledge my friends in the National Archives of India, National Library, Secretariat Library, and New Secretariat Library, as also those in the libraries of the Russy Mody Centre for Excellence, Asiatic Society, Anthropological Survey of India, Geological Survey of India, Commercial Museum, Indian Museum, Indian Statistical Institute, Sriniketan, and Bangiya Sahitya Parisad, as well as in several nondescript village libraries. To my mind, the successful completion of this work is the best recognition of their support. To two great ladies, my mother and my wife, I owe the completion of this work. Always at my beck and call, my sons, Pinak and Chirag, did all the odd jobs and my nephew Bapun solved the computer-related problems. Smritikumar Sarkar Itkhola, Belghoria October 2013

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Abbreviations

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Abbreviations (p.xxi) BBMI Report on the Brass and Bell Metal Industries of Bengal, 1939 BHMA Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association BISC Report of the Bengal Industrial Survey Committee, 1945/1948 BNCCI Bengal National Chambers of Commerce and Industry BPREC Report of the Bengal Paddy and Rice Enquiry Committee, 1938 BPP Bengal Past and Present BRMA Bengal Rice Mills Association BS Bangiya San (Bengali Year) CEHI Cambridge Economic History of India, (I & II) CHJ Calcutta Historical Journal CLFB Classified List of Factories in Bengal, 1939 CSSS Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta DFI District Food Inspector DHAM District Handbook on Agricultural Marketing Page 1 of 4

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Abbreviations DOIB Bulletin of the Department of Industries, Government of Bengal EBR Eastern Bengal Railway EBSR Eastern Bengal State Railway (p.xxii) EIC East India Company EIR East Indian Railway FBERMW Report on the Family Budget Enquiry into the Living Conditions of the Rice Mill Workers in West Bengal, 1949–50 FHMAI Federation of Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association of India FWC Fort William Consultations GT Road Grand Trunk Road HDC Handloom Development Corporation ICHR Indian Council of Historical Research IESHR Indian Economic and Social History Review IGNR India General Navigation and Railway Company IGSN India General Steam Navigation Company IHC Indian History Congress IHR Indian Historical Review IIC Report of the Indian Industrial Commission, 1916–1918 ISC Report of the Indian Sugar Committee, 1921 ISI Indian Statistical Institute ITB Report of the Indian Tariff Board on the Sugar Industry, 1931 ITB Indian Tariff Board KBP Page 2 of 4

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Abbreviations Kangsa Banik Patrika MAP Report on the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Bengal, 1926 MAS Modern Asian Studies MB Mahajanbandhu MDA Market Development Assistance MFR Murshidabad Factory Records, Proceedings of the Council of Revenue at Murshidabad MRI Report on the Marketing of Rice in India, 1951 MWAC Report of the Minimum Wages Advisory Committee for Rice Mills in West Bengal, 1957 NAI National Archives of India NBR Northern Bengal Railway NBSR Northern Bengal State Railway OCIC Report of the Oilseeds Crushing Industry Inquiry Committee, 1956 (p.xxiii) RMC Rice Milling Committee, 1955 RNP Report on the Native Press, Bengal RSCI Report on the Survey of Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1924 RSN Rivers Steam Navigation Company SEZ Special Economic Zone SIHMA South India Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association VISC Report of the Village and the Small Industries Committee, 1955 WBSA West Bengal State Archives, Calcutta WIMCO Western India Match Company

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Abbreviations (p.xxiv)

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Introduction

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Introduction Smritikumar Sarkar

I Technology introduced in nineteenth-century India had generally been the firstgeneration version already rendered obsolete in the land of its origin. India thus served as the underbelly to the hubs of technological growth by helping recycle old technology.1 The first steamship sailing on an 800-mile voyage between Calcutta and Allahabad moved only 40 miles a day, while the steamboat covered up to 140 miles on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.2 The fastest rail engine, the Fairy Queen shuttling trains between Howrah and Raniganj, ran only 24 miles per hour. Nevertheless, steamboats on the Ganges changed the notion of river transport; the country boat plying the same route could cover at best 15 miles a day upstream.3 A ballad recounts how the faithful, taking the holy dip in the Ganges, were taken aback by the powerful waves of the passing steamer and failed to conclude their ritual ablutions and chanting of hymns. Literate Calcutta too was in a similar frame of mind. Samachar Darpan (8 August 1829) drew the attention of its readers to the wonderful mill on the Strand Road. Driven by two steam engines, the mill could grind 2,000 maunds of wheat a day, other than milling rice and oil. Three decades earlier, Albion Mill, the first steam-driven flour mill in England, had created a similar ‘sensation in London and it became the fashion to go and see it’. ‘What have Dukes, Lords and (p.2) Ladies to do with masquerading in a flour mill?’—a literally annoyed James Watt had asked his partner, Matthew Boulton.4

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Introduction The steam engine had been employed for various utilities in early nineteenthcentury Bengal, spreading thereafter to the whole of eastern India. The hub of British mercantile activities in the East, Calcutta drew a large number of these new devices.5 In 1830, the city acquired its first mint, the first modern mint in Asia, which was housed in a magnificent building with gothic pillars facing the river. A leading Bengali newspaper drew public attention to its underground floor, 25 feet below the road level. Heavy machineries had been installed for melting, rolling, and cutting metals, and dicing coins. With an output of 300,000 coins per day, what the best Mughal mint could achieve in a month, the mint literally remained for long a temple of the new technology in India.6 An aura of change thus visibly dawned in Calcutta of the 1820s. From the East India Company’s (EIC’s) steam navigation and mint, the initiative soon shifted to the individual entrepreneur, both European and Indian. A number of societies came up for the promotion of Western scientific ideas and the use of the new technology. In 1820, William Carey of the Baptist Mission, a botanist by choice, had founded the Agricultural and Horticultural Society, which aroused considerable interest among the landlords and merchants of Calcutta, the City of Palaces. Three years later, local medical practitioners organized themselves into the Calcutta Medical and Physical Society. The quest for Western scientific knowledge also dominated discussions at the Asiatic Society, founded by William Jones (1784) for the pursuit of oriental knowledge. During the 1820s, a group of Europeans and Indians assembled here at regular intervals to talk on subjects like geology, physical science, natural history, meteorology, and zoology, the proceedings of which came out in a series of publications entitled Gleanings in Science. Formed in 1832, the Society for the Translation of European Books published a number of European books in Bengali entitled Vijnan Sebadhi, or ‘in service to science’. Another society issued a bilingual journal in English and Bengali for the diffusion of scientific and industrial knowledge among the local people.7 In 1833, a Steam Society was founded in Calcutta with the purpose of spreading knowledge concerning steam navigation in (p.3) Bengal. The society created a Steam Fund in collaboration with the Union Bank—a leading bank of the city, subscribed to mainly by landlords—to help raise funds for the cause. Eventually, though, native professionals, officials, clerks, and others also joined them. The smallest sum of Rs 4 came from a peddler physician from Balasore, while servants of a European officer contributed Rs 12. All this points towards the growing interest which the steamboat was generating with its increasing popularity. Three years later, when Dwarkanath Tagore launched a Steam Tug Society in Calcutta, it netted 16 per cent profit in the first year of its operation.8 The enthusiasm continued, as did the profit. In March 1850, the Calcutta Steam

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Introduction Tug Association declared Rs 30 per share as the dividend, while in June the Hooghly Steam Tug Company paid Rs 20.9 From Calcutta, the new technology slowly spread to the districts. The iron suspension bridge and the steam engine were the foremost among this new technology that reached the interiors. In 1822, a judge of the Calcutta Court of Circuit, Mr Sealy, had lost his life while fording an innocent-looking small stream in the interior of Bankura, which embarrassed the government. Iron suspension bridges replaced the old rope bridges (rajjur pool) that the company had erected earlier on important thoroughfares. By the mid-nineteenth century, steamboats and steam-driven machines reached the districts in ones and twos. Everyone in the city had thus been expecting an industrial take-off of sorts, with Calcutta poised to play the role of a Manchester in Asia. The editor of a Bengali newspaper assured its readers thus: ‘They [the English] had invented and would soon introduce to this country a piece of machinery by which the cow could be milked and sweetmeats of the cream manufactured automatically.’ It was as if the English were the Almighty, capable of achieving everything they would like to do with their machines—angrej bhagwan or the English God. The notion of an imminent shift to a mechanized civilization trickled down from the creamy layers of society to create a kind of euphoria at the folk level. A ballad summed up the popular ecstasy thus: ‘O, thou machine, thou hast conquered our villages and cities! I salute thy feet.’10 The first product of the Industrial Revolution to reach Bengal was neither the textile, nor the yarn, nor the loom, but John Kay’s flying shuttle. Was it a tool or a machine, or a mix of both? The EIC (p.4) brought it to help the weavers weave faster. Soon, local carpenters made a cheap prototype of the loom. Other similar examples of how new technology was integrated into rural India were the new silk-reeling techniques and the long-staple cotton for better handspun yarn. The induction of technology into the periphery thus really began from an artisan base. The first modern factory built by the EIC was a small workshop at Khidirpur to assemble iron bridges imported from England. In a land crisscrossed with rivers, these bridges helped them assert their control in the interior, as also draw wide admiration of the people, except for the unhappy boatman. Dhaka at this time was much less populous than either Bardhaman or Benares, but still had a population larger than Brussels. In 1830, the town got a marvel—an iron bridge that attracted more visitors than many of its old monuments. In Hooghly, District Judge Mr Smith built a similar bridge over the Saraswati River with contributions from villagers of Saptagram. Slowly, the iron bridge spread even to the farthest parts of Bengal. Whether it was the Karala bridge in Jalpaiguri or

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Introduction the Jayanti bridge in Coochbehar, they were all built based on the model of the Ken Diana Bridge of Caron.11 With the passage of time, colonialism brought mill-made textiles and raw materials, namely yarn, for the weaver, and metal rods, bars, and sheets for the smith to produce old goods in new ways. The new tools—machine-made hammers, chisels, files, wrenches, pliers, handsaws, dices, nails and screws, nutbolts, and the measuring tape—changed the artisan’s old perception of work. English ships brought to Bengal an unending row of surprises such as new implements and accessories, as well as arms and ammunitions to supplement the indigenous technology. A wide range of steam engines penetrated deep into the countryside under private initiative. In between came sundry other technologies, such as the river-dredging machine, used to service the main trade channel to north India through the vital Nadia rivers. From its ox-drawn variety to the steam vessel, the early river-dredging techniques failed to yield the desired result, forcing the company to rely on the traditional basket and spade for digging out silt from the river.12 But no other technology affected rural India the way the railways did. Steam-driven railways ended the isolation of the village. As it rolled out of Calcutta, linking the colonial metropolis to the periphery, (p.5) railways emerged as the real victor, the symbol of power and glory of the Raj. To the rural folk, the railway engine with its long trail of smoke darkening the sky appeared as an avatar of supernatural power.13 The sheer volume of references to the railways at the folk level illustrates the deep imprint it had made upon the contemporary mind. From gaping wonder to hapless wail, regretting the drain of life-sustaining grain from the village, the references touched upon a wide range of themes concerning rural life. Only a fraction of all these has surfaced in literature so far. By encouraging mobility, the railways changed both the morphology and the demography of the interior. From Calcutta, the new technology travelled along the railway tracks to the districts. Small steam-driven machines for milling sugar, oil, and rice were found in these areas, as was small-scale manufacturing. The multiplicity of the rice mill in rural areas dislocated the old village life to such an extent that it slowly but irrevocably changed in the rice-based cultural economy of eastern India.

II Much has been written about the reason behind the building of railways in India —from British political motives to pressure from the cotton lobby. All major issues—the guarantee system to draw British capital and technology, the high cost of construction, the dislocation of the old system of transport and industry, and price rationalization—are much too well known.14 Indian society, it has been stressed, also did not remain the same; the taboo of pollution by contact with a Page 4 of 18

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Introduction low-caste person fell off as it was ‘hard to maintain in the intimacy of the railway compartment’.15 Nevertheless, many fascinating aspects of the history of railways in India still remain unexplored. A case in point is the acquisition of land for the railways. The historiography of Indian railways in recent years has been marked by a new departure. From the interrelationship of imperialism, financial/industrial capital, technology, and the nationwide development of railways, research attention has shifted to local-level issues. ‘Limited in time and space’, these issues are crucial to our understanding of Indian railways, evolution of the policies that shaped and governed them, as also their impact on (p.6) regional economy and society.16 Local issues impinged upon trans-regional developments and, in turn, determined the subsequent pattern of the growth of the railways in India. Land is always an important factor in construction work; yet, for a gigantic building activity like the railways, it failed to attract the attention of earlier scholars in the field. In pre-colonial India, land was regularly acquired to build roads, forts, palaces, public buildings, and to dig tanks and canals. Supply of land for all these did not create a problem at the time. Contemporary authorities provided minute details about house building but did not even refer to land.17 The company’s government had also acquired land for similar purposes, including the land for building ports and dockyards, but did not encounter major opposition. If the early record of Calcutta’s urban growth is any indication, land acquisition in the early nineteenth century was a peaceful affair,18 except in the case of the construction of Strand Road.19 The acquisition of land for the railways differed from the earlier instances in two ways. Never before had land been acquired on such a massive scale, running into hundreds of miles across the towns, villages, and regions. There were also different types of acquisition: permanent, temporary, and other. All these must have caused huge rumbles of resentment among the people. The land was given for free by the government to the railway company. The government paid the owner the price of his land and the cost of the built-in superstructure, if any. Thus, compensation schemes for the land and property acquired for the railways had to be carefully worked out and minutely administered. In the context of financial stringency, the government also tried to keep the cost of land acquisition to the minimum. To expedite the work and avoid the vexatious issue of compensation, R.M. Stephenson had mooted the idea of state acquisition of land. T.W. Simms favoured the idea, as it would be not only easier but also safe not to allow railway companies to deal with the sensitive issue of private property. He argued that it would not entail much of a financial burden on the government either, as land was cheap even in densely populated areas of Bengal. Henry Hardinge, Page 5 of 18

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Introduction Governor-General of India, and members of his council readily accepted the proposal. (p.7) A lot of issues, however, cropped up, since land acquisition for the railways was of a new nature. The construction of a canal also required a long strip of land, but limited to a few miles at best, while a road was mostly built through thinly inhabited areas. Hence, the earlier process of land acquisition encountered little difficulties for the definition and settlement of claims. The question was also associated with the sensitive notion of homestead. Reinforced by feudal social structures, the notion attributed cultural values to one’s home and the land inherited from one’s ancestors. To the villager, land was not just an asset but a virtual guarantee to his sustenance through the vicissitudes of life. In the religious cultural tradition, the land was held in trust before passing it on to descendants. A man would agree to part with it only under the direst necessity.20 But, while he could sell or even desert his land, eviction from the homestead was an altogether different issue. Tribal people feared that clearing forests for the railways would dislocate ancient graves and as a result of which fire balls, instead of rain, would drop from heaven. Eviction from homesteads was thus considered undesirable and to be avoided till the end. It was also a humanitarian issue. ‘On this ridge the villages are clustered almost continuously in some parts,’ W.H. Greathed observed while making the route map for an all-weather road to Dhaka, and the road, always contracted at these spots, has been led through them. Unaccustomed as it is to traffic, the road affords little inconvenience to the village communities, small as be the plot to which their habitations are necessarily confined; but the construction along this of anything like a trunk road, which would occupy an average of at least ninety feet, and which must necessarily be formed in continuous straight lines, would go far to destroy many villages, and would occasion so much loss and damage to communities … as to lead me to conclude such a plan of construction impracticable. The Calcutta–Dhaka road thus made ‘a considerable angle at Bongaon on the Ichhamati River’ to leave the villages unaffected.21 The technicality of the problem also deserves attention. The land for the railways was needed for double lines in both uninhabited and congested areas. The land marked for tracks, stations, sidings, and yards was to be permanently acquired, while a certain measure (p.8) was also needed for only the period of construction. Land was also required for embankments, diversion of water channels, staff quarters, and railway brickfields. All these generated fear in thickly populated and important areas such as river ports and market towns.22 To make it commercially viable, it was decided to build the line closely along the Page 6 of 18

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Introduction river, which caused an inherent dichotomy between the railway’s commercial compulsion and the opposition of affected groups in riverbank areas. Since the river was the principal artery of trade and transport in those days, the closer a piece of land was to the river, the higher was its cost. Riverside land was also considered important for residence. In 1852, J.C. Page, touring around Bengal, stated, ‘The banks of every river have villages upon them.’ This is repeated by a latter-day observer thus: ‘Along larger streams the line of villages is often unbroken for miles together, so much so that it is quite impossible to identify the end of one village from the commencement of the next.’23 In the cultural tradition of the land, living on the west bank of the Ganges was considered akin to residing in the holy city of Benares, ‘Gangār paschimkul Bārānasi samatul’. As the Howrah–Pundooa line was to be built along the west bank of the Hooghly River, the severest opposition to the process of land acquisition for the first railway project came from these areas. A more sensitive problem was how to deal with sacred sites—temples, mosques, and places of religious congregation (akhra, ashram, idgah, dargah), including cremation and burial grounds. Early engineers and surveyors mapping the route were generally unaware of the sensitivity of this issue. The engineer always insisted on keeping the line as straight as possible to get the best of the running stock and minimize operational cost. European officials often failed to distinguish these sites from other land earmarked for attachment. Thus, while commencing the work from Howrah, officials had acquired a plot of land belonging to a Catholic chapel, which led to strong protests from Calcutta’s Eurasian population. A wide range of complications thus arose, ranging from litigations to public riots, often enforcing deviation from the original route map of the line.24 There was also the issue of public–private legal entitlement. The government could not transfer land acquired for public works under the existing law (Regulation I of 1824) to a private company for (p.9) the construction of railways. Nor could the railway construction be referred to as public work. The existing norms of land acquisition by the government did not match the basic premise of the contract made with the railway company either. In all cases, the legal title and valuation of the land were to be settled first before it could be taken over by the government. In brief, the complexity of interests vested in land and the procedure of their settlement were bound to delay the process of land acquisition.25

III Technology can be useful to society only through the entrepreneur who decides to use it. The decision requires an awareness of the opportunity as well as the technology needed to achieve the target. He considers ‘a constellation of sociopolitical and economic forces favourable for venturing into one or other Page 7 of 18

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Introduction enterprise’. If successful, his enterprise marks him out, both socially and materially, from those who refrain from such activities as also from those who fail.26 The entrepreneur has a key role in promoting society from a lower to a higher level of technology. Technology offers him new opportunities but his success depends on the quality of his entrepreneurial drive and the investment environment. India received new technology quite early but failed to achieve a breakthrough. It has been held that her caste system, metaphysical vision of life, and religious catholicity discouraged the spirit of enterprise—a situation often seen in contrast to the ‘cultural root’ of Japanese enterprise. A recent critic of the view argued that ‘the value system of Japan, emanating from its religious–cultural ethos, could hardly have been more conducive to economic achievement than the value system engendered by Hinduism’.27 The argument attributing the Parsi’s success as an entrepreneur to his Protestant ethic also drew a similar reaction. ‘Had a Protestant ethic been the only factor, the progressive minded English-educated Bengalis, after the success of their initial ventures in collaboration with the Europeans, would not have faded out after 1848; nor would the Marwaris, an immensely conservative community, have emerged thereafter as the most successful Indian business group in Calcutta.’ More than Protestant ethic, Parsi success was mainly due (p. 10) to ‘the strategic position they had carved out for themselves early in Bombay as collaborators of the Europeans in China trade’.28 Opposed to this culture-centric view is the argument blaming colonial rule for the lack of enterprise. Industrial entrepreneurship, it argues, was ‘a function of, on the one hand, incentives, profits, and a generally stimulating environment; and, on the other, of access to capital and labour, of lack of obstacles to entry, of an education and business acumen sufficient to make men aware of and able to grasp opportunities.’ British supremacy in business and industry, aided by the advantages they derived from their racial, cultural, and linguistic affinities with the ruling race, denied Indians an entry into the select coterie.29 In the place of ‘interracial collaboration’ of early colonial Bengal, there came into existence ‘a new racial caste in business’.30 Europeans had succeeded as they ‘enjoyed easier access to and, therefore, a greater command of capital while their connections with banks and managing agencies facilitated its mobilization’.31 The success of European enterprise, vis-à-vis the failure of Indian, perpetuated the process of capital outflow from India adding to its economic backwardness. While arguments such as these lay too much stress upon the role of the state as a factor in motivating the entrepreneur, they ignore the change brought about by the British in the climate of enterprise in India.

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Introduction A few others shifted their attention to the community, postulating that some social groups in India are more enterprising than others. Morris D. Morris argued that if the imperfect commercial facilities in India in the second half of the nineteenth century ‘did not prevent Bombay entrepreneurs from entering manufacturing they should not have been sufficient cause to bar Bengali or other native entrepreneurs’. The Bengali failed to break into the jute industry because, compared to Bombay, capital was scarce in Calcutta and that, unlike the Parsi of western India, he was also lacking in enterprise.32 What has been ignored here is that industries in Bengal dealt mostly with the export market, while those of Bombay catered to local demand. The ‘British dominated Bengal industry in a way they never did in Bombay’. ‘With their more advanced knowledge of and contacts in foreign markets’, they possessed ‘a clear comparative advantage’ in the industries of Bengal. The validity of the (p.11) ethno-cultural argument has been questioned in other ways as well. If the Bengali’s failure to venture into the jute market was the result of his ethnocultural attributes, then how can one explain his success in coal mining and tea plantation under increasingly hostile conditions?33 Similarly, if European success in the second half of the nineteenth century was due to their entrepreneurial ingenuity, then why did they largely fail earlier in the sugar and iron industries? 34

Furthermore, community could hardly be used as a uniform category. ‘Entrepreneurs of any single community, however defined, often had as much or as little in common with each other as they had with the member of any other group.’35 The variation in entrepreneurial drive, which is also relative to time, could with difficulty be explained in terms of community. Bengalis, denounced in the nineteenth century for their lack of commercial pursuit, earlier viewed it as the most profitable vocation to follow. A whole branch of literature is thus devoted to the tradition of their great sea-faring merchants, substantiated by evidence now available. A sixteenth-century Malaya chronicle refers to the Malaccan’s hailing the first batch of Portuguese sailors to their country as ‘white Bengalis’.36 The way Bengalis had responded to new opportunities in the early nineteenth century indicated their lack of inhibitions towards trade. In some fields, Europeans failed to compete with them. ‘By the early 1840s, Calcutta and its hinterland’ appeared to be ‘on the threshold of a small-scale industrial revolution’ fuelled by new economic institutions based on interracial enterprise.37 However, the crisis of the late 1840s—the collapse of agency houses and private banks, and delinquencies and adventurism of British collaborators—scared away Bengali capital from business. From a hub of colonial trade, Calcutta in the late nineteenth century slid to ‘an economic dependency of Great Britain’ with the British dominating the city’s modern commercial sector.38 All these shifted the local capital to land, which emerged as Page 9 of 18

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Introduction a moderately profitable but more secure sector of investment. The shift of capital to land soon transformed into a social movement characterized by aversion to trade, largely a late-nineteenth-century phenomenon.39 The dominant bhadralok culture of Bengal had further consolidated this trend. The bhadralok preferred white-collar jobs, ‘the causal, simple and graceful life of a country gentleman’, to the hazardous (p.12) anxiety in trade and industry. Large-scale manufacturing was thus left to European care till the First World War and then to non-Bengali business groups. The Bengalis’ retreat from business drew sharp criticism from their leaders. What is missed out here is their role as small entrepreneurs initiating many a new line of manufacture in India that in the long run proved very successful. Very little is known about these small-scale enterprises despite the repeated emphases on the need for such studies.40

IV Contrary to the Indian artisan’s supposed traditionalism, recent research has cited evidence of his entrepreneurial talent. A number of small- and mediumscale engineering industries in different parts of India were initiated by artisans. As their new ventures proved successful, they were slowly ‘overtaken by a second wave of entrepreneurs consisting primarily of businessmen’. The weaver shifted to power looms, as the blacksmith started manufacturing ‘light engineering products’ without compromising his community character.41 In Punjab, blacksmiths and carpenters were the first to respond to the opportunity created by the railways and other construction works. A large number of them moved out of their native villages to reach as far as Assam, with some even going overseas to Kenya and similar other places. Others flourished by catering to new demand in the Canal Zone. Not only had they adopted imported tools but also flooded local markets with their cheap copies. Their attitude to utilizing the wealth thus acquired also changed. In earlier times, they spent most of it either on temple construction or in social charity. A carpenter achieving prosperity in Simla had thus built a temple in his native village and dedicated it to his clan god, Viswakarma. With funds repatriated from overseas or other parts of India, artisans in the early-twentieth-century Punjab, on the other hand, purchased urban land or launched small factories.42 The Ramgarhias in particular had ‘a vital role in the regeneration of the agroindustry in Punjab’. Owing to their technical upbringings, they ‘studied foreign designs and adapted a number of agricultural implements to local conditions’. Their craftsmanship flourished ‘in (p.13) response to rising requirement of agriculture in the state and most of them shifted to nearby towns to set up small industrial workshops. In due course, these units grew into full-fledged industrial enterprises. Early promoters of the agro-industry in Punjab were therefore mostly the village artisans themselves’.43 Page 10 of 18

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Introduction In Gujarat as well, ‘the transition to entrepreneurial industrial production’ did not remain confined to ‘big cities’, but spread also to rural areas. In Bulsar and Bilimora, ‘artisan caste members [suthar] and blacksmiths [luhar] were the first to become actively involved in the transition to industrial production’. In Bulsar, suthars engaged in an ‘entrepreneurial form of production’ using non-traditional technology and hired labour based on specialization to produce for mainly, but not exclusively, the local market. In 1912, a suthar family launched the first industrial workshop of rural Bulsar to manufacture the Persian wheel bucket for north Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharastra, Bihar, and Madras. Within two decades, the unit acquired an iron furnace, a lathe, and a metal press run by a diesel motor, along with a threefold expansion of the workforce. Another suthar family of Bulsar started a small repairing shop with a lathe, servicing motor pumps and rice- and pulse-mill machines. In less than five years, it came to serve the hinterland of Bulsar and Bilmor. With the growth of the cotton textile industry in the 1930s, suthars took to manufacturing wooden spools and bobbins with their traditional tools, slowly shifting to motor-driven machines with the capital coming from ‘family members and kinsmen’. To the suthar, ‘entry into the production of bobbins was an extension’ of his hereditary craft. Others who tried failed due to ‘cash shortage and the lack of commercial skills’, problems that bothered most small enterprises in the early days.44 A similar ‘transition from traditional craftsmanship to industrial production’ also took place in the Kheda district of Gujarat, based on modern entrepreneurship in respect of both the mode of production and its origin. Nearly a fourth of these small-scale enterprises belonged to the kachhia caste or bricklayers. Their traditional technical skill helped them but their enterprise suffered due to a lack of contact and networks.45 Moving out of their traditional craft, a section of artisans in different parts of India thus turned into what Mario Rutten called the ‘artisan industrialist’. (p.14) All of these help highlight the need for a similar study on Bengal. Much has been written about deindustrialization but hardly anything about how the artisans responded to the new technology brought by colonial trade. The present study aims to address this very issue.

V ‘Bengal’ in the early nineteenth century primarily referred to rural Bengal. Its innumerable rivers, streams, and creeks kept the population confined to small settlements. The smallest of these units was the village, with a boundary sacred to its notion of well-being. This settlement of landholders and their aides eventually developed into the village community.46 Its basic objective was to generate life-sustaining crop, a seasonal yet timeless, historical function, thus turning the village into a centre of stability. In areas relatively free from sharp ecological and political undulations, one thus observes villages outliving Page 11 of 18

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Introduction empires. Hence, a village referred to in early medieval epigraphy sometimes surfaces in colonial records. Early European observers, coming from the fragile society of Industrial Revolution, were fascinated by the stability of Indian villages. An early official note of the EIC thus stated: Under this simple form of municipal government, inhabitants of the country have lived from time immemorial. The boundaries of village themselves have been sometimes injured, and even desolated by war, famine and disease, the same name, the same limit, the same interests, and even the same families continued for ages. The inhabitants give themselves no trouble about the breaking up and divisions of the kingdom, while the village remains entire, they care not to what power it is transferred or to what sovereign it devolves; its internal economy remains unchanged.47 Into this seemingly unchanging rural India, the colonial masters had introduced measures that transformed its way of life. Studies on rural India under British rule deal mostly with agriculture, land revenue, and administrative measures; trade and market integration; as also culture. The only important area neglected so far is how new technology affected rural life. Nevertheless, the real triumph of European imperialism is ‘a triumph of technology’. ‘Western (p.15) industrial technology’, Daniel R. Headrick argued, ‘transformed the world more than any leader, religion, revolution or war.’48 Similarly, the technology that the British brought to India far outlived their empire. From the colonial hub centres, it reached the periphery, affecting the rich and poor alike, as nothing escaped its influence. Technology destabilized old occupations, boosted others, and created new tastes and demands to replace the old. Localities separated by distances requiring several weeks of perilous journeys were now only a few hours away by train. Telegraphic wire transmitted the minutest of information from the farthest corner of the country to the village post office and the rail station. Goods produced in unheard of foreign lands reached the village market to elicit the fancy and imagination of the rustic buyer. As the British bridgehead, Bengal was more intensely influenced by these than most other regions of India. The important question is in what way the village society was affected by the new technology. But this leads us to too large a field to cover within the ambit of a book. Hence, the focus is on some specific areas as starting points to delineate the social history of technology in rural Bengal since the early nineteenth century. These areas have been organized into chapters, as stated earlier. Each chapter deals with different aspects of the process of technology induction into the village arena and its impact on rural economy and society. Agriculture is the only important area that has been left Page 12 of 18

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Introduction out of the scheme of this book since it was the least affected by technology, save for primary processing. Technology increased the market network, which undermined the old organization of village communities. For community, as Stephen A. Marglin puts it, ‘depends on constraints and obligations that transcend the calculation of individual utility’.49 The market, on the other hand, flourishes on increasing exploitation of individual interest. Slowly and unnoticed, the village community dissolved under the irreconcilable contradiction between the two. Families so far bound by the community into mutually beneficial relationships tended to break away from the old bonds, a process that generally ended by splitting apart families altogether. Village life lost much of its old charms, while the piecemeal and rudimentary nature of the technology reaching the periphery failed to deliver its much desired result. (p.16) But social benefits of all new technologies always take time to deliver results. In the immediacy of their use it might seem that technologies are destructive of the prevailing social order, but they also set the trends that generate new hopes and aspirations. It is the new generation rather than the old in the villages that served as the bridging generation. Later generations responded to technology with a more approving outlook, thus ushering in a new era laden with expectations for the future. Notes:

(1.) An exception was the railway bridge built in India, costlier and more durable than the timber-trestle bridges of contemporary America. Daniel R. Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress (Oxford, 1988), p. 76. (2.) Henry T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges: An Exploration in the History of India’s Modernization through Science and Technology (Delhi, 1960 [Reprint 1987]), pp. 15–16, 50–1, 55, 59; G.R. Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York: Rinehart, 1951), p. 5. (3.) Paul C. Pet, Rail across India: A Photographic Journey (New York: Abbeville, 1986), p. 27. (4.) Satire by Rupchand Pakshi (1818–82). Bengali paper cited by Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay in Sangbadpatre Sekaler Katha (Calcutta, 1401 BS), Vol. I, p. 186; Paul Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England (London, 1964), pp. 333–4. (5.) In 1837, Calcutta had 62 British firms, compared to 17 in Bombay, 15 in Singapore, 10 in Madras, 11 in Canton, and 2 in Penang. J. Crawford, Sketch of the Commercial Resources, Monetary and Mercantile System of British India

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Introduction (London, 1837), cited by Benoy Ghosh, Banglar Nabajagriti (Calcutta, 1979), p. 33. (6.) B. Bandyopadhyaya, Sangbadpatre, Vol. II, pp. 334–5. Frank Perlin, ‘MintTechnology and Mint-Output in an Age of Growing Commercialisation’, in Essays in Medieval Indian Economic History, ed. Satish Chandra (Delhi: IHC), pp. 292– 304; H.T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges, pp. 40–1. The Calcutta mint used an upgraded version of Boulton’s steam coining press invented in the 1790s. P. Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution, p. 336. (7.) H.T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges, pp. 42–3; India Gazette, cited in the Samachar Darpan dated 5 May 1832 and 11 September 1833; B. Bandyopadhyaya, Sangbadpatre, Vol. II, pp. 179, 187–8. (8.) B. Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre, Vol. II, pp. 340–1, 343–4. (9.) Allen’s Indian Mail and Register of Intelligence for British and Foreign India, China and All Parts of the East, vol. VIII, no. 145, Friday, 22 March 1850, London, p. 161; Allen’s Indian Mail, no. 148, Saturday, 4 May1850, London, p. 255. (10.) Allen’s Indian Mail, vol. I, pp. 165–70, 175–6; Hindu Hitoishini (11 January 1868), cited in Report on the Native Press, Bengal, p. 6; Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Social Organization of Artisan Production in India: Changing Role of the Market, Technology and Merchant-Creditor, 18th to 20th Centuries’, in History of Science, Philosophy and Culture of Indian Civilization, Vol. VIII, Part III: Economic History of India from Eighteenth to Twentieth Century, ed. Binay Bhusan Chaudhuri (New Delhi, 2005), p. 109. (11.) Home Public, 19 December 1822, Progs. No. 54 A; Henry Walter, ‘Census of the City of Dhaka, 1830’, Asiatic Researches, XVII (1832), pp. 534–57. B. Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre, Vol. I, pp. 350–1; Charuchandra Sanyal, ‘Jalpaiguri Saharer Eksho Bachchar: 1869–1969’, in Jalpaiguri District: Centenary Souvenir: 1869–1969, eds C.C. Sanyal et al. (Jalpaiguri, 1970), p. 87; Somerset Playne, Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa: Their History, People, Commerce and Industrial Resources (London: The Foreign and Colonial Compiling & Publishing Co., 1917), p.197. (12.) James Long, ‘Report on the Nuddea Rivers and the Advantages Derived from the Measures Annually Adopted for Facilitating Navigation’, dated Kishnaghur, 14 July 1848, in Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. VIII, pp. 43–5; National Archives of India, PWD Progs. No. 7544 dated 17 February 1859. (13.) Census Report of the United Provinces for 1931, Part I, p. 515.

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Introduction (14.) G.S. Iyer argued that ‘every additional mile of railway constructed in this country drove a fresh nail into the coffin of one industry or another’, thus making ‘the lot of the Indian poor so miserable’. For the nationalist view on railways see Bipan Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India (New Delhi, 1982), pp. 172–216. Ian J. Kerr, Railways in Modern India (Delhi, 2001), pp. 328–56. (15.) Lady Falkland’s eyewitness account of the opening of the railway line in Bombay as cited in W.H. Carey, The Good Old Days of the Honorable John Company (Calcutta, 1882 [Reprint Calcutta, 1964]), pp. 285–6. W.J. Macpherson, ‘Economic Development in India under the British Crown, 1858–1947’, in Economic Development in the Long Run, ed. A.J. Youngson (London, 1972), p. 190. (16.) Ian J. Kerr (ed.), 27 Down: New Departures in Railway Studies (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007). (17.) The Ain I Akbari thus refers to house building in great detail, giving prices of materials required, wages of the labourer employed, estimates of building the house, and the weight of different kinds of wood used, including rules for calculating the loss in wood chips. But there is not a single reference to the land as a basic requirement for the construction work, neither the mode of its acquisition nor the market price of the land used for public buildings. Abul Fazl, The Ain-i-Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann (London, 1873 [Reprint, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1993]), pp. 232–9. (18.) The Calcutta-based newspaper Samachar Darpan, dated 26 February 1820, thus referred to demolition of a large number of residential houses, gardens, and tanks belonging to native people for the construction of a road from Chandni Chowk in the south to the northern part of the city. It stated that the affected people were ‘paid good compensation’ and there was no sign of protest. B. Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre, Vol. I, pp. 331, 333. (19.) W.H. Carey observed, ‘In 1823, Strand Road was formed, which led to a great sanitary improvement, though it injured the ship builders.’ They opposed their eviction from the riverbank of Calcutta, but had nevertheless to yield. ‘The ship builders’, Carey added, ‘were obliged to remove to Howrah and Salkia’, on the other side of the Hooghly River. W.H. Carey, The Good Old Days, p. 67. (20.) A villager in Orissa stated, ‘I have three daughters. I will sell a part of my land to marry off my elder daughter; another part, two years later, for the next and so on. How can I get my daughters married when they attain the age, if I dispose of my land today.’ Interview by Nandita Mohanty, presented in a seminar at the Department of History, Sambalpur University, on 13 February 2010.

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Introduction (21.) W.H. Greathed, ‘Report on the Communication between Calcutta and Dhaka, Preliminary 1856’, in Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Serial No. 19, pp. 11, 19. (22.) Report by Charles Hugh Lushington of his proceedings in taking the land and other property required for the railway, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, IV, p. 9; Edward Davidson, The Railways of India with an Account of Their Rise, Progress and Construction, Written on the Basis of the India Office Records (London, 1868), p. 105. (23.) As cited by M. Wylie, Bengal as a Field of Missions (London: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1854), p. 102; J.E. Gastrell, Geographical and Statistical Report of the Districts of Jessore, Fureedpore, and Buckerganj (Calcutta, 1868), p. 6 (24.) ‘Railway Operations’, Englishman, cited in Allen’s Indian Mail, vol. VIII, no. 162, Tuesday, 3 December 1850, p. 701. An official note (12 March 1856) referred to a similar situation in Patna city arising out of the railway land clearing work involving violation of the sacred site. The extremely volatile situation could be brought under control only after the government had interfered and warned the Railway Company not to repeat such mistakes in future. Fin. (Rly) Des, as cited by Hena Mukherjee, The Early History of the East Indian Railway 1845–1879 (Calcutta, 1994), p. 98. (25.) For contemporary reporting of the problem see the Bombay Times and the Friend of India dated 25 April 1850, as cited in the Allen’s Indian Mail, vol. VIII, no. 151, Monday, 17 June 1850, p. 348; The Calcutta Gazette, September 1850, cited in Allen’s Indian Mail, no. 159, Monday, 21 October 1850, p. 605; Friend of India, dated 3 October 1850, cited in Allen’s Indian Mail, no. 161, Wednesday, 20 November 1850, p. 669. (26.) K.L. Sharma, Social Stratification and Mobility (New Delhi, 1994), p. 123. (27.) W.J. Macpherson, ‘Economic Development in India’, p. 185; D. Tripathi, Historical Roots of Industrial Entrepreneurship in India and Japan (Delhi, 1997), pp. 14–15. (28.) Rajat K. Ray (ed.), Entrepreneurship and Industry in India 1800–1947 (Delhi, 1994), pp. 3–4. (29.) W.J. Macpherson, ‘Economic Development in India’, p. 186; A.K. Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, in Elites in South Asia, eds E. Leach and S.N. Mukherji (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 223–56. (30.) Nirmal Kumar Sinha, ‘Indian Business Enterprise: Its failure in Calcutta: 1800–1848’, in The Economic History of Bengal, 1793–1848, ed. Nirmal Kumar Sinha (Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1956), Vol. III, p. 127; Blair B. Kling, Page 16 of 18

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Introduction ‘Economic Foundation of the Bengal Renaissance’, in Aspects of Bengali History and Society, ed. R.V.M. Baumer (Honolulu, 1976), pp. 26–7; see also Kling’s Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India (Calcutta, 1981), pp. 1–9. A.K, Bagchi argued that ‘a racial and cultural affinity claimed by all European businessmen with British rulers that gave the former an edge over Indian in all public affairs connected with making money.’ A.K. Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, p. 225. (31.) Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, ‘Industrialization in India before 1947: Conventional Approaches and Alternative Perspectives’, Modern Asian Studies, 19, no. 3 (1985), p. 644. (32.) Morris D. Morris, ‘Large-Scale Industry’, in The Cambridge Economic History of India (CEHI), Vol. II: c. 1757–c. 1970, ed. Dharma Kumar (The Cambridge University Press, 1982 [Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984]), pp. 568–70. (33.) Omkar Goswami, ‘Sahibs, Babus, and Banians: Change in Industrial Control in Eastern India, 1918–50’, in Entrepreneurship and Industry in India 1800– 1947, ed. Rajat K. Ray (Delhi, 1994), p. 230. In 1847, 38 out of 40 indigenous collieries belonged to Bengalis. C.P. Simmons, ‘Indigenous Enterprise in the Indian Coal Mining Industry c. 1835–1939’, Indian Economic and Social History Review (IESHR), 13, no. 2 (1976), p. 192. (34.) B.B. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 87; N.K. Sinha argued, ‘We should not be wrong if we ascribe British success in business in India more to the effects of British legislation and policy than to British character.’ N.K. Sinha, ed., Economic History, pp. 133–5; C.P. Simmons, ‘Indigenous Enterprise’, p. 217. (35.) R. Chandavarkar, ‘Industrialization in India before 1947’, p. 646. (36.) Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Notes on the Sixteenth Century Bengal Trade’, IESHR, 24, no. 3 (1987), pp. 265–89. (37.) O. Goswami, ‘Sahibs, Babus, and Banians’, pp. 249–51; B.B. Kling, ‘Economic Foundations’, pp. 26–7. (38.) N.K. Sinha, Economic History, p. 136; B.B. Kling, ‘Economic Foundations’, p. 27. (39.) N.K. Sinha, Economic History, pp. 125–7, 130–6. The rent realized from a zamindari estate was three times higher than the amount payable as revenue for the same, and it had been growing over the period. Blair B. Kling did not consider landholding a barrier to the growth of commercial or industrial enterprise. Landholding actually helped in the process of capital mobilization. Both Dwarkanath Tagore and Motilal Seal had successfully combined business

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Introduction with the management of big zamindari, thus creating a trend of a both way movement of capital from the land to business and the reverse. (40.) Acharyya Prafullachandra Roy, Bangalir Mastiska O Tahar Apabyabahar (Calcutta, 1985). Between 1855 and 1860, the number of Bengali members in the Bengal Chamber of Commerce fell from five to zero. Bengal Chamber of Commerce, Half-yearly Reports (Calcutta, 1853–60) cited by B.B. Kling, Partner in Empire, pp. 4–5, 244–5. For, the problems of entrepreneurial response have been so far dealt with mainly with regard to the large scale industries. N.K. Sinha, Economic History, p. 124. Morris D. Morris described it as the terra incognita of Indian economic history. M.D. Morris, ‘Large-Scale Industry’, p. 569. (41.) James J. Berna, Industrial Entrepreneurship in Madras State (Bombay, 1960); H. Steefkerk, Industrial Transition in Rural India: Artisans, Traders and Tribals in South Gujarat (Bombay, 1985), p. 69; M. Holmstrom, Industry and Inequality: The Social Anthropology of Indian Labour (Cambridge, 1985); Mario Rutten, Farms and Factories: Social Profile of Large Farmers and Rural Industrialists in West India (Delhi, 1995), p. 31. (42.) Satish Saberwal, Mobile Men: Limits to Social Change in Urban Punjab (New Delhi, 1976), pp. 87–99. (43.) G.K. Chadha argued, ‘The Ramgarhias have studied foreign designs and have adapted a number of agricultural implements (electric motors, diesel pumps, threshers, sprayers, seed-cum-fertilizer drills etc.) to local conditions.’ The State and Rural Economic Transformation, as cited by M. Rutten, Farms and Factories, pp. 31–2. (44.) H. Steefkerk, Industrial Transition, pp. 69–81. (45.) M. Rutten, Farms and Factories, pp. 227–9. (46.) R.P. Kangle, The Kautiliya Arthashastra (Bombay, 1969 [Reprint 1986]), 2.1.3, p. 32; A.R. Kulkarni, The Indian Village with Special Reference to Medieval Deccan (Maratha Country), General Presidential Address at the 52 Session of the IHC (Pune, 1992), pp. 23–4. (47.) Fifth Report of the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, 1812, p. 85. (48.) Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981), p. 4. (49.) Stephen A. Marglin, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines a Community (New Delhi, 2009), p. 20.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

From Bullock Cart to the Railways Exploring the Interior Smritikumar Sarkar

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords The chapter discusses the crucial transition from the old system of transport involving bullock carts and boats to a new one, and in which the railways functioned as the primary instrument of rural change. The new roads, river bridges, steamships, and the railways ended the age-old isolation of the villages. Beginning with the discourse on the railways, the chapter discusses how the government managed to acquire vast tracts of land for the construction of the railways and how the people actually responded to this acquisition. The villagers had never seen construction work of the magnitude of the railways, with its gigantic bridges spanning wide and turbulent rivers. The railways had incorporated a mix of both local and imported technology, as also skill, but it adversely affected the existing agriculture practices by disrupting the natural drainage of rainwater. Keywords:   road, bullock cart, boat, steamer, land acquisition, railways, bridges, village

Hai Re! … In front is the train, behind is the signal. The villagers leave their work and run to see it. At every station the engine takes coal and water. In front runs the wire to give the news. Behind, we sit clutching tickets in our hands. … Hai Re!*

THE PRE-COLONIAL INDIAN VILLAGE is believed to have had a unilateral relationship with the market. It is often ignored that basic needs such as salt, oil, oilseeds, and metal had to be brought from outside. At the per capita annual Page 1 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways consumption of 12 pounds, 2.88 million people living in an area of 18,000 square miles needed 15 tons of salt. Since its production was location specific, salt often had to be brought from production centres a long distance away, and accounted for 70–80 per cent of the inland trade in some districts. In Assam, Marwari traders thus bartered salt with rubber, wax, handlooms, elephant tusks, and rhino horns.1 An extremely large volume of goods was thus carried to and fro in a routine manner. As the village sent larger volumes of goods than (p.23) it received and a certain amount of reciprocity had to be ensured to justify the transport cost, the intensity of goods traffic increased after the harvest. In 1824, Reginald Heber found ‘numerous barges’ on the Nadia rivers ‘carrying chiefly mustards and bringing back salt from Calcutta’; just like boats moving ‘up and down the Rupnarayan and the Damodar during the rains, bringing down rice and other agricultural produce and carrying up kerosene oil, etc.’ in 1900.2

Roads Bengal also had large landlocked areas such as Birbhum that were dependent mainly on roads. Two types of roads distinguished the district: pilgrim and river roads. The Rajnagar–Deoghar road via Siuri connected it to northwest India. In the winter, ‘pilgrims from upper India and Gaya pass along this line taking the route to Deoghar and Jaggernath, returning at the close of the cold season. At Kurukdihi, the stream of pilgrims divides, one proceeding south to Parasnath, the other east to Deoghar; they again united near Bardhaman’. Nearly 55,000 tons of goods passed along the road in the early 1850s. The route to Bardhaman via Supur–Surul was the only road cartable round the year though much less busy than the Siuri–Lalbag road. Birbhum imported cotton via the Bhagirathi River and sent rice, textiles, silk, and lac from Katoa, which was thought of as the ‘mart and port of Birbhum’. A 42-mile long road linked the port to Siuri, while a set of cart roads led to markets—Nakrakonda, Ilambazar, and Supur on the Ajoy River.3 In 1810, the Calcutta–Patna road via Murshidabad–Birbhum was ‘the most frequented road in Bengal’, but unusable ‘for any sort of carriage or even loaded cattle’ for ‘two to three months a year’. Unable to proceed on road from Birbhum to Bhagalpur, members of the Court of Circuit thus returned to Lalbag to take the boat. Two decades later, the Siuri–Bardhaman route was pretty good, but Katoa and Lalbag roads were in a very bad state, lost into paddy fields after showers. The condition of the Katoa road, beyond the Bakreshwar River was in such poor condition that it was stated that ‘even during the dry season carriages do not easily traverse it’.4 The Bankura–Bardhaman road was worse with ‘scores of carts and hundreds of bullocks laden with country produce labouring along it’ and partly ‘overflowed by the Damodar’. The situation in (p.24) Bardhaman—a divisional headquarters Page 2 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways —was no better. The road to Katoa was ‘deplorably bad’ and carters often took ‘seven days to traverse its length of 39 miles’. In the division ‘a good road … has hitherto been unknown. The wonderful patience with which natives cart goods over the most difficult tracks’ sustained the trade and commerce of the land. Murshidabad had its old Mughal roads, Maldah–Dinajpur and Birbhum–Dhaka, but in the early nineteenth century all these were in ruins. The local road to Jalangi and Bhagwangola was literally a mass of mud during most of the year.5 Crisscrossed by rivers, Jessore hardly had any paths worth calling a road and ‘none of the considerable rivers across it was bridged’. The Calcutta–Dhaka road was ‘a track kept up for country traffic’. ‘In June 1854,’ a surveyor wrote, ‘I should have been utterly unable to proceed, but for the assistance I derived from planters; who posting a horse in this place, a boat there, an elephant beyond, enabled me to eke out my journey by small instalments: but in September I sailed over the country without impediment.’ During the mid-1870s, the district had 264 miles of road built on private–public enterprise.6 To the east of Jessore was mainly a land of water carriage, except for ‘a few miles of half-made road formed in a desultory unsystematic way’ to link indigo factories to the river, but no road that could be ‘depended upon for a journey of twenty miles without interruption’. In 1852, missionary J.C. Page did not find a single cart in Barishal, where ‘almost every ryot has his little boat and without this he would be highly crippled’. Rangpur had a good network of roads leading to all major trade centres of north Bengal. Dinajpur relied more on the river, but navigation was ‘confined to very narrow limits in the dry season’, with the bullock as the only choice for ‘the conveyance of goods’.7 Rural Bengal had thus ‘a network of cart roads, but all left in a deplorably broken up state partly by wear, partly by encroachments of cultivation or having been cut across to let water in and out of the paddy field, till at last they have become impassable for carts’. Landlords also neglected roads in order to maintain the insularity of their position. Perhaps, the notion of road also mattered: a thin strip of open space across paddy fields and often tilled by peasants having plots adjacent to it. In the harvesting season, roads led in every direction across empty fields, and the notions of private and public spaces merged. Private land gave way to public roads to cart (p.25) produce from within interiors, but in the sowing season the public road turned into private fields.8 The road thus swung between existence and non-existence with the season, surfacing in dry months and lost to fields in the monsoon, when paddy was sown all over the low lying patches of the road. Most village roads were just foot tracks either linking the river nearby, the market a little far, or the village beyond, since the villager’s needs were ably met by the peddler carrying wares

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways to his door. Shops and storehouses filled up after rains, when villages became accessible by boat carrying produces of distant lands.

Bullock Cart With the bullock cart as the most convenient means of transport, the carter was in high demand. A letter dated 1726 directs the local officer to settle ‘the charge for transport’ ‘with the cart drivers with their full consent; no compulsion should be used,’ though he ‘should try to save the government money’. The cost of carting varied with the condition of the road. Patna carters charged Rs 3 for carrying fifteen maunds of goods to Gaya, a distance of 72 miles. In Dinajpur, a premier centre of rice trade, ‘neither cart nor oxen or porter could be procured for hire, no persons making the carriage of goods a profession’.9 Those often used were the peasant’s cart, their number depending on the distance of the village from the river. Table 1.1 shows Bardhaman as having the largest fleet of carts followed by Dinajpur. In the 1830s, Carr, Tagore & Company had to cart coal from its mines at Raniganj to Amta, to be ferried to Calcutta down the Damodar. ‘Hundreds of boats’ laden with coal ‘were tied to the company’s ghāts’ for shipping, which could be ‘done during a ten-day period in the rainy season when Damodar was high enough to support boats’. Similarly, paddy moved from the village mart in carts to the major exit points: Kalna, Katoa, or Magra. The cart traffic on the old Benares road between Bardhaman and Howrah was heavy in the dry season, as carters preferred it, being 12 miles shorter, to the Grand Trunk Road (GT Road).10 The data on the cart traffic along GT Road, collected at a point between Magra and Bardhaman from December 1842 to July 1844, shows that a total of 44,390 laden carts moved from Magra to (p.26) Table 1.1 Bullock cart in the districts of Bengal, 1925–26 District

Bullock carts

Percentage to Bengal total

Birbhum

64,900

7.71

Bankura

55,100

6.54

Bardhaman

86,000

10.21

Medinipur

45,400

5.21

Hooghly

15,300

1.81

36,900

4.38

Southwest Bengal

Central Bengal 24-Parganas

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways

District

Bullock carts

Percentage to Bengal total

Nadia

57,500

6.83

Murshidabad

69,900

8.3

Jessore

69,200

8.22

Khulna

14,700

1.74

Maldah

40,100

4.76

Jalpaiguri

24,800

2.94

Rajsahi

42,600

5.06

Rangpur

47,100

5.59

Dinajpur

82,200

9.76

Dhaka

7,400

0.87

Faridpur

2,200

0.26

Pabna

14,300

1.69

Noakhali

2,900

0.34

Bakharganj

900

0.10

Howrah

2,300

0.27

Bagura

17,800

2.11

Darjeeling

3,400

0.40

Mymensingh

37,300

4.43

Chittagong

1,500

0.17

Northern Bengal

Eastern Bengal

Others

Source: Agricultural Statistics of Bengal, 1925–26. Bardhaman and 43,801 went southward from Magra to Calcutta during the period. The number of empty carts going to Calcutta and Bardhaman is 14,036 and 13,123 respectively. All these show ‘only one half of the carts that actually pass over the road as the data was collected in the day’ whereas ‘the general practice in this country for natives [is] to travel with their carts in the night time’.11

(p.27) Turning to district blocks, the table suggests a more interesting point. Southwest had the highest share (31 per cent) of carts with Birbhum, Bankura, and Bardhaman claiming one-fourth of Bengal’s total fleet. Medinipur and Hooghly lagged behind them due to a greater dependence on boats. Central and Page 5 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways north Bengal almost had an equal share—29 per cent and 28 per cent respectively. The situation was just the reverse in the ecologically identical districts of Maldah, Rajsahi, and Rangpur. Dinajpur and Jalpaiguri did not conform to this pattern; the cost of hiring here was very high, being ‘six annas a day’, which was worth ten seers of common rice. In eastern Bengal, ‘road ceases during June to October, under repair in the winter; only to be disturbed again by first rains of the next season’. Hence, the poor pool of carts. In the post-harvest season, the peasant let out his cart with himself as the carter but did not move far from his village. In 1856, carters thus refused to proceed along the Birbhum–Dumka road, even on a higher pay, as they feared attacks from robbers and tigers in the jungle. The pilgrims ‘on their passage kept watch and ward all night long to prevent the attack of tiger and thief’. In the rainy season, merchants shifted to baladiya or ladu-beparis ‘having many cattle which they hired’ for the carriage of goods.12 Ole Feldbaeck recounted the carriage of textiles from Birbhum to Srirampur, a distance of roughly 80 miles. ‘One bullock carries two bales of twenty pieces each and a driver is needed per four or five bullocks. Generally, it takes eight to ten days but in the worst season when the road is slippery, the surface soft, and there is water everywhere, a full fortnight might be necessary.’ The cost was ‘1.25 rupees for twenty pieces’ plus washing charges for ‘the bullock often tumbles into a hole or morass with its entire load whereby clothes are damaged’. There were other problems too. ‘If it rained in the journey, the carrier often perished under the burden of saturated cotton in the soft track, while their bones whitening the route served as landmark to travellers.’ But bullocks could be relied upon in all seasons and were found to be more secure since they often moved in herds.13 The elephant as a means of transport was still associated with power. An Englishman enjoying an elephant ride thus claimed that the ‘howdah which Europeans use’ had a more ‘elevated seat’ than the ‘native howdah’. The palki was used as a means of conveyance (p.28) by women. For a day’s journey, the usual rate was Re 1 per group of five bearers. ‘Upon a journey, they go eight for the relieving of one another and will carry one for forty miles per day.’ Early English officials made out its more workable version called daak. Used by an official on long-distance tour, he interrupted his journey at a place with a rest room (a daak bungalow); hence this foot track was called the daak road. ‘In this mode of travelling,’ Grant stated, ‘you are allowed eight bearers, two banghy burdārs or luggage carriers each carrying 48 lbs weight and two musālchees (torch bearers), an essential, where mud, water and jungle interrupt your path and tigers possibly prowl upon its margin.’14

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways River Transport In Bengal, transport by boat was easier, less expensive, and all pervasive during rains. ‘Bengal, from its western boundary to shores of the sea, is watered by the Ganges and is intersected in every direction by navigable streams which fall into that river.’ Colebrook added, In most of her districts, lakes, rivulets and watercourses, linking with great rivers and becoming passable in the rainy season conduct boats to the peasant’s door. But his produce being reaped at other seasons and disposed of as soon as gathered; he derives less benefit from navigation. Land carriage conveys the greater part of the produce from the place of its growth to that of its embarkation on the Ganges.15 ‘All transport of piece goods as well as of other goods takes place on the river.’ A Danish trader wrote from Srirampur, ‘The rainy season starts in June and ends in September.’ In other cases, ‘long detours have to be made, vessels often have to be unloaded and the goods carried over land, which is too expensive as weaving centres are often situated far from the navigable river.’ Hence, market towns (ganja) dotted Bengal all over, with the traders interlinking hinterlands. ‘The produce of the country is collected in river ports for further distribution and the towns of Dhaka, Rangpur, Mymensingh together with the marts of Serajganj, Jessore, Narayainganj, Sylhet, and Assam constituted major resorts of trader and emporia of the resource of the country.’16 From north Bengal and Assam, small boats (of 80 to 300 maunds) carried paddy, jute, tobacco, oilseeds, and cotton to Serajganj, ‘to be (p.29) transhipped into larger boats of 500 maunds burden or upwards’, and returned with ‘salt, brass utensil, cloth and dried fish’. Narayanganj was ‘one of the busiest river ports of Bengal drawing exports from Dhaka, Mymensingh, Tripura, Khasia, Jayantia, and Garo hills’.17 From Rajmahal downwards, two types of ports distinguished the course of the Ganges: daha and gola. The daha, found all over Bengal, refers to the place where a river, while taking a little turn, allows a large pool of calm water on the higher bank, which was often used as harbour for cargo boats, and thus drawing considerable trade, such as Maldaha and the port of consignments on the west, Goalandaha, and Ashardaha a little further east. The gola refers to a rice port, if not prefixed otherwise such as nungola or chungola, a market for salt or lime respectively. Most notable of these was the Bhagwangola-Barshatigola cluster of Murshidabad, which Holwell described as the largest grain market of India. Bijoyram in the early eighteenth century found it 8 miles long, with grain dealers coming from Bengal and Assam to buy cotton, woollens, indigo seeds, stoneware, and saltpetre from north Indian merchants. The transaction in a normal year amounted to 7,000 tons, less the grain carried in canoes, carts, or bullocks that passed duty free. ‘A thousand horse and a thousand foot under a military officer of high rank’ were posted here to Page 7 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways ‘preserve the line of communication for supplies between the Ganges and the city of Murshidabad’.18 Bhagwangola and Barshatigola were the two ends of the cluster within 4 miles of each other. For five to six months, when the river flowed breaching its banks, trading shifted to Barshatigola, thus literally turning it into a grain market for the rainy season. Being the akhriganj or the last port of call in the east, Bhagwangola was very important to up-country merchants, who had their agents posted here. For, the price at Mirzapur, the biggest cotton entrepôt in north India, was ‘chiefly influenced by the selling price at Bhagwangola’. In 1824, Heber could not spot a single ‘ancient building’ here due to repeated havoc caused by the Ganges; he distributed it as ‘very beautiful, a thorough Hindu village with sheds/booths for accommodation of the gomosta [agent]’. But it continued to have a large congregation of merchants at its ‘annual grain fair’ till the 1850s, when it lost its trade to Lalgola, upstream 20 miles northwest.19 (p.30) Boatmen proceeding from Calcutta to the north preferred the Bhagirathi to the Jalangi River as it ‘took them into Ganges sixty miles above the Jalangi head’. Bhagirathi also had a ring of market towns such as Kashimbazar, JiaganjAzimganj, and Raghunathganj with Gujarati traders and bankers. Kalna and Katoa, on the other hand, were dominated by Bengali merchants, who traded grain, lac, raw silk, and textiles of southwest Bengal for north Indian cotton. They also ferried salt from Calcutta to these ports, to be forwarded to the interior, its dumping sites on the riverside being known as nundanga or saltbanks.20 These ports lost their importance with the Bhagirathi River shrinking to a narrow stream. In 1778, John McGowan had been entrusted with the task of restoring the river from Suti down to its confluence with the Hooghly for the passage of boats of 600 maunds ‘burthen’ round the year. He was ‘empowered to collect a toll on all boats using the river between November and June’, the lean period. He failed to save the river and by the 1830s, it became impassable from Jiaganj to Kashimbazar, except during the rains.21 Katoa survived as a port a little longer due to the eastern Bengal trade towards Calcutta via the Jalangi. The course of the river also determined the direction of trade. From Dinajpur, grain flowed down the Tangan, Purnabhaba, and Atrai Rivers to Bhagwangola until it lost its position as the premiere rice port to Calcutta, when grain boats moved further east to take the Jalangi en route for the city via the Hooghly. The transit cost varied with the nature of the consignment, the route, the direction of the journey, whether up or down, and the season. At the Serajganj rate, it was 4.59 pies per mile for rice and 9.35 pies for indigo, inclusive of 5–10 per cent insurance charges. This was a bit high as the journey to and from Calcutta was ‘attended with innumerable perils’.22

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Hiring of boats was also not without its woes, ‘although many boats were professedly kept for hire’. The most frequent charge was the loss of cargoes. A trader with a moderate business needed 400 boats a year and he always hired it through a ghat-majhee, who would act as a sort of broker. The ghat-majhee served as guarantor of the goods entrusted to a boatman. Without his service, it was difficult for the merchant to track the missing cargo. However, even the ghat-majhee could not always be relied upon; hence European traders had (p. 31) been demanding laws for ‘regulating the office of the ghat-majhee’ since the late eighteenth century.23 By the mid-nineteenth century, the ghat-majhee lost his control over the community of boatmen and the system largely degenerated into a band of goons. A local paper reported that ghat-majhees of Calcutta ‘oppress the crew of boats visiting the place, by taking an anchorage rate from them, else the boatmen are detained or beaten’. The Bengal National Chambers of Commerce thus demanded ‘legislative action for licensing registration of cargo boats in the mofussil.’ They were supported by other merchant bodies, leading to the enforcement of the statutory registration of all cargo boats operating in Bengal.24 The boat was also the most convenient means for long-distance travel. Those who could afford it would have travelled in houseboats (bajra) of various sizes possessing many amenities, while their entourage would follow in ordinary boats. The less fortunate travelled in the cargo boat necessitating frequent change at places. The speed and reliability of the journey would depend on the type of the boat used and the number of rowers engaged. The journey from Calcutta to Benares by a boat of eighteen rowers took two and a half months at a cost of Rs 500; a lighter boat could do it in much less time. The journey was nevertheless pleasant, as young Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara narrated about his trip to Benares.25 The police department declared rates of hire for different destinations to prevent boatmen from quarrelling with passengers. The rich travelled with armed guards for fear of marauders. A journey from Calcutta to Allahabad by a first class houseboat cost around Rs 1,300. The simpler a boat, the less was its cost. The upstream journey took a longer time than rowing down the river as the boat had to be towed by track rope at places, moving 15–20 miles a day. A journey from Calcutta to Allahabad up the Bhagirathi would cover a distance of 787 miles, which could be reduced to less than 500 if undertaken by road. The season also played an important role. A cotton boat from Allahabad thus reached Calcutta in 20 days during the rainy season, but took thrice the time during dry months.26 The company needed a large number of boats for the routine movement of its men and materials from one part of the territory to another. There were various treasures sent from interior villages (p.32) to district headquarters and to Page 9 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways bigger centres from there on. Such cases were considered to be of top priority. Officials preferred boats to hazardous road journeys, with their entourage sailing in separate boats; the higher the rank, the larger was the number of such boats. Bishop Heber ‘left Calcutta for Dhaka on board a fine sixteen oared pinnace … and two smaller boats, one for cooking and the other for baggage and goats to supply him milk’.27 A system of relay boats carried the mail. Calcutta mail reached Goalpara in about a week’s time and Guwahati after ten days. In 1823–24, the Company spent Rs 1.58 lakh on boats and thrice the amount in 1827 for the movement of troops alone, whereas the journey from the Surman Embassy to the Mughal Court in 1717 had cost only Rs 150. In 1760, a Governor’s entourage of 59 boats of various sizes and shapes to Murshidabad cost Rs 2,411 only. All these indicate a massive expansion in the demand for boats over the period, ‘upwards of twenty-five thousand tons’ a year. As demand exceeded the supply, ‘boats had to be procured by compulsion and force’.28 Boats were of a great variety, ‘each adapted to the nature of the river it navigates’. ‘Fancy has had some share in planning them but the most essential differences are grounded on considerations of utility.’ The flat clinker-built vessel of the West was unsuitable for the wide and stormy navigation of the lower Ganges. A lofty boat with its unwieldy bulk, plying between Patna and Calcutta, could not move in rapid and shallow rivers. Likewise, the Dhaka boat with its narrow deep hull was suited for strong currents of wide rivers, but unfit for the rivers of north Bengal. There were also purpose-specific boats, such as the grain boat of Nadia, the salt boat of Tamluk, the betel leaf boat of Medinipur, and wood boat of the Sunderbans.29 A ship moving to Calcutta past Sagar Island first interacted with the pansi boat. Heber found it an ‘interesting vessel; large and broad, shaped like a sniper dish, a deck fore and aft and the middle covered with a roof of palm branches and a coarse cloth, the whole forming an excellent shade from the sun but intolerably close’. Compared to it, the bhaolia of Medinipur was larger with wooded cabins, like the ulak of central Bengal, ‘a long, well shaped boat covered with a roof throughout its length’. In 1910, up-country boatmen were found plying the malini, katra, bhar or bhaar, and patli along the Ganges–Bhagirathi route after the rains.30 (p.33) In 1681, William Hedges referred to the bhar (boora) as ‘a very float light boat rowing with 20–30 rowers, carrying saltpetre and other goods from Hughly downward and some trade to Dhaka with salt’. Two hundred years later, they ‘carried 500 to 2,500 maunds [of] stone, coal and similar articles’. The oftused patella of the early European record was the Bhojpuri patlia or patli boat made of the timber of the patli tree of ancient fame. The patella, Hedges added, ‘comes down from Patna with saltpetre or other goods built of an exceeding Page 10 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways strength, very flat and burthensome’.31 The ‘well-built up-country boatmen’ leisurely rowed them down the Ganges after rains with heavy loads of stone, ironware, saltpetre, indigo, cotton, and returned with rice, salt, and ghee; later, with kerosene oil, coal, iron, and hardware from Calcutta. From the heavier, let’s shift attention to the smaller craft used for passenger traffic. The most universal of these was the dingi, a boat 25 feet to 30 feet long and 4 feet wide which moved ‘on larger rivers’. Also widely found was the salti, ‘a small flat bottomed canoe’ for ‘going from one village to another’ or ‘to carry goods to the nearest market’. An older version was the donga or dug-out trunk of the palm tree, like the saranga of northern districts, or the kunda of Noakhali.32 With one boat per three families, boat making was a thriving industry. In 1852, J.C. Page observed, ‘There being an unlimited demand for boats from the largest to the smallest size—hewing timber and splitting it into planks, sawing, boat building, and selling kept thousands of hands in active employ.’33 The predominant use of boats made the riverfront a coveted place. It attracted trade, shops and depots, markets and towns, and clusters of artisans and professionals. The road from the interior terminated at the riverside, the entry and exit points of goods. From the riverfront, one could thus regulate the course of trade with the interior. Erskines had a small mine at Munglepore but as their old ghat had silted up, they were looking for a new location downstream. Their rival, Carr, Tagore & Co., tipped its official thus, ‘We have been for sometime in possession of all the riverfront occupying that distance … and they must be defeated by any means…. Our object is to secure all the line of ghats to prevent parties in the interior from getting their coal shipped out there.’34 The merchant–boatman nexus prevailing on most river routes was a major problem for the company. Gujarati merchants dominated the (p.34) route to north India through Bhojpuri boatmen, while their Bengali counterparts, the teli and saha, controlled the river route to east and northern Bengal. The traders often used it as an effective means of bargaining with the government. In 1811, Jiaganj traders, protesting against the increased custom duties and house tax, thus suspended their trade in rice, leading to a sharp rise in prices. The resultant fear and anxiety forced the government to repeal its earlier order.35 All these led to the establishment of European river transport firms in Calcutta. The ‘despatch boat’ of Messrs Davidson and Maxwell left Calcutta for north India ‘on the 1st and 15th of every month’. Messrs Holmes and Allan’s package, with insurance coverage, was so attractive that it nearly monopolized the river transport of European cargoes. It guaranteed the ‘safe arrival of their ventures in three, four or six months after the date of despatch’. The parties not availing themselves of their services, its bulletin cautioned, ‘were equally certain that

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways their goods would never reach their destination, being disposed of by the chuprasee [servant] in charge of the boat at the various stations’.36

Old versus New: Steamboats The problem of pace and space of river transport bothered both the government and English traders. The idea of introducing the steamboat thus began to surface in the official circle of Fort William as soon as it was patented in England. The first steam vessel (John Shore), launched at the Khidirpur dock on 31 March 1807, failed to perform. The next application of steam power was in a dredging boat, named Pluto, built by Major Schalch in 1822. Never before used for dredging, Pluto was sent to the Aracan expedition along with the Diana (1823) and ‘proved very useful’. Steamboats could also dispense with the costly practice of equipping the treasury shipment to and from Calcutta with troops and save money on boat allowances paid to officers on transit duty.37 In 1826, the Comet moving on the Bhagirathi–Jalangi–Mathabhanga could proceed up to Maldah, ‘beyond which she was unable to steam the strength of the current’ and returned to spend the dry season stuck in sand near Murshidabad. Two years later, the Hooghly, a paddle wheeling wooden vessel drawing only 3 feet 8 inches of water, repeated (p.35) the feat in September. It took 24 days to reach Allahabad as against 3 months by boat and did the return journey in just half the time. Her second journey along the same route in the dry season was attended with great difficulties of locating the proper channel through shoals. Moving 1 mile per hour, it reached Benares in 21days, but it justified the hope of ‘a swifter means of transportation on the Ganges’.38 Nevertheless, the journey to and from Allahabad needed to be covered in less than a month, which only a lighter steamer could achieve but was difficult for a wooden vessel with mounted steam engine. Back home, iron had been fast replacing wood as ship-building material. From 1810 to 1840, the price of pig iron in England fell by 45 per cent and became cheaper than wood. In India too, the use of wood had to be reduced to make the steamer more efficient, as ‘a twoand-a-half-inch iron girder can do the work of a two-foot oak beam’. The first iron steamboat launched in Calcutta was named Bentinck, made of iron sheets imported from England in pieces and welded in Calcutta.39 The supply of iron sheet increased the launching of passenger vessels— Hoorounghotta (January 1841), Berhampooter (July 1841), Indus (January 1842), Damodar (February 1843), Mahanuddy (March 1843), Lord William Bentinck (April 1845) and Nebudda (May 1845)—and cargo boats like Lukia (April 1841), Sutlej (November 1842), Goomtee (January 1842), Soane (June 1845), and Bhagiruttee (August 1845). Originally meant for public use, steamer routes were soon thrown open to private enterprise resulting in competition in which government boats failed both in celerity and cheapness of passage and freight. Founded in 1844, the first commercial river company of India, India General Page 12 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Steam Navigation Co. (IGSN), had an amazing growth. It was to eastern India what the Irrawaddy Flotilla Co. was to Myanmar. This was followed by the Rivers Steam Navigation Co. (RSN) in 1862.40 The steamer carried much more goods than the boat through major routes of trade, but suffered from certain disadvantages. The early steamer was not energy efficient, burning on an average 10 pounds of coal per hour, hence curtailing the cargo space. ‘A Ganges steamer could carry no more than a quarter of the fuel it needed for the trip from Calcutta to Benares,’ requiring refuelling at regular intervals. Thus, all along its route, coal had to be stocked at places. In the 1840s, coal loading points (koilaghat) beyond Calcutta were (p. 36) Katoa, Berahampore, Rajmahal, Danapore, Ghazipore, Mirzapore and Allahabad on the Bhagirathi–Ganges route. Providing these sites with coal was a real problem. The flotilla of coal boats had to be scheduled with unfailing regularity to feed these stations. Thus, in some areas, the steamer service actually increased the demand for boats.41 In 1861, the first steamer service in Assam was launched, four decades after its debut run in Calcutta. The services from Calcutta to Dibrugarh or Silchar were irregular. The tea planters of Assam thus relied mostly on cargo boats for their consignments down the river, as steamer services were limited and costly. Besides, in the rainy season, the main road to the Dibrugarh steamer station, 60 miles of unmetalled cart track known as sadiya road, was ‘a perfect slough of despond strewn with broken carts, burst rice bags and damaged tea boxes’. The services from Calcutta to Dhaka, Narayanganj, Sylhet, and Khulna were frequently carrying imported goods too, along with jute bales back, but failed to attract eastern Bengal’s large supply of grain to the city. Sending grain by boat proved cheaper and reached earlier than the steamer as they sailed through creeks and canals.42 Early steamer services failed to attract passengers barring a few sahibs. The journey to Allahabad took 20 days. ‘The charge for the first class passenger (excluding meals at Rs 3 a day) … [was] Rs 200 with 12 maunds of luggage.’ The journey between Calcutta and Gauhati cost Rs 150, and ‘freight on ordinary stores was charged at Re 1 per cft’. ‘For the vast multitude of Indian natives,’ Bernstein observed, ‘this was an economic impossibility.… Few Indians of any class embarked in the early years except for servants travelling with their European masters or a subordinate government employee like a chaprassee sent down to Calcutta’ for official purpose. The situation changed with the launch of the telescopic steamer-railway services. In 1899, the IGSN thus became the India General Navigation and Railway Co. (IGNR). An appropriate example would be Goalanda after the Eastern Bengal Railway (EBR) broad gauge line had been extended from Kustia to a place on the Padma River. Soon, daily services of steamers connected it to Page 13 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways the railway system at Narayanganj and Chandpur, along with steamer services to Madaripur, Barisal, Sylhet, and Cachar. There were also daily (p.37) steamers services up the Padma to Digha Ghat in the dry season, and Buxar in the rains, and up the Brahmaputra to Dibrugarh.43 The popularity of the steamer on routes not served by the railways is indicated by the success of the RSN. Beginning with just three steamers and three flats in 1862, it came to have 130 steamers and 260 flats and barges in 1912. Together, the IGNR and RSN served thousands of river miles in east and north India with gigantic steamers, such as the Kharoti of the RSN. Built in its Garden Reach dockyard, it had ‘accommodation for 12 saloons, 1,500 deck passengers and a cargo capacity of 18,500 maunds’. The steamer sailed up the Hooghly to north India as long as the Nadia rivers were full and afforded a favourable channel to make a rapid passage. Otherwise, they went down the river via the Sunderbans. The cargo service from Calcutta to north India, for all major stations up to Allahabad, was highly in demand, paying high dividends to steamboat companies44

The Railway Discourse in Bengal The difficulties of the early steamer service had initiated the railway discourse in Bengal. In 1838, two railroads had been proposed: Calcutta–Rajmahal and Kalna–Rajmahal. The first was to expedite the movement of men and materials to and from north India via Rajmahal on the Ganges; and the second was to ease the congestion at Kalna, the converging point of both the western and eastern Bengal trade.45 Nobody took these projects seriously. Britain in the mid-1840s was at the high pitch of the railway mania with the new breed of investor-contractors building railways in the ‘metropolis of London and Empire’. Calcutta as the second city of the Empire could hardly escape its effect, and the man initiating the discourse was Rowland Macdonald Stephenson. A civil engineer by profession, he was brought up in the era of England’s transition to the railroad-exporting nation. For sometime he had been toying with the idea of building railways in India, a country of emotional attachment to his family. He had also piecemealed information on land, labour, and materials needed for the railways and contributed articles in the local press on its utility. In 1841, when he had placed the proposal of a Calcutta–Bardhaman railroad, the Court of Directors rejected it as a wild project. From Dalhousie to the petty district official, everyone (p.38) was interested in railways, but no one really knew who would pay for it. No one was quite sure about its feasibility in Bengal where seasonal inundations turned the plains into landlocked seas.46 On his second visit to Calcutta, Stephenson wrote to the city’s business magnets, mostly Europeans and a few Bengalis, about the benefit of the railways. The select group of Bengalis included Ram Comul and Mutty Lall Seal, the conservative duo, as also Ram Gopal Ghosh and Dwarkanath Tagore of the Page 14 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways ‘liberal or progressive’ group. The timing (1844) was also crucial, since it ‘witnessed the first coming of a political consciousness to the Bengali mind’. As all of them were celebrities of the renascent Bengal, their replies might reflect the best minds of contemporary Bengali society.47 ‘The planter and the merchant,’ Goodwyn replied to Stephenson, ‘whose goods are now consigned to the dangerous, crazy boats which navigate the river at an enormous risk and decided uncertainty of their arrival at their destination would hail with joy’ the new means of transporting their goods. For the government, the benefits for the ‘conveyance of military stores, troops, officers, and mails’ were ‘really numerous’. Colvin Ainslie wrote, ‘The traffic between Mirzapore and Calcutta is so great, the price of land and labourer in this country so cheap and the great proportion of the contemplated line of road so level that the railways would be of great advantage to Indian capitalist.’48 ‘There can be no doubt’, Mutty Lall Seal replied, ‘the country would be largely benefited by the introduction of railways…. Lines connecting our great interior marts with this city could hardly fail to yield a large return on their original outlay. The revenue that would arise from the conveyance of troops and stores I should think would be very large.’ If an industrious population, numbering a hundred million, a large, active and daily expanding internal traffic—cheap land and labour, with most of the necessary materials for construction on the spot at prices equally low— and perfect security for person and property, are elements that will command success, then it is certain that a more promising field than Bengal for the investment of railway capital would not be found.49 Ram Gopal Ghosh wrote that commercial benefits likely to arise from … railways are unquestionable. It will benefit the country by developing her hidden and partially-opened (p. 39) resources that it will infuse a spirit of enterprise hitherto unknown to her merchant and that it will increase the consumption of British and other goods where they are known, and create a demand for them where they are not.50 Dwarkanath’s willingness to bear one-third cost of the Calcutta–Raniganj line distinguished him from others. He had made a large investment in the mines of Raniganj, 121 miles southwest of Calcutta, but was hard pressed to carry coal to the city. From the pithead, coal was carted to Amta to be ferried down the Damodar only when the river was in full spate for a monsoon fortnight. ‘One house thus lost three out of eleven lakh maunds in the transit in one year from boat sunk and other causes incidental to the existing means of transport.’

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Europeans who had invested in mines or were willing to secure a foothold also welcomed the proposal.51 Conservative Mutty Lall Seal did not fail to realize that by opening up the new market in the interior, railways would help extend his trade. Similarly, progressive Ram Gopal Ghosh argued that ‘railroad … would give us more to import and more to sell’. Mutty Lall also knew that ‘the revenue that would arise from the conveyance of troops and stores … would be very large’, but he refused to be a member of the Local Committee for the Management of Railways.52 For, in the volatile capital market of the 1840s, he was unwilling to risk his funds without the power to pull the strings.

Dream to Reality: East Indian Railway Upbeat at the warm response to his scheme of a Calcutta–Bardhaman railway, Stephenson formally placed the proposal to the Court of Directors in 1844. Early next year, the East Indian Railway Company (EIR) was constituted in London with Stephenson as the Managing Director. The Court of Directors were still sceptical of the possibility of railways in India and their financial returns but could no longer ignore the proposal. Sent to prepare a feasibility report, engineer T.W. Simms proposed: (a) Calcutta– Bhagowangola, (b) Calcutta–Rajmahal or the river line to upper India, and (c) Calcutta–Bardhaman or the direct line. After a few rounds of field survey, the court cleared the construction of the line from Howrah to Raniganj and sanctioned £1 million as the (p.40) capital cost. It was taken as a test case to see ‘whether natives would avail themselves of the improved means of locomotion afforded by a railway’. The government was also keen to assess its financial results before conceding to any further extension of the line.53 In August 1849, the contract for railway construction had been signed with the EIR, and Turnbull as the company’s chief engineer reached Calcutta by mid next year. The choice of Howrah as the terminal station in the beginning created resentments. Commercial firms objected to its being ‘separated from the warehouses of Calcutta by a deep and wide river thus involving all the inconvenience of a steam ferry’. Locating the railhead outside Calcutta was also considered unfitting to the status of the city. In May 1846, Simms proposed to build the terminus at the eastern extremity of Chitpur road with a branch line along the Strand Road to Fort William, with a future extension to Diamond Harbour via the steamboat docks in Garden Reach. The long river frontage of the site, he asserted, would meet the expanding demand of export or import trade as also help in the movement of troops from the fort. Meanwhile, the idea of a line from Calcutta to Bhagowangola along the eastern bank of the river seemed more attractive. The Ganges River could be reached from Calcutta in shorter time than it was through the Rajmahal route. Page 16 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Bhagowangola had easy river links with east and north Bengal and the terminus could be built in the city. In 1845, shares were floated with an alluring 65 per cent profit per year on the capital of £1.5 million. With a hefty subscription of shares, a party was also hosted in the Town Hall with much fanfare to mark the beginning of railway construction in India. But the financial implication of building two river bridges double the size of Waterloo Bridge in London, besides long viaducts, had not been properly assessed by the promoters in their hurry to beat the Howrah–Rajmahal line. The project thus ended in a fiasco.54 Simms’ idea of the city terminus with a bridge over the river was also untenable. ‘The river Hooghly at its narrowest point,’ an official note stated, ‘is 1700 feet broad with a maximum depth of 40 feet below lowest water mark. The velocity of the flood tide was twenty miles an hour. The bore of the Hooghly is strong and dangerous.’55 (p.41) The Howrah site was thus selected for the terminus with steam ferry linking it to the city. In July 1850, Dalhousie sanctioned an experimental line of about 40 miles from Howrah to Pundooa with earthwork and masonry for a double line of rails. He also recommended an extension of the line to Raniganj, but rejected the EIR’s more ambitious project of the Calcutta–Mirzapore line through Shergotty hills (466 miles) with three branch lines: Bardhaman–Rajmahal (140 miles), and lines to Patna (40 miles) and Benares (15 miles). Simms’ successor, Colonel Pitt Kennedy, opposed it on the ground of ‘a rising and falling gradient of considerable severity’ and opted for the lengthier Ganges valley route to Mirzapore (595 miles). He argued that the ruling gradient of the hill line would be 1:100 instead of 1:2000 on the river route, thus making the strain on the engine to carry one ton over the hill equivalent to four tons along the river. Cheaper to build, the Ganges valley line would also be a paying line, as it would link great marts all along the river and run parallel to the existing stream of traffic.56 The adjacent river would help tow the construction materials from Calcutta Port to the working site, a great advantage given the quality of transport available.

Eastern Bengal Railway The exclusion of eastern Bengal by Stephenson from his scheme of railways was opposed by others. In a monograph (1848) highlighting the need for railways in the region, Transit described the Ganges valley to British capitalists as ‘your manufactory’. He considered a railway line linking the river entrepôt of Maldah to Calcutta as the best way to draw the trade of northeast India.57 The proposal did not create much response, as eastern Bengal trade’s gravitation to Calcutta by waterways was more widely known. After the annexation of Burma, the Military Board demanded an all-weather road to Akyab through Dhaka and Chittagong, as the existing system was unsafe for the passage of troops. In the long period of inundation, nearly twenty changes in Page 17 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways the mode of transit had to be made between the starting point and the destination. ‘It is a whole day’s work to cross the Ganges at Faridpur in an eightoared boat.’ Even the construction of a metalled road was unlikely (p.42) to ease the problem for want of an ‘encamping ground for troops moving on it at any but the very driest season’.58 In 1855, Fergusson and Peterson proposed the construction of railway lines to Kushtea, and to Dhaka to attract the river trade of the region. Engineer Purdon discouraged the direct line to Dhaka, as there were 14 large rivers requiring viaducts, one more than two and a half miles long, besides a number of streams varying from 100 to 200 feet in breadth. For 50 miles, the line must have been carried through a tract inundated during rains requiring the provision of a large number of costly underpasses for floodwater. He preferred the line to Kushtea on the stable bank of the Ganges with its deep and narrow channel that could be bridged without much difficulty. Then the line would pass through a country easier than in the case of the direct line, and reach Jamuna, the main channel of the Brahmaputra. A steam ferry would connect the line on the other side of the river to Dhaka. On 30 July 1858, Eastern Bengal Railway Company (EBR) signed an agreement with the Court of Directors for the Calcutta–Kushtea line with a likely extension to Dhaka. To expedite the work, Messrs Brasey, Paxton, Wythes & Co. was awarded the contract for the entire line, as also the supply of a fixed rolling stock for the total sum of £1,045,000. The work started immediately under the supervision of consulting engineer Mr Brunel.59 The EBR selected for its city terminus the enviable site earlier chosen by Simms for EIR. In total, 141 acres of land was acquired. The acquisition of such a large chunk of land at the heart of the city did not create a problem as it was largely marshy or watery land. The entire site had been raised to facilitate the passage of boats below railway bridges built over the nearby canal, an important channel of trade from eastern districts to the city. In November 1862, the line up to Kushtea was opened, but by then the flittering Padma had drifted farther east. The sectional engineer sent an SOS: ‘The Ganges has cut for itself an entirely new channel, clearing away thirteen villages in its course’. As the new channel was ‘more than double the breadth of the river at Kushtea with the cut above 45 feet deep’, the plan to bridge the river was dropped.60 The new line also lost its viability. For, when a boat from Goalpara or Serajganj reached Goalanda, it could either go down the Jamuna to reach the tidal rivers of the Sunderbans, or go up the Ganges to (p.43) move through the Garai to Calcutta by the inner and safer route, in direct competition with the railway.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways In fact, when a laden boat reached Kushtea from Goalandah after three to four days, it was hardly worthwhile to transfer the cargo to railway. The location of Goalandah as a railhead was so favourable as to induce the shifting of the cargo to the railways and ‘avoid all risk of further water carriage by either the inner or outer Sunderban route’. The Kushtea line was thus extended to Goalandah by bridging the Garai River. ‘The extension of EBR line farther down the Ganges to Goalandah in Faridpur,’ Hunter wrote in 1870, ‘has removed much of the traffic of Kushtea to the new terminus.’ Goalandah also emerged as the railhead for the fortnight-long boat journey to Dibrugarh, a distance of nearly 600 miles.61 Meanwhile, a severe famine in north Bengal forced the government to extend the railway network on private–public enterprise. From Poradaha on the Sealdaha–Kushtea route, a broad gauge line was extended to Damukdia on the bank of the Padma River. Between 1877 and 1884, the government built a metre gauge line from Sara on the opposite bank of the river to Siliguri, the Northern Bengal State Railway (NBSR), with branches from Parbatipur to Kaunia on the east and Dinajpur on the west. In 1884, a narrow gauge line, the Kaunia Dharla Railway, connected Teesta junction to Jatrapur and Moglahat. Next year came the Dhaka State Railway from Narayanganj to Mymensingh. Abdulpur on the Ishwardi–Santahar route was linked to Rajsahi, Nawabganj, Maldah, and Katihar via Amanura junction with a line to Godagari on the Padma, opposite Lalgola in Murshidabad. With the Sara Bridge, nearly the entire region was directly connected to Calcutta by rail.62 Telescoping the railway and steamer services solved the problem of building difficult bridges across major rivers of eastern Bengal and Assam. From Calcutta, one could thus reach Mymensingh in little over a day’s time instead of six weeks by boat. The sandwich model was also extended to the EIR, at Sakrikali-Manihari ghat on the old Ganges–Himalayan road after it was extended beyond Rajmahal to western India. The Calcutta–Canning and Calcutta–Diamond Harbour lines had been planned earlier to improve the city’s access to the sea. But once these lines were completed (1863 and 1883 respectively), the idea of (p.44) shifting the port either to Port Canning or Diamond Harbour was dropped on political grounds. The lines nevertheless helped in land reclamation, thus changing the demography of the area. Passing through an extremely fertile tract, these lines proved very useful in carrying grains to the city as also drawing a part of the river trade from Khulna, Barisal, and Noakhali to Calcutta.

Land Acquisition for the Railways: Individual Responses The construction of the railways necessitated the massive acquisition of land, which differed in nature from the land acquired earlier for public works. The basic issues of land acquisition have already been discussed in the introductory

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways chapter. This subsection simply deals with the problems of land acquisition and the reaction of the people surrendering their land to the railways. On 20 December 1850, an act was passed extending the term ‘public work’, referred to in the Regulation I of 1824, to include railway construction. It authorized the government to take over land for railways, settle entitlement, and conduct valuation, and also fixed a certain amount of the compensation. The government thus constituted an executive body comprising five deputy collectors and three amins headed by C.H. Lushington as Railway Commissioner for ‘taking, valuing and making over’ land to the railway company. But the work of taking possession of land ‘by consent of parties in possession of it’ still remained problematic.63 There were hundreds of huts and houses, and thousands of trees to be accounted for. The right of zamindar, pattanidar, mouroosi ryot, and others having claims over land had to be defined. The property was also to be divided into parts to fit into categories of permanent or temporary occupation by the railway company. Lushington planned ‘a detailed native measurement under the supervision of a trustworthy Deputy Collector’ and ‘a proper definition of various interests and a fair adjustment of claims’. The Deputy Collector would ‘give due publicity to notices’ by sticking them up in a convenient place near the land’ and the purpose was to be proclaimed by the ‘beat of drum throughout the portion of the line … as well as in the nearest bazaar, ganja or villages’. He wrote to London: (p.45) Between Howrah and Uttarpara, the countries are thickly populated and covered with huts, orchards and bamboos. From Uttarpara to Serampore it is more open, consisting for the most part of rice land. In Srirampur, Chattra, Sheorapuly and Baidyabatty again, there is a continuous dense mass of trees and houses; and from that place rice lands and orchards alternatively intervene until you get to about three miles on the further side of Hooghly.… Out of the whole, forty one miles between Howrah and Pandooa, about half is open country and half covered with trees and houses.64 The work of land acquisition commenced from the terminus site. A young Englishman reported the railway work commencing from Howrah to his sisters in England: At present, we have no railways, though we are to have very soon, for already have the plummet and the line been laid to the ground; already have miles of country been surveyed, levelled and cleared of the dwellings and little plantations of the wandering and often I fear, though temporarily, distressed natives, whilst our Indian Southwark, quiet Howrah, on the opposite side of the river facing Calcutta, the intended terminus of the first Page 20 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways rail already exhibits, in demolished houses and uprooted trees, the energetic march of the great work.65 The railway construction work started with a bang from Captain Oake’s premises at Howrah. He had readily acquiesced to acquisition; hence everything went off peacefully in the beginning, but not for long. On 22 November 1850, the government issued a notification providing details of the land that was to be acquired in contiguity to Oake’s property at Howrah. Altogether, 29 premises were marked including dockyards, gardens, European bungalows, trade establishments, European and Bengali dwellings, and a few huts. The area thus covered measured nearly 65 acres of land, only 8.35 per cent of which belonged to the government; mostly wastelands, roads, and coolie-lines that were readily relocated. Two European companies, Colvin Austin Cowie & Co. and a docking company, together accounted for 49 per cent of the total area attached to Captain Oake’s property. The rest belonged to individual owners: 11 Europeans and 12 Bengalis. As per size of the holdings and buildings thus attached, Europeans held a larger share than Bengalis.66 Howrah at that time had docks, an Armenian garden, and large ‘practising grounds of the Bengal Artillery’. A little away was a (p.46) cluster of villages linked to the river by the Howrah Ghat Road, while the riverside was dotted with houses of European officials and traders choosing to retire from the din and dust of the city to rural privacy.67 Leading members of Calcutta’s urbane elite (Mutty Lal Seal, Ram Ratan Bose, Sooruth Nath Mullick, and Ashutosh Dey) owned properties here but they readily agreed to the acquisition, whereas some European owners opposed it, leading to prolonged litigations. Once the work of land acquisition moved further north of Howrah to the longsettled areas of the riverbank, the energetic march of the great enterprise really stumbled. The official anxiety is reflected in Turnbull’s note to the EIR Chairman (3 January 1851): ‘A portion of the embankment, about a quarter of a mile in length near Bali Khal has been raised to its full height and completed in a creditable manner, but for want of the possession of land, further progress of this work has been stayed in the meantime.’68 By 1851, the land marking operation was done up to Shrirampur, and that was where the trouble started. The land for railways was needed in a continuous strip and ascertaining the title of the property was a time consuming process. ‘Huts, houses, bamboos and trees of every description mixed up together without any boundary to mark division of the property or anything of any description, beyond proximity to huts or houses, to give a clue to parties to whom trees may really belong.’ But the title was to be ascertained and apportioned where it involved more than one party and agreement made with the owner.69 Page 21 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Turnbull appreciated ‘the ease and rapidity with which the embankment had been thrown up’, but expressed fear that ‘extraordinary delay in obtaining possession of land’ might hold up the work. ‘Of the forty miles of the proposed railways,’ he clarified, ‘five or six miles of jungle and trees [are] to clear, on the centre line about fifteen miles have been surveyed, and about ten miles of the sections effected.’ Nevertheless, he assured that ‘the whole work will be done before the close of the present month,’70 which suggests the official pressure on him to expedite the work. Given the technology, the speed with which the embankment had been thrown up in areas with easy access to land points to massive mobilization of labour. But in disputed areas, firms undertaking (p.47) the work wasted their fund on workers already hired for the job. Mobilizing labour required the services of a professional group and labour mobility widely varied with seasons. Thus, all work had to be done between winter and the onset of monsoon. The companies engaged in different sections of the line thus got panicky and the EIR Co. in turn raised an alarm for fear of losing investors’ confidence back home. An official note sums up the problem thus: Some delay occurred in putting the company into possession of the land; and it is conceivable that the appropriation of land … would be a matter of time. In whatever way the delay arose … contractors … were obliged to maintain establishments suitable for the work which they had undertaken, whilst they were prevented from commencing them.71 Work or no work, labourers were to be fed and paid off at the onset of the sowing season so that they could return to their villages. The acquisition process jolted to a halt in Shrirampur, Seoraphuli, Baidyabati, and Bhadreshwar. ‘The Danish settlement of Serampore,’ a European wrote in 1850, ‘is a very pretty, neat and clean little town built (1755) on high ground having the advantage of facing a broad and long reach of the river.’ ‘A very unattractive looking native town’, Bhadreshwar was ‘an extensive mart for grain’, ‘a busy and populous place’, 12 miles south of the French settlement of Chandannagore.72 All these were important market and residential areas with a natural pull for grain from hinterlands. Unlike Dwarkanath Tagore, Mutty Lal Seal, and others, local traders sent grains to Calcutta and sold salt and imported textiles to the interior. They had large storehouses thriving on the river trade from north India. All along the river from Chunchura to Shrirampur, ‘boats laden with country produce such as rice, wheat, grain, silk and cotton’ were berthed to the riverbank with ‘ten/twelve boatmen’ whiling away time ‘at the close of their wearisome journey’ from upper India. Controlling the profitable riverside market was a contentious issue among landlords. Samachar Darpan (5 August 1820)

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways reported a similar tussle in Baidyabati, where the government had to stop the construction of a new market by another landlord.73 The traders here opposed the land acquisition drive for railways as it would undermine their river-based trade. ‘In the neighbourhood of Shrirampur,’ land owners ‘refused to give consent under the (p.48) impression that their interests would be injuriously affected’. The riverside land was their prized possession with regular increments of its leasehold price. The site for Shrirampur railway station had to be shifted twice and forceful acquisition of the land of an ashram led to litigation with its gossains.74 The government offered compensation at only Rs 2 per bigha. The land to be taken for good was paid at twenty years’ price, or Rs 40 per bigha, and those under temporary occupation at half that rate. For a little over 1,633 bighas under permanent occupation, the payment amounted to Rs 65,320 in total.75 It did not distinguish between the location or uses of land, as it made separate payment for houses, huts, walls, ponds, tanks and ghats, and urged upon the people to make sacrifice for a good cause. The Court of Directors argued that in view of the benefits to be derived from the railways through their localities, landowners would hand over their property on ‘moderate terms’.76 Lushington felt otherwise, as he wrote to London: It seemed very questionable, on a review of the peculiar circumstances of the cases before us, whether this plea could with propriety be urged. An examination of the claims showed that the question of advantage or disadvantage to be derived from the introduction of the railway had in no instance been alluded to. He argued that in view of ‘the generally impoverished condition of the people … offers of compensation should be calculated on the actual value of the property at the time it was taken’. He was also critical of the principle of uniform rate. By September 1851, the Deputy Collectors could settle only 1,409 disputed cases— 832 were paid off, 112 set aside for arbitration, and 57 dropped as fictitious. The high share of the dispute (408 out of 1,409) points to the intensity of the problem. In some areas, officials failed to do even primary land-marking operation, forcing Lushington to requisition the services of village officials. At the first stage, the amin was to prepare a list of the affected people with a detailed record of their properties, a copy of which was to be handed over to them for adjustment of claims. The property would then be placed under ‘the charge of the village mandal and chowkidar until some arrangements for disposal of it could be made’. He emphasized that the clearing for the railway would be

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (p.49) confined to the smallest possible breadth.… It is never necessary to destroy a hut or a house in order to obtain the required site and trees that must be removed should invariably, in the first instance, be marked. The surveyor should also be prohibited from employing more coolies than are really necessary; there are sure to be mistakes and uncalled for destruction of property where the number employed is large.77 All these point to excesses committed by officials in charge of land-marking operations. Dalhousie’s directive that ‘no man should be compelled to surrender his land unless the public interest should really demand it’ reaffirms Lushington’s concern.78 Dalhousie’s dictate was intended to address the complaints of unauthorized occupation of land close to working sites by companies contracted for different sections. The EIR authority in London also issued advisory notes to rein in the contractors’ men and diffuse tension at the local level. R.M. Stephenson thus warned: No more land should have been taken for the railway than what was wanted to give room for the embankment cesses and necessary diggings. Hence, the outer nick of the land ought to have been the outer boundary of the digging also.79 Nevertheless, carting and dumping of materials to working sites still remained problematic. For, villagers opposed the use of or the passage through their fields, as it interfered with cultivation and the normal flow of rainwater. The government thus issued an ordnance for ‘temporary appropriation of 20 feet in width of land for use as a foot road upon one side of the railway’, helping railway officers in ‘readily inspecting works in progress’. It was also to be used as ‘a way for carting timber, bricks, lime, and etc. from the ghat at which they will be landed by the cross road to the depot’.80 The villagers also opposed massive digging on land under temporary occupation or ‘in the waterway’ made to collect earth for embankment or divert a stream. Even the official sanction of an additional ‘payment at the rate of four rupees per thousand cft of digging’ failed to resolve the crisis. A crisis of similar nature delayed the construction of the bridge over the Saraswati River, the principal discharge channel of floodwater in Hooghly district. Two dams made across the river to help the foundation work obstructed the passage of rain water along the channel.81 The work of the Satgaon (p.50) Bridge, as it was officially known, was delayed earlier due to land-related problems. Burn & Company, the firm building it, demanded compensation from the government on the ground that not ‘putting into possession of the land till near the rains and … compelled in terms of the agreement to commence work immediately after being put in possession, our earthwork would cost us more than would have been the case had we received possession of the land before the … cold season.’ Page 24 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Besides we had ‘to give coolies higher rates and also to providing huts for them in the rain, not necessary in normal times.’ [Hence, we had to work] ‘at much expense … carrying it night and day and also [for] the removal of the sand washed in by rains.’82 The principle followed for adjustment of claims also indicates the official concern for the delay on land acquisition. The Court of Directors stated to the Governor General, ‘You will not be satisfied without having fully ascertained that those who have necessarily suffered in their rights, for public purposes, have been not only fairly dealt with, but that in every case the decision has been suitable, and even liberal.’83 It was resolved that compensation would be decided by taking into account the nature of the land acquired, the state of cultivation, the number and variety of trees, and so on, and the superstructure including tanks existing on it. The rate for different varieties of trees had been fixed after investigation by the Deputy Collector (see Table 1.2). The compensation to be paid for houses and other structures was decided on the basis of size, nature, quality of the materials used, and the labour cost. The rate for house and excavation of tank was based upon the data supplied by the builder and tested by the superintending engineer of the concerned railway division. The government also ‘conceded the claims to higher rate by the people of Shrirampur, Chatra, Seoraphuli, Baidyabati, and a few other places. Higher claims were demanded owing to peculiar advantages of their lands from position or otherwise’. They were paid at a rate five times higher than the normal one; for 89 bighas of land earmarked for permanent and 93 bighas for temporary occupation in Shrirampur, Chattra and Baidyabati. In Seoraphuli, problems nevertheless continued, with the ledger book showing an amount of Rs 3,592 as unclaimed allocation.84 (p.51)

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways

Table 1.2 Compensation paid for trees cut down for the laying of railway lines Type

Age of the tree

Years paid for

Mango

1 to 8

X

9 to 13

9 to 18

1

6

6

14 to 18

14 to 23

1

11

6

19 to 23

19 to 28

2

0

6

24 to 28

24 to 33

2

5

6

29 to 33

29 to 38

2

8

6

***

***

***

64 to 68

64 to 73

2

0

0

69 to 78

69 to 78

1

14

0

79 to 88

79 to 88

1

4

0

1 to 9

X

10 to 14

10 to 19

1

9

0

30 to 34

30 to 39

3

12

0

50 to 54

50 to 59

3

13

0

11 to 15

11 to 20

0

15

0

26 to 30

26 to 35

2

13

0

Jack Fruit

Coconut

Rupees

Anna

Paisa

X

X

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Source: For separate and detailed rates for these and other trees such as date, shimul, tamarind, palm, jam, bel, chulta, and bamboo, see Appendix F of ‘Report of the Proceedings in Taking the Land and Other Property Required for the Railway’, Bengal Government Selections, Serial No. 4, pp. XV to XVIII.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways For the EIR line between Howrah and Pundoo a, roughly 43 bighas of land per mile had been acquired for permanent and 75 per miles for temporary occupation; involving altogether 4,475 cases of private property. Of these, 1,858 cases were for permanent and the rest for temporary occupation. The property occupied permanently included 1,633 bighas, 2 kathas and 14 chhatacks of land in total, along with 12,266 trees, 20,554 bamboos, 64 brick houses, 1,311 huts, 4 ghats, and 63 walls. In addition to these, 2,789 bighas, 17 kathas and 1 chhatack of land with 21,556 trees, 32,766 bamboos, 33 brick houses, 1,231 huts, and 74 walls had been taken over for temporary occupation.85 The important point to note is the small number of houses in relation to the area of land acquired. Even in Bengal, with its relatively high density of population, ‘huts except in markets and bazaars are seldom close together but are scattered among small garden plots, (p.52) mango, date, betel nut groves and pan garden’.86 The EIR line between Howrah and Pundooa dislocated about 2,639 houses, only 97 of which were brick built, including the European houses of Howrah. The poor ratio of brick-built houses to huts suggests that the route map was planned in such a way as to cause minimum dislocation to the rich and the people dislodged from the railway zone mostly belonged to the cultivating class. The relatively large number of trees and bamboos felled (33,822 and 53,320 respectively over a land space of roughly 528 acres) compared to the number of huts destroyed indicates that most of the land thus cleared was not used for cultivation. The compensation was paid only for the full-grown valuable trees, disregarding ordinary species and immature ones. The land thus acquired possibly comprised poor homesteads or wealthy people’s backyard. Altogether 64 brick houses and 63 walls, after deducting the value of their materials, were paid for at the rate of Rs 400 and Rs 30 each, the cost of the material was settled separately. Similarly, an additional payment of Rs 6 was made per hut, plus the cost of the materials used. On the whole, the average cost of the properties taken over amounted to Rs 8,493 per mile, a paltry sum by any measure.87

Post-1857 Reconciliation The revolt of 1857 hit the railway works hard. No untoward incident took place in Hooghly, Bardhaman, and Birbhum where the EIR land acquisition drive had created tension. Landlords of both Hooghly and Birbhum literally vied with each other to prove their loyalties to the British and also raised local militia to help them. Some posted guards along the river so that ‘armed men descending down the Ganges in boats could be caught, disarmed and dispatched to the authority’.88 Elsewhere, ‘mutineers and their civilian supporters targeted railways’, killed engineers, vandalized, and burned down properties. Kunwar Singh of Jagdispur damaged whatever progress had been achieved on the Sone Bridge. ‘The value Page 28 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways of railway materials afloat on the Ganges at the period of the outbreak,’ Baker reported in July 1857, ‘was not less than a half million sterling. It may be found that a very large proportion of it has been or will be lost.’ In 1879, when (p.53) the EIR Co. transferred its assets and liabilities to the government, the financial cost of the loss of materials, damage of properties, destruction of work, and cost escalation in 1857 accounted for 13 per cent of the total expenditure. ‘From Monghyr upwards, effect of the mutiny was to throw back the progress for nearly two years.’89 But the upsurge only highlighted the need to build the railways at a faster pace. The short stretch of the EIR proved immensely useful in moving troops from Calcutta. ‘When mutiny broke out, the rail ended at Raniganj and when time meant everything and each day was precious it took troops the best part of three weeks to march from the railhead to Benares, while the conveyance of stores and munitions of war took still longer.’ Whereas ‘there is no difficulty in carrying 200 men daily from Calcutta to Raniganj, and larger numbers being carried on special occasions when necessary’, financial constraints underlined the need to reduce the construction cost per mile, since the EIR line had proved to be an extremely ‘expensive undertaking’.90 The traumatized psyche persuaded the government to deal liberally with the issue of land acquisition. The policy of uniform rate was replaced with the location-specific rates of compensation and an upward rate revision for all categories of land to be acquired in future. The government also decided to acquire large chunks of land rather than small strips to meet immediate needs. Hence, unlike the EIR, land was taken for four tracks for the EBR line. After 1857, the government also became more careful in dealing with sacred sites. The original site map of the EBR terminus at Sealdaha included a mosque; but in 1859, when the work of the acquisition really began, it was ‘revised to spare the mosque’. Similarly, when people opposed the laying of the railway lines across an old burial near Patna, the line was shifted a little westward, resulting in a curve.91 Nevertheless, a different set of problems emerged. There were frequent complaints of unlawful occupation of land by contractors, creating local-level problems. More difficult was the provision of land for the manufacture of bricks for railway buildings, floodwater arches, viaducts and river bridges. The EIR Co. had to spend £1,500 per mile of the line for viaducts and bridges. The construction of 84.5 miles of the Howrah–Bardhaman line involved the use of 40.5 million bricks.92 Manufacturing bricks in such a large number (five (p.54) million cubic feet in south Birbhum section alone) within the given timeframe proved to be a major bottleneck. Under the terms of the contract, construction companies had to locate brick kilns away from human habitation; while good

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways earth for bricks could be had only at a few places, and that too a thin workable layer at the surface. Turnbull wrote to the EIR Chairman, informing him about the problem, ‘Little or no progress has been made in brick making for want of land.’ It was a problem that haunted companies in charge of the construction of different railway sections. Some of these brickfields were located ‘at a considerable distance from the line’, adding to the ‘cost of carting bricks to working site’. To this was added the ‘great expense in building flame kilns on the American plan’, stipulated in the contract.93 Construction companies also tried to locate brick kilns close to working site, to add to the annoyance of the local people. Early in 1861, a government circular delineated the land question and formulated a model code for all railway construction works in future, dividing the land into four different types. Category A referred to land needed for the permanent work of a line including roads, bridge, stations, workshops, permanent storehouses and the like. All such land would be provided by the government free of cost to the railway company, to be lapsed to it on expiry of the contract. Category B included the land necessary for execution of the permanent work of a railway project but not needed after its completion in part or in whole. The government was to provide this type of land free of charge, for spoil banks, for extra excavation to divert water channel, and for storage of materials for the construction of the line. The occupation of this class of land was to be for a temporary period, after which the company would restore the land to the government. Category C referred to land required for the provision and preparation of the materials for purposes contingent upon actual execution of works on the line including the land for brick kiln, quarrying ballast, housing workers, and so on. These were needs legitimately falling within the scope of the railway company’s operations and so it had to acquire land for all these purposes at its own cost. Category D included the land required for roads either to feed railway stations or to connect the permanent store/yard and the workshop or to divert the old road. All such land was to be provided by the government free of charge. (p.55) Houses, trees, tanks, and other property were to be paid for at once by the railway company. In the case of land given free of charge, materials derived from the clearance of the surface at the government’s expense would be disposed of by the revenue officer to the best advantage.94 All these made land acquisition relatively easy. To illustrate with the EBR, one notes that it acquired 141 acres of land for the city terminus at Sealdah. The rate of compensation was also lucrative: 423 bighas acquired at Rs10,23,470 or Rs 2,420 per bigha.95 Outside the city also, the EBR rate was higher than what the EIR had offered earlier.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Table 1.3 shows wide sectional variation in land acquired per mile. The rail bed from Sealdah had to be raised to a high level for building bridges over two canals near the terminus, which was maintained till Dum Dum for underpasses. The high share of land acquired per mile in the first two sections thus accounts for the greater width and height of the embankment; land needed on both sides of the track for digging ditches and tanks to get millions of cubic feet of earth. The greater frequency of bridges and cart arches in this stretch also involved intensive brick-making, hence the spatial use of land. Another point to note is the lack of uniformity of rates of compensation for the land acquired in different sections. The price of land was high in the vicinity of Calcutta, but even then the highest price was only a little more than a third of the rate paid at Sealdah. Further north, land prices progressively declined. The dissimilarity in its pattern points to variation in demography and land use in different areas. The price of land fell to less than a half between the first and second section and zoomed to less than one-sixth of the Narkeldanga price in the third. Then it suddenly moved up at Barrackpore close to the level of the second section. Only sparsely populated, Narkeldanga–Belgachhia areas were centres for rice dealers catering to both internal and export trade. In the late 1850s, Calcutta’s rice market was expanding in absolute terms to feed British colonial settlements overseas.96 Local rice merchants thus formed a powerful pressure group to secure a better price deal for their land. This was followed by the ‘first suburban retreat of Cossipore, the residence of quiet-loving aristocracy, who have no difficulty in driving into town to duty or business in the morning.’ The land prices naturally remained high in Kashipur–Dum Dum areas. (p.56)

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways

Table 1.3 Land acquisition for the Eastern Bengal Railway, 1859–60 Section

From

To

1

Narkeldanga Road

Belgachhia Road

2.37

138

327

859

2

Belgachhia Road

Dum Dum Road

0.68

138

94

338

3

Dum Dum

Titagarh Road

8.67

69

598

129

4

Titagarh Road

Barrackpore

2.21

57

126

298

5

Barrackpore

Bhutpara

6.2

60

372

61

6

Bhutpara

Kanthalpara

1.7

51

87

125

7

Kanthalpara

Ranaghat

21

60

1,260

45

2.55

57

145

157

8 9

Ranaghat

Distance in mile

Bighas of land Total land acquired per mile acquired in bighas

Cost per bigha in rupees

Ranaghat

Mutteearee

22.1

75

1,658

14

10

Mutteearee

Koomar River

24.4

69

1,684

11

11

Koomar Road

Ganges (Padma)

16.5

87

1,436

17

Source: Edward Davidson, The Railways of India with an Account of Their Rise, Progress and Construction, Written on the Basis of the India Office Records (London, 1868). Note: Bigha is a unit of measurement amounting to 14,400 square feet and 3 bighas make an acre.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (p.57) The railway tract between Dum Dum and Titagarh had been laid at the surface level, avoiding construction of bridges and underpasses, except for a few small floodwater drains. The line largely passed through the low lying marshy land (bada), a part of which once formed the ‘happy hunting place of the Nawab of Chitpur and abounding with tigers’.97 Two to three miles west were old localities called Barhanagar, Alambazar, Ariadhaha, Panihati, and Khardah, clustered close to the eastern bank of the river, but all these areas, also those from Mohanpur to Halisahar, had been left undisturbed. Eastward of the thin strip of human settlement along the river were vast stretches of lowland, full of trees, marshes, and tanks with a sprinkling of huts. ‘Between Salt Lake and the city, the space is filled by gardens, fruit trees and the dwellings of natives, but mostly wretched huts, all clustered in irregular groups round large square tanks and connected by narrow unpaved streets and lane amidst tufts of bamboos, coco trees and plantations.’98 Mostly peasants, artisans, coolies, and carters lived here to meet the needs of Calcutta. The upcountry carter (baelgar) thus lent their name to a locality, Belghar, that was turned to Belghoria by the railways. All these explain the low land prices in the section. A cantonment of European artillery, Barrackpore was a ‘pretty and salubrious village inhabited by soldiers with bungalows for English officers and white inhabitants … attracted by its clean air, vicinity of the Governor’s house or the beauty and convenience of the river’.99 By the 1850s, it was coming up as a planned town on the riverside. The native villages stood a little away to the east or up the river towards north. The railway tract thus passed through the outer periphery of European settlement. The land prices then continued to fall, except at Bhatpara–Kanthalpara. The first was a centre of Sanskrit learning; the other the birthplace of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay. The EBR line passed through the middle of the two villages. Bankimchandra’s family lost their land to the railway. His ancestral house, now a heritage site, stands close to the tract. Ranaghat, an important market centre on the east–west river route and inhabited mainly by traders, drew higher prices, as also Kushtea. The EBR paid Rs 28,900 per mile of land acquired, 3.4 times higher than the amount paid for the EIR line, which passed through (p.58) riverside market towns and village settlements. The EBR line on the other hand was laid through backyard areas that ‘contained a fair average of cultivation and jungle’.100 The plan to avoid congested market and village settlements was later on accepted as the model for all successive railway projects in other parts of India. Other railway companies also found it convenient to carry ‘lines at some distance from large towns and markets and not through the heart of cities and business

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways places.’ In north India, stations were thus built 2 to 3 miles away from the busiest part of the town.101 In 1908–09, the EBSR made the largest acquisition of land in Pabna and Nadia districts, on both sides of the Padma River (5,664 bighas on the right bank and 6,429 on the left, in addition to 2,223 bighas for queries) for the Sara Bridge on its main route. Two approach roads (4 miles long on the Pabna side and 3 miles in Nadia) had to be built. More than the length, the vast spatial expanse of the land acquired accounted for the million cubit feet of earth required to attain the height of the approach road, for more than a mile and a half 50 feet above the ground level. But, by then, the railway land policy had been firmly settled and not a single case of dissidence had been officially reported here.102

Railways and the Land Prices All these are indicative of a shift in official attitude to land acquisition for railways. Everybody from Stephenson to the persons who had replied to his queries held that land being cheap in Bengal could be acquired at a throwaway price. The Court of Directors had even expected voluntary surrender of land for a good cause like the railways. The principle of uniform rate of compensation for land was based on this notion. What had been ignored was the location-specific value of land, especially the costlier riverside plot as discussed earlier. Another major irritant was the uniform rate of Rs 2 per bigha, a gross understatement of the price of land in the 1850s. In 1818, the government was contemplating a 40-mile long canal from Sivnivas in Nadia to the eastern end of Calcutta to ease the traffic congestion on the shallow rivers of Nadia. The government had decided at that time to pay Rs 10 per bigha throughout the entire canal tract, with higher prices for lands near the city.103 (p.59) The two major irritants, uniform rate of compensation and undervaluation, were the cause of most of the early problems related to land acquisition for the railways. In 1859, the government thus lost the long contended railway land related arbitration. The court directed it to pay Rs 7,748 for the late Statham’s plot in Howrah at the rate of Rs 1,000 per bigha. His successor also received an additional amount of Rs 3,889 for the forced sale of his land and two houses. For a little over 7.7 bighas, Statham’s family was paid Rs 11,637 in total, plus Rs 5,818 as interest at 5 per cent on the principal amount due for three years.104 Like other Europeans, Statham also must have been aware of the benefits of the railways, but he was determined to assert his right as owner of the property the government had attached without his consent. The landowners of Shrirampur–Seoraphuli–Baidyabati received just Rs 200 per bigha as against Rs 1,511 paid to Statham’s family. The question of additional payment for compulsory alienation of property was also not considered. The case of the Shrirampur akhra was a bit different. For a group of religious mendicants, Page 34 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways shifting to a new location was not really a problem, but the gosains were unwilling to leave the site as it contained the last remains of their Guru.105 Like many others, Hooghly landowners had failed to assert their right in the complex reality of British rule, which was pursuing a covert policy of racial discrimination. The systems of law, police and courts, European judges, alien language, hallowed enclosures and, above all, the cost—all stood in the way of the average Indian seeking protection from the court. Unlike the native trader of Calcutta, who had supported Stephenson’s proposal of the railways, those who had opposed the land acquisition in the district did not have any exposure to European society. They were small men engaged in local trade. What had really discouraged them from going to the court was the fear of losing everything through litigations. The popular psyche is best indicated by folk sayings referring to the ruinous cycle of litigations.106 The land acquisition drive boosted land prices. ‘The natural effect of making a railway and terminus is to increase the value of ground in the neighbourhood, for the land now required at Howrah is only to be obtained at the rate of Rs 150 per cottāh’, or Rs 3,000 per bigha.107 (p.60) The land at Sealdah had been initially acquired at Rs 121 per cottah, but later when the government decided to buy more land for the South Eastern & Calcutta Railways close to the EBR terminus, it had to pay Rs 137 per cottah.108 The same thing happened in the districts. In 1880, the government purchased a plot for the Munsiff’s Court at Bolpur at Rs 40 per bigha.109 The editor of a leading paper observed: It is well known that from the time the EIR Co had begun their operations many made their fortunes by selling their old dilapidated houses. Those unworthy of not more than even two thousand rupees had been sold off for ten or twelve thousand. And pieces of land and property for which large sums had been already paid were selling again for small sums. The official circle attributed the cost to ‘very considerable profits’ of the village headman responsible for the ‘very high price’ the government had to pay for the railway land in many places.110 How far the rise in land prices was due to speculation or corruption could hardly be ascertained at this stage. But the difference in the objective condition between the land acquisition drives for the EIR and the EBR must not be lost sight of. When the process of land acquisition had commenced for the EIR, people were unaware of the railways. By 1859, they got used to the running of trains and their utilities. Passenger traffic increased by 76 per cent in the period, with third class ticket holders being its largest contingent. The goods traffic increased at an incredible rate, an annual growth of 200 per cent for the first five years.111 Slowly, the railways changed the rural urban morphology, as discussed a little later. Page 35 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Technology Mix: Problems of Railway Construction The villager in India had never before seen construction work of such magnitude as the railways. Road building was much less an intensive work with materials often locally organized. The ballast, sleepers, rails, and sundry other logistics for railways on the other hand had to be transported either from the port city or distant places to the construction site. The preparation of the rail bed needed clearing and the levelling of the land involving massive earthwork. (p.61) Excavation was also required for making millions of bricks needed for the station buildings, cart arches, culverts for rain water channels, viaducts, and bridges. The railway construction in the early phase was a labour intensive process dependent mostly on local skill and method, with little use of imported technology. In Europe, steam excavators, wheelbarrows, and horse runs were already in use for earth moving and smashing of stone, jobs still manually done in India. The companies building the railways also did not insist on the use of new technology, if not unavoidable, for both economy and technical difficulties of import and applicability to local condition. The old ‘pick and head-basket in combination with the rail dumping truck were to suffice. Only in the cases of brick and lime manufactures were improvements, for qualitative reasons, sponsored by British supervisors’.112 ‘Not a day passes,’ The Friend of India wrote in February 1851, ‘without the cheerful sight of boats laden with rails and sleepers and redolent of creosote passing the river’ as ‘bullock train carts’ carried railway goods from the nearest ghat to the working site.113 The difficulties of the early railway construction were many, the most important being ‘the peculiarly isolated nature of the work’ and mobilization of provisions and labourers. Workshops equipped with machines were erected in places ‘hitherto considered beyond the confines of civilization’ that ‘daunted even the boldest’.114 The EIR Co. had earlier decided to subcontract the construction work. A length of 26.5 miles from Howrah to Hooghly had been given to the Hunt, Bray & Elmsley of London, and a further distance of 10 miles to Burn & Co. of Calcutta. Meanwhile, the Court of Directors authorized the extension of the line from Pundooah to Raniganj, a distance of 84.5 miles. The tender for the extended section was given to Remfrey for 5 miles from Pundooah to Boinchee; to a Mr Daniel of Calcutta for 11 miles from the western side of Boinchee to Mundipur; 10 miles from there to Memari to a Mr Ryan; 22 miles from Memari to Bardhaman to Burn and Co.; and the rest 36.5 miles to Hunt, Bray & Elmsley. Most firms, except Hunt, Bray & Elmsley and Burn & Co., failed to complete their job and one by one EIR engineers took over the charge of the lengths assigned to them. Some were actually adventurers, lacking in both expertise and capital, but let down mainly by (p.62) the difficulties of manufacturing bricks. Thus, Daniel’s firm could complete only 22 per cent of the brickwork, Burn & Co. Page 36 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways only 11 per cent, while with only 2 per cent of the work done, Hunt & Co.’s performance was even worse. Ryan’s firm had failed to lay even a single brick out of its 300,000 cubic feet of work. Except for the brickwork, subcontractors had finished the earth work, excavation, ballast, and the laying of rails for 95 out of the 121 miles of the Howrah–Raniganj section. Stations were initially built rather parsimoniously, additional spaces being given only with the growing passenger traffic and rising demand for goods shed.115 In 1853, the Court of Directors cleared the EIR’s proposal to build railways up to Delhi via Allahabad. The actual work commenced almost immediately and by March the centre line had been marked out on the ground for the first 45 miles beyond Bardhaman. The work of the Rajmahal line was kept in abeyance for the time being, due to local problems. The total length of the line was about 1,000 miles with the Karmanasha River demarcating the boundary of the EIR’s Bengal division under Turnbull. The construction began by subcontracting the work to resident European firms in India, the same policy that had failed the company earlier. The real challenge of railway construction was bridge building. Not wholly unknown, bridging major rivers in India involved several problems. Derbyshire called it physical deterrents, such as ‘tremendous seasonal fluctuations in river levels and widths, and the capricious character and sheer velocity of the river at the height of the rainy season’.116 In fact, the economic impulse was also nonexisting. For, the alternative to the costly and difficult river-bridge was much too simple. The old system of transport was slow, fit to carry a small amount of goods, and much less time bound. The usual practice was to interrupt journey at the ferry, tranship goods to the boat, and resume it afresh from the other side of the river. It suited the community of carters. All these slowed down the movement of goods and escalated the cost. Boat bridges often assured an uninterrupted journey in the dry season, but was unworkable after rains. On the Calcutta–Dhaka road, on the ‘major rivers of Chuttrah, Naba-Ganga, Burraseeah, Ellenkhalee, Koomar, the passage of mails and troops could be well performed by boat bridges, [which] transformed into ferries during the inundation’ when ‘the violence of the (p.63)

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways current would make the maintenance of the bridge very difficult and expensive in that season’.117 In the post-monsoon season, water transport was more accessible and hence widely used.

All over eastern India, there was ‘a great deficiency of bridges, and the descent into many of the creeks is as steep as to impede very much the passage, and to diminish the

Figure 1.1 Cane Suspension Bridge

118

load of carts’. Except in Source: S. Playne, Bengal and Assam Assam and eastern Bengal, (London, 1917), p. 436. most rivers withdrew to a thin sheet of water in the summer, only to turn into gushing streams in the monsoon, often with the width of a mile. In the dry season, rivers could be crossed at points carters knew. The longdistance trade thus picked up immediately after monsoon, when the river was in high spate, opening the interior to heavy boats, and then retracted to its old course no sooner than the water level had subsided. The seasonality of the longdistance trade thus strained the old system of transport. The railways as a new mode of transport was distinguished by its speed, great carrying capacity, and dependability in all seasons, and hence needed to ensure the uninterrupted run over canals, flood streams, and rivers. Bengal in the 1840s had a number of road bridges built under private–public enterprise. The railway bridge was a technological feat of great economic significance, but financial and (p.64) local considerations discouraged the use of latest European technology. Indian rivers also ‘presented British bridge engineers with a novel and taxing set of problems’, seasonality of water flows in the main. It restricted the on-site work to eight or nine months a year, leading to an ‘annual race against the rains’.119 The disposal of rainwater was also a major problem. Railway engineer J.P. Kennedy considered the Damodar River ‘the greatest enemy’ to the rail bed from Howrah to Bardhaman, observing upon its ‘extraordinary and most alarming inundation produced by bursting its embankments’. To ensure the safety and uninterrupted run of the railways, it was important therefore to provide for spacious rainwater arches in sufficient number for the quick disposal of floodwater. He had thus proposed reinforcing and raising the height of the Damodar embankments, dredging both old and new courses of the river, and constructing a canal from the north to the Hooghly River near Sankrail. Kennedy’s proposal looked very sound from engineering considerations, but was too costly to accept. James Anderson, Public Works Division (PWD) engineer of Page 38 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways the Bardhaman division, argued that the GT Road passing through the same tract, with a network of flood channels, was used round the year.120 What he did not mention was that the GT Road was regularly flooded at a number of points rendering it unusable for loaded carts in the monsoon season. The railway engineer could hardly afford to ignore it. Hence, they provided for 212 culverts for the first 26 miles from Howrah, followed by 360 up to Pandua, but reduced the number of flood-arches for the next 43 miles of the more floodprone zone. To save the rail bed here, a viaduct was built near Bardhaman and ‘embankments on the right bank of the Damodar river has been removed’. As a result, ‘the catastrophe which formerly caused misery and desolation to countless numbers, has never occurred on its left’, leading to ‘immense miseries and hardships to the people of the right bank’.121 This was the first major direct intervention in the course of the discharge of rainwater. The raising of the height of the embankment on one side of the Damodar and its flattening on the other bank was an easy and cheap alternative to the costly construction of a canal to ease the rush of floodwater to the Hooghly. It marked an important shift in attitude towards railway construction in India: cost efficiency (p.65) over all other considerations. If the lectures delivered by the top brass of railway engineers to students of Sibpur Engineering College are any indication, the attitude soon transformed into a policy zealously followed in subsequent railway projects. Thus the EBR embankment in eastern Bengal had originally no ‘outlets for the passing of water’, resulting in frequent traffic dislocation during floods. Hence, ‘about 2,000 lineal feet of opening’ had to be added in the period 1868–85, followed by ‘a further 400 feet’ in 1890.122 The masonry floodwater arch served as the model for the first major railway bridge built over the Ajoy River, the best evidence of what Ian Derbyshire called the technology mix. Between Howrah and Bardhaman, there were iron bridges over the Bally and Magra canals and the streams Saraswati and Banka. The bridge at Magra used two sets of girders of the length of 85 × 6.25 feet placed on heavy masonry piers perforated with wells. The girders were reassembled at the site by local craftsmen under the supervision of the English. The iron girder bridge was easy to build but difficult and costly to import; hence it was replaced by the masonry-arch technique for the Ajoy. Turnbull wrote to the EIR Chairman: The crossing of the river Ajoy will be a formidable work. In the dry season the river is only 70 feet wide, and about one foot in depth at the crossing, but in the rainy season it comes down with great force and fills a channel of 1,450 feet wide; about 16 feet deep.… The bed of the river consists of sand of an unknown depth resting on alluvial clay. The whole of the 1,500 feet will require to be bridged and work will be expensive, and will be

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways attended with some difficulty.… The viaduct for crossing this river will necessarily be a very heavy work.123 Local diggers dug out wells on the riverbed, excavating earth till the water inside became too deep. As earth and sand were removed, the block built on curbs of wood or iron sank into the soft soil. When the water became too deep for a man to work in, an instrument called jham was lowered into the river. When this filled up with water the diver was manually drawn up. The device was kept constantly going night and day by relays of men, so as to prevent the sand from settling round the block. To save the site from the sand or from scour, curtains of blocks were sunk on the up- and down-stream sides of the bridge across the river, and abutments and wing-walls usually rested on similar perforated blocks. The Ajoy Bridge was 2,200 feet (p.66) long with 36 50-feet long arches on brick pillars sunk at 9–15 feet depth below the sand level.124 Within curtain walls, inverts of concentric ring of bricks were turned beneath the arch, sunk well below the sand level before rains lest ‘the current acting upon them threw the blocks’. In August 1858, piers of the Ajoy Bridge were above water and on 20 July 1859 Turnbull passed over the bridge on an engine to Sainthia on the banks of the Mor River. The 1,500 feet long bridge over the latter was opened on 5 December 1859. The plenty of natural ballast saved money and the trouble of burning clay. The arching bridge of brick was cheap, but too time consuming to build.125 The brick-arch technique was dropped as manufacturing millions of bricks was problematic. No less easy was the provisioning of fuel in isolated places. The shift to the iron girder thus reduced the number of 40 arches of 15 feet for the next bridge on the Pagla River, as planned earlier, to 25 spans of 28 feet each and four larger 60 feet spans. The Dwarka Bridge was also built with seven 60 feet spans resting on brick pillars of well foundation 20 feet below the clayey river bed. The spans were ‘hoisted into position using pontoons, scaffolding and pole derricks’, ‘an extension of scale’ of ‘Indian practice—elephant drawn wooden roller and rope pulley—rather than a new departure’.126 It thus became the standard technique, and was used to build the longest bridge over the Son River. The subsoil foundation work also needed a change. It began with the use of steam pumps for bailing out water ‘rushing into the pit’ of the Sealadah station building.127 Then came Hughes’s pneumatic principle of sinking cast iron cylindrical piers for building the Koomer bridge in Jessore. It did not dispense with the spade-wielding diggers, but here they worked under atmospheric pressure instead of underwater pressure. When piers had been sunk to the requisite depth, the interior was filled with concrete and the bell removed. A

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways bridge of 12 spans of 80 × 8 feet wrought iron girder was thus complete within five and a half months,128 literally winning the race against time. The Jubilee Bridge over the Hooghly River facilitated the movement of trains and coal wagons between the EIR and EBSR railway networks of eastern India. Opened in 1887, it was shorter than the Dufferin Bridge at Benares, but had the longest span among railway bridges in India. Two of its steel spans were 160 metres between piers, (p.67) designed to ‘accommodate heavy navigation of the river’.129 But none was really comparable with the Hardinge or Sara Bridge over the Padma River. In 1912, a railway official publication referred to it as ‘the most important engineering scheme being carried out in India, and in some respects one of the most notable in any part of the world’. The EBSR main line terminated at Damukdia, 119 miles from Sealdah, where a paddle steamer ferried the passenger across the Padma River to Sara on the other side. The double transhipment of cargo caused inordinate delays and damage due to the varying level of the river. Hence, ‘extensive goods traffic on this line crosses the river in trucks carried on specially constructed flats towed over by steamers’. The proposal for the bridge had been placed as early as1889, but cost implications delayed the official sanction till 1908. Here the problem was not to build a bridge more than a mile long but how to train the river known to frequently change its course so that it did not desert the bridge when built. The site was selected 9 miles below the transhipment point at Raita and 3 miles below the metre gauge terminus at Sara. The annual rise of the river in flood was 31 feet, with a maximum flood discharge of 2,500,000 cusecs. To prevent further lateral movement of the river, a pair of guide banks along with revetment of the bank at Sara and Raita Ghat stations on either side were built. The magnitude of the task could be gauged from a statistical computation that ‘the amount of stone used in pitching these guide banks of sand and clay could fill a broad-gauge train extending from Calcutta to Darjeeling’. This broad-gauge double-line bridge, with 15 spans of 352 feet each and two land spans of 75 feet each carried on 16 piers of well foundations, was opened in 1915. The great depth of wells, 50 feet deep and 63 feet long by 37 feet wide, deepest in the world at the time, had been obtained by mechanical dredging energized by two power houses, one on each bank. The piers were formed of concrete blocks above the steel caissons and of steel trestles above the high flood level. With the opening of the bridge, the EBSR main line was extended to Santahar—the new changing station to the metre-gauge system.130 Notes:

(*) Agaria song from central India, collected and translated by Verrier Elwin.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (1.) W.H. Greathed, Report on the Communication between Calcutta and Dhaka, Preliminary, 1856, in Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Serial No. 19, pp. 24–5; F.W. Simms’ Report on the Extension of the Railways to Rajmahal, 1853; Government of India Selections, Serial No. 1, p. 20; W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal (London: Trubner & Co., 1876 [Reprint, Delhi: DK Publishing, 1974]), Vol. X, pp. 230, 237, 247–8, 299, 338–9, 400; Sarah Hilaly, The Railways in Assam (Varanasi 2007), p. 257; Rasananda Tripathi, Crafts and Commerce in Orissa (in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) (Delhi, 1986), pp. 109–10. (2.) Reginald Heber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825, Vol. I (London, 1828), p. 137; L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah (Calcutta, 1909), p. 125. (3.) Report from W.H. Elliot, Officiating Divisional Commissioner, to William Grey, Secretary to the Government of Bengal, dated Bardhaman, 18 November 1855, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. XXIV, pp. 166– 7. (4.) Francis Hamilton Buchanan, An Account of the District of Bhagalpur in 1810–1811 (Patna: Bihar and Orissa Research Society, 1939), p. 641; ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical Association’, Calcutta Review, 36 (March 1861), p. 116; Ranjan Gupta, The Economic Life of Bengal District, Birbhum: 1770–1857 (Bardhaman: Burdwan University, 1984), pp. 223–5, 233–4, 249–50. Chittapriya Mukherjee, Urban Growth in a Rural Area (Santiniketan: Visva Bharati, 1972); idem. ‘Productivity of Rice Milling Industry in Birbhum’, Khadigramodyog (December 1966), p. 224. (5.) W.H. Elliot, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, pp. 161– 2, 164–5, 168; Francis Hamilton Buchanan, Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description of the Zila of Dinajpur (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1833), p. 328. K.M. Mohsin, A Bengal District in Transition: Murshidabad (Dhaka, 1973), pp. 12–13. (6.) W.H. Greathed, Report on the Communication, pp. 9, 18, 19; A. Hope, Jt. Magistrate, Barasat, to the Commissioner of the Nadia Division, etc., dated 31 May 1855, Bengal Government Selections, No. XXIV, p. 36; W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal (London: Trubner & Co., 1876 [Reprint, Delhi: DK Publishing, 1974]), Vol. II, pp. 278–9. ‘Obituary of Kaliprasad Poddar’, a major promoter of roads and bridges in Jessore, Sambad Bhaskar (April 1849). Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre Sekaler Katha (Calcutta 1401 BS), Vol. I, pp. 482–4. (7.) Ian Derbyshire, ‘Eastern Bengal and Its Railways’, The Calcutta Review, 36 (1861), p. 162. Page has been cited by M. Wylie, Bengal as a Field of Missions (London: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1854), p. 101. Report of the Ferry Fund Page 42 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways Committee, Rangpur, in Bengal Government Selections, No. XXIV, p. 142. F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 326; Final Report of the Rangpur Survey and Settlement Operations (Calcutta, 1931), pp. 34–6. (8.) F. H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 327, 328, 333; Report from the Ferry Fund Committee, Rungpore, dated 19 June 1855, in Bengal Government Selections, No. XXIV, p. 143. (9.) Cited by Harbans Mukhia, Exploring India’s Medieval Centuries: Essays in History, Society, Culture and Technology (Delhi, 2010), p. 232. M. Martin, History of Eastern India, cited by R.C. Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I: Under Early British Rule (London, 1901 [New Delhi, 1960; Reprint 1989]), pp. 154–5, 160; F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 328. (10.) B.B. Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India (Calcutta, 1981), p. 98; Thomas Oldham, Report of the Proceedings for 1851–52, in Superintendent, Geological Survey of India, Bengal Government Selections, No. 8, pp. 21–2; Ferry Fund Committee, Howrah, to the Commissioner of Circuit, No. 13, dated 12 June 1855, Bengal Government Selections, No. XXIV, p. 180. (11.) J. Anderson, Divisional Engineer, PWD, Bardhaman Division, letter to R.M. Stephenson dated Burdwan 4 September 1844, cited in S. Settar and B. Misra (eds), Railway Construction in India: Select Documents, Vol. I: 1832–1852 (New Delhi: ICHR, 1999), pp. 1–56. (12.) W.H. Greathed, Report on the Communication, p. 17; F.H. Buchanan, Bhagalpur, p. 643; ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway’, p. 116; R. Gupta, Birbhum, pp. 224–5. (13.) Ole Feldback, ‘Cloth Production and Trade in Late Eighteenth Century Bengal: A Report from the Danish Factory in Serampore’, Bengal Past and Present, vol. 86 (Diamond Jubilee Number, Calcutta Historical Society, 1967), p. 136. ‘One ox and five rupees of capital enabled a bepari to start his trade and he sold goods to the value of fifty rupees a month making a profit of six to twelve percent’. Four to five hundred bullocks carried paddy daily from Dainkuni–Janai to Bardhaman–Bishnupur. Cited in Nalinaksha Sanyal, Development of Indian Railways (Calcutta, 1930), p. 2; Samachar Darpan, dated 10 April 1833, cited in B. Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre, Vol. II, p. 615; R.C. Dutt, Economic History, Vol. I, p.155. (14.) R. Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol. I, pp. 36–7; Harisadhan Mukherjee, Kolikata Sekaler O Ekaler (Calcutta, 1915), pp. 681–2; William Hedges, The Diary of William Hedges, Esq. (1681–87), Vol. II, p. 19; Colesworthey Grant, Letters from an Artist in India to His Sisters in England (London, 1860), pp. 7–8.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (15.) H.T. Colebrook, Remarks on the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal (Calcutta, 1804), p. 152. (16.) O. Feldbaeck, ‘Cloth Production and Trade’, p. 126. I. Derbyshire, ‘Eastern Bengal and Its Railways’, p. 161. Census of Bengal, 1872, p. 110. (17.) W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account, X, pp. 236–7, 401. Nilmani Mukherjee, ‘Foreign and Inland Trade’, in The History of Bengal, 1757–1905, ed. N.K. Sinha (Calcutta: Calcutta University, 1967), p. 371; Somerset Playne, Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa: Their History, People, Commerce and Industrial Resources (London: The Foreign and Colonial Compiling & Publishing Co., 1917), p. 67. (18.) K.M. Mohsin, Murshidabad, pp. 14–15. (19.) J.F. Royle, On the Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India (London, 1851), p. 43; R. Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol. I, pp. 241–2; ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical’, p.120. (20.) R. Gupta, Birbhum, p. 226. For more on the movement of boats of salt for rice in Orissa, see R. Tripathi, Crafts and Commerce in Orissa, p.112. (21.) K.M. Mohsin, Murshidabad, pp. 11–14. In 1819, the river was navigable for heavy boats up to Hooghly. Samachar Darpan, dated 27 November 1819 and 1 January 1831, cited in B. Bandyopadhyay Sangbadpatre, Vol. I, pp. 376–7, Vol. II, p. 616. (22.) Rice was selling at Rs 31 and 8 annas and indigo at Rs 4,201 per ton. W.H. Greathed, Report on the Communication, pp.15, 37. (23.) F.H. Buchanan, Bhagalpur, p. 641. (24.) Hindu Hitoishi (27 October 1870), cited in Report of the Native Press [hereafter RNP], Bengal, 1870. Cited in Prajnanda Banerjee, Calcutta and Its Hinterland—A Study in Economic History of India, 1833–1900 (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1975), pp. 94–5. (25.) Police Notification dated 10 March 1781, cited in W.H. Carey, The Good Old Days of Honorable John Company (Calcutta, 1882 [Reprint, Calcutta, 1964], p. 15; Nilmani Mukherjee, A Bengal Zamindar: Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara and His Times 1808–1888 (Calcutta, 1975), p. 12. (26.) In April 1850, The Englishman reported a similar incident. Cited in Allen’s Indian Mail and Register of Intelligence for British and Foreign India, China and All Parts of the East (London: W.M.H. and Company, 1850), p. 415.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (27.) Henry T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges: An Exploration in the History of India’s Modernization through Science and Technology (Delhi, 1960 [Reprint 1987]), pp. 15–17, 45, 47–48, 99–100; R. Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol. I, pp. 107, 134. (28.) Rajen Saikia, Social and Economic History of Assam (1853–1921) (Delhi, 2001), p. 125; C.R. Wilson, The Early Annals of the Bengal (London: W. Thacker & Co.), Vol. II, Part II, p. 327; W.H. Carey, Good Old Days, pp. 14–15. (29.) H.T. Colebrook, Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal, p. 153; H.T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges, pp. 14–15. (30.) The pinnace of European records. R. Heber, Narrative of a Journey Vol. I, p. 5; L.S.S. O’Malley, 24-Parganas, 1914, pp. 165–6, Midnapore, 1911, p. 133; J.H.E. Garrett, Nadia, 1910, pp. 99–100. (31.) William Hedges, Diary of William Hedges, Esq., (1681–1687), issued by the Hakluyt Society, Vol. II (London, 1886), p. 19; J.H.E. Garrett, Nadia, p. 100; S. Sen, Bangla Sthan Nam (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1393 BS), p. 6. (32.) L.S.S. O’ Malley, Howrah, 1909, p.125, Midnapore, p. 133, 24-Parganas, p. 166, Rajsahi, 1916, p. 118; J.N. Gupta, Bogra, 1910, p. 108; J.E. Webster, Noakhali, 1911, p. 66; J.A. Vas, Rangpur, 1911, p. 99. (33.) ‘Boats made on the banks of rivers and canals possessed very fine lines, descending from countless generations and were very safe and very clean.’ L.S.S. O’ Malley, Bakharganj, 1918, p. 57, 80, Khulna, 1908, pp. 121–2; F.A. Sachse, Mymensingh, 1917, p. 79–80; Between 1883 and 1894, Dhubri sent 1,500 boats a year on an average, the highest being 2,812 in 1893–94. R. Saikia, Social and Economic History of Assam, pp. 125–9; ‘Chattagrame Jahajer Byabsa’, Arthik Unnati, 2, no. 7 (1334 BS), 6, no. 1 (1338 BS). Page has been cited in M. Wylie, Bengal as a Field of Missions (London: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1854), p. 102. (34.) B.B. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 103. (35.) R.D. Turner, Actg. Mag. Murshidabad, to G. Dowdeswell, Sec. to Govt. Judicial Dept., Fort William, dated 25 February 1811, cited in Dharampal, Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition (Varanasi, 1971), pp. 105–6. (36.) W.H. Carey, Good Old Days, p. 16. Sambad Prabhakar (9 January 1830), cited in B. Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre, Vol. I, p. 183. (37.) W.H. Carey, Good Old Days, pp. 18–22; H.T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges, pp. 46–7.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (38.) W.H. Carey, Good Old Days, p. 22; H.T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges, p. 55. (39.) H.T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges, pp. 55–6; Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981), pp. 142–6; W.H. Carey, Good Old Days, p. 25. (40.) From the Hooghly to the Himalayas: Being an Illustrated Handbook to the Chief Places of Interest Reached by the Eastern Bengal State Railway (Bombay: The Times Press, 1913), p. 19. (41.) B.B. Kling, Partner in Empire, pp. 99, 114. (42.) In 1848, the government introduced steamers between Calcutta and Gauhati but it was not successful. The regular services had to wait till 1860, when the Indian Commercial Navigation Company let two vessels sail between the two cities at six weeks’ interval. W.R. Gawthrop, The Story of the Assam Railways & Trading Company Limited, 1881–1951, (London, 1951), pp. 6, 10; R. Saikia, Social and Economic History of Assam, pp. 124, 125, 129. Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the Year 1880–81, p. 61. ‘East Bengal River Steam Services’, Byabsa O Banijya, I, no. 1. (43.) From the Hooghly to the Himalayas, p. 16. (44.) The regular cargo service left Calcutta for: Dibrughar (1,108 miles), Silchar (771), Dinapore (936), and Buxar on the Ganges (1,018), and Ayodhya (Fyzabad) on the Gogra (1,229). In 1912, they carried more than a million tons of goods in six months. From the Hooghly to the Himalayas, pp. 19–20. C. Grant, Letters from an Artist, pp. 3, 8; ‘The East Indian Railway’, Calcutta Review, LXI, p. 237; S.B. Medhi, Transport System and Economic Development in Assam (Gauhati, 1978), p. 19; H.T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges, p. 104; L.S.S. O’Malley, 24-Parganas, pp. 163, 165–6. (45.) S. Settar and B. Misra, Railway Construction in India, Vol. I, p.15. (46.) Dalhousie considered the country above the city of Allahabad ideal for ‘the successful prosecution of Railway line with few river crossings and no hills.’ ‘Minute by Dalhousie on Introduction of Railways in India, as Submitted to the Court of Directors, 4 July 1850’, in Our Indian Railway: Themes in India’s Railway History, eds Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas (Delhi, 2006), p. 25. (47.) Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘The Colonial Context of the Bengal Renaissance: A Note on the Early Railway Thinking in Bengal’ in Our Indian Railway: Themes in India’s Railway History, eds Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas (Delhi, 2006), pp. 4–5.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (48.) Letter from Captain Goodwyn to R.M. Stephenson, dated 12 August 1844; Letter of Messrs. Colvin Ainslie, Cowie & Co.; both cited in S. Settar and B. Misra, Railway Construction in India, Vol. I, pp. 31, 34–5. (49.) Mutty Lall Seal to Stephenson, dated 26 August 1844, cited in D. Chakrabarty, ‘Colonial Context of the Bengal Renaissance’, p. 17. (50.) Kelsall & Ghosh (Baboo Ram Gopal Ghosh) to Stephenson, 14 September 1844, cited in D. Chakrabarty, p. 18. (51.) Stephenson to William Theobold, Commissioner of Burdwan, dated Calcutta 3 August 1844; William Theobald to Stephenson, Calcutta, not dated, cited in D. Chakrabarty, ‘Colonial Context of the Bengal Renaissance’, pp. 6, 16, 18, 20; Rowland M. Stephenson, Report upon the Practicability and Advantages of the Introduction of Railways into British India (London, 1844), cited in B.B. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 195. For instance, Mr Jenks had a coalmine in Bardhaman near the Ajay River. Hena Mukherjee, The Early History of the East Indian Railway, 1845–1879 (Calcutta, 1994), pp. 1–2. Stephenson received the support of Cockerill & Co, Fletcher, Alexander & Co., Crawford, Colvin & Co., Palmer, Mackillop & Dent, and Great East India Houses. (52.) Ram Gopal Ghosh & Mutty Lall Seal to Stephenson, cited in D. Chakrabarty, ‘Colonial Context of the Bengal Renaissance’, pp. 17–18. (53.) Edward Davidson, The Railways of India with an Account of their Rise, Progress and Construction, written on the basis of the India Office Records (London, 1868), pp. 133–4. (54.) Rohini Mohon Chaudhuri, The Evolution of Indian Industries (Calcutta, 1939), p. 5. (55.) Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Land Acquisition for the Railways in Bengal, 1850– 62’, p. 111. (56.) E. Davidson, Railways of India, pp. 141–4. (57.) Iftekhar Iqbal, The Bengal Delta, Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840– 1943 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 118–21. (58.) W. Grey, Sec. to Govt. of Bengal, to the Sec. to the Govt. of India in the PWD, 30 May 1855, Government of India Selections, Serial 19, p. 4; W.H. Greathed, Report on the Communication, pp. 14, 21, 23. (59.) Edward Davidson, Railways of India, pp. 215–8.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (60.) National Archives of India (NAI), Captain F.S. Taylor, Officiating Construction Engineer to the Government of Bengal, Railway Department, Letter No. 1216 dated 30 May 1862, PWD Progs. Rly Branch, 11 July 1862. (61.) NAI , Memo No. 94–5, C.T. Buckland, Dhaka Commissioner, PWD Progs. Rly Branch, July 1865; W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account, Vol. II, p. 94; W.R. Gawthrop, Assam Railways & Trading Company Limited, pp. 6, 9. (62.) With 15 steel spans of 352 feet each and 2 land spans of 75 feet each, the 5,430 feet long bridge was the longest and most difficult bridge built in India till 1935. Ian Derbyshire, ‘The Building of India’s Railways: The Application of Western Technology in the Colonial Periphery, 1850–1920’, in Technology and the Raj: Western Technology and Technical Transfer to India, 1700-1947, eds Roy M. Macleod and Deepak Kumar (Delhi, 1995), p. 212. (63.) The Act XLII of 1850. H. Mukherjee, Early History of the East Indian Railway, pp. 92–3; Geo Turnbull’s letter to the Chairman, East Indian Railway (EIR), 3 January 1851, Papers on the Proposed Railway in Bengal (Home), 1853, Government of India Selections, Serial I, p. 65. (64.) C.H. Lushington, ‘Report of the Proceedings in Taking the Land and Other Property Required for the Railway’, Bengal Government Selections, Serial No. 4, pp. 4, 9–10. (65.) C. Grant, Letters from an Artist, p. 3. The letters were written in early 1850 (p. 2). (66.) Home (Public) Progs. A, 1850; No. 32–3; Statement of land required for the railway in Howrah by C.J. White, No. 101, Turnbull’s note dated 5 July 1853 to R.M. Stephenson; PWD Progs. A, July 1853, pp. 495–6. (67.) W.H. Carey, Good Old Days, p. 62. (68.) Turnbull’s letter to the Chairman and Directors, EIR, 3 January 1851; Papers on the Proposed Railway in Bengal (Home) 1853, Government of India Selections, Serial I, Appendix No. 6, p. 65. (69.) J.P. Kennedy to F.J. Halliday, Secretary, Fort William, dated 29 January 1851; Papers on the Proposed Railway in Bengal (Home), 1853, Government of India Selections, Serial 1, p. 33. Report by C.H. Lushington, Government of India Selections, pp. 3–5. (70.) Turnbull’s letter to the Chairman, EIR, Government of India Selections, Serial 1, p. 65. (71.) ‘The East India Railway’, Calcutta Review, LXI (September 1858), p. 234.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (72.) C. Grant, Letters from an Artist, pp. 19, 21. (73.) Ibid., p. 25; Samachar Darpan (5 August 1820), cited in B. Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre, Vol. I, pp. 178–80. (74.) NAI, Home Public Progs. A, O.C. dated 22 November 1850, Nos 32–3; A, O.C. dated 29 November 1850, Nos 24–5. (75.) Report by C.H. Lushington, Bengal Government Selections, Serial No. 4, Appendix M, p. xxviii. (76.) Financial Letter to India, 14 November 1849, No. 27 as cited in H. Mukherjee, Early History of the East Indian Railway, pp. 96–7. (77.) Report by C.H. Lushington, pp. 5–7, 15, Appendix K, p. xxv. (78.) Dalhousie’s Minute, 4 July 1850, as cited in H. Mukherjee, Early History of the East Indian Railway, p. 96. (79.) NAI, PWD Progs. Rly. Branch, No. 140, dated 15 June 1855, p. 463. (80.) Ibid., A, July–Dec, 1855, p. 924; Govt. of India, Railway Dept. (Rly. Br.), July 1860, No. 17A. (81.) Govt. of India, Railway Dept. (Rly. Br.), June 1855, p. 452. (82.) NAI, PWD Progs. A, July–Dec, 1855, p. 466. (83.) As cited in H. Mukherjee, Early History of the East Indian Railway, p. 96. (84.) Report by C.H. Lushington, p. 23, Appendix M, p. xxviii. (85.) Ibid., p. 23. See also H. Mukherjee, Early History of the East Indian Railway, pp. 95–6. (86.) J.E. Gastrell, Geographical and Statistical Report of the Districts of Jessore, Fureedpur and Backerganj (Calcutta, 1868), p. 6. (87.) Report by C.H. Lushington, Appendix M, p. xxviii. (88.) N. Mukherjee, A Bengal Zamindar, pp. 190–6, emphasis added. (89.) Baker’s Report, 13 July 1857, cited in H. Mukherjee, Early History of the East Indian Railway, pp. 35–6; Eastern Railway, Symphony of Progress: The Saga of Eastern Railway, 1854–2003 (2003), p. 11; G. Huddleston, History of the East Indian Railway (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1906), p. 37.

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (90.) G. Huddleston, History of the East Indian Railway, p. 49; ‘A Copy of the Memorandum Laid before the Court of Directors of the East India Company upon Railways in India,’ 24 July 1857, p. 243, cited in H. Mukherjee, Early History of the East Indian Railway, p. 35. (91.) NAI, Jt. Secretary to Govt. of Bengal, PWD Rly Br., to Offg. Secretary to GOI, PWD, No. 44 dated 15 June 1860, PWD Progs. A, Railway Branch, Letter No. 2549 dated 29 June 1859, from the Deputy Construction Engineer to Government of Bengal on the EBR Terminus at Seladah. Report by C.H. Lushington, Appendix M. In Madras, the forcible occupation of a temple land was declared illegal by the government—NAI, Home, PWD Progs. Rly. Branch, Nos 1–6, A, 5 April 1861. (92.) Report to the Secretary of State in Council, Railways in India for 1872–73, Parliamentary Paper, (H.C.), as cited in H. Mukherjee, Early History of the East Indian Railway, p. 36. E. Davidson, Railways of India, pp. 145,147. (93.) NAI, Geo Turnbull to Chairman, EIR, p. 65; Home PWD Progs. 13 July 1855, p. 446. (94.) NAI, Revised Rules for Land for Railways, Circular No. 55 issued by the Secretary to Government of India, PWD; No. 14, Home, PWD Progs. A, 5 July 1861. (95.) For details of the Kushtia layout, see J.E. Gastrell, Jessore, Fureedpur and Backerganj p. 40; E. Davidson, Railways of India, p. 98. (96.) Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘The Rice Milling Industry in Bengal, 1920–1950: A Case Study of the Impact of Mechanization on the Local Peasant Economy’, The Calcutta Historical Journal, 13, nos 1–2 (July 1988–June 1989), pp. 11–14. (97.) C. Grant, Letters from an Artist, pp. 13, 15–16. (98.) R. Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol. I, p. 30. (99.) Ibid., pp. 38, 43. (100.) E. Davidson, Railways of India, p. 98. (101.) N. Sanyal, Development of Indian Railways, p. 56. (102.) In 1884, government acquired the EBR from Calcutta to Rajabari from the guaranteed Eastern Bengal Co. and amalgamated it in phases with the Poradah branch of the Northern Bengal State Railway, Kaunia–Dharla Railway, Dhaka Railway, Calcutta and South Eastern Railway; and the whole became the Eastern Bengal State Railway from 1 April 1887. From the Hooghly to the Himalayas, pp. 27–8, 71. Page 50 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (103.) Samachar Darpan (14 November 1818), cited in B. Bandyopadhyaya, Sangbadpatre, Vol. I, pp. 339–40. (104.) NAI, Letter from Lt. Col. C.B. Young, Offg. Scy to the Govt of Bengal, PWD to Offg Scy to the Govt. of India, PWD; No. 1331 dated 14 April 1860. Letter from Jt. Scy to the Govt. of Bengal, PWD Rly Br. to the Offg Scy to the Govt. of India, PWD; No. 44 dated 15 June 1860. NAI, PWD Progs. A, January–June, 1860. ‘Rough estimate of the cost of the land and other property taken for Railway in the first section of the line between Howrah and Pandooha, comprising 41 miles’, S. Settar and B. Misra, Railway Construction in India, Appendix M, p. XXVIII. (105.) NAI, PWD Progs. A, Rly. Branch, Letter Nos 24–5 dated 29 November 1850. (106.) Sushil Kumar De, Bangla Prabad: Chhada O Chalti Katha (Calcutta, 1359 BS), pp. 387, 388, 432, 637. (107.) ‘The East Indian Railway’, p. 234. (108.) No. 2549 (29 June 1859), EBR terminus at Sealdaha. PWD Progs. A; E. Davidson, Railways of India, pp. 97–8. (109.) During 1851–1901, Bolpur’s population expanded by five times, while that of Supur and Surul declined by 57 per cent and 48 per cent respectively. C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth, pp. 13, 16–22, 24–5, 167, 176, 199–201, 222–3. (110.) Som Prakash (27 April 1868), cited in RNP; ‘A Copy of the Memorandum’, etc., 1857, p. 234. (111.) G. Huddleston, History of the East Indian Railway, pp. 14–15, 27. (112.) I. Derbyshire, ‘The Building of India’s Railways’, p.185. (113.) NAI, Home PWD Progs. F. W. A No. 2570, dated 15 June 1855. H. Mukherjee, Early History of the East Indian Railway, p. 116. (114.) W.R. Gawthrop, Assam Railways & Trading Company Limited, p. 15. (115.) Rs 28,000 had been spent for each of the Srirampur, Chandannagore, and Hughli stations; and Rs 44,810 for Bardhaman. Burn & Co. had later received the contract for the entire length from Pundooah to Bardhaman. E. Davidson, Railways of India, pp. 145–7, 152–3. (116.) Ian Derbyshire has thus referred to the ‘pleated rope chains’ bridge of the early Kashmir. ‘The Building of India’s Railways’, p. 193. (117.) W.H. Greathed, Report on the Communication, pp. 18–19. Page 51 of 53

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways (118.) F.H. Buchanan, Bhagalpur, p. 641. (119.) Anderson to Stephenson, dated Burdwan, 4 September 1844, as cited in S. Settar and B. Misra, Railway Construction in India, Vol. I, ICHR, New Delhi, pp. 1–55. D.R. Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress (Oxford, 1988), p. 76; I. Derbyshire, ‘The Building of India’s Railways’, p. 194. (120.) Kennedy to F.J. Halliday, dated 29 January 1851, pp. 35–8; From Magra to Bardhaman (38 miles), the Grand Trunk Road had 36 drains, apart from small irrigation drains. Of these, one had three arches of 20 feet each, three of 20, 18, 12 feet breadth, and three of 10 feet each, the rest varies from 2 to 6 feet. The section up to Andal (48 miles) has 59 drains; only one with 21 feet breadth, others varying from 2 to 6 feet. Anderson’s letter to Stephenson, dated Burdwan, 4 September 1844, p. 55. (121.) Turnbull to Chairman, EIR, 3 January 1851, pp. 66–7; E. Davidson, Railways of India, pp. 149–50. (122.) I. Iqbal, The Bengal Delta, pp. 126–30. (123.) Turnbull’s letter to the Chairman and Directors, EIR, pp. 77, 96–7. (124.) Padmanava Ghosal, Relpathe Bharat Bhraman (Calcutta, 1291 BS), p. 16. (125.) Letter dated Srirampur, 3 January 1851, p. 65; Home PWD Progs. 13 July 1855, p. 446. (126.) E. Davidson, Railways of India, pp. 163–6; I. Derbyshire, ‘The Building of India’s Railways’, pp. 194–5. (127.) ‘In the treacherous and yielding soil of the large and deep ponds, bottom of the walls are as much as 45 feet below the ground floor level, and are from eight to ten feet thick.’ W.H. Greathed, Report on the Communication, pp. 11–12. (128.) A staging was fixed at first across the bed of the river and then a travelling crane put the cylinder in a place. Several lengths of these were bolted together and made air-tight. The cylinder fitted with a knife edge at the bottom was then loaded by a heavy weight of 30 tons forcing it down a few feet. An apparatus (bell) weighing nine tons is next fastened to the top of the cylinder and air was pumped into the lower length until the atmosphere within becomes so compressed as to expel all the water from lower lengths of the pier. Excavators then passed to the bottom through the bell fitted with valves and trap doors worked exactly in the same way as an ordinary canal lock, air instead of water being fluid. As the earth was removed from inside the cylinder by men and passed up in large buckets through trap in the bell to the surface, the

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From Bullock Cart to the Railways heavily weighted cylinder rapidly sunk, often one foot in an hour. E. Davidson, The Railways of India, pp. 220–2. (129.) D.R. Headrick, Tentacles, p. 75. (130.) For the Sara bridge including the quotes see From the Hooghly to the Himalayas, pp. 27–8.

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New Tools in Old Hands

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

New Tools in Old Hands Artisan as Barefoot Entrepreneur Smritikumar Sarkar

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords The transfer of technology from the West commenced with the East India Company introducing the fly-shuttle loom in the late eighteenth century. Colonial trade brought with it not just machine-made products to replace the handmade ones but also new tools, raw materials, and concepts of work, followed by small machines in the early twentieth century. The earlier emphasis on the destructive role of technology ignored how all these had helped the artisans. Focussing on the metal working group, the discussion analyses the role of new technology as the key factor for their survival—how artisans, without formal training, used new tools, raw materials, and machines, coming in the wake of the international trade, to survive in an increasingly hostile market. Keywords:   East India Company, fly-shuttle loom, colonial trade, artisans, technology, metal workers

Charka katar din giyechhe kaler sutoy tant chalchhe, bhat to pabina. Charka tarka phele diye sutakale line diye, kaj to pabina.*

Tool Technique Ever since William Bentinck referred to the bones of Bengal’s weavers bleaching her villages, critics of British rule have argued that free import of factory yarn and textiles destroyed India’s most extensive industry. What is ignored, however, Page 1 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands is that colonialism brought not just the machine-made goods but also new tools for old hands. Tools and techniques are two interrelated notions. Repeating the same job over a length of time instils unto the worker a mastery that is slowly crystallized into a technique based on tools. The (p.79) more efficient the tool the better is the yield. The overemphasis on machines since the early nineteenth century ignores this critical element of industrial heritage. The early machine, as distinct from the tool, was a part of what could be called the ‘technology of handicraft’. A spindle could hardly be called a machine, but the loom was certainly more than a tool. Once put into motion, the potter’s wheel works like a machine. Similarly, the fire drill, pulley, water lifting wheel, and spinning wheel required human energy to operate them. This was true for most machines during the first phase of the Industrial Revolution. Those machines did not replace the human element. Excluding the power machine, they all differed simply in the degree of their complexities. The artisan’s technique was characterized by an ‘occasional use of machine’ as against the machine-induced routine production of the industrial era.1 Is it possible to use the tool technique as an entry point for looking at the artisan? Did the village loom remain unchanged since medieval times? For, a shift from the vertical to horizontal loom and from spindle to the spinning wheel is evident. A mid-sixteenth-century Bengali composition refers to weaving as peasant women’s daily chore.2 They wove without a fixed frame. Threads forming the warp were hung down with the lower ends fixed to a belt fastened between the waist and toes. They worked in sitting postures, stretching out their legs, and made pieces of short length and width for their use or barter in the locality. The technique, still found in the hills, could not meet larger demands. The demand for textiles had been growing since medieval times, as foreign traders cruised to the river ports of Bengal buying it mostly for bullion. The expansion of demand is indicated by the proliferation of looms. A proto-Bengali text refers to a nomadic group making bamboo looms for the villager. Early Europeans recorded a loom for weaving long cloth that worked by hanging warp threads from a tree. A Bhagalpur weaver thus rebuked his grandson for wasting time to fix the loom: Tanabi to tana nehi to nau narik harkat hoi. In east Bengal, a carpenter (tarkhan) who had migrated from Punjab had introduced a loom called thak-thaki tant.3 Some localities of Dhaka owed their names to similar migrations, such as thateri bazaar from the thaterian (coppersmith) of north India. A product of Samana (Punjab), the long cloth used in the Mughal tent came to (p.80) be known as samiana in Bengal. The migration of Khatri and Sikh merchants to eastern India since the late seventeenth century had a key role in the fusion of tool techniques.4

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New Tools in Old Hands The legendary muslin weaver of Dhaka is often believed to have done everything by himself, even growing his own cotton. What is ignored is that he needed at least six spinners to feed the loom, which forced him to depend upon others, leading to a gender-based specialization with spinning becoming a woman’s job. The social control of skill formation made it difficult to replicate the working unit, forcing a shift from the spindle (taqli) to the spinning wheel. The process that followed the diffusion of the belt-driven technique in late medieval India was nearly complete by the early eighteenth century. If the weaver was not from a large family, with additional male members to spare, he had to utilize a part of his labour time in bleaching, finishing, and marketing the product. It reduced the weaving time, since weaving by women was largely a taboo, except in social groups characterized by labour shortage. From spinning, specialization spread to loom-making, dyeing, bleaching, calico printing, and so on.5 After the weavers, the braziers (kansari or kasera) formed the largest artisan group. A form of cire perdue metal casting craft, this traditional craft freed itself of the control of the closed group tied to the temple and king. Once the timeconsuming lost-wax process was done away with, the brazier was free to fashion out his ware to meet wider demand. In eastern India, the transition took place at the medieval port city of Saptagram. The supply of copper from southeast Asia and the larger demand of the place transformed the early nomadic craft to a stable industry, by fusing the local and north Indian copper working techniques. The high rank of the saptagrami in the kansari caste hierarchy points to their catalytic role in the transformation of the craft.6 The easiest way to increase production in those days was by inducting more labour, which was difficult for a closed group like the kansari. The price of copper soared till the overseas supply improved and its artillery use declined in the early eighteenth century.7 As mint use of the metal continued to be a state priority, the brazier could not hope to buy it cheap. Nevertheless, an upgradation of the tool technique helped the industry grow during late pre-colonial eastern India. (p.81) Abul Fazl in his Ain-i-Akbari refers to a 4:1 copper–tin ratio for bellmetal. Compare it with the formula (veej-mantra) of the late eighteenth century braziers: satay doyay karo jaro; tate ano, tate garo—make a combination of seven and two, smelt by heat and fashion it while hot. The copper–tin ratio of 3.5:1 declined later to 2.5:1, as used by Maldah braziers, or to 1:1 by their craft fellows in early-nineteenth-century Murshidabad. Using the Ain’s ratio as the base, an analysis of the working formula thus suggests a fall in the copper content of brass utensils, deliberately done to produce them cheap for the larger market. What needs to be stressed here is that this had been achieved by the brazier himself.

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New Tools in Old Hands The brazier’s tool technique also changed. All utensils had to be scrubbed and chiselled before polishing, to be ready for sale. Most tedious, it required high inputs of skill and labour, and was hence time consuming and costly. As the skilled artisan in the prevailing system of training was in short supply, it created a bottleneck situation leading to the development of a mandrill. A prototype of the spinning wheel, it was called charka by the braziers, and its operator, charkash. The early-nineteenth-century reference to kudandar and chachandar (scrubber and chiseller) found among backward workgroups points to a recent introduction of the drill. Contrary to the conventional notion, this is a clear case of the inter-sector diffusion of the tool technique.8 Even tribal blacksmiths used different types of furnaces and bellows for smelting iron.9 These changes looked small and insignificant to developments elsewhere, because traders always took the easier route of responding to the market, by simply multiplying production units. The minimal use of iron in agriculture also deprived the industry of its much-needed demand for a push. In brief, the notion of the unchanging tool technique seems suspect in view of what has been read above. Let’s turn to the major artisan groups of colonial eastern India to locate the changes that helped them survive in a globally integrated market.

The Weaver Bengal’s textiles were known for variety, magnitude, and quality, yet they were unbelievably cheap. A medium of exchange in Asian trade, these had even been used by the English for profit repatriation, a (p.82) process that ended up with colonization.10 What really existed before is difficult to answer since the weaver surfaced in historical records only with European arrival. Europeans wrote mostly about their trade, production financing, and procurement, often contextualizing Indian reality to Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution. Of the four major textile zones in India, Bengal produced the best. The East India Company (EIC) had shifted its investment to Bengal, as ‘no other nation on the globe could either equal or rival their quality’. Quality in those days depended on human skill and the cotton used. Bengali farming usage rarely refers to cotton, as it required eight times of tilling as against only four for paddy. Bengal thus relied on cotton grown outside.11 It has been held that ‘the peasant-cultivator was often a weaver as well and whenever necessary could shift from one occupation to the other’. A situation such as this is hardly conducive to the acquisition of skill, possible only through uninterrupted association. A rigid social control on skill transmission discouraged industrial skill being ‘abundant’.12 Since productivity under similar situations could not be readily adjusted to demand, early industrial organization responded to market expansion by inducting non-skilled labour. Two types of persons were thus associated with the industry: the skilled hereditary worker we

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New Tools in Old Hands call artisan and the casual labour. The latter was readily available, but not the former. Eastern India enjoyed a ‘comparative advantage in costs’. The low cost of labour due to cheap food and the extensive river system, ‘a cheap and highly flexible means of movement’, made it a ubiquitous rural industry against its ‘urban gravitation’ elsewhere. ‘Wherever a European penetrated inland, he found cloth being produced along his route.’ Robert Orme did not come across ‘a single village near large town and on the principal road where every inhabitant, man, woman or child, was not engaged in the manufacturing of cloth’. ‘Places like Birbhum, which were not-quite-so-near the port of shipment, produced ordinary textiles like garras, and Malda, which was a more distant place from the consideration of transport and shipment, produced both fine and coarse textiles.’13 Birbhum was on the high road to northwest India, midway between Patna and Dhaka; Maldah’s position was even more viable. Birbhum met nearly threefourths of its demand for cotton internally, (p.83) while Maldah relied on the supply from north India. It is difficult to attribute the localization to climatic factors either. If Dhaka owed muslin weaving to its ‘hot and humid’ climate, how to explain its absence in the neighbouring districts sharing the same ecology? If Birbhum’s coarse weaving was due to its dry and arid climate, why did other bhum areas fail to have a similar impact? In fact, supply of cotton, proximity to market, and ethno-cultural bonds had a larger influence on weavers’ localization than climatic factors. The more skilled the weaver, the more he tried to get closer to the market. Major artisan settlements in Bengal changed since medieval times due to river shifting. Referred to by the Portuguese as porto pequeno de bengala, Saptagram turned into a ‘petty village’. The capital, Gaur, was also abandoned for the same reason. Bengal textiles, Suma Oriental states, moved to Malacca, Coromandel, Malabar, Gujarat, and Ceylon. In Malacca, Bengali merchants sold their wares at ‘a great profit’, bought spices, precious stones, copper, tin, lead, carpets, porcelain, and back home made 200–300 per cent profits. The journey to and from Malacca took them two months.14 With Portuguese arrival, they retired to coastal trade, carrying rice, raw silk, and muslin, and returned with bales of ginned cotton. Bengal’s increasing integration with northwest India as also the long reign of peace and stability under the Mughals boosted trade. North Indian cotton helped expand weaving. Two important changes in the tool technique were largely to account for it. These were the use of the vertical bamboo loom and the spinning wheel. Nevertheless, cotton imports exceeded the export of textiles.15 Silk Weaving

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New Tools in Old Hands Bengal was also known for its exquisite silk goods. From cultivation to sericulture, spinning, and weaving—the industry involved many social groups. Ecological factors localized mulberry cultivation to a few areas, attracting reeling and weaving also to the same places. Murshidabad and Maldah were the two major centres of silk weaving, followed by Rajsahi, Rangpur, Dinajpur, and Nadia. Kashimbazar in the seventeenth century emerged as the premiere centre of silk trade promoted by Gujarati and Marwari traders. In 1658, the English founded their factory at Kashimbazar following the Dutch, who had (p.84) a larger factory at the place. Traders and weavers began to localize here, amongst whom were the likes of Kali Nandy, great-grandfather of Krisnakanta Nandy, founder of the celebrated Kashimbazar Raj.16 Kali Nandy travelled all the way from his native village of Sijna in Bardhaman to settle at Kashimbazar, a town with Bengali and Gujrati wards, as also a branch of the Jagat Seths. Maratha raids dislocated trade for some time, but by the 1750s it was once again buzzing with activities. Bengal silk goods soon lost their position due to a downturn in north Indian markets. The silk trade of Bengal was mainly inter-provincial with a minor flow to some Middle Eastern and Chinese ports. The English also found it profitable to sell Bengal silk as a substitute for the costlier Italian variety in home, thus encouraging mulberry cultivation.17 But Bengal silk being weak and uneven was soon found to be unsuitable for English looms. Afraid of losing a profitable trade, the English first tried to introduce better worms and then (1769) brought European filature into Bengal with a team of Italian experts, but in vain. The indigenous method of reeling was simple and the winder (naqad) was unwilling to shift to costly filature. To make it a success, the company force closed reeling houses of the local and Armenian traders so as to corner the supply of cocoons. The company’s success in partially achieving the target failed to improve the quality of silk, as mulberry cultivation and breeding of worms shifted to small individual enterprises. A series of famine and high rice prices led to the ‘incredible mortality’ of the chassar, affecting the silk winder and weaver in turn. As an aftershock, large scale conversion of mulberry lands to paddy cultivation followed. All these forced the company to offer ‘liberal rates of rent’ for reclamation of waste land for mulberry cultivation, but with very little success, as the demand for silk became uncertain. The result was a ‘stagnation in Bengal silk trade’, followed by a marginal recovery in the early nineteenth century. The export of silk picked up till the onslaught of the commercial depression in the early 1830s.18 The Prelude to Change

English traders had first tried to reach Bengal ‘through overland routes used by merchants of Agra and other up-country cities’, but (p.85) found it commercially unworkable. Hence, they followed the trail of Bengali merchant boats carrying cotton from Gujarat, setting footholds at Balasore, Hooghly, Page 6 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands Kashimbazar, Maldah, and Dhaka. European demand for textiles by itself was not a new phenomenon. Like other foreign traders, they also located factories near major production centres. In 1663, Kashimbazar produced 22,000 bales of silk, only a third of which was lifted by Europeans. Tartars and Mughals took about the same, and the rest went to Ahmedabad and Surat. An estimate for Maldah (1670) puts the European share at 1.5 per cent of the total trade in textiles. In 1793–94, the English claimed a little over 9 per cent of Bengal’s total textile output, with the rest catering to inland trade. Bengal produced coarse goods more than finer pieces, and its share rose further under the increasing English control over her textile exports.19 European emphasis on standardization was a new development, as the local practice was for the buyer to negotiate his price after a close scrutiny of the product. For the split choice and spot sale, Europeans introduced ‘specific demand for the specific market’, uniformity of quality, size, colour, and the rejection of ‘unsatisfactory cloth’.20 Local weavers were not used to all these. European domination over the Bay of Bengal drove the sea trade to Gujarat to overland routes. With Mirzapur as the major assembly point of cotton from both north and western India, north Indian merchants thus came to control its movement to Maldah, Bhagowangola, and other river ports. Folklore referring to women’s ginning of cotton in the moonlit night points to the increased demand. A sort of symbiotic relationship bound the weaving cluster to spinning hinterlands. The weaver had a direct relationship with the spinner when he worked for the locality, but once he opted for the larger market he had to rely on the trader to feed his loom. The more extensive his market the more complex was the hierarchy interlinking trade in raw cotton, spinning, and yarn to the weaver. The weaver was free when he produced for the locality, and a group of enterprising weavers functioned as petty capitalists, marketing the product of their fellow weavers. Weaving was not usually combined with agriculture. In the early-nineteenthcentury Dinajpur, ‘except some weavers, who make coarse cloth for their own use, there are few or no persons, who cultivate the ground at one season and work at their profession (p.86) during the remainder of the year’. James Taylor referred to interchanging as ‘a common occurrence among those who make coarse cloth’, but not in Dhaka where weaving was undertaken ‘with whole-time attention’.21 A certain switching of occupation occurred only with the industrial depression, but the sedentary nature of weaving made the weaver largely incompatible to physically more exacting field work.22 Folk tradition also mocks the weaver’s shifting to plough: the poor fellow was somehow living on his craft but got himself ruined by buying oxen. This can be compared to the petition by Lakshipur weavers to the company stating, ‘We, who are jugees are not able to perform any other profession besides that of weaving Page 7 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands cloth.… We have no other means to maintain ourselves for we have not been brought up in any other line.’ There was often a division in the family combining farming with weaving, ‘with some brothers cultivating the ground while others weave’.23 Shocks and Survival

The company’s rule brought a sense of relief as the horror of Maratha raids was quite fresh in the memory of the still-traumatized folk whose villages were lying desolate.24 The weavers of Balasore escaped to the English factory at Balaramgarh and then worked for the company till they could return to their homes. In 1753, Holwell purchased a large ground to settle some of them in Cuttack. Hooghly merchants began to send their goods to south India in English and French ships, just to avoid harassment by the Dutch. In disturbed areas, weavers often willingly joined ‘the Hon’ble Company’s employ’.25 The company offered cheap provisions at a time of erratic food prices. It also ensured security and freedom from arbitrary imposts by local authority and reduction of the loom tax.26All these coincided with the decline in demand from qasba towns.27 Once the company’s rule had been firmly established, weavers began to feel the difference between earlier and later regimes. Increasing control on the primary market, replacement of old traders by the company’s associates, and abolition of the old advance system robbed the weaver of his relative freedom. Never before had the failure to fulfil a contract led to confiscation of property or (p.87) arrest, and sometimes both.28 To the company, export of textiles was still the best way for its tribute remittance. As attempts to raise the productivity by technical inputs failed, it zeroed in on buying cheap by controlling both production and procurement. Since the muslin of Dhaka, ‘envy and despair of the textile world’, had first reached England around 1670, the value of its annual export was an ‘estimated one crore rupees’ till 1787. The imposition of high duties on Indian cotton goods reduced its export to England by 72 per cent by 1807, and then totally stopped it. A reduction in import duty on Indian cotton goods (1825) failed to revive its prospects, as the ‘influx of British thread’ had by that time dealt the fatal blow. ‘The manufacture of thread, the occupation in former times of almost every family in Dhaka,’ James Taylor wrote in 1830, ‘is now, owing to comparative cheapness of English thread almost entirely abandoned.’ English yarn ‘deprived all classes of inhabitant of an employment, which in a great measure afforded them the means of subsistence’.29 Trade in Patna, Dhaka, and Murshidabad declined. Grierson reported from Gaya that ‘the weaver or jolha is fast disappearing.… If all members of the jolha caste had to depend on the produce of their looms, they would have died out long ago.’ Similar reports trickled in from other areas.30 The weaver, however, survived by adjusting himself to the changing market and new technology. In the earlyPage 8 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands twentieth-century Bengal, weaving claimed one-fourth of its artisans. With the highest weaver–loom ratio in India, weaving remained ‘the most important and widespread cottage industry’ of the region.31 The nationalist swadeshi ideology of boycott boosted the demand for handlooms, improved the condition of weavers, and drew up others ‘who had given up their caste occupation to return to it’. In Nadia, rising cloth prices of the 1920s created a reverse shift from the field to loom. In Dhaka, bhadralok youths started weaving with the fly-shuttle loom as white collar jobs were difficult to find. In Mymensingh, ‘many weavers, otherwise engaged in cultivation, turned to weaving and use of fly shuttle loom among weavers increased cloth production’. Weaving survived due to its intrinsic qualities and the low prices of handmade textiles;32 the power loom was unable to churn out such products until well into the twentieth (p.88) century. Weaving continued to remain unaffected in regions which had recently been opened near the railways.33 Imported yarn compromised the durability of the weaver’s goods, but the weaver had very little choice since the price of hand-spun yarn was prohibitive. In Chittagong, where spinning continued even in the early 1920s, weavers adjusted cost by ‘using hand-spun yarn for the weft and the mill-made yarn in the warp’. The weaver’s survival has been attributed to his dexterity, skill, subhuman living conditions, and cultural factors.34 In spite of an addiction to the cheapest primitive tools and implements, and methods, weavers have surprising dexterity and artistic ability. It is to this cause and also because of the fact that Indian public are so traditionally accustomed to particular styles and sources of their clothing that notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which he labours, the cottage weaver still retains so voluminous a share of the weaving and clothing business of the country.35 In 1936, N.M. Joshi had pointed out the gender specific division of the Indian textile market as the key factor for the survival of weavers. He stated, ‘In spite of the prevailing competition and restriction of the market, which was gradually being captured by Indian mills and foreign imports, the industry was safely entrenched in the manufacture of [the] female garment, sari.’ Tirthankar Roy repeated the point that half of the textile market catered to women and saris remained the weaver’s monopoly till Indian mills entered into this segment. Women preferred the handloom’s ‘multicoloured and exquisite fabrics’ to the drab mill-made varieties, a segment of demand large enough to sustain a sizeable section of weavers.36 In the case of coloured cloth, the British mill could never really compete with Indian weavers once they had shifted to European dye.

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New Tools in Old Hands In the sphere of men’s wear also, English goods failed to dislodge the handloom completely. ‘Of recent years the output of cloths has much increased. Their popularity is due to the fact that they satisfy the taste of the middle class, who are the chief consumers of these commodities.’37 British millers failed due to demand variations and fragmented markets. The weavers sustained mainly by ‘the most durable fabrics of very coarse cloth’, like garha, lahnga, dhotar of north India, motia or gazi of Bihar, and korah, matha or dhokra of (p.89) Bengal. Even the Indian mills could not make too many dents into this segment until the 1960s. Change and Deterioration

In 1832, the first cotton mill of India, Bowreah Cotton Mills, was established as a part of the Fort Gloster industrial complex; Ghusuri mills came a little later, followed by several others. By 1873, Bengal had altogether 15 mills, most of which later succumbed to the Bombay industry.38 The swadeshi movement revived the interest in textile production and by 1921 the number of mills in Bengal reached 18, mostly medium sized mills—six in Howrah, three in 24Parganas, two in Hooghly, and one each in Dhaka and Nadia. In terms of the spinning capacity, Dhakeshwari Mills of Narayanganj was the largest, catering to Dhaka weavers, while the Kushtia mill served those in Pabna and Faridpur. Bengalis constituted only a third of the total mill hands, the rest coming from the United Provinces and Orissa. The mill yarn also changed the system of supply. The old system involved the merchant importing cotton at the top, a motley group of small traders in the middle and the spinner or weaver at the bottom. The system was mutually exclusive at each stage; the trader passing on cotton did not hope to get the yarn in return. The weaver was now forced to rely on a new group of traders, as his caste merchant failed to supply the mill yarn. Owing to Shalimar railheads, Ramkrishnapur in Howrah emerged as the premiere yarn market of eastern India. Local traders assembled here with handloom cloth and used the ‘major portion of the sale proceeds in buying yarn’. Marwari and Nakhoda merchants controlled the yarn trade. Some were really ‘men of straw’, who had begun as ‘amateur operators’ in the 1860s,39 then shifted to yarn retailing, and had finally ended up as forwarding agents of Indian mills. Using their control over supplies from western India, they soon outbid local traders in the handloom trade as well, getting woven cloth for the mill yarn. Turning attention to the base also shows the breakdown of the old relationship. In Jalpaiguri, weavers used British yarn till the cheaper Japanese variety reached them in the 1910s. Marwari traders procured the yarn, English or Japanese, from Calcutta and served weavers either ‘on terms of repayment in cash or on condition of selling (p.90) the finished product to local middlemen, who are, as a rule, well-to-do persons of their own caste’. From Kumarkhali in Nadia, Marwari dealers similarly controlled the trade all over central Bengal. Page 10 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands The mill yarn thus forced upon the weaver a cloth-for-yarn relationship with the dealer, who paid only the wages. The result was an uneven competition between skill-specific quality work and labour-intensive cheap product. At Dhaka, the shift to mill yarn landed the weaver in a market which was hard to survive in. By 1920, only three families of Tantibazar made quality goods, undersold by plain jamdani sari woven in other villages. Mymensing, once known for its ab-i-rowan, also met the same fate. An official observer regretted the loss of skill and the weaver’s drift towards cheap production. In Dinajpur, a fourth of coarse weavers (yugi, polia, and jolha) belonged to the ‘plough for loom’ category. The skilled–unskilled weaver ratio is hard to come by, but the declining share of the tanti to total weaving population indicates a shift to coarse weaving. In the early 1940s, tantis formed only a fifth of the weavers in Dhaka and Nadia, one-tenth in Bagura, a third in Maldah, and a half in Rangpur.40 Skilled weavers everywhere opted out of their trade. ‘Tanti or Hindu weavers have given up their characteristic handicraft to a great extent and only one in nine is still a cotton weaver in Bihar and nine in twenty in Bengal proper.’ ‘Tantis, who are weavers of all the finer qualities of cloth,’ repeated another official observer, ‘enjoyed a considerable amount of affluence in the glorious days of the industry, but their material condition is far from being satisfactory now.’41 More than dispossession, it meant the sudden termination of the old skill building process hereditarily nurtured within a small group. This drift to coarse work was also witnessed in silk weaving, excluding Birbhum, Murshidabad, and Bankura. In Memari, where ‘silk weaving was carried on a large scale and was in a very prosperous condition’, the shifting to cotton left it with only six silk looms in 1924. A new group of mahajans replaced the old, who supplied the yarn and ‘took back the finished product, weight for weight, without allowing for the decrease in weight during the bleaching’, in violation of the old norms.42 Even in the case of cash transaction, ‘weavers get the supply of yarn from the mahajan at prices higher than those prevailing in the market. Hence, they cannot make much profit by (p.91) selling their products in the open market and are obliged to make over the same to the mahajan.‘43 For the vast multitude of the unskilled workers, there was hardly any choice. Jolhahs ‘ply their trade less for gain than to keep up the old tradition. Nowadays, a family of jolhahs has seldom more than one loom at work at a time. Formerly the number was limited only by that of the members of the family, who would work.’44 The jolhah in Bihar could work on the field or accept the physically more exacting career of a porter at the dock or railway station, which did not attract Bengali weavers. ‘In Bengal proper, nearly half of the jolha or Muslim weaver lived by weaving, but only a quarter do so in Bihar.’ The weaver was free to go, but everything tied him to his loom, except in areas close to cities. An

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New Tools in Old Hands official reported from Medinipur that ‘tantis are either dying off or leaving the district. Many have found employment in the mills in or near Calcutta’.45 All these had generated a weak but positive response to the problem. Some Dhaka weavers ‘adopted dobby and draw-boys in addition to their primitive looms to expedite ornamentation of their dhuti and sari borders’; others took to the sturdier ‘vital loom’. In the 1920s, fly shuttle loom accounted for a third of the Bengal looms with ‘a high ratio in Bardhaman, Hooghly, Howrah, 24Parganas, Nadia, Jessore, Khulna’, ‘low in Bankura, Birbhum and Midnapore’, and ‘very low in Tripura, Noakhali and Chittagong’. A cheap variety of fly shuttle loom, either ‘brought from Ludhiana’ or made by local carpenters, became very popular in eastern Bengal.46 As the new loom ‘could not be accommodated in the hut of the people nor would be as portable’, the pit loom remained a better option for poor weavers. ‘A contrivance of bamboo and string’, it was user friendly and could be serviced by the weaver himself.47 By increasing productivity, the new loom, however, helped both the trader and the weaver. In the 1930s came the Jacard loom and punching machine, greatly simplifying the process of ornamentation. Tangail weavers utilized the technique to develop a popular style. No less important was the use of imported chemicals for bleaching and dyeing in lieu of the old organic materials and vegetables. It reduced the weaver’s dependence on the dyer—rajak or rangrej as the Hindu and Muslim dyers were known respectively. In 1889, Collin thus found the art of vegetable dyeing confined to a few silk (p.92) weavers while the rest had shifted to chemical dye. Much of this change took place slowly and unnoticed, largely without public initiative. Chemical dye proved three to five times cheaper and easier to use than the old dyeing material. All these helped the weaver regain some of his lost position in the rural economy during the early twentieth century.48 Post-colonial Developments

The Partition of India and the ensuing communal violence led to the exodus of Hindu weavers from eastern Bengal. Comparable only with a similar migration from the west to east caused by Maratha raids in the eighteenth century, the demographic shift during this time was of a much greater intensity. The fear and suspicion it created in the minds of Hindu weavers and traders dislocated social organization and destabilized the industry in eastern Bengal, which later became East Pakistan. A case in point is Baishgan, a cluster of 22 villages of Hindu weavers covering a radius of 10 miles in Tangail, distinguished by its water bodies, reeds, bushes, and beautiful saris.49 Unlike Dhaka, Baishgan weavers were not affected by English imports due to the stable demand for their plain colourful cloth. In 1923, Kanthu and Bankubihari Basak of Taratia had started weaving saris bordered with sensitive designs, but Page 12 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands the technique remained a close secret of the duo, till it was smuggled out by a relative of Nalshodha village. A few years later, when Baru Basak of Nalshodha patented his design—Gajamati and Taj—to forestall use by others, fellow villagers went to court after enforcing a caste boycott. Baru lost the case and his designs soon became a brand of the cluster. But Baru was unstoppable; the sari he now began to weave on the Jacard loom with colourful motifs soon seized the market. He would not let others use the technique and suffered social boycott once again, only to have been outwitted this time by his son-in-law. A skilled weaver, Maharaj Basak mastered the technique, got Jacard looms and punching machines from Calcutta through a local trader, Akali Basak, and engaged Braja Basak, a folk artist of the same village, to draw rural motifs.50 The trio served as the catalyst to get the Baishgan cluster humming with activities. The Tangail sari, with its lively motifs of folk art and matching borders thus got a distinct identity in Bengal. (p.93) The Partition broke the industry’s old symbiotic link with Calcutta, whereby local traders could sell Tangail sari twice its cost price and get the best yarn at the cheapest rate. More affluent traders thus shifted a part of their trade to West Bengal, along with groups of skilled weavers. What started as a streak soon turned into a flash flood with Hindu alienation from village society in East Pakistan. Even as late as the 1980s, a village survey found them scared of buying land and unwilling to participate in the development work. The exit of old traders and skill hit the industry hard. Chinese and Japanese yarn failed to match the Indian kind. Faced with an uncertain market and the falling quality of the product, the industry in eastern Bengal went into a state of atrophy for a long period of time.51 In western Bengal, old trade routes were closed, and the inflow of capital, enterprise, and skill intensified competition. Old centres like Begampur, Dhanekhali, and Rajbalhat, to name a few, lost their importance to new settlements of the refugee weavers in Kuchbihar, Bardhaman, and Nadia. The Phulia cluster, an area of 8 kilometres in radius, drew most Baishgan weavers. It all began with the displaced traders buying small pieces of land to settle their men followed by the government distributing plots and loom doles, as public response to the problem. Weavers also received a monthly quota of yarn at a subsidised price. But the transformation of this wasteland into a flourishing weaving zone had been achieved primarily by the labour and enterprise of the settler trader and weaver. Unlike others, Phulia weavers stuck to their old technique with their brand name, Tangail. In 1952, the Government of India imposed a ban on the manufacturing of coloured saris and short length cloth by the mill, and made it mandatory to apportion half of the spinning mill’s output for the handloom sector. All these relieved weavers, attracting clandestine movement from East Pakistan in the Page 13 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands lure of cheap yarn and larger market. In the 1970s, the central handloom commission came up with a package of financial, technical, and marketing assistance for the sector, routed through state governments to handloom cooperatives. The handloom cooperatives flourished,52 beginning with individual initiative to organize rootless weavers into societies that slowly turned into a sort of movement with escalating yarn prices and the increasing consolidation of capital. (p.94) Bengal constituted the largest market for high count yarn but was unable to exert pressure on the cotton lobby of the south. Bidhan Chandra Roy’s Kalyani Spinning Mill was designed to ease the problem, but failed to cope with demand. The 1970s saw stiff rise in yarn prices, followed by wage cuts and clandestine trade in yarn.53 The more down-to-earth Left leaders came to the rescue of weavers and organized them and launched agitations, which turned violent in some places. A similar situation in the Ranaghat block led to the formation of the first handloom society of Phulia, with the active help of S.K. Dey of the local United Bank of India, followed by two others by 1977, and yet another a little later. After coming to power, the Left Front government declared the target of getting 60 per cent of West Bengal’s weaving population under the cooperatives’ fold within five years, a target difficult to achieve. The supply of yarn fluctuated with prices, which was a major problem for societies as they received only 40 per cent of their requirement from the Handloom Development Corporation (HDC) and had to procure the rest from the open market. Marketing was also difficult, for the HDC took only 70 per cent of the output of the societies affiliated to it, and the rest was to be cleared by them.54 Societies were thus forced to sell the stock on credit and had to release it. The illiteracy of weavers, lack of trained personnel to deal with technical and financial matters, and the poor capital base only escalated their problems. A large number of handloom cooperatives were let down by the Tantuja and Tantushri sale outlets of the apex body, the West Bengal State Handloom Weavers’ Cooperative Society Ltd. In 1980–81, they had a total turnover of Rs 21 crore, but failed to clear their dues to primary societies for the woven materials that they had received from them. In the late 1990s, the cooperatives’ total outstanding dues amounted to nearly ten crore rupees to Tantuja alone, in addition to varying amounts owed to Tantushri and the state government. The societies nevertheless had to pay interest on the borrowed capital. As a result, more and more societies failed, forcing weavers to get back to the mahajan, while the state government failed to utilize the central assistance meant for their welfare. Being better organized, the mahajans came to have a free run and the relative share of wages to sale prices continued to decline in absolute terms.55

(p.95) Braziers Page 14 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands Braziers were the most important artisans after the weavers, filling the suburban air with the tinkling of their metal. During the early nineteenth century, their industry had a spectacular growth due to the shift towards new raw materials and tool techniques. The brazier made his ware by forging or casting. The molten mass of composite metal was first turned into a lump to be fashioned into ware by heating and beating. The headman held the mass on the anvil, deftly moving it with a pair of pincers, as hammerers beat the hot metal in quick but orderly succession. Those of uneven shape were cast into moulds and then scrapped and polished for sale. ‘At the beginning of the cold weather they go out with their wares, all sorts of brass vessels. Many of them wander over the eastern part of Jessore and over Bakharganj, travelling in their boats, a few go landwards taking their wares in carts. They sell them partly for money, partly for old brass and after they have for four months or so gone about hawking their goods; they come back to their homes.’56 The brazier’s was a full-time job, with work carried on round the year and winter as the best selling season. Hired labour and absence of women distinguished the craft. In the old technique, six to seven men were required to hammer out a rice plate (thala or thali), often enforcing inter-unit adjustment. A group of 10 hammerers served 25 Khagra workshops. The intra-unit specialization is also important to note. In a unit making pitchers, ‘one man cuts the sheet into proper sizes, another beats them roughly, a third beats lower half of the vessel, a fourth the upper half, a fifth makes the dovetailed joints ready for soldering, a sixth does soldering, as there are men for cleaning, polishing and finishing the vessel’.57 Even in small domestic units, ‘four or more men are employed: one to keep the fire, one to blow the bellow, one to place and hold the metal on the anvil, and one to hammer’.58 Shift to the New Technique and Growth

In the 1780s, B. Anand Ram had enumerated about 50 varieties of copper vessels in Lucknow, whereas in 1807 a rural family in Bengal possessed 76 brass utensils of 40 varieties, and a peasant home had 39. In 1894 an official observed, ‘Every household now possesses more utensils than it did in former times and a larger assortment (p.96) of such articles is presented to the bride on the occasion of every marriage.’ The increasing demand for brassware led to a threefold expansion of the workforce by 1900, followed by a slump in the 1920s, and an upward movement again later on.59 Early-twentieth-century Bengal had two types of brazier settlements. Maldah, Dhaka, Khagra, Nabadwip, and Bishnupur were old centres. Maldah flourished after Saptagram had declined as a port city. Nabadwip owed the craft to its traffic of Vaishnab pilgrims. All expanded till the early twentieth century, with Dhaka claiming a half of bell metal and a third of brass utensils made in Page 15 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands Bengal.60 Calcutta was the most important new settlement, attracting braziers from Murshidabad, Bardhaman, Khulna, Jessore, and Nadia, with 110 factories (1924) along Baranashi Ghosh Street. Kharar in Medinipur on the river route to Calcutta was yet another new centre. In eastern India, the braziers’ craft was a caste specific occupation of the kansari or kasera. But by 1890, ‘all castes appear to work at it … a kāyastha fashioning a copper dish in north Calcutta, a teli making the well-known chandrakona horn and in Berahampore … bāgdis and kaivarttas handling bellmetal’. In Birbhum, kamar, hari, and vaishnava were making brass utensils, as did the Muslim in Maldah. From rajbangshi, the agricultural caste of north Bengal, to dule, napit, bagdi and sadgop—all joined in. All these indicate an expansion of labour demand that the kansari or kasera failed to meet, which was true of the brass industry all over India.61 Why did the industry not suffer from foreign competition? The brazier’s clusters were mostly located close to the riverfront, and hence were exposed to the market. The low value of their ware to bulk also did not restrict the products’ mobility much, as Dinajpur’s annual import of utensil from remote central Bengal amounted to 6,000 maunds in 1807.62 A related point is the trade in imported cooking bowls (karhais). Better than the local wrought iron variety, its import increased by 23 per cent during 1902–05, to be interrupted by the swadeshi agitation, but a steady rise afterwards. Teachers of Shibpur Engineering College thus requested principal B. Heaton to try thin casting in the workshop. The problem was not the transport of the utensil, but its mechanical reproduction in lots to suit its varied socio-religious uses. From the midnineteenth century onwards, (p.97) metallurgists trained in Europe made ‘several attempts to turn out such articles by the aid of machinery’, but failed.63 The industry also had a sort of cultural insulation. Noted scientist-entrepreneur P.C. Roy claimed that it would exist as long as Hindus lived in India.64 To Hindu society, the brazier’s utensil had a utility based on its notion of the purity or impurity of metal. In ritual construction, gold was the purest metal followed by silver, copper, brass, and bronze. As the first two were cost prohibitive, the brass utensil was used for dietary purposes. Bronze, although cheap and user-friendly, was much less popular, as it was believed to be liable to pollution. All these left only the clay pot to compete with the brass utensil. Apart from its fragility, social prejudice also discouraged the use of the clay pot. ‘The poor Hindu will generally use a platter of leaves when he is unable to afford a nobler ware.’ For, ‘a clay vessel once eaten out of becomes impure and has to be re-baked before it can be used again’. Muslims had no such scruples, but for the obvious difficulty of its use. An added advantage for the brazier was his ability to recycle the old or scrap ware, as also the creditworthiness of his product. ‘Since copper was an investment, which could always be capitalized, Page 16 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands humbler folk for whom precious metal was a distant dream could concentrate on this base metal.’ In every marriage, utensils were offered in large numbers to the bride, to be part of her trousseau. The villager bought utensils after a good harvest, to sell in the hostile season. In the famine of 1943–44, old brass utensils were sold away in hundreds of maunds a day in the worst hit Contai subdivision of Medinipur district.65 The mechanization of mining and manufacturing of metal, ‘combined with the deadly competition between shipping lines trading to the East’, and the supply of American copper reduced its prices in India. During 1861–90, Calcutta prices fell by nearly 20 per cent, whereas in 1908 bell metal was sold at half the rate prevailing a century ago. With the railways and steamer services carrying the metal to the interior, braziers tended to shift from central and western Bengal to the jute growing districts of the north and east. In the early 1920s, a group of Dhaka and Faridpur braziers traced their origin to Nadia, Jessore, and 24Parganas, like their Rajsahi counterparts did to Bardhaman. Mostly a post-1860s development, these migrations seem clearly related to jute cultivation.66 (p.98) The brazier similarly reached Hazaribagh, Ranchi, and Manbhum to cater to landlords, merchants, moneylenders, and others. If their oral tradition is to be believed, kansaris from Dainhat and Khagra had moved in small groups to Bund, long before the railways opened up these areas. Some had settled at Tunju in Ranchi, Gola, and Pir Hatu in Hazaribagh and Sharidi in Manbhum, followed by kaseras from Balasore.67 To the tribal villager, a shining brass utensil was a prized possession. The imported metal sheet helped the brazier most. It has been held that ‘foreign trade did not expose brassware to any significant competition but it did substitute scrap by imported sheets wherever possible’.68 What has been ignored here is the brazier’s role in the substitution. Prior to iron-built vessels, all ships had the bottom of their keel covered with brass sheets to insulate them against hazards of the submarine magnetic rocks, after two or three voyages. By the 1840s, Calcutta docks came to have this relaying facility; the use of brass sheet by braziers started later. Two points deserve attention. Unlike the millmade yarn, metal sheet did not resemble the stuff braziers used earlier, and there was no organized initiative, private or public, to popularize its use.69 The person who was making the innovative use of the metal sheet in the industry also deserves attention. Sometime in the late 1730s, Madanmohon Pramanik, by caste a kansari, shifted from Hooghly to Shimla-Kansaripara of Calcutta and opened a utensil workshop there. With the brazier’s metal cheaper in the port city of Calcutta, he soon prospered in his trade. His son, Gurucharan, flourished by launching the Caledonia Dock in Salkia. The name suggests a European link but nothing is known about the collaboration. Gurucharan was interested mainly in scrap sheets he used to make utensil. A pioneering enterprise, his dock Page 17 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands brought him immense fortune. But the family met its real destiny under Taraknath (1816–83), Gurucharan’s only son. In 1852–53, he had upgraded his father’s dock, acquired two ships for directly importing sheets from Europe, and distributed the sheets all over eastern and northern India.70 He had utensil outlets all over Bengal managed by elderly persons. An associate of Rustomji Manikji, Taraknath was a leading merchant of contemporary Calcutta, and was known as the ‘glory of the kangsabanik’.71 (p.99) An identical case is of Gurudas Das of Nabadwip, the holy city of Bengal. Born in a poor kansari family, he had moved to Calcutta to try his luck outside the family trade. Here, he learnt the use of brass sheet in panelling horse carriages. Back home, he started making utensils from the sheet and was amply rewarded. He also began importing brass sheets from Europe. During his last days,

Figure 2.1 The brazier working with his machine Source: Author.

Gurudas Das had altogether 360 warehouses and 800 shops all over India with an average income of Rs 5,000 a day.72 The brazier’s shifting to metal sheet was fast and widespread. Though costlier, it had changed the quality, design, and production organization of the old industry. Its better malleability, low wastage rate, and higher return helped the industry to expand. ‘Locally made brass ingot is cheaper than the foreign article and yet the latter is getting every year a firmer hold on the market’. For, ‘foreign brass is more malleable and what is lost in price of the material is gained or more than gained in the manufacture.’73 By 1930, metal sheets had nearly replaced the use of ingots in brass manufacture. Centres opting for it grew faster than those clinging to the ingots. But sheet did not wholly replace scrap. If it had done so at one level, the industry’s dependence on scrap increased at the other. India at that time did not export scrap, nor did it have recycling mills, which did not appear till a much later date. The price of scrap thus fell faster, making possible its wider use at lower levels (p.100) of industrial organization. The wholesale scrap market of Calcutta redirected its supply to the utensil industry of Balasore, Cuttack, Bhubneswar, and Puri, helping them expand.74 Steamer services ferried the scrap to Calcutta from east and north Bengal and Assam, where metal sheet was fast replacing the use of ingots.

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New Tools in Old Hands The new mode of transport also helped the brazier. The old system had confined him to riverbank areas, whereas railways and steamer services opened up new markets for him. ‘During the last 30/40 years, the use of brass and copper … has increased among rural masses on account of comfort after the opening of railways.’ But it did not displace the use of pots. Long before the railways, utensils had a stable demand in rural Bengal, and more so among ‘people in the easy circumstances’.75 Rich people maintained utensils of different utilities to be used in the community feast to justify their social status. It has been argued that colonial trade created external demand for brassware.76 Foreign demand for Indian wares was not new. Pre-colonial India regularly sent utensils in exchange of scrap to the Middle East. A Persian merchant thus carried scrap to get finished wares from India. Abraham ben Yiju of Tunisia owned a brass factory in India. Southeast Asia imported art wares from south India in exchange of copper or tin ingots. Since nothing is known about the volume of this trade, to what extent European demand was an improvement upon all these cannot be easily stated. European demand for artistic goods was a late-nineteenth-century development—‘only of recent growth’, as stated by Kipling in the 1880s. In 1885, E.B. Havell referred to the degeneration of south Indian copper craft, European demand notwithstanding, as indicated by the craftsman’s increasing shift to cheap product.77 Hard Times of the 1920s

The brazier faced hard times from the 1920s.The annual output of brass utensil in Maldah declined from 6,250 to 50 maunds in the 1907–24 period, before it stopped altogether by 1939. Bell metal output fell by a half during the same period. Nabadwip, Matiari, Budhpara, and Kalam also met the same fate. Bankura–Bishnupur escaped the crisis by shifting to German silver (nutun kansa), a cheap (p.101) composition of nickel and zinc. The utensil output in eastern India fell by 20 to 25 per cent in the 1930s alone78 due to dislocation in the supply of metal sheet from Europe as a result of war. Meanwhile, a whole range of cheap wares had reversed the brazier’s earlier position in the market. Between 1924 and 1939, utensil prices fell by 38 per cent in Calcutta and 34 per cent in Khagra. At Dhaka, prices of bell metal goods fell by 35 per cent and brass by 17 per cent, followed by a massive reduction of the workforce: 84 per cent at Kharar, 86 per cent at Sankarbati, and 50 per cent in Khagra.79 Aluminium ware was largely to account for the crisis. The first consignment of aluminium reached in the late 1890s and within a decade its import reached 1,200 tons a year. Since aluminium was then used in India mainly for making kitchenware, the import points to replacement of brass. The earliest reference to its trade by migrant traders came in a Calcutta newspaper in 1913, linking it to a Madras aluminium factory. Jeevanlal Bhatia and K.M. Nayenger were two major dealers in the city. By the 1920s, Calcutta had three aluminium firms, Gold

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New Tools in Old Hands Mohur, Crown, and Chand Tara, with the daily output reaching 150 maunds by the end of the decade.80 Aluminium-ware spread in the post–World War I inflationary market. In 1918, trouble had started with the failure of winter rice and rising rice prices. The salaried people, usually much less conservative, were the first to the new ware; followed by peasants during slump of the 1920s. Between 1924 and 1934, the price of the predominant winter rice fell by 54 per cent, while that of jute suffered by 57 per cent, forcing the people to cut their expenditure. The peasants began to sell brass utensils to meet their immediate expenditure, leading to a 23 per cent fall in the scrap prices of Calcutta in the 1924–39 period. The situation was worse in the jute-growing districts. In 1941, kansari merchants from Dhaka, Maldah, Rajsahi, and Mymensingh complained of an enormous loss of business since the early 1920s.81 All these led to the formation of a kansari caste association. In its inaugural session, P.C. Roy, icon of the Bengali enterprise, argued, ‘In one sense, I am also an enemy of you, since I am one of the directors of the Bengal Enamel Works. Initially, Hindus avoided the use of aluminium ware on religious ground. In recent years, these wares (p.102) have found good market as they are cheap and have a little wear and tear.’ Kansari leaders also tried to arouse the spirit of swadeshi in favour of their utensil, but in vain.82 The industry nevertheless survived by shifting to improved tool techniques once again. Post-Independence Re-organization

The brazier’s industry was never organized along communal lines. The Partition of the country on communal lines thus unsettled the old network of trade in the worst hit areas. As it existed earlier, the merchant–creditor was mostly a Hindu kangsabanik having a stake in the continuation of the trade. He thus advanced money to the artisan, irrespective of caste or community, and received utensils in return. As the tie between the kangsabanik and artisans formed the crux of such transactions, a shift at either of these levels dislocated the entire organization. Traditionally, brassware manufacturing was the caste specific occupation of the Hindu kansari or kasera caste in eastern India. An invisible bond thus bound the merchant and artisans. This is not to argue that there was no exploitation. In fact, caste affinity often widened its scope. A sort of social symbiosis between artisans and their caste merchant, the kangsabanik, nevertheless, distinguished the production organization, as also between the kansari artisan and his labourers at the lower level. The artisan received advance from the trader and distributed the work among his workers. Religion or caste considerations never interfered with the old norms of production.

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New Tools in Old Hands In the aftermath of the Partition, the kangsabanik first moved to the Indian part of Bengal followed by one or two kansari artisans. As a result, prosperous centres like Dhaka, Rajsahi, Faridpur, and Mymensingh lost their skilled workforce and suffered a steady decline in output. The centres in West Bengal lost their market in jute-growing districts. The worst hit were those in Murshidabad and Nadia with their easy river links to eastern Bengal. When the initial shock of the Partition was over, displaced artisans relocated themselves to new centres, depressing the utensil market in West Bengal. The import of nonferrous metal, both ingot and sheet, sharply declined. A section of the kansari traders and artisans thus opted out of their old trade. (p.103) In the early 1960s, brass manufacturing in eastern India showed signs of marginal recovery as the second largest craft. Braziers’ co-operatives were formed for the distribution (p.104) of raw material and the marketing of the product. The state government had for some time supplied raw material to the artisans as a part of its refugee rehabilitation programme, a great relief at a time of high metal prices. Better intraregional connectivity and refugee settlements in Madhya Pradesh helped widen the demand. The artisans also shifted to small electrical devices for cutting, dicing, and polishing jobs. Industrialization, use of electrical appliances and, production of decorative brassware led to diversification

Figure 2.2 Traditional brassware manufacturing

of production.83

Source: Author.

An increasing ascendancy of the merchant also distinguished the post-colonial period. In 1959, an official survey described two-thirds of the utensil workers of West Bengal as ‘wage-earners’, resulting from the artisan’s increasing dependence on the trader for the supply of raw material and the marketing of the product. In a situation such as this, traders also decided the nature and volume of production. The artisan only received the wages, plus a wastage allowance of metal. Bardhaman braziers Page 21 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands thus delivered 40 seer of utensils to the merchant for 45 seer of scrap. The artisan, even if he could maintain a semblance of free space for himself, did not fare well. The rapid dissolution of the old organization of the industry in the new circumstances only helped in the consolidation of capital.84

The Blacksmith An integral part of Indian village society, blacksmiths made tools for both artisans and peasants. Eastern India produced good quality malleable iron, an industry that declined in the eighteenth century. The decline has been attributed to import of iron. S. Bhattacharya argued, ‘The substitution of indigenous iron with imported iron in the early eighteenth century wiped out … [the industry] and threw … [it] back … to the primary level of tribal household organisation.’ Morris D. Morris also admitted that iron smelting ‘suffered grievously from modern competition’, mainly from the Swedish and English iron.85 In 1852, Oldham found a number of iron-smelting units in Birbhum, but in a very bad shape. By the late nineteenth century, it had declined almost everywhere. ‘Iron-smelting was at one time an important art in Upper Assam,’ Mallet wrote in 1877, ‘but it had been extinct for many years.’86 The decline was a protracted process, as imported iron could not make much penetration into rural India before the railways. The import of ‘bars, rods, angles, beams and pillars’ increased from the 1870s, but that of pig iron suffered ‘a very considerable fall’. In England, prices of all these had fallen by a third, but ‘the improved quality and cheaper cost of the pig iron produced in India’ discouraged its imports.87 Colonial forest laws had hit iron smelting hard, as the concept of reserved forest was incompatible to the tribal way of using natural resources. Since iron ore was dug out of the womb of the Mother Earth, they believed, iron-pits belonged to everyone. Hence, they could not reconcile with the government restriction on collection of ores and fuel from the forest. In Mandla, Agaria iron smelters did not suffer from Swedish or English iron since transport barriers (p.105) restricted their use in the region, but they could not afford to pay the government duty. Grigson observed that Agarias abandoned iron-smelting due to ‘forest rates, which they said had made it cheaper to buy the raw material from the bazaar’.88 Earlier, landlords welcomed the blacksmith to their areas since skilled craftsmanship was scarce. The import of arms and a ban on local manufacture reduced their importance. Landlords now claimed a larger share of the spoil, often half of the smelter’s income. The trader also exploited him, exacting 5.5 maunds of iron for a maund of coarse rice from Kol smelters of Rajmahal hills. Earlier, they offered rice for iron, weight for weight, while the Cuttack merchants brought ‘solid mass of iron for salt’ from Sambalpur. The destruction of forests, mining, and famines dislodged smelters from their hideouts, whereas tribal migration to plantation areas deprived them of their old clientele.89 Page 22 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands With a high wastage rate, the Indian smelting technique was too costly to compete with the imported iron produced at a higher level of industrialization. It was rather predestined to fall, much in the same way that iron-smelting had failed in the late-seventeenth-century England in competition with Swedish iron. Blacksmith in the New Environment

The blacksmith’s trade expanded in the environment of technological change. The ‘cheapening of factory-made semi-fabricated metal bar, rod and sheet vastly expanded the market for blacksmiths…. The enormous increase in the use of metal in India, railway ties and track, also contributed to the availability of scrap materials, further reducing input prices and expanding the potential vitality of sectors that could put them to use.’90 Iron was earlier a location-specific product with restricted mobility. Limited demand thus forced the village smith to combine his craft with carpentry. With steamers and railways linking ports to the interior, imported iron reached everywhere. The price of iron also fell due to capitalization of production in Europe and competition among shipping lines ferrying metals to India. British firms thus accused Belgium and Sweden of dumping iron into India. With the Bengal Iron and Steel Company of Barakar launching production (p.106) of pig and cast iron in the 1890s, pig iron output reached 47,000 tons in 1906.91 Available in more workable form (bar, rod, ball, and sheet) the imported iron was easy to use. A case in point is the blacksmith’s cluster of Begunkodar in Purulia making axe, sword, sickle, bill-hook knife, dagger, and more for traders of Jhalda, a market on the high road to Jharkhand. Iron was earlier smelt in hills and jungles southwest of the locality. In 1882, James W. Browne referred to blacksmith villages of Begunkodar, Jhalda, and Joypur thus, ‘All classes of people, especially those living in the jungle are purchasers of their products.’ After the promulgation of the Arms Act, they shifted to tool making from the railway and factory scrap flowing through normal trade channels from Calcutta.92 The cheapest and most convenient raw material to the blacksmith was the railway scrap reaching him through both formal and informal channels of trade. The lure of the railway scrap drew him to major railway stations and workshop sites. An added attraction was the flow of pilfered railway coal. Often the blacksmith himself procured it from the station and yard. Railway lines thus helped him shift from the earlier riverside location to the village along the railway track, with the passing steam engine as his source of fuel. All these enabled him to sell cheap, leading to the proliferation of the workgroup. For, he was ‘not specialised in any branch of trade, required next to no tools or outfit’, but did ‘a profitable business in agricultural implements’.93

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New Tools in Old Hands Thus, small villages with one or two families of smiths could be found all over India. The wide range of imported iron also helped him cater to new demand. Hence, blacksmiths of Munger started using Crown Swedish iron for gun-barrel, while Kanchannagar cutlers gave up the Birbhum iron for cast steel produced by W.K. Pearce of Sheffield. Scrap files and tools were recycled into knives and scissors, and railway hooks and clips into scythes and sickles. Iron furnaces disappeared, but the blacksmith’s forges spread in rural areas. All these encouraged a process of labour mobility in favour of the blacksmith’s craft.94 How much did the import of cutlery, farm implements, and hardware items affect the rural market? In 1809, Buchanan found ‘700 houses of blacksmith’ in Dinajpur. ‘When not otherwise engaged, they prepare with iron of their own and retail at markets common (p.107) implements of agriculture.… European cutlery has made little headway into this district.’ The situation did not change even at the end of the century. In 1901, the total value of hardware and cutlery items imported through Calcutta meant for the eastern and some parts of north India amounted to only Rs10,000.95 The imported implements were not really use worthy in India, such as the plough. Many British firms exported ploughs to India. The Manchester Examiner (6 September 1880) reported these ploughs ‘are unfortunately heavy and, designed to be drawn by a number of horses, are far too difficult for a pair of bullocks’ in India. Britannia Iron Works of Belford tried to make lighter ploughs involving persons with Indian experience, without much success. But, they opposed its manufacture in government workshops in India on the ground that ‘such implements of any required pattern could be purchased from either of the great plough-making establishments at home at a much less price than they are at all likely to be produced in India’.96 Much like the Kanpur plough of the American model, ploughs made in the government workshop were no better. Known as Kaiser Plough, its price had been fixed at Rs 6, when the native plough was sold at just Re 1, and Rs 6 could get the farmer a pair of bullocks. This is also partly true of other imported implements, most of which had to be taken to the blacksmith to be made ready for use. In spite of its best attempts, John Perks & Sons of Wolverhampton could not give its spade the much-needed Indian bend at the edge. Only some indigo factories in Bihar used these ploughs to supplement tilling by peasants. Some traditional hardware items such as the nail and clamp used in houses and boats also could not be turned out in the machine till a later date, but their demand grew steadily.97 Imported articles increased the supply of scrap to the blacksmith, while new tools such as file, hammer, and pliers of various sizes and shapes made his job easier.

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New Tools in Old Hands Steamboats opened up new opportunities for the blacksmith, generally as an important member of the crew maintained on a high salary. The army, public works, transport departments, and railways also needed him. The second-largest railway workshop at Kanchrapara had a contingent of blacksmiths in each division. The smith’s shop of the loco division made ‘drop-stamped items, light and heavy forgings, as also laminated bearings springs’.98 From the small engineering unit (p.108) to the steamer company, dockyard, indigo factory, paper, cotton/jute mill, or tea garden, the blacksmith was indispensable everywhere. The Sheffield of the East: Howrah

Howrah provides a unique study of the blacksmith’s mobility in eastern India. In 1824, Bishop Heber described it as ‘a considerable place chiefly inhabited by ship builders’. Ship building started in this place from the 1780s, when south India stopped sending ships to Calcutta. Since then, ship building along with the dockyard developed very fast here and it continued till the launching of steamdriven iron vessels in the early 1840s. The industry drew carpenters and blacksmiths from United Provinces, Bihar, and Orissa.99 From ship building, the initiative passed on to manufacturing. Industries in Howrah included modern engineering units such as Burn & Company, Roof & Bridges, and Albion Foundry; these entailed railway workshops, jute or cotton mills, rice, flour, and oil mills, small turning and pattern shops, iron foundries, and ancillary industries. To take advantage of all these, blacksmiths localized here. The municipal records of the 1950s refer to 389 blacksmith units, nearly a fifth of the small manufacturing firm of the town. The survival of the pigmy forge juxtaposed with large-scale modern industrial establishments makes for an interesting case study.100 Blacksmiths came to Howrah to cater to the industrial demand for sundry hardware items. Even crude workmanship could satisfy a wide range of demands like door hinges, locks and keys, springs, bolt nails and hooks, rivets and angles, repairing items, and fabrication jobs. Howrah smithies enjoyed economies of integration in the industrial structure of the city. They got the opportunity to use cheap scrap of iron and steel, railway coal, and facilities such as casting or drilling offered by lathe and turning shops. Howrah, opposite to Calcutta, had the cheapest supply of imported iron that helped some blacksmith forges grow into engineering units.101 The blacksmith had a new clientele here—railway and government contractors, factory operators, and hardware merchants from Calcutta—instead of the peasants and artisans served in rural areas. He produced not just the scythe or sickle, but bolts, nuts, nails, and other implements for industrial uses. All these involved a shift (p.109) to new tools: various types of files, hammer, pliers, tongs, dies, and measures, while the bellow and anvil became symbols of olden days. An Page 25 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands expansion in the size of these workshops seems to have partly balanced the dearth of tools; the number of hired labour ranged between 3 and 16, mostly rural hands migrating to Howrah. Most smithies were in small shed- like open-air hearths of the tribal smiths, marked by kin-group relationship and a craft culture. The blacksmith entrepreneur and his labour in Howrah often ‘lived in the same place, ate and worked together’, a good number of them also ‘sharing the earnings of the workshop jointly with the workers’, who were either their relatives or had close village ties. They also adhered to their old notion of iron, the yearly ritual of paying obeisance to the anvil and hammer, and a host of other beliefs and practices.102 New Opportunities: Varied Responses

Most blacksmiths in Howrah were non-Bengalis, the largest group coming from Arrah and Chhapra in Bihar, closely followed by those from eastern UP, and a small minority belonging to the local agro-fishing caste of mahishya. The Bengali blacksmith, karmakar or kamar, was conspicuous by his absence.103 The migration of the outsider in view of the relative immobility of the local blacksmith thus needs to be looked into. (p.110) Unlike peasants, who had a stake in land, artisans were more mobile. The railways and steamers as well as posts and telegraphs had made it easier. Due to seasonal uncertainties of income and want of opportunities in the village, a large family was forced to try their luck elsewhere. Spread by steamers

Figure 2.3 Blacksmith and railways steaming out of Source: Author. Calcutta, the lure of new opportunities has been beautifully summed up in a Bhojpuri folklore: poorabke deshwa men kailee nokaria, te karee sonwanke rojigar janiaho (Lo listen! one who gets a job in the East can fill his house with gold).104 Why did local blacksmiths not respond to the opportunity which their migrant fellows had seized with both hands? In 1921, Bengal had 60 iron foundries with 16,000 workers, a small minority of whom belonged to the Bengali castes of mahishya, kaibarta, chamar, and muchi. Local blacksmiths, kamar or lohar, were ‘unexpectedly few’. Iron foundries thus relied mainly on the people of Bihar, Page 26 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands Orissa, and eastern UP, and those in Bardhaman on Santal and bauri labourers.105 Does this mean that the local blacksmith lived a better life in the village than his up-country craft fellows? The demand for artisan goods expanded in jute growing and tea-garden areas, as discussed earlier. In crude workmanship, the Bengali blacksmith was a bad competitor for the sturdy yet cheap up-country worker, and was often living at a cost he could ill afford. The district level records also point to a trend of improving wages since the 1890s. Carpenters and blacksmiths had benefitted most, achieving a 60–140 per cent rise in wages in the early twentieth century, which was, however, later followed by stagnant wages.106 Only the more enterprising men moved to towns. Most lathe or turning workshops of Howrah thus belonged to Bengali blacksmith castes. The turning and smithy shops used the same raw materials to produce comparable range of goods and were often competitive with each other. What actually distinguished turning shops from the smithy was the use of electrical lathe. It introduced a lot of changes in the workshop and its product. Most of these were opened in the wartime captive market for hardware items. Many of the smiths had sold their land to raise the necessary primary capital. Local blacksmiths also dominated the lock and key industry of Howrah, which was a white-collar enterprise. Initiated during the First World War, these units survived through the acute (p.111) depression of the inter-war period to flourish again in the 1930s. In 1955, Howrah had 917 lock and key making units. The easy access to industrial scrap, sheets, and rods of iron or brass, springs, nuts, screws, or hardware items, accounted for their localization here, as well as in 24-Parganas and Hooghly. Howrah locksmiths specialized in cabinet and furniture locks, since they could not compete with Aligarh padlocks. Like lohiya iron merchants of the late-nineteenth-century Lucknow, Bengali locksmiths finally ended up as wholesale dealers and their products ‘commanded a wider market in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras’.107 North Indian lohars also produced iron safes, steel trunks, cutlery, and cast iron articles to cater to new urban demand. Nearly 500 of them were engaged in a Calcutta suburb in the manufacture of iron safes that ‘look and wear well, compare favourably with imported articles’, and ‘find a ready market throughout the province.’108 Similarly, smiths making steel trunks, using pre-fabricated corners and hinges, hailed from Allahabad and on their way to Calcutta down the river localized at Patna and Bhagalpur. In 1908, Cumming had found them ‘doing well and prices are cheaper than those of English-made goods’.109 A similar case in point is the manufacture of canisters from imported tin sheets. In India, earthen pots were traditionally used as containers for oil, ghee, or holy Page 27 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands water from the Ganges. The leather bag, introduced in late medieval times, made their transport easy but was never widely accepted. The canister was a better option, encouraged by the growth of oil mills in the nineteenth century. The varied use of tin articles—buckets, tanks, bathtubs, mugs, toys, containers of varying sizes and shapes, and cycle mudguards—helped the blacksmithturned-tinsmith the most. All this ‘work [was] done by hand with the aid of hearth and bellows’.110 Small clusters of cutlery smiths existed in different parts of Bengal like Kanchannagar, owing its origin to the Bardhaman ruler’s demand for arms and ammunition. Later, when Kanchannagar lost its raison d’etre, its artisans, unlike Munger smiths, took to cutlery manufacturing.111 It has been held that ‘a notable metal town, Kanchannagar near Bardhaman, gave up brass to specialise in cast-iron tools’ during the colonial period.112 The brass industry, as discussed earlier, had an uninterrupted growth since the late pre-colonial times, later (p. 112) boosted by imported brass sheet. The shift from brass to iron also seems unlikely when craft culture is taken into consideration. The available evidence rather points to a vertical movement from the lesser to the higher metal: iron to brass in the blacksmith’s case and copper to gold for the brazier. Kanchannagar smiths had specialized in surgical instruments, in addition to shaving razors, knives, scissors, and cutlery items. The most notable was the firm of Premchand Mistry, a government supplier, producing quality goods but costlier than imported items. The termination of imports during the war helped them manufacture pruning knives, hoop iron nails, hoes, and digging forks for tea gardens. Some of these were also produced in Bankura, Araipur, Barishal, and Darjeeling. A local observer attributed Kanchannagar’s decline to ‘sons of the famous artisan losing their father’s skill’. The real problem, however, was their failure to upgrade technology and reduce the cost.113 The railway or steamer workshop, with its contingent of blacksmiths, often served as the catalyst for the diffusion of tool technique. The European notion of house building and the use of domestic articles and furniture, disseminated through public buildings, railway stations, and staff quarters, created a new demand for the blacksmith–carpenter combination. The post-colonial period saw a further consolidation of the process. The Partition dislocated blacksmiths destabilizing their old clusters. Traditionally, Muslims represented only a small segment of the blacksmith in eastern India, with the mixed caste group of the kamar–lohar constituting the majority.114 The partition of the country on the basis of religion and the resultant communal disharmony forced the blacksmiths to leave eastern Bengal. Form Barishal in the south to Mymensingh in the north, centres known for cutlery and similar other items lost their skilled craftsmen to India.

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New Tools in Old Hands Some positive changes came to the blacksmith’s rescue, such as the demand in the rural transport sector. The tricycle van as a light mode of transport made him all the more relevant to village life. He had also adjusted his skill to cater to new demands of the building industry. Hardware, iron grills, railings, fencing, wrought iron articles, and a whole lot of other things were now required to be made in large numbers. Thus, the blacksmith could now be found (p.113) busy in his forge along the highways and in major transport hubs all over the region. It is interesting to add that blacksmiths formed a part of the Indian migrants to Saudi Arabia and adjoining countries, as an indispensable component of the workforce engaged in their sprawling building industry.115

New Tools in Old Hands There could be perhaps no better example of the new tool saving an old craft than the sankhari’s. They made conch shell bangles that were once widely used as a marriage symbol all over east, central, and north India. The non-availability of the bangle-worthy shell in the eastern coast points to the external origin of the craft. Whatever little could be reconstructed from stray evidence is a fascinating account of its transmission along the coastline from the west to flourish as an extensive craft in Bengal. The archaeological evidence found in early work-sites points towards a relationship with the south, which is referred to in sankhari mythological traditions as their cradle, and as yielding the best variety of conch shell in India.116 Tavernier in the early seventeenth century found more than 2,000 men making shell bangles (sankha) in Dhaka,with the karati or sawyer of shells as the chief. A crescent-like saw, a few hammers of different sizes and shapes, and some simple aides served as his tools. He went on selling tours with his bangles, dividing his time between manufacturing and marketing.117 The location of shell fishing zones in Madras, Sri Lanka, and Maldives forced him to depend on the supplier. With some capital and marketing skill, one could thus pose as a trader, leading to the rise of the merchant group called sankhabanik in medieval literature. The high profits of carrying shells drew the Portuguese to the trade, thus helping the sankhari craft to revive from the reverses suffered during the early Muslim rule. Later, the Dutch imposed a monopoly on the carrying of conch shells to Bengal, but finally gave it up due to the sankhabanik opposition, who fought them not in the south, or on the high seas, but boycotted their shells altogether in Bengal. They could enforce the boycott through their caste control of sankhari artisans. The Dutch also suffered due to the scarcity of shell-sawing skills, a high-precision activity confined (p.114) to a small group of karatis. The latter shifted their loyalties from trader to trader for higher rates. The sankhari custom of paying off the karati’s debts before engaging him was a rare instance of artisans dictating terms to the trader.

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New Tools in Old Hands The sankhari’s craft expanded under colonial rule too. Between 1830 and 1924, their number at Dhaka, which was the most important centre at the time, nearly quadrupled. New sankhari settlements emerged in Calcutta, Rangpur, and Faridpur in the nineteenth century. Rangpur owed its rise to the growing trade with sub-Himalayan regions. Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim, which had been importing bangles from Dhaka for long, now turned to Rangpur. Muslim association with shell carving in Chittagong and in Dinajpur was a new development of the period too.118 Better transport and interregional trade increased the supply of shells from south India and Sri Lanka. The Calcutta price of the best variety shell (titkaudi) fell by 22 per cent between 1770 and 1870, and by a further 37 per cent by 1892. Everywhere, bangle prices crashed an average of 84 per cent roughly over a hundred years. Even highly carved Rangpur bangles were sold at only onethird of a rupee per pair. The cheaper bangle and swadeshi ideology boosted the craft, but the most important factor was the spread of the bangle-wearing custom among lower caste and tribal women by way of thier acculturation.119 Shell bracelets were earlier used by women of higher castes and the poor used brass bangles (kharu), 16 times cheaper. By the 1890s, the nature of the industry had changed, with 70 per cent of its products as ‘broad, strong, serviceable bangles used by women of lower classes, while 25 per cent or less than that was medium and the high grade work suitable for ladies in good caste’. The increasing import of the Jaffna shell to Calcutta also indicates the drift to cheap product. Nicknamed pati or inferior, it was used for cheap, strong bangles. Thus, Hargash in Rangpur flourished by producing compound armlets of 10–12 rings in each set for the rajbangshi, koch, and paliya castes of north Bengal.120 The sankhari merchant had reduced the karati to a state of bondage, thus monopolizing the key section of shell-slicing, throwing, finishing, and marketing to small domestic units. The merchant procured shell from south India, got it sawn by the karati, and (p.115) distributed sliced sections among banglemakers at a high price. All these only increased their profit, as high as 150 per cent according to an estimate of 1910, while the common artisans suffered.121 The progressive degeneration of the shell-slicing skill created a bottleneck in the craft. The problem had to be solved if the mahajan was to maintain the level of his trade. As the price of shell tended to rise from 1903, wastage due to bad workmanship also proved costlier. Meanwhile, imposition of restrictive laws on shell fishing in south India reduced its supply to Calcutta. To save the industry, S.C. Mitter, an engineer of the government industrial department, introduced a shell-slicing machine in 1924. Based on the principle of small lathe with partial modifications, the machine generated a mixed response among the sankharis. Calcutta-based sankhari mahajans readily switched to it and found it very useful for the production of bangles for mass use. However, this was not so for fellow Page 30 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands sankharis in Dhaka, who were socially more organized, and more concerned with the quality of the product. Wide use of the machine took place only after the Partition had disorganized the old social base of the craft. The displaced sankhari relocated to West Bengal under the mahajan, and shifted to the (p.116) machines too. The use of the mechanical saw changed the old karati-centric structure of the craft and helped it spread further.122

Meanwhile, the supply trade of conch shell had slipped out of the sankhari mahajan to a coterie of south Indian merchants. Artificial price control discouraged free flow of the shell to Calcutta, creating an unprecedented crisis for the industry. The attempt of the

Figure 2.4 Conch shell–cutting machine Source: Author.

state government to ensure supply at a reasonable price through cooperative marketing societies at both ends did not work in the long run. The old bangle-wearing culture, meanwhile, changed from its status as a marriage symbol to fashion wear, somehow helping the craft to survive. Notes:

(*) ‘Gone are the good old days of the spinning wheel with the weaver switching to the mill-made yarn. The spinner queues up at the mill gate, but the job eludes him.’ Balaram Basak, Tana Poden, Phulia, translation by me. (1.) Paul Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England (London, 1964), pp. 189–92; Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (London, 1955, pp. 9–12. (2.) Mukundaram Chakraborty, Chandi (Calcutta: Basumati), pp. 9–14, 68. A.I. Chicherov, India: Economic Developmentin the 16th–18th Centuries, Outline History of Crafts and Trade (Moscow: Nauka Publishing House, Central Department of Oriental Literature, 1971), pp. 37–8. (3.) A.I. Chicherov, India, p. 107; Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (Delhi, 1994), p. 11, 96–7. Atindra Mukherjee, The Charyyapads (Calcutta, 1967), p. 42; Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language (Calcutta 1985), Vol. I, pp. 110–12, 308, Page 31 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands 310, 316, 362, 501, 502; Niharranjan Roy, Bangalir Itihas, Adi Parba (Calcutta, 1980), Vol. I, pp. 33, 272, 316–19; Monier Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1899 [Reprint, Delhi, 2005]), pp. 291, 436. (4.) Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Social Organization of Artisan Production in India: Changing Role of the Market, Technology and Merchant-Creditor, 18th to 20th Centuries’, in History of Science, Philosophy and Culture of Indian Civilization, Vol. VIII, Part III, Economic History of India from Eighteenth to Twentieth Century, ed. Binay Bhusan Chaudhuri (New Delhi, 2005), pp. 141, 168–9, 196. (5.) Irfan Habib, ‘Technology and Barriers to Social Change in Mughal India’, Indian Historical Review (IHR), 5, nos 1–2 (July 1979–January 1980), pp. 152–74; M. Chakraborty, Chandi, p. 68; A.I. Chicherov, India, pp. 37–8. (6.) For details, see Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘From Autonomy to Subordination: A Study of the Changing Organization of Artisan Production in Colonial Bengal, the Cases of the Kānsāris and the Shankharis‘, The Calcutta Historical Journal (University of Calcutta), 14, no. 2 (July–December 1994), pp.105–51. (7.) S. Sarkar, ‘Social Organization of Artisan Production’, pp. 171–2; Irfan Habib, ‘The Monetary System and Prices’, in The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. I: c. 1200–c. 1750, eds Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (The Cambridge University Press, 1982 [Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984]), p. 371. (8.) Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Indian Craft Technology: Static or Changing—A Case Study of the Kānsāri’s Craft in Bengal 16th to 18th Centuries’, Indian Journal of History of Science, 33, no. 2 (1998), pp. 131–42. (9.) Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘The Changing Image of the Craftsman: Blacksmith in Colonial Jharkhand’, The Calcutta Historical Journal (University of Calcutta), 18, no. 2 (July–December 1996), pp. 67–85; also see idem., ‘An Aspect of Artisanal Technology in India: Some Methodological Arguments’, in History, Science and Society in the Indian Context, ed. Arun Kumar Biswas (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 2001), pp. 125–58. (10.) In 1911, weavers represented one-fourth of the artisan population. Census of India, 1911, Vol. V, Part II, p. 214. (11.) K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company (Delhi, 1978), pp. 62–3, 237. J.G. Medlicott, Cotton Hand-Book for Bengal: Being a Digest of Information Available from Official Records and Other Sources on the Subject of the Production of Cotton in the Bengal Province (Calcutta, 1862); Sushil Kumar Dey, Bangla Prabad: Chada O Chalti Katha (Calcutta, 1359 BS), see index.

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New Tools in Old Hands (12.) Sushil Chaudhury argued that Bengal had an abundance of textile skill as it was a domestic industry. From Prosperity to Decline: Eighteenth Century Bengal (Delhi, 1995 [Reprint 1995]), pp. 134–6. (13.) In 1661, Madras council thus regretted ‘for all provisions of victual, when at the cheapest, is here three times dearer than in Kashimbazar and Hooghly … and consequently weavers and other workmen employed therein can maintain themselves at two-third less than those that shall be employed in this your town.’ K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World, pp. 248–50; W.H. Moreland, India at the Death of Akbar: An Economic Study (London, 1920 [Indian edition, New Delhi 1983]), pp. 181–2; Tapan Raychaudhuri, Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir (Delhi, 1966), p. 205; Robert Orme, Historical Fragments of the Mughal Empire (London, 1805), p. 409, Jagadish Naranyan Sarkar, Mughal Economy: Organization and Working (Calcutta, 1987), p. 49; Rajat Datta, Society, Economy and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, c. 1760–1800 (Delhi, 2000), pp. 303, 328; S. Chaudhury, From Prosperity to Decline, p. 138. (14.) Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal (Delhi, 1990), p. 109; A.I. Chicherov, India, pp. 108, 138; K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World, p. 198. (15.) Hameeda Hossain, The Company Weavers of Bengal (Delhi, 1988, pp. 140– 72; Nirmal Kumar Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, 1793–1848 (Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1956), Vol. I, p. 127. (16.) Jadunath Sarkar, ‘Old Murshidabad’, Krishnath College Centenary Commemoration Volume: 1853–1953 (Berahampore, 1954), p. 132. (17.) S.C. Nandy, Life and Times of Cantoo Baboo, The Banian of Warren Hastings (Bombay, 1978), pp. 1, 3, 8–9, 281–2; Dharma Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India (CEHI), Vol. II: c. 1757–c. 1970 (The Cambridge University Press, 1982 [Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984]), pp. 6–7, 282. K.N. Chaudhuri, ‘Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments (1757–1947)’, in CEHI (II), p. 848. S. Chaudhury, From Prosperity to Decline, p. 220. (18.) B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Regional Economy (1757–1857): Eastern India, Part II’, in CEHI (II), pp. 299–300, 318, 319, 320–1; R. Datta, Society, Economy and the Market, pp. 294–5. (19.) J. Sarkar, ‘Old Murshidabad’, p. 132, cited in Tapan Raychaudhuri without acknowledgement in CEHI (II), p. 27; and by S.C. Nandy, Cantoo Baboo, p. 1. In Indonesia, merchants used Indian textiles to barter for local spices, whereas in Red Sea areas ‘it was the common people who were the overwhelming majority of India’s customers and the more expensive varieties did not sell well’. Ashin Dasgupta,’Indian Merchants and the Trade in the Indian Ocean’, in The Page 33 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands Cambridge Economic History of India (CEHI), Vol. I: c. 1200–c. 1750, eds Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (The Cambridge University Press, 1982 [Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984]), p. 413. Ole Feldbaeck, ‘Cloth Production and Trade in Late Eighteenth Century Bengal: A Report from the Danish Factory in Serampore’, Bengal Past and Present, Vol. 86 (Diamond Jubilee Number, Calcutta Historical Society, 1967), pp. 27–8. (20.) Fort William Consultations (hereafter FWC) dated 10 September 1753 states, ‘The musters received from Santipore and Kheerpoy upon inspection proving very indifferent. Ordered the keeper to recall Kisenchurn and Rossick Peharry from the aurangs.’ National Archives of India (NAI), Home Public Progs. Vol. II, p. 500. (21.) The subsidiary nature of weaving to agriculture has been emphasized in the literature. H. Hossain, Company Weavers, p. xi; S. Chaudhury, From Prosperity to Decline, pp. 134–5, 136, 149. Francis Hamilton Buchanan, Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description of the Zila of Dinajpur (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1833), pp. 300–1; J.A. Taylor, A Sketch of the Topography and Statistics of Dacca (Calcutta, 1840), p. 73; Joseph J. Brennig argued, ‘A shift from weaving to agricultural work [was] not a part of the rhythm of the normal work year, but occurred rather as a large-scale and singular phenomenon when there was a serious decline in demand.’ ‘Textile Producers and Production in Late Seventeenth Century Coromandel’, in Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India, ed. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi, 1990), p. 82. (22.) Gyan Pandey questioned the feasibility of the frail weaver competing with the sturdy agricultural labourer. ‘Economic Dislocation in Nineteenth Century Eastern Uttar Pradesh: Some Implications of the Decline of Artisanal Industry in Colonial India’, in Rural South Asia: Linkages, Changes and Development, ed. Peter Robb (London, 1983), p.110. The weaver emigrants from south India went ‘for work on plantations and frequently returned to their places of origin’. Konrad Specker, ‘De-industrialization in Nineteenth-Century India: Textile industry in the Madras Presidency, 1810–1870’, in Arrested Development in India, ed. Clive J. Dewey (London, 1983), p. 343. K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World, p. 268. (23.) D.B. Mitra, The Cotton Weavers of Bengal (Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay Private Ltd., 1978), pp. 178–9; The Report on the Survey of Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1924 [hereafter RSCI], observed, ‘Tantis practically limit themselves to weaving of finer qualities of cloth and have abhorrence for agriculture’ (p. 59). F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 306–7. (24.) See Gangaram, ‘Maharastrapuran’, Bangiya Sahitya Parishat Patrika, vol.12 (1312 BS), pp. 209–36; J.Z. Holwell, Interesting Historical Events Relative to the Page 34 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands Provinces of Bengal and the Empire of Hindostan (London: T. Becket and P.A.D. Hondt, 1767), Vol. I, pp.195–6; Ranajit Guha and A. Mitra (eds), West Bengal District Records: New Series Bardhaman Letters issued 1788–1800 (Calcutta, 1956), p. lviii. (25.) NAI, William McGwire’s letter dated 1 January1753, FWC, Vol. I, p. 58. Letter No. 80, FWC dated 19 October 1753, Vol. II, p. 605. FWC dated 18 January 1754, Vol. II, p. 78; K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World, pp. 198–9. BTC, Vol. 172, No. 33, Letter from Resident, ‘Gorruckpore’, 26 March 1804, cited in Gyan Pande, ‘Economic Dislocation’, p. 93. (26.) In 1754, Calcutta weavers received ‘cash advance in view of the rising prices of cotton, thread and rice. FWC, dated 8 August 1753, Vol. I, p. 396. S. Arasaratnam, ‘Weavers, Merchants and Company: The Handloom Industry in South-eastern India 1750–1790’, in Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India, ed. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi, 1990), pp. 204–5; FWC dated 9 June 1755 noted with concern that ‘letters from most of the gomosthas at the aurangs complaining of the scarcity of cotton and the refusal of the weavers to take pattani (advance) upon the same terms as last year; directions to the gomosthas to advance something in the price of the cloth they provide rather than debase the fabric.’ Vol. II, p. 232. On 11 February 1753, the council decided to sell ‘650 bags of rice from the stock of the Company’s factory at public outcry.’ FWC, Vol. I, p. 68. (27.) An estimate of muslin exports from Dhaka (1747) shows that royal families of Delhi and Murshidabad, the house of Jagat Seth included, purchased less than a fifth of the fabrics exported. A third went to Europeans, while Indo-Asian merchants got the largest share of it; both the groups took mostly the coarse goods. In the 1750s, high-quality jamdani was sold for Rs 250 apiece at Dhaka, while the variety exported by the company ranged between Rs 12 and 31 only. Abdul Karim, Dhakai Maslin (Dhaka, 1372 BS), pp. 81–6. (28.) H. Hossain, Company Weavers, pp. 140–72. (29.) J.A. Taylor, A Sketch of the Topography (Calcutta 1840), pp. 308, 363–6. (30.) G.A. Grierson, Notes on the District of Gaya (Calcutta, 1863), p. 118. By 1876, ‘extensive weaving industry … declined on account of the competition with Manchester goods’. G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries and Resources of Eastern Bengal and Assam, for 1907–1908 (Shillong, 1908), p. 9. (31.) S. Bhattacharyya held that handloom weaving ‘showed surprising survival capacity’. CEHI (II), p. 291. For other details see Census of India, 1951, Vol. VI, Part IC, pp. 368–73. The weaving population declined by 20 per cent, in the 1910s, but registered a 13 per cent growth in the next decade. Census of India,

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New Tools in Old Hands 1911, Vol.V, Part I, pp. 524–5; Census of India, 1921,Vol. V, Part I, pp. 400–2. RSCI, p. 5; G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries, p. 7. (32.) Census of India, 1911, Vol. V, Part I, p. 543. RSCI, pp. 61, 79, 118. In 1908, G.N. Gupta observed, ‘The handloom industry has a special vitality in India.… The handlooms are specially suited for the production of durable coarse cloth, for which there is a large demand in India and finally, weavers have a low standard of living and are satisfied with comparatively low wages and, therefore, labour is cheaper.’ G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries, p. 15. (33.) Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Private Investment in India, 1900–1939 (Cambridge, 1972 [Reprint New Delhi, 1980]), pp. 220–1, 224. The imported cloth entered Central Provinces after the 1860s, Rajasthan after 1911 after the railways reached these areas. D.R. Gadgil, The Industrial Evolution of India in Recent Times, 1860–1939 (Delhi, 1979), pp. 6, 36; J. Krishnamurthy, ‘The Occupational Structure’ in CEHI (II), p. 546; Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘De-industrialization in Gangetic Bihar,1809–1901’, in Essays in Honour of Prof. S. C. Sarkar, ed. Barun De (New Delhi, 1976). (34.) Census of India, 1921, Vol. V, Part I, pp. 378–9; RSCI, pp. 93–6. G. N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries, p. 7; C.J. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy1880–1955, The Tamilnad Countryside (Delhi, 1988), p. 393. (35.) RSCI, pp. 5–6. Census of India, 1921, Vol. V, Part I, pp. 400–2. (36.) N.M. Joshi, Urban Handicrafts of the Bombay Deccan (Pune, 1936), p. 47; Tirthankar Roy, Artisans and Industrialization: Indian Weaving in the Twentieth Century (Delhi, 1993), pp. 105–33. (37.) Chadar (bedspread), dhuti and lungi (men’s wear), and gamchha (towel). RSCI, pp. 57–8, 61. (38.) In 1796, Samuel Stock wrote from Ghusuri that for the past two years the company had engaged him in receiving, packing, and screwing cotton for England. In 1817, Brightman and Hogue had cotton screws in Hooghly. A.B. Guha, ‘Prospects of Cotton Mills in Bengal’, Modern Review (February 1936). (39.) RSCI, pp. 5, 27, 28, 33, 56; M. Vicziany, M. ‘Bombay Merchants and Structural Changes in the Export Community 1850–1880’, in Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History, eds K.N. Chaudhuri and C. Dewey (Delhi, 1979), p. 186. (40.) RSCI, pp. 57, 59–60, 79, 85, 122–5, 140–3; F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 298–9; N.C. Chakraborty, Report on the Survey of Handloom Weaving Industries in Bengal (Calcutta, 1942), p. 21.

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New Tools in Old Hands (41.) G.A. Grierson, Gaya, p. 118; Census of India, 1901, Vol. VI, p. 486. In east Bengal and Assam, tantis were only 9 per cent of the total weaving population as against 43 per cent for the yugi and 48 per cent for the jolah. G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries, p. 8. (42.) In 1877, W.W. Hunter referred to independent silk weavers of Birbhum thus, ‘Some weavers, however, are sufficiently enterprising to invest their little capital on their own account. The women aid them in setting out the woof and filling the shuttles.’ Statistical Account, Vol IV, pp. 276–7, 374–8. In 1901, fulltime silk weaving supported 1.42 lakh persons in Bengal. Census of India, p. 35; RSCI, pp. 11, 14–16, 61. (43.) G.N. Gupta argued, ‘A distinction has to be drawn between such mahajans either in the cotton or silk trade as Suranath of Comilla, Gour Basak of Dhaka and Mohesh Chandra of Shibganj (all belonging to the weaver caste), who are intimately interested in the welfare of the industry; and the mahajan … to whom usury is the sole motive for advancing money to the artisan and who would as soon invest money in weaving as in any other business, which will pay them as well …[but which would] ruin weaving in the long run.’ G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries, pp. 33–4; RSCI, pp. 61, 80. (44.) C.J. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy, pp. 394–5; Peter Harnetty, ‘Deindustrialization Revisited: Handloom Weavers of the Central Provinces of India, c. 1800–1947’, Modern Asian Studies, 25, no. 3 (1991), pp. 455, 460–1, 476; Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, ‘Industrialization in India before 1947: Conventional Approaches and Alternative Perspectives’, Modern Asian Studies, 19, no. 3 (1985), pp. 654–5; N.M. Joshi, Urban Handicrafts, p. 51; Sumit Guha, ‘Handloom Industry of Central India: 1825–1950’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 26, no. 3 (1989), p. 305; G.A. Grierson, Gaya, pp. 118–19. (45.) Census of India, 1901, pp. 485–6; Letter No. 836, Medininpur, dated 14 March 1892. Census of India, 1891, Bengal, p. 5. (46.) Report of the Census of India, 1921, Vol. V, Part I, pp. 400–2. RSCI, pp. 12, 16, 60–1, 93. (47.) Census of India, 1901, Vol. VI (I), p. 477; Census of India, 1921, Vol. V (I), pp. 400–2. (48.) Of the 25 families of silk weavers in Bishnupur, only Kailash Chandra Rajak, ‘the chief artist’ of the place, stuck to vegetable dye. He prepares ‘his own vegetable dyes’, ‘his own silk thread and weaves the cloth’; ‘others use aniline dyes and the use of vegetable dyes is becoming uncommon’. E.W. Collin, Report on the Existing Arts and Industries in Bengal (Calcutta, 1892), p. 9. G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries, p. 36. Census of India, 1921, Vol. V, Part I, p.

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New Tools in Old Hands 400–2. A.K. Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 225; N. M. Joshi, Urban Handicrafts, pp. 47–50. (49.) ‘Nadichar khāl-bil, gajāreer ban, tangail shāri tār garaber dhan’. For migration of Hindu weavers from Noakhali, see Kurt Mock Jensen, Nonagricultural Occupations in a Peasant Society: Weavers and Fishermen in Noakhali, Bangladesh, Centre for Development Research, Report No. 12, Copenhagen, 1987, pp. 47, 55, 59, 61, 62–3, 66–7, 64, 111–12. (50.) Personal interview of old Tangail weavers settled in Phulia-Shantipur, West Bengal, November–December 1995 and August–September 1996; Haripada Basak, ‘Banglar Tant Shilpa: Phuliar Tangail Sari’, pp. 60–4; Interview of the weaver-trader Raghunath Basak of Bajitpur, Bangladesh, as published by Farida Akhtar in Chinta (Dhaka), II, no. 23 (30 July 1993), p. 40. (51.) K.M. Jensen, Non-agricultural Occupations, pp. 157–8; Farida Akhtar’s interview of Raghunath Basak of Bajitpur, published in Chinta, pp. 40–1. (52.) It actually started in the 1920s. The Bankura District Industrial Union was possibly the most successful of the early societies in Bengal. In 1923, 63 societies were affiliated to it with a total membership of 800 weavers in the sadar subdivision of the district. RSCI, pp. 20, 57–8, 93–4,118. (53.) Biswaranjan Sarkar, ‘Most Tangail Weavers Left Out of Coops’, The Telegraph, Calcutta, 1 November 1982. (54.) Biswaranjan Sarkar, ‘Too Much Dependency on Handloom Sector’, The Telegraph, 6 October 1982. (55.) ‘Tantiraki Takar Janya Ebar Writers Buildings e Dharnadebe?’ Deshmatrika (quarterly published by S. Chaudhuri, Nivuji Bajar), 25 February 1991, pp. 1, 4. Purnendu Patri, ‘Tantipara Manushe-Machine e Dubhag’, Anandabajar, 17 April 1994; Bartaman, Calcutta, 12 June 1996, p. 3, ‘Who Will Take This Responsibility?’ Deshmatrika, 10 November 1999, pp. 1, 4. Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Sinking Handloom Sector: Bengal Government Speaks with Two Voices on State Weavers’, The Statesman, Calcutta, 10 September 2004; Sukriti Lahari, ‘Sarir Phul Phuliaya’, Anandabajar, 11 July 1992, supplementary, p. 3. (56.) James Westland, A Report on the District of Jessore: Its Antiquities, Its History and Its Commerce (Calcutta, 1871), pp. 258–60. (57.) In 1912, part-time workers formed only 7 per cent of workers in Bengal, and 5 per cent in British India. The respective figures for women were 3 per cent and 1 per cent, as against 24 per cent in cotton weaving, 40 in silk, 54 in basketry, and 11 in shell work. In Punjab, women never helped ‘in any part of the work of brass and copper making’. P.G. Shah, ‘The Copper and Brass Industries of India’, in Report of the Indian Industrial Conference, Bunckipore, 1912 Page 38 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands (Calcutta, 1912), p. 32; Report on the Brass and Bell Metal Industries of Bengal, 1939 [hereafter BBMI], p. 3; F.D. Ascoli, Report on the Development of Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1921 (Calcutta 1921), p. 3; D.C. Johnstone, Monograph on Brass and Copper Ware in the Punjab in 1886–1887 (Lahore, 1888), p. 7. E.W. Collin, Existing Arts, p. 4; RSCI, pp. 24, 136; F.D. Ascoli, Development of Cottage Industries, p. 6. P.G. Shah, ‘Copper and Brass Industries’, pp. 28–9. (58.) D.C. Johnstone, Brass and Copper Ware, pp. 6–7. Report on the Enquiry into the Existing Working Conditions of the Owners-cum-Workers of Brass and Bellmetal Industries in West Bengal, p. 2. Personal interview of Prabodh and Shantu Karmakar, Susunia village, Bankura, producing bell metal rice plates for Chhotonagpur, Hazaribag, and Santal Parganas (February 1982). (59.) H.K. Naqvi, Urban Centres and Industries in Upper India, 1556–1803 (Bombay, 1968), p. 235; F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 116–17, 124–5; J.C. Jack, Bengal District Gazetteer: Bakarganj, pp. 28, 36. Trailokyanath Mukherjee, Monograph on the Brass and Copper Manufactures of Bengal (Calcutta, 1894); W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account, Vol. II, p. 101. The RSCI held, ‘Next to handloom weaving the most striking and widespread home industry is that of brass and bell-metal manufacture.’ The Report on the Indian Industrial Commission, 1916–1918, also shared the view. For details, see S. Sarkar, ‘From Autonomy to Subordination’, pp. 115, 134, 138. (60.) J.G. Cumming, Review of the Industrial Position and Prospects in Bengal in 1908 with Special reference to the Industrial Survey of 1890, Part II of Special Report (Calcutta, 1908), pp. 24–5. (61.) Ibid., p. 116; Meera Mukherjee, Metal Craftsmen of India (Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India, 1978), pp. 21–2, 75, 93. The sonar in Sahabad gave up his hereditary occupation to join the kasera’s craft. In north India, not only the metalworking caste of lohar or sonar had given up their metals in favour of the kasera’s, but also men of non-artisan castes like kunbi, kalwar, and bhangi were busy making ‘tools and sacrificial implements of brass and copper’. In Punjab, lohar, ahir, or kumhar ‘have turned copper and brass smiths and in subsidiary processes many other outsiders are employed’. In Andhra, everybody from devangi or padmasali weaver to kapu, or the cultivator, and koli was working in the brazier’s workshop, as the Muslim ladaf did in Ramareddy. S. Sarkar, ‘From Autonomy to Subordination’, p. 117. (62.) Tirthankar Roy argued that ‘being bulky, transport costs would not have justified imports’. Tirthankar Roy, Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India (Cambridge, 1999), p. 128. S. Sarkar, ‘From Autonomy to Subordination’, p. 121.

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New Tools in Old Hands (63.) Like the attempt by Bipradas Pal Chowdhury of Nadia and Tarakali Chatterjee of Calcutta. J.G. Cumming, Review of the Industrial Position, p 22; T. Mukherjee, Brass and Copper Manufactures, p 27; Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Smallscale Unorganised Industries of Bengal, Their role in the Industrial Economy of the Province: 1900–1947’, Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Calcutta, 1992, p. 359. (64.) Presidential address, First Annual Conference of Bangiya Kangsabanik Sammilani, 4 Kartik 1330 BS. (65.) S. Sarkar, ‘Small-scale’, pp. 118–19, 139, 358; H.K. Naqvi, Urban Centres and Industries, p. 236; T. Roy, Traditional Industry, p. 132; P.R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943–44 (Oxford, 1982), p. 197. (66.) For details, see S. Sarkar, ‘From Autonomy to Subordination’, pp. 120–1. (67.) Census of India, 1911, Vol. V, Part I, p. 65. G.R. Dampier, A Monograph on the Brass and Copper Wares of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Allahabad, 1894), p. 20; D.C. Johnstone, Brass and Copper Ware, p. 1. J.W. Browne, Calcutta Exhibition of Indian Art Manufactures (Calcutta, 1882), p. 333. (68.) T. Roy, Traditional Industry, p. 131. (69.) Copper prices increased in the early twentieth century with its growing electrical and industrial uses. K.L. Datta, Report on the Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in India, 1915 (Calcutta, 1915), p. 37. (70.) C.N. Banerjei, An Account of Howrah (Calcutta, 1872), p. 73. Punjab regularly imported brass and copper from Bengal by railways and ‘the greater part of this supply was in the form of sheets … used for domestic purposes’. John Lockwood Kipling, ‘Brass and Copper of the Punjab and Kashmir’, Journal of Indian Art and Industry, I (1886), pp. 1–16, cited in S. Sengupta, Highlights and Halftones: The Rajview of Indian Art, 1850–1905 (Delhi: Asia Pacific Research Information, 1997), p. 205. (71.) Panchanan Roy, Taraknath Pramanik (Calcutta, 1937). Panchanan belonged to the family of the medieval poet Krittibas Ojha and Roy Gunakar Bharatchandra. His father was a Sanskrit scholar close to Vidyasagar Iswarchandra. Mahajanbandhu, I, no. 5, 1307–8, pp. 113–19. (72.) S. Sarkar, ‘From Artisan to the Merchant’, pp. 203–12. (73.) E.W. Collin, Existing Arts, p. 27.

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New Tools in Old Hands (74.) In 1939, brass accounted for 60 per cent of utensils made in Bengal. S. Sarkar, ‘From Autonomy to Subordination’, p. 122; BBMI, p. 5; D.C. Johnstone, Brass and Copper Ware, p. 2; N.M. Joshi, Urban Handicrafts, p. 133; Tirthankar Roy argued, ‘Brass sheets eliminated the need to melt the scrap in crude furnaces.’ T. Roy, Traditional Industry, p. 131; L.S.S. O’Malley, Bengal District Gazetteer, Balasore (Calcutta, 1907), p. 135. (75.) S. Sarkar, ‘From Autonomy to Subordination’, p. 121; Industrial Survey of the United Provinces (Allahabad, 1924), p. 23, cited in T. Roy, ‘Home Market etc.’ p. 363. He argued, ‘brass entered a market which had probably grown since the advent of the railways.’ ‘Metals replaced earthenware wherever possible. Durability would have been an attraction for metals, but perhaps not the only one.’ Traditional Industries, p. 131. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 73–4. (76.) Tirthankar Roy emphasized the role of foreign demand. See his ‘Home Market’, pp. 362–4. (77.) S. Sarkar, ‘Social Organization of Artisan’, p. 143. Havell to Director of Revenue Settlement and Agriculture, Madras, 21 February 1885, No. 78. Kipling and Havell have been cited in S. Sengupta, Highlights, p. 205. (78.) G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries, p. 39; J.G. Cumming, Review of the Industrial Position, p. 26; RSCI, pp. 50, 82, 116, 136; BBMI, pp. 5–6. (79.) S. Sarkar, ‘Small-scale’, pp. 457–8; RSCI, pp. 22, 24, 42, 54, 136; BBMI, pp. 10–11. (80.) Kajer Lok, 12, no. 2 (February 1913), p. 41. A.G. Clow, The State and Industry (Calcutta, 1928), p. 2; S.N. Seth, Mokamer Banijyatatta (Calcutta 1327 BS), p. 8; BBMI, p. 3; Kangsa Banik Patrika [hereafter KBP], I, no. 1, p. 6; K.C. Pradhan, pp. 82–3; RSCI, pp. 7, 83. (81.) Census of India, 1921, p. 30; P.G. Shah, ‘Copper and Brass Industries’, pp. 20–1. RSCI, p. 113, BBMI, p. 9. S.K. Basak, ‘Dhaka O DhakarBahirer Tama Pital O Kansa Shilpa’, Arthik Jagat (15 September 1941); S. Sarkar, ‘Small-scale’, pp. 468–70. (82.) He said, ‘Nowadays, Swadeshi feeling is running high in the country. People generally prefer handloom to the mill-made cloth; but is the self-respect of the country maintained only by using the cloth alone? True Swadeshi also requires boycotting aluminum ware for the brazier’s utensil.’ KBP, I, no. 3, p. 116. (83.) State Statistical Bureau, Brass and Bell-Metal Industry (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1959); Report on the Enquiry into the Existing

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New Tools in Old Hands Working Conditions of the Owners-cum-Workers of Bell-metal and Brass Industries in West Bengal (Calcutta, 1973). (84.) A similar unit in Ghatal had an average monthly income of Rs 24–64. S.S. Bureau, Brass and Bell-metal Industry, preface. (85.) Irfan Habib observed, ‘Alongside cotton goods, English exports to India of iron, together with hardware and cutlery, guns, glass and machinery had increased enormously by 1828.’ ‘Colonization’, p. 322; S. Bhattacharya, CEHI (II), p. 285. M.D. Morris, ‘Large-scale Industry’, in CEHI (II), pp. 349, 675. (86.) Monograph on Iron and Steel Works of Assam (Shillong, 1907), pp. 1–2. (87.) NAI, Home Public. FWC, dated 23 September 1754; Progs, Dept. of Agrl. Rev & Com. March 1874, pp. 3–4, 10. (88.) Grigson has been cited in Verrier Elwin, The Agaria (London, 1942), p. 41. (89.) Ibid., pp. 37, 246; J.W. Browne, Calcutta Exhibition, p. 365; J. M’clelland, Report of the Geological Survey of India for 1848–1849 (Calcutta, 1850), p. 10; E.R. Watson, A Monograph on Iron and Steel Work (Calcutta, 1907), p. 35; R.S. Hole, ‘Iron Industry in Central Provinces’, Agricultural Ledger 5, no. 17 (1903), p. 12; V. Elwin, The Agaria, p. 244. Abstract of Names of Castes and Corresponding Numbers of Emigrants from Chotonagpore to Assam and Kachar from January 1864 to December 1867 Obtained from the Office of the Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi (Calcutta, 1868), p.10. (90.) M.D. Morris, ‘Large-scale Industry’, pp. 673–4. (91.) E.R. Watson, Iron and Steel Work, pp. 14–15, 34–5, 54–5. (92.) J.W. Browne, Calcutta Exhibition, p. 365. Blacksmiths of Begunkodar later specialized in screw drill (agar); those of Jhalda in dagger and knife. Personal interview, Susanta Karmakar (70 years) and Madan Karmakar (65 years) of Begunkodar; Sisir and Madhusudan Chandra, Rashbehari Datta (80 years) of Jhalda, dated 9/10 Febuary 2003. (93.) J.A. Vas, Rangpur, 1911, p. 91; J.C.K. Peterson, Bengal District Gazetteer, Burdwan (Calcutta, 1910), p. 123. (94.) Personal interview of Subol Karmakar (82 years) and Ananda Karmakar (73 years), and Netai Pramanik (75 years) of Kanchkuli and Dahakula villages, Nadia, March 2007. V. Elwin, The Agaria, pp. 9, 37, 41, 44, 51, 236; E.R. Watson, Iron and Steel Work, pp. 34–5. A. Latifi, pp. 229–31. (95.) F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 287. E.R. Watson, Iron and Steel Work, p. 37.

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New Tools in Old Hands (96.) NAI, Home, Rev. & Agrl. Dept, Agrl & Horticulture, Progs: A, December 1880. Index 7–8, No. 93 (Rev), India Office, London, 11 November 1880, No. Progs. 36 & 37. (97.) J.E. Gastrell, Geographical and Statistical Report of the Districts of Jessore, Fureedpur and Backerganj, (Calcutta, 1868), p. 33; E.R. Watson, Iron and Steel Work, p. 37; F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 287. For indigo factories, see S. Playne, Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa: Their History, People, Commerce and Industrial Resources (London: The Foreign and Colonial Compiling & Publishing Co., 1917), pp. 306, 329. Even the TATA spade had to be taken to the blacksmith to adjust it to the comfort of its user. Interview of Sumanta and Sadhan Karmakar, Begunkodar, February 2003. (98.) Henry T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges: An Exploration in the History of India’s Modernization through Science and Technology (Delhi, 1960 [Reprint 1987]), pp. 147–61; S. Playne, Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa, pp. 136, 364. Eastern Railway, Kanchrapara Workshops, pp. 3–4. (99.) After Hyder Ali had threatened the supply of south Indian ships to Calcutta, the English started to build ships in Howrah to ensure food supply to its troops in the region. C.N. Banerjei, An Account of Howrah, pp. 72–5. (100.) L.S.S. O’Malley, An Account of Howrah: Past and Present (Calcutta, 1872, pp. 108–9; James Hornell, Social Aspects of Small Industries in India: Studies in Howrah and Bombay of Selected Turning Shops, Blacksmithies, and Art Silk Units (Delhi: UNESCO Publications, 1962), pp. 87–112. (101.) W.A. Hoey, Monograph on Trade and Manufacture in Northern India (Lucknow, 1880), pp. 9–10, 30–1. (102.) S. Sarkar, ‘The Changing Image of the Craftsman’, pp. 67–85. (103.) In the 1900s, kamar represented three-fourths of the blacksmiths in Bengal. E.R. Watson, Iron and Steel Work, p. 12. (104.) Gyan Pande, ‘Economic Dislocation in Nineteenth Century Eastern Uttar Pradesh: Some Implications of the Decline of Artisanal Industry in Colonial India’, in Rural South Asia: Linkages, Changes and Development, ed. Peter Robb (London, 1983), p. 113. (105.) Census of India, 1921, Vol. V, Part I, pp. 406–7. (106.) L.S.S. O’Malley, Murshidabad, p. 121, 24-Parganas, p. 141, Birbhum, p. 65; H. Coupland, Bengal District Gazetteer, Manbhum (Calcutta, 1911), p. 149.

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New Tools in Old Hands (107.) Department of Cottage and Small-Scale Industries, West Bengal, Locks and Keys Industry in Howrah: A Type Study (Calcutta: West Bengal Government Press, 1961), p. 1. (108.) RSCI, pp. 31, 34, 36, 41; BISC; Department of Cottage and Small-Scale Industries, Locks and Keys Industry in Howrah, cited in S. Sarkar, ‘Small-scale’, p. 560. (109.) J.G. Cumming, Review of the Industrial Position, p. 22. (110.) Ibid.; RSCI, p. 41. (111.) For similar developments in Madras, see S. Sengupta, Highlights, pp. 222, 234. (112.) T. Roy, Traditional Industry, p. 136. (113.) Administrative Reports of the Department of Industries, Bengal, pp. 2–5; RSCI, pp. 11, 21; J.K. Majumdar, Cottage Industries of Bengal (Calcutta, 1927), pp. 44–6; BISC. (114.) E.R. Watson, Iron and Steel Work, pp. 12–13; Abdul Baker, Tangail Jelar Itihas O Aitihya (Dhaka, 1990), pp. 418–9. (115.) Personal interview of the blacksmith along B.T. Road, Dunlop, Kamarhati, Kanchrapara, January–February, 2005. (116.) G.C. Dutta, A Monograph on Ivory Carving in Bengal (Calcutta, 1901), p. 2; K. Chattopadhyay, India’s Craft Tradition (Delhi, 1980), pp. 50–1. H.H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic Glossary (Calcutta, 1891 [Reprint: K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1981]), p. 221. (117.) J.B. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. II (London, 1889), p. 267; James Hornell, ‘The Sacred Chank of India: A Monograph of the Indian Conch’, Madras Fishery Bulletin, no. 7 (Madras 1914), pp. 86, 91. (118.) J.A Taylor, Topography, p. 180; RSCI, pp. 65–6, 86; Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Bhabanipur: Prak-Upanibeshik Kolkatar Pratham Shilpakendra’, Itihas Anusandhan, VI (1991), pp. 218–27. Interview of N.G. Dhar and others. J.B. Tavernier, Travels in India, pp. 74–5; J. Hornell, ‘The Sacred Chank’, pp. 76–7; also ‘Chank Bangle Industry’, pp. 427–8. (119.) For details, see S. Sarkar, ‘From Autonomy to Subordination’, p. 123; F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 279; K. Majumdar, Dhakar Bibaran (Calcutta, 1910), p. 117; J. Hornell, ‘The Sacred Chank’, p. 97. Roy, Dhakar Itihas, p. 227. (120.) F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 73–4, 129. J. Hornell, ‘The Sacred Chank’, p. 212. Page 44 of 45

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New Tools in Old Hands (121.) In 1945, a karati working for the mahajan earned Rs 58, compared to only Rs 27 by a free artisan. BISC, p. 153. For distribution of shell sections, see F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 270; F.D. Ascoli, Development of Cottage Industries, p. 3; BISC, p. 152. S. Sarkar, ‘Small-scale’, p. 519; J. Hornell, ‘The Sacred Chank’, pp. 924. (122.) Bangabasi, cited in Arthik Unnati, II, no. 6, pp. 422–3; S.C. Mitter, The Conch Shell Industry of Bengal (Calcutta: Department of Industries, Government of Bengal, Bulletin No. 24, 1924), pp. 2–3.

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Machines in the Periphery

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Machines in the Periphery Rice, Sugar, and Oil Mills Smritikumar Sarkar

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords The chapter deals with rice, sugar, and oil milling, the single-largest sector of technology induction to the village. Europeans had first introduced steam engines in indigo factories and in sugar and oil mills, but none of these flourished like the rice mill. Unlike in Myanmar, rice milling here did not attract British capital; it remained a local enterprise, largely Bengali and, after the 1920s, partly Marwari. The new technology of milling rice dislocated large networks of poor women, peddlers, carters, boatmen, traders, and financiers associated with the old industry of husking paddy. The ox-driven oil mill disappeared more quickly than the traditional sugar factory, which survived longer since the new sugar mills failed in competition with the new-generation small cane-crushing mills in the villages. Keywords:   paddy husking, women, rice trade, sugar milling, oil milling, local enterprise, Marwari, technology

Gar kari meyder pay, dhan bhana chal Thakure khay.*

Paddy Husking Trade in rice from surplus to deficit areas was a ‘major ingredient of the precolonial Asian trade, inter-regional and intra-regional’, which was ‘independent of European presence and dating from well before that presence’. Bengal, the proverbial land of rice, was ‘the granary from which the deficient areas of India Page 1 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery were fed’. Its rice flowed to Mokha and Achin, to Madras, and to parts of the Coromandel Coast. ‘The scarcity of grain hath increased the trade to Bengal,’ Samuel Baron wrote from Madras in 1695. The Ganges helped distribute it over large parts of northwest India. A network of wholesale rice markets supported by husking villages and bulk carriers of grain thus distinguished the region. From the 1650s, Bengal-built ships of 100–500 tons capacity were carrying rice; the (p.130) boat Khemchand used for exporting rice to Galle carried 200 tons and usually returned with conch shells, ivory, and other things.1 Bengal’s advantage was its low cost. Large fertile tracts of alluvial land, crisscrossed by rivers, streams, and beel (bog), along with simple tool technique and cheap labour were largely to account for the cost advantage. It could thus send rice to distant areas, the low primary cost absorbing the high cost of longdistance transportation of bulk grain. Late pre-colonial Bengal included the whole of eastern India distinguished by the rice (bhat, bhata, or chawl) culture. The rites and rituals of the region are thus either based on or related to agricultural cycles, from the tilling of land to the processing of rice, including its tool technique. In a major rice economy like Bengal, paddy husking or rice processing, as referred to in contemporary sources, provided large employment opportunities. A broad gender-specific division of labour distinguished rice cultivation in this region. The primary activities of tilling or irrigation were done by men, while sowing and harvesting were done by both men and women, but paddy husking was always a woman’s job. The folk adage, garaje dhan bhane marade, or necessity makes even a man husk paddy, reflects the feminine character of the work. All over eastern India, spinning and grain parching were the available choices to the woman willing to supplement the income of her family. From the early seventeenth century onwards, spinning had expanded in response to weaving till it emerged as a caste-neutral major occupation for women. The situation changed only after its decline in the early nineteenth century. What had been ignored earlier was the shift from spinning to husking that took place in Bengal since then. The destitute rural woman served as a professional husker—kuti, kutni, bhanuni, husking paddy for the market. Near the major rice markets (mokams), merchants organized large-scale husking by women labourers.2 We do not know whether the rice exported was sent in the husk (that is, as paddy) or after processing. The latter added to its cost, hence restricting the market, for the long-distance trade in low-value bulk goods was profitable only if a sizeable cost advantage could be ensured in the final market. By reducing the duration for which rice can be stored, and thus lowering its storage value, processing (p.131) also increased the risk of hazards associated with the longdistance transport of rice. But it reduced the bulk by a third and thus lowered Page 2 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery the transport cost, an important consideration in view of the limited shipping space till the arrival of larger European ships. An added advantage for the dealer was the relative price margin between paddy and the husked rice.3 The difference in the margin determined the relative share of rice to the total market supply of the grain. The specificity of demand, the schedule of shipping, and organization of the export trade were major variables deciding the volume of rice processed. The supply of labour for this low-return and highly exacting work was scarce, although labour was abundant. In Dinajpur, merchants thus recruited women labourers from Bihar, as local women refused to work in their rice workshops. By the end of the eighteenth century, ‘husking had become a more lucrative and hence a superior mode of employment as compared to somewhat over-emphasized traditional female occupation—spinning’.4 Much less laborious, spinning was a better choice. It was also more rewarding when skill-intensive, but the quality of spinning declined in the eighteenth century. The dispossessed spinners swelled the rank of huskers. The period also saw a change in the nature of rice trade: short-distance intra-regional movement gave way to long-distance trade.5 Short-distance trade usually involved specific demand in a specific market and mostly dealing directly with the consumption area. Instead, the merchant now began to send to a much larger though unknown market, hence catering to the demand in bulk. The better organization of trade, better information, and improved means of transport helped him. He could decide the relative share of rice to the total supply of the cereal to be sent. As a result, rice husking as an occupation grew throughout the nineteenth century. The report of inland trade suggests the predominance of rice over paddy. In 1876–78, paddy accounted for only 2 per cent of the 2.29 crore maunds of the grain brought into Calcutta from the district, followed by a marginal rise in the next decade. In 1892–93, rice accounted for 90 per cent of Calcutta’s import of the grain from the four administrative divisions of Bengal.6 The processing of this huge amount of rice in the old way must have involved a (p.132) very large workforce in the interior, since there was no rice mill in those days. At some stage of its transition from the peasant’s home to the consumption centre, paddy had to be husked. Everyone had a stake in it. If the peasant had a surplus to sell, he would prefer to sell it after processing, because it added to his income. A rupee’s worth of paddy, after cleaning, yielded rice worth of 1.37 rupees and an industrious peasant family could get this extra income without much difficulty. Reporting on agricultural marketing J.C. French thus stated, ‘In the case of paddy, the cultivator generally makes rice and sells to the local trader.’ For the price differential between the two articles was greater than the cost of conversion of the paddy to rice. In south Bengal, paddy was sold at just half the price of rice; hence it was economical to husk it in home. ‘He … requires Page 3 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery daily two seers of rice,’ an official reported from central Bengal. ‘He will not buy cleaned rice from the market but paddy in the village, which his wife will boil, dry and husk.’7 The Dufferin Enquiry Committee stated: A peasant’s income is eked out in many ways. His women are always busy husking rice. The mahājan advances paddy to the peasant. The peasant … carries the husked rice to market and sells it, and then repays the mahājan. … When it is remembered what a large amount of paddy comes into the mahājan‘s hand, nearly equivalent in value to the rental of the village, and that in the well-to-do household the paddy for family consumption is given out to be husked, it will be perceived what an important part in the village economy is played by rice husking.8 The husker was an undefined group of rural women, categorized in the census as food processor without specifying the work. In eastern India, paddy was husked by dhenki, a horizontal wooden beam resting on a fulcrum and worked by two women for pedalling, feeding, and relieving the mortar. Two women could thus husk 1 maund of rice in a day of eight hours. The hand-driven pestle and mortar, udukhal or ukli of north Bengal and eastern Bihar, had a low yield.9 In 1876–77, Calcutta’s import of 2.29 crore maunds, stated a little earlier, thus involved 4.58 crore units of labour. It only shows the enormous employment potentiality of paddy husking in the rural economy. The demand for husked rice was fairly stable well into the twentieth century, due to consumer preference based on the notion of its (p.133) greater palatability and nutritional value. How much did the husker really earn? She received a part of the clean rice plus the bran and the husk. The bran formed an important source of her food and she used the husk to boil paddy. In 1828 Walter Hamilton observed, ‘The husker contracting to deliver back five-eighths of the weight in clean rice, the surplus with the chaff or bran, paying for the labour.’10 On an average yield of 30 seers of rice per 40 seers (1 maund) of paddy, Hamilton’s husker thus earned 5 seers of rice per maund of paddy processed. The norm varied from district to district, if not villages. In Dinajpur, ‘the manner of paying for cleaning rice thoroughly’ was ‘for the owner to give the labourer 23 measures of paddy and to receive back 9 measures of clean grain, if it has been cleaned without boiling’. In another part of the same district, the ‘woman takes 24 measures of rough grain and delivers ten of clean.… When she received 23 measures and delivered nine, she would have about 3/10 parts of the clean grain’. At an average 4:3 yield rate, the Dinajpur husker got 9 and 7.5 seers of boiled and non-boiled rice respectively for her labour. In Medinipur, the husker returned 24 seers of rice for a maund of paddy. ‘Good workers can get thirty seers of clean rice to the maund (40 seers) so that they make six seers in each maund.’11

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Machines in the Periphery The husker took the help of someone in her family to preclude sharing her yield with an outsider. Since husking was a labour-intensive job combined with domestic chores, she could not work everyday. Suppose she worked 20 days a month and husked 20 maunds of paddy. A workgroup of two thus earned 3.3 maunds of clean rice a month, enough to maintain a family of five. (For variation in the husker’s share of clean rice through the years, see Table 3.1.) This is exclusive of the bran offered as part payment of wages. The bran, usually 7 per cent of the paddy processed, was a good source of food. Hence, in some areas, they were allowed to take only a part of it. The husker was in a better position than women working in other fields. In Dinajpur, a coarse weaver and his wife ‘could generally weave and dye a piece of cloth worth Rs 20 and may have about five rupees’ a month. A husker could earn Rs 3 a month, and was better placed than the embroiderer, the domestic, or the brick-kiln woman. Unable to make even one rupee, the spinner’s position was the worst. A sharecropper’s wife, making a third of her family income (p.134) Table 3.1 Variation in the husker’s share of clean rice in eastern India Year Place

Type of the Rice

Husker’s Share of the Clean Rice

Prepared

per maund

1807 Dinajpur

Boiled

9 seers

1807 Dinajpur

Non-boiled

7.5 seers

1828 Unknown

Unknown

5 seers

1896 Khulna

Unknown

4 seers

1911 Purnea

Boiled

5 seers

1911 Purnea

Non-boiled

4.5 seers

1917 Medinipur Unknown

6 seers

1940 Keshabpur*Hansraj

10 seers

1940 Keshabpur Ajanta

8 seers

Mean

6.6 seers

Source: Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Small-Scale Unorganised Industries’, p. 307. Note: * Eastern UP (Seer is a basic unit of weight used all over India. Forty seers made a maund). from spinning and husking, did most of it from the latter. In 1926, Macpherson had found poor women subsisting mainly by husking. In the folklore of the region, a husker thus retorts to her inquisitive neighbour, ‘Why should I go for hazardous outdoor

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Machines in the Periphery works, if I could meet my needs from husking?’ Hence, the mortar (dhenki) was an inalienable part of the village homestead; the one without it was destined to perish.12

The strong export trade link suggests that at some level paddy had to be husked under the merchant’s supervision involving professional huskers, a more homogenous group. The contemporary local-level sources refer to small clusters of huskers, like the Muslim kuti of eastern Bengal. Deriving their name from the word ‘kuti’ or ‘kutna’, literally to pound, kutis were divided into three subgroups, with the paon-kuti or the dhenki-pedalling husker being the most numerous. ‘The kuti alone among Muslim women appear unveiled in public making purchases in the bazaar … and boiling and husking rice in the open air.’ They worked both for the village and for the trader.13 A mid-nineteenth century local-level source of western Bengal refers to a group of itinerant merchants, baniwalah or bani-mahajan. (p.135) They procured bulk supply of paddy on credit from wholesale dealers to distribute it among kutnis or huskers. After an interval, the baniwalah revisited their villages to collect clean rice from them and make fresh advance of paddy. He then sold the rice to the kistiwalah or the bulk carrier of grain in a large boat (kisti), a group of traders higher in rank to them. With the money received from the kistiwalah, the baniwalah returned to the wholesale market to buy as much paddy as he could afford to and retraced his steps back to the kutni’s village, to do a fresh round of trade. The kistiwalah, on the other hand, sailed down the river to unload his boat at Calcutta or such other place he found convenient, before going for another circuit. Both the baniwalah and the kistiwalah were itinerant traders with the first operating in his locality and the latter taking part in inter-regional trade. The kistiwalah helped in linking the local rice trade with intra-regional and regional networks. The banzara counterpart to riverine Bengal, the kistiwalah thus served as the pivotal group in the long-distance carriage of grain. The baniwalah was the mainstay of commercial husking involving different husking villages. Dependent on each other, the two groups catered to the great rice merchants of Bhagwangola, Kashimbazar, Dhaka, Farasdanga, and Calcutta. From the kistiwalah down to the kutni, everyone had a rolling business round the year, except for the rainy months. Similarly, rice merchants of Maldah procured paddy in bulk from the nearby districts and sent it to Nawabganj for husking, ‘giving employment to a large number of workmen’.14 Dinajpur sent large supplies of rice to Calcutta, Bihar, and northwest India. In 1911, F.W. Strong observed, ‘Rice husking was at one time a fairly important industry, when large quantities of cleaned rice were prepared by local grain dealers at the principal grain mart for export to Calcutta and elsewhere.’ All major rice markets of Dinajpur had a number of such units with ‘up-country coolie women’ working for cash. The higher wages of the husker in the Dinajpur village points to labour scarcity, hence the induction of outsiders. Commercial Page 6 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery husking, often on a factory scale (chauler karkhana), was linked to both the inland and export trade. ‘The rice was regularly purchased in the interior wholesale markets of Bengal for shipment to Madras and to the St. Helena plantations.’15

(p.136) Sugarcane Processing Eastern India was also known for its sugar. The Portuguese merchant D. Barbosa observed, ‘Much good white sugar is made here from canes; but they know not how to compress it and make it into loaves; so they wrap it as a powder in parcels of un-tanned leather, well sewn.’ Bengal had a specific caste group of sugar manufacturers called modak or moyra. The late medieval literature refers to the modak chief fixing his workshop at the heart of the town. A split-away faction of the tambuli caste had emerged as major sugar dealers in the port of Saptagram. According to Bernier (1656–68), sugar regularly moved from Bengal to northwest India, Golconda, the Carnatic, as also to Iraq and Bander Abbasi in Persia. The English exported it via Surat, as did the Dutch to Ceylon, Batavia, and even to Holland.16 Sugar from different parts of Bengal, Bihar, and Benares reached Saptagram by boats. The tambuli traders sold it to Indo-Asian merchants: West Asian sheikhs, nakhodas of the western coast, seths of Gujarat and Marwaris of Rajasthan. A tambuli subgroup named after Saptagram indicates their long association with the port, which at one point of time had 1,400 families. A temple built by Gokul Tambuli (1582) still remains an important evidence of their prosperity. From Saptagram, they migrated to other areas due to Maratha raids, renaming some of the areas after their trade, such as Gurdaha in north 24-Parganas. A subtropical region, Bengal had an extensive cane growing tract with a moderately high rate of yield in some areas. Sugarcane required repeated use of manures, land safe from inundation, and a longer time to harvest the crop. The land meant for cane cultivation had to be fallowed every alternate year and involved greater inputs of labour and capital than what was needed for most other crops. All these proved too expensive for the peasant, even when he could skip the manufacture of gur (jaggery), another costly enterprise. Here, the merchant-financier (mahajan) stepped in to bail him out.17 The cane acreage in Bengal was always small. The spurt in European demand for Bengal sugar due to trade dislocation with French colonies thus strained the supply base. As the company could not compete with Gujarati and north Indian merchants in the local market, it tried to encourage cane cultivation but failed. The (p.137) equalization of duties on Bengal and west Indian sugar helped, followed by an ambitious scheme for extension of cultivation (1846), but not for long. By the mid-nineteenth century, Rajsahi division had the largest cane area, with Pabna having the highest yield per acre (59 maunds) followed by Bagura, Rajsahi, and Jessore.18 Page 7 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery For the manufacturing of gur, peasants often clubbed together their resources and procured the mill, dug the furnace close to field, and harvested the cane. The mill (kolhu) was a simple device of two vertically placed wooden cylinders of 10 to 12 inches diameter hinged to each other, one of them being fixed to a horizontal pole tied to the yoke of a pair of oxen. Driving the cattle, thus, generated a rotational motion to the cylinders, crushing the canes pressed in between them, and the juice flowing into a pot at the bottom of the mill. Three men were required to run the mill: one to cut the cane in strips, one to drive the bullock, and other to feed the rollers with canes. The mill was firmly fixed into the ground with a dug-up hole for the man feeding canes into the mill and collecting juice from the pot at regular intervals. Made by local carpenters from tamarind or babul wood, the mill usually belonged to the rich peasant, who let the villagers use it for a share of the produce. In Bihar, a special kind of wood (kosoom) from Chhotonagpur was used for the mill. ‘The wood is used for expressing oil or juice of the sugarcane for which it is peculiarly adapted, being very close grained and tough.’19 In Dinajpur, the best variety of gur was called royadar or danadar, or the one of more granular variety, as against the motki, kundo, and hangru. All these were carried in pots giving the potter a good business in the sugar season. Not so the dhima or hard cake of sugar meant for long-distance trade. The nomenclature differed from district to district. The farmer retained a part of the yield and handed over the rest to the mahajan. Most of these ultimately reached sugar factories called hamar in the southwest and karkhana in other parts, like the north Indian khandsari. The cost of manufacturing sugar from gur was lower in Bengal than in Maharashtra, Mysore, and Madras.20 By the end of the eighteenth century, sugar manufacturing reached a fairly developed stage in Bengal. ‘All manufacturers (goladars) are natives and most of them are men of considerable wealth.’ Buchanan stated, ‘Rs. 3/4,000 for each (p.138) boiler is the smallest capital that can carry on the business and very few have borrowed money.’21 Badalgachhi arang (cluster) had 141 of them with 225 boilers between them, each with a yield of 12.5 maunds of sugar per operation. A single-boiler factory needed four huts (24 × 10 cubits), one each for boiling, claying, straining, and storage, with 13 per cent of the annual expenditure being as maintenance cost, 7 per cent for payment of wages, and the rest claimed by raw materials and other expenses. In a season of six months, a factory cleared 1,200 maunds of gur, both cake and pot varieties. The gomosta, the only permanent employee of the factory, had the highest pay, followed by the manager (sarkar), a group of sugar makers under the head boiler (pasari), a weigh-man (koyal) and a few labourers (jogare). The gomosta was responsible for the collection of gur and he received a commission for that, Page 8 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery pointing to the competitive nature of the primary market. He released the first of four instalments of advance to the farmer in July against a letter of guarantee (kundo khalasi) through the local landlord. The farmer agreed to sell gur ‘at onetenth below the harvest price’, which the gomosta often controlled ‘by driving out other buyers till the whole of the contracted business was secured’. It helped the landlord realize rent from cane growers at a higher rate. He had only to ensure the supply of gur to the gomoshta, for which he received an incentive at one-fifth of the money disbursed through him. In normal years, the goladar earned 40 per cent profit, higher than what his Benares fellows did in the late 1840s.22 Bengal also produced date sugar, an occupation of the siuli, a mixed workgroup of the hari and other low castes. In Jessore, date trees were planted ‘in land too high for rice to grow well’ at the rate of 200–300 trees per acre. The collection of juice started from the seventh year of the tree. The juice was boiled down into gur and carried in a special type of pot. The date sugar industry of Kotchandpur and Chaugachha in Jessore relied on the Bagdanga potter while that of Khulna on the Alaipur one. Goladars of Shantipur purchased gur directly from farmers through the advance system. There were two to three varieties of date sugar, the most popular being the dhulua used in sweetmeats.23 In 1853, M. Wylie referred to the extensive sugar trade of Bengal thus, ‘A good supply of gur, both from the sugarcane and date tree, is prepared in many villages and carried to (p.139) the larger market places, whence it travels to Narayanganj and other parts where sugar factories are established.’24

Oilseed Processing In eastern India, the milling of mustard, sesame, and linseed oil was the most important processing activity after paddy husking. Of these, the most important was the milling of mustard oil, used as cooking medium. The indispensability of mustard oil to their life has been summed up by a boatman while lamenting the imposition of a government duty on it. ‘We eat mustard oil,’ he told the sahib he was taking to eastern Bengal, ‘we burn it, we rub ourselves with it—it is quite as useful as rice.’25 Eastern India had thus a number of oil-milling groups, teli, tili, kalu, and kolhu. There were also a few forest-based groups making oil of neem, kuraj, and kachra era-dom by the old plank-press. All these are indicative of an extensive demand for oil milling leading to social mobility of some groups.26 Two of these could be clearly identified—a group of oil-traders who abstained from milling, and the multitude of teli milling oil either by ghani or ghana. H. Sanyal described the division between the oil presser and trader as the case of dissidence of a faction of the teli. He argued, The origin of dissident telis can be traced back to the sixteenth century. In Mukundaram’s accounts of the mid sixteenth century Bengal, teli appears Page 9 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery to have split into three occupational groups. One of them gave up oil milling and took to agriculture. A few simply sold the oil made by other, but did not produce it on their own. The third and the largest group called ghānā continued to pursue their traditional occupation.27 Since Mukundaram did not state the occupational difference between ghani and ghana, it was possibly not distinct at that time. The ghani and ghana were actually two types of the mill. An improved version of the old mill (ghana), ghani was more widely in use, and it differed from ghana in the way of emitting the oil. Ghani had a sprout at its bottom to pass the oil to the pot placed below, while the miller using ghana had to siphon the oil out from the mortar by a piece of cloth tied to a stick (arkathi). The ghani was more efficient and needed a pair of bullocks while the ghana was a single-animal mill.28 The miller thus came to be known after his mill, ghani or ghana. As a (p.140) group of potters making pots without the wheel were known as hath gade in Maharashtra, while another as gadheria kumhar or the donkey potter due to their using the animal for vending. To return to the point, the ghani was as much an oil-presser (teli) as was the ghana, and there was no question of his desertion in the sixteenth century. Otherwise, Mukundaram would not have included him in the list of artisans settled in the town described by him. Like other occupational castes of Bengal, teli society too had its endogamous units, ritual practice–based groups like ekadas and dwadas teli; tool-technique-related groups such as ghana, ghani, gachhua teli, and kalu; product- or status-based groups such as tili (sesame oil maker), and the Muslim miller called kalhu, also kalu in its corrupt form. The ghani were sub-divided into ek-gachhi and do-gachhi referring to the structural difference between the mills used by them. The social status of these groups varied in different parts of Bengal. In the early nineteenth century, the ghana and gachhua types of mills were still found in southwestern Bengal and Orissa; while the ghani and kalu types were more widely used all over the region. Eastern Bengal had a small group called tili, who milled sesame (til) oil but did not use the bullock-driven ghani for fear of losing their ritual status. In central Bengal, ‘telis, who have grown rich call themselves tilis and claim to be of higher lineage than the teli, although they still retain old family titles. Wealth and prosperity have made them give up oil milling and work simply as traders’. Shifting to new tool-techniques often helped the early birds. The ghani with two bullocks had a 30 per cent extraction rate in mustard compared to 35 per cent by the first-generation mechanized mill of the early nineteenth century. A post colonial micro study on Saraikela oilmen suggests that the group using the ghani with two bullocks (do-baladia) held higher ritual status in teli society than those clinging to the old one-animal mill.29

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Machines in the Periphery In Dinajpur, ‘wealthy oilmen’ had ‘as many as five [mills]’, who advanced money ‘to farmers for their mustard seed’ and ‘exported a considerable quantity of oil’ to Dhaka, Rangpur, and Murshidabad. More numerous were ‘needier oilmen’ unable to buy ‘more [oilseeds] at once than will last them from one market-day to another.’ The oilmen got the oil seeds from the ‘farmer and delivered a certain proportion of oil keeping whatever more they could express from (p.141) it, together with the cake’. The cake was equal to almost ‘half the measure of the seed with abundance of oil which must have been afterwards expressed otherwise he could not have lived’.30 In Bihar, nearly ‘25% of oil pressers received raw material from merchants and were paid by them for work’, whereas three-fourths of the Sahabad oilmen could not buy seed and worked against payment. Oil milling thus involved a fairly large workgroup with more than 2,000 in Dinajpur alone. Unlike many others, the miller was not a village artisan and lived close to the market. Owing to her typical culinary culture, Bengal’s demand for oilseeds fell far short of her production. Khatri and Marwari merchants largely controlled the flow of oil seeds down the river from north India to Maldah, Raghunathganj, Azimganj– Jiaganj, and Bhagowangola.31

The Shift to the New Technology Rice Milling

Rice milling refers to conditioning, husking, and cleaning of paddy. In India, the technology of rice milling came long after flour milling had been introduced in the early nineteenth century to meet European demand. The British had first developed rice milling in Myanmar and Siam. By reducing the bulk of the paddy, milling facilitated rice export and helped them secure a good margin. Like the jute mills in Calcutta, the rice mills in Myanmar are another case of relocating a processing industry close to the natural source of the crop. The paddy is the predominant crop of eastern India. With 90 per cent of the cultivated land under paddy, Bengal in the 1930s accounted for 30 per cent of the total area under the crop and 37 per cent of the yield in British India, Myanmar excluded. Next was Madras with 14 per cent acreage, followed by other Indian rice zones. Bengal’s rice acreage was greater than that of Myanmar, but had a poor rate of yield.32 All these notwithstanding, rice milling started in Bengal long after it had been introduced in Madras. How does one explain this, a development that was hardly in conformation with the idea of Bengal being the bridgehead for receiving most of the new technology from the West? Or, why did British capital fight shy of rice milling here, although it had pioneered the industry in Myanmar? (p.142) Like the jute industry of Dundee, large-scale rice milling first flourished in London and Liverpool based on the supply of ‘cargo rice’ (paddy), initially from India and then from Myanmar. After lower Myanmar had fallen to Page 11 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery the British (1852), chetty capital and Tamil labour opened up the Irrawaddy delta to international trade. The cultivation of rice, favoured by Myanmar’s ecology and cheap labour, expanded from a mere 600 acres in the late 1850s to 80,000 acres in the 1930s. Here, paddy could be grown at half the cost it was done in India;33 rivers transported it cheaply to the nearby ports, turning Myanmar into the rice bowl of the contemporary world. British industry sent rice to continental Europe after catering to domestic market. In the early 1870s, the industry suffered from the imposition of a duty on paddy export from British India, due to famine and fiscal constraints. Paddy export fell by more than 26 per cent but it helped the growth of rice mills in Myanmar. As the volume of rice export was negligible compared to paddy, the duty had been imposed on an equal rate for both paddy and rice. The paddy yielded about 66 per cent of rice; hence milling before shipment saved the duty by a third. From the 1870s onwards, major British grain exporters in Myanmar began to invest in rice mills, initiating a commercial rivalry with London–Liverpool millers, as the Calcutta jute miller had with Dundee. With the declining import of paddy from Myanmar, London–Liverpool millers tried for the repeal of the export duty, citing how, in the case of wheat, a similar measure had led to a tenfold increase of import into Britain. For various reasons, their attempts did not succeed, not even their demand for a differential duty: lower for paddy and higher on rice. With plentiful supply of paddy at a throwaway price and cheap milling cost, the new industry in Myanmar soon priced out the home millers in Europe; even its refuse fetched a better price. All these ultimately forced some of the London–Liverpool millers to relocate their mills to Myanmar.34 Compared to Bengal, Myanmar had a larger gap between production and consumption of paddy; the surplus had been growing in absolute terms over the years. Myanmar’s rice was also better suited to European uses. Virtually bereft of manufacturing, the cost of milling in Myanmar was also cheaper, making it a better option than Bengal to the British miller. (p.143) Myanmar’s rice industry and its integration to the international rice market, with Europe as the hub, challenged the old network of inter-regional rice trade in Asia. India had been long exporting rice to Southeast Asia, and later to settlements of British-indentured labour in the region, with Madras and the Cauvery delta being major beneficiaries of the trade. Bengal and coastal Orissa only occasionally supplemented the flow. Indian rice exporters to Southeast Asia could no longer hope to continue their trade without shifting to the new technology, as occasional spillovers from Myanmar mills trickled into these areas. The commercial compulsion thus forced Madras exporters to shift to the new technology, a cheaper version procured by chetty merchants from Rangoon.

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Machines in the Periphery The uniformity of taste between Madras and Southeast Asia, unlike Bengal, also helped. The term ‘rice mill’ refers to two types of technology—huller and sheller. The huller had two grooved cylinders horizontally set side by side in a hollow casting. The paddy was poured into one cylinder as the other discharged the clean rice. The steel blade fixed to the inner side of the casting against which cylinders revolved helped remove the husk. Very easy to use, it could be driven either by a steam engine or an electric motor. The sheller was a bigger machine, different in structure, which de-husked the paddy by grinding it between two rotating stone discs, while an automatic cone polisher cleansed the product. The successive phases of husking, cleaning, winnowing, polishing, and sieving were done in an unbroken sequence, yielding clean rice, husk, and bran through separate channels. Unlike the huller, the degree of milling could be regulated in the sheller mill and polishing undertaken in stages, thus rendering more nutritious rice. It had also a lower percentage of broken rice and a higher rate of output than the huller.35 On 15 February 1826, members of Agriculture Society, Calcutta, had assembled to observe a steam-driven rice huller sent by David Scott from Myanmar. Two persons could prepare 10 maunds of rice a day by this machine, as against half a maund by the dhenki in the same time. Two decades later, a report on the steam engine in Bengal stated that only 3 out of a total of 150 engines used in Bengal were milling rice.36 A few landlords had first purchased the new mill hoping that it would help them exert greater control over the local flow of paddy. Looking at the craze, a contemporary observer feared (p.144) that the new machine would soon send the old mill (dhenki) into oblivion. He was proved wrong as most of these enterprises failed, with the machine lying as junk in the rich man’s house, only to add to the wonder of the unsuspecting villager.37 The failure has been attributed to prejudice against milled rice. Why did it succeed in more conservative Madras? Writing on the rice mill, a trader had warned the buyer thus, Before opting for the new machine, you should take into your account that you cannot successfully run it with the product of just one or two villages. You have to locate the mill at a site, which is on the transit route of the produce of several hundred villages. For, key to the success of your plant is continuous running of its machines.38 The early birds failed due to improper selection of site. The Myanmar industry flourished on export trade, since local people consumed hand-pounded rice. The Madras mills also catered to the East Asian trade. The early rice mill that failed in Bengal focused on the local market characterized by a strong bias for husked

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Machines in the Periphery rice. The dhenki survived for long because of its integration to the rural culture of storage and consumption of rice. The regional variations in taste and technique of processing also mattered. People in eastern India consumed parboiled rice that required soaking and drying of the paddy before husking. The parboiled rice produced by early mills was full of meal and chaff, hence inferior in taste. Since steaming and sun drying of paddy at this stage had to be done manually at a higher cost, rice mills could not compete with the old system. Both Myanmar and Madras mills produced only non-boiled rice without drying. The improved milling technique, with facilities of steaming and mechanical drying of paddy, came later. Meanwhile, in the Orissa famine of 1866, a third of the local population perished for want of food although there was no dearth of grain in the region. The local government, which virtually stood a silent spectator to the horror, was let down by two problems. One was the absence of road; ‘people were shut in between pathless jungles and impracticable seas’;39 the other was the inflexible supply of clean rice. As bulk husking of rice depended on a close integration of several cobwebs of merchant, boatman, carter, trader and husker, it was impossible to muster a sizeable stock on short notice to meet the exigency. (p.145) In his submission before the House of Commons on the famine, Stafford Northcote, Secretary of State for India, urged upon the official ‘to derive lessons from the catastrophe’.40 The government decided to introduce ‘a good, cheap, portable rice-cleaning machine’ that would be both simple and durable. In 1871, on the news of a similar invention by P. McKinlay in the United States, the Secretary of State was requested to arrange an early dispatch of the machine to India. The negotiation failed, as Kinlay was unwilling to ship the machine without a commitment from the Indian government to purchase his patent.41 The search for an alternative in Europe yielded good results and the Secretary of State did his best to make it available in India at the earliest. This paved the way for the rice huller’s entry into eastern India. Rice Huller

The use of rice huller in Bengal took off in the early twentieth century, with the rice dealers trying to meet the export demand. These were localized either in Ramkristopur-Salkia, the assembly point of the rarhi and orya rice; or in ChetlaTolleygunj, the centre of the purbi rice carried in boats. Ramkristopur-Salkia owed its rise to a railway terminal, attracting Marwari merchants to settle here, by way of their shifting from river ports and inland market towns to railway stations. In 1899, a Marwari trader had for the first time installed a rice huller at Ramkristopur.42 He was immensely successful and within two years there were 14 rice hullers in the place. ‘When Ramkristopur had only one rice huller, the charge for milling a Page 14 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery maund of paddy was Re 0.75, which due to competition of mills has come down as low as Re 0.31 to Re 0.37. Even then, the miller’s business is highly profitable.’ It soon spread to Chetla-Tolleygunj and Salkia-Howrah. The leading brand was England’s Engel Berg Huller No. 2, followed by the German Cowie’s Huller. The first husked about 60 maunds of paddy in eight hours and cost Rs 700 at Calcutta. In 1901–02, the total cost of a rice milling plant amounted to Rs 7,000–8,000.43 The transfer of technology from the colonial metropolis to the periphery was neither easy nor free from control. Engel Berg Huller is a case in point. To prevent its manufacture in India, the London (p.146) firm did not send its spare parts to Calcutta, not even the blade and the screen that had to be replaced at intervals. The replacement was made only against the old, broken part, plus the cost of the spare. In the event of a breakdown, old broken parts in matching pieces had to be retrieved from heaps of rice and husk wasting both time and labour. The problem did not end even there. For all these had to be sent to England, leaving the machine idle for months that were required to receive the replacement. The illusion of ‘a new industry’ coming into being in the major rice marts of Bengal thus failed. Eventually, Rakhaldas Khan of Salkea solved the problem when he succeeded in making a prototype of the Engel Berg Huller.44 With an output rate of 40 maunds, Khan’s machine was sold at half the cost of the imported huller, with its parts being freely available in Calcutta. With a low operational cost, it was easy to use and fairly trouble-free. Hence, by 1910, Khan’s rice huller had nearly driven out its imported brand form the Calcutta market. This example was followed by Jagadiswar Ghatak of Salkea and, by the mid-1950s, the number of huller-making units in Howrah rose to more than 20, before the initiative passed to Punjab. Rakhaldas Khan had thus initiated a new trend, indigenization of imported technology in the way the Japanese had started earlier.45 Sheller-Type Rice Mill

Early rice mills were small with one or two hullers, as Bengal did not have a sheller-type mill till 1903.46 In 1915, a government official reported, ‘There has of late years been an extension of the rice hulling industry. There are now 30 mills in Chetla … with some using electric power. This is an industry which might well be extended to mufassal as the process is simple and the plant is inexpensive.’47 In 1903, Bengal had only 1 rice mill, the number rising to 3 in 1910, after which it rapidly increased from 24 in 1911 to 104 in 1921. Except the 2 with 100-plus workers, these were small mills, ‘coming up in the town where work of pounding paddy was being performed by power driven mill’.48 The new industry fed Calcutta’s export trade, which increased by 200 per cent in the 1870s and continued for long, sending rice to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Mauritius, and other Page 15 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery British settlements, with high quality rice being shipped to Europe (p.147) and Japan as well. Between 1918 and 1928, the export expanded by 600 per cent, when rice mills in Bengal increased from 40 to 286.49 The urban demand for cheap rice also helped the industry. The population in Calcutta grew by 11 per cent in the 1880s, followed by a further 24 per cent rise in the next decade; Howrah grew by 88 per cent; even Shrirampur had a 40 per cent growth during the period. The industrial labour on both sides of the Hooghli River preferred the milled to costly hand-pounded rice. Rice mills came up in Bardhaman to feed industrial centres like Raniganj, Asansol, Kharagpur, Dhanbad, and later also Kalimati.50 With 18 mills in 1933, Bolpur sent 58,240 maunds of rice by railways; a third of it went to United Provinces, a fifth to Bihar, and Bengal claimed 28 per cent, with 6,179 maunds going to tea garden areas in Assam.51 The long spell of high rice prices (1916–28) had helped the mills to multiply.52 With Myanmar diverting a part of its supplies to Calcutta during the depression, rice prices nosedived, reversing the industry’s early growth, till the revival during World War II. The railways encouraged rice mills to spread to the district. The transport of rice in boats or steam-tug-barges, although time consuming, was cost efficient. Hence, rice continued to be ferried in boats from eastern Bengal to Calcutta,53 an advantage southwest Bengal lacked for ecological reasons. Here, the railways helped the rice mills grow fast, with the network of station and feeder roads drawing grain supplies from hinterlands and carrying coal to feed the steam-driven mills. From Shaktigarh onwards, Bardhaman thus attracted rice milling to all its major railway stations, encouraged by the supply of coal from Raniganj. A case in point is Birbhum, the proverbial land of paddy (dhaner desh) with limited markets. The railways, by opening it up to markets so far inaccessible, helped intensify the cultivation. ‘Collector reports that no improvement has taken place of late years in the quality of rice grown in the district,’ Hunter observed in 1874, ‘but the area under rice cultivation has greatly extended within the last twenty years; large tracts of land formerly covered with jungle having been reclaimed and brought under rice.’ The railways greatly increased the market flow of rice.54 In 1913, the first rice mill was established near Bolpur station; two more came up a little later; ‘all the three made enormous profit (p.148) during the period of high agricultural prices’. By 1928, the number of rice mills in the town rose to 18, when depression set in. Out of these, 11 were localized north on the road to Nanoor; 3 crisscrossed the road linking Bolpur with Bandgora, 3 to south; and the rest in the east. With supplies of paddy from the hinterland and cheap Santhal labour, Bolpur was ideally suited for the rice milling industry. A similar

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Machines in the Periphery localization took place near the Hili station in Dinajpur that drew paddy supplies from the interior to cater to northwestern India.55 In 1903, Bengal had only one rice mill with 33 workers. Assuming this as the basic size of the workforce, Table 3.2 illustrates the shift in the rice mill’s average size over the period. Since the production process in the early rice mill up to the stage of hulling was labour intensive, a change in the size of workforce suggests a corresponding change in the scale of production.56 As parboiling of rice restricted the mill largely to single-shift norm, this was all the more true. The table also points to the slump of the 1930s, a fallout of the dumping by Myanmar mills. In 1930–31, 8 out of 47 joint stock mills went into liquidation, while 13 failed in the next five years. Out of these, 6 went into voluntary liquidation, 3 closed down by the government, and 4 downed their shutters under the order of the Calcutta High Court.57 (p.149)

Figure 3.1 Early rice mill Source: S. Playne, Bengal and Assam (London, 1917), p. 277.

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Machines in the Periphery

Table 3.2 Changing size of the rice mill in Bengal, 1903–39 Year

No. of Registered Rice Mills

No. of Persons Employed

Basic Size of the Workforce

Change in the Size Pattern

1

2

3

4

5

Col. 2 × 33

Col. 3 − 4

1903

1

33

33

–

1916

35

1,531

1,155

376

1918

40

2,039

1,320

719

1920

80

3,604

2,640

964

1922

101

4,023

3,333

690

1924

132

6,185

4,356

1,829

1926

235

9,711

7,755

1,956

1928

286

10,778

9,438

1,340

1930

315

12,225

10,395

1,830

1934

343

13,509

11,319

2,190

1936

381

16,305

12,573

3,732

1938

411

18,635

13,563

5,072

1939

400

18,742

13,200

5,542

Source: S. Sarkar, ‘The Rice Milling Industry’, p. 6.

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Machines in the Periphery From Calcutta, imported rice penetrated deep into the district by railways to price out the local product. The railway freight policy ensured a cheap rate for the transit of goods from the port to hinterlands. In 1938, Bolpur Rice Mills Association (BRMA) argued to the Bengal Paddy & Rice Enquiry Committee (BPREC) that ‘freight policy pursued by the East India Railways (EIR) was making it more and more difficult for them to compete with Burmese import, even in upcountry markets’. The freight for Calcutta to Chhapra was equal to the rate for a little more than a half of its distance from Bolpur to Chhapra. Bolpur mills thus lost their markets to cheap rice from Myanmar. ‘Small millers with smaller means and limited knowledge of the market’ suffered more than the resourceful ones.58 The mills in western Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa were more adversely affected than those in the east. In Madras, Andhra, and Mysore during the war, only rice mills were authorized to procure paddy; the plentiful supply thus helped them survive. But the Bengal government permitted both the miller (p.150) and the trader to procure paddy, with the former suffering a fall in his business. The BRMA claimed a 50 per cent cut in capacity utilization and attributed it to wartime food control measures.59 The Food Grains Control Order dislocated the supply network, but did not really restrict the miller to procure paddy. In fact, it had a mixed impact.60 The wartime exigency of bulk transport on short notice made the miller indispensable to the government, because of his storage facility and expertise in handling bulk supplies. The system of direct purchase by the government saved the miller the time required in marketing or holding the stock idle. Assured of his business quota and prompt payment, some millers had actually invested in plant upgradation during the period. All over eastern India, food control measures led to a sharp fall in the market supply of paddy, due to the cordoning system and manipulation by a section of traders. The miller also resented the revised Regulations of 1943, requiring him to make over his entire output to the public agency at a price often unrelated to market. All these intensified competition in the primary market, forcing the miller to take preemptive measures. He gave the farmer his harvesting cost in advance against an undertaking to sell him paddy at a rate lower than the harvest price.61 The miller suffered the most in the lean season when rice prices exceeded the procurement price, as he could not afford to buy high to deliver at a fixed rate. He was also critical of the local-level formality. The District Food Inspector (DFI) issued permit for the movement of rice stock and fixed the price for different grades. The miller had to run between him and the district railway authority for allotment of wagons, leading to malpractices. All these forced the millers to consolidate.62 The end of the war did not lead to immediate termination of the control regulations, but the industry marginally recovered only to be hit hard

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Machines in the Periphery again in 1947. Much of the post-Partition crisis was due to uneven distribution of the mills in Bengal, which also affected food availability in rural areas. Rice Milling: Most Extensive Industry

Of all the industries in eastern India, rice mills were the most widely distributed. In 1951, it was ‘the most common industry employing (p.151) power distributed in almost all districts of West Bengal’. As discussed earlier, it first came up in Calcutta but with the gradual weakening of the industry’s export link, rice mills tended to shift to the districts. Bankura had only 2 mills in 1921 and as many as 19 in 1926. In Medinipur and Bardhaman, the industry had an early growth initiated by the small- or medium-size trader with a grip over the local supply of rice. In 1938, only 8 out of 25 districts produced more than their consumption needs; 5 were self-supporting and 12 relied on outside imports.63 In 1945, Bardhaman, consuming even less than a half of its output, had as many as 59 mills or 13 per cent of the Bengal total. With a small surplus of 8 per cent, Medinipur had 65 mills, whereas Bankura with 19 per cent had only 22 and Birbhum with a meagre 3 per cent surplus had 54 or 12 per cent of all the mills in Bengal. But the surplus district of Khulna had no mill. The 24-Parganas excluding Calcutta was a surplus district, but including the city, it was a deficit area, like Hooghly and Howrah. Nevertheless, 24Parganas had a third of the total mills in Bengal in 1935, while the equally deficient district of Nadia had no mill till 1950. Nadia could not benefit from the supply of paddy passing through its rivers from eastern or northern Bengal and instead, relied on the milled rice ferried by paddy or jute boats returning from Calcutta.64 Rice milling grew mainly as a western Bengal industry. In 1935, 24-Parganas, Howrah, Medinipur, Hooghly, Bardhaman, Bankura, and Birbhum claimed 88 per cent of the mills, while the eastern and northern Bengal districts, except Dinajpur, had only a few. The easy supply of coal and cheap labour in these mono-crop areas could perhaps explain this, while the easy river link to Calcutta stood in the way of the industry’s growth in east Bengal. Thus, surplus districts like Khulna and Barisal failed to attract rice mill because it was always profitable to send paddy to Calcutta by boat than milling it there. Steamer companies offered lower rates on routes served by the railways. From Nadia to Calcutta, steamer freight per 100 maunds of paddy was only Rs 7.5, which in 1938 amounted to only 2 per cent of its price at Calcutta. For many other places it was even lower; the boat still remained not only the cheapest but also the most convenient means of carrying paddy from the interior. Calcutta millers (p.152) imported paddy from and sent the milled rice to east Bengal by boat. Medinipur also enjoyed a similar advantage in ferrying paddy from Orissa through rivers and canals, which was made easier by the railways. In the exceptional years of 1934–36, when the paddy crop failed over large parts of Page 20 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery southwest Bengal, its millers relied on the supply from Orissa, importing four to five times more than their normal intake. The dry year excluded, Orissa remained an unfailing source of supply to Medinipur millers, till it came to have rice mills in the early 1940s.65 Table 3.3 indicates a progressive change in the distribution of rice mills over the period. Once the export boom ceased in the 1930s, the mills of 24-Parganas, Howrah, and Hooghly suffered a progressive decline in their share of the total number of mills in Bengal. From 45 per cent in 1921–22, the share of 24Parganas thus dived to 27 per cent in 1949–50. The flow of milled rice to these districts replaced the earlier movement of paddy from the surplus areas, forcing them to seek supplies from outside. Some had even tried to get it from Myanmar till Rangoon resumed its rice trade with Europe after the war.66 The Howrah and Hooghly mills suffered more than those in Calcutta, fed by supplies from Khulna, Jessore, and Barishal till 1947. The Partition of India in 1947 intensified competition in the primary market. The worst hit were the Calcutta mills, deprived of their supply base in east Bengal. From the 1950s onwards, rice milling also spread to Bihar and Orissa, ousting the Calcutta millers from these markets. A number of Calcutta mills downed their shutters, while a few others went into liquidation, a crisis the Calcutta Rice Mills’ Association attributed to prohibitive transport cost. From 105 in 1946, the number of rice mills in Calcutta came down to 5 in 1957. In Dinajpur, 24 out of 43 mills went to East Pakistan, dislocated from their markets in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, while the rest were cut off from their supply base in Bogura and Rangpur, as also their railhead at Hili.67 Nature of the Enterprise

Early rice milling was largely a seasonal activity (October–May). The rains terminated the market flow of paddy, disorganized labour in the sowing season, and made the sun-drying of paddy difficult. (p.153)

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Machines in the Periphery

Table 3.3 The changing distribution pattern of rice mills in Bengal, 1920–50 District

24-Parganas

1920–21

1934–35

1944–45

1949–50

A

B

A

B

A

B

A

B

61

45

142

35

105

26

96

27

12

3

23

5

12

3

Howrah Bardhaman

22

17

56

14

59

13

48

14

Medinipur

10

7

42

10

65

14

59

17

Birbhum

5

4

53

13

54

12

57

16

Bankura

2

1

16

4

22

5

21

6

Hooghly

32

8

28

6

23

7

Dinajpur/ West Dinajpur*

30

7

41

9

17

5

Jalpaiguri

1

0.24

4

1

8

2

1

0.28

8

2

Bogura

3

2

2

0.49

2

0.44

Bakarganj

1

0.72

4

0.99

4

0.88

Rajsahi

1

0.72

2

0.49

2

0.44

Murshidabad

1

0.72

1

0.99

Others

31

23

10

2

41

9

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Machines in the Periphery

District

1920–21 A

Total number 137 of mills

1934–35 B

A 403

1944–45 B

A 450

1949–50 B

A

B

350

Source: Census of India, 1921, Vol. V, Pt I, pp. 408–9; The Report of the Marketing of Rice in Bengal Appendix XII as reprinted in the Report of the Bengal Paddy and Rice Enquiry Committee (Calcutta, 1938), p. 14; Report of the Bengal Industrial Survey Committee, 1948, pp. 22, 199–200; S.K. Haldar, Report on the Family Budget Enquiry into the Living Conditions of the Rice Mill Workers in West Bengal, 1949–50, p. 1. Notes: A: Number of rice mills in the relevant district. B: Relative share in the total rice mills of Bengal (stated in per cent). *The figures are for the whole of the district till 1947 and for the Indian part of the district (West Dinajpur) after 1947.

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Machines in the Periphery (p.154) The running of mills beyond this season thus required additional storage, stable workforce, and costlier technology to avoid the drying of the steamed paddy in the open. In 1933–34, only 4 out of 18 Bolpur mills worked round the year. Three of them could process only 90,000 maunds each, a volume cleared by yet another mill in just six months. By the late 1960s, some mills went for full mechanization but could not wholly curtail their dependence on the cheaper practice of sun-drying the paddy till much later.68

The early rice mill required 50 workers on an average. A post-Partition sample survey revealed that only 9 per cent of the mills had more than 100 workers, a half had 50–100, while the rest engaged even less than 50.69 In most mills, there was a good deal of combination of works, like the motor-cum-huller man, firecum-husk man, and a group of coolies to cater to sundry other jobs. The firstgeneration technology and parboiled rice minimized the scope of specialization here compared to the mills in other parts of India. Except for a few clerks and security men, most workers worked only in the milling season, with the women constituting the largest labour group coming from Bihar, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh.70 Most mill owners came from humble rice trading groups: goladar/aratdar or mahajan, with gandhabanik claiming 15 per cent of the mills in 24-Parganas, followed by the teli and sadgop. In Bardhaman, the dominant agricultural caste of ugra-kashtriyas pioneered rice milling. In nearby Birbhum, the sadgop and dalal took the lead. Even the non-trading caste groups of the brahmin and kayastha, as well as the Muslim, had entered into the rice milling. The zamindar and zamindar–merchant combine too had a small share. Except for a doctor and a pleader, at Sahapur and Bolpur respectively, rice milling did not attract the bhadralok.71 Contrary to conventional arguments, all these clearly indicate the wide social acceptability of the new technology. In the 1920s, Howrah-based Marwari traders dealing in rail-borne paddy from Bihar and Orissa took to rice milling. A few others shifted a part of their capital from the jute trade to rice milling in Chetla-Tolleyganj, sending paddy in jute ferries from east Bengal and Assam. In 1925, Marwaris owned 14 rice mills at the place, 2 Birla mills included. The depression helped them send Myanmar rice to the interiors, thereby securing a foothold in the local rice trade. Slowly, they began to take on lease or buy sick mills in the (p.155) districts. In 1931, Ramana Chandra Das of Bolpur leased out his mill to Purusottam Baiti for only Rs 1,751 a year. Suraj Bhan Jasoria of Bardhaman had similarly taken Annapurna Rice Mill on lease, and renamed it as Jasoria Rice Mill after he purchased it in 1937. By 1946, the number of Marwari mills increased in all centres, with the cartel controlling a sizeable portion of the Bengal industry and extending their influence to Orissa and Bihar.72

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Machines in the Periphery Post-Independence Period

The Partition in 1947 left 306 rice mills in West Bengal and 41 in East Pakistan. Either way, a large number of mills were cut off from their supply base or market. In five years’ time, 55 mills went out of business, followed by a slow recovery caused by the advent of a better yet cheap technology using paddy husk as fuel. The advent of lorries in rural areas, mostly the war junks, also helped the rice mills drift away from the railway station, leading to a mushrooming of small multi-purpose mills in the interiors close to the trunk roads. In two years (1955–57), 65 rice mills were established in West Bengal.73 In 1955, the Rice Milling Committee (RMC) recommended a blanket ban on further extension of the milling and hulling of rice in the village to encourage rural employment. Nevertheless, reversing the technology was no longer possible and rice milling continued to expand. In the 1960s, the number of licensed mills in West Bengal increased from 494 to 741. Most of these were small husking units working in the backyard of the larger mills. As the acreage and productivity of paddy cultivation did not change, the mills suffered from capacity underutilization.74 Meanwhile, the Indo-China war of 1962 and a long spell of bad harvests had forced the government to reintroduce food control measures. The result was a stagnation of the milling technology. In 1960, Mysore had 461 sheller-type mills, followed by Uttar Pradesh (131), Gujarat (128), Madras (95), Punjab (85), Madhya Pradesh (79) and Maharashtra (71), compared to only 50 in West Bengal. Even Orissa, where the industry was only a decade old, had 35 sheller and 54 sheller-huller combined units.75 Rice hullers mushroomed in rural areas because of the cheap and easy-to-use technology. Usually, local grain dealers acting as the entrepreneur earned a little extra by milling and hired out the excess (p.156) capacity to anyone willing to use it. In 1929, Arambag, a remote village in Hooghly, had 10 such units. Teli rice traders of Nadia were the first to localize rice hulling at HatkholaKumartuli, closely followed by the sahas of Chetla-Tolleyganj along the approach canal to the eastern Bengal river system.76 Between 1951 and 1955, the number of rice hullers in West Bengal rose from 1,429 to 5,000, as against 360 registered mills. In 1966, Medinipur had 100 rice mills, with rice hullers many times that number. Birbhum had 68 mills and 700 rice hullers; Bardhaman had 129 mills compared to 760 small husking units.77 The public distribution of the cheap technology among refugees on easy terms and the ban on new mills imposed under the Rice Milling Industries Act of 1958 encouraged its proliferation. A sort of functional adjustment thus emerged between the formal and informal sectors, with the small huller serving as feeder to the larger mill. The latter could thus manipulate its actual turnover and skip

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Machines in the Periphery part payment of duties. Some of these were later on registered under a liberalized scheme.78 Sugar Milling Early European Enterprise

Europeans had introduced mechanized manufacturing of sugar in Bengal following an early nineteenth century craze that large fortunes could be made out of it. Sugar factories and distilleries came up first in Howrah in the late eighteenth century. In 1834, a certain Mr Blake founded Dhoba Sugar Co. in Nadia, followed by his ambitious project at Kotchandpur (1852) surrounded by local sugar factories, but failed in competition with Cossipore Sugar Works. The latter could easily export its product via Calcutta Port, while the adjacent Hooghly River helped it ferry cheap molasses from Bihar.79 Early records of the British East India Company referred to Bengal as the place ‘from which sugar and silk could best be procured’. Between 1828 and 1840, sugar export from India increased by more than 81 per cent, reaching its peak in the early 1840s. Bengal was the natural outlet of the sugar produced in Bihar and United Provinces, with the product from Sahabad, Gazipur, Danapur, Patna, and Barh reaching Calcutta through the Hooghly River. In 1865–66, Calcutta exported 2.33 lakh cwt of sugar; in 1868–69, 2.62 lakh; (p.157) and increased the latter figure by three times in 1876–77. Most of it went to England, explaining the early English interest in Indian sugar. The local demand for refined sugar also expanded to feed the European population, as also new distilleries and breweries.80 European sugar factories in rural Bengal have been referred to as the signpost of civilization. J E Gastrell observed thus: The numerous indigo and sugar factories … impart an air of civilization to and greatly enliven the scenery wherever they appear. There is an appearance of solid and unmistakable comfort about them generally…. Always built in the most open spot they stand boldly out and offer a striking contrast to the neighbouring Bengali habitations, which are so buried in jungle as to be barely visible until arriving within a few yards of them. The fields around factories are generally better tilled, good fair weather roads lead to and from them.81 Most of these failed like the grandiose scheme of Dwarkanath Tagore. In 1830, he had planted Otaheite cane on 200 acres of land at Baruipur and set up steamdriven horizontal sugar mills under European supervision. But it yielded only a few seers of sugar. Undaunted, he repeated the attempt at Ghajipur in Bihar and Silaidaha in Pabna, with no different results. It marked the end of a ‘golden dream that swamped so many good men’, making huge investments in sugar milling without considering the soil properties or the local cane market. Hence, the price at which they could sell their sugar in the market was ‘scarcely enough

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Machines in the Periphery to cover the cost of production’. In 1850, Shantipore Rum and Sugar Works fetched only Rs 24,000 as there was no higher bidder in the auction.82 Contemporary observers attributed the failure to local competition. ‘The truth was that’, James Westland stated, ‘when Europeans gave a great impulse to sugar cultivation native merchants stepped in and appropriated all the trade, which the factories had given birth to.’ The local merchants succeeded due to the cheap method of refining and the culturally protected market. Unable to reach the interior, Europeans relied on local traders for the supply of molasses. Meanwhile, the protection of beet sugar depressed European demand for Indian sugar, forcing Calcutta exporters to rely on the home market till the imposition of import duties in favour of the West Indies planter.83 The abolition of import duties on European sugar (March 1882) opened the Indian market to cheap sugar from Java and Mauritius, (p.158) and beet sugar from Germany. Flourishing under the government bounty, its import into India threatened the vital British sugar interest in Java, Mauritius, and West Indies. In 1899, the government of India thus imposed a duty on the import of beet sugar, leading to a drastic drop in supply, but cane sugar import increased by leaps and bounds. In the 1900s, the import of unrefined sugar multiplied by three times, while the refined sugar achieved a 100 per cent growth.84 Meanwhile, the Brussels Sugar Convention (1903) neutralized the relief to the Indian industry provided by a rise in import duty in 1902. From an exporting country, India became a major importer of sugar, due to free trade and the natural advantage of Mauritius, Java, and West Indies. From cane cultivation to the extraction of sucrose and refining, India also lagged behind in technology. The industry in Mauritius, Java, and West Indies further enjoyed export subsidies.85 The Calcutta market was soon flooded by Java sugar, produced at less than twothirds of the lowest cost in Bihar. In 1920, the shipment cost only Rs 5 a maund, as against Rs 7 if brought from Bihar and Rs 9 in the case of Benares. Cossipore Sugar Works and European breweries shifted to cheap Java molasses. Some Howrah traders began to import huge quantities of refuse scum of cane-juice from Java and Mauritius to prepare molasses and undersold the local pure canejuice variety. The Bengal industry also lost its vital Bombay market to Mauritius sugar.86 In Bihar, English factories swung between sugar and indigo, but in Bengal they stuck to sugar. Of the three Howrah factories in the 1850s, only the Albion Factory survived till 1909. With an average workforce of 500 a day, Cossipore Sugar Works outlived most others. In 1905, Bengal had seven such factories: five in Nadia and one each in Jessore and Rangpur, but mostly small units with a hundred workers or so. With the declining in export, these factories relied

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Machines in the Periphery mainly on European demand for refined sugar, a market largely monopolized by the two firms at Kashipur.87 Indigenous Enterprise

The old sugar factories (hamar or karkhana) of Kotchandpur, Shantipur, and Basirhat survived the competition from foreign sugar. By the mid-1880s, when the industry had already outlived (p.159) its peak period, Jessore alone had 250 factories, with small clusters in Pabna and Bagura. More than cultural insulation, khandsaris had survived in north India due to their owners’ control, as zamindar, moneylender, or trader, over the cane cultivator. No such control operated in eastern India, but here sugar manufacturers controlled cane marketing, much to the disadvantage of their European competitors.88 In Bengal, cane was cultivated in small disjointed tracts and the localization of too many factories increased the competition at the primary level. Hence, sugar merchants relied on itinerant traders to ensure the supply of gur, a post-harvest peasant production. They purchased it directly from the peasants, partly for cash but mostly on part payment to be settled at the end of the season. Known as gaonal, these village tours were conducted in boat through creeks and canals that served as both a line of communication and a barrier to an effective integration of markets. The profit of the trade drew non-traditional workgroups such as the teli, tamuli or tambuli, mahishya, and kaibartta to sugar manufacturing, originally an occupation of the modak.89 The increasing import of refined sugar from 1904 onwards depressed the demand for the local product and discouraged cane cultivation. Between 1883 and 1920, cane area in the Rajsahi division fell by 47 per cent, in Bardhaman by 28 per cent, and in Dhaka by 50 per cent, while Pabna lost it by 23 per cent roughly during the same period. A partial shift of land from the cane to jute was also to account for this decline in eastern and northern Bengal, as jute was less expensive, more store-worthy, and easily marketable than sugarcane. By 1920, Bengal thus declined from possessing the second highest cane acreage in India to the fourth.90 Local manufacturers could not sell sugar at the cost price, but had to buy cane dear due to its falling supply. Table 3.4 shows the dismal state of indigenous sugar manufacturing in Bengal. It became literally a ‘dying trade’ limping on the culturally insulated demand of the Marwari community and the occasional ceremonial needs.91 The unique success of the Birbhum unit was due to a captive supply of cheap molasses in the area, as also its shifting to coal as fuel, which reduced the wastage rate from 13 per cent to 3 per cent. It was also privileged to sell its product to the backward market of Bihar and Orissa nearby. (p.160)

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Machines in the Periphery

Table 3.4 Statement of accounts for indigenous manufacturing of sugar, 1899–1901 (Per 100 maunds of gur processed; 1 maund = 40 seers) Place

Cost of Gur

Manuf. Cost Total Cost

Output Sugar (mau nds)

Income from Sugar

Output Income Molasses (m from aunds) Molasses

Total Income

Profit/Loss

1. Basirhat

Rs 300

Rs 69

Rs 369

33 + 8*

Rs 246

50

Rs 100

Rs 346

- Rs 23

2. Kenragachi

Rs 350

Rs 62

Rs 412

25 + 9*

Rs 170

56

Rs 154

Rs 324

- Rs 88

3. Birbhum

Rs 300

Rs 67

Rs 367

30 + 5*

Rs 280

62

Rs 155

Rs 435

+ Rs 68

4. Rs 300 Gobordanga 1

Rs 70

Rs 370

20 +14*

Rs 221

50

Rs 125

Rs .346

- Rs 24

5. Shantipur Rs 369

Rs 71

Rs 440

25 +12*

Rs 213

46

Rs 115

Rs 328

- Rs 112

(Date sugar) Sources: Based on M. Saha, ‘Basirhate Chinir Karkhana’; S. Biswas, ‘Kendagachhir Chinir Karkhana’; H. Dey, ‘Birbhume Chinir Karkhana’; U. Rakshit, ‘Gobardanga Chinir Karkhana’; and ‘Shantipure Chinir Karkhana’. Notes: *First + Second quality of sugar. The price used in this table is the average of available prices.

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Machines in the Periphery (p.161) Sugar Mills

The wartime dislocation of supplies and the imposition of 10 per cent import duty on foreign sugar (1916) encouraged investment in sugar milling till the end of the war. To help the local industry, the duty on foreign sugar was raised to 15 per cent in 1921, 25 per cent in 1922, and 50 per cent in 1925, with little impact on the depression-induced imports. The protective duty and the use of highyielding varieties of cane, however, helped the local industry in Madras, as also in United Provinces after the completion of the Sarda Canal Project. In Bengal, sugarcane cultivation expanded only in the irrigated part of Bardhaman division, but elsewhere it was sacrificed for jute, depressing the manufacturing of sugar, except for the Cossipore Sugar Works. Meanwhile, after a series of Tariff Board enquiries, government imposed 185 per cent duty on imported sugar, thus stabilizing its price in India. The industry also received a boost from the falling prices of sugarcane and jaggery. Following the price crash, import of machineries increased by more than 5 times in 1932–33, and by 10 times in the next year. A number of new mills came into existence in Bihar, north India, and Madras.92 In Bengal, Surajmal Nagarmal Co. established Sitabganj Sugar Mills and North Bengal Sugar Mills (1933–34), to supplement their vital jute interest in the region. With jute presses catering to Calcutta mills, the firm could utilize its storage space in the off-season for sugar mills and send the product in jute ferries for very little extra cost. Bengal, without a single sugar mill in 1931, came to have 10 by the end of the decade. Nadia, Murshidabad, Dhaka, Rajsahi, and Dinajpur had two each; and one each in Maldah and Jalpaiguri. Except the Carew Company of Nadia, all these were small mills, unlike those in north and west India. The owner of indigenous sugar factories had in the meanwhile started dealing in foreign sugar,93 as they lacked both capital and market exposure to shift to the new technology. Mostly a stranger to the locality of his mill, the Marwari trader on the other hand developed a supply base through local collaborators. Bengal failed to take advantage of the wartime boost in demand. Notwithstanding the large fertile cane tract and lower production cost to most regions except Bihar and United Provinces, Bengal (p.162) lagged behind in cane supply due to low-yielding varieties, minimal use of manure, and fragmented cultivation.94 For ecological reasons, peasants in north and east Bengal transported cane mostly in slow-moving boats, thus reducing its sucrose content. The widespread peasant practice of gur-making also discouraged sugar milling. Peasant Processing of Sugarcane: Gur

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Machines in the Periphery The processing of sugarcane was integrated into the culture of cane cultivation. In the non-milling areas, gur-making remained the only option to peasants; elsewhere they could use it as a bargain against the miller. The peasant processed the cane into gur close to his field and sold it at his doorstep to the person he knew. Carrying cane to the mill on the other hand was not only troublesome but often landed him in an unpleasant situation, as also financial losses. When the farmer himself produced gur, he could also keep a part of it for his consumption. All these explain why gur claimed the largest share of the consumption of sugarcane products in India. The financing of the sugarcane harvest also had a role to play. ‘When crushing out the juice and converting the same into gur,’ the Commissioner of Burdwan reported in 1883, ‘most of them generally take advances from the moneylender to enable them to manufacture or dispose of their gur on the spot.’ In Rajsahi, peasants borrowed ‘at the commencement of the season’ and repaid ‘the debt in gur, giving the mahajan at six to eight annas per maund below the market rate’. With the old sugar industry declining by the early twentieth century, eastern India had largely reverted to gur-making. Meanwhile, cane cultivation also spread to Chittagong Hills and Rangpur (barind tract), where jute did not fare well. Steam-driven small molasses factories also spread to remote Chittagong and Assam.95 The railways encouraged the marketing of a low-cost, previously difficult-to-transport product like gur. The recycling of the canister oil tin, which the peasant must have learnt from the itinerant trader buying his product also facilitated its long-distance carriage. But the use of the portable iron mill helped the peasant most. Invented by Thomson & Mylne, and named after their Behea estate in Sahabad, the new mill changed ‘the barbarous and wasteful method of cane culture’. One could run it even with a single bullock without (p.163) any risk to life either of the man driving the bullock or the fellow feeding cane to the roller. Its crushing capacity was three times greater than the old mill, with ‘purer and cleaner’ juice and a 25 per cent rise in yield. The company ‘sent instructors to villages to show peasants how to operate the mill. Enterprising zamindars, managers of wards’ estates, indigo planters and even village moneylenders also had a role in popularizing it.’96 In the early 1880s, Behea mill or its more efficient 3-rollers version that could be driven either by bullock or steam engine had reached Bengal, and by 1900 it had replaced the kolhu. ‘The sugar industry in Bengal has been thriving since the introduction of the Behea Mill, which enables peasants to extract a greater quantity of juice than formerly from cane.’97 In Rajsahi and Dhaka divisions, more popular was the Livermore’s sugarcane mill distributed by the Renwick & Co. of Kushtia. Originally a sugar milling company of Dinajpur, Renwick made a real fortune by letting out the mill to peasants. In 1907, the rate of hire varied between Re 0.50 and Re 1 a day with the cost of milling moving around Rs 9 to Page 31 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery Rs 30 per acre. The increasing demand is indicated by a 50 per cent per cent hike in the hiring charge between 1900 and 1920. Chittagong and Chhotonagpore divisions relied more on the Behea Mill, as Thomson and Mylne’s cane presses had ‘entirely supplanted the old country presses’ in Bihar. In Bengal, the new mill boosted the manufacture of gur, with the total output reaching the 5 lakh ton mark between 1938 and 1942, while the production of sugar stagnated at 18,000 tons. The sugar mills suffered from the falling supply of cane. The promulgation of the Gur Control Order did not increase the movement of cane to the mill.98 The Partition and After

The Partition cut off the Carew Company’s mill at Palashi from its raw material base, while the Meherpur mill of Kushtia lost its access to the Calcutta market. Cheap sugar and molasses from north India flooded Calcutta crashing cane prices and boosting gur manufacturing. In 1966, 80 per cent of the local cane had been processed into gur, a colossal wastage as it could utilize only a part of the cane’s sucrose against 90 per cent extraction by the mill. The cane acreage (p.164) fell, hitting south Bengal the most which had limited options for crop rotation. In 1960, a public sector mill (National Sugar Mills Ltd) was started at Ahmedpur. With an ambitious output capacity of 2.5 lakh maunds, it suffered for want of compact cane cultivation blocks. But nothing was done to improve irrigation or offer high-yielding plants to encourage cane cultivation in the locality as the Parrys had done for their Nellikuppam factory in Tamil Nadu. The mill thus failed to achieve even half of its projected target, as attempts to get sugarcane from Bihar by the railways created further problems.99 The want of proper roads also discouraged the transport of cane by automobile trucks from the interior. The model mill thus failed to serve its purpose. Machine Milling of Oil

The shift from the slow, arduous medieval wedge-press to screw-press mill took place in sixteenth-century Europe, followed by a Dutch improvement a little later. The real breakthrough came in 1795 with the invention of the hydraulic press in England by Joseph Bramah. The invention of the hydraulic accumulator in 1843 perfected the machine, leading to the steam-driven oil mill in 1872. In eastern India, mechanized oil milling started at the Fort Gloster industrial complex in the early nineteenth century. A more elaborate venture was the Jessop & Co.’s mill on the Howrah side of the River Hooghly, naming the site as Telkal Ghāt. The new technology had also spread to the outskirts, as Henry Walter referred to an oil mill as a landmark of Dhaka town in 1830. By the 1860s, oil mills localized mainly in Howrah and 24-Parganas. The largest of these, Gauripur Oil Mill, exported on an annual average of 7 lakh gallons of Page 32 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery linseed oil to China, Philippines, the Straits, and Australia, besides serving the jute mills. Andrew Yule on the other hand catered to the railways’ demand for industrial oil. The high rate of dividends, paid over a long period, points to their success, which continued till the growth of oil mills in Bihar and United Provinces.100 European oil mills attracted local investment in milling edible oil. The chuckertype mill driven by steam or electric engine reached Calcutta around 1900. Between 1903 and 1911, the number of small mills producing mustard oil jumped from 15 to 118 in Bengal, (p.165) localized either in north Calcutta or in Howrah. The industrial census of 1911 put the number of these cluster-centric mills to 77 out of 118, rising to 80 in 1920. There were also a few large mills, both in terms of investment and labour, depending on the railway supply of oilseeds from north India, Bihar, and Orissa. Slowly, oil mills spread to the districts—Fulchari Oil Mill at Rangpur and two mills at Barishal with 62 workers each.101 A new industry thus emerged. ‘I found the following plant in different places: a 20 horse power engine working 54 mills,’ Cumming wrote in 1908, ‘a 20 horse power engine working 42 mills; a 16 horse power engine working 32 mills; another 16 horse power engine working 26 mills and 12 mills worked by an oil engine.’ Most of these belonged to Bengali trading castes, a few by Marwaris, except a European-owned mill in Berhampore. In 1911, Manindra Chandra Nandi of the Kashimbazar family purchased the European-owned mill with 58 workers. From edible oil, the new technology also spread to other areas: medicinal oil mill at Chittagong and coconut oil mills at Noakhali and Barishal. But the most successful enterprise in this regard came much later, Hindusthan Cocoanut Oil Mill at Sainthia in Birbhum, a venture of the 1960s.102 The industry later suffered due to the growth of oil mills in Bihar and United Provinces. In the period 1935–46, 30 oil mills closed down in Bengal, with the millers regretting their inability to compete with the upcountry mill. Pushed out of the oilseed market of north India, the kundus, sahas, and sadhukhans sold their mills to the agarwals and maheshwaris. Unplanned growth was a major problem: 80 mills in and around Calcutta were based on oilseeds from east Bengal, Bihar, and United Provinces. In 1956, West Bengal had 254 mills, 3 per cent of the all-India tally, while the nakhoda and bhatia merchants of Burra Bazar flooded the local market with the coconut oil from south India.103 Oil Mill and the Miller

The displacement of the oilman (teli, tili, kolhu) by the mill was a tragedy immortalized by Amritalal Bose in his poem ‘Proclamation’.104 The first to go was the urban miller like the teli of Bhawanipur. The more enterprising of them flourished by supplying molasses to (p.166) European distilleries; a few others,

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Machines in the Periphery like Shyamsundar/Ramdulal Dey, went into the textile trade along with speculation in salt, a favourite pastime for the tambuli and teli traders.105 The actual size of the displacement in the traditional sector is difficult to determine. The census method of enumeration always recorded oil pressing as a full-time activity although many took it as a subsidiary occupation. Even the evidence of the industrial census of 1911 could hardly be used as the base data, for oil milling had by then passed the crucial phase of its growth. Already in 1908, a European observer noted the teli’s ‘antagonism’ to oil mills. The early census data is also of questionable reliability. The number of ghani as recorded in the census of 1951 thus falls short of the number registered in the Livestock Census of the same year.106 In Mymensingh and Rangpur, oil pressing was more widespread, being based on the supply of oilseeds from Assam, where the oil press suffered from a lower yield.107 The mustard oil is now the most widespread manufacture. There is a colony of telis or Muslim kulus in many roadside villages. The ghāni is worked by a bullock inside a shed and, but for the cracking noise of the mill … its presence would never be suspected. In Kishenganj, Namasudras are employed to draw the mill.… Three tenth of the seed used is the average produce in oil and it takes six days to crush three maunds. If the seed is not the property of the teli, he gets one-third of the oil and the cake as the price of his labour.108 The demand for ghani oil soared because of its palatable and nutritious quality. More a craze, this was often exploited by the unscrupulous oilman who sold the mill oil as ghani oil at a premium. The new mill had low running cost, higher yield, and better oil cakes. All these reduced the competitive edge of the ghani, vis-à-vis the mill.109 Notes:

(*) I bow to thee, woman; the rice thy foot husketh maketh God’s offerings. (1.) S. Arasaratnam, ‘The Rice Trade in Eastern India, 1650–1740’, Modern Asian Studies, 22, no. 3 (1988): p. 532; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Portuguese, the Port of Basrur, and the Rice Trade, 1600–1650’, in Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India, ed. Sanjay Subrahmanyam (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 18–47; K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 52, 206, 207, 208, 578; P.J. Marshall, East India Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 107; Sushil Chaudhuri, Trade and Commercial Organisation in Bengal 1650–1724 (Calcutta, 1976), p. 187.

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Machines in the Periphery (2.) Mukul Mukherjee, ‘Impact of Modernization on Women’s Occupations: A Case Study of the Rice-Husking Industry of Bengal’, Indian Economic and Social History Review (IESHR), 20, no. 1 (March 1983), pp. 27–46; Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘The Rice Milling Industry in Bengal, 1920–1950: A Case Study of the Impact of Mechanization on the Local Peasant Economy’, The Calcutta Historical Journal, 13, nos 1–2 (July 1988–June 1989): pp. 1–111; J. Krishnamurthy, ‘Deindustrialization in Gangetic Bihar during the Nineteenth Century: Another Look at the Evidence’, IESHR, 22, no. 4 (1985), p. 406. (3.) S. Arasaratnam, ‘The Rice Trade in Eastern India’, pp. 533, 548. (4.) For more on migrant huskers, see Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Small-Scale Unorganised Industries of Bengal, Their role in the Industrial Economy of the Province: 1900–1947’, unpublished PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Calcutta, 1992, pp. 311–13. M. Mukherjee, ‘Impact of Modernization’, p. 33. (5.) S. Arasaratnam, ‘The Rice Trade in Eastern India’, pp. 548–9. (6.) For details, see Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Small-Scale Unorganised Industries of Bengal’, Table 4.1, p. 302. (7.) J.C. French cited in Report on the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Bengal, 1926 (Calcutta: Dept. of Agriculture, Govt. of Bengal, 1927), p. 11. ‘In his case, a maund of cleaned rice will cost Rs 1.25 or at 1.5; for sixty seers he will have to pay Rs 2.25.’ Cited in M. Mukherjee, ‘Impact of Modernization’, p. 31. (8.) Report on the Condition of the Lower Classes of Population in Bengal, 1888 (GOI, Dept of Rev & Agrl. [Famine Br.] Progs, Nos 1–24); M. Mukherjee, ‘Impact of Modernization’, pp. 29–30. (9.) Reports of the Rice Milling Committee, 1955 and Report of the Village and Small Industries Committee, 1955 (Calcutta: New Delhi: Government of India, 1955); H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum: A Survey, 1931–1934, Visva Bharati Rural Studies Series, No. 3 (Sriniketan, 1934), both cited in S. Sarkar, ‘Rice Milling Industry’, pp. 31, 101. (10.) Walter Hamilton, The East Indian Gazetteer, as cited in S. Sarkar, ‘Rice Milling Industry’, p. 304. (11.) Francis Hamilton Buchanan, Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description of the Zila of Dinajpur (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1833), p. 180; A.K. Jameson, Report on the Final Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Medinipur: 1911–1917 (Calcutta, 1918), p. 34.

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Machines in the Periphery (12.) F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 296; D. Macpherson, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations, Pabna and Bogra for the Years 1920–9 (Calcutta, 1930), p. 38. For the folklore, see Sushil Kumar Dey, Bangla Prabad: Chada O Chalti Katha (Calcutta, 1359 BS), index. Consider the Odiya folklore: Bapa emiti ghara dekhi deichi, ushnan nahinki kutta nahin. Jhia kanthalu auji bashichi (Father’s only concern while negotiating the marriage was the ghara [family]; but did not take note of the family’s not having pestle and the mortar [or enough food in home]. How long shall I idle away my time here?)—Manoj Raut, Bhadrak, 6 December 2006. (13.) H.H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary (Calcutta, 1981 [Reprint Calcutta: K.L. Mukhpoadhyay, 1981]), Vol. II, pp. 539– 40. (14.) ‘Ramkrishnapure Chauler Kaj’, Mahajanbandhu, 4, no. 3 (Baisakh 1311 BS [1903]), pp. 58–9, and Santoshnath Seth, Bange Chaltatta (A guide book for the wholesale rice trade in Bengal) (Calcutta, 1332 BS)—both cited in S. Sarkar, ‘Small-Scale Unorganised Industries of Bengal’, pp. 311–15. (15.) F.W. Strong, Bengal District Gazetteer, Dinajpur (Allahabad, 1912), p. 79. S. Sarkar, ‘Small-Scale Unorganised Industries of Bengal’, p. 311, 313–15. K.N. Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia, p. 578. (16.) Barbosa has been cited by A.I. Chicherov, India: Economic Development in the 16th–18th Centuries, Outline History of Crafts and Trade (Moscow: Nauka Publishing House, Central Department of Oriental Literature, 1971), pp. 81–2; Mukundaram Chakraborty, Chandi (Calcutta: Basumati), p. 71; Hiteshranjan Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal (Calcutta, 1981), pp. 16, 18, 42, 55, 68; Francis Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire, 1656–68, translated by Irvine Brock, revised and annotated by A. Constable (London: W. Pickering, 1891 [Reprint Delhi, 1968]), p. 437. Thomas Bowrey described the Bengal sugar trade as ‘vigorous’—A Geographical Account of Countries Round the Bay of Bengal 1669 to 1679, ed. R.C. Temple (London, 1905 [Reprint New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1933]), p. 132. Anjali Chatterjee, Bengal in the Reign of Aurangzeb 1658–1707 (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1967), pp. 81, 165; K. Glamann, Dutch Asiatic Trade 1620–1740 (Copenhagen, 1958), p. 153. (17.) W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. V (London: Trubner, 1876 [Reprint Delhi: DK Publishing, 1974]), pp. 308–9; Rajat Datta, Society, Economy and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, c. 1760–1800 (Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 2000), pp. 43–7. (18.) R. Datta, Table 4, p. 44. These districts produced 43, 37, and 32 maunds per acre respectively, as against 29 and 24 maunds by 24-Parganas and Hooghly. Benoy K. Chaudhury, ‘Agrarian Relations in Bengal, 1859–85’, in The History of Bengal (1757–1905), ed. N.K. Sinha (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1967), p. Page 36 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery 251; Statistics of Sugar within the Presidencies of Bengal, Fort St. George & Bombay (Calcutta, 1848), p. 4. (19.) G.H. Thompson, Notes, Geographical, Statistical and General on That Portion of the Lohardugga or Chota-Nagpore District Known as Palamow Written during 1862–1866 (Calcutta, 1866), p. 12. (20.) M. Chakraborty, Chandi, p. 71.; B.B. Bandyopadhyay, ‘Birbhumer Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. I (Kartik, 1308 BS), p. 208; Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’ in Elites in South Asia, eds E. Leach and S.N. Mukherji (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 382, 386. (21.) F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 307. (22.) FH. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 301–7; Harinarayan Dey, ‘Birbhume Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, no. 1 (Phalgun, 1308 BS), pp. 34–6. For Benares, see Statistics of Sugar within the Presidencies of Bengal, Fort St. George & Bombay, pp. 6–7. (23.) James Westland, A Report on the District of Jessore: Its Antiquities, Its History and Its Commerce (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Office, 1871), pp. 207– 26. For more on date sugar, see ‘Shantipure Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, II, no. 1 (Phalgun 1308 BS), pp. 12–15. (24.) M. Wylie, Bengal as a Field of Mission (London: Thacker Spink & Co., 1854), p. 102. (25.) Reginald Heber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825 (London: J. Murray, 1828), Vol. I, p. 137. (26.) In 1926, Bengal accounted for 7.3 per cent of the total acreage under oilseeds in India and contributed 6.7 per cent of the total production of oilseeds. In the same year, Bengal imported 14,18,878, a half of her own production, maunds of mustard and rapeseed from other parts of India. P.E. Lander, Report on the Indian Vegetable Oil Industry (Lahore, 1927), p. 33, Appendix I. For oil milling groups in Bengal, see Niharranjan Roy, Bangalir Itihas: Adi Parba, Vols I & II (Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing 1980); Nirmalkumar Bose, Hindu Samajer Garan (Calcutta, 1356 BS); Hitesrajan Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal (Calcutta, 1981). (27.) A.I. Chicherov, India, p. 81; ‘Teli boise yato jana, keha ghāni keha ghana; kinia bechaye keha tel’—M. Chakraborty, Chandi (Calcutta: Basumati), p. 70; H. Sanyal, Social Mobility in Bengal, p. 98. (28.) N. Bose, Hindu Samajer Garan, pp. 52–61. Page 37 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery (29.) H.H. Risley, Tribes and Castes, pp. 306–9; Report of the Oilseeds Crushing Industry Inquiry Committee, 1956 (New Delhi, 1956) [hereafter OCIC], pp. 1, 12. P.E. Lander, Report on the Indian Vegetable Oil Industry, p. 6; N. Bose, Hindu Samajer Garan, pp. 52–61. (30.) F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 276–7, 315. (31.) B.K. Chowdhury, ‘Agrarian Relations’, p. 266; A.I. Chicherov, India, p. 18; Thomas A. Timberg, The Marwaris: From Traders to Industrialists (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978), pp. 54–5. (32.) Report of the Bengal Paddy and Rice Enquiry Committee (Calcutta, 1938) [hereafter BPREC], pp. 9–11. (33.) C.J. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy 1880–1955: The Tamilnad Countryside (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 247. (34.) National Archives of India (NAI), Govt. of India, Finance and Commerce, Statistics & Commerce Branch, Progs A, April 1888, Nos 182–3, pp. 182–4; Reply of Chief Commissioner of Burma (No. 686 dt. 27 February1888) to enquiries sent by the Govt. of India dt. 27 July 1887 in Progs. No. 185, pp. 185–6. Letter from Sir A. Godley, Under Secretary of State for India, to the Secretary of the Incorporated Chambers of Commerce, Liverpool, No. 3180, R & S dt. 21 November 1899, in NAI, Dec. 1899, Progs A, No. 689. (35.) S.A. Deshpande, The Rice Milling System of Vidarbha (Nagpur: Nagpur University, 1973), pp. 19–21. (36.) Samachar Darpan (11 March 1826), cited in Brajendranath Bandopadhyay, Sangbadpatre Sekaler Katha (Calcutta, 1356 BS), Vol. I, p. 186. S. Sarkar, ‘Rice Milling Industry’, p. 2; The Friend of India (Calcutta), 27 November 1845, cited in Blair B. Kling, ‘Economic Foundation of the Bengal Renaissance’, in Aspects of Bengali History and Society, ed. R.V.M. Baumer (Honolulu, 1976), p. 30. (37.) ‘It’s not long ago, when this machine had been first introduced, a section of zamindars and middleclass people in the rural area thought that they would hire out this machine to peasants at a low cost. Many of them had purchased this machine but could not make it commercially viable.’ ‘Dhan Bhana Kal’, Mahajanbandhu, IV, no. 3 (1311 BS), p. 31. (38.) ‘Dhan Bhana Kal’, p. 31, translation mine. For prejudice against the milled sugar, see Shahid Amin, Sugarcane and Sugar in Gorakhpur: An Inquiry into Peasant Production for Capitalist Enterprise in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 101.

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Machines in the Periphery (39.) Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Famine in Bengal and Orissa, 1866, Vol. I, p. 8, as cited by J.K. Samal, Economy of Colonial Orissa 1866–1947 (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2000), p. 74. (40.) C.E. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, Being a Narrative of the Principal Events and Publc Measures during Their Periods of Office from 1854–1898 (Calcutta: S.K. Lariri & Company, 1901), Vol. I, p. 330. (41.) NAI, Dept of Rev, Agrl. & Com, Agrl. & Hort. Br., Progs. Nos 13, 15 to 17, dated 1 July 1871; Letter, Secretary of State to Govt. of India, No. 17 dated 19 May 1871, in reply to its Despatch No. 18 (PWD) dated 8 February 1871; P. McKinlay to Secretary of State for India, dated Charleston, South Carolina, (?) March 1871; Indent for rice hulling machines to the Secretary of State for India, No. 2, dated Fort William, 5 January 1872. (42.) ‘Ramkristopure Chauler Kaj’, Mahajanbandhu, IV, no. 3 (1311 BS [1903]); Sivnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj (Calcutta, 1903 [Reprint 1983]), p. 32. (43.) ‘Dhan Bhana Kal’, p. 32, translation mine; H.H. Ghosh, ‘Rice Manufacture’, Report of the Indian Industrial Conference 1906 (Calcutta), pp. 96–7. (44.) Interview, M/s. S.N. Chatterjee & Brothers, 38, Strand Road, Calcutta, dated 10 February 1986; S. Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri, p 32; H.H. Ghosh, ‘Rice Manufacture’, pp. 97–8; L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah (Calcutta, 1909), p. 114. (45.) H.H. Ghosh, ‘Rice Manufacture’, pp. 97–8; Report of the Rice Milling Committee, 1955 [hereafter RMC], pp. 12, 23. Led by a group of Calcutta intellectuals, the initiative soon spread to other spheres, thus generating a sort of movement for the development of nationalist technology. Most notable was Satish Chandra Dasgupta, a follower of Prafulla Chandra Roy. He devoted his entire life to the improvement of what he called people’s technology. Subhendu Dasgupta, ‘Satish Chandra’s Journey from Nationalization to Nationalism’ in Studies in History of Sciences, eds S. Chatterjee, M.K. Dasgupta, and A. Ghosh (Calcutta, 1997), pp. 63–8. (46.) Statement of Industrial Labour for 1901–05 Containing All Concerns in Which the Average Daily Number of Persons Employed Was Not Less Than 50 throughout the Year (Calcutta, 1906), pp. 1–18. (47.) ‘The rice is first put into vats and steeped for twelve to eighteen hours. It is then put into cylinders made of sheet iron and parboiled with steam for about 15 minutes, after which it is spread on a cement floor to be sun-dried for two days. It is then passed through hulling machines and the winnower. One and half a maund of paddy gives about one maund of husked rice.’ Report on the Industrial Development of Bengal (Calcutta, 1915), p. 11. Page 39 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery (48.) B.P. Adarkar, Report on the Labour Conditions in the Rice Mills (Delhi, 1946), p. 28; K.L. Datta, Report on the Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in India, 1915 (Calcutta, 1915), p. 4; Report of the Census of India, 1921, Vol. V, Part I, pp. 408–9. Report of the Indian Industrial Commission, 1916–1918, Vol. I, p. 162. (49.) Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the Year: 1876–1877 (Calcutta, 1878), pp. 24–5; Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the Year: 1877–78, p. 9; Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the Year: 1882–83, p. 71; Nilmani Mukherjee, ‘Foreign and Inland Trade, 1883–1905’, in The History of Bengal, 1757–1905, ed. N.K. Sinha (Calcutta: Calcutta University, 1967), p. 349; K.L. Datta, Report on the Enquiry into the Rise of Prices, p. 112. In 1926, the Additional Collector, 24 Parganas, reported the export of rice to Havana, New York, Montenegro, and Liverpool, the bulk of this being sent to Havana and Hamburg. Report on Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Bengal (Calcutta, 1926), p. 24; Capital, 26 February 1889, p. 373; B.P. Adarkar, Labour Conditions, p. 28–9; S. Seth, Bange Chaltatta, pp. 64–70, 376; BPREC, p. 34. (50.) B. Chaudhury, ‘Agrarian Relations in Bengal’, p. 249; ‘Dhan Bhana Kal’, p. 31; BPREC, p. 13; Report of the Rice Milling Committee, 1955 [hereafter RMC], p. 59. Report on the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Bengal, 1926 [hereafter MAP], pp. 18–19; S.N. Seth, Bange Chaltatta, p. 215. (51.) Major destinations were Benares, Khorason Road, Lucknow, Aligarh, Mussoore, Mihrawan, and Tanda in United Provinces; Dildarnagar, Jamalpur, Katrasgarh, Kodarma, Patna Ghat, Sahibganj, and Zamania in Bihar. S. Bose, Marketing of Rice at Bolpur, Visva Bharati Rural Studies Series, 1934–1936, No. 4, pp. 6–7 (reprint in Sankhya, ISI, Calcutta, Vol. II, Part II, 1936, p. 14); Rajen Saikia, Social and Economic History of Assam (1853–1921) (Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 2001), p. 123. (52.) The rice mills multiplied by more than eight times during 1916–18, with a 38 per cent rise in the prices of rice in Calcutta. In 1951, Bolpur had 19 mills out of which 17 were launched between 1915 and 1928. Santipriya Bose,’Marketing of Rice at Bolpur’, Visva Bharati Rural Studies Series, 1934–1936, No. 4 (Reprinted in Sankhya, ISI, Calcutta, Vol. II, Part II, 1936), pp. 6–7, p. 38; Chittapirya Mukherjee, Urban Growth in a Rural Area (Santiniketan: Visva Bharati, 1972), p. 148; S. Sarkar, ‘Rice Milling Industry’, p. 14. (53.) Benoy Sarkar, ‘East Bengal River Steam Service Ltd.’, Arthik Unnati, II, no. 1 (Baisakh, 1334 BS). (54.) W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal. In 1876–77, the railways carried 784 maunds of cleaned rice from Birbhum. Internal Trade Report 1876– 77, cited by H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, p. 38.

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Machines in the Periphery (55.) H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, pp. 37–3, 41. Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Howrah Ramkrishnapur, Unish Shataker Kolkatar Chaler Bazar’, Itihas Anusandhan, V (1990), pp. 320–8; S.C. Mitter, The Rice Milling Industry (Calcutta: Department of Industries, Government of Bengal, Bulletin No. 33, 1928), pp. 3, 8–10. (56.) N. Chakraborty, Design for Development of Village Industries (Calcutta: 1959) p. 158. (57.) Report on the Growth of the Joint Stock Companies in Bengal (Calcutta, 1937), pp. 14, 31, 40; Reports on the Administration of Joint Stock Companies in India. H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, p. 38. BPREC, 1938, pp. 18– 21; N.C. Chakraborty, The Problem of Bengal’s Rice Supply (Calcutta: 1939), p. 29. (58.) BPREC, pp. 80–1; H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, pp. 37–8. (59.) RMC, p 14; D. Ray, Food Administration in Eastern India: 1939–1954 (Santiniketan: Visva Bharati, 1958), pp. 152–3. (60.) The Food Grains Control Order (21 August 1942) required all persons other than producers engaged in purchase, sale, or storage for sale in quantities exceeding 20 maunds in one transaction of any specified food grain to apply to the state government for a licence. Licence holders were required to keep accounts and had to submit monthly returns of their purchase, sale, and stocks to the designated official for scrutiny. In the wake of Japanese advances, the government had also introduced urban rationing. (61.) The Bengal Rice Mill Control Order of 1943, cited by D. Ray, Food Administration in Eastern India, pp. 15, 24; S.A. Deshpande, The Rice Milling Industry in Vidarbha, p. 46. (62.) In 1942, the Calcutta Rice Mills Association was set up to take over the North Calcutta Rice Mills Association, Marwari Rice Mills Association, Tolleygunj Rice Mills Association, and Barrackpore Rice Mills Association. All these were later amalgamated into the Bengal Rice Mills Association. I. Ray, ‘Problems of Modern Rice Mills in West Bengal’, Proceedings of the Seminar on Modernisation and Utilisation of By-products of Rice Milling Industry (Calcutta, 1988), p 76. In 1946, the government passed the Essential Supplies (Temporary Powers) Ordinance with ‘powers to control the production, supply and distribution of and trade and commerce in certain essential commodities.’ Report of the Bengal Industrial Survey Committee [hereafter BISC], 1948, p. 22; B.P. Adarkar, Labour Conditions, p. 28. (63.) Census, 1951, VI, IA, pp. 112–13; BPREC, p. 13; BISC, p. 201; S.K. Haldar, Report on the Family Budget Enquiry into the Living Conditions of the Rice Mill Page 41 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery Workers in West Bengal, 1949–1950 [hereafter FBERMW], p. 1. H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, pp. 38, 41. C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth, p. 119; Census, 1921, Vol. V Part I, pp. 408–9; MAP, pp. 70–1. For details of the supply position of the districts, see BPREC, pp. 22–3. (64.) S.C. Mitter, Rice Milling Industry, pp. 8–10; N.C. Chakraborty, The Problem of Bengal’s Rice Supply (Calcutta, 1939), pp. 35, 159–61; BPREC, pp. 13, 23; BISC, pp. 202, 212; S.A. Deshpande, The Rice Milling Industry in Vidarbha, p. 224. Census of India, 1951, 1951, p. 31; D. Ray, Food Administration in Eastern India, p. 89. S.N. Seth, Bange Chaltatta, pp. 94–5, 236, 282, 284, 352; Benoy Sarkar, ‘Arthik Jagate Adhunik Nari’, Arthik Unnati, II, no.10 (Magh 1334 BS). (65.) BPREC, pp. 14, 79–81; BISC, p. 212; S. Seth, Bange Chaltatta, pp. 94–5, 236, 284. Henry T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges: An Exploration in the History of India’s Modernization through Science and Technology (Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1960 [Reprint 1987]), pp. 96–7. Benoy Sarkar, ‘An Interview with the Owner of a Steamer Company’, Arthik Unnati, II, no. 10 (Agrahayan 1334 BS), p. 10; J.K. Samal, Economy of Colonial Orissa, pp. x, 68, 77–8, 206–7; BPREC, pp. 38–40; BISC, p. 23. (66.) Report of the Rice Trade Enquiry Committee, Burma (Calcutta, 1937), pp. 18, 32, 35, 64–70, 71; M.M. Islam, Bengal Agriculture1920–1946: A Quantitative Study (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 58. (67.) In 1988, Calcutta had only two rice mills. I. Ray, ‘Problems of Modern Rice Mills’, p. 75. Report of the Minimum Wages Advisory Committee for Rice Mills in West Bengal [hereafter MWAC] (Calcutta, 1957), pp. 3–4. (68.) H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, pp. 41–2; S.A. Deshpande, The Rice Milling Industry in Vidarbha, p. 226; S. Bose, Marketing of Rice at Bolpur, pp. 6–7. (69.) In 1921, 2 out of 137 mills had 100-plus workers. RMC, p. 12; Census of India, 1921, pp. 408–9; FBERMW, p. 5. (70.) For the work pattern inside the early rice mill, see S.A. Deshpande, The Rice Milling Industry in Vidarbha, p. 226; FBERMW, 3, 6, 8–9. (71.) S. Seth, Bange Chaltatta, pp. 379–96; Census of India, 1911, Vol. I, Pt 1, p. 446; Census of India, 1921, Vol V, Pt 1, pp. 408–9. Achintya Kumar Dutta, ‘Rice Trade in the “Rice Bowl of Bengal”: Burdwan 1880–1947’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 49, no. 1 (2012), p. 96; S.C. Mitter, Rice Milling Industry, p. 5; ‘Arambage Chaler Kal’, Arthik Unnati, 4, no. 10 (Magh, 1336 BS); C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth in a Rural Area, p. 150, 254; Classified List of Factories in Bengal, 1939 [hereafter CLFB] (Calcutta: Government of Bengal, 1939), see under the rice mill. Page 42 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery (72.) MAP, p. 39; C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth in a Rural Area, pp. 288–9, 300. A.K. Dutta, ‘Rice Bowl of Bengal’, p. 96; Marwari mills increased from 14 to 26 in Chetla–Tolleyganj and from 2 to 12 in Bardhaman. S. Seth, Bange Chaltatta, pp. 379–96; CLFB. For similar development in south India see C.J. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy 1880–1955, p. 243. (73.) Arthik Jagat (30 June 1947), p. 152. State Statistical Bureau, Trends in Industries of West Bengal 1950–57 (Calcutta, 1958), see ‘Rice Mill’. (74.) Uma J. Lele, Food Grain Marketing in India: Private Performance and Public Policy (Cornell University, 1971), pp. 180–4. (75.) Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Rice Economy of India (New Delhi, 1961), pp. 34–5. (76.) ‘Arambage Chaler Kal Paridarshan’, Arthik Unnati, vol. 4, no. 10 (Magh 1336 BS); S. Seth, Bange Chaltatta pp. 352, 375–6; L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah, p. 114. (77.) RMC, 1955, pp. 14, 24. Directorate of Agriculture, Government of West Bengal, District Handbook on Agricultural Marketing for the District of (DHAM): Birbhum (1963), pp. 23–4; Midnapore (1966), p. 51; Bardhaman (1970), p. 46. (78.) RMC, 1955, pp. 14, 24. N. Chakraborty, A Design for Development of Village Industries, p. 154; FBERMW, p.1. Uma J. Lele, Food Grain Marketing in India, p. 180. (79.) Blake sold his Kotchandpur factory to Newhouse, a resident of Jessore, who owned another factory at Taherpur. In 1871, there were two more European factories at Trimohini and Chaugacha in Jessore, owned by Galdstone Wyllie and Co. B.K. Chowdhury, ‘Agrarian Relations’, pp. 81, 251; L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah, p. 113. C.N. Banerjei, An Account of Howrah: Past and Present (Calcutta, 1872), p. 96. J. Westland, A Report on the District of Jessore, pp. 207–8; Report of the Indian Sugar Committee, 1921 (Shimla, 1921) [hereafter ISC], pp. 3, 4. Nemai Charan Basu, ‘Kotchandpurer Chinir Kal’, Mahajanbandhu, I, no. 5 (Ashar 1308 BS), pp. 107–11. Sugar Plants and Sugar: Statistics relating to (1) the Area under Sugar Plants, (2) the Outturn of Coarse Sugar and (3) the Trade in Sugar (Simla, 1887), p. 21. (80.) Abdul Karim, Dacca, the Mughal Capital (Dhaka 1964), Appendix A, pp. 440–67. J. Westland, A Report on the District of Jessore, p. 173. Blair B. Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India (Calcutta, 1981), p. 83; A.K. Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, p. 359. Cwt, or hundredweight, is a measure of weight roughly equivalent to 60.8 kilograms. In 1876–77, 6.38 lakh cwt of sugar was exported. Sugar Plants and Sugar, p. 23. In 1883–84, England claimed 76 Page 43 of 47

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Machines in the Periphery per cent of the unrefined sugar exported by Bengal—B.B. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 24. L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah, p. 113. (81.) J.E. Gastrell, Geographical and Statistical Report of the Districts of Jessore, Fureedpur and Backerganj (Calcutta, 1868), p. 7. (82.) B.B. Kling, Partner in Empire, pp. 87–8. J. Westland, A Report on the District of Jessore, p. 208; B.K. Chowdhury, ‘Agrarian Relations’, p. 81; Allen’s Indian Mail and Register of Intelligence, Vol. VIII, January–December, 1850, p. 415. (83.) J. Westland, A Report on the District of Jessore, p. 208; A.K. Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, p. 359. (84.) Sugar Plants and Sugar, pp. 17–18; A.K. Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, p. 359. (85.) Sugar Plants and Sugar, p. 17; G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries and Resources of Eastern Bengal and Assam, for 1907–1908 (Shillong, 1908), p. 64; A.K. Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, pp. 359–40. (86.) Report of the Indian Tariff Board on the Sugar Industry, p. 312; G.N. Gupta, Industries and Resources, p. 67. For the quantity of gur imports from Java, see G.N. Bower, Report on the Maritime Trade of Bengal for the year, 1922–23 (Calcutta, 1923), p. 6. Sugar Plants and Sugar, p. 20; Editorial, ‘Chinir Duty’, Mahajanbandhu, II, no. 4 (Jaistha 1309 BS), p. 94; H.D. Chattopadhyay, ‘Khanduar Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, II, no. 7 (Bhadra 1309 BS). (87.) L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah, pp. 113–14; J. Westland, A Report on the District of Jessore, p. 208; Statement of Industrial Labour for 1901–05, see under ‘Sugar Mills’, p. 21; N.C. Basu, ‘Kotchandpurer Chinir Kal’. (88.) In 1855, Basirhat sent 20,000 maunds of sugar to Calcutta. P. Banerjee, Calcutta and Its Hinterland—A Study in Economic History of India, 1833–1900 (Calcutta: Progressive, 1975), p. 99; Sugar Plants and Sugar, p. 6; ‘Shantipure Chinir Karkhana’; Sitanath Biswas, ‘Kendagachhir Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, II, no. 4 (Jaistha 1309 BS); Motilal Saha, ‘Basirhate Chinir Karkhana’ Mahajanbandhu, II, no. 11 (Paus 1309 BS); U. Rakshit, ‘Gobardanga Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, I, no. 10 (Agrahayan 1308 BS); Letter to Editor, Samachar Darpan (21 April 1838), cited in B. Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre, Vol. II, p. 276; Kajer Lok, vol. 1, no. 3 (March 1907), p. 34; Kajer Lok, vol. 2, no. 4 (1908 April), pp. 43–4; Kajer Lok, vol. 3, no. 7 (July 1909), pp. 99–100. A.K. Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, p. 362. In Gorakhpur and Basti, zamindars compelled peasants to grow sugarcane but forcibly removed the kolhu in their areas to ensure the supply of sugarcane to the mill. Sahid Amin, Sugar Cane and Sugar in Gorakhpur: An Inquiry into

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Machines in the Periphery Peasant Production for Capitalist Enterprise in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 120. (89.) ‘Shantipure Chinir Karkhana’. (90.) Sugar Plants and Sugar, pp. 5–8; ISC, 1920, p. 110. (91.) ‘Sukhcharer Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, III, no. 7 (Bhadra 1310 BS), p.165; ‘The manufacture of sugar has considerably dwindled in Nadia, owing to the low price of imported sugar and several workshops have closed down failing to compete with it.’ Similar reports came from Khulna, 24-Parganas, Jessore, and Birbhum. RSCI, 1924, pp. 19, 50, 56, 58, 83, 87. (92.) A.K. Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, pp. 367, 378, Table: 12.2. In 1919–20, only 20 sugar mills were at work all over India; together they could not match the production of three average-sized mills in Java. Morris D. Morris, ‘Large-scale Industry’, in The Cambridge Economic History of India (CEHI), Vol. II: c. 1757–c. 1970, edited by Dharma Kumar (The Cambridge University Press, 1982 [Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984]), p. 635; Report on the Indian Tariff Board on Sugar (hereafter ITB [Sugar Industry]), 1931, pp. 473–4. H.D. Chattopadhyay, ‘Khanduar Chinir Karkhana’, p. 148. C.J. Baker observed, ‘Investment began to flood into the sugar industry. A large number of new joint stock ventures to construct sugar mills were floated from 1931 onwards; the import of sugar mill machinery soared; and thirteen new factories were built in the province by 1937–8.’— An Indian Rural Economy 1880–1955, p. 377. (93.) ITB (Sugar Industry), 1932, p. 111; The Sugar Technologists’ Association of India, Cawnpore, Year Book, 1939–40, Appendix 4, pp. 14-15; M. Saha, ‘Basirhate Chinir Karkhana’, p. 264. (94.) During 1937–47, Bengal’s share to total Indian production stagnated at an average 2.7 per cent. BISC, pp. 199–201, 217; A.K. Bagchi,’European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, p. 383. ITB (Sugar Industry), 1931, pp. 15, 119. (95.) B.K. Chowdhury, ‘Agrarian Relations’, pp. 258–9; M.D. Morris, ‘Large-scale Industry’, pp. 65, 635; G.N. Gupta, Industries and Resources, 65–7. (96.) The chance of an accident in the old mill was very high due to ‘the sudden breakage’ of the pestle. B.K. Chowdhury, ‘Agrarian Relations’, pp. 237–8. (97.) The new mill, sold for Rs 80 only, needed four persons to crush 8.25 maunds of cane per hour. G.N. Gupta, Industries and Resources, p. 66; RSCI, pp. 77, 92, 105, 123, 131; Sugar Plants and Sugar, p. 6. See also ‘Akh Mara Kal’, Mahajanbandhu, II, no. 2, Chaitra, 1308, pp. 46–7.

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Machines in the Periphery (98.) G.N. Gupta, Industries and Resources, p 66; RSCI, pp 77, 92, 105, 123, 131; Sugar Plants and Sugar, pp. 7–8, 24; BISC, pp. 24, 208, 217. (99.) C.J. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy 1880–1955, p. 375; Directorate of Agriculture, District Handbook: Birbhum, 1963, p. 25; Bengal National Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Souvenir [hereafter BNCCI], p. 56. (100.) Most notable mills were the two units of Messrs Andrew Yule & Co. at Howrah, Gauripur Oil Mill of Messrs Barry and Co. at Naihati, and the Baranagore Mill. L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah, p. 113; P. Banerjee, Calcutta and Its Hinterland, p. 100; Henry Walter, ‘Census of the City of Dhaka, 1830’, Asiatic Researches, vol. XVII, p. 538. Statement of Industrial Labour for 1901–05, pp. 1– 18; Santoshnath Seth, Mokamer Banijyatatta (Calcutta, 1327 BS), p 19; ‘Bharater Kal’ Mahajanbandhu, I, no. 5 (1308 BS), p. 104. Jessop & Co’s mill paid 100 per cent dividends. P.E. Lander, Report on the Indian Vegetable Oil Industry, pp. 24, 27, 32, Appendix I. (101.) CEHI (II) p. 507; Census of India, 1911, Table 15, E; Census of India, 1921, p. 408; OCIC, pp. 10–11. IIC Evidence, p. 43. P.E. Lander, Report on the Indian Vegetable Oil Industry, p. 32. Statement of Industrial Labour of 1901–05 (Calcutta, 1906), pp. 1–18. (102.) J.G. Cumming, Review of the Industrial Position and Prospects in Bengal in 1908 with Special reference to the Industrial Survey of 1890, Part II of Special Report (Calcutta, 1908), p. 43; Census of India, 1911; L.S.S. O’Malley, Murshidabad, p. 144; RSCI, pp. 92, 105, 112–13. BISC, p 2; Directorate of Agriculture, Birbhum, 1963, p. 25. (103.) In 1947, East Bengal had only 4 and West Bengal had 28 oil mills with 2,000 workers. BISC, pp. 23, 165, 199–200. Arthik Jagat, 30 June 1947, p. 152. T.A. Timberg, The Marwaris, pp. 54–5. IIC Evidence, p. 43. RSCI, p. 46; S.N. Seth, Mokamer Banijyatatta, p. 19. (104.) S. Gangopadhyay, Swadeshi Andolan O Bangla Sahitya (Calcutta, 1367 BS), pp. 111–12. (105.) Anjana Roy Choudhury, ‘Caste and Occupation in Bhowanipur’, Man in India, 44, no. 3 (September 1964), pp. 207, 215–17. (106.) J.G. Cumming, Review of the Industrial Position, p. 43; OCIC, p. 12. The 1951 census refers only to West Bengal, and hence not comparable. (107.) Assamese mills yielded 12 to 13 seers as against 16 seers by the Rangpur’s. Sarah Hilaly, The Railways in Assam 1885–1947 (Varanasi, 2007), pp. 271–2.

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Machines in the Periphery (108.) Strong also adds, ‘These mills consist of five parts: the gachh or foundation, the naipat or tube in which the jait or log revolves; the joal or yoke and the katli or capstan-like lever, which is pulled by the bullock. The jait has to be renewed every month and the total cost is Rs 20.’ F.W. Strong, Bengal District Gazetteer, Dinajpur (Calcutta, 1912), p. 76; RSCI, p. 81. (109.) OCIC, pp. 12, 20, 23, 36; ‘Kolhus or oilmen are scattered all over Chittagong. Locally produced oil is always preferred by the people to the millmade oil but the former cannot compete with the latter as the cost of production is greater.’ RSCI, p. 105.

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Technology Beckons

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Technology Beckons Bhadralok Enterprise in the Suburbs Smritikumar Sarkar

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords The chapter studies two interesting cases of bhadralok enterprise. A small class of English-educated élites, the bhadralok, had literally shaped the nineteenthcentury Bengali mind. Their role in encouraging anti-colonialism and the politics of organization is well known but not their contribution as entrepreneurs. Most of them considered the productive technology of the West as the panacea for rural poverty and preferred the small-scale industry. From the schoolteacher to the petty clerk, everyone tried in his own way to make use of the new technology in the villages, be it through match manufacturing or hosiery weaving. Studying all these simply as a part of the political programme of swadeshi ignores the important role played by technology in itself, which was no less attractive to the youth than the ideology of anti-colonialism. Keywords:   bhadralok, swadeshi, match manufacturing, hosiery, nationalism, anti-colonialism

Shilpei sukh shanti, desher mangal, shilper helay desh jay rasatal. Dao artha akatare, jar jato bal, shilper pratistha karo, labhibe mangal.*

Bhadralok means a cultured person—the well-behaved, better-placed people of high birth, as distinct from the baseborn (chhotolok). In British Bengal, the term assumed a narrower connotation, meaning English-educated men distinguished by their urbane etiquette, profession, and, who had largely moulded the nineteenth-century Bengali mind by their thought and actions. Their role in Page 1 of 46

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Technology Beckons developing the ideology of anti-colonialism, the politics of organization, and giving the nationalist movement its icons and idioms is much too well known;1 but not so much their concern for the rural poor. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya (1838–94), a doyen of the nineteenth-century Bengali literature and an apostle of Indian (p.180) nationalism, had possibly initiated the poverty discourse. In his inimitable style, he praised the British for whatever they had done for India—roads, steamers, railways, telegraph, medicines, cities, law courts, and English education. But he also raised the question as to how all these really helped her peasants—the wretched lot of Rama Kaibarta and Hasan Seikh.2 In R.C. Dutt (1848–1909) did the problem of rural poverty find its most powerful thinker. An ardent advocate of everything British in his early life, Dutt’s encounter with the Orissa famine of 1866 as commissioner turned him into a critic of the Raj. Thus, in his critique of British rule, he attributed the recurrence of famine to the escalating poverty of the masses. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), poet and humanist, who had sung out the heart of Bengal, was shocked to see the plight of his countrymen under the most powerful government on earth. Much of this, he believed, was due to rural decay. To Prafullachandra Roy (1861–1944), a Calcutta University professor, scientist, and entrepreneur, the more serious problem was the declining intake of the staple food, causing deprivation and debilitation among the rural mass, mainly the mothers. The poverty also degraded the social and moral life of the village, argued Aurobindo Ghosh (1872–1950), the guru of the Bengal revolutionaries and later philosopher and yogi, also the author of the Life Divine. ‘Indian peasantry’, he wrote, ‘has always been distinguished by their superior piety, gentleness, sobriety, purity, thrift and native intelligence. They are now being brutalized by unexampled oppression; attracted to liquor shops, which a benevolent government liberally supplies … and gradually driven to the same habits of looseness and brutality, which disgrace the European proletariat.’3 Bankimchandra considered the Permanent Settlement the permanent cause of the ruin of Bengal,4 thus initiating a lengthy public discourse. Men like Akshoykumar Datta (1820–86) and Kishorichand Mitra (1822–73) worked hard to create public opinion against the exploitation of peasants by landlords. To R.C. Dutt, the excessive land revenue demand was the root cause of India’s ills. The siphoning of capital from agriculture in the form of land revenue and the destruction of her village industries remained the main plank of the bhadralok’s arguments against the Raj. Long before the nationalist rumblings were heard, a group of Calcutta boys in their journal had urged upon their countrymen to (p.181) shake off the delusion of their subservience, ‘natural idleness and lethargy’ and come forward ‘armed with the weapon of business, commerce, and industry’ to ‘triumph over Page 2 of 46

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Technology Beckons enemies of their prosperity’. In the early 1830s, they had pointed out what later passed down in history as the drain of wealth. ‘Foreigners come here and in a short time earn enough to live in comfort back home, and our country is being pumped dry in the process.’ Bholanath Chandra (1822–1910) stated it more emphatically, ‘It has been claimed in government reports that India has been gradually prospering. In reality … India is getting poorer day by day.’5 Bankimchandra did not oppose the dumping of Manchester goods in India. He argued, if the weaver lost his traditional trade, ‘there is no bar to his earning by other means. If he cannot meet his demand by working on loom, why can’t he earn his livelihood by planting paddy?’ There were few takers of his views. Fellow Chandranath Bose (1844–1910) demanded protection of the handloom, as R.C. Dutta made a classic exposition of the impact of free trade on India’s most extensive industry. ‘We are experiencing everyday,’ Rabindranth put it more bluntly, ‘the people of India, which had once supplied cloth to the world, have to clothe themselves today with products of other countries.’6 How did the bhadralok seek to address the problem of poverty? Bholanath Chandra’s clarion call, ‘Let us receive commercial and industrial education … [to] dethrone the King Cotton of Manchester’, literally ignited the youth. In March 1876, ‘a group of enlightened youth’ in Dhaka took an oath in a public meeting to ‘reduce the use of British cloth to its minimum’. A Dhaka daily described it as commendable in view of Bengal’s growing dependence on Manchester cloth and the plight of her weavers.7 All these marked the beginning of what later on crystallized into the concept of the swadeshi, which far outlived British rule. Encouraged by the vision of the industrialized West and a resurgent Japan in the East, the bhadralok considered industrialization the panacea of Bengal’s ills. Dwarakanath Tagore had been thus hailed as the trendsetter when he launched his firm, Carr, Tagore & Company (1834). ‘Perhaps, things will now change…. May others follow the path shown by the Tagores and engage in similar ventures, which are beneficial and bold.’ The euphoria soon died down with (p. 182) the collapse of the business houses, leading to the flight of capital to land. The bhadralok later shifted to small industries. Satish Chandra Mukherjee (1865–1948) of the Don Society argued that the large-scale industry only enriched a few and reduced the millions to wage slaves, a view also shared by Bholanath Chandra.8 The bhadralok response to the beckon of technology was based on the ground reality. As India lacked skilled manpower, they argued, even a small cotton mill would need not only foreign machineries but also supervisors and fitters difficult for capital-short projects to afford. Prafullachandra Roy faced immense problems in mobilizing capital for Bengal Chemicals, ultimately salvaged by his friends and students. Small-scale enterprise, Roy admitted in his later life, was much Page 3 of 46

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Technology Beckons less trouble prone as it required low-cost inputs and relied more on the local resource.9 Bholanath Chandra argued that large-scale industry was difficult also due to British fiscal policy. ‘I know of no act in modern fiscal legislation,’ R.C. Dutt wrote, ‘more unwise and hurtful to an infant industry than the imposition of an excise tax unknown in any civilized country. And I know of nothing more humiliating to the government of a Great Empire like India than the correspondence which you will find recorded in Parliamentary Blue Books leading to these fiscal changes.’10 Aurobindo Ghosh opposed the large-scale industry on political grounds. It would provide ‘a field for English capital and English skilled work in India’, with Indians only as clerk and labour, ‘not out of any desire for India’s goods’ but because the labour was ‘cheap’. All these would only diminish India’s wealth. A schoolteacher and a firebrand revolutionary, Bipinchandra Pal (1858–1932) argued that it would only add to India’s dependence on foreign capital and technology, obstructing ‘all real improvements in the economic condition of the people’.11 Hence, Ramananda Chattopadhyay (1865–1943) considered political freedom as the prerequisite for Indian industrialization. Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925), who had given up his successful legal career for the cause of ‘New Bengal’, regarded the Western industry as a monster. ‘Look at the changing landscape of Calcutta —the trails of smoke belched out by industrial chimneys and the squalid slums of the jute mill. The large-scale industry enriches only foreign mill (p.183) owners and ruins millions of our people.’ To him, it was also alien to our traditional ethos that would ‘degrade the moral life of labour, attracting them to liquor and other vices of life’.12 Here is a ring of the philosophical hatred for the large-scale industry characteristic of Gandhi. In his famous interview, ‘If I were a Minister,’ Gandhi stated, ‘I don’t believe that industrialization is necessary for any country. It is much less so for India … [for it lacks] deliverance for the masses from their grinding poverty.’13 Industry, nevertheless, held a wide appeal for both friend and foe. British officials often taunted Indians for their craze for salaried work and lack of industrial and commercial enterprise. Nationalist leaders like Prafullachandra Roy urged upon the youth to launch businesses and industries. Rabindranath Tagore denounced the British for the drainage of capital from India, taken away in the form of land revenue and commercial profit, thus creating a stumbling block to Indian enterprises. ‘But you keep on applying for jobs being lured by England’s exalted declarations,’ protested Tagore. ‘Alas, the endless patience of beggars!’ A section of the bhadralok considered regeneration of village industries as the solution, although others doubted its practicability. ‘A revival can hardly be hoped for,’ Surendranath Tagore observed, ‘however efficacious Page 4 of 46

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Technology Beckons the remedy, as long as the cause which originally killed them is allowed to remain operating in all their virulence.’14 Since large-scale industry was difficult to establish and the dependence on jobs had to be reduced, small-scale enterprise became the obvious choice. From Calcutta, the hub of intellectual activities, the message thus spread to the districts through schoolteachers, post office and railway officials, and clerks in government offices. The local press also helped generate an encouraging atmosphere for enterprise based on the new technology, leading to a plethora of enterprises being set up by mostly inexperienced enthusiasts. From the minute items of daily use, such as comb, soap, hair oil, matchbox or pencil, to new consumer and surgical instruments, electrical goods and cooking devices, the wide-ranging choice inspires awe.15 Like large-scale manufacturing, small-scale manufacturing too started from Calcutta, and eventually spread out to the suburb, driven by bhadralok initiative. Surendra Mohan Basu of Calcutta stayed six years in Japan to learn dyeing and calico printing. Back home, he started his factory, (p.184) Bengal Waterproof Works (1919), at Calcutta. It was the first enterprise to produce chemically proofed cloth in India, diversifying to tarpaulin, canvas, paper proofing, and oil or rubber cloth sections. The firm soon emerged as the largest producer of raincoat, brand-named Duckback, supplying to the railways, government, army, and local bodies all over India. This was soon followed by other oil cloth firms. Dhaka came to have two such units—one of Supati Ranjan Nag at Wari and other of Bhupati Nath Bose in Malkhangar village.16 Of the wide range of industries, only safety match and hosiery have been taken here as case studies. Though largely dictated by the availability of data, the choice has a rationale too. Pioneering enterprises as they were in the whole of India, all of these were the direct outcome of the swadeshi ideology, with match manufacturing being virtually canonized. There was hardly any session of the Bengal Legislative Council in which leaders like Surendranath Banerjee or Bhupendra Nath Bose did not refer to it.17 More illustrative is the success of hosiery; foreign companies were using local brand names to sell their goods in India. The success led to the proliferation of the hosiery industry in eastern India, which grew large enough to slowly emerge as the highest foreign exchange earning industry in the small-scale sector.

Match Manufacturing The Pioneer

The match industry in Europe had evolved out of its ‘handicraft origins’ marked by the coexistence of cottage and small units using low level technology. A rudimentary form of factory organization based on ‘a well-developed division of labour’, they used machines only for making the splint. A network of putting out supplied them with matchboxes made in peasant homes, whereas the job of Page 5 of 46

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Technology Beckons putting splints into frames, dipping them in chemical dough, filling the matchbox, and packaging took place in the factory. The labour mostly consisted of women and children. By the mid-nineteenth century, the old form of match manufacture in Europe slowly gave way to the mechanized factory. In Japan, the industry flourished by an interaction of the formal and informal sectors, from where the match industry was ‘transplanted to India’.18 (p.185) Calcutta, the gateway of technology transmission to India, had received it first, drawing bhadralok attention almost immediately after English traders introduced it in the early nineteenth century, largely through Japanese enterprise. Sporadic attempts to produce matches at the cottage level started in the 1860s, reminding the reader of Tagore’s reference to the early Hindumela euphoria.19 A little later, small-scale units aimed at catering to local demand began to appear in ones and twos, first in Calcutta and then in the districts. Most notable of these were the Bengal Safety Match Manufacturing Co. and the Indian Match Factory Ltd. Founded in 1892, these were the first match factories in India. These enterprises failed due to non-viable planning and poor capital base. Bhupendra Nath Bose argued that the ‘first promoter of a match factory in Calcutta brought the machinery from England, which proved valueless as match making on a large-scale had greatly decreased in England. They had to indent on fresh machinery from Sweden and that exhausted their capital and the enterprise came to an end’.20 England or Sweden; machineries imported by early match entrepreneurs were of first generation technology, then in a process of being phased out in Europe. Hence, they could get them cheap but failed to work them with profit. Rashbehari Ghosh’s Bande Mataram Factory with match experts like S.N. Mitra and A.P. Ghosh, and a chemist like Sir P.C. Roy was better organized. With German machinery, imported gun-powder, paper, and wood, Bande Mataram matches were comparable to the imported brands sold in Calcutta. This was followed by the Oriental Match Manufacturing Co.21 The local entrepreneur at this stage was looking for a hand-driven machine for making match splints and local matchwood, to skip costly imports. Early attempts to solve the problems failed till Bande Mataram shifted to Charuchandra Mullick’s dipping machine and, after a series of attempts, narrowed down on the geon (Exoecaria agallocha) wood of the Sundarbans that could be easily towed through the river at little cost. Mahendrachandra Nandy’s ‘guillotine machine’ changed the industry. For some time, he had been toying with the idea of helping the artisan while still a student of the Calcutta Medical College (1872–76). He developed a new loom, besides printing ink and coconut-shell buttons. Back in his native village, he established

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Technology Beckons an (p.186) iron foundry and a weaving factory, but the most fruitful was his splint making machine.22 ‘As a direct result of Dr. Nandi’s invention,’ argued Aiyer and Chirayath, ‘a large number of cottage units sprang up within a short time in different parts of Bengal. All operations in such units were performed manually.’23 By the 1920s, the machine had a four-fold rise in its price, thereby indicating its demand. Dr Nandi did not patent it in his name, to help match making spread as a cottage industry; but it proved commercially unviable. The organized sector of the industry also did not fare better. In 1912, Bande Mataram ceased work; Oriental collapsed next year, followed by the Calcutta Match Factory. Thus, when in 1923 the Ghosh Committee was appointed to comment on the feasibility of the match industry, it did not find a single ‘match factory worth the name working in Bengal’.24 The failure has been attributed to ‘unscrupulous foreign competition’. M.N. Mehta, a match manufacturer of Calcutta, described it as the only obstacle to the growth of a viable industry in Bengal. Prior to World War I, matches came mainly from Sweden and Germany with a small quantity from Japan. By the early 1910s, Japan had largely replaced Germany as a foreign supplier. In 1912–13, India imported 15.12 billion gross boxes, half of which came from Japan and the rest from Sweden. The outbreak of the war dislocated the supply from Europe, much to the advantage of Japan, which supplied 97 per cent of India’s total match imports in 1918–19.25 Opposing the official view of improper localization of the match industry in Bengal, S.N. Mitra, proprietor of Bande Mataram, attributed its ruin to government’s failure to ease the supply of local matchwood. The BISC also pointed out the abundance of matchwood in Bengal, which eventually drew the Swedish giant Western India Match Company (WIMCO) to Calcutta. Like Bande Mataram, WIMCO also used local geon wood for its matchbox and splint. However, with imported wood and raw materials, Bengal enterprises could not compete with the Japanese industry, enjoying cheaper supply of labour and wood.26 Match manufacturing moved out of Bengal. In Bombay also, most early enterprises conformed to the Bengal pattern—too much of reliance on the imported machineries and raw materials, leading to the same end. The Ahmedabad units, such as the Gujarath Islam Match Manufacturing Co. (1895) (p.187) or Amrit Match Factory (1895, Bilaspur 1897) collapsed by 1915. But in south India, the industry achieved a unique success, discussed a little later. Towards Protection

In the wake of the post-war financial stringency, the government of India imposed an import duty on matches at the rate of Rs 1.5 per gross. Introduced purely as a temporary measure, it boosted the local industry. From 1.2 crore in 1920–21, match imports nosedived to a little over half a lakh gross in 1925–26. Page 7 of 46

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Technology Beckons The declining import encouraged local manufactures ‘to rework defunct concern or to start new one’. By 1928, Bengal had 27 match factories. The official observer admitted that ‘many large match factories have been started in Calcutta and its surrounding places and it promises to become one of the organised industries of the province’. Most of these were small units with an output of 50 to 200 gross per day.27 Two years later, Bengal produced six lakh gross of match boxes per month as against seven by the rest of India. Meanwhile, the industry spread to Jalpaiguri, Faridpur, Rangpur, Mymensingh and Chittagong, with one unit in Dhaka and two in Naranyanganj. Faridpur and Mymensingh had four and five respectively. The cheap matchwood also attracted it to areas near the Sunderbans. In Dhaka and Tripura, the industry also recovered much of its early swadeshi zeal. Based on the Japanese model, women and children made the matchboxes at home, while the wrapping and packaging were left to part-time workers. With Nandy’s machine and local wood (kadam, shimul, devdaru), they turned out 6 to 10 gross a day. The manufacture of dipping and splinting machines also started in some areas.28 The prosperity soon ended with the multinational firms relocating to India. M.N. Mehta summed up its impact thus, The greatest menace to Indian match industry is the foreign competition launched by Swedish American match combine, which is out to establish a world monopoly by adopting methods both fair and unfair, by buying over small match units, underselling their goods, scaring away Indian match dealers … and by inaugurating a system of espionage hitherto unknown in the commercial world. (p.188) So penetrating was the competition that it could destabilize even factories located in remote areas. To this was added the menace of Japanese competition selling their matches in Calcutta at Rs 2 a gross against Rs 2.5 for the local variety.29 By 1919, Japan had nearly eliminated European matches from the Indian market, hitting Sweden hard. Attempts at mutual sharing of the Asian market between Swedish and Japanese industries had failed and the imposition of a duty on match import worsened their position. But Sweden could hardly afford to lose the Indian market and hence decided to take it to India, thereby avoiding the payment of import duty and squarely facing the Japanese competition. The labour being exceedingly cheap in India, notwithstanding the imported raw material and wood, the cost of making matches in India was cheaper than Europe. The only qualm was that of locating the leading Swedish industry in a British colony. Thus, when WIMCO was founded in 1923, ‘as a wholly owned

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Technology Beckons subsidiary company of Swedish Match’, it was tagged ‘as a temporary measure’ being a part of the ‘long run aim’ of increasing ‘match exports from Sweden’. WIMCO: The Giant

In 1924, WIMCO started its first two units in India: at Ambernath near Bombay and at Dakshineswar, close to Calcutta. Five years later, when the government of India protected the match industry, the Swedes decided to expand their plants in India; they added one at Dhubri (1926) and energized the Bareilly (1929) and Madras (1930) units, followed by a match splint and box factory in the Andaman Islands (1929) to cater to the mainland units. All these were wholly owned by Swedish Match, except for the Dhubri unit (Assam Match Company Ltd. or AMCO), with 31 per cent of its share sold to the Indian capital market. Highly capital and technology intensive, these factories were organized in such a way as to ensure the supply of the cheapest match all over India. Per Hilding argued that WIMCO ‘was in a class of its own in the Indian market’, ensuing a ‘triangular contest’ between the Indian machine-made, hand-made, and its own matches.30 Soon, the WIMCO match became unbeatable in the Indian market. The Dakshineswar factory, started with an installed capacity of 5,250 gross a day, doubled the rate by 1928. Between 1924 (p.189) and 1927, the cost of production fell by 62 per cent when the best local firm stagnated at Re 1.5, as against WIMCO’s Re1.12, per gross. WIMCO’s business strategy of colourful packaging also had an important role. To unsuspecting rural buyers, the WIMCO matchbox had greater appeal than the dull looking local product. Increasingly, it became difficult for the local producer to compete with the cheap yet attractive WIMCO match. The vernacular press launched a campaign against Swedish matches urging upon people to patronize local products, but all in vain. By 1945, Calcutta suburbs had only 5 match factories against 27 in 1928; the rest of Bengal had only 2.31 Even the Calcutta-based larger concerns could not compete with WIMCO. In 1923, Esavi India Match Manufacturing Co. was started with a daily output of 3,000 gross, rising to 5,500 by 1928. Similar other concerns like Karimbhoy Match Manufacturing Co. and M.M. Mehta’s Match Factory had average daily outputs of 1,500 and 2,200 gross matches respectively. In 1945, the Deshpande Committee observed, ‘Two of the five units surveyed in Calcutta employ about 82% of the workforce engaged in the match industry in Bengal. In three other units, employment as compared to the pre-war period had diminished.’ By 1947, WIMCO had nearly monopolized the Indian market, catering to 73 per cent of it in 1953. Esavi India had till then ‘survived WIMCO’s cut-throat competition’, but not for long.32

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Technology Beckons Cottage Sector: The Case of South India Compared

The cottage sector of the match industry fared worse. In 1924, a Dhaka observer stated his experience of home-made matches thus, ‘When the matches are struck or rubbed against the prepared surface, the match heads come off and paste on the striking surface rubs away.’ The situation did not change from what Rabindranath Tagore had observed some 60 years earlier with regard to Hindumela matches.33 What did really go wrong with the pioneering cottage sector in Bengal, vis-à-vis its success in the south? In the 1920s, match manufacturing began to spread in Sivakasi, Sattur, and Kovilpatti of Tamilnadu through the enterprise of P. Aiya Nadar and A. Shanmuga Nadar. Coming of a family of spice traders, (p.190) the nadar brothers turned to match industry under the aegis of their caste association. Known as the Nadar Mahajana Sangam, the association took a number of measures for the uplift of the low-caste toddy sellers. Robert Hardgrave argued that the Sangam always urged upon the nadar to try manufacturing and considered the ‘industrial progress of the community’ as one of its major concerns.34 As their family trade had been losing its importance in the mid-1910s, the nadar brothers turned to safety match, a consumer product in demand from almost everyone. In 1922, they came to Calcutta, then the match-producing centre of India, to learn the technique; this was followed by their visit to Japan as apprentices to master the basic chemical compositions used in the match. With imported German machines, they started their first factory in Sivakasi, a suburban centre of cotton and tobacco trade in Tamilnadu.35 The nadar brothers’ story up to this point does not differ much from the narrative of the bhadralok entrepreneur in Bengal, other than the difference in social hierarchy. As pioneers, most Bengali match entrepreneurs went to England, Germany, or Japan to acquire the expertise. They too had started with imported machineries, raw materials, paper, and matchwood, often with a higher input of capital than the brothers of Sivakasi. The initial result and entrepreneurial experience, in both the cases, also remained the same. The only difference is that after the initial failure, the nadar brothers had achieved a U-turn, when most of their Bengali counterparts resigned in frustration. Per Hilding argued, ‘Mechanised production was costly since only certain quality of woods could be used, but labour was plentiful and cheap because of the economically depressed conditions in the region. After a year and a half they decided to switch to manual production of the type similar to the one Japanese had introduced.’ Since then, they did not have to look back. By the late 1920s, their enterprise led to the clustering of ‘about a dozen family units’ and within a decade or so a cottage industry flourished at Sivakasi.

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Technology Beckons Sivakasi was ideally suited for sun drying the match head/paper and all the works of labelling and packaging. An agriculturally backward zone, it was also a vast reserve of cheap labour, so far untapped for industrial uses. Like the Japanese, the nadar brothers relied on women and child labour. The matchwood, chemicals, and paper in (p.191) the beginning had to be brought from outside, but the eventual localization of the match industry led to a clustering of softwood and paper plants in the nearby district endowed with the flora. Sivakasi had to import only the chemicals from north India. As the industry spread to Ramnad, Sattur, and Kovilpatti, the interaction between its formal and informal sectors deepened.36 If all these had helped match manufacturing in the south, the cottage match industry in Bengal suffered from improper localization with most of its units located in Calcutta suburbs or in north Bengal districts. Jalpaiguri, Faridpur, Rangpur, Rajsahi, Dhaka, Mymensingh, Tripura, and Chittagong, where most cottage units were localized, received good rainfall and was well cultivated, apart from housing the old cottage industries like weaving and brass work. Hence, labour was not cheap. Incidentally, not a single cottage match unit was located in the dry and arid districts of southwest Bengal, which had all the ecological attributes of Sivakasi and vast forest reserves. But enterprise and ecology do not fully explain the nadar brothers’ success. An important part of their early breakthrough could be attributed to their ‘particularistic caste loyalties’ as also their attachment to old commercial and social values and institutions.37 Sivakasi in the late nineteenth century slowly emerged as a centre of tobacco and cotton trade under the aegis of its nadar merchants. Other nadar traders followed suit and established ‘a virtual monopoly’ of the local trade in grains. Out of the profit of these trades, a fund was raised for the welfare of the community. The Nadar Mahajana Sangam, as Robert Hardgrave argued, served as ‘a base for the economic and social rise of the community’.38 Successful marketing of low-priced bulk goods such as safety matches called for a wide network and an efficient supply organization, difficult to procure for the early entrepreneur. The nadar merchants’ extensive trade and transport network helped them reach a wide market at a low cost. Women in nadar families looked after the production and wage payment, while men concentrated on collection of raw materials and marketing. More than anything else, it is their savings on account of labour and marketing that sustained them in years of cut-throat competition. By the early 1940s, nadars succeeded in making Ramnad an important match manufacturing (p.192) centre. ‘Sattur and Sivakasi,’ the Labour Enquiry Committee reported in 1945, ‘are virtual match towns where bulk of the population seems dependent on the industry and in almost every

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Technology Beckons home can be seen men, women and children engaged in some process of match manufacture such as, box-making, box-labelling, etc.’39 In the post-colonial period, nadars added ancillary plants for the splint and veneer manufacture, printing press, and chemical units to their parent enterprises, besides having their own means of transport. By the 1960s, there were nearly 800 small match factories in Sivakasi generating some ‘useful linkage effects’. Splints and matchbox manufacturing helped in the rise of furniture-making units. The handling of chemicals for the safety match led to fireworks, explosives, and chemical industries. The use of colourful labels for the matchbox also helped localize litho-printing units in Sivakasi.40 Unlike the nadars or early Marwaris of Calcutta, caste, community, or kin relationship did not help in mobilizing support for the match entrepreneur in Bengal. Mostly of the bhadralok origin, none of them was earlier associated with trade whatsoever, and was hence ignorant of the market. Poor capital base and want of organizational skill distinguished the Bengal industry. In the beginning, the choice between European large-scale match factory and Japanese cottage unit also caused confusion. By opting for the former, most had wasted their funds. The WIMCO undersold cottage products even in the local market. For collecting WIMCO matchboxes with fascinating thematic labels had by this time emerged as a favourite pastime and a hobby of the rural people. The Indian match market had been growing in absolute terms, with the match consumption increasing from 15 million gross boxes to 30 million in the 1921–49 period. Between 1926 and 1941, WIMCO’s share of the market nearly quadrupled. The intervention of a new policy regime by the government of India, with its thrust on securing employment in the small-scale cottage sector, partly changed the situation from the mid-1950s. The production in the organized sector stagnated so much that from 76 per cent in 1949, WIMCO’s market share nosedived to 28 per cent in the late 1970s. In 1977–78, 1.2 lakh persons were employed in the cottage sector of the industry compared to only 8,000 in the large-scale.41 By that time, only the WIMCO’s Dakshineswar plant had survived in Bengal.

(p.193) Hosiery Industry The First Hosiery Enterprise of India

Like rice milling, knitting, bleaching, and tailoring of hosiery goods (vests, socks, and underwear) spread to suburban Bengal. European demand for these goods was so far met by imports from Britain that also supplied the hosiery knitting machines. How many of these were actually in use in early twentieth-century Bengal is not known. A rough estimate of the 1920s put their number close to 800, describing it as ‘a new cottage industry of Bengal’ that would soon spread to the whole of India.42

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Technology Beckons Annadaprasad Mukherjee, manager of the Bhagyakul zamindar, was the pioneer of the hosiery industry in India. In course of a casual visit to the International Exhibition at Calcutta (1888), the hosiery-knitting machine drew his attention. The new product, the small size of the machine, and Calcutta’s dependence on British hosiery goods held out good commercial prospects. He thus decided to launch a hosiery factory. In 1889, he imported two socks-knitting machines, installed them at his Khidirpur residence, and received another consignment of two in the next year. That marked the beginning of the Indian hosiery industry, which achieved a third of the total world production in 1990.43 In 1892, encouraged by his early success, Annadaprasad established the Oriental Hosiery Manufacturing Company Ltd in a Calcutta suburb. A joint-stock company with an authorized capital of 2 lakh rupees, the Oriental Hosiery had men like Sir Ramesh Chandra Mitra, Rai Akhilchandra, and Purnachandra Mukherjee on its Board of Directors. Sir Ramesh Chandra Mitra had been Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court for two terms.44 The boiler engine, scoring and washing machines, and steam press were imported from the well-known Messrs Mellor & Sons of Nottingham, besides having three English experts engaged for the factory construction, machine installation, and floor management. All these indicate Annadaprasad’s sincerity and clarity of purpose, only rarely found among the bhadralok entrepreneurs; but the dream project did not succeed. Lalit Mohon Mukherjee, his son and the latter-day leader of the Bengal hosiery industry, attributed its failure to the hostility of European departmental stores in Calcutta. (p.194) They feared that the growth of a hosiery industry in Bengal would neutralize their role as marketing agents of the leading British firms. Hence, they refused ‘to push the sale of Oriental Hosiery goods’.45 Marketing was a major hurdle the early entrepreneur often failed to clear. Prafulla Chandra Roy had once observed, ‘It is a notorious fact that nascent industries are greatly handicapped for want of a suitable market. The local trader demands high rate of commission … push foreign manufactures of which the supply is abundant and try to force most unreasonable condition on the home product.’ The marketing also remained the most neglected part of the early industrial strategy. But why did the shop owner refuse to sell Oriental’s goods? It could be due to either unattractive commission, low turnover of business, sluggish demand, or irregular supply of the product. Anyway, the consideration was purely commercial. Why did an able organizer like Annadaprasad, after having engaged selling agents,46 have to depend on the departmental stores at all? In reality, with a paid-up capital of only 20 per cent, the Oriental had been facing financial problem since its inception, further aggravated by its marketing difficulties. If Calcutta’s departmental stores were reluctant to ‘push the sale of Page 13 of 46

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Technology Beckons indigenous goods, the company’s selling agents were equally incompetent for their job’. The real problem seems to lie somewhere else. Calcutta’s hosiery market in the 1890s was entirely fed by imports. In organizing a mechanized plant based on English expertise, European design, and imported raw materials, Annadaprasad had actually aimed at the import substitution. This did not click, for which the limited nature of the hosiery market in Calcutta and its craze for the imported goods were largely to blame.47 The editor of Mahajanbandhu, the Calcutta-based traders’ journal in vernacular, described the craze for foreign goods as the virus killing the nascent enterprise. He wrote, ‘The factory, which was started at Bhabanipur in Calcutta for making hosiery goods has been still lying idle. It failed, because the native people did not favour its goods … the reason which had ruined the match and glass factories in Bengal.’ An official report on the Bengal hosiery industry had similarly attributed the Oriental’s failure to the absence of swadeshi. ‘In those days, the love for the use of Swadeshi goods did not as yet assume a driving force in the economic life of the people and (p.195) therefore the appeal to buy and support indigenous products did not always meet with an encouraging response.’48 Swadeshi or no-swadeshi, Annadaprasad’s project was not viable. With machineries, raw materials and experts brought from England, it could not undersell British goods produced at the higher level of industrialization. The inordinate delay in releasing the official sanction also ruined its chance. Meanwhile, ‘English experts, who were rather costly to maintain, had to be paid for, imposing on the nascent enterprise a heavier burden of unproductive expenditure it could hardly bear.’ He could hardly meet the consequent escalation of cost. Hence, the Oriental’s goods, fairy comparable in quality, sold dear to similar imported varieties in Calcutta. That was possibly the reason why departmental stores did not cooperate or the company’s selling agents failed ‘to push the sale of the indigenous hosiery products’. It would have been better if he could create a ‘new market in rural Bengal’ with cheap products from local yarns, a possibility never seriously tried. Not even in 1904, when it was revived as Nawab and Singh, after its new proprietors: Abdus Sovan Chaudhuri, Nawab of Bagura, and his lawyer friend, Dipnarayan Singh of Bhagalpur. Annadaprasad, as managing agent of the firm, again imported new machines but did not use local yarn, as Japanese did a little later and Chinese still later. Thus, the second attempt to float the company also failed, with Annadaprasad dying a frustrated early death in 1905. The ‘unsatisfactory sale of the finished product … brought about a degree of dullness in the business; investors and promoters became a little shy, and the capital necessary to keep the factory going was not forthcoming’.49

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Technology Beckons Bengal Hosiery Company

Annadaprasad’s example encouraged Bhupendrnath Bose to found the Bengal Hosiery Company in 1908. Bhupendrnath started his public life as Commissioner of the Calcutta Corporation, later became its President, but gave up the position in protest against the partition of Bengal in 1905. Elected as President of the Indian National Congress at its Madras session (1914), he joined the Bengal Legislative Council and later also the Indian Council. A member of the Royal Commission, he was conferred knighthood and died in harness as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta in 1924.50 (p.196) Nothing is known about how a man of his stature got into the hosiery business. He possibly had been moved by novelty and the sheer size of the first enterprise lying idle since the death of its pioneer. He also suffered from scarcity of capital, most of which he subscribed through ‘personal influence’ and the help of ‘others, who took an interest in the concern’. The company’s Board of Directors included eminent persons like Nawab Abdus Sobhan Chowdhury of Bagura, A.H. Guznavi of Tangail, and Radhacharan Pal of Faridpur. He had also imported new machines to add to the Oriental’s old stock and also engaged an English expert and bhadralok workers. With a strong swadeshi orientation, he described its labour as ‘more or less patriotic and sentimental hands devoid of solid knowledge and experience in the trade’, but earning ‘a decent livelihood’.51 It has been held that the Bengal Hosiery Company had an early period of prosperity followed by crisis and eventual liquidation.52 But Bose stated that the early years of the company actually spoilt its chance. ‘For the hosiery business,’ he argued, ‘we brought a man from England on a salary of Rs. 350–450 a month and he knew only one department of the work and we ought to have more men, but we do not have the means to employ them and the whole thing came to grief.’ In the early 1910s, the company suffered from Japanese competition. ‘The hosiery factory came to grief and was wound up.’ Bose made a last bid to give it a try, but failed. Deposing before the Indian Industrial Commission, he stated, ‘Instead of selling the plant as scrap iron I thought I would make another attempt. I got a manager and he had been producing for the last two or three months, and I can produce 300 dozens a day from my concern.’53 The war helped the company, but a steep rise in the price of imported yarn largely neutralized its advantage. Switching to local yarn was difficult as its machineries were compatible to English yarn; hence, it failed. One only wonders why the second hosiery entrepreneur also followed the same strategy that had failed the pioneer.

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Technology Beckons Pabna Shilpa Sanjibani Company Ltd

With repeated failures of the Calcutta firms, hosiery enterprise spread to rural Bengal, where ‘rapid and substantial progress in (p.197) some cases exceeded all anticipations of their sponsors’. The Shilpa Sanjibani Company of Pabna was most notable of these firms, achieving spectacular success from the very beginning. An official note stated, ‘The quality of its products was of such a high order and prices of its products were so low that very soon it established a reputation of its own in the market.’ The replacement of the hand-driven machines by gas engine within two years and the high rate of dividend indicate its success. In 1937, the company’s secretary wrote to the Director of Industries that ‘after declaring high dividends for about fifteen successive years it has still been able to make a reserve of about 150% of its capital. Its products enjoy an all India reputation’, attracting ‘numerous colourful imitations of its brand by foreign manufacturers’.54 In 1923, it had 70 full-time workers and 11 hosiery-knitting machines ‘driven by steam power’. The relatively high man–machine ratio points to multi-shift working norm. The prosperity of Shilpa Sanjibani Co. led to the mushrooming of hosiery units in Pabna, rising to 150 in 1945, out of which 88 were registered under the Indian Factories Act. Many of these must have been bleaching, calendaring, and finishing units but localization indicates the rising demand for its products. Hence, the volume of hosiery articles booked through the Pabna Out Agency to different railway and steamer stations registered 169 per cent growth in the mid 1930s.55 Shilpa Sanjibani was a follow-up of the Pabna Provincial Conference founded in February 1908 to promote industries with Rabindranath Tagore, a landlord of the district, Surendranath Banerjee, Jogeschandra Chaudhuri, Hirendranath Datta and Motilal Ghosh, headmaster-turned-editor of the Amritabazar Patrika. Founded in the high swadeshi days, it had not to face early marketing problem. The company did not engage foreign experts, made limited use of imported yarn, and pursued an innovative marketing strategy with peasants as its main target group. Peasants in Bengal, as in other parts of India, generally did not use upper wear except in winter. Shilpa Sanjibani intervened here with barefoot salesmen popularizing the use of banyan in the village market and fair through folk songs and caricatures, soon making its ‘moon and star’ and ‘elephant’ brand banyan a common wear in north and east Bengal. The company also had an advantage in its location, its central position (p.198) being well served by waterways to reach the more insulated rural markets that helped it sustain through the critical years of Japanese competition.56 Early Growth and Localization

In 1914, J.A.L. Swan reported that ‘hosiery is a comparatively new industry and the existing factories are on a small scale’. How many of these really survived in the long run is difficult to state, for most hosiery firms did not come under the Page 16 of 46

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Technology Beckons purview of the Indian Factories Act, hence escaping official attention. Besides, there were persons who adopted hosiery knitting and tailoring ‘as a spare time or whole time occupation in their homes’. There was therefore a considerable interface between the organized and cottage sector of the industry, making the volume of production and the nature of its variation over time difficult to state.57 Founder of the Indian Industrial Association and a man of versatile abilities, T.N. Mukherjee also considered hosiery manufacturing as a major industrial opening for the youth. Indeed, the Students’ Economic Hosiery of Taltala (1908) flourished on wartime supplies before shifting to dealing in hand-driven Japanese hosiery machine. A Calcutta paper thus reported, ‘It is no longer necessary to import shirting, socks and other hosiery underwear from abroad. For, factories in the suburbs of Calcutta are now making similar items so efficiently that nobody would like to buy imported varieties anymore.’58 This point was repeated by S. Playne in 1917, ‘Special machines have been introduced into India for use in factories … and in private houses, with the result that a very large number of articles are now being knitted and placed upon Indian market, where ready sales are effected.’59 In 1903, a small firm had first imported hand-driven hosiery machines for trade. With its popularity in the wake of the swadeshi craze, others followed suit. The All India Hosiery Manufacturing Co. of Calcutta introduced ‘very efficient hand knitting machines’ in Bengal and supplied more than a thousand of these machines in various parts of the country from Tinnevelly to Peshwar.60 Calcutta is stated to have ‘sixteen large hosiery factories’ by the end of the World War I, of which D.N. Bose’s Maniktala factory (p.199)

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Technology Beckons was the largest with more than a hundred workers. The size of the workforce in hosiery factories varied between 4 and 25 men in units equipped with electric/gas motor depending on the number and type of the machine used. In 1923–24, about 700/800 machines for knitting socks and 100 for making banyans were in use in Bengal alone.61

Looking closely at some enterprises could be useful at this stage. Ramesh Chandra Shome, a student of the Calcutta Medical College, had been inspired by the idea of the constructive swadeshi. In 1906, he procured a hand-driven

Figure 4.1 All India Hosiery Manufacturing Company Source: S. Playne, Bengal and Assam (London, 1917), p. 76.

machine to make socks at Sitaram Ghosh Street, Calcutta, which earned him both money and fame, so much so that he devoted the rest of his life to hosiery manufacturing. Known as R.C. Shome’s Hosiery Factory, his unit at Jhamapukur was one of the most successful hosiery concerns of Bengal.62 His early initiative eventually led to the localization of cottage socks industry around Diamond Harbour in South 24Parganas. (p.200) A primary school drop-out, Ratishchandra Mitra of Rajabari (Dhaka) started his life as helper in a Noakhali grocery. In 1906, at the age of 15, he moved to Calcutta with a vow to have a business of his own. After sustaining himself by sundry jobs for five years, he suddenly met Prafullachandra Roy and Upendra Kishore Roy. Short of capital, he started manufacturing hair oil with his Swaraj Bakul and Mayur brands of sesame oil. It gave him the necessary footing in the city. In 1916, he flourished as a military supplier of socks and invested the money to produce his brand, R Mitra’s Socks, in addition to wholesale dealerships of the Kalighat Hosiery and Beleghata Hosiery. He ended up with two hosiery factories of his own, Rajlakshmi Hosiery and Dulal Hosiery.63 The swadeshi movement had similarly drawn D.N. Bose to the hosiery industry. As a young man he ‘arrived in Calcutta on foot from Faridpur, penniless and without academic qualification’. His ‘only capital was self-confidence’ and ‘his indomitable will and a vision’ to do something new. Nothing is known before he founded a hosiery factory (1922) at 24/1 Cornwallis Street, later shifted to 36/1A Sarkar Lane, Calcutta-7 in 1936. His scheme would have failed but for the assistance of M.B. Majumdar, an engineer from the Bengal National College, who helped him pick up the right piece of machine from Germany and Page 18 of 46

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Technology Beckons technically supported his project. Bose’s Sankha Padma bleached banyan eventually became a popular brand all over eastern India.64 The case of Kalighat Hosiery (1927) of Haricharan Neogy is more interesting. A young graduate, Haricharan developed an interest in hosiery when he visited Japan in 1915 as purchase manager of a Calcutta firm. Two years later, he started a cottage unit at his Shahapur residence without much success. He returned to Japan to learn the hosiery technology and established Kalighat Hosiery with two German Seltzer machines and a few workmen, expanding the firm in two years. In 1932, he took lease of the Kohinoor Hosiery from J.B. Feroze. The Swastika brand grey and coarse type durable banyan made Kalighat Hosiery a household name in north India. Prataplal Ghelaphil was his agent in Bombay, and there were similar others in Allahabad, Kanpur, and Patna. He introduced a special variety of banyan called Summer Cool, made from perforated hosiery fabric produced in the Scott Eyelet machine of his factory. Later, he (p.201) had thoroughly reorganized and expanded Kalighat Hosiery in the outskirt of Calcutta.65 Early hosiery manufacturing in Bengal remained a small-scale cottage activity marked by its ups and downs. Old units changed hands with their machines sold and resold to successive owners. The number of registered factories continued to grow from the mid-1930s, with the cottage sector expanding faster than the small scale.66 The growth of a moderately large hosiery factory in an area always led to the mushrooming of ancillary units in its vicinity, as it was true of Calcutta and Howrah. In 1945, the small agricultural district of Pabna, with 150 units, emerged as the largest centre of hosiery manufacture outside Calcutta–Howrah, with products unbeatable in quality and price.67 Hosiery manufacturing had an early growth also in Dhaka. Out of the seven units of the town, Gupta & Co. Hosiery Factory at Patuatuli, the first firm, was started by ‘a graduate son of a respectable pleader’. With Rs 15,000 only, it installed Foster’s Hand machines and built ‘a suitable building’. ‘Swadeshi movement led to the emergence of a number of hosiery factories in different localities of Bikrampur in Dhaka,’ N.L. Chandra stated in 1914. ‘Most notable of them are units located in Lohajang and Nagerhat. A Hindu widow is running the Nagerhat factory. Both factories are known for the quality of their socks and banyans.’ Mostly cottage units, the hosiery industry at Dhaka largely succumbed to Japanese competition and partly recovered in the protection era. In 1942, the city had 21 small hosiery factories as against only 7 in 1908.68 From Pabna, the industry spread to Rajsahi and Rangpur. J.A. Vas observed that Rangpur ‘articles command a ready sale in rural markets’ with bhadralok boys earning ‘about twenty rupees a month’. In Nadia district, Krishnanagore, Ghurni, Kusthea, and Koya emerged as centres of hosiery knitting, while Barishal district had four units making socks in the 1920s. The Kumilla factory Page 19 of 46

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Technology Beckons produced two dozens of banyan a day with small hand-driven machines. Some later shifted to oil engines to meet the wartime demand. In the post-protection period, the industry expanded with a motley group of new traders joining the trade. A Mymensingh hosiery factory, entirely owned and managed by women, possibly remains the best example of the craze in contemporary Bengal.69 (p.202) Calcutta and Pabna were the two main centres of the hosiery industry in eastern India. At Calcutta, the industry was relatively organized and capital intensive, while Pabna had the most extensive cottage sector with the Shilpa Sanjibani Company working as the catalyst. This was also largely true of the rest of Bengal with a few large units located in Howrah. Major western districts like Medinipur, Bankura, Birbhum, Hooghly, and Bardhaman did not have a single factory worth its name. Outside Calcutta, it was localized mainly in east and north Bengal. With imported machineries and yarn, hosiery manufacturing in the beginning could be profitably undertaken at any place closer to the port. How to explain then its emergence in a remote district like Pabna? The existence of a large market did not always help. Thus, hosiery firms of Rangpur, Faridpur, Kumilla, Nadia, or Barishal thrived mainly on their local markets. It seems the supply of bhadralok entrepreneurship, depending on the intensity of swadeshi agitation, was the most crucial factor in the beginning. Hence, hosiery manufacturing flourished in areas where the movement was strong and the vice versa.70 In Medinipur, ‘the agitation was officially stated to be remarkably mild in 1906 and even dying out in 1907’. In Hooghly and Bardhaman, it was confined to some pockets, while in Birbhum, Bankura, and Purulia the movement had hardly any repercussion whatsoever. Dhaka, Pabna, Faridpur, Barishal, and Rangpur, areas of hosiery manufacturing in east Bengal, also happened to be the hub of the swadeshi agitation. In these districts, hosiery knitting became a means of shilpa sanjibani or industrial regeneration. With the swadeshi movement outreaching Bengal, it’s underlying economic objectives also followed it. ‘A small hosiery firm in Punjab was put in touch with a hosiery firm of Calcutta with a view to organizing business and to train the local people in the art of knitting.’ Similarly, it spread to Patna, Burabanki, and Lucknow in the early 1920s. Dipnarayan Singh, earlier a partner of the Calcutta firms, launched the first hosiery unit at Patna.71 Pabna did not have the advantage either with regard to the supply of raw material or electricity. In 1945, BISC described the localization of hosiery here as an exception to the general pattern of industrial growth in the province. ‘It had been more or (p.203) less an accident,’ Mukul Gupta repeated the point in the 1940s, ‘just the result of bold initiative taken by a few enterprising local gentlemen and amply justified by subsequent developments.’ The Shipla

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Technology Beckons Sanjibani Company trained local youth in hosiery trade and engaged local washermen (dhopa) for bleaching; trading organizations followed later.72 First World War and After

The impact of the war on hosiery has been misunderstood most often. In 1914, Swan observed, ‘Hosiery units, which I visited, were working profitably until the war broke out when the market collapsed.’73 A recent study held that ‘during the First World War, with the dislocation of communication network with the West, trade and commerce also suffered and the result was that the hosiery companies in parts of Bengal ceased to work’. A few pages later, it contradicted the point, stating that the condition of the ‘hosiery industry was somewhat changed with the commencement of World War I in 1914. The war brought about a general rise in prices as a result of which by 1915 the Bengal hosiery industry got some impetus … and no less than sixty hosiery concerns sprang into life all over Bengal’.74 Admittedly, the import of yarn and knitwear into India sharply fell due to the shortage of shipping space. But army operations increased the demand for all sorts of hosiery goods, socks and banyans in particular, forcing the government to make bulk purchase from local markets. A change in government stores purchase policy preferring Indian to similar other non-British goods also helped.75 As a result, ‘many new concerns were started’ and the idle capacity of existing firms utilized.76 In September 1916, Bhupendranath Bose revived his firm and produced 300 dozen underwear a day still using imported yarn, despite the rise in prices. ‘Even with this difficulty of price,’ Bose stated, ‘I find that during the last two or three months this produce has taken the market.’ F.H. Harcourt’s All India Hosiery Company, basically a dealer in hosiery machine, had been transformed overnight into a manufacturing concern. In 1916, it produced 5 lakh pairs of socks for the military department, while several thousand pairs were sold through (p.204) local traders. An identical case is the Students’ Economic Hosiery, as stated above. The war brought prosperity also to the Shilpa Sanjibani Company, which paid 25 per cent dividend in 1918–20; with ‘something unusual’ performance during the war.77 The end of the war hit the industry hard; following an upswing in the import of cotton goods from Britain, piece goods achieved a 62 per cent rise in the 1921– 28 period. From 1928 to 1931, the value of the total import of British cotton knitwear to Calcutta alone registered 60 per cent growth, rising further in the 1930s. To make matters worse, Calcutta was flooded by cheap hosiery goods from Japan, produced through a sort of industrial conscription of labour at the lowest wages in the world. The hosiery factories mushroomed in urban Japan during the war, employing mainly women and children. From 1,441, number of units shot up to 2,232 in 1918 with the workforce expanding by more than 133

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Technology Beckons per cent. The import of Japanese hosiery into India achieved 17 per cent growth during the period.78 In 1921–25, the import value of cotton hosiery articles from Japan into Calcutta leapt up by 145 per cent. In 1928, Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association (BHMA), the parent body for the whole of India, summed up the problems thus: ‘Some factories did excellent service during the war and supplied hosiery for troops in the field. Since the termination of the war, although hosiery was still required for the troop, they were deprived of the government patronage. Quite a number of these concerns were forced to close down as a result of a very keen and unfair Japanese competition.’ Bengal hosiery manufacturers were caught unawares by Japan sending mainly coarse and cheap articles. ‘When once you wear an undershirt made in Japan you can never wear it again’—Bhupendranath Bose had thus described the Japanese product before the IIC.79 The point here is their ability to undersell local products. In 1926, Japanese vests (weighing 3 lbs. 8 oz.) were sold in Calcutta at Rs 2.37 per dozen as against Rs 3.87 for the local. The Calcutta hosiery price fell by 25–33 per cent. By better plant utilization and low wages, Japan emerged as the cheapest producer in the world, although Bengal goods were better in quality and durability. But, as the BHMA argued, there was often ‘an easy market for cheap articles’. Besides, in the wake of the boycott agitation, a group of (p.205) Muslim traders of Pageyapatty imported cheap hosiery articles from Japan and variously branded them as swadeshi finish or pure swadeshi and sold in the local market at a high premium.80 A Japanese producer later put a bold photo stamp of Gandhi on hosiery articles meant for India. The psychological impact of the practice on Indian buyers during the high days of the Gandhian movement was quite obvious. Often, spurious articles were dumped into the Calcutta market at a throwaway price. Local people bought it as ‘Swadeshi article … the dealer made a good deal; hence lost his will to sell the genuine one.’81 The long-term credit option tagged with the import package also attracted the dealer. A more serious challenge soon came from China, which began to send goods cheaper than Japanese. American small hosiery knitting machines were introduced in the Ping Hu and Chekiang areas of China after 1910, which were soon indigenized in Shanghai. These machines were let out to families, where young girls and housewives interchanged their work with male members in mutually adjusted time slots. The leasing-out system became so popular that within a few years, hosiery knitting became almost a household activity in Shanghai and in the more populous areas of the Yangtze valley as far north as the Yellow River. In Ping Hu, the number of machines leased out by companies

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Technology Beckons varied between 400 and 1,000, while smaller companies had anything from 50 to 200 each.82 Most machines were constantly at work, enabling the master entrepreneur to carry on business from a small office–cum-warehouse. With low cost, the Chinese undersold British, American, and Japanese hosiery articles in the Asian market. Chinese hosiery reached Calcutta at such a low price that it remained almost the same even if sent to Patna. The railway freight, designed to ensure the entry of British goods into hinterlands, now helped the Chinese to their ruin. Calcutta traders, so far selling Japanese goods, lost no time to shift to Chinese goods and helped spread these in north India, depriving the local industry one of its major outlets. Accumulating stock, liquidity crisis, a debt trap, and closure was the sequence of events befalling local firms; 56 factories downed their shutters since the war and many entered their career of slow decline. The cottage sector of the industry also did no better; nearly 1,000 hand machines had been thrown out of work by the end of 1926.83 (p.206) Aftermath of Protection

In 1923, hosiery manufacturers of Bengal formed the Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association. With Nisithchandra Sen, a barrister and former Mayor of Calcutta, as President, its primary objective was to plead their case before the Indian Tariff Board (Cotton Textiles Enquiry).84 In 1927, BHMA placed two major demands: protection for their industry and a revision of Indian Merchandise Marks Act of 1889 to prevent misuse of local trademark by foreign manufacturers or their Indian collaborators. From the wartime boom, the Bengal industry had thus landed in its worst time. In 1932, the Tariff Board observed, ‘In Bengal there are factories in which machines are driven by power, 30 being in or near Calcutta and 8/9 in Pabna and about 100 factories in which machines are worked by hand, while one mill has a hosiery department attached. The power factories employ about 1000 men and smaller factories about 2,500.’85 In the absence of similar statistics for the war and pre-war period, the real decrease, either in the number of factories or in the size of the workforce, cannot be ascertained. The Shilpa Sanjibani Company, however, survived the worst period of Japanese competition due partly to its insularity and partly to rising jute prices. The crisis forced local units to switch to Indian yarn, which in 1932 accounted for 91 per cent of the industry’s total intake. In 1932, the Indian Tariff Board (ITB) recommended protection of the hosiery industry against the import of ‘non-British similar goods’. Two years later, revenue consideration forced the government to drop the non-British tag. An import duty was thus imposed at the rate of 25 per cent ad valorem on all imported cotton underwear, knitted or woven and cotton socks or stockings, and 50 per cent ad valorem per pound on the imported yarn.86 The import of Japanese hosiery goods into India in 1938–39 fell by 89 per cent over similar imports in 1929–30, while the total

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Technology Beckons import declined by 88 per cent; but Japan continued to remain the largest exporter of hosiery goods to India. As a result, 15 medium-sized hosiery factories were established in Calcutta suburbs, while Pabna added 22 new firms. A.K. Chaudhuri, a young unemployed graduate, started a hosiery firm (1932) with three old Japanese circular machines he had secured from the auction market. He slowly built up the business and established a full-scale (p.207) hosiery mill, Kusum Hosiery Mills Private Ltd (1935), at Beleghata. Kusum flourished on military supplies of knitwear during World War II and had been awarded the Coronation Medal after the war. It introduced sports shirt and ladies wear in the Calcutta market.87 In 1941, Bijoykrishna Pal established The Empress Hosiery Mills at Sovabazar. Its ‘inner and outer vests, shirts and underwear of different varieties’ were much in demand. In the post-Partition period it turned to the production of hosiery fabrics.88 The most notable of the new firms is Gopal Hosiery of Subodh Ghosh. A mechanical engineer from Bengal National College, he had suffered imprisonment for a fortnight for taking part in the Medinipur salt agitation (1930), and thus disqualified for public service. He went to his native village in Pabna to seek support from his political guru, Haripada Sarkar, who left him in charge of his small hosiery-knitting unit and set sail for Japan in 1933. Haripada returned as the agent of a Japanese hosiery machine firm and asked Subodh to start a business on his own. His relatives and friends raised him a fund of Rs 5,000, while his mentor gave him two knitting machines at the cost price. In 1936, he established a small hosiery unit named after his father in Dhakuria, a tiny village south of Calcutta, with only five workers and the help of his friend, Prafullachandra Das, a hosiery mechanic. From the beginning, Subodh Ghosh insisted on quality production. Every morning, he himself took the entire output of the previous day to Burra Bazar, sold the stock, and returned late in the night. Soon, Gopal’s 512 brand vests made a mark in the local market due to his marketing skill. In the 1930s, Calcutta’s wholesale trade in hosiery goods was controlled by a coterie of Muslim merchants from north India. A swadeshi engineer like Subodh Ghosh with a badge of imprisonment could not make many dents into the group. Unwelcome, he turned to the Marwaris, then trying with every possible alternative to get a foothold in the wholesale market of Calcutta. Here, he succeeded in drawing their attention to the quality of his products. Beharilal Karormull became his first marketing agent, followed later on by Rakhaldas Bhagwandas. Much of Gopal’s early success was due to their honest dealings and trading networks, especially in north India.89

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Technology Beckons The availability of cheap Indian yarn also helped the industry. Forced out of China by the Sino-Japanese competition, Indian cotton (p.208) mills during this period turned back to the domestic market. The 1930s being a decade of the swadeshi revisited, the rising demand also boosted production. Foreign suppliers thus variously branded their products as swadeshi, pure-swadeshi or Pabna finish. A change in the culture of dress also mattered. ‘The hosiery has spread amongst masses,’ a local observer stated, ‘who use Ganjee (banyan) as principal item of body cover, when they find any occasion to dress themselves.’90 All these led to ‘most unhealthy internal competition … and severe pricecutting’. The BHMA and leaders of the industry variously tried to find a way out. Unsuccessful, it pleaded for government monitoring of the manufacture and sale of hosiery goods: The present critical situation of the industry requires certain immediate changes in laws to prevent its imminent collapse. Hosiery goods, as made in the Bengal mills at present, are selling below minimum price of the imported Japanese goods against which the protection was necessary. If these prices had been uneconomic earlier, then they are certainly so today; for which the mutual competition of the unhealthiest type is responsible. But the government could hardly take such steps, as the association’s measures were of no avail. The secretary of BHMA observed: Some factories are working at a loss and still continuing and some others are closing down. New factories are starting again … qualities are deteriorating due to pressure of competition. Initiative to start new lines is discouraged by imitative tendencies of the less progressive manufacturer … for sins of a few, the whole industry suffers and with it the interest of the consumer suffers also.91 Meanwhile, the inflow of hosiery goods from south India created new problems. Located close to the source of yarn, south Indian factories enjoyed a cost advantage; the hosiery price fell in Calcutta by about 35 per cent, unrelated to the cost of production. Bengal industry thus failed to utilize the opportunities of World War II. The wartime demand for cotton manufactures and the growing export to West Asia and Africa greatly reduced the supply of yarn in the open market. The hosiery and handloom industries were the worst affected, as mills failed to supply yarn because of their preoccupation with the war production.92 (p.209) Industrial Organization

Early hosiery factories were of two types: regular and irregular. There was also a product specific division. Most units produced stockings, socks, vests, gloves, and so on; a few also tried woollen hosiery before yielding to Ludhiana, where the first silk hosiery unit was founded in 1902.93 Synthetic hosiery was not produced in eastern India; it became a speciality of Delhi and Kanpur after 1947. Page 25 of 46

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Technology Beckons Regular hosiery factories combined knitting, bleaching, dyeing, tailoring, and finishing, thus catering to a cluster of tailoring units specialized in the cutting and finishing of hosiery goods. In 1940, Bengal had altogether 36 regular hosiery factories registered under the Indian Factories Act, with only 6 of them having more than 100 workers each. The hosiery unit located in the Presidency division represented nearly 80 per cent of the industry’s total capital input and 71 per cent of its total workforce before 1947. With a respective share of 15 per cent and 18 per cent, Rajsahi division including Pabna came next. This was exclusive of the large cottage sector of which very little is known. In 1928, about 1,000 men were working in the cottage units of Pabna alone and nearly 10,000 hosiery machines had been running in the cottage sector all over Bengal prior to the Partition.94 In 1915, Swan observed, ‘The proprietor of one factory has some knitting machines worked by hand, which he gives out to employees to work in their homes. He also supplies the thread and pays for labour at the rate of 12 annas (¾ of a rupee) a dozen pairs. This is a cottage industry which appears to be capable of further development.’95 Equally widespread was the cottage-tailoring unit with women labour engaged by the retailer. They procured grey fabrics, bleached and dyed the stuff, passed it on to women for tailoring, and sold it in the open market96—just like the Chinese, as discussed earlier. The hosiery manufacture was by its very nature a low technology-intensive industry known for the division of labour. All the job of tailoring, finishing, and bleaching was done manually with the machine having only a limited role in the beginning. The nature of the hosiery market discouraged large-scale production, but it was neither impossible nor unprofitable. A case in point is the Kesoram Cotton Mills (p.210) of Calcutta which had a fully mechanized hosiery unit. In 1932, the owner of this mill stated before the ITB (Cotton Textiles) that ‘the difference in design and size on account of the variation was not as great as to render the standardized production difficult’.97 The small-scale character of the industry could be attributed to the social composition of its entrepreneurs. Beginning with the pioneering Annadaprasad Mukherjee, hosiery entrepreneurs came mainly from the educated middle class, the bhadralok. They included petty zamindars, engineers, jobless graduates, political leaders, as well as a ‘graduate son of a respectable pleader’, as also affluent servicemen and lawyers. A Bikrampur factory even belonged to a middle class widow; yet another in Mymensingh was fully run by women. The bhadralok character of the industry also explains its diffusion in the province. The leaders of the Ludhiana hosiery industry also came mostly from the same social group.98 Bengal depended on British, Japanese and south Indian yarn. The availability of cheaper Indian yarn of necessary counts encouraged the industry. The Kesoram Page 26 of 46

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Technology Beckons Cotton Mills of Calcutta tried to produce hosiery yarn, but later discontinued it in 1936. The yarn produced by the Narayanganj Cotton Mills could not even meet the local demand. As a result, Bengal industry’s dependence on south Indian yarn eventually reduced its competitive edge over other centres. To help the industry, Bidhan Chandra Roy, visionary and the most constructive Chief Minister of West Bengal, launched the Kalyani Spinning Mill.99 The hosiery industry required mostly unskilled labour. ‘Generally, machines are so easy to handle and simple to operate that even children and women of the house can use them.’ The labour was thus recruited mostly from the local people. ‘One special feature of the industry is that employees are mainly educated persons of Bengali families, both Hindus and Muslims.’ How much did they earn? In 1911, bhadralok operatives in a Rangpur factory earned Rs 20 a month. The wartime boom pushed up the wages to Rs 50–60; the upward trend continued till the critical years of Japanese competition. In the mid-1940s, hosiery workers were better paid than those in the jute mill.100 The high rate of wages in jute mills has been attributed to powerful trade unionism, but the hosiery labour was not so organized. (p.211) The better wage deal in hosiery therefore could be attributed to its nationalist orientation and its dominant bhadralok character. The relatively high wages was both a source of the industry’s strength and weakness. If it had encouraged local labour to join the industry, it also compromised the industry’s relative cost advantage over other hosiery centres. It was only during the period of cut-throat internal competition that hosiery wages in Calcutta showed signs of decline.101 Labour trouble also followed; factories thus resorted to a system called badli or substitute. This was a tempting means to economize production whereby the mill owner maintained a group of apprentices for the purpose. ‘The selling prices of most of the products today are so low as to leave absolutely no margin for the proprietors,’ the BHMA Secretary observed in 1938, and they ‘are sustained through a systematic lowering of wages and replacing Bengalis by cheaper workers from other provinces.’ The skilled labour thus suffered from a sense of insecurity, but failed to organize themselves.102 In 1920, Calcutta hosiery workers formed a cooperative, Hosiery Samavay Samity, and founded a factory, Labour Hosiery, with its capital fully mobilized by its members. ‘Its main objective was to enable workers to earn a living wage, when they were thrown out of employment either as a result of a strike or due to any other reason for which the employer might be responsible.’103 Perhaps, there could be no other objective more befitting a labour organization than this. Labour Hosiery engaged nearly 70 workers in one shift and it successfully continued for five years. A unique development in the history of labour

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Technology Beckons movement in Bengal, it was also a rare example of foresight, initiative, and enterprise of those unknown labour leaders, free from their dogmatic views. Marketing always remained a major problem for hosiery entrepreneurs. Small hosiery factories usually sold their products directly to the market, while the larger one engaged agents on low rates of commission. Only a few firms, like Students’ Economic Hosiery or Gopal Hosiery, had selling shops. In 1938, Lalitmohon Mukherjee argued, The hosiery industry consists mainly of small factories. Much of the bargaining power … is thus transferred to the influential dealer. Often, during the slack season, the price is lowered. But during the succeeding (p.212) busy period the price level cannot be raised enough. The dealer again refuses to buy goods, which bear the maker’s trademark. Manufacturers are forced to use fictitious marks on their product before they can sell them to dealers.104 England, Germany, and the Unites States supplied hosiery machineries in turn. In the late 1920s, Japanese Over Lock machine reached Calcutta and was sold at half the price of the popular Singer variety, attracting machine manufacturing in Ludhiana. Less durable but cheaper than the Japanese, Ludhiana machine helped the north Indian manufacturer to undersell the Bengal goods in upper India. Despite its better engineering base and the early growth of the hosiery industry, Bengal failed to manufacture machines due to greater vulnerability to foreign competition than Punjab. Punjab started with coarse wool goods using local raw material, an area with much less foreign competition.105 The absence of hosiery machine manufacturing hit the Bengal industry hard in the postcolonial period. The hosiery industry attracted cardboard box making and manufacturing of buttons from mother of pearl, horn, and metal at Dhaka. But Bengal hosiery traders preferred the imported to the handmade local button, which was irregular in size and shape. The demand for Dhaka buttons increased during the war, engaging nearly 2,200 men in 1924. Incidentally, hosiery manufacturers demanded protection against Japanese goods, sans their buttons. A shift in fashion to open vests without button fronts ruined the button industry. Unlike in Ludhiana and Gujarat, the cottage craft of making wooden bobbins did not grow in Bengal, which continued to rely on the imported bobbin.106 Post-Partition Period

Bengal lost its premiere position with the Partition leading to a massive exodus of men, money, and materials from eastern Bengal, and abruptly terminating the old network of trade. Let us take the case of the Gopal Hosiery of Subodh Ghosh. In 1939, fearing Japanese air raid, he relocated his plant from Dhakuria to Nilshemari in Rangpur and equipped it with two oil engines to generate power. Page 28 of 46

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Technology Beckons After the war, he built a larger factory at Jadavpur, but did not downsize the (p. 213) Nilshemari unit, the place he owed his early rise to. But increasing communalization of social life in eastern Bengal ultimately forced him to transplant the Rangpur unit almost at the last hour.107 As a result of the Partition, eastern Bengal centres suffered due to dislocation in the supply of yarn, machine parts, and hosiery needles. Those in western Bengal lost their vital market in areas constituting the eastern part of Pakistan. The influx of refugees from the east to West Bengal sapped its labour market. Since it required very little skill, hosiery manufacturing in West Bengal in the 1950s was largely to benefit from it. Hence, contemporary official reports refer to the hosiery as ‘a prosperous industry’, where the government was only to ensure the supply of cheap credit and yarn. The unending supply of cheap labour slowed down the process of technology upgradation, which in the long run reduced the relative advantage of Bengal over hosiery centres in the rest of India. With time, the industry showed some signs of recovery. Some hosiery firms expanded in scale, such as the Siddhesari Hosiery Factory established in a Calcutta suburb in 1946. By the 1980s, it emerged as a major hosiery group in India, amalgamating five companies with the largest processing unit in India and a steady export record. Gopal Hosiery was yet another example. Subodh Ghosh was the first to install interlocking machines in the industry. The special type of yarn was supplied in the beginning by the Madura Cotton Mills followed by the Kalyani Spinning Mill. With its flagship brand Arup, Gopal Hosiery soon emerged as the premiere firm of eastern India.108 In the post-Partition period, Marwari entrepreneurs entered into what had been earlier the domain of the Bengali bhadralok. Early in the 1950s, maheshwari, kothari, kedia, tod, bothra and nahata Marwaris joined the industry, first as marketing agents and then shifted to manufacture, aggarwal being the most important group among them. Their migration to Calcutta from Bhiwani in Rajasthan in small batches began in the early nineteenth century; they spread all over north and east India up to Assam, through their networks of river trade in grain, jute, opium, cotton, and oilseeds. In the early twentieth century, Marwaris tended to shift to the industry as ‘an expression and a cause of nationalist and reformist impulses in the community.’ More affluent aggarwals launched cotton and jute mills: (p.214) 26 out of 48 cotton mills and 7 out of 9 jute mills belonged to them. Others took to sugar/oil milling, jute press, and small engineering109 and also rice milling as already discussed. In the early 1950s, the educated section of the Marwaris was the first to take to hosiery trade. Men of small capital, they mobilized necessary support through their caste affiliation. Unlike their Bengali counterparts, most of them followed the Chinese model of hosiery trade. They procured yarn from the mill, supplied it to their knitting-machine leaseholders, got the articles stitched through another Page 29 of 46

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Technology Beckons set of persons, and had them bleached and dyed before they were fully ready for sale. Without a labour force and with very little establishment cost, they could thus regulate production to minimize market risk and catered mostly to the unspecified rural market.110 By the 1960s, Marwaris started taking over defunct units from their Bengali owners. R.C. Shome’s Hosiery changed into Kothari Hosiery, Kusum Hosiery became a Kedia enterprise, and Deshbandhu Hosiery changed hands in 1983. The Marwari firms MB Knitwear and Binod Hosiery had by this time grown into large firms, with the Rupa brand emerging as the market leader. They brought new machines, diversified production, took proactive marketing techniques, and extended their reach to south India, Delhi, Kanpur, and Bombay, in order to achieve the relative advantage of cost. Nevertheless, from 85 per cent in 1955, Bengal’s share of total hosiery output in India fell to 35 per cent in the late 1980s;111 while the woollen hosiery business was lost to Ludhiana, production of synthetic articles never really picked up. It has been attributed to the industry’s diffusion in Ahmedabad, Benares, Bombay, Delhi, Indore, and Kanpur, with Bombay and Delhi specializing in synthetic, Ludhiana in woollen, and the rest in cotton hosiery. The most important of the new centres is Tiruppur, a village near Coimbatore, which owed its urban growth to the hosiery manufacturing industry. In 1990–91, it claimed 45 per cent of India’s total market for the cotton hosiery and bagged a third of the country’s total apparel export. It emerged as hosiery’s Silicon Valley, having close technology tie-ups with German and American firms. The unique success of Tiruppur, achieved within three decades, thus deserves an attention in view of the Bengal industry’s career of slow decline after the Partition.112 (p.215) The Tiruppur industry owes its origin to a group of Muslim peddlers procuring Bengal hosiery goods from Bombay wholesellers, sometimes also from Calcutta, to retail in the local markets. In the early 1920s, they took to hosiery knitting with old hand-driven machines received from the Commonwealth Trust. It all began at Karode and then spread to Erode, drawn by its long tradition of handloom weaving catering to the Naidu and Chettiar traders of Salem and Coimbatore.113 With the cotton mills nibbling at the handloom market, a group of Muslim entrepreneurs used the same yarn to knit coarse hosiery goods for the local market. By the early 1940s, hosiery knitting in south India had picked up when the enterprising rich peasant community of the Vellela Gounder launched it at Tiruppur.114 A mono-crop area, Tiruppur depended mostly on paddy and groundnut, supplemented by weaving. Its brackish water, old men recounted, was suitable for bleaching cotton goods. The growth of the rice mill in the vicinity dispossessed a very large section of its sturdy rural women of their old occupation of paddy husking. Its early success in hosiery was due largely to Page 30 of 46

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Technology Beckons Vellela Gounders’ enterprise and cheap women labourers dispossessed by cotton and rice mills. An added advantage was the cheap supply of yarn from Salem and Coimbatore, an advantage also shared by Karode and Erode, which slowly yielded to Tiruppur. The initial capital for the hosiery business came mostly from land. Vellela Gounders, accounting for nearly 95 per cent of the hosiery entrepreneurs in Tiruppur, did not de-link themselves from agriculture even after they had firmly established themselves in the new trade. It supported them in the early years of hazardous marketing.115 Tiruppur started with small knitting, calendaring, and stitching units only informally linked with one another. In 1960, when Bengal had 12 composite hosiery units out of the 40 in India, Tiruppur had none. It took off mainly in the 1970s and by 1987 surpassed the pioneering Bengal in the output of cotton hosiery, largely due to its export breakthrough. Beginning on a modest scale in the 1970s, export demand boomed in the late 1980s, leading to a shift in production from traditional item to apparel and new range underwear. The social support of workers also helped. To achieve an export target, workers thus worked 16/18 hours a day, as the owner took care of all (p.216) their needs. The Gounders’ position in landed society had endowed them with a control over their labourers, who came mostly from the peasant community. Baker argued that unlike the valley Mirasidar, the Gounder ‘proudly stood behind the plough’ and always treated the farm labourer as a member of his family rather than condemning him ‘to a separate, low, outcaste and selfish status’.116 Hosiery entrepreneurs of Bengal on the other hand relied on the internal market, which by the sheer size of it was really too large for them to meet. But soon they were forced out of north and west India by their local counterparts and had to fall back on the relatively backward markets of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Assam.117 But why did Bengal entrepreneurs fail to take advantage of the favourable industrial climate of the early post-colonial era, when most other hosiery centres in India achieved rapid progress? An important reason is the lack of expansion in scale. Located in narrow cramped spaces in and around Calcutta, most manufacturing units had hardly any scope for expansion. The early origin of the industry from the cottage level was also partly to blame for it. Integrating different working sites in a coordinated programme based on specialization often involved larger input of capital and enterprise few could afford. To be more specific, the Bengal industry suffered from stagnation characterized by its poor capital base, old enterprise, first generation technology, and unproductive labour. The industry by and large thus clung to traditional items, aimed at a limited market.

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Technology Beckons Contemporary reactions by leaders of the industry attributed its problem to the prohibitive cost of machinery and import difficulties. Even the supply of Indiamade machines was irregular. Based on old designs, these were small machines incapable of responding to the fast changing export market of the post-1970s. How could then other centres facing the same problem grow in the period? As pioneer, the Bengal industry suffered from a historically inbuilt orientation to the home market, without an ‘urge to upgrade technology’. Most hosiery entrepreneurs of Bengal were unaware of the export market potential till it was too late.118 Being late starters, other centres of India, on the other hand, had to carve out their markets by competing with the existing brands. They tried it by various means, leading to the development of product-specific specialization as in Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, and Ludhiana, or the export-induced (p.217) growth of Tiruppur. Unlike in Bengal, some of their units were more capital intensive while others addressed the problem of technology build-up in a phased manner. The high cost of capital in Calcutta was another bottleneck. The industry could not stand on its own due to unfailing foreign competition and was then crippled by the Partition. Except for a few firms, the local industry was thus characterized by pigmy units incapable of handling bulk orders, most often served with a time tag. Agglomerating small units into larger concerns could have been a way out but did not really succeed due to the inherent constraints: cottage character, too many partners in family enterprise, old-fashioned entrepreneurship, and similar others. Hence, the industry’s leadership eventually slipped to Marwari traders, who could utilize their caste- and clanbased solidarity to mobilize support for their firms. The Bengal industry’s early advantage with regard to the supply of yarn ended once it shifted to Indian yarn. The growth of hosiery manufacturing in other parts of India made the yarn market more competitive. In the 1940s, Madura Mills supplied hosiery yarn to Bengal, while other varieties of yarn came from Japan.119 In 1986, a survey by the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, revealed that 52 per cent of the cotton yarn consumed by hosiery units in Bengal came from south India. Nearly a half of it came from the western region, while north India sent a little over 9 per cent, and the rest was supplied by the mills in Bengal.120 The centres located close to the source of yarn thus enjoyed a natural advantage over Bengal. Attempts to produce hosiery yarn in Bengal did not succeed. The first to try it was the Mohini Mill in Kushtia, intended to serve hosiery factories in eastern Bengal, but discontinued it soon; this was followed by the Kesoram Cotton Mill. The Mohini’s Belghoria unit made another abortive attempt in the post-Partition period. The only mill to influence the local yarn market was Kalyani Spinning Mill, but it became sick in the 1980s, and Mohini’s Belghoria Mill was closed sine die. Hosiery traders were thus left with no alternative but to procure yarn Page 32 of 46

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Technology Beckons from south India at an additional cost of Rs 250 per case.121 Their plea for a quota and cost subsidization went in vain. In the 1984–91 period yarn prices skyrocketed.122 The (p.218) government had included hosiery manufacturing in the small-scale cottage sector, but did not fix a quota of yarn for it; hence hosiery traders had to buy from the open market. The Bengal industry thus suffered more than those closer to the yarn-producing zone. Labour was also costly in Bengal vis-à-vis most other centres. The middle class composition of the hosiery labour in Bengal, opposed to its dominant peasant character in other centres, was largely to blame for it. The labour in Bengal was relatively more organized, but much less productive compared to other centres. More than ethno-cultural factors, leaders of the industry attributed it to deteriorating industrial relations in Bengal from the late 1960s onwards. The dominant bhadralok character of the industry with its strong nationalist linkages must have also helped inflate the wages. The industry’s bhadralok character and the role of nationalist ideology have been analysed earlier. Let me return to Subodh Ghosh to illustrate the point a little further. In 1939, he had relocated his factory to a Rangpur village. Three years later, with his firm then running on a steady keel, he left the business to his brother to join the Quit India Movement. The decision ultimately landed him in a jail, but this time on a two-year term. Most hosiery factories in Bengal during World War II flourished on military contracts. An ardent advocate of Gandhi, Subodh Ghosh could not compromise the national interest to selfish pursuit of personal profit. From jail, he thus instructed his brother not to send a single thread from Gopal Hosiery for the use of the British army.123 The political scenario from the mid-1960s onwards also added to the industry’s woes. The influx of refugees from East Bengal had altered old labour relationships in the industry. The labour became cheap and prone to exploitation, more so in the small-scale sector. In the context of competition from other centres, stagnant wages and job insecurity characterized the industry. All these drew in demagogic leaders, breeding irresponsible trade unionism based on old dialectics of industrial relations. In sharp contrast to this situation, the workforce in most other centres increasingly reconciled to the reality that collective prosperity could be achieved only through high productivity and better use of the available inputs.124 From the early 1980s onwards, frequent power cuts for hours together became an order of the day. An IIM survey in 1985–86 (p.219) estimated that hosiery units in Calcutta lost nearly 12 per cent of their work-days due to power cuts and voltage fluctuations. For most of them, a generator was a costly input and difficult to install in units located in congested residential areas.125 Encouraged by the pro-people declarations of the Left Front Government, leaders of the industry from 1977 onwards had been demanding a Hosiery Complex to ease the Page 33 of 46

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Technology Beckons space problem and to rationalize cost, as also a Hosiery Training Institute on the Tiruppur model to respond to shifts in the export market. Nothing materialized till it lost its mandate in 2011. The Minimum Wages Act introduced by the state government in the meanwhile forced a number of small hosiery units out of circulation, particularly the stitching units, too small to afford full compliance of the act. Soon, it became the bone of contention between the owner and workers and led to cost escalation, as the payment of minimum wages was not linked to labour productivity.126 Investment became further shy and hosiery traders in West Bengal reverted to the old practice of a putter out—’farming out jobs to a number of suppliers’ for fear of labour trouble.127 Some even moved their factories out of the state, or had sister units in other centres, like Binod Hosiery’s unit in Tiruppur. In an overall hostile industrial environment such as this, small-scale hosiery manufacturing in the state could hardly hope to keep pace with the development in the rest of India. Notes:

(*) ‘Peace, mirth or welfare, the industry hails them all; else the spectre of doom will befall over all. Raise funds, the little ye can, thy enterprise will greet thee boons.’ Part of a long poem entitled ‘Shilpa’ (Industry) by Gobindachandra Das, Dhaka Review O Sammilan, vol. I, p. 95. (1.) Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908 (Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1973 [Reprint 1977]), p. 23. (2.) Satyendra Nath Sen, Bankim Rachana Sangraha (Calcutta, 1973), Vol. I, pp. 366–8. (3.) Aurobindo Ghosh, ‘The Next Step’, Bande Mataram, 31 March 1908, republished in Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram and Early Political Writings (Pondicherry, 1973), pp. 807–12. Tagore wrote, ‘The village in Bengal has been plagued by the drying source of drinking water, polluted environment, inaccessible roads, lack of stores, fragile society, and similar other. The time is fast running out before the God of Death reigns in the desolate village’. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Samabayniti’, Rabindra Rachanbali, Vol. XIII (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1990), p. 742; Prafullachandra Roy, ‘Bangalir Annasamasya’, Arthik Unnati, II, no. 8 (Agrahayan 1334 BS), pp. 630–4. (4.) ‘Cornwallis robbed landlords of their land and gave it to the revenue contractor…. This is the first time under English rule that misfortunes befell upon the Bengal peasantry.’ Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya, ‘Bangadesher Krishak’, in Bankim Rachana Sangraha, ed. Satyendranath Sen (Calcutta: Paschimbanga Niraksharata Durikaran Samiti, 1973), Vol I, p. 391.

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Technology Beckons (5.) Jnananeshan (Quest for Knowledge), dated 14 December 1833; cited in Blair B. Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India (Calcutta 1981), p. 75; Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre Sekaler Katha (Calcutta 1401 BS), Vol. II, pp. 331–2; Bholanath Chandra, ‘A Voice for the Commerce and Manufactures of India’, cited in Manmathanath Ghosh, Manishi Bholanath Chandra (Calcutta, 1331 BS), p.174. (6.) B. Chattopadhyaya, ‘Bangadesher Krishak’, Vol. I, translation mine. Dutt argued, ‘By 1858 … the value of cotton goods imported into India had reached nearly five million pounds sterling. By 1877, which was the year when her Gracious Majesty assumed the Empress of India, the value of the cotton goods imported into India had reached nearly sixteen million pounds sterling. This steady increase in the import of cotton piece goods is often quoted as a mark of India’s increasing prosperity. But, is there any practical man in India who does not see in these figures the decline of the most extensive of Indian industries, and therefore, a loss in the wealth of the nation?’ ‘Presidential Address at the First Indian Industrial Conference, 1905’, in Builders of Modern India: Romesh Chunder Dutt (Delhi: Government of India, 1968), 212. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Atyukti’, Bharat Barsha O Swadesh, Rabindra Rachanabali (Calcutta 1368 BS), p. 168. (7.) B. Chandra, ‘On the Commerce and Manufactures of India’, Mukherjee’s Magazine, April 1873, cited in M. Ghosh, Manishi Bholanath Chandra, p. 174. The noted journal Bengalee, dated 16 August 1873, published an editorial note on the article by Bholanath Ghosh, which was followed by many others. See M. Ghosh, Manishi Bholanath Chandra, pp. 186–8. ‘Deshiya Bastra’, Sadharani (7 Chaitra 1282 BS); Soumendra Gangopadhyay, Swadeshi Andolan O Bangla Sahitya (Calcutta: Basudhara Prakashani, 1367 BS), p. 11. (8.) Dwarkanath assured Bentinck that his firm ‘would be an instrument of national regeneration and a model to be emulated by his countrymen’. Blair B. Kling, ‘Economic Foundation of the Bengal Renaissance’, in Aspects of Bengali History and Society, ed. R.V.M Baumer (Honolulu, 1976), pp. 73–5. Sambad Prabhakar, 4 April 1848. B. Bandyopadhyay, Vol. II, p. 751. Both Satish Chandra and Bholanath Chadra have been cited by Bipan Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India (New Delhi, 1982), pp. 69–70. (9.) For R.C. Dutt’s views on shortage of capital, see ‘Presidential Address’, p. 214; also see P.C. Roy, Report of the Indian Industrial Commission, 1916–1918, IIC Evidence, Witness No. 82, p. 34. (10.) Bholanath Chandra stated, ‘In name, it advocates free trade. In fact, it upholds a gigantic monopoly. The whole history of that policy … cannot but leave on the mind the impression that selfishness, combined with insincerity, is the essential of all commercial legislation by England with reference to India and Page 35 of 46

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Technology Beckons that the break up and repression of Indian industry being the great object of that legislation.’—B. Chandra, ‘A Voice for the Commerce’, pp. 190–2; R.C. Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I: Under Early British Rule (London, 1901); ‘Presidential Address’, p. 214. (11.) Aurobindo Ghosh, ‘English Enterprise and Swadeshi’, in Bande Mataram and Early Political Writings (Pondicherry 1973), p. 149; B. Chandra, Economic Nationalism in India (New Delhi, 1982), p. 97. (12.) Chattopadhyay observed, ‘We need a lot of capital to manufacture goods in competition with foreign companies. India is getting poorer day by day. In this context, how can we establish large-scale business without putting an end to our exploitation by English? And we cannot hope to do that until we achieve our political rights.’—’Agami Congress’ as cited in S. Gangopadhyay, Swadeshi Andolan, p. 174. Chittaranjan Das, ‘Amader Byabsay O Banijya’, Desher Katha (Calcutta: Sukumar Ranjan Das, n.d.), pp. 54, 57–8, 67; Bikrampur, vol. 4, no. 9. (13.) D.G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Delhi: Publication Division, Govt. of India, 1966 [Reprint 1969], 188, Vol. VIII, p. 5. Tagore regretted, ‘For long, we had blindly surrendered ourselves to European civilization. We were mistaken that rising above its self-interest, the West had been proceeding to achieve the truth, love, and peace in the world by ensuring universal good and freedom. But, the time has come for the shuddering surprise.’ R. Tagore, ‘Atyukti’, pp. 1082–3. (14.) P.C. Roy observed, ‘The reckless competition of the day has threatened the very existence of the Bengali. We have at present 40,000 boys studying in the college. What will happen to them? How will the youth earn his livelihood? … The average earning of a lawyer amounts to Rs15 a month, too small to maintain him. But more than 3000 boys are studying law at present, while the more affluent one is joining England’s inn to become a barrister. What will happen to this race, without a decent livelihood?’ P.C. Roy, ‘Bilate Arthik Safar’, Arthik Unnati, I, no. 7 (Kartik 1333 BS), pp. 520–1. R. Tagore, ‘Atyukti’, vol. 12, pp. 1082–3. S. Tagore, ‘A Plea for Small Scale Factories in Bengal’, Industrial India (Society for the Advancement of Scientific and Industrial Education of Indians, Calcutta), II, no. 1 (January 1905). (15.) J.A.L Swan, Report on the Industrial Development of Bengal (Calcutta, 1915), p. 10; L.S.S. O’Malley, Jessore (Calcutta, 1912), p. 102; Bengal Adm. Reports, 1917–22; Report on the Survey of Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1924 [hereafter RSCI], pp. 47, 67–8 (16.) P.C. Roy, S.M. Basu’s interview, Arthik Unnati, 2, no. 7; RSCI, pp. 74–5.

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Technology Beckons (17.) West Bengal State Archives, Calcutta (WBSA), Gen. (Misc.) Progs B. No. 28–30, October 1911; Fin Dept. (Coml. Br.), File 2Q 1–4, Nos 19–22, December 1914; 1Q, Nos 5–12, March; 1Q, No. 3, July 1916. (18.) P. Hilding, Technology in a Controlled Economy: The Match Industry in India, Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies, Monograph Series No. 62 (Stockholm, 1992), pp. 4–5. (19.) Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Swadeshikata’, Jeevan Smriti, p. 81; Report of the Bengal Industrial Survey Committee [hereafter BISC], p. 103. (20.) Per Hilding ignored the pioneering role of Bengal. Technology in a Controlled Economy, p. 37; IIC, Evidence, Witness No. 102, p. 143. (21.) Bande Mataram Factory at 38, Russa Road, Calcutta. J.G. Cumming, Review of the Industrial Position and Prospects in Bengal in 1908 with Special Reference to the Industrial Survey of 1890, Part II of Special Report (Calcutta, 1908), p. 34; G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries and Resources of Eastern Bengal and Assam, for 1907–1908 (Shillong, 1908), p. 90; IIC, Evidence, pp. 183, 191. Kajer Lok, VI, no. 9 (September 1912), p. 167; Kajer Lok, I, no. 2 (February 1907), p. 31. (22.) Subodh Sengupta (ed.), Sangsad Bāngāli Charitāvidhān (Calcutta, 2002), Vol. 1, p. 406. (23.) Aiyer and Chirayath added, ‘The skillets made by the guillotine machine were made into the outers and inners of the boxes by pasting cut paper. The splints made by the guillotine machine were also dipped by hand. For this purpose, splints were arranged on a dipping plate making use of frames made of wooden lathes, padded with tapes, for gripping the splints in between.’ ‘Match Industry: Role of the Early Pioneer’, Economic Times, 24 February 1882, cited in P. Hilding, Technology in a Controlled Economy, p. 38. (24.) J.G. Cumming, Industrial Position and Prospects, p. 34; G.N. Gupta, Survey of the Industries and Resources, p. 90; RSCI, pp. 44, 69, 110; N.C. Bidyabhusan, Swadeshi, 1, no. 3, p.137; J.N. Nag, ‘Dhakar Kutir Shilpa’ Banik, VI, no. 5 (Bhadra, 1328, BS), p.117; Arthik Unnati, 2, no. 7; IIC, Evidence, p. 191; A. Bhattacharyya, pp. 210–11; A.P. Ghosh, Report on the Investigations into the Possibilities of Match Industry in Bengal (Calcutta, 1923), p. 3. (25.) N.L. Chandra, p. 169; ‘Bharatbarshe Deshlaier Byabsay’, Banik, 2, no. 2, pp. 20–1; IIC, Evidence, p. 143. Report of the Indian Tariff Board, Match Industry, 1928, Vol. I, pp 19–20; P. Hilding, Technology in a Controlled Economy, p. 38. (26.) IIC, Evidence, pp. 183–90; BISC, p. 105; ‘Diasalai Shilpa’, Byabsa O Banijya, I, no. 6 (Aswin 1333, BS); BISC, p. 105. Letter from the Swedish Match Co. Ltd, 7

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Technology Beckons February 1928, to Report of the Indian Tariff Board (Match) [hereafter ITB (Match)], 1928, Vol. III, p. 93. (27.) A few were also large units like the Prasanna Match Factory of Dhaka, with a daily output of 8,000 gross in 1926. India. (Coml Dept.), Simla, 2 November 1926; ITB (Match), 1928, Vol. I, p. 20. A.P. Ghosh, Investigations into the Possibilities of Match Industry, pp. 1, 3. Report on the Administration of Bengal, 1927–28 (Calcutta, 1929), p. 50. (28.) ITB (Match), 1928, Vol. I, pp. 19, 30–3, 53. RSCI, p 68; L.S.S. O’Malley, Faridpur, p. 77; Supplementary Report on the Survey of the Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1924, p. 7. J.K. Majumdar, Cottage Industries of Bengal (Calcutta, 1927), p. 90; ITB (Match), 1928, Vol. I, p. 38; RSCI, pp. 68, 84, 110; Supplementary Report, Cottage Industries, etc., pp. 7, 14; Arthik Unnati, 2, nos 7 & 10; A.P. Ghosh, Investigations into the Possibilities of Match Industry, p. 4. (29.) A case in point of the destabilizing effect on factories located even in remote districts is the collapse of the Bengal Safety Match Works of Rangpur. ITB (Match), 1928, Vol. I, pp. 18, 25, 38. (30.) The last two paragraphs are largely based on Per Hilding’s work, Technology in a Controlled Economy, pp. 6–7, 38–40. (31.) WIMCO used the latest printing technology and popular folk themes to produce attractive matchboxes. Hence, their packaging cost continued to rise, while the general cost declined. BISC, pp. 103, 108. ITB (Match), 1928, Vol. I, pp. 46, 51, 52, 93. Per Hilding, Technology in a Controlled Economy, pp. 53–56; Banik, 5, no. 6, pp. 134–5; S.R. Deshpande, Report on Enquiry into Conditions of Labour in the Match Industry in India, 1945, p. 5. (32.) BISC, p. 103; S.R. Deshpande, Conditions of Labour, p. 5; R.K. Roy, Industrialization in India: Growth and Conflict in the Private Corporate Sector, 1914–1947 (Delhi, 1979), p. 211. (33.) RSCI, p. 68. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Swadeshikata’, Jeevan Smriti (Calcutta, 1360 BS), p. 81. (34.) R.L. Hardgrave Jr., The Nadars of Tamilnadu (Berkeley: Los Angeles, 1969), p. 151. (35.) P. Hilding, Technology, pp. 41–2.. (36.) Moulik and Purushotham, ‘The Match Industry in Sivakasi, A Case Study of Technology, Working Conditions and Self Employment’, Economic and Political Weekly (May 1982), as cited by Per Hilding in Technology in a Controlled Economy.

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Technology Beckons (37.) Based on Burton Benedict’s study of family firms and economic development, Thomas A. Timberg argued that ‘perhaps it is the presence, rather than the absence of these institutions and values, which made the Marwaris and some other commercial communities successful. It may be that many institutions, such as the joint family and strong particularistic caste loyalties are the secret of success in Indian business and industry.’ Thomas A. Timberg, The Marwaris: From Traders to Industrialists (New Delhi: 1978), pp. 6, 16–7. (38.) Cited in P. Hilding, Technology, pp. 51, 244. (39.) Cited in ibid, p. 42. (40.) S.R. Deshpande, Conditions of Labour, p 15. The discussion on the south Indian match industry is based on Per Hilding’s monograph, if not otherwise stated, Technology in a Controlled Economy, pp. 5, 41–4, 51–2, 244; C. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy 1880–1955, The Tamilnad Countryside, (Delhi 1988), p. 373. (41.) P. Hilding, Technology in a Controlled Economy, Table: 1.1, pp. 8, 43. (42.) ‘Ganjeer Kal’, Byabsa O Banijya, 1, no. 11 (Phalgun 1333 BS); Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Small-Scale Unorganised Industries of Bengal, Their Role in the Industrial Economy of the Province: 1900–1947’, PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Calcutta, 1992, p. 180. (43.) Bengal, Dept of Industries, Bulletin No. 87, pp. 1–2; J.N. Kumar (ed.), Bangsha Parichay (Calcutta 1341 BS), Vol. 14, p. 63; Amit Bhattacharyya, p. 19. In 1990, hosiery industry in India employed 4 lakh persons in the organized sector and many more in cottage and ancillary units. The value of the total annual production amounted to Rs 22,000 crore, exporting hosiery goods worth Rs 800 crore. G.L. Agarwala, ‘Indian Hosiery: An Overview’, Business: Explorer Times, Calcutta, vol. II, no. 23 (May 1991), p. 29. (44.) S. Sengupta, Sangsad, vol. 1, pp. 290, 461. (45.) Biswakarma, Lakshmir Kripalav: Bangalir Sadhana (Calcutta, 1969), p. 98; Amit Bhattacharyya, p. 19. (46.) IIC, Evidence, Witness No. 82; Mukul Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, Calcutta: Department of Industries, Government of Bengal, Bulletin No. 87, 1940, p. 2. (47.) BISC, p. 42. ‘Bharater Kal’, Mahajanbandhu, I, no. 5 (1308 BS). (48.) Nemai Charan Basu, ‘Kotchandpurer Chinir Kal’ Mahajanbandhu, I, no. 5 (Ashar 1308 BS), pp. 102–5; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 2.

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Technology Beckons (49.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 2. (50.) S. Sengupta, Sangsad, vol. 1, p. 383. (51.) Bhupendrnath Bose, IIC, Evidence, Witness No. 102, pp. 141–2. (52.) Amit Bhattacharyya, Table: 3.2, pp. 24–5. (53.) IIC, Evidence, Witness No. 102, p. 153. (54.) L.S.S. O’Malley, Pabna (Calcutta, 1923), p. 61; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 3, 9; Amit Bhattacharryya, p. 22. G. N. Gupta, Survey of the Industries and Resources, p. 13. (55.) RSCI, pp. 61, 134; L.S.S. O’Malley, Pabna, p. 61; G.N. Gupta, Survey of the Industries and Resources, p. 13; BISC, pp. 51–2; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 11. (56.) S. Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement, p. 343. A Professor of Physics/Chemistry at Calcutta Metropolitan College, Jogeschandra later joined the legal profession. Hirendranath shot to fame for his role in the Maniktala Bomb case. S. Sengupta, Sangsad, vol. 1, pp. 390, 446, 632. M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 10. L.S.S. O’Malley, Pabna, p. 61; Arthik Unnati, 7, no. 1 (Baisakh 1339 BS); M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 3. (57.) J.A.L. Swan, Report on the Industrial Development of Bengal, p. 7. M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 4; ‘Hosiery goods differ in varieties and size. Trade statistics published by the department of commercial and statistical intelligence of the government are not much helpful for the purpose.’ BISC, p. 50. (58.) Editor, ‘Bangalir Kayekti Ullekhjogya Byabsay’, Kajer Lok, 3, no. 2, pp. 172– 3; J.G. Cumming, Industrial Position and Prospects, p. 48; Byabsa O Banijya, 1, no. 11(1333 BS); Amit Bhattacharyya, p. 19; also his ‘Random Notes on ‘Bengali Enterprise 1900–1920’, Journal of History, Vol. V, 1984, p. 114. (59.) ‘Ganjeer Kal’ Byabsa O Banijya, I, no. 11 (Phalgun 1333 BS); Somerset Playne, Bengal and Assam, Bihar and Orissa: Their History, People, Commerce and Industrial Resources (London: The Foreign and Colonial Compiling & Publishing Co., 1917), p. 76. (60.) It was J.C. Dey & Sons. ‘Ganjeer Kal’; S. Playne, Bengal and Assam, Bihar and Orissa, p. 76. (61.) N.C. Bose’s factory had six machines, R.C. Shome’s had three big and eight small, while Student’s Economic Hosiery had seven machines. RSCI, pp. 38–9.

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Technology Beckons Similar others were Sealdah Hosiery Mills, at 125 Bowbazar Street, and Shimla Hosiery, at 6 Ramtanu Bose Lane. ‘Ganjeer Kal’. (62.) Enclosure to the Letter of the Managing Director, Kusum Hosiery Mills Private Ltd. (28 September 1991) to the Secretary, Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association, 219, B.B. Ganguly Street, Calcutta. (63.) Upendra Kishore Roy, a revolutionary of Mymensingh, was involved in the murder of the notorious CID Police Inspector, Madhusudan Bhattacharyya, but was subsequently released for lack of conviction. The abstract submitted to the Papers of the Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association [hereafter BHMA] office for centenary celebration, September 1991, MSS. (64.) Enclosure to the Letter from D.N. Bose’s Hosiery Factory to the Secretary, BHMA, dated 9 September 1991. (65.) Historical abstract of Kalighat Hosiery, BHMA, Centenary Celebration File, office of the BHMA. MSS. (66.) Bhupendranath Bose purchased machineries of the Oriental Hosiery and then resold to Parjoar Hosiery Co. of Howrah. Biswakarma, Lakshmir Kripalav, p. 98. The data available on the number of hosiery units is not really comparable. The RSCI mostly referred to cottage and small-scale units while the Classified List of Factories in Bengal [hereafter CLFB] listed only the factories coming under the purview of the Indian Factories Act. CLFB, RSCI, p. 38; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 7–8. (67.) In 1935, Howrah had three registered factories, namely the Parjoar Hosiery Mills Ltd, Salkia; the Jagadish Hosiery Factory, Howrah; and the Juggilal Kamalapat Hosiery Factory at Belur—all founded after 1919. CLFB, M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 7–8; BISC, pp. 194–5. Calcutta and its neighbourhood consumed about two-thirds of the hosiery yarns in Bengal. M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 3, 4, 9, 10, 51; Arthik Unnati, 7, no. 1 (1339 BS). Rajsahi and Bagura, districts adjacent to Pabna, had only one hosiery factory each. BISC, pp. 51–2. (68.) G.N. Gupta, Survey of the Industries and Resources, p. 13; N.L. Chandra, ‘Bikrampurer Shilpa Itihaser Upadan’, in Bikrampur, edited by J.N. Gupta, vol. 4, no. 4 (Dhaka, Shraban 1330 BS), p. 165; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 4, 5; RSCI, pp. 59–78. (69.) J.A. Vas, Rangpur, 1911, p. 91; RSCI, pp. 49, 79–84, 86, 92, 110. M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 5; G.N. Gupta, Survey of the Industries and Resources, p. 13; F.A. Sachse, Mymensing (Calcutta: 1917); R.L. Datta, The Bleaching of Hosiery; Harihar Seth, Sangkhipta Chandannagar Parichay (Chandannagar, 1370 BS), p. 44. Page 41 of 46

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Technology Beckons (70.) J.A. Vas, Rangpur, p. 91; RSCI, pp. 49, 86, 110. (71.) S. Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement, p. 372, 373–4; See also Administration, Report of the Department of Industries, Bengal, 1920, p. 16; S.H Kadri, Hosiery Trade in Northern India, Department of Industries, Government of Bihar & Orissa, Bulletin No. 18 (Patna 1926), preface, p. i; Biswakarma, Lakshmir Kripalav, p. 98. (72.) BISC, pp. 51, 201; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 10. (73.) J.A.L. Swan stated that there were only ‘one or two hosiery units in the mufassal’ in his Report on the Industrial Development of Bengal, p. 7. (74.) Amit Bhattacharyya, pp. 26 and 29. (75.) A.K. Bagchi, ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’, in Elites in South Asia, eds E. Leach and S.N. Mukherji (Cambridge: 1970), p. 237; BISC, p. 50; IIC, Evidence, Witness No. 102, p. 153. (76.) BISC, p. 50; Amit Bhattacharyya, p. 29. (77.) IIC, Evidence, Witness No. 102, p. 153. S. Playne, Bengal and Assam, Bihar and Orissa, pp. 76–7; L.S.S. O’Malley, Pabna, p. 61; G.N. Gupta, Survey of the Industries and Resources, p. 13. RSCI, pp. 13, 38–9, 134; Byabsa O Banijyya, 5, no. 11 (Phalgun 1333 BS); Advertisement in Byabsa O Banijyya, 4, no. 4 (Shravan 1332 BS); ‘Ganjeer Kal’. (78.) Govt of India, Progs. Dept. of Agrl. Rev. & Com. Foreign of Trade of Calcutta, 1918–19 to 1922–23: Cotton goods, pp. 12–13; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 20–3, 74, 79; S.C. Mitter, A Recovery Plan for Bengal, p. 337. (79.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 30–7, 40, 80. (80.) Report of the Panel on Hosiery Industry (New Delhi: Department of Industries and Supplies, Government of India, 1946), p.2. Biswakarma, Lakshmir Kripalav, p. 100. (81.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 37–8. (82.) Textile Mercury of Manchester, April 1926, as cited in D.C. Gupta, Director of Industries, Bihar & Orissa, in Bulletin No. 18. (83.) Messrs Abdul Khaliq & Co. of Calcutta was the sole agent of the Britani brand hosiery goods produced in Hongkong. S.H. Kadri, Hosiery Trade in Northern India pp. 3–4. M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 4, 38–40, 55.

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Technology Beckons (84.) Biswakarma, Lakshmir Kripalav, p. 100; D.B. Ghosh, ‘On the Occasion of the BHMA Diamond Jubilee’, Diamond Jubilee Souvenir of the BHMA, p. A. (85.) Report of the Indian Tariff Board (Cotton Textile Enquiry Committee), 1932. (86.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 51–2; Report of the Indian Tariff Board (Cotton), 1932. (87.) Letter, Managing Director, Kusum Hosiery Mills Private Ltd. (28 September 1991), For M/s Deshbandhu Hosiery Factory, courtesy, Kamal Mukherjee of 43C, Raja Dinabandhu Street, Calcutta, (15 May 1991). (88.) From four in 1924, number of hosiery factories in Barishal thus increased to nine in 1940. DOIB, No 87, pp. 4–5, 41. RSCI, p. 92; BISC, pp. 50–1; Biswakarma, Lakshmir Kripalav, pp. 98, 103–4. Enclosure to the Letter of Durgadas Pal to the Secretary, BHMA, dated 21 September 1991, BHMA. (89.) Rabindranath Ghosh, ‘Gopal Hosiery: An Account of the Old Days’, Handwritten MSS, BHMA, pp. 1–4. (90.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 51–2; BISC, p. 51. (91.) Letter of Mr B.N. Dasgupta, Secretary, BHMA, and Managing Director, Indo-European Trading Company Ltd, 20 November 1938, to the Government of Bengal; cited in M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 48, 50. (92.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 12, 35, 48–50; BISC, pp. 214, 218. (93.) Ludhiana owes its woollen hosiery industry to a group of Kashmiri families who had migrated to this place due to a severe famine. Their womenfolk knew several arts including that of knitting socks on wooden or steel rods, and they laid the foundation of a craft which from usual pastime of ladies eventually developed into an important industry. Dept of Industries and Supplies, p. 1. For the Ludhiana industry, see Report on the Woollen Hosiery Industry (Tariff Commission), Government of India, 1952. (94.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 13; BISC, pp. 51–2; Arthik Unnati, 7, no. 1 (1339 BS); L.M. Mukherjee, ‘Handicaps of the Hosiery’; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 14. (95.) J.A.L. Swan, Report on the Industrial Development of Bengal, p. 7. (96.) S. Playne, Bengal and Assam, Bihar and Orissa, p. 77; RSCI; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 16. (97.) IIC, Evidence, Witness No. 102, p. 153; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, 14–15, 42. Page 43 of 46

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Technology Beckons (98.) L.S.S. O’Malley, Pabna, p. 61; G.N. Gupta, Survey of the Industries and Resources, p. 13; J.A.Vas, Rangpur, p. 91; M.S.H. Kadir, p. 7. (99.) RSCI, p 38. Dhakeswari, Lakshmi Weaving & Spinning, and Chittaranjan Cotton Mill also produced hosiery yarn for sometime. BISC, p. 54; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 26. A cartel of wholesale dealers controlled its supply to the Calcutta market—Ewing & Co., 4 Clive Row; Sunder Das Thackersay & Brothers, Armenian Street; Hazi Hassan Dada, 12 Zakaria Street; Bankey Lall, 176 Harrison Road; S. Ghosh of 18/12 Vidyasagar St.; Gokul Das, Damodar Das & Co. and Dongarji Jiwandas & Co. at Cross Street, BISC, p. 54; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 12, 25–8, 34; S.H. Kadir, p. 14. (100.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 2, 9, 16, 17; IIC, Evidence, 102, pp. 149, 153. In 1924, Maniktala Hosiery Factory paid in the Rs 10–60 scale, while Rs 10–30 was paid by small units. Iktikar ul Awwal, p. 66; S. Playne, Bengal and Assam, Bihar and Orissa, p 77; RSCI, p. 39. (101.) S.R. Deshpande, Conditions of Labour, p. 9; Iktikar ul Awwal, The Industrial Development of Bengal (Delhi: 1982), p. 65. BHMA, Golden Jubilee Souvenir. (102.) B.N. Dasgupta; M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 19. (103.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 18–19. (104.) L.M. Mukherjee, pp. 35–6. (105.) Carpenters and blacksmiths at Ludhiana first started with repairing imported knitting machine till they could locally make out a prototype of it, which they sold at one third of the price of the imported machine. Md. Mosa Mistry’s was the most enterprising of the early Ludhiana firms producing small hosiery machine. Kadri, Hosiery Trade in Northern India, p. 6. M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, pp. 65, 66, 68–72, 74. H.H. Ghosh, pp. 97–8. (106.) M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 32; BISC, pp. 55, 145, 147; RSCI, pp. 65–7; M.S. H. Kadri, Hosiery Trade in Northern India, p. 7. (107.) Rabindranath Ghosh, ‘Gopal Hosiery’, p. 6. (108.) ‘Interview of S. Samanta’, Business, p. 27; R. Ghosh, ‘Gopal Hosiery’, p.5. (109.) T.A. Timberg, The Marwaris, pp. 11, 68, 113–14, 117–18, 255. (110.) Interview with the owner of Rupa Hosiery during our trip to Tirrupur in Tamailnadu in October 1992.

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Technology Beckons (111.) Letter of the Managing Director, Kusum Hosiery Mills (28 September 1991). For M/s Deshbandhu Hosiery, Interview, Shri Kamal Mukherjee, 43C, Raja Dinabandhu Street, Calcutta (15 May 1991); BHMA, Editor, Interview of Shri D.B. Ghosh, President, Federation of Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association of India (FHMAI), Business, p. 24. (112.) I acknowledge my gratitude to Shri Debabrata Ghosh of Gopal Hosiery, former President of the BHMA, and the FHMAI, Delhi, for giving me an opportunity to visit Tiruppur in October 1992. I fondly recollect the time I spent at Tiruppur with him and his friends—Mr Aggarwal of Binod Hosiery and Mr P.R. Agarwal of Rupa Hosiery. (113.) The pioneering firm was Kadar Knitting Co. of Razzak Bhai. Personal interview of Abdul Rehman alias Babu Bhai (84 years), owner of the Tiruppur Knitting & Weaving Co., Baby Knitting Co., dated 21 October 1992. (114.) Early British observers referred to the sturdiness of Gounder peasants, while their twentieth-century successors pointed out their enterprise and wealth. C.A. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy, p. 200. (115.) Personal interview of Ramaswamy Gounder, owner of the Miller Hosiery, Tiruppur, 21 October 1992. (116.) ‘Present Scenario of the Cotton Hosiery Industry’, SISI, IDBI, SBI, Madras sponsored Industry Workshop on Modernization of Cotton Hosiery Industry (15 December 1988), Tiruppur, MSS. p. 3. Courtesy, Mr Narayanswami, former Secretary of the South India Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association (SIHMA), P. Murgaswami and V. Subramanian, proprietors of PVS Knitting Co. and PVS Lodge, Tiruppur, who allowed me to use papers in their collections. Interview of K. Vellusamy, owner of the Sparrow Knitting Co., Tiruppur, dated 19 October 1992. C.A. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy, p. 95. (117.) In 1985, Bombay produced 30 per cent of the synthetic hosiery in India and Delhi’s share was 40 per cent. In the case of cotton hosiery goods, Delhi contributed 10 per cent of the total produce, while Ludhiana, Kanpur, Saharanpur, Ahmedabad, and Pune collectively contributed another 10 per cent. M. Gupta, The Hosiery Industry in Bengal, p. 19. (118.) Editor, ‘Interview with Mr. P.R. Agarwal: Difficulties of the Local Industry’, Business, p. 28. (119.) Report of the Panel on Hosiery Industry, pp. 4–5. (120.) Sujit K. Basu, Manish C. Bhattacharjee, Satyesh C. Chakraborty, N Ramachandran, and Alok Ray, ‘A Survey of Hosiery Industry in West Bengal’, 1986, IIM, Calcutta, Typescript MSS, p. 13.

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Technology Beckons (121.) The estimate of the cost is for the year 1985–86. Ibid. (122.) Biswakarma, Lakshmir Kripalav, p. 101; R.C.E. Jain, Editor, Interview, G.L. Agarwal, ‘Indian Hosiery: An Overview’, Business: Explorer Times, p. 26; See also ‘Interview of S. Samanta’, p. 27. (123.) R. Ghosh, Gopal Hosiery: An Account of the Old Days’, Handwritten MSS, BHMA, p. 5. (124.) Report on the decline of the hosiery industry in the Sovabazar cluster of Calcutta in the 1980s by a special correspondent in the Bengali daily Bartaman, dated 28 October 2005, p. 9. (125.) S.K. Basu, M.C. Bhattacharjee, S.C. Chakraborty, N. Ramachandran, and A. Ray, ‘A Survey’, p. 13 A. Editor, Interview, G.L. Agarwal, p. 26; ‘Interview of S. Samanta’, p. 27. (126.) D.B. Ghosh, Editor, Business, p. 25. (127.) Editor, Interview, G.L Agarwal, p. 26; ‘Interview of S. Samanta’, p. 27. In 1980, S.C. Nandy, President, Bengal National Chambers of Commerce and Industry (BNCCI), thus stated, ‘The labour situation in West Bengal is very unsatisfactory. The number of man-days lost here due to strikes, lockouts etc., in January–June 1979 in the State, amounted to 13.2 million as against the total all India figure of 22.6 million during the same period, nearly 58% of the total mandays lost in the country as a whole. Productivity of labour is also not commensurate with the increased wages paid to them, and is less compared to that in other states.’ Annual Report of the BNCCI, Calcutta, 1980, p. 7, as cited in Chittabrata Palit, Growth of Commerce & Industry in Bengal (Calcutta: BNCCI, 1999), p.178.

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The Power of Steam

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

The Power of Steam Breakdown of the Old Economy Smritikumar Sarkar

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords This chapter is an analysis of the impact of steam engine on the rural economy, discussed with reference to the railways and the rice mill. The railways realigned the pattern of rural settlement. From the river that was till then the highway of trade and travel, localities and bazaars gravitated towards the railway station. The railways carried coal to run steam-driven rice mills in the interior, leading to massive outflow of grains from the village. The old pattern of rice trade changed, destitute women lost their paddy husking job, and rising prices of the staple often denied the poor his meal. In the folk imagination, the rice mill thus appeared as a diabolical agent of destitution, and hence often a target of mob frenzy. Keywords:   steam engine, rural economy, railways, rice mill, paddy husker, rice trade

Istim vessel railway ei sakaler tej heriye Ved Brahma bhoma hoye gelen miliye agni, jal ar pabane*

STEAM IS AN ENGLISHMAN, GOES AN OLD SAYING IN ENGLAND, reminding one of both its discovery in England and its role in the making of the British Empire. It was the first in a long series of ‘inanimate converter of energy’ that changed the human life. The attempt to overcome limitations of the old means of inanimate motive power began quite early. Based on early discoveries, James Watt built ‘a steam engine with technical and economic characteristics that led Page 1 of 54

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The Power of Steam to its wide adoption’. It took him nearly 20 years to perfect his experiment before its commercial use could begin in 1785,1 converting it from a mere fire pump planned for the mines to a source of motive (p.232) power literally with unlimited use. Most important was its adaptability to any place unlike the location-bound water or wind mill. Soon ‘the people in London, Manchester and Birmingham became steam mill mad’. The first to adopt it were ‘the great ironmasters of England and Scotland’, followed by flour mills, malt mills for breweries, flint mills for the earthenware and china industry, and mills for crushing sugarcane. The most notable of these was the Albion Flour Mills of London, built in 1786. Its 50 pairs of millstone driven by two steam engines yielded 16,000 bushels of flour a week, threatening old millers. Five years later, when a fire burnt it to ashes, rumour spread across the lanes and by-lanes of London that it was not a mere accident. But the steam engine was unstoppable and by 1802 it had nearly replaced the water and wind mills in rural England.2 The export of steam engines began soon. In 1840, only 620 steam engines were in use in Great Britain, whereas nearly three times that number were running outside, Europe and America excluded.3 India, the most prized possession of Britain, drew a steady flow. The East India Company brought it to mint coin, navigate Indian rivers and dredge canals followed by its use in the railways. Steam-driven mills spread to the interior. The steam engine was a more powerful agency of change than laws, roads, bridges, canals, or education that the British had introduced in India.4 This chapter is devoted to an analysis of its impact on rural society, discussed with reference to the railways and rice mills, two major spheres of its use in rural Bengal since the early nineteenth century.

Riverbank to the Railways Over large parts of eastern India, railways reorganized the pattern of human settlement all along its track. In earlier times, populous villages clustered close to the river, the silent highway of trade and transport. The most important roads thus either moved along the river or linked the interior to the riverfront. With the coming of the railways, any road that went to the riverside either lost its importance or was relaid to feed the station nearby. The road south of Bangaon ‘began to be less used as traffic with the interior moved by rail from Chagdah station’ after the ‘opening of the Eastern Bengal (p.233) Railway in 1862’. The old Benares Road passing through Hooghly lost its textile traffic to northwest India to the railways.5 The railways realigned the pattern of human settlement. A typical case is Howrah, a small, nondescript village on the western bank of the river Hooghly that turned into the second city of Bengal. In 1723, Alexander Hamilton referred to the western bank of Calcutta as ‘a line of mud banks reeking with malaria, corpses in all stages of decomposition floating up and down the stream by the Page 2 of 54

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The Power of Steam dozen, the jungle lining the shore, the abode of snake and alligator’.6 The long line of riverbank villages ended with Ghusuri-Salkea, beyond which there were a few small settlements—once described by the Venetian traveller Cesare Federici as the shifting village—such as Bator.7 A document in 1797 for the first time referred to Howrah Ghat, linked to the village of the same name by a narrow road. Twenty-five years later, Bishop Heber found it mainly inhabited by boat builders.8 The industry prospered with the increasing demand for boats and eviction of dockyards from the Calcutta side, drawing early localization of boatmen, carpenters, blacksmiths, rope makers, porters, and traders. The migration increased with the beginning of the construction of the railway in 1851, and soon changed the old desolate character of Howrah, when the two major railway networks connecting northern and central India became fully operational. In 1908, migrants thus constituted two-thirds of the population of Howrah, with the factory operatives alone claiming 8 per cent of it.9 The seat of the largest zamindari in Bengal,10 the town of Burdwan served as the vibrant hub of a cluster of rural markets in the most fertile tracts of eastern India. Early in the nineteenth century, much of it was spoiled by the degeneration of the river system and a sudden downturn in its old trade with northwestern India. The decaying roads and the use of bullock carts restrained the natural flow of its surplus grain to the river ports of the Bhagirathi River. The Howrah–Raniganj/Howrah–Rajmahal railways via Burdwan came in this background. In Burdwan, railway construction had coincided with yet another important construction work—a European style royal palace by a British firm. In 1851, the raja shifted his residence from Kanchannagar, their old habitat on the bank of the Banka River, to the new palace. The Rajbati of popular parlance served as the nucleus of the new urban settlement of Burdwan in the postrailway decades. (p.234) The traders and bankers followed the royal entourage to operate from markets founded close to the palace, which slowly eclipsed the river- and road-based old markets. A set of new roads came into existence to meet the railway-induced spurt in transport demand, mostly serpentine cart roads that caused minimum affront to private space. A little further north from Burdwan, Supur–Surul in Birbhum offers yet another form of change. Supur was a small trading station on the Ajay River close to Surul on the road to the river port of Katoa. With John Chap as the company’s resident, it had nearly 20,000 weavers living in its vicinity. ‘Studded with brickbuilt houses and temples’, Surul in the 1850s was a large village with ‘five thousand inhabitants’ with the trunk road from Siuri to Bardhaman passing through these ‘populous villages’. The East India Railway (EIR) loop line from Bardhaman crossed the Ajay River at Supur and passed through Surul before reaching Siuri, headquarters of Birbhum district. The final survey report states, ‘North of the Ajay, the surface of the country rises rapidly for about three miles, then sinks again into the bed of the Page 3 of 54

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The Power of Steam river Kulpi. The ridge is known as Surul ridge, and the line will pass through it close to the village of Surul on the West side thereof.’11 The EIR had thus built its workshop at Surul for building the crucial bridge over the Ajay River, first of its type undertaken in India. ‘Surul … has greatly increased since the railway staff settled here,’ a local observer noted. ‘It has now a dispensary and hospital. Near Surul are remains of the old commercial residency, the relics of the old palatial style and mode of living, when residents were the princes of the land. A road metalled and bridged leads to Ilambazar on the Damuda, which is there a quarter of a mile wide.’12 But the people of Supur-Surul opposed the railways passing through their area forcing the EIR to shift the track two miles farther east. Bhulpore, or Bholepore, which came to be known as Bolpur, a mile and a half away from Surul, became the nearest railway station. In the early 1850s, Bolpur was a desolate place ‘with a density of houses not exceeding 58 per square mile’, compared to 238 in Supur–Surul. A year later, Sherwill found only 163 mud houses in Bolpur, against 730 of Surul and 582 of Supur. Bolpur at that time was inhabited by blacksmiths, scavengers, cobblers, palanquin-bearers, Muslims, and Santals.13 (p.235) Unlike Supur–Surul, other major villages en route, such as Sainthia, did not oppose it. In 1858, the EIR loop line was extended up to the Ajay River; the bridge over it opened by the end of the year; and in the next October regular train services commenced up to Sainthia, Birbhum’s most important port town on the Mayurakshi River. The 1860s also marked the completion of the two other narrow gauge lines: Ajay–Saithia and Tinpahar–Sainthia. The EIR Co. closed its workshop at Surul and sold the property to the Raipur landlord.14 Sainthia was a ganja (rural market town) on the Suri–Murshidabad road through which the east–west trade mostly travelled. In May 1856, a police outpost was opened at Sainthia ‘chiefly on account of its fast increasing population by reason of railway and the proposed station there’. It also became an assembly point for building the Mayurakshi Bridge. ‘Thousands of labourers’ and ‘several Europeans’ settled in Sainthia turning it into ‘an encampment station’.15 There are similar other reports of passive resistance of circumstances at a number of sites.16 The Howrah–Pundooa section of the EIR was the first railway line built in eastern India. Why then did it bypass the Pundooa village by forming a large curve? ‘The large village of Pundowah is situated on the GT Road about 42 miles from Calcutta,’ Turnbull wrote to the EIR Chairman. ‘The line will pass on the south side of the village, thus avoiding the low land on the north side thereof and also interference with native cottages and other buildings. Curving to westwards, the railway will cross the road about two miles west of Pundowah on the present level of the road.’ It led to an extension of the project length of the line by two miles.17

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The Power of Steam Turnbull had justified the diversion on two grounds: low land on the northern side and native settlement in the village. The first is untenable; as most of the line here had been laid through the low and marshy land. In fact, raising the embankment level was cheaper than the circuitous diversion of the line. He just wanted to spare the native cottages and avoid trouble, because the pressure to reach the coal belt of Raniganj was mounting daily.18 Messrs Burn and Co., the firm building the line, filed a petition to the Supreme Court ‘demanding compensation in respect of alterations made by direction of the government in the original place upon which it had contracted’. It (p.236) ‘sought compensation for the delay in giving possession of the land’. The company lost the case; but an official note (July 1857) admitted ‘the fact of the alteration’ and ‘the delay’ in land transfer.19 The leniency shown in the case of Pundooa was not repeated in other villages. Only a little later, the same Turnbull tells us, ‘When passing the large village of Caksa [Kanksa], it [land] begins slightly to undulate; throughout the distance the line keeps on the north side of the G T Road, maintaining an almost straight line.’20 Thus, in Kanksa, neither farmland nor villagers’ cottages stopped him from laying the line straight across the village. There was no opposition. Three different cases of the village-based response to railways need a little elaboration. In the Seoraphuli, Shrirampur, Bhadreshwar, Baidyabati cluster, as discussed earlier, the initial opposition of the people faded into disorganized grumblings at the mode of acquisition and the rate of compensation for the land acquired. In Surul and Pundooa, people did not let the railway line pass through their villages. Why was it so? It has been argued that ‘influential people of these villages objected to laying of the rail track through these villages on the ground that this would disturb their privacy.’21 It is true that in the beginning villagers were afraid of the social intimacy of the railways; but why such conservatism was specific to Surul and Pundooa only and not found in similar other villages along the route? Dipesh Chakraborty found an interrelationship between early railways and incidence of dacoity in its neighbourhood. The people also feared the railways as a carrier of deadly epidemics, such as cholera recurrent among the labourers pressed into the work. ‘Housed in meager shacks, underfed and overworked, these labourers commonly were ill.’22 In October 1859, ‘a terrible cholera ravaged the district [Rajmahal]. For some weeks, no less than eight to ten percent of the coolies employed died weekly and the disease did not disappear altogether until middle of December. It is estimated that over 4,000 labourers succumbed during the epidemic.’23 Hence, villagers often opposed the settlement of railway labourers near their village.

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The Power of Steam Santals, used to the life of migrant labourer, did not join the railway work, creating an acute labour problem in the Rajmahal division. ‘The reports of the engineers engaged on construction show what a trying time they had’ building the line through this area. (p.237) The folk image of the railway as a demon gobbling up innocent souls had been so pervasive that even Mahatma Gandhi once referred to it as the harbinger of the bubonic plague.24 To return to the point, both Surul and Pundooa were prosperous villages led by rich peasants, with Surul being a high caste Hindu village under a Brahmin zamindar; and Pundooa had the dominance of rich Muslim families. In both Surul and Pundooa, the village-based opposition to the railways had been thus organized by landlords. Why did an equally prosperous village of Sainthia not oppose the railways? Sainthia, Ahmadpur, and Mollarpur were major market centres dominated by Bengali trading castes. Teli, kundu, sadhukhan and subarnabanik traders of these places got grains and textiles from the interior and sent the same to north India. In the early nineteenth century, they shifted to sending their goods to Calcutta and receiving in return salt, sugar, metal, and so on, for the hinterland. Apparently, their trade was similar in nature to that of their counterparts in the river-borne markets of the Hooghly district, as discussed earlier. But, unlike the Hooghly traders, they were disadvantageously located. The river route, which linked them to the Ganges in the north and Calcutta in the south, was navigable only in post-monsoon weeks. The ecology of their location constrained their trading activities; hence they had smaller shops compared to the large storehouses of their Hooghly counterparts on the banks of the major rivers. The railways thus held out to them the hope of a faster reach to both the Ganges and Calcutta, as also the possibility of transforming their local trade into a trans-regional one. Like Dwarkanath Tagore, bogged down in the isolated coal mines of Raniganj, they had thus welcomed the railways, which boosted their trade. In 1876, W.W. Hunter found that ‘Bolpur, Ahmadpur, Sainthia and Mallarpur, stations on the loop line of the EIR, … have rapidly risen in importance within the last twenty years, since the opening of the railways and have attracted a great deal of the trade which formerly went by water to Katoa and other trading towns of the Bhagirathi and Hooghly’.25 Kanksa was a backward village of low caste, tribal people. The landlord of Surul was from an influential house having connections with the administration. In 1873, as Surul had been feeling the pinch of losing its railway station to Bolpur, its landlord managed to open a sub-registry office in the village.26 What Kanksa had lacked was a (p.238) spontaneous social leadership to streamline the discontent into an effective opposition. Here, villagers had lost their land, many their homesteads, but did not oppose the move. The spectre of the babu and sahib associated with early railway works must have acted as a deterrent.

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The Power of Steam Their allegiance to the Bardhaman Raj also had an important role in their acquiescence to land acquisition and ouster.27 Traditionally known for its Rajbhakti, or submission and allegiance to the British government, the Bardhaman Raj was favourably disposed to the early completion of railways. It expected a rise in the lease value of its land in Raniganj once it was linked by the railways. Thus, even the fear of cholera, which had earlier induced the Rajmahal tribes to boycott railway works, did not have any impact here, with the people of Kanksa voluntarily working for the railways. With railways in operation, the old roads to the Ajay River through Supur–Surul fell into disuse. Instead, ‘feeder roads and cartable village paths leading to the railway station came into existence, often on the initiative of the villagers themselves’. Supur as a river outpost lost its trade and population to Bolpur. Kalikapur nearby drew settlers from old market places like Katwa, Kalna, Memari, Ketugram, Mangalkot, and Bhatar. Government offices began to shift in ones and twos. In 1871 came the Munsiff’s Court from Amdahara village, 6 miles from Bolpur, the sub-registry office in 1876 from Surul, and the police station from Kasba village, followed by postal and medical units by 1900. Bolpur’s population grew by five times, as Supur and Surul suffered 57 per cent and 48 per cent decline respectively since 1851.28 A revisit to the village in 1961 found ‘many ruined brick buildings’, ‘majority mud houses’, and ‘old temples’ in Supur with ‘a narrow road’, really ‘an uneven dusty track along the vast expanse of the rice fields’.29 Small markets like Raniganj, Asansol, and Barakar attracted Marwaris and ‘thousands of coolies from Bihar and the neighbouring districts of Manbhum, Birbhum and Santhal Parganas’.30 Near Calcutta, sparsely populated localities of the Titagarh–Halisahar cluster had similar development. The thin sheet of settlement along the river, amidst marshes and waste lands, had mostly priests, traders, professionals, artisans, and milkmen. With the Eastern Bengal Railway (EBR) opening in 1862, jute mills came into existence from (p.239) Kamarhati to Naihati, between 1865 and 1884. The railway workshop at Kanchrapara (1868), second largest in India, drew waves of migration from the United Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, Rajasthan, Madras, and Punjab. They looked like ‘foreign towns planted in the midst of Bengal’. By 1910, non-Bengali population grew by 162 per cent in Titagarh, and more than quadrupled in Bhatpara– Halisahar with Bengalis constituting only 20 per cent in Bhatpara and 10 per cent in Titagarh.31 In the east, Ishwardihi or Ishwardi in Pabna was a small village outshined by the more populous Sara, an overgrown village with a mart and a ferry linking to Nadia, with an EBR assembling yard. Ishwardi later became a junction station on the Calcutta–Santahar route with a branch line linking it to Serajganj, the largest river port and steamer terminal of north Bengal. The running of the Calcutta–Santahar broad gauge train through Hardinge Bridge further added to Page 7 of 54

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The Power of Steam its importance. Sara was thus eclipsed by Ishwardi, which grew into a major market town with an easy access to nearly the whole of northern Bengal. A remote village without a riverfront, Sanatahar in Bagura became a terminal station on the Calcutta–Siliguri route. The metre gauge branch line brought here large supplies of paddy, tobacco, and jute from Jalpaiguri, Kuchbehar, Dinajpur, Rangpur, and Rajsahi, to be transhipped to broad gauge trains. It turned into a centre of wholesale trade attracting merchants, labourers, and carters from far and near. A small village, Siliguri was ‘a focus of the local trade’, catering mainly to the hills with cart roads to Kalimpong and Sikkim starting from here. After it became the terminus of the Northern Bengal State Railway (NBSR) (1878) and was joined by the Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway (1881), Siliguri emerged as the most important market town of the region.32 Amanura and Lalmanirhat in Rajsahi and Bagura respectively are similar other cases of the railways turning a village into a trade/urban centre. A more interesting case is Jalpaiguri, which Hooker described in 1849 as ‘a large straggling village near the banks of the Teesta’ amidst forests and ‘a transhipment point’ for proceeding further north on elephants. The first batch of settlers (bahe) to move to Jalpaiguri, after the British had carved out the district in 1869, consisted of lawyers, officials, doctors, and traders from Pabna, (p. 240) Dhaka, and Noakhali. They sailed down the Yamuna–Brahmaputra–Tista– Karala Rivers to wind up their trailing journey at Kalibari ghat of Dinbazar. Government pleader Priyanath Bandyopadhyay of Barasat went to Bhagalpur by boat and took a cart from there, while Prabhudayal Agarwal of Rohtak trekked all the way from Bhagalpur to reach Jalpaiguri. With the railways reaching Jalpaiguri (4 June 1878), the pace of migration picked up and the population doubled itself within two decades. ‘The facilities of communication afforded by the railway,’ an official stated in 1911, ‘have induced many people to flock here for trade, while the railway itself, with its host of officials, coolies and workmen employed, also contributed to a great extent to swell the population.’33 The localities in Jalpaiguri came to be identified after professions, both high and low, unrelated to the local Rajbangshi. With Marwari traders, Dinbazar or the daytime market emerged as its hub round which Bengali professionals settled. The railway station drew small traders, shopkeepers, carters, artisans, confectioners and a host of others, assembling in the wee hours of the day only to disperse at sunset. Shops and houses surfaced later in ones and twos. The more remote the area, the more hesitant was the growth. Everywhere, railway station helped petty traders earn ‘their livelihood by selling vegetables, ghee, timber, cattle, and so on. Haats began to be held and traders established themselves at almost every station; permanent bazaars grew up at some of the important ones’.34

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The Power of Steam All these remind of C.A. Bayly’s notion of the ‘railway mart’ emerging as a new type of country town. He argued, ‘The construction of the EIR to Allahabad and later of its Awadh extension contributed to the decline of many of the old trading towns of the Ganges–Jamuna riverbank. But it also gave rise to a number of places conveniently situated for the rail borne trade.’ Mirzapur lost its position to Kanpur after the railways reached there. But, this did not happen in eastern India. The EIR line did not affect old trade centres. In 1907, O’ Malley wrote that Patna, Barh, Dinapore, Khagaul, Mokamah, and Phulwari ‘always had a good trade and attracted settlers; and even though the railway has supplanted the river as the chief artery of commerce, they have not suffered so much, as would otherwise be the case, as they are all situated on the line of rail’.35 (p.241) In Murshidabad, the railways failed to sustain the river ports of Bhagowangola, Ajimganj, and Baluchar. In January 1875, a local editor regretted the removal of the Munsif’s Court from Goas to Ajimganj, as it put ‘the clerk and the suitor to extreme inconvenience for want of good lodgings and accommodation not found at the place’. It had also reported public discontent over the shifting of the sub-registry office form Lalbag to Baluchar.36 All these places lost their importance not due to the railways, but because the political economy they were related to had changed by then. By ‘stimulating emigration’ of labour, the railways only helped in their re-ruralization.

Rice Trade Before the Railways Pre-railway India was a mosaic of markets often separated by barriers difficult to overcome. Faster, cheaper, reliable in all seasons, railways ensured carriage of goods across rivers and hills. This subsection studies the railways’ impact on rural trade. Bengal was possibly the only region incompatible to the pre-railway market syndrome. Its ‘cheap river shipping’, J.M. Hurd observed, ‘permitted Bengal to export rice’. In north India, ‘regular commercial relations were limited to a semi-circle which extended just one hundred miles’.37 But Bengal’s rice almost circumnavigated the subcontinent reaching as far as Agra and Gujarat and bringing in turn cotton and yarn to feed her looms. The rice was exported down the coast of Orissa to Madras, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Hurd referred to the two most important aspects of the Bengal trade: water transport and rice export. The question missed out is how all these had been affected by the railways. In mid-seventeenth-century Murshidabad, Manrique referred to rice selling at 4 maunds a rupee.38 Crisscrossed by river routes, it had a unique advantage to draw supply from all directions. Its port, Bhagowangola drew cotton, shells, metals and salt to send rice in return; as also raw silk and betel nut of Assam.39 Bhagowangola (literally meaning God’s depot) owed its name to its ‘mammoth rice stores’ (gola), known for their unceasing stock of grain. If Bhagowangola dealt with the east and north Bengal rice, Jiaganj-Azimganj on the Bhagirathi River was the major outlet of the south/ (p.242) west and central Bengal grain. Page 9 of 54

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The Power of Steam Both Bhagowangola and Jiaganj-Azimganj catered mainly to north Indian markets. In 1783–84, Murshidabad town needed 5,000 maunds of rice a day. From the peasant to the retailer in the town, the grain passed through an elaborate hierarchy of traders. A class of farmer-traders collected paddy from the village and sold it to itinerant traders. A group of carrier traders—baladiya, kistiwala or bhasaniya (boatmen)—were crucial to mobilizing supplies from the interior to the assembly centres. The grain transporters mostly acted as subcontractors for traders located at these places. More substantial traders, goladar, arhatdar, mahajan/seth, controlled supply through networks interlinking localized traders. In Dinajpur, ‘great houses who trade with this district are Bhojraj of Bhojpur near Patna and Thakurdas Nandi of Kalna, who … send here for large cargoes of rice for Calcutta and Murshidabad markets and have agents that reside constantly on the spot’. Four major groups (Moorcha, Kaya, Ujiniya/Marwar, and Buccali/Baqqal) controlled the rice trade in Murshidabad.40 But in matters of common concern, social barriers dissolved into close cartel. Panchayets ‘are all managed by a few of the most rich and opulent of each tribe and no instance will ever occur of their underselling each other or ever deviating from the plan of combination’. In the 1780s, Bhojraj was the merchant leader of Murshidabad, respected by the Nawab and the Company alike for his power to dislocate grain supply and create panic in the market.41 The rice trader usually earned 20 per cent profit. Those capable of holding the stock for long secured high return, as high as 53 per cent as in 1775 in Murshidabad or 78 per cent in Calcutta in 1794. In an unusual year the rate of profit could be still higher, as in 1788 when Bhojraj procured 2 maunds of rice a rupee and sold at Rs 2 a maund. The company was critical of the profiteering by these traders, but could do nothing to restrain them as the rice trade was totally under their control.42 Calcutta merchants procured rice from their kinsmen in Murshidabad and Nadia. The nexus soon encouraged the less substantial Bengali trader to shift to Calcutta: Sahas and Kundus localized in Beleghata– Bagbazar–Kumartuli areas, Telis and Sadhukhans in Chetla–Tollygunj. The pre-railway rice trade was distinguished by its seasonality. Eastern India had two rice crops a year, autumn and winter. The (p.243) latter, being more bountiful, determined the supply and price of grain in the market. From small time farmer–traders to the merchant operating at the top, everyone had a stake in buying grain at its harvest price. The peasant needed to sell a part of the produce to pay off his debt or meet other needs and could not afford to hold on to the stock for long. The seasonality of the trade thus required the trader to control a fairly large liquid reserve for the fast and wide circulation of capital.

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The Power of Steam The seasonality of trade was determined also by the mode of conveyance. The post-harvest hectic activities of traders often ended with the transport of grain from the village to market centre (ganja) either by pack bullock, cart, or boat. More cost-effective, the latter was more widely used. From the craft plying in the shallow water to those capable of carrying the bulk, boats were of various types relative to the ecology of its route. In the harvest season, riverside village markets thus attracted boats of all descriptions. As noted by a contemporary source, ‘Sales are going on rapidly amid all the hubbub and the byapari and mahajan are filling their ships with the grain which peasants have brought alongside and sold to them.’43 The use of boat as the principal mode of transport determined the location of the grain market. All major rice-trading centres were located on the riverbank. The intensity and volume of trade changed with the seasonal variation in the navigability of the river. The flow of paddy reached its peak in the post-monsoon weeks, when small crafts penetrated deep into the interior through channels carrying rainwater to the river. With the drying of these channels, grain outflow from the interior declined, leading to rise in prices. ‘Very little is exported or imported in the dry season during which the produce of the country is collected in warehouses that are situated on the banks of rivers; and when these swell, is loaded on boats and sent to the places of its destinations.’ Similarly, ‘imports are made in the rainy season; and during the dry weather are distributed from the marts to the various market places’. In the dry season (December–June), Calcutta suffered from a sort of artificial scarcity, as ‘communication between the Ganges by means of Jalangi, Kashimbajar and Suty rivers, with the river Hooghly are stopped and become un-navigable even for small craft’. Thus, ‘rice usually becomes dear … corn merchants raise the price of their grain’.44 (p.244) The mode of transport thus slowed down, if not discouraged, the movement of grain from the interior—from the peasant’s home to the primary market, from several of such points to the assembly centre (ganja, gola or mokam), and to the place of interregional and trans-regional trade. At each stage, there was pressure to hold stock relative to the size of the market and volume of trade. From the primary to final market, grain passed thorough several groups of trader and transporters, interlinked yet lacking in a uniform control. The fragmentary nature of the market helped dissipate control at the local level dividing the region into several grain trading zones overlapping one another. The need to husk a part of the paddy at each stage also discouraged the faster movement of grain. The possession of cargo boat was an important instrument of control for ensuring bulk supplies of grain. The merchant used to ‘keep a few large boats … of 700 to 5,000 maunds burthen, which lie idle all the dry season; but are loaded Page 11 of 54

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The Power of Steam and ready to depart as soon as the season admits. These in general can annually take two loads of rice to Calcutta and bring back two loads of salt’. Owning boats was a must for anyone intent on securing large supplies. One without a boat maintained ties with professional boatmen [kistiwalas] round the year to ensure their services in the sailing season. All these discouraged outsiders to poach into the rice trade. In the winter of 1799, the company thus failed to get supplies on its own, as ‘all available boats had been engrossed by merchants’.45 A perishable commodity, paddy had to be disposed of by way of the usual shift from one agricultural cycle to the other. As the fear of crop failure in the next season was inbuilt into the shift, everyone including the peasant tried to corner a stock as large as he could afford to hold. The popular folk image of a peasant home thus includes a rice barn. The more substantial the merchant, the greater was his ability to hold the stock over a longer period, which required investment in stores (gola) and other recurring expenses. The merchant localized in a major mokam could even defer the sale for one or two seasons. From these centres, merchants spread their control down the scale by enforcing a vertical alignment of identical social groups of traders. When it failed, they tried to rope in the local trader by financing him. All these notwithstanding, the post-harvest paddy (p.245) market at the primary level often assumed a competitive character. Hence, merchants worked out various strategies to corner large supplies at a preferential price. They offered advance to the peasant at the harvest time or otherwise on an undertaking to sell his crop at a low rate.46 At each level of trade, merchant associations determined the price. Whenever there were signs of government interference, they withheld the stock from the market or diverted it to other areas, opposing ‘interference of the Company in bazaars’.47 The greater mobility of the post-monsoon weeks soon retracted to river routes linking major markets in the dry season. In the route of natural advantage, the cost of carrying rice per mile was negligible, only 0.24 per cent of its wholesale price at the Serajganj rate, including 5 per cent insurance coverage. For the dry season immobility, ‘cultivators [were] unable to carry their rice, when cut in December or January, to market and unable to hold it. [Hence,] … they are obliged to sell to their more wealthy brethren on the spot’.48 Similarly, postharvest hectic activities forced the primary trader to release his stock at a throwaway price, for he lacked the means to wait for a better deal. The seasonal immobility helped consolidate the control of capital over the long-distance trade of rice.

Railways, Rice Mill, and the Rice Trade It has been recently argued that railways ‘quickly drew trade away from the river and apparently increased the volume of trade’. ‘By offering cheap overland transportation’ it brought ‘a less stratified trading community’, replacing the old Page 12 of 54

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The Power of Steam ‘commercial environment dominated by large trader’ and narrowed ‘spatial differences in regional price levels’.49 In the beginning, railways could change neither the seasonality nor the nature of rice trade. Except in some landlocked areas, the old system of transport continued to remain competitive till long after the 1860s. Boatmen in the east, unlike their counterparts in the north, did not reduce their charges to compete with railways. The earlier pattern of trade changed only with the railways spreading the steam-driven rice mill in the interior. In Assam also, contemporary reports point to a close interrelationship between the development of the railways and the spread of the ‘rice and mustard mills’.50 The (p.246) railways and the rice mill, or the combined power of the steam engine, thus changed the old structure of trade in the most active hinterland of the colonial metropolis. The rice mill reversed the old composition of grain trade: higher share of clean rice to paddy. During 1876–77, Calcutta had imported nearly 2 crore maunds of hand-pounded rice from the interior. But with its rice mills, Calcutta began to procure paddy rather than the clean rice, a pattern that changed again with the growth of rice mills in district from the 1920s onwards. The rice mill also changed the old direction of trade. Earlier, paddy grown in western Bengal moved to north India via Murshidabad; but after the rice mill had spread to these districts, local supply fell short of the requirement. Katoa, which used to send grain boats to Calcutta and Jiaganj-Azimganj, began to import paddy from Murshidabad for its mills.51 Birbhum mills also drew supplies of paddy from Murshidabad, an assembly centre of grain from eastern and northern Bengal. Similarly, Medinipur, a happy hunting ground for Calcutta millers, turned into a deficit area after the growth of rice mills in the district. Instead of Calcutta, the flow of milled rice from Bankura-Birbhum moved to Asansol, Ranigunj, Durgapur, Kharagpur, Adra, Tatanagar, and Jharia, while Medinipur mills sent their yield to south India by rail.52 From Dinajpur, paddy boats moved earlier to Bhagowangola, Katoa-Kalna, and Chandannagore-Bhadreshwar. The growth of rice mills in Hilli and Parbatipur terminated this old trade and also ended the Bagura–Calcutta trade in paddy for salt, through the Atraei–Meghna–Jalangi–Hooghly Rivers.53 The rice mill caused a reorganization of the local trade. The primary trader’s intimate knowledge of the local market was valuable both to the miller and the merchant. The old norm and locale of the trade changed, with the wholesale merchant (mahajan, arhatdar) getting close to the milling areas. To ensure supplies, millers offered them a part of their working capital plus commission on the supply. It was just the reverse in the case of the substantial merchant, who supplied paddy to the mill on credit in the lean season for the miller’s commitment to sell rice through him.54 All these intensified competition at the primary market all over eastern India. Marwari traders served as useful linkages Page 13 of 54

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The Power of Steam between the village and the Calcutta market. In the harvest season, city mill agents roamed all over Balasore, (p.247) Cuttack, Ganjam, Sitamari, Hazaribag, Gaya, and Santal Parganas to send paddy in railway wagons.55 Hard pressed, district mills started to buy directly from the farmer. In Birbhum, ‘most of the paddy grown finds its way to mills’. H. Quinton wrote, ‘Either producer or buyer brings the paddy in carts to the mill. Buyers are either agents of the mill owner who buy paddy on their own, stock it and sell to the miller at a profit.’ Farmers assembled at the mill gate with paddy, free to make the deal but the mill price prevailed. Much less hazardous and cheap, the system did not ignore intermediaries altogether, as their help was needed to run the mill in the lean season.56 To counteract the move, Calcutta millers resorted to crop hypothecation. ‘All these loans are advanced on condition that the farmer should either pay a fixed quantity of paddy or an interest at a rate varying from 38% to 75% per annum.’ By the 1920s, the rice mill thus emerged as a new source of rural credit.57 The post-Partition developments further added to the complexity of the primary market. Jalpaiguri mills introduced a system of forward purchase of the standing crop of paddy. It helped peasants meet a part of their harvest expenditure, while the miller was assured of the supply at a lower price. Beginning only in the 1930s, the local miller faced stiff competition from the Calcutta cartel. By the 1960s, the system spread to all major rice milling districts.58 In Bengal, seasonality of the rice trade, however, continued, as lower-level mobilization of grain continued to depend on the monsoon stream. The railways did not very much intervene here, which explains the low turnover of trade by both the EIR and EBR/EBSR for a long period, forcing the ‘construction of feeder roads to the railway station’.59 The hierarchical structure of grain trade also did not change, without any sign of its deflated base. The railways and the rice mill rather helped consolidate the control of capital over rice trade. Slowly, it led to the concentration of capital into highly placed groups. In brief, the combined power of the steam led to the intermeshing of markets and the greater mobility of grain all over eastern India.

Railways and Rural Employment The railways had a mixed impact on rural employment. By 1947, it employed a little over 1 million people in running the system, (p.248) with Indians occupying mostly the non-skilled bottom-level posts.60 The ratio of rural–urban elements in the composition of the railway workforce is difficult to estimate. The villager joined as chaprashi, sardar, beldar, coolie, gang man, sweeper, scavenger, carpenter, or blacksmith. The colonial character of the administration had made the system top heavy. Thus, ‘skilled workers, foremen, and engineers were brought from Britain and paid twice the home rate, plus free passage,

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The Power of Steam medical care and allowances’.61 Most Indian recruits were on the other hand poorly paid and shabbily maintained. C.A. Bayly held that the large sum spent in building the railways had trickled down to the village. In the 1860s, the ‘cost of putting in a mile of railway was reckoned to be between 1.5 and 2 lakhs … local labourers and contractors received some of this large expenditure in the form of wages and payment for bullocks, gravel and bricks’.62 For want of financial management, the cost was higher in the beginning. How did it affect the local people? The railways involved massive earthwork for construction of the rail bed. The average height was 6 feet by 33 feet at the top with very flat slope to resist effects of flood water. As there were no cuttings in the alluvial plains of the Ganges, all the earth needed for the same had to be excavated from pits near the toe of the slope. The embankment needed at the station, yard, and mandatory crossing at an interval was naturally of greater width. More often, exceptionally large tanks had to be excavated to supply earth for bridge-ways wherever necessary, as also for the foundation of railway buildings. The construction of the 121-mile-long Calcutta–Raniganj line involved 258 millions cubic feet of earthwork for the embankment, besides 7 millions cubic feet of excavation in tank, and 2.25 millions in foundation work. In the south Birbhum section, where the height of the bank was low, the 45-mile Bardhaman– Maurakshi line needed nearly 121 millions cubic feet earthwork and 7 millions of excavation in foundation. The Bardhaman–Asansol line involved more intensive earthwork ‘than on the eastern part of the railway’. For here, ‘the country consists of land, more or less undulating, tops of the ridges are covered with an iron conglomerate … the rock beneath is an easy wrought land stone’.63 The entire earthwork was executed manually without the simplest use of instrument. ‘All the earth is brought by men, women or (p.249) children in small baskets on their heads, from excavations alongside the line.’ The primitive and apparently slow method was later ‘found sufficiently speedy wherever labour of any kind can be collected’. Davidson observed, ‘It allows the whole strength of a family to be employed, from the grandsire down to the girl and boy of ten or twelve.’ In the way, ‘the bank has in all cases been finished without difficulty wherever the labourers have been punctually and fairly paid’.64 ‘Not less than 1,18,000 labourers were daily working’ on the EIR line in Bengal. The old man working alongside his grandchildren of tender age tends to suggest local recruitment. But the sheer size of the workforce makes it a doubtful proposition. At 10 cubit feet of earth per head per day, excavation for the Calcutta–Raniganj line alone involved 26.8 million of man days.65 An additional 5 million were needed to dump it and dress the embankment using the old head load method. All these are sheer guess work, for the actual arrangement differed Page 15 of 54

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The Power of Steam from site to site; but the involvement of an extremely large number could be hardly doubted. During 1859–60, 3,940 diggers and 13,530 labourers worked daily for the embankment in the Birbhum section alone. For Rajmahal, the respective figures are 14,013 and 16,686. Five decades later, with greater induction of machineries, 25,000 coolies had been engaged in the construction of the Sara Bridge.66 Labourers were needed also for brick manufacture and the construction of floodwater arch, viaduct, stationhouse, bridge, and other structures. According to an estimate, the building of the 84.5-mile Howrah–Bardhaman line involved the use of 4.05 crore bricks.67 The spurt in demand created a bottleneck. The absence of a specific caste group of brick layers, in view of the superfluity of similar other formations, indicates insignificant use of bricks. In 1807, Buchanan could trace only ‘120 families acquainted with the process’ of brick laying in Dinajpur, as against several thousands of potters. The occasional demand was met by migrant brick layers from Orissa. Calcutta drew a large number from north India, localized all along the eastern bank of the river, south of the town.68 Even if the labour could be mobilized, the railway specification for bricks did not match the local variety. The local brick was ‘usually of about 7½ long, by 6½ broad and 1½ inches thick’. Railway engineers (p.250) were also critical of the method of its manufacture. The brick was mostly made with ‘the common free soil’ without using any mould and was burnt in clamp kilns causing high rate of spoilage while burning. The manufacturing of railway bricks was an altogether different enterprise coordinating multiple workgroups of excavator, mixer, brickmaker, carpenter, blacksmith, furnace coolie, and fireman.69 The terms of contract required locating railway brick kilns away from residential areas, but companies tried to keep it close to the construction site to help transporting the same. The construction of the EIR line led to the localization of brick kilns along the Ganges from Bally to Hooghly in the north. Some of these were started by railway contractors and auctioned off later. The floodwater soil deposits of the river supplied excellent raw material with the facility of towing bricks to railway sites up and down the stream. The size of the workforce involved in laying 4.5 crore of bricks could not be guessed. Turnbull stated that 1,500 persons worked in the Birbhum section, excepting those involved in excavation and preparation of the clay, carrying/ organizing bricks in the pit, and firing it. Labourers were also employed ‘to clear jungles of vegetation, cut tree and excavate roots, flatten roadbeds, lay gravel or limestone, dig drainage ditches’, and so on. All these pushed up wages of carpenters, masons, and smiths, forcing the phased induction of machineries.70 Where did the labour really come from? Robert G. Varady observed with regard to Benares that ‘thousands of beldar (labourers) from the nearby countryside Page 16 of 54

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The Power of Steam were hired’. The dominant notion of the contractor using local labour, also shared by Bayly, hardly applies to Bengal. The labour in Bengal was largely immobile. Even tribal groups, used to shuttle between their native upland and the plains, did not join the work. ‘Santals were unwilling to work in any numbers upon the railways’, like villagers in Assam, although construction companies paid well.71 The villager in Bengal was largely able to satisfy his wants and hence unwilling to move out. The attachment might also be due to his compulsion to take part in the crop cycle. The idea of native village was too strong a cultural notion to be ignored. Fear also had a role—the fear of losing social identity outside one’s native place, as (p.251) also the agony of suffering in the lurch. The inhuman condition of work at the railway site only helped intensify the fear. Hence, ‘there was much difficulty in collecting and retaining labour, as visitations of cholera were common; and the dreaded disease was most destructive in its effects upon the gangs of men brought from a distance.’72 The railway labour in eastern India came mostly from Bihar, United Provinces, Orissa, Andhra, and Madras. If the recruitment through contractors had helped in their induction, construction companies also preferred the cheap yet hardy upcountry labourer to ‘lazy Bengalis’. The ethnic composition of railway junction/workshop towns of Bengal points to this mobilization.73 The demand for carts also increased for carrying men and materials, as also to supply food, fuel, and other necessities for labourers. In Bengal, carts could be hired ‘for six anna (Re. 0.37) a day’ and it conveyed ‘7 to 10 maunds of goods for twelve miles’.74 The railway rate was higher, Rs 1–10 annas (Rs 1.62), but it did not really help the local people as carting was not followed as a profession here. The peasant did not like to risk his bullock, his most precious possession, for the strenuous railway job (see Table 5.1);75 attracting carters Table 5.1 Property of a well-to-do cultivator in the early 1860s Property

Valuation (in rupees) Property

Valuation (in rupees)

Brass Plate

2.75

Spindle

0.25

Brass Cup

1.06

2 Bullocks

20.00

2 Huts

6.00

Native Umbrella 0.03

Small Cup

0.50

4 Mats

0.25

Earthen Utensils

0.08

2 Quilts

0.25

Foot Mill

0.25

4 Pieces of Clothing

2.00

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The Power of Steam

Property

Valuation (in rupees) Property

Valuation (in rupees)

Hoe

0.06

1 Towel

0.25

Sickle

0.12

1 Hooka

0.04

Cutlers

0.12

Paddy seed

5.00

Plough

1.00

Jewellery

0.75

Harrow

0.25

Cash in

Rake

0.25

Hand

Nil

Total Assets:

Rs 41.26

Source: The Amrita Bazar Patrika, dated 20 August, 1868; Report on the Native Press, Bengal, 1868, pp. 288–9. (p.252) from Bihar and United Provinces with their sturdier bullocks and better carts.

On the whole, the massive amount of money spent on payment for labour and cart hire by construction companies was unlikely to generate much of an accelerated income in the village, contrary to the case of canal companies in western India. Bengalis generally did not join the work. The people from Bihar, United Provinces, and Madras had largely manned the army of railway workers– turned-porters all over eastern India. An official report states, ‘Up-country coolies spent the cold weather in Dhaka and Mymensingh and return to plough their own fields at the beginning of the rains.’76 With the influx of refugees from East Pakistan, the situation had changed only in the post-Partition period.

Rice Mill and Rural Employment The early rice mill was a low-input labour-intensive technology with an average workforce of 50–60 workers. In 1921, only 2 out of 137 mills in Bengal had more than 100 workers. This number applied to 15 out of 162 mills of West Bengal in 1949, while 82 continued at 50–60 and the rest had even less. The mill producing parboiled rice needed largely unskilled labour. The skilled–unskilled ratio of labour was in the range of 40:60, consisting mostly of women.77 The technology thus suited rural eastern India most with its vast reserve of unskilled labour. But the employment generated was mostly temporary in nature, except for a small support staff.78 Neither the nature of work nor wages thus lured Bengalis, instead attracting labourers from Bihar, Orissa, and Andhra. Daniel and Alice Thorner had first referred to the rice mill’s backwash effect on paddy husking. The census data suggests that the falling off in the number of huskers became increasingly pronounced over decades, declining from 4.31 to 2.83 lakh during 1901–21. The census occupational data are not really comparable as the definition of the group and the technique of enumeration kept on changing from time to time. The 1921 census shows ‘a great decrease’ of Page 18 of 54

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The Power of Steam huskers, because the group also included for the first time the flour-grinder. The husker here refers only to the professional group, whereas the bulk of the paddy was processed outside the market (p.253) operation.79 Hence, the census data does not really reflect the rice mill’s impact on the rural employment. In 1931, 18 Bolpur mills produced 8.1 lakh maunds of rice.80 At the rate of two women per dhenki (old husking tool) cleaning one maund of paddy a day, 8.1 lakh maund of milled rice could have ensured full time job for 4,438 women a year. Bolpur mills had thus displaced (4,438 ÷ 18) 247 women per year. During 1949–50, 52 rice mills cleared 51,800 maunds of paddy in a year of 200 days. Doing the same work in the old way would have involved the full time job of 284 huskers. A report on village industries of Bengal in 1955 states that sheller-type mills yielded 80,000 maunds of rice in 200 days, thus depriving 438 huskers of their job round the year.81 Table 5.2 on the displacement of huskers is based on the mean (323) of the three rates—247, 284 and 438, as stated above. Table 5.2 Unemployment created by the rice mill in Bengal, 1916– 40 Year No. of Registered Rice Mills

No. of Persons Employed in the Rice

No. of Huskers Displaced by the Rice

Mills

Mills

3

4

1916 35

1,531

11,305

1918 40

2,039

12,920

1920 80

3,604

25,840

1922 101

4,023

32,623

1924 132

6,185

42,636

1926 235

9,711

75,905

1928 286

10,778

92,378

1930 315

12,225

101,745

1932 –

–

–

1934 343

13,509

110,789

1936 381

16,305

123,063

1938 411

18,635

132,753

1940 400

18,742

129,200

1

2

Source: Cols 1 to 3 from B.P. Adarkar, Report on Labour Conditions in the Rice Mills (Delhi: Government of India, 1946), pp. 28–9. Page 19 of 54

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The Power of Steam Note: Col. 2 : 323 (displacement rate per mill) = Col. 4. (p.254) Table 5.2 illustrates the insignificance of the employment created by rice mills compared to its backwash on the traditional sector. In 1920, rice mill workers thus accounted for only 14 per cent of the displaced husker, 12 per cent in 1930; and 15 per cent in 1939. These are not really comparable, as rice mills offered only temporary employment whereas huskers lost their full-time job. In 1955, the Rice Milling Committee thus argued, ‘For every mill that was introduced in Bengal about 500 persons were thrown out of hand-pounding work.’82 The rice huller created larger unemployment. In the 1950s, a huller yielded 40 maunds of rice a day but had a longer operational year than the mill; hence it threw out more huskers for few employments. The low-cost user-friendly rice huller mushroomed in rural areas, totalling 5,000 in 1955.83 At a daily outturn of 40 maunds for 250 days a year, they milled 5 crore maunds of rice, displacing 2.74 lakh huskers. As against five in Maharashtra, a huller milling parboiled paddy in West Bengal employed only two persons. Nearly, four-fifths of the paddy hulled by them was brought after boiling and sun-drying. The owner simply hulled the paddy for a minimal charge.84 During 1951–52, hulling a maund of paddy cost even less than a rupee, as against Rs 1.5 to Rs 1.75 for husking; nearly five times rise since the 1930s due to ‘general rise in prices and cost of living’.85 In 1950, Bengal’s jute industry engaged 2.71 lakh persons while 403 rice mills and 5,000 hullers threw nearly 5 lakh village huskers out of their occupation.86 To this must be added the figure for indirect unemployment. Bolpur mills dislocated 8,000 dhenkis. Thus, village carpenters lost wages worth Rs10,000 towards manufacturing and repairing cost.87 The potter was also affected, as the demand for the paddy-boiling pot declined. Immediately after rains, he moved in cart or boat laden with the pot and bartered it for paddy it filled. Hence, larger the pot, the greater was the quantity of paddy received by him, as it saved the peasant his fuel. What was true of the rice mill also applied to oil and sugar milling. Steam-driven oil mills threw the old miller out of business. The village carpenter lost a potent source of his income from making and repairing the oil/sugar mill. In the case of the latter, the potter suffered more than the carpenter. For, the old technique of sugar (p.255) making involved a massive use of pots of various sizes and shapes for jobs ranging from the collection of juice to transporting molasses to refineries and markets.

Impact on the Primary Transport

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The Power of Steam The nationalist critic argued that construction of railways in India at a breakneck speed had ruined the existing carrying trade. ‘The profits of the carrying trade are now earned not by boatmen but by railways owned by foreign capitalists.’88 They did not deny the advantage of railways as a mode of transport, but they were more concerned about the boatman and the carter who lost their livelihood. ‘Boat transportation on the Ganges and Jamuna, above Allahabad quickly declined to insignificance.’ With the train running between towns, upstream boat journey became unnecessary. But ‘the early impact of the EIR upon longdistance boat traffic on the Ganges below Allahabad was less dramatic’. The shift from boat to railways was neither abrupt nor uniform. J.M. Hurd argued, ‘Cartmen and boatmen continued to be needed to take goods from the railways, the sheer increase in the volume of goods being shipped within the subcontinent may have generated as many new jobs in the transport sector as were lost.’89 In eastern India, boat traffic continued to dominate the trade in low-value bulk goods for a fairly long period. The community of carters also did not lose much. Boat to Rail

The rice trade was the largest trade of eastern India. In 1879–80, after two decades of regular running of trains, Calcutta received 1.24 crore maunds of rice from the district by all means of transport. Steamers carried only 4.5 per cent of it, 6.5 per cent came by carts, while the railways claimed only 21 per cent. The bulk of it (68 per cent) came by boat. The estimate for 1881–82 states a drop in the railway’s share; only 14 per cent collectively by the EIR, EBR, and Calcutta & South Eastern State Railways, as against a steep 9 per cent rise for the boat.90 The Divisional Commissioner of Bardhaman had been asked to ‘enquire about the falling railway traffic of the EIR’. The railway rate, (p.256) even after its partial reduction in August 1871, was higher than the cost of carriage by boat. The boatman on the Patna–Calcutta route did not reduce their fare like their north Indian fellow-boatmen who had done it to compete with the railways.91 A trader had to pay 6 annas 4 pice for a consignment of 140 maunds of ‘edible grain’ from Patna to Howrah by rail including the terminal charges, as against only 4 annas 4 pice by boat.92 A trader would thus wait for a month or so, rather than pay 32 per cent higher charge for faster transport. The railways thus experienced ‘a decline in trade’ wherever it ran parallel to the old route of the river-borne trade. The shift from boat to rail was faster in the case of goods more valuable in bulk. In the 1870s, raw silk reached Calcutta mostly ‘by rail, while quantities carried by boat showed a decrease of a little over 2000 maunds’. During 1877–79, raw silk booking from Ajimganj on the EIR increased by 88 per cent; that from Murarai in Birbhum by 37 per cent; and by six times from the Damukdea station Page 21 of 54

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The Power of Steam of the Northern Bengal Railway (NBR). But raw silk booking at Kushtea fell by more than 50 per cent, followed by at the Nalhati and Ahmadpur stations of the EIR.93 If Kushtea lost its trade to river shifting, as discussed earlier, booking at Nalhati and Ahmadpur fell due to high EIR rates. The Gujarati silk traders of Ajimganj preferred the rail to boat as they needed faster reach to north India, but not so the local traders of Nalhati. From Calcutta to Goalandah via Kushtea, the line passed through 24-Parganas and Nadia districts, but failed to generate growth along its route. In 1877, Hunter noted, ‘Large centres of industry have not sprung up along the railway line, nor have any small railway stations, except Kushtea grown into seats of commerce to a sufficient extent to require special notice.’ For ‘the cheap and abundant water carriage still commands the traffic’. The EBR was intended to draw eastern Bengal’s massive trade in grains to Calcutta. A decade later, its annual returns registered a dismal show, carrying only 5 per cent of the sub-region’s total export of rice to Calcutta and 2 per cent of the return cargo of salt from the city. An observer regretted, ‘The great bulk of traffic does not take at all the railway, which however conveys the greater portion of the jute of Eastern Bengal.’94 Why did the EBR fail to attract rice and salt, the two principal articles of the sub-region’s trade, but cornered (p.257) most of its jute? Jute transport was controlled by British merchants in Calcutta with Marwaris acting as contractors. Railways helped them in its quick disposal, since it is a bulky and hazardous commodity to preserve. They preferred the new mode of transport to the old because the community of boatmen in east Bengal was under the domination of local traders.95 Transport by boat suited the ecology of east Bengal. Through its creeks and canals, paddy assembled at river ports on way to Calcutta, as it earlier sailed to Bhagowangola. The rice boat from north Bengal thus took Nadia rivers to reach Kalna–Katwa, Hughli–Chandernagore, and Bhadreshwar–Baidyabati. Those from the east passed through Kabotaksha–Marichchapi rivers till Kholpetua, where larger boats took the Galghasia–Banstala channel and smaller ones followed the Sobnali route to reunite at Kaliganj. Both then moved along the Jamuna River to the Basantapur bifurcation point of the inner and outer Sunderban routes. All these refer to a unique grid of rivers, streams, shoals, and canals, a combination of natural and manmade waterways linking eastern and deltaic Bengal to Calcutta. The routes differed only in their seasonal navigability. The transport was slow, with the boatman, like an amphibious creature, sometimes rowing through the water, sometimes pushing forward with his stick, and at other times dragging the boat by a rope along narrow winding pathways on the riverbank. The logic of intraregional trade also favoured it. Paddy from eastern Bengal was exchanged for salt produced in Medinipur since long. The government monopoly of salt could not dislocate the old trade at lower levels. Page 22 of 54

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The Power of Steam Salt was collected from the government depot at Calcutta and sent back in boats carrying paddy/rice from east Bengal. The production season also matched the exchange; not so for jute. Since it was carried from Medinipur by waterways, salt depots at Calcutta were located on the riverbank facilitating its carriage to eastern Bengal by boat. In brief, the old system of carrying eastern rice for the south Bengal salt by boat was too viable and convenient to be threatened by the EBR. The EBR thus planned a massive yard at the Chitpur riverbank, relocating ‘the salt pass station … from Sealdah to Chitpur’. It was hoped, ‘Facilities thus awarded will increase the salt traffic by the railway … as there is at present an enormous river traffic of salt into (p.258) eastern Bengal that entirely escapes the railway.’ But that was not to be, although the new line proved useful in sending ‘government rice’ to famine-hit districts in 1875.96 The vertical alignment of social groups of traders and boatmen also justified the old carrying trade. A sort of ethno-cultural relationship bound the trader to the community of boatmen, unbroken through generations. The boatman was not just the carrier, but also the custodian of the consignment, and often acted as the forwarding agent, selling and buying goods for the trader located in the interior. Traders of eastern Bengal regulated the movement of rice boats by administering to their boatmen an oath, the mutchalka of the company’s records. Perhaps at no point had the relationship been tested better than in the most trying time of the Partition in 1947, when Bengali society was fragile and wrought by communally frenzied violence at its highest. Even in the midst of broken relationships, surcharged with mutual suspicion and fear, the community of boatmen could still be relied upon, so much so that upper- and middle-class Hindus from east Bengal mostly left their homeland in boats and not by the faster railway. In western Bengal, the railways had a mixed impact on the boatman, although the data necessary for quantifying his loss is not available. In earlier times, most boatmen lived by ferrying people across numerous rivers, creeks, and canals. With the railways, a large number of these waterways had been bridged, ensuring an uninterrupted journey for both the passenger and the goods traffic, which cost the ferryman dear. In February 1876, an iron suspension bridge was built over the Bally Canal at the point where it intercepted the Grand Trunk Road. The bridge ensured an uninterrupted journey for both passenger and goods traffic passing along the road and thus deprived the boatman of his trade. How much did he really lose? A few years before the construction of the bridge, annual ferry collection at the point increased from Rs 500 to Rs 3,000, indicating the traffic volume on the road.97 In rupee terms, it does not make much sense unless one gets into the contemporary reality of the boatman’s people-ferrying business. He was usually Page 23 of 54

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The Power of Steam paid a paisa—the sixty-fourth part of a rupee—often just a half of it, per trip. The load a man could carry on his head was allowed to pass for free. Assuming onehalf of the (p.259) ferry fund (Rs 1,500) as collected from the passenger traffic, the Bally boatmen thus appear to have carried ([1,500 × 64] ÷ 365) 263 passengers a day, pointing to their hectic business round the year. By the end of the nineteenth century, the relative share of the railway-borne trade in Bengal increased. An official note for the year 1901 states the share at as high as 65 per cent. The railways carried nearly two-thirds of Calcutta’s total trade with the provinces by all routes. The boat traffic still retained one-fifth of the total carrying trade in Bengal, whereas the steamer, even after service rationalization in eastern Bengal and Assam, could claim only one-tenth.98 In reality, the boat had a higher share of the tonnage than it might seem to be, as the extremely proliferated nature of the boat traffic often escaped official notice. The shift from the boat to the railways was therefore neither immediate nor total. Bullock Cart to Rail

John M. Hurd argued, ‘By 1930–31 freight prices by rail per ton kilometre were … 88 per cent less than charges per ton kilometre for bullock-carts in 1840– 60.’99 In southwestern Bengal, bullock cart was the predominant means of transport. With the introduction of railways, along with its unlimited space and faster journey at affordable cost, the cart was destined to perish as the banjara caravan had suffered earlier; but it maintained its position as the principal rural transport till the 1980s. Railways only pushed it out of the long-distance trade. In 1844, J. Anderson, Civil Engineer and Superintendent, Public Works Department, Bardhaman division, had collected data of the Calcutta– Bardhaman–Calcutta trade by carts along GT Road, as a part of the railway survey. The distance between Calcutta and Bardhaman could not be covered in one go by cart. The cart proved uneconomical when used at a stretch for more than 20 miles or so. The consignment to and from Bardhaman thus changed at Magra, a major market for the south Bengal rice and textiles, with fleets of carts assembling from different directions. Carts carrying goods from Bardhaman ended their journey halfway at Magra to return with a fresh load of cargo, while their counterparts shuttled between Calcutta and Magra. Anderson estimated the total tonnage on the Calcutta–Bardhaman route at 91 (p.260) tons per day, carried by carts and pack bullocks in 88:12 ratio, with a per capita load of 12 and 1.5 maunds respectively. In December 1842, 1,745 loaded and 287 empty carts left Magra for Bardhaman. The respective figure on the Magra–Calcutta route was 1,471 and 306. In February 1843, 4,660 loaded and 2,364 empty carts left Magra for Bardhaman, as 2,252 loaded and 1,618 unloaded carts moved in

Page 24 of 54

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The Power of Steam the opposite direction.100 Table 5.3 shows the variation in movement between post-harvest and monsoon seasons. Adams’ abstract on cart traffic along GT Road suggests a lesser frequency between Hooghly and Bardhaman. In the rainy season of 1849, an average of 371 loaded carts moved to Bardhaman and 256 returned to Hooghly per week; with 700 carts, the Magra–Bardhaman route looked busier. The traffic intensity increased in post-harvest months; the average of loaded carts thus reached 532 for Bardhaman and 888 for Hooghly on the same road during March–April 1850; this feature was also true of the Bardhaman–Dubrajpur and Janai–Bardhaman routes.101 In western Bengal, the carriage of coal from pitheads to the Damodar River had greatly increased the demand for carts. The total tonnage of coal carried on the route, according to Anderson, was 74 million tons per season.102 At 12 maunds per cart, it needed altogether 1.67 lakh trips to carry coal to the riverside. Equally spread over a period of nine months, the rainy season excluded, it involved nearly 19,000 cart trips a month, or roughly 600 a day. Since more than one trip a day was impossible, the number of carts involved could be easily guessed. Anderson’s estimate refers to just one of the several routes of the coal traffic. The mining of coal thus created a very stable demand for the up-country carter. With the introduction of the Calcutta–Raniganj railways via Bardhaman, carters carrying paddy/rice or coal lost their trade almost immediately. As railways extended through Birbhum, bridging Ajoy and Mayurakshi Rivers, more and more carters perished. The rail transport was cheaper, quicker, and dependable in all seasons, with no upper limit to the bulk and volume of the consignment to be carried.103 What happened to the displaced carter? The carter was a heterogeneous community broadly split into two groups, professional and seasonal. The seasonal or local carter combined carting with (p.261)

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The Power of Steam

Table 5.3 Number of carts passing along Grand Trunk Road between Magra and Bardhaman, 1843–44 Month

Laden Carts to Bardhaman

Empty Carts to Bardhaman

Laden Carts to Calcutta

Empty Carts to Calcutta

Pack Bullocks to Bardhaman

Pack Bullocks to Calcutta

No. of Days

1842, December

1,745

287

1,471

306

572

1,568

31

1843, January

1,806

202

1,954

296

634

2,076

31

February

4,660

2,364

2,252

1,618

1,840

2,432

28

March

3,987

4,496

5,818

4,218

1,422

6,034

31

April

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

May

1,171

1,165

956

1,340

951

904

21

June

1,168

279

957

257

3,034

3,605

30

July

1,308

240

1,614

281

2,647

3,236

31

August

1,008

216

1,021

344

1,896

2,355

31

September

1,416

330

1,165

655

2,608

2,495

30

October

1,698

07

2,079

500

2,104

3,135

31

November

2,507

248

1,855

435

2,481

2,663

30

December

2,519

447

2,550

447

2,747

3,165

31

1844, January

2,397

503

2,379

403

2,528

3,110

31

February

2,947

602

3,199

582

2,914

3,430

29

March

2,739

370

2,983

419

,109

3,123

31

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The Power of Steam

Month

Laden Carts to Bardhaman

Empty Carts to Bardhaman

Laden Carts to Calcutta

Empty Carts to Calcutta

Pack Bullocks to Bardhaman

Pack Bullocks to Calcutta

No. of Days

April

2,745

313

3,040

326

3,163

3,296

30

May

2,913

237

2,870

226

3,085

3,076

31

June

2,745

188

2,792

173

2,084

2,924

30

July

2,834

242

2,876

214

2,907

3,072

31

Total

44,390

14,036

43,081

13,213

43,446

55,717

579

Daily Average

76.66

24.24

75.65

22.6

75

96.23

–

Source: Reply from J. Anderson to R.M. Stephenson, 4 September 1844, Railway Construction in India, ICHR, Vol. I.

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The Power of Steam (p.262) (p.263) farming, using the same animal for the both; hence he did not move far from the village. The railways hit the professional carter hard, who lost both the goods and passenger traffic, but created new opportunities for the local fellow. The cost of carting thus tended to rise in railway-fed localities. In 1904, the carter charged half a rupee for carting 20 maunds of rice from the depots near Rajbati to Burdwan station, while the railway freight was only two and a half rupees for transporting the same from Burdwan to Ramkrishnapur yard.104 Most railway stations attracted a fleet of carts carrying goods from the interior and often returning with a fresh load from the station. With the feeder roads connecting the station to villages far and near, the intensity of cart traffic increased. A local correspondent of a Calcutta-based paper thus reported of ‘the immense volume of bullock cart traffic (numbering 300 to 400) daily passing along the Burdwan–Katwa road’, obviously to Burdwan station.105 The professional carter sometimes seized this opportunity in short-distance transport, but the railways benefited the local carter the most.106

In 1877, official reports referred to ‘the cart traffic’ pouring ‘rice faster into depots at Sainthia, Ahmadpur and Bolpur than railways have been able to carry, … vast quantities of Calcutta bound rice had been lying heaped in bags at railway stations waiting for carriage’.107 Similarly, at Santahar, Serajganj, and Goalandah, where massive volumes of goods were off-loaded from steamers and metre-gauge rail for transhipment to Calcutta-bound trains, the bullock cart remained the most obvious choice. The rice mill also helped the local carter. Paddy was earlier husked mostly in the locality it was grown, which reduced its bulk by a third, as also its transport requirement. By localizing the processing, rice mills increased the outflow of paddy from the village, much to the benefit of the carter. ‘Along with the displacement of huskers’, Hasim Amir Ali stated in 1931, ‘some new occupations have been opened up as a result of these mills. Apart from the merchant and mill owners, there have come in the cart maker and carter.’ In north India, sugar mills encouraged carting, leading to the rise of ‘a different kind of intermediary, professional carter’.108 But rice mills did not have a similar impact. Table 5.4 (A and B) shows an upswing in the cart fleet in all rice milling districts, without any striking correlation between the two. In 24-Parganas, the mill grew by 133 per cent (p.264)

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The Power of Steam

Table 5.4 (A) Bullocks and ploughs in the rice-milling districts of Bengal, 1920–41 Districts

Bullocks

Ploughs

1920–21 = 100

1925–26

1930–31

1940–41

1920–21 = 100

1925–26

1930–31

1940–41

24 Parganas

361,481

114.33

113.06

91.43

107,678

115.37

113.82

118.24

Burdwan

278,319

104.28

94.88

80.76

129,149

110.07

104

94.71

Birbhum

237,501

100.34

101.41

84.48

107,704

99.25

98.53

95.05

Bankura

207,779

106.26

110.42

35.46

111,021

107.38

107.61

80.39

Midnapore

589,568

112.13

112.45

77.63

287,868

109.24

114.42

81.40

Hooghly

158,556

101.52

100.77

96.26

75,943

97.81

95.07

95.91

Howrah

65,296

106.8

106.62

88.05

296,683

103.43

86.02

123.45

Dinajpur

494,837

108.96

98.83

79.45

285,038

106.94

97.77

–

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The Power of Steam (p.265)

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The Power of Steam

Table 5.4 (B) Carts and bullocks available per cart in the rice-milling districts of Bengal, 1920–41 Districts

Carts

Bullocks available per cart

1920–21 = 100

1925–26

1930–31

1940–41

1920–21 = 100

1925–26

1930–31

1940–41

24 Parganas

33,731

109.44

109.53

103.27

10.71

11.19

11.06

9.48

Burdwan

73,596

116.92

116.89

101.71

3.78

3.37

3.07

3

Birbhum

64,681

100.43

101.32

88.2

3.67

3.66

3.67

3.51

Bankura

48,549

113.65

123.16

83.96

4.27

4

3.43

1.8

Midnapore

37,997

119.66

139.92

91.37

15.51

14.54

12.46

12.58

Hooghly

12,314

124.37

135.67

121.09

12.87

10.51

9.56

10.23

Howrah

1,616

146.59

126.05

76.48

40.4

29.43

34.17

46.51

Dinajpur

70,023

117.49

114.33

121.1

7.06

6.55

6.1

4.63

Source: Agricultural Statistics of Bengal, of the relevant years (Agriculture and Industries Department, Government of Bengal).

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The Power of Steam (p.266) during the 1920–35 period, against only 10 per cent increase in carts. Birbhum had ten-fold growth of mills at a time when its carts increased only marginally. In the 1930s, the number of carts fell everywhere notwithstanding the fast growth of the rice mill.

Compared to rice milling, the increase in the number of carts in non-milling districts looks more even and the decline much less pronounced (Table 5.5 [A and B]). The rice mill thus appears to have a marginal impact on carting. In landlocked Bankura and Birbhum, where the dependence on cart is greater and rice mills are the only industry, the cart fleet expanded only by 23 per cent and 1 per cent respectively. Bullocks were too costly to buy: Rs 40 a pair in 1931 and yearly Rs 20 for fodder. With paddy selling at Re 1.5 a maund, the cost of cart bullocks was difficult to be recouped from hiring in the milling season.109 The combined power of the steam had thus a mixed impact on primary transport. The increased volume of business helped the carter and the boatman at the local level. The railways had dislocated the old reciprocal networks of the carrying trade, but did not offer much return traffic from the station for long. Hence, carting as a full time profession lost its charm. The reality changed only with the entry of automobile vans from the late 1960s onwards.

Immediate Effects of the Technology British officials held that the railways would change the old inertia of India and bring unbound prosperity to her people. The nationalist critic on the other hand related it to the sudden spurt and recurrence of famine in India.110 A recent critic denounced the nationalist view thus: ‘There is no reason why the railways should create scarcity in one period and sufficiency in another. It is more likely that the adverse role of the railways in late nineteenth century famines is exaggerated.’ A more recent revision, however, endorsed the nationalist point that by ensuring prompt supply during scarcity, the railways actually reduced the level of grain store in the village.111 This subsection analyses how the railways and rice mill had created a mechanism of the grain outflow from the village, to add to the villager’s woes. But before that, a little about the impact of the embankment. (p.267)

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The Power of Steam

Table 5.5 (A) Bullocks and ploughs in the non-rice-milling districts of Bengal, 1920–41 Districts

Bullocks

Ploughs

1920–21 = 100

1925–26

1930–31

1940–41

1920–21 = 100

1925–26

1930–31

1940–41

Nadia

320,598

112.4

111.44

87.3

133,514

113.26

113.09

88.69

Murshidabad

243,062

105.12

96.64

95.33

107,583

111.41

106.39

104.5

Jessore

401,848

104.96

99.24

87.28

177,028

105.73

99.99

92.33

Khulna

300,117

106.87

103.29

95.48

171,153

97.98

95.54

90.47

Rajsahi

281,983

115.85

107.33

154.29

178,692

114.62

107.18

114.03

Rangpur

614,039

97.65

95.69

60.23

315,592

101.26

98.79

67.44

Bagura

162,976

102.74

107.31

89.27

129,178

103.63

102.44

81.76

Pabna

201,234

111.99

105.74

85.74

140,593

105.5

100.63

87.15

Maldah

244,390

109.26

103

84.75

112,170

104.91

105.2

92.58

Faridpur

392,856

99.92

142.29

83.56

160,146

97.93

101.87

91.47

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The Power of Steam (p.268)

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The Power of Steam

Table 5.5 (B) Carts and bullocks available per cart in the non-rice-milling districts of Bengal, 1920–41 Districts

Bullocks

Ploughs

1920–21 = 100

1925–26

1930–31

1940–41

1920–21 = 100

1925–26

1930–31

1940–41

Nadia

48,021

119.81

123.72

93.97

6.67

6.26

6.01

6.2

Murshidabad

59,676

117.15

112.97

100.89

4.07

3.65

3.48

3.84

Jessore

56,769

122.06

114.49

89.94

7.07

6.08

6.13

6.86

Khulna

12,432

118.86

109.12

102.84

24.14

21.7

22.85

22.41

Rajsahi

35,176

121.31

114.25

87.75

8.01

7.65

7.53

14.09

Rangpur

42,251

111.71

119.72

80.18

14.53

12.7

11.61

10.91

Bagura

16,557

107.85

117.24

92.44

9.84

9.37

9

9.5

Pabna

12,375

115.61

90.57

129.33

16.26

15.75

18.98

10.78

Maldah

36,407

110.02

112.79

96.67

6.71

6.65

6.13

5.88

Faridpur

1,955

115.49

93.86

56.93

200.94

173.85

304.63

294.94

Source: Agricultural Statistics of Bengal, of the relevant years (Agriculture and Industries Department, Government of Bengal).

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The Power of Steam (p.269) The EIR embankment escalated the degradation of the lower Damodar discharge channels. Aware of the problem of rainwater discharge in the area, engineer Turnbull wrote to the EIR chairman that the floods in the Banka Nuddy and all other water courses are of formidable kind … and much precaution will be necessary by giving ample vent for the floods by arches and openings in the embankment in addition to the bridge arches to prevent injury to works from the almost periodical bursting of the bunds of the Damooda and consequent inundations of the plains’.112 But Turnbull had been overruled. The high embankment and inadequacy of underpasses in the most active flood zone had obstructed the flow of rain waters causing ‘proliferation of stagnant pools’, ‘ideal breeding grounds for the anopheles mosquito, the carrier of malaria’. Known as the Bardhaman fever, its recurrent visits spread havoc over large areas. Bardhaman alone recorded a 30 per cent decline in population in just three years, with its people becoming extremely malaria prone—72 per cent according to an estimate in 1925. To save the EIR line, as discussed in the first chapter, the height of the river embankment all along the left bank of the Damodar had been raised and reinforced. The embankment on the right had been totally removed to let the flood water have a free run, thereby easing the pressure on the other side. It stopped periodic floods on the left side, thus depriving the land of its fertile deposits and the small streams of their seasonal discharge. The intensity of periodic floods increased on the right side. The positive impact of the railways-induced mobility of the rice trade had been neutralized by the ecological disorders brought about by it. Bardhaman’s predominant rice crop marked a long-term decline in surplus generation.113 The relatively cash-thrifty construction of the EBR line created more serious problems in eastern Bengal. It had been initially built with few rainwater arches, though these were later added in phases due to floods. The construction of the EBR line across the Rajsahi plains led to the deterioration of the Chalan Beel, ‘a watershed of about 1,547 square miles’, the virtual sink of the rainwater discharge of ‘47 rivers of north Bengal’. Iftekhar Ikbal has shown that the beel ‘reserved and cleared the drainage of almost half of the Bengal Delta’. EBR embankments for its main and the Bogra–Santahar lines intervened in the natural flow of rainwater to the (p.270) beel from the northwesterly and southwesterly directions, while the Sara–Serajganj section obstructed its southeasterly drainage to the Brahmaputra River. A cycle of blockage of water in one part and waterlogging in the other followed. It disrupted the old agricultural patterns over large areas and deprived the people of their primary subsistence crop.114

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The Power of Steam The railways’ role in narrowing down the spatial difference in grain prices has been much emphasized.115 What is often ignored is that it did not lower the price of grain in the area it was grown and the increased mobility actually boosted prices in the lean season. In 1876–77, Bardhaman officials had referred to rice export by the railways,116 but the pull on the supply at the village level was yet to be felt as there was no rice mill in those days and husking slowed down the outflow. Three decades of time since then, a booming rice-milling industry developed in the region, generating a massive outflow of rice. ‘In the district through which the rail passes the railway company could not supply wagons for transit of rice.’ The Birbhum Collector reported, ‘The vast quantities of Calcutta bound rice had been lying heaped in bags at railway stations of the district waiting for carriage.’ In Rajsahi, rice mills ended the old practice of ‘husking in the cultivator’s own house by means of the dhenki’. In 1907, G.N. Gupta had warned against the increasing craze for mechanization of rice processing and urged to confine it to Calcutta to feed the export trade.117 The feeble voice was soon lost in the trumpet raised by the IIC chairman Mr Holland. He argued, ‘No one would regret the change from hand-pounding to mechanical milling of rice for social and economic reasons.…. The relief of women from these household burdens is a step in advance and leaves them in leisure, which they may in future devote either to more cultured domestic occupation or to more productive work.’118 The Eurocentric notion did not match the ground reality. In Europe, women displaced by processing industries moved to spinning mills or served as domestics in new towns and industrial centres,119 options not open to huskers displaced by rice mills in Bengal. An anonymous author from Birbhum summed up the problem thus, ‘We have got enough of rice mills in the district. The existence of so many mills in Birbhum has created great difficulties for both the (p.271) miller and the people alike. Poor people have been suffering due to export of thousands of maund of rice from the district everyday. Nobody would have suffered, if so many mills had not been established here in haste.’120 Over-reaction characterized the early use of technology, be it rice milling in Bengal/Madras, or oil milling/ginning in United Provinces.121 An outcome of the misplaced priority, the rice mill attracted traders, who were only too anxious to get rid of the husker. All these had ensured high profit till the inter-industry competition led to undercutting from the 1930s onwards. The early rice mill reduced the nutritional value and quality of the product. The milled rice had very little demand in rural areas, not for the prevailing social attitude, but due to its insipidity and degraded nature. C.J. Baker argued, ‘There were now too many rice mills, and anyway the demand for milled rice was falling away and being replaced by a demand for paddy and thus few rice mills could be run at a profit.’122

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The Power of Steam How much did the husker lose? During 1933–34, Bolpur mills diverted 8.1 lakh maunds of rice from them. At the wage rate of 8 seers of paddy per maund of clean rice supplied, this amounted to a loss of 1.6 lakh maunds of paddy, or Rs 7.2 lakh, at four/five rupees a maund, for the huskers living in the mill’s catchment zone (372 square miles).123 The husker also prepared confectionary items from the rice/bran and chaff received as her wages. With plenty of husk, an important cattle feed, she often maintained a small herd of cows, and a pair or two of goats, to supplement her income. ‘When women are compelled to work for their livelihood, they generally buy paddy, husk it in their own houses and sell the rice; sometimes they also keep one or two cows or a few goats.’124 Some of the displaced huskers must have swelled the rank of farm labourers. A shift in gender composition of weaving in the early twentieth century tends to suggest a partial mobility in favour of it. A post-1943 famine survey over 386 villages of Medinipur found huskers as the third worst victim of the affected workgroups, after fishermen and field labourers.125 Already distressed by the mill, huskers were hit hard by an abrupt termination of market relations during the famine. The fishermen suffered due to the British boat denial policy followed as a preventive measure for Japanese threat. (p.272) With social restrictions and taboos yielding to more objective needs, huskers slowly moved out of the village as vegetable/fish vendors. The distance of their trip increased with the railways. Early twentieth-century Calcutta drew a large number of them as domestic hands, mostly from Medinipur, Bardhaman, 24-Parganas, and Hooghly—areas with more mills and better railway networks.126 Later, the rice huller helped these women resume their old trade in a new way. They boiled and sun dried the paddy at home, hulled it for a minimal charge, and carried the rice in small affordable loads to sell in towns. The interface between the husker and huller literally reduced the paddy supply to the mill. The combined power of the steam engine—rice mill and railways—thus reduced the availability of paddy in the village. The old time-consuming, labour-intensive method of husking slowed down the movement of grain. By removing the bottleneck, the new technology led to massive outflow of the paddy immediately after the harvest.127 The advent of automobile trucks from the late 1960s onwards intensified the process. With increased facilities of intercommunications, outstation dealers and merchants were able ‘to control the grain trade to an extent previously unknown. Much of the trade, used to be carried on locally between cultivators and grain dealers in local bazaars, has now come under the control of large firms at chief commercial centres’. A local official continued, ‘Their agents penetrate into rural tracts where they were unheard of 15/20 years ago and buy up surplus stocks of grain before even dealers in the nearest town can make a bid.’128

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The Power of Steam The rice price thus increased almost immediately after the harvest. It did not help peasants as most of the harvest changed hands to pay off their old debt or buy other necessities.129 With the advent of the railways, a whole new trade in selling cheap consumer goods for grain sprung up in rural areas, enticing the peasant to part with his grain.130 A sudden shift in grain prices in the lean season caused panic, with the spectre of scarcity looming large over villages. Fear often gripped the people at the slightest turn of the season. ‘The poor people have been suffering due to thousands of maunds of rice moving out of the district everyday.’ The evidence of mob frenzy against the mill is also not rare.131 Traditionally, people were opposed to bulk movement of rice from the locality, other than the usual seasonal outflow. In a predominantly (p.273) rice-based culture such as eastern India, preserving a stock of rice was considered crucial to sustaining the life system. The folk culture of the land thus made it mandatory for every home to preserve a rice store (gola). Shifting attention from the family to the village as a whole, one comes across the notion characterizing its social life: dharma gola or community store associated with the place of ritual. A sort of cultural notion prevailed upon the society that indiscriminate movement of grain from the area did not augur well for the community.132 From the periphery to the centre, the same feeling prevailed. Bengalee, the mouthpiece of the nationalist elite, thus drew the attention of the High Prices Committee to ‘the wanton export of rice’ and its grave consequences. Hindustan put it straight and simple: ‘As a result of this, whatever else may or may not happen, rice will become scarce in the home of the poor. It is not difficult to say whether in consequence, peace or unrest will prevail, so far as the poor are concerned.’ Others saw it as the machination of the public selfish ends and ‘hard persuasion of Indian and European traders’, thereby exhorting the poor countrymen to ‘die without a murmur as you had been dying’.133 The public opinion against the indiscriminate export of rice through Calcutta Port had been also referred to by the nationalist poet Amritalal Bose in his satiric poem ‘Proclamation’ (1905). What has been ignored is that the technology at its end result does not discriminate between the poor and the rich, but the latter often reaps its advantage the most because he has the necessary power to control it. Perhaps more interesting to note is that a large section of Calcutta’s commercial groups served as compradors to the booming export trade in rice the English had started from the early nineteenth century. The celebrated family of Rani Rasmoni (1793–1861), a pious and benevolent lady immortalized by her foundation of the Dakshineswar Temple, owed its early rise to export trade in rice. Her father-in-law, Pritiram Das, was a petty clerk in the customs house of Calcutta. Born of a traditional trading caste, a Nadia teli, Pritiram did not fail to seize the opportunity to supply paddy to English ships and had a meteoric rise since then. If the contemporary evidence is to be believed, at the

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The Power of Steam height of his career, his income hovered around twenty-five thousand rupees a day.134 (p.274) An entrepreneur is always distinguished by his intuitive power to seek out opportunity. The intellectuals sometimes fail to read the impact of a trend, the more so with regard to the development of technology. Karl Marx’s analysis of the possible results of the introduction of the railways in India by the British could be one such illustration, much too well known to warrant repetition. Close at home, let’s look at the writings of R.C. Dutt, the doyen of nationalist economic thinking in India. He had not only supported rice export from Bengal but actually pleaded for the introduction of rice milling in India to further encourage it. He wrote, The export of rice from Bengal in the husk increased to 1000 tons shortly before 1830, principally owing to the invention of machinery for freeing it from the husk after its arrival in England. Formerly it used to go husked, with a great deal of dirt and much broken in the grain. After the inventions it went in the husk, and was cleaned in England, and looked as fresh and bright as the American rice. If it could be cleaned in India as it was cleaned in Carolina it would be exported in larger quantities; for in the husk it paid double freight, as it occupied double the space.135 Not only had R.C. Dutt resigned from the Indian Civil Service in protest against the devastating Orissa famine, but in his later life he also became the chief critic of British rule for the recurrence of famine in India. The moot point is that he had welcomed the rice-milling technology, but could not foresee the adverse impact of its indiscriminate use in a situation characterized by agricultural stagnation. Notes:

(*) ‘Amazed at the prowess of the steam vessel and the railways, Brahma ran pell-mell to seek refuge in fire, water, and air, the celestial’—satirical composition by Gaurhari Das Mahapatra alias Rupchand Pakshi (1815–90). Brahma is the Creator in Hindu mythology. (1.) Carlo M. Cipolla, The Economic History of World Population (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1962 [Seventh Edition, 1978]), pp. 54–5. (2.) Paul Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England (London: 1964), pp. 333–4. (3.) Cipolla, The Economic History of World Population, p. 57.

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The Power of Steam (4.) Edward Davidson, The Railways of India with an Account of Their Rise, Progress and Construction Written on the Basis of the India Office Records (London, 1868), p. 3. (5.) The road traffic further decreased since the CBR launched its services in 1884 as ‘the road is now mainly used as a feeder to the railway’. L.S.S. O’Malley, Jessore (Calcutta, 1912), p.108; From the Hooghly to the Himalayas: Being an Illustrated Handbook to the Chief Places of Interest Reached by the Eastern Bengal State Railway (Bombay: The Times Press, 1913), p. 185. (6.) Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies from the Year 1688 to 1723 (London, 1739), Vol. II, p. 12. (7.) Cesare Federici has been cited by L.S.S. O’Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers: Howrah (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1909), p. 19. (8.) Reginald Heber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825 (London: J. Murray, 1828), Vol. I, p. 31. (9.) L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah, p. 105. (10.) B. Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Relations: Eastern India’, in The Cambridge Economic History of India (CEHI), Vol. II: c. 1757–c. 1970, edited by Dharma Kumar (The Cambridge University Press, 1982 [Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984]), p. 118. (11.) Turnbull’s letter to the Chairman and Directors of the EIR, dated Serampore, 23 February 1852, Papers on the Railway in Bengal (Home) 1853, Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Serial I, p. 97. In 1855, the Commissioner of Bardhaman observed, ‘If Siuri be connected with the railway and GT Road, both at Raniganj and Panaghur, with which Supur, Surul and Purnandarpur are also connected, will be still better off when the railway is open to Surul.’ W.H. Elliot to William Grey, Sec. to Govt. of Bengal, dated 18 October 1855, Bengal Government Selections, No. 24, p. 167. (12.) ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical Association’, Calcutta Review, 36 (March 1861), p. 118. (13.) Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhayay, Rabindra Jibani O RabindrasahityaPrabeshak (Visva Bharati, 1977), p. 405; Chittapriya Mukherjee, Urban Growth in Rural Bengal (Santiniketan: Visva Bharati, 1972), pp. 16, 27. (14.) In 1912, Rabindranath Tagore purchased the EIR Co.’s house for the Rural Reconstruction Department of Sriniketan. P.K. Mukhopadhayay, Rabindra Jibani, pp. 405, 457.

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The Power of Steam (15.) Letter, offg. Magistrate to Rev. Commissioner (10 May 1856), cited by Ranjan Kumar Gupta, The Economic Life of a Bengal District, Birbhum: 1770– 1857 (Bardhaman: Burdwan University, 1984), p. 263. (16.) The Friend of India, February 1851, Calcutta cited by Hena Mukherjee, The Early History of the East Indian Railway 1845–1879 (Calcutta, 1994), p. 94. (17.) Turnbull to the Chairman, EIR, Serampore, dated 3 January 1851, ‘Papers on the Proposed Railway in Bengal (Home), 1853’, Government of India Selections, Serial I, p. 66. (18.) There are reports of similar opposition. ‘If the proposed Mymensingh railway line is carried straight from the Jamalpur station, it will involve the demolition of a good many houses in the town and besides causing serious inconvenience to many people. The line should therefore be given a southward direction and should form a curve.’ Charumihir (2 April 1895), cited in Report on the Native Press [hereafter RNP], Bengal, 1895, p. 297. (19.) ‘The East Indian Railway’, Calcutta Review, LXI, p. 241; E. Davidson, The Railways of India, p. 145. (20.) ‘Papers on the Proposed Railway in Bengal (Home), 1853’, p. 67. (21.) C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth, pp. 199–200. (22.) Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Early Railwaymen in India’: “Dacoity” and “TrainWrecking” (c. 1860–1900)’, in Essays in Honour of Prof. S. C. Sarkar, eds B. De et al. (Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1976), pp. 523–50. Robert G.Varady, Culture and Power in Benares, cited in Mark Tully, ‘A View of the History of Indian Railways’, in Our Indian Railways: Themes in India’s Railway History, eds Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas (Delhi: Foundation Books, 2006 [Reprint 2007]), p. 233. (23.) G. Huddleston, History of the East Indian Railway (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1906), p. 25. (24.) E. Davidson, The Railways of India, p. 166; M.K. Gandhi, ‘The Condition of India: Railways’, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, 1921, reprinted in Ian J. Kerr (ed.), Railways in Modern India (Delhi, 2001), pp. 77–9. (25.) W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. IV (London: Trubner, 1876 [Reprint Delhi: DK Publishing, 1974]), p. 343; C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth, p. 25. (26.) C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth, pp. 13, 16–22. (27.) W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal (London, 1897), Appendix D, p. 429. Page 42 of 54

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The Power of Steam (28.) Shyam Bhadra Medhi, Transport System and Economic Development in Assam (Gauhati, 1978), p 113. During 1851–1901, Kalikapur’s population increased by three times, Bandgora’s by two times. C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth, pp. 13, 16–22, 24–5, 167, 176, 199–201, 222–3. H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum: A Survey, 1931–1934’, Visva Bharati Rural Studies Series, No. 3 (Sriniketan, 1934), pp. 37–8. Nirmalkumar Bose, Hindu Samajer Gadan (Calcutta, 1356 BS), pp. 118, 122. (29.) Supur: A Village in a Paddy Producing Area (Sriniketan: Visva Bharati, 1961), pp. 136–40. (30.) Chaibasa, a peasant village in Singbhum, drew ‘railway employees, contractors, labourers, merchants, shop-keepers and artisans’, adding to its population by 15 per cent in the 1890s. L.S.S. O’Malley, Singbhum, Saraikela & Kharswan (Calcutta, 1910), pp. 2–3. Nearly 30,000 migrated to Asansol in less than five years. J.C.K. Peterson, Bengal District Gazetteer, Burdwan (Calcutta, 1910), pp. 1–2. (31.) No. 1194J, dated Alipore, the 22 April 1892 Note on the movement of population, 24-Parganas, Census of India, Bengal 1901, pp. 3–4; also 1911, p. 79. See also Sarah Hilaly, The Railways in Assam 1885–1947 (Varanasi, 2007), pp. 260, 266. (32.) From the Hooghly to the Himalayas, p. 30. (33.) J.D. Hooker, Himalayan Journal (London 1854), p. 365. Charuchandra Sanyal, ‘Jalpaiguri Saharer Eksho Bachchar: 1869–1969’, in Jalpaiguri District: Centenary Souvenir, 1869–1969, eds C.C. Sanyal, K.K. Chakraborty, Pratinidhan Roy, and Rebati Mohan Lahiri (Jalpaiguri, 1970), pp. 82–3. The population of the district increased by 180 per cent. L.S.S. O’Malley, Jalpaiguri, p. 2. (34.) S.P. Desai, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Kamrup District (March 1928), pp. 15–16; see also Administration Report of Assam, 1915–16, as cited by S. Hilaly, The Railways in Assam, p. 250. (35.) C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870 (Delhi, 1992), pp. 347, 441; L.S.S. O’Malley, Patna, p. 44. (36.) Murshidabad Patrika (9 January 1875), cited in RNP, p. 1; also Murshidabad Patrika (18 December 1875), p. 35. L.S.S. O’Malley, Patna, p. 44. (37.) John M. Hurd, ‘Railways’, CEHI (II), pp. 737–40; Ian Derbyshire, ‘Economic Change and the Railways in North India, 1860–1914’, Modern Asian Studies, 21, no. 3 (1987), reprinted in Ian J. Kerr (ed.), Railways in Modern India (Delhi, 2001), pp. 173–97.

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The Power of Steam (38.) When Sebastian Manrique had visited this place, its name was Māsumābazar, literally Māsumā’s market named after a nobleman’s wife. Māsumā means a chaste lady. Travels of Sebastian Manrique 1629–1643, cited by Jadunath Sarkar, ‘Old Murshidabad’, Krishnath College Centenary Commemoration Volume: 1853–1953 (Berahampore: 1954), p. 131. (39.) Francis Hamilton Buchanan, Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description of Dinajpur (Calcutta, 1833), pp. 315, 316, 326. (40.) F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p 317. The following report on the rice traders of Calcutta in 1748 illustrates the point. ‘The Seths (Jains) being all present at the Board inform us that last year they dissented to the employing of Fillick Chand Gosserain, Occore and Oteeram, they being of a different caste and consequently they could not do business with them; upon which account they refused Dadney and having the same objection to make this year. The company had to accept their objection.’ Bengal Pub Consult, No. 18, dated 23 May 23 1748. James Long, Selections from the Unpublished Records of the Government, For the years 1748 to 1767 Relating Mainly to the Social Condition of Bengal (Calcutta, 1869), p. 9. (41.) Moorchas were led by Chaitan Chand Poddar, Kayas by Raja Ram Poorhoot, Mootee Churun Baboo, and Bool Chund Shaw, while Santosh and Niti Rai Sokah led Ujiniyas. The leaders of Baqqals were Nilmoni Rakshit, Kushal Chand, Sulluck, and Brindaban Datta. Gautam Bhadra, ‘Social Groups and Relations in the Town of Murshidabad, 1765–1793’, The Indian Historical Review, II, no. 2 (January 1976), pp. 323–4. (42.) ‘The poor inhabitants of this town daily crying out to us concerning the great distress and want due to the dearness of rice and oil, agreed that the annual duties taxed on those two articles, amounting to near Rs 500 be forgiven this year. Holwell, the zamindars was opposed to this decision on the ground that the money would go to the dealers and not the poor.’ Bengal Pub Consult No. 69, dated 9 September 1750. James Long, Selections from the Unpublished Records of the Government, p. 27. W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, p. 367; Kumkum Chatterjee, Merchant Politics and Society in Early Modern India, Bihar: 1733–1820 (Leiden, 1996), p. 147; Rajat Datta, Society, Economy and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, c. 1760–1800 (Delhi, 2000), pp. 211, 215; G. Bhadra, ‘Social Groups and Relations’, p. 324. (43.) James Westland, A Report on the District of Jessore: its Antiquities, its History and its Commerce, (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Office, 1871), pp. 235– 6. (44.) F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 326. Rajat Datta, Society, Economy and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, p. 214.

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The Power of Steam (45.) F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 326–7; Warren Hastings thus expressed concern ‘about his own boats for his private trade’. G. Bhadra, ‘Social Groups and Relations’, pp. 324–5. K. Chatterjee, Merchant Politics and Society in Early Modern India, p. 147. (46.) Buchanan observed that ‘the rice farmer makes large advances, and can afford to keep the grain for a favourable market.… The advances are usually made between June and November.’ It usually involved the local agent as already discussed with regard to the procurement of the sugarcane. Dinajpur, p. 320. (47.) J. Westland, Jessore, p. 235. R. Datta, Society, Economy and the Market, pp. 214, 217, 293–4. Teli and saha merchants of eastern and northern Bengal thus instructed their boatmen carrying rice not to sail downward beyond Kalna, as they could not sell freely at Calcutta. Home Public Progs 1753, dated 19 October. (48.) W.H. Greathed, ‘Report on the Communication between Calcutta and Dhaka, Preliminary, 1856’, in Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Serial No. 19, pp. 15, 17–18. (49.) ‘Water transport was impossible during almost eight months of the year because of low water level or poor navigability of many of the major rivers. These eight months included important harvest seasons.’ Tirthankar Roy, The Economic History of India, 1857–1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 70. I.D. Derbyshire, ‘Economic Change and the Railways in North India,’ pp. 179–80. (50.) S.P. Desai, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Kamrup District, 1928, pp. 112–13, 169. (51.) Chittapriya Mukherjee, ‘Productivity of Rice Milling Industry in Birbhum’, Khadigramodyog, December 1966, p. 119. Report of the Bengal Paddy and Rice Enquiry Committee [hereafter BPREC], p. 23. In 1925–26, for instance, Bardhaman mills made large purchases from Murshidabad. Report on the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Bengal [hereafter MAP] (Calcutta: Dept. of Agriculture, Govt of Bengal, 1926), pp. 18–20, 28. Report on the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Bengal [hereafter BISC], p. 23; Department of Agriculture, District Handbook on Agricultural Marketing for the District of Burdwan (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1970), p. 37. (52.) MAP, pp. 19–20, 23–4, 28, 70–1; Department of Agriculture, District Handbook on Agricultural Marketing for the District of Birbhum (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1963), pp. 14–15; C. Mukherjee, ‘Productivity of Rice Milling Industry in Birbhum’, cited in his Urban Growth, pp. 119, 148–52; BISC, p. 23. Santoshnath Seth, Bange Chaltatta (Calcutta, 1332, BS), p. 266.

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The Power of Steam (53.) ‘Marwari and Bengali merchants make purchases from cultivating peasant through commissioned agents, locally known as pharias, who are paid commission at the rate of one ana per maund. These small traders sell their stock at a profit say two to four anas per maund to the mill owners of Hilli.’ F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 16. See also MAP, pp. 56–7, 63; BPREC, pp. 19, 110. (54.) MAP, pp. 22, 77. With the localization of rice mills, Bolpur thus came to have 21 rice depots (arhats). For the new system of transactions, see S. Bose, Marketing of Rice at Bolpur, Visva Bharati Rural Studies Series, 1934–1936, No. 4, pp. 6–7, Reprinted in Sankhya, ISI, Calcutta, Vol. II, Part II, 1936, p. 8–9; H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, p. 40. (55.) MAP, pp. 30, 38–9, 56–60, 64, 70–1; S Seth, Bange Chaltatta, pp. 49, 248, 266. (56.) MAP, pp. 18–19, 20–2; Directorate of Agriculture, District Handbook, Midnapore (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1966), pp. 41; S. Bose, Marketing of Rice at Bolpur, p. 6. (57.) J. Westland, Jessore, p 235; MAP, pp. 17–18, 20–1, 30, 36, 39, 50, 55; Report of the Rice Milling Committee [hereafter RMC], 1955, p. 26; S. Bose, Marketing of Rice at Bolpur, pp. 6–7; H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, pp. 40– 1. (58.) RMC, p. 58; Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘The Rice Milling Industry in Bengal, 1920–1950: A Case Study of the Impact of Mechanization on the Local Peasant Economy’, The Calcutta Historical Journal, 13, nos 1–2 (July 1988–June 1989), p. 16; MAP, p. 57; C. Mukherjee, ‘Productivity of Rice Milling Industry in Birbhum’, p 152. (59.) Some of these are: GT Road to Raniganj station, Kushtea–Salgamudi (1864– 66), Kushtea–Dadpur (1863–66), Krishnanagore–Bagula, Ranaghat–Shantipur (1860–64), Bongaon–Chakdah (1861–65), Sukhsagar–Chakdah (1863-65), and Ghoshpara–Kanchrapara (1862–64). PWD Progs No. 7 dated 2 March 1855; No. 2570 dated 15 June 1855; No. 2556 dated 30 June 1859; No 30–1, dated November 1865. (60.) John M. Hurd, CEHI (II), p. 748; T. Roy, Economic History, p. 265. (61.) Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981), p. 188. (62.) C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, p. 429. (63.) E. Davidson, The Railways of India, pp. 148–9; Turnbull to the Chairman, EIR, 3 January 1851, p. 67.

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The Power of Steam (64.) E. Davidson, The Railways of India, p. 162. For Assam, see S. Hilaly, The Railways in Assam, pp. 179–80. (65.) Canning’s speech at the opening of Rajmahal Railway; ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical Association’, p. 114. The estimate is based on the schedule of the Public Works Department, Calcutta, West Bengal. Superintending Engineer, Planning & Monitoring Circle, Rate Analysis for the Public Works Department, West Bengal, Schedule of Rates (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 2010). (66.) Geo Turnbull, ‘Table on Statement of daily average of work-people employed on the construction of the several divisions of the line of Railway, for the twelve months, from the 31st May, 1859 to 31st May, 1860,’ 26 September 1860, as cited in ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical Association’, p. 115. From the Hooghly to the Himalayas, p. 28. (67.) E. Davidson, The Railways of India, pp. 145, 147. (68.) H.H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary (Calcutta, 1891 [Reprint 1981]), Vol. I, pp. 517–26; F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 284; idem., An Account of the District of Bhagalpur in 1810–1811 (Patna: Bihar and Orissa Research Society, 1939), p. 596; R. Heber, Narrative of a Journey (London: J. Murray, 1828), Vol. I, pp. 19–20. (69.) F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, pp. 284–5. For more on brick making in Assam, see W.R. Gawthrop, The Story of the Assam Railways & Trading Company Limited, 1881–1951 (London, 1951), p. 31. (70.) G. Turnbull, ‘Table on Statement of daily average of work-people’, p. 115. Engineer Edward Davidson claimed 50 per cent rise in the wages; The Railways of India, pp. 101–2; W.R. Gawthrop, The Story of the Assam Railways, p. 31. (71.) Robert G. Varady, ‘Modern Agents of Change’, in Railways in Modern India, ed. Ian J. Kerr (Delhi, 2001), p. 258; C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, p. 429. E. Davidson, The Railways of India, pp. 101, 166. A labourer in Nowgong received nearly double his normal wages if he worked in railways but still refused to work for it. S. Hilaly, The Railways in Assam, p. 254. S.B. Medhi argued otherwise, ‘In some areas, the slave either became a cultivator of the soil when his ex-master desired to keep him by offering better terms or migrated as a coolly or became a labourer on the construction works.’ Transport System and Economic Development in Assam, pp. 194–5. (72.) E. Davidson, The Railways of India, p. 101. The outbreak of cholera in the camp of coolies at the Sara construction site had delayed the completion of the bridge. From the Hooghly to the Himalayas: Being an Illustrated Handbook to

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The Power of Steam the Chief Places of Interest Reached by the Eastern Bengal State Railway (Bombay: The Times Press, 1913), p. 28. (73.) Howrah–Lilulah, Kharagpur, Asansol, Adra, and Kanchrapara still have a mixed population. Healthier labourers from Sindh, North-West Frontier Provinces, and Afghanistan worked on the Assam–Bengal Railway as they could withstand ‘effects of the climate’ better than the labourer from Bihar. S. Hilaly, The Railways in Assam, pp. 174–5. (74.) The Imperial Gazetteer of India states that for the Assam–Bengal Railway, that in addition to railway material, ‘food for more than 25,000 men had to be carried into the hills on elephants, bullocks, ponies and other pack animals’. S.B. Medhi, Transport System and Economic Development in Assam, p. 71. F.H. Buchanan, Dinajpur, p. 328; idem., Bhagalpur, p. 643. (75.) The rate was paid in the Howrah–Pandooa section of the EIR. See Fort William Progs, 13–7–1855, p. 446. (76.) F.A. Sachse, Mymensingh, 1917, p. 92. (77.) Report of the Census of India 1921, pp. 408–9; S.A. Deshpande, The Rice Milling Industry in Vidarbha (Nagpur: Nagpur University, 1973), p. 226. (78.) The female labour was engaged in sun-drying the boiled paddy. S.K. Haldar, Report of the Family Budget Enquiry into the Living Conditions of the Rice Mill Workers in West Bengal, 1949–1950 [hereafter FBERMW] (Calcutta: Government of India, 1952), pp. 3, 6. In Vidarbha region, women represented 30 per cent of the rice mill labour; it was higher in the case of Bengal mills because, unlike the Vidarbha mills, they rendered the parboiled rice only. See S.A. Deshpande, The Rice Milling Industry in Vidarbha, p. 226. (79.) Daniel Thorner and Alice, Land and Labour in India (Bombay, 1965), p. 77. Census of India, 1901, Vol. VI, Pt I, pp. 469, 476; 1921, pp. 408–9. (80.) The estimate is based on an annual yield rate of 100 maunds of rice per woman per dhenki, lower than the ratio suggested by the RMC. H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, pp. 41–3; Report of the Village and Small Industries Committee [hereafter VISC], New Delhi, 1955, p. 46; RMC, p. 10. (81.) FBERMW, p. 4; VISC, p. 46; RMC, p. 10; H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, p. 46. (82.) Basic assumptions are: the work was done in a year and the working time was of eight hours a day. Hence, number of huskers displaced by the mill (Col. 4) indicates the loss of full time employment. RMC, pp. 20, 22.

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The Power of Steam (83.) VSIC p. 46; S.A. Deshpande, The Rice Milling Industry in Vidarbha, p. 20; RMC, p. 145; S Seth, Bange Chaltatta, p. 376; Directorate of Agriculture, District Handbook, Burdwan, p. 46. N. Chakraborty, A Design for Development of Village Industries (Calcutta, 1959), p. 149. (84.) H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, pp. 40–1; RMC, pp. 22–3, 60; D. Roy, ‘Prospects of Hand-Pounding of Rice in East India’, The Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, January–March 1960, Vol. 15: 1, p. 82; N. Chakraborty, A Design for Development of Village Industries, pp. 148–50. (85.) Debidas Roy attributed the shift of domestic paddy processing to huller to laziness of women. ‘Prospects of Hand-Pounding of Rice in East India’, p. 82; RMC, pp. 10, 145; N. Chakraborty, A Design for Development of Village Industries, p. 149; Report on the Marketing of Rice in India [hereafter MRI] (New Delhi: Government of India, 1951), p. 164. (86.) In 1939, the jute industry employed 60,000 persons, whereas rice mills displaced 1,29,200 huskers. Itikhar-ul Awwal, The Industrial Development of Bengal (Delhi, 1982), pp. 241–2; B. Banerjee, Industrial Profile of the Calcutta Metropolitan District (Calcutta, 1967), p. 154. (87.) At 1:2 employment ratio, half the number of huskers displaced by the mill refers to the dhenki put out of use. In 1939, it amounted to 64,600, inflicting a loss of Rs 90,000 to carpenters. H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, p. 43. At the Bolpur rate of wages of Re 1 per unit, 64,600 dhenkis involved a loss of Rs 64,600 as carpenters’ wages. Assuming 25 per cent of it as the cost of repair, total loss to the carpenter amounted to (64,600 + 16,150) Rs 80,750 over a period of 10 years, or Rs 8,075 a year. (88.) Bipan Chandra, Essays on Colonialism (Delhi, 1999), pp. 281–2; R.C. Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. I: Under Early British Rule (London, 1901 [New Delhi, 1960; Reprint, 1989]), p. 205. (89.) I.D. Derbyshire, ‘Competition and Adaptation: The Operation of Railways in Northern India: Uttar Pradesh 1860–1914’, in Our Indian Railways: Themes in India’s Railway History, eds Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas (Delhi: Foundation Books, 2006 [Reprint 2007]), p. 54; CEHI (II), p. 748. (90.) Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the year 1881–82, pp. 61, 69. (91.) I.D. Derbyshire, ‘Economic Change and the Railways in North India 1860– 1914’, p. 180. Also see his ‘Competition and Adaptation: The Operation of Railways in Northern India: Uttar Pradesh’, p. 54. (92.) C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth in a Rural Area, p. 17. (93.) Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the year 1876–77, pp. 74, 90–1. Page 49 of 54

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The Power of Steam (94.) W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal (London: Trubner & Co., 1876 [Reprint Delhi: DK Publishing, 1974]), Vol. II, p. 94; Vol. V, p. 334; Vol. I, p. 172. (95.) Benoy Kumar Sarkar, ‘East Bengal River Steam Service Ltd.: Interview with Jadunath Roy, Spokesperson of Srinath Roy & Brothers, Managing Agents’, Arthik Unnati, II, no. 1 (Baisakh 1334 BS). (96.) The section, two miles long, involved construction of a girder bridge over Dum Dum Road and an embankment. Planned in April 1873, it was thrown open to traffic in August next. Report on the Administration of Bengal, 1873–1874. cited by W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. I, pp. 167, 169. In some parts, boatmen represented nearly one-tenth of the population. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. VI, p. 257. (97.) Nilmani Mukherjee, A Bengal Zamindar: Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara and His Times 1808–1888 (Calcutta, 1975), p. 85; C.N. Banerjei, An Account of Howrah: Past and Present (Calcutta, 1872), p. 98. (98.) Nilmani Mukherjee, ‘Foreign and Inland Trade’, in The History of Bengal, 1757–1905, ed. N.K. Sinha (Calcutta: Calcutta University, 1967), p. 376. The EBR-turned-EBSR also significantly improved its tally. For the data of passenger and goods traffic in 1912, see From the Hooghly to the Himalayas, p. 73. (99.) The railways by reducing the transport cost, Hurd held, ‘brought significant economic benefits for India’, a point disputed by others. CEHI (II), p. 740. B.R. Tomlinson, The Economy of Modern India, 1860–1970, The New Cambridge History of India (Cambridge University Press, 1993 [Indian Edition Delhi: Foundation Books, 1993]), Vol. III: 3, p. 58. (100.) J. Anderson to R.M. Stephenson, Bardhaman, 4 September 1844, Papers on the Proposed Railway in Bengal (Home) 1853, Government of India Selections, Serial No 1, pp. 29–30. (101.) Report on the Extension of the Railways to Rajmahal by F.W. Simms, Consulting Engineer to the Government of India & Director of the Railway Department, Papers on the proposed Railway in Bengal (Home) 1853, in Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Serial No 1, p. 21. Ranjan Gupta, The Economic Life of A Bengal District, Birbhum: 1770–1857, p. 229. (102.) J. Anderson to R.M. Stephenson, pp. 28, 30. (103.) For photographs of the early railway days, see M. Satow and Ray Desmond, Railways of the Raj (London, 1980). (104.) Mahajanbandhu, IV, no. 5 (Ashar, 1311 BS), p. 106.

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The Power of Steam (105.) Hitavadi, Calcutta, 21 February 1906, cited in RNP, Bengal. (106.) S.B. Medhi, Transport System and Economic Development in Assam, p. 112. (107.) C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth in a Rural Area, pp. 25–6. (108.) H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, p. 43; Sahid Amin, Sugar Cane and Sugar in Gorkhpur: An Inquiry into Peasant Production for Capitalist Enterprise in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 158–62. (109.) For the price and maintenance cost of bullocks, see S. Sarkar, ‘The Rice Milling Industry in Bengal, 1920–1950’, pp. 67–8. (110.) In 1868, Edward Davidson observed, ‘Thirty years ago India was practically stationery. Generation after generation passed away, leaving the habits and customs of the people more unchanged than those of any other race of which history bears record.’ The Railways of India, p. 1. R.C. Dutt argued, ‘Railways helped the distribution of food supply in times of famine, but did not add to that supply. It was irrigation works which added to production and secured crops in years of drought.’ M.G. Ranade also preferred the irrigation works to railways for India. R.C. Dutt, The Economic History of India, Vol. II: In the Victorian Age, 1837–1900 (London, 1901 [New Delhi, 1960; Reprint, 1989]), p. 251; B. Chandra, Essays on Colonialism, pp. 291–2. (111.) T. Roy, Economic History, p. 265; I.D. Derbyshire, ‘Economic Changes and the Railways in North India, 1860–1914’, pp. 184–5. (112.) Turnbull to EIR Chairman, pp. 66–7; E. Davidson, The Railways of India, pp. 149–50. (113.) Indrani Ganguly, ‘Of Rajas and Prajas: Leadership in Colonial Town’, in Indu Banga (ed.), The City in Indian History: Urban Demography, Society and Politics (New Delhi, 1991), pp. 252–3; W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account, Vol. IV, p 55; Arabinda Samanta, Malarial Fever in Colonial Bengal 1820–1939 (Calcutta, 2002), pp. 36, 40, 82–3; Achintya Kumar Dutta, ‘Rice Trade in the “Rice Bowl of Bengal”: Burdwan 1880–1947’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 49, I (2012), p. 85. (114.) Between 1814 and 1872, Burdwan district lost nearly 40 per cent of its population. S. Bhattacharyya, ‘Regional Economy 1757–1857: Eastern India’, CEHI (II), p. 278; Iftekhar Iqbal, The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840–1943 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 130–1. (115.) J.M. Hurd argued, ‘Before railways, inter-regional price differences were pronounced and the local prices of grain … fluctuated with the changes in local supply conditions, particularly rainfall. As the railway network expanded and Page 51 of 54

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The Power of Steam with it trade in commodities, price differences between regions narrowed dramatically.’ CEHI (II), pp. 745–6. (116.) General Department, Progs 168, dated 24 November 1877, as cited by C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth in a Rural Area, p. 25. (117.) Cited by C. Mukherjee, Urban Growth in a Rural Area, pp. 25–6; L.S.S. O’Malley, Rajsahi, p. 106. G.N. Gupta, A Survey of the Industries and Resources of Eastern Bengal and Assam, for 1907–1908 (Shillong, 1908), p. 75. (118.) Report of the Indian Industrial Commission, 1916–1918 (IIC Evidence), Vol. I, pp. 162, 163–4. (119.) Walter Minchinton, ‘Patterns of Demand 1750–1914’, in The Industrial Revolution, ed. Carlo M. Cipolla (Glasgow, 1980), pp. 157–8. (120.) ‘Chāler Kal’ as cited in S. Sarkar, ‘The Rice Milling Industry in Bengal, 1920–1950’, pp. 89–90. (121.) C.J. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy 1880–1955, The Tamilnad Countryside (Delhi, 1988), p. 279; W.J. Macpherson, ‘Economic Development in India under the British Crown, 1858–1947’, in A.J. Youngson (ed.), Economic Development in the Long Run (London, 1972), p. 186. (122.) C.J. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy, p. 279; S. Seth, Bange Chaltatta, p. 21; RMC, p. 5, 50; S.A. Deshpande, The Rice Milling Industry in Vidarbha, p. 377; N. Chakraborty, A Design for Development of Village Industries, p. 21; Central Food Research Institute (CFRI), Some Facts About Rice (Mysore: Government of India, 1960), p. 4; C. Mukherjee, ‘Productivity of Rice Milling Industry in Birbhum’, p. 251. (123.) (810,000 × 8 ÷ 40 seers). Even in the 1950s, ‘major portion of their contract workers continued to be recruited from outside the state’; H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, pp. 42–3. K.B. Saha, pp. 184–5; FBERMW, p. 6. Srinath Sarkar, ‘Kajer Kal: Ramkrishnapur Rice Mill’ Mahjanbandhu, Vol. 4.1 (Phalgun 1310 BS), p. 7. (124.) RMC, p. 29; L.S.S. O’Malley, Khulna, p. 114; Report on the Census of Bengal, 1872, p. 17. (125.) The number of women in the weaving industry of Bengal increased by 24 per cent during 1901–31. I. Awwal, The Industrial Development of Bengal, p. 205. The survey was conducted by the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta. P.R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943–44 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 205–6, 211. (126.) Report of the Census of the City of Calcutta, Census 1911, pp. 16, 64. Page 52 of 54

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The Power of Steam (127.) In 1930, 18 Bolpur mills exported 8,000 maunds of rice by rail, more than what entire Birbhum had sent in 1876–77, when there was no mill in the district. H.A. Ali, The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum, pp. 38, 41–2. (128.) F.J. Atkinson, ‘Rupee Price in India, 1870–1908’, as cited in Census on Bengal, 1911, Vol–V, Pt I, p. 65. (129.) ‘The trading class as a body is thriving as development of communication has made it easier to bring goods from Calcutta and Howrah. Grocers and shopkeepers are numerous and add to their profits by judicious usury, advancing paddy or money to the ryot in the slack season and being repaid after harvest with 25% interest.’ L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah, p. 92. Chittaranjan Das argued that per capita income in Bengal was only Rs 20 as against the government’s spending Rs 48 per prisoner. Chittaranjan Das, ‘Krishaker Katha’, in Desher Katha, ed. Sukumar Ranjan Das (Calcutta: Itiban Book Club, n.d.), pp. 46–7. (130.) During 1922–23, umbrella imports from Germany to Calcutta registered a spectacular rise of 800 per cent, followed by 400 per cent from England and 67 per cent from Japan. The import of sundry other items such as toys, bicycles, soap, and similar stationery goods also showed rising trends. A part of these growing imports must have trickled into the village to create a pressure on the existing grain market. National Archives of India, Government of India, Progs, Dept. of Commerce, Statistics & Commerce (Customs), A Progs 1922–23, pp. 13– 14. (131.) For similar incidence of mob violence against the mill see P.R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, p. 95. (132.) In April 1770, Shuja ud Daulah, on the request of Cartier sent some boats laden with rice towards Patna. ‘The scarcity of grain also prevailed in Awadh and the people of that country fearing that the export of grain from their country might enhance the price of grain higher resisted the passage of grain-boats through their country.’ N.G. Chaudhuri, Cartier, Governor of Bengal, 1769–1772 (Calcutta, 1970), p. 56. (133.) Calcutta press carried on a sustained campaign against rice export. During 1921–22, the price of common rice in rural Bengal increased by 25 to 50 per cent. Pravakar (Calcutta) observed that the export of rice would only swell the purse of traders, as the poor perished. Bengalee (25 February 1912, 17/24 March 1922), The Bande Mataram (20 March 1922), The Hindustan (17 March 1922), cited in RNP, Bengal. (134.) Jnanendra Kumar (ed.), Bangshaparichay (Phalgun 1328 BS), Vol. II, p. 379. (135.) R.C. Dutt, The Economic History of India, vol. 1, p. 183. Page 53 of 54

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The Power of Steam

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Conclusion

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Conclusion Village Society at the Crossroads Smritikumar Sarkar

Aam gachhe jaam phale, Tentul gachhe neem re. Kalikaler rang dekhe, Bhoye him shim re.*

The technology entering rural Bengal since the early nineteenth century was piecemeal and fragmentary. The only perceptible change, rice mills apart, was new roads, bridges, steamers, and the railways linking the village through nearby market towns to Calcutta, the colonial metropolis. The obvious yet most difficult question to confront at this stage is how it had affected the village as a social and cultural unit. Inaugurating the Rajmahal route, Lord Canning had described the railway as ‘a line of light through the mofussil of darkness’, a view not shared by the nationalist. They believed that it would create ‘no permanent impression on the face of the country’.1 The contemporary folk image nevertheless indicates the deep imprint of the railways on the rural psyche.

(p.289) Folk Image of the Railways Against the elitist notion of the railways dwarfing the exploits of mythical heroes, the folk image was more mundane. In one such composition, the rail engine had been stated as the iron cow that moved without corn and ran ‘by the force of steam’ (bhak bhak); hence, an object of veneration and worship. Engineer John Burton referred to the local belief of the steam engine dragging great loads by the power of ‘some diabolical agency, Shaitan [Satan]’. The mechanical hand of the signal post letting the rail engine pass drew both fear Page 1 of 22

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Conclusion and awe of the rural folk. Women walking along the winding footways by the railway track thus bowed before the signal maharaj.2 The patri or the pair of rails piercing through endless fields, bushes, and ditches had replaced the river as the villagers’ old link to the outer world. Unlike the pleasing beauty and calmness of the river, the lifeless track of the railways instilled unto the villager a mixed feeling of fear and admiration for the new avatar. In their karma (working) song, the Agaria tribesmen narrated how the train whistled before leaving for Bilaspur, a place too far to reach even in their dream. It rings the same tune as in the Agra folklore: fast to Delhi, fast to Agra, fast to Bharatpur it goes. The Agaria song recounts how ‘villagers leave their work and run to see it’ or children leave their food to get a glimpse of the bustling train. In Bibhutibhusan’s Pather Panchali, the same feeling gets echoed in the ecstasy and yawning wonder of tiny Apu as he sees the train rattling through the forlorn fields.3 The villager, used to travelling by the slow cart, was surprised to see the majesty of speed and power of the railways carrying even elephants. Prior to 1878, the journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling took six days. ‘Those who had the time, money and energy to undertake the journey’ reached Sahebganj by rail, crossed the Ganges by steamer to move in cart from Chargola to Dingra Ghat ferry. The travel along the Himalayan road was then undertaken by cart or palki to Siliguri, the starting point of a slow and arduous ascent up Hill Cart Road. Railways reduced the journey to a day’s time.4 The ecstasy of railway travel mesmerized both the high and low.5 In the first year of direct services between Howrah and Puri, 3 million people travelled to the shrine of Jagannath by the railways.6 The spontaneity of response surprised everyone. By making the journey (p.290) easier and cheap, railways encouraged the culture of pilgrimage in India. The old network of Jagannath roads points to the steady annual traffic of pilgrimage to Puri, a costly and exacting journey. The Bengali adage, hate kadi paye bal, tabe chali Nilachal, thus enjoins upon people not to venture into pilgrimage to the shrine without a hefty amount of money to spare and a good physique to bear the fatigue. It was not easy even for the rich. ‘As late as 1814,’ Sherwill wrote from Birbhum, ‘roads were so infested with robbers that pilgrims could not pass through Deoghar on the way from Benares to Juggernat.’7 The roads were often disrupted due to rain and flash flood confining the pilgrim. In 1855, W.H. Elliot, commissioner of Bardhaman Division, narrated a similar experience thus, I had a conversation yesterday with some from Patna, who have been residing for three months in a suburb of Bardhaman. Having come after the early rains in May had cut that road, they diverged in the vain hope of getting from Bardhaman to Medinipur; and finding that route still more Page 2 of 22

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Conclusion impracticable, are quietly waiting till the next dry season shall enable them, with whatever difficulty, to move on. I proposed to them to go by rail to Calcutta, thence by boat to Tamluk, and thence on foot to Puri, but they said they had two horses and four bullock carts with them, and had also learned by letters from that quarter that the routes from Tamluk and Medinipur to Cuttack, are as bad as on this side.8 By 1901, when the Howrah–Puri train service commenced, people were accustomed to travelling by railways, nearly 50 years old by then. Given the speed, ease, and comfort of the journey, the number of pilgrims making the trip does not deserve to be stressed too far. Sherwill reported that ‘100,000 pilgrims from the North Western Frontier Provinces and Gayah pass along this part of Birbhum, and in the cold weather, taking the route to Deoghar and Juggernath, returning at the close of the cold season’.9

Railway Station as the Nucleus Back at the village, the railway station emerged as an island of civilization dissimilar to its surroundings. Its building, furniture, telegraph, posted lamps, and the bell were new and unfamiliar. The enclosed space manned by the sahib or demi-sahib, their points-man and chaprasis included, was literally a symbol of the power of the Raj. (p.291) It was a different culture zone where common people were unwelcome except at the hours of the arrival and departure of the train. Little that is known about the behaviour of the station staff in the early railway days reflects a mentality of the ruler to the ruled. In April 1868, the editor of a local daily reported, ‘A few days ago, some cows were grazing inside the railway fence when two to three demi-sahibs and some lascars set dogs on them, leaving them dreadfully torn and bitten; then the sahib ended its sufferings with a bullet. This we suppose is a sign of civilization.’ The Kushtia correspondent of a Calcutta-based paper cited the police order ‘prohibiting third class passengers from entering the station till the arrival of trains by which they are to start. Owing to this, passengers are exposed to the heat of the sun for two to three hours in an uncovered place to the east of the station’. Nevertheless, the notion of hierarchy continued to determine primary access to the railway station. In 1906, the editor of the Calcutta-based Hitavadi observed that ‘third class hackney carriages should be permitted along with the second class ones to draw up alongside of the railway platform at least in the rainy season’.10 Reports of ‘European railway men’s offence against the native’, ‘harassment of women passengers’, and ‘maltreatment of natives by the native’ abound.11 The executive engineer of the Ranaghat–Kushtia section (EBR) had proposed to defer its inauguration as some station roofs were still incomplete. He was told, ‘Considering the preponderance of the third class railway traffic, station comforts are not very urgent. It is only necessary to bring terminal works into a Page 3 of 22

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Conclusion better working condition to ensure the comfort of European train running staff.’12 The same attitude distinguished the railway hierarchy from the top to the bottom. To cope with the rush in third class traffic, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal suggested the introduction of fourth class compartments—‘large vans attached to goods trains travelling at a slow rate of speed, which is found to be the cheapest’.13 More than the attitude, it was the misconduct of the station staff that bothered the local people most. In 1868, a correspondent of Grambarta wrote, ‘If in houses adjoining the station, there was any article required by the railway staff, chaprasi used force to enter the houses and take such articles away.’ To the local people, station staff appeared ‘more oppressive than the indigo planter’. ‘The gate (p.292) keeper allows the gate to remain open and permit cows to enter the enclosed area, then impound them or charge fine on their owners. In a similar case, the gate keeper was charged by the Joint Magistrate a fine of sixteen rupees.’14 Much of it changed in the later days with the increasing induction of Indians at the lower level. In the beginning, the ratio of European to native employees was fairly high; one European per rail mile in the Santal Pargana, Bhagalpur–Munger section of the EIR. European presence was considered indispensable for ensuring punctuality and aversion of accidents, responsibilities that the natives could hardly be trusted with. The ‘punctuality so wanting in our native friends,’ Canning observed while inaugurating the Rajmahal line, ‘will be now taught more effectively by the rail than by the schoolmaster.’15 An official note issued a decade after the inauguration of the line admitted that it ‘has been remarkably free from accident and this is the more singular achievement when we consider the number of native servants employed’. The absence of accidents and the considerations of cost eventually persuaded the railway authorities to replace Europeans by Indians at the station level, junctions excluded. Hence, another master was integrated into the village society, adding to the school and post masters, as the railways got ‘naturalized in the native mind’.16 The railway station, like the steamer station in much of the river-fed eastern India, replaced the old ferry ghat and the road crossing as the place of social gathering. With vendors and shop keepers shifting to it, the station drew both settlers and traders, including confectioners and fortune seekers of all hues.17 The station area assumed the character of a locality with settlers coming from both far and near, the smith and the carpenter being the early birds. Their old functional attachment to village society eroded over time.18 Let us read a few lines from a Bengali novel narrating rural Birbhum of the late 1920s.

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Conclusion Aniruddha Karmakar and Girish Sutradhar, smith and carpenter of Kalipur village, shifted their shops to the railway junction. They left the village early in the morning and returned late in the night, forcing the villagers to take their broken cart wheel, plough or ploughshare through the sand bed of the Mayurakshi River, four miles away from the village. It cost them the whole day, something that the villagers could ill afford in the sowing season. Even the Panchayet failed to get them back to the village.19 (p.293) Near the railway station, blacksmiths had a larger clientele, besides the supply of pilfered iron and coal. With tea vendors and the blacksmith, railway stations blended both the old and the new. The construction of the Bombay–Baroda line in Gujarat had led to similar mobilization of artisans,20 as a subsequent subsection would show, but before that a little about the increased mobility of the villager.

Mobility of the Villager The railways drew a large traffic of third class passengers. The Friend of India stated, ‘The fondness for travelling by the rail has become almost a national passion among inferior orders.’ ‘Nobody imagined that ryot and the bania had such locomotive habit as they soon showed; that between small towns or villages, with nothing but a local trade, a continuous traffic would set in; and that third class passengers would crowd the railway and be its main support.’ In the first two years, EIR receipts from third class were ‘nearly four times as much as from the two higher classes combined’. It belied ‘the general belief in the indisposition and inability of natives to avail themselves of the railways’.21 Who had crowded the third class compartment? In the beginning, most people even in Calcutta could not afford the high fare of the railways. If the Education Gazette is to be believed, ‘coming by water from Chinsurah or Chandernagore to Calcutta’ was three times as cheaper as travelling the same distance by train. The third class fare was three pice per mile for the first hundred miles, two per mile for the next, and one and a half pice beyond. ‘Most of those who travel in this class are very poor and feel it hard to pay one pie for every mile they travel; but for expedition they are obliged to travel by rail.’22 As the fare chart at the station was stated in English, ‘the more numerous but illiterate mass of 3rd class passengers’ were at the mercy of the railway staff. Station masters refused ‘payment made in pie for tickets’ and their servants ‘turned this rule to account by supplying passengers with changes in silver at a heavy discount’.23 ‘They charge a pice for every two anna and four anna bit given in exchange for pice and half an anna for every eight anna bit. The poor (p.294) passenger cannot but help complying with the unjust demand; for the railway company refuses to take the price of tickets in copper.’ The liquidity crisis or the railway company’s manoeuvre to increase its silver earnings hit the people hard ‘in a country where even a pie is valued’.24 Page 5 of 22

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Conclusion Most long-distance third class passengers were either the pilgrim fulfilling a mission, or the labourer moving in search of work. The agriculture over large parts of eastern India depended on the seasonal mobility of labourers. Colesworthey Grant wrote about the coolie’s coming ‘from Manbhoom or Singhbhoom in the indigo manufacturing season’. These poor people, who are willing to come on a journey of probably 100 to 120 miles to obtain the employment upon a small salary for a brief period, receive three rupees in advance ere quitting their homes to provide for the support of their families and such is their frugality until returning that they generally take back with them about nine-tenth of their earnings.25 The railways encouraged these footloose people to undertake more intensive journey. Santals had earlier opposed the construction of railways and even ‘killed two Europeans’ near Rajmahal Junction. Later, they could be seen all over Rajmahal ‘waiting outside the station [for the train] with tickets in their hand’.26 The railways increased the intensity of labour mobility, earlier restricted to 100– 150 miles, beyond which the journey was often undertaken for good.27 Sometimes, villages owe their name to migrant settlers, such as the Bhumij Dhan Sol or Santal Dhan Sol in Medinipur. Hailing from Mayurbhanj, the Bhumij reclaimed forest land here to initiate paddy cultivation.28 Birbhum received ‘a considerable number of settlers from Santal Parganas for the purpose of cultivation’. Dinajpur and Purnea depended on labour boats from Murshidabad till the railways reached these areas. ‘It is well known that at the reaping season large bodies of labourers move northward to secure employment in the rice field of Purnea and Dinajpur.’29 They returned with boatloads of paddy received as wages, a part of which went to the boatman as his fee. By regularizing the seasonal migration, railways enabled the labourer to shuttle between their village and the place of work. ‘Many earth workers and field labourers,’ Malley observed in 1916, ‘visit (p.295) Rajsahi in cold weather and leave again before the rains set in. Great majority of them are Santals, Mundas and Oraons.’30 Oriya brahmins moved to Rajsahi in great numbers to serve as cooks, while others from Balasore, Cuttack, and Puri ‘served as palki-bearer, doorkeeper, labourer, cook and domestic throughout Bengal’. ‘Railways afforded greater facilities for communication with the outside world’ and ‘stimulated migration’.31 A small trickle of people looking for jobs in public offices or commercial houses also distinguished the mobility. ‘A large number of clerks and others come to take service in Calcutta and its neighbourhood leaving their families behind in the district.’ With the railways ensuring safe journey round the year, the movement of the babu to town increased. In 1820, it took four days to reach Rangpur; a century later, the same journey could ‘be accomplished by railways

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Conclusion in just twelve hours’.32 Railways encouraged the enterprising villager to try his luck in the town and yet maintain the social intimacy with the village.

Village Society at the Crossroads The enterprise of a few in the beginning set a trend that eventually changed the village society. The person shuttling between the village and the town served as a catalyst of change. An example is Yadu, a poor barber in a remote village in Faridpur district. In just three years’ time, he built a new house with corrugated iron sheet roof and dug a pond near his home. All these he owed to the hair salon his son Nagen had started in the town, catering to big shots like the magistrate, lawyers and the daroga. Shaking off the ignominy of his work, Yadu now started to show off to his neighbours.33 Developments such as this created the first fissure in village society and in its nucleus, the joint family. Those frequenting the town cultured new tastes and demands. The brick house, iron sheet roof, shoes, long shirts, tea, cigarette, and a sense of modesty (abru) in female attire were some of the signs of the changing culture (halchal) in the village. In southwestern Bengal of the mid-1960s, the use of petticoats and blouses with coloured handloom saris became the standard wear of young women of respectable classes. The middle aged, otherwise wearing plain (p. 296) white sari, used these ‘on the occasion of marriage and during the visit to distant places’. A few had even switched to leather footwear, while most others wore the ‘cheap hawai chappal’.34 Earlier, villagers entertained their guests with puffed rice (muri) as in southwestern Bengal, or chaffed rice (chira) as in the north and the east. A popular folk song recounts the custom thus, ‘O! My friend, do visit my home; I shall offer you a wooden seat, betel leaf with nuts to chew and the chaffed rice of fine sali paddy to relish.’

(p.297) Tea and biscuit replaced all these in areas close Figure C.1 Old and new modes of to the railway station, with tea transport becoming a village delicacy to Source: Sukhumar Sinha (ed.), Village be shared with the dear one. In Survey Monograph on Raibaghini, Census 1964, a remote village in of India, 1961, West Bengal & Sikkim, Vol Bankura had as many as eight tea shops with 80 per cent of the villagers taking tea regularly. A local observer Page 7 of 22

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Conclusion reported from the village that ‘guests and relatives are offered tea even in families which do

XVI, Part VI (4) (Delhi: Govt of India Publication, 1966).

not take tea’.35 The rising sale of Britannia biscuits in the interior of Birbhum could be used as an illustration. The Bolpur-based distributor of the company achieved a spectacular 400 per cent growth in sales during 1959–64, closely followed by his Suri counterpart, whereas the sale in Sainthia multiplied by more than 18 times.36 Cheap imported goods drew more attention than the costlier products of the earlier days. A popular folk song refers to the craze thus, ‘Lo! My damsel, please forgive me, I’ll get you a comb from the junction station.’ So far, the villager felt happy with two square meals a day and a well-thatched hut to sleep peacefully in the rain. With new modes of transport exposing the village to the market, he found a lot more things to aspire for. The local-level evidence clearly points to the change. ‘With the introduction of the railways, … loin cloths are retiring in favour of dhotis when off work; shirts and coats are taking the place of the old rappers; hair oil and soaps are in increasing demand; the consumption of tea is advancing rapidly; smoking of cheap cigarette is rampant among the old as well as the young.’37 Some of these were of course positive signs indicating a change for better life. In 1966, out of the 143 families of a Bankura village 70 used mosquito nets, 56 used hurricane lanterns, while another 61 including 33 bauri and bagdi households had Bishnupuri lanterns, a local version known for its economy of fuel. ‘Kerosene oil worth of Re 0.9 is sufficient for this lantern for three days’ use. It gives out scanty light, in which only cooking can be done or meals can be taken but … reading or writing is not possible.’ Here, one-fourth of the total villagers used soap almost regularly. The village also boasted of its four sets of transistors; a brahmin and a modak (confectioner) owned one each and two families of sankhabanik (conch-shell trader) the rest.38 The type of things differed from village to village, depending on its exposure to the new technology. Closer to Calcutta, the use of hurricane lantern was more widespread; 103 out of a total of 182 families in a Hooghly village in 1961 used hurricane (p.298) lanterns, with the rest using diba, a locally made tiny, open kerosene lamp emitting a dim light.39 A little away from Bardhaman, 13.3 per cent of villagers in Kamnara used bicycles, though only 3 per cent commuted daily to town for work.40 The demand for old services in the village did not cease immediately. In Darbhanga, ‘rough implements needed in agriculture were still made and repaired by the village smith and carpenter’.41 Why did then they leave the village? For the sonwan ke rojigar, or an earning as precious as gold, as a Bhojpuri couplet puts it. To cope with the rising grain prices, artisans needed to earn more. Aniruddha Karmakar and Girish Sutradhar, smith and carpenter Page 8 of 22

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Conclusion respectively, thus shifted to the railway station inconveniencing the fellow villager. The way Aniruddha argued his case before the panchayet deserves attention. As village smith, I receive five measures of paddy per plough and Girish gets four; an income too little to meet our needs. To add to woes, peasants often nibble at our share or avoid payment on one plea or other, as I lost the share of eleven ploughs for consolidation of holdings. I could no longer sell hardware and cutlery items in the village due to cheap goods brought by the railways. Much like Girish, who lost his orders to migrant workers.42 H. Steefkerk attributed the artisan’s migration to the inadequacy of the avat or wages in kind. The artisan preferred avat to cash wages as it minimized the risk of price rise. The cash wages increased their propensity to spend and often induced them to drink; but ‘harmonious relationship’ yielded to their more pressing requirements for cash. More and more, village artisans thus relocated themselves to the railway station area. It helped them ‘convert their craft skill into cash by variously working as smith, carpenter, furniture maker, brick layer or even as building contractor, maintenance worker in the railways and so forth’.43 Two points emerge: the increased demand for cash and the weakening of the village bond. The integration of the market helped the peasant sell whatever he could produce and save, with someone eagerly waiting at hand to buy. The village artisan and the menial were the worst victims in a situation such as this. Traditionally, the scavenger had a right over the dead cattle thrown into the village dumping ground (bhagar). With the railways increasing the demand (p. 299) for raw hides, landlords began to lease off the bhagar to leather traders. ‘A number of east Bengal Muslims carry on a trade in leather at Chilahati and Badarganj. The hides are purchased from doms and bagdis, cured with the help of muchis and then exported to Calcutta.’ The declining supply of leather to the village chamar disrupted his ‘extremely important function in the social scheme’. Earlier, he made ‘shoes, whip thongs, drumheads and any pieces of leather needed about a cart’, while his wife served as the village midwife for a share of the harvest.44 The railways changed the nature of the market as the hub of rural economic activities. The Murshidabad Factory Records of 1776 refers to a 50-years-old market at Chandpara near Rangamati. Held twice a week, it had 13 shops: ‘three mudikhana (groceries), three shops supplying kadi shells (pseudocurrency), two sarraf‘s stalls (money changer), a tobacconist’s; a carpenter’s, two shops for muri (fried rice) and other cooked food run by widows; and a pasari or the stall for selling medicinal herbs.’45 The existence of five money-

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Conclusion changing shops in a small place such as this suggests that it was visited by itinerant traders as also those passing along the Bhagirathi River nearby. More numerous, the village market (haat) as distinct from bazaar, Francis Buchanan wrote in 1807, was a space where ‘all those from the neighbourhood who wish to buy or sell, assemble, and dispose of their commodities by retail. The farmer brings the produce of his lands, the artisan that of his workshop, and the fisherman that of his snares’. Shopkeepers assembled to buy goods or sell those brought from outside. What distinguished the village market was the simple way of transacting business. In 1824, Bishop Heber left a fascinating account of a rural market not very far from Calcutta.46 Some seemed to be shops being entirely open with verandahs and all chiefly made up of mats and twisted bamboos.… The shops contained a few iron tools, hanging up some slips of coarse coloured cotton, plantations hanging in bunches, while the ground was covered with earthen vessels, and a display of rice, of some kind of pulse heaped up on sheet; in the midst of which smoking a sort of rude hookah, made of a short pipe and a coconut shell, the trader was squatted on the ground. Comparing it with the following account of the village market a century later indicates the disappearance of much of this simplicity. (p.300) There is not a single village where a hāt does not exist in a radius of five to six miles.… The market is usually held in an open space, where vendors occupy temporary booths or squat on the ground. Around the open space are the house of permanent shopkeepers, who deal in salt, kerosene oil, piece goods, metal utensil and other imported goods. In the central space, business is transacted in all kinds of country produce, rice, vegetable, spices, betel, tobacco, fruit, fish and earthenware. Here, the villager disposes of his surplus produce and obtains what he needs himself.47 The organization of the market as a space of public transaction also changed. Unlike Heber’s market, it looks better planned and organized. The proliferation is also important to note. In 1807, Buchanan did not find ‘a bazaar of any consequence except in Dinajpur’. Better communications increased the profitability of markets to the landlords, who were reportedly vying with each other to set up more of these, leading to police and court cases.48 Perhaps more important is the change in the composition of grocery. From heaps of rice and peas lying on the ground, iron tools, and coloured cotton cloths, the later-day shops sold piece goods, kerosene oil, metal utensils, soaps, and other imported goods. In Rangpur, the small-riverside-village-turned-steamer-stations like Phulchhari, Kamarjani, Chilmari, and Rahummari ‘show heavy import of kerosene oil, piece-goods, iron goods’, plus the usual export of jute and tobacco. Page 10 of 22

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Conclusion Local traders initiated the trade, later taken over by Marwaris shifting from the old river ports of Murshidabad.49 With the ‘hurricane lantern penetrating far and wide’, the use of kerosene oil spread to the interior. In Bardhaman, local grain dealers combined their trade with the retailing of kerosene, buying paddy from peasants in lieu of the assured supply of fuel all year round. Rice traders at Magrahat queued up for the kerosene licence. In the 1930s, a local official described the change thus, Small brokers do a good deal of business in the interior by travelling from village to village and buying as they go along.… Amongst the less perishable articles are quantities of coloured cloth and cheap fancy goods such as the highly scented and gaudy looking soaps, glass bangles, cheap mirrors, amulets and colourful earthenware pots. Nowhere is the economic conquest by Japan more apparent than in these stalls.50 The hierarchical realignment of traders also deserves attention. The trader dealing in imported goods prospered more than those (p.301) selling the local product, and hence occupied a more important space in the market. Some shifted from the grain trade; others combined both, leading to the rise of a motley group of rich traders, beneficiaries of the booming trade in grain and consumer goods. Their material achievements soon prompted them to ignore old social norms. Citing a few lines from a Bengali novel, Kurpala, literally ‘cruel episode’, woven around a post-Swadeshi village of Faridpur, could be useful here. It was a river-based village inhabited by the poor. Nasiram Majhi was a small farmer with two ploughs; old Jagu Sardar had none. Even then, they were regarded as social leaders, since what mattered in those days was not really wealth, but character. Then the steamer changed the village. Haran Kundu vended head-load of molasses from the village to village. His son Bankim now emerged as the richest man of Sagardighi with a fleet of boats making brisk business in markets all along the rivers Madhumati, Padma, Meghna, and the Ganges. Emboldened, he poses to devour the entire village like a demon.51 Agriculture did not attract new technology, official enthusiasm over the Calcutta Agricultural Exhibition (1864) notwithstanding. ‘The purchase of machinery and implements at the exhibition by native gentlemen from the mofussil afford an undeniable proof that there is no want of disposition to give those modern appliances a fair practical trial.’ But in 1904, Viceroy Minto admitted that India lagged ‘far behind other countries in the application of science to agriculture’. The government experimental farms mostly failed to perform, as Curzon’s ambitious scheme of an agricultural college/research station in each important province had been scuttled by London. The individual initiative to popularize Page 11 of 22

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Conclusion new tool techniques among peasants also failed. In a rare move, a group of Comilla youth developed a plough 10 times more efficient than the old one, but could not commercially launch it for want of funds.52 The much-publicized Kaiser Plough, sold for Rs 6 only, also failed. For the same amount could get the peasant a bullock. What discouraged the use of the new technology was the shortage of capital, given the small-peasant system of farming, not social inhibition. A case in point is the Behea sugar mill. In 1900, the Beheas launched their mill with a price tag of Rs 85, but met with poor response. Undaunted, they started letting out the mill at a minimal rent, attracting the (p.302) peasant to use it at a low cost and the trader to invest in the mill. The peasant had readily adopted new tools, but whenever it involved a hefty investment they preferred buying land to technology, as the land added to their social position. The more remote the village, the more secure was the old social organization of production.53 Technology also changed the rural woman’s attitude to work, determined largely by the patriarchy. ‘Few women were seen outside. Those who appeared had somewhat more clothing than men.’ With spinning almost a universal occupation, followed by husking, women had plenty of indoor work earlier. The creaking of the foot mill synthesized with the husker’s song filled the air in the grey dawn of the village, a reality that changed with the arrival of the rice mill. Tatma weavers of Darbhanga were thus forced to send their women outdoors for work, much like the dhangar (scavenger), whom they had derided earlier for allowing their women to work on the Kosi–Siliguri road, or the pakki.54 What followed was not just increased occupational stress encountered by women, but also growth of new aspirations and enterprises. Since only those possessing land could hope to earn more in the village, the more enterprising ones moved to the town. The artisan was more mobile than the peasant as he had little attachment to land. The most dynamic were the blacksmith and the carpenter, as their tools were easier to carry, their services more widely in demand, and they worked with raw materials usually brought by their clients. Hence, they could readily move out of traditional production. Bishop Heber referred to Munger blacksmiths thus, ‘The shops are numerous and I was surprised at the neatness of kettles, tea trays, guns, pistols, toasting forks, cutlery and other things of the sort which may be procured in this tiny Birmingham.’55 The railways, with its station buildings, spread a new concept of housing, encouraging the mason, the carpenter, and the smith.56 English masonry technique had already replaced the indigenous one in early nineteenth-century Calcutta. Samachar Darpan (9 January 1830) reported how English masons had forced the local counterparts, like Sultan Ajuddin and Chand Mistri, to adopt the new technique. Slowly, the technique spread to the districts. Nearly a century Page 12 of 22

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Conclusion later, a local observer from Birbhum wrote that ‘mud houses are being replaced day by day by brick built ones. In lieu of the old (p.303) thatched roof, corrugated tin shades are becoming more popular now’.57 It reduced the demand for the service of the barui, the workgroup skilled in thatching houses. For baruis, the situation escalated further with the increasing access of lorries transporting corrugated iron sheet to the interior; as villages around BishnupurKotulpur witnessed from the 1960s. The masons benefitted the most through these developments, often earning more than a petty clerk.58 The change witnessed by carpenters was more than what the smiths did, and the shift from the old thread (sutra) to the measuring tape (phita) symbolized this change. From being the sutradhar (chhutar), the carpenter turned into a mechanic (mistri). During 1893–1908, carpenters’ wages increased in Howrah by 25 per cent, blacksmiths’ by 67 per cent, and masons’ by 50 per cent. In Bardhaman, carpenters and masons were better paid than the smiths, but in Purnea the latter were more in demand, while all the three received uniform wages in Balasore. The variation points to the relative difference in urban growth. Howrah had a captive industrial demand for blacksmiths, whereas Bardhaman as a rural town needed masons and carpenters more than smiths. Tanneries and urban demand had similarly drawn the leather workers to Calcutta, initiating a competition in which Bengalis failed to survive and moved out their trade.59 As early birds returned home with a changed vision of life, others were influenced in turn. The weaver of a Faridpur village got a glimpse of the life in Calcutta from Adam Jolah, who had just returned from the city. He told them about the bioscope: how pictures moved, sang, or even fought wars in the movie. How petro-max outshined the moonlit night or the gramophone (kaler gan) could remake old songs and a lot more.60 The wonders slowly spread beyond the urban boundaries. The railways, telegraph, steamer, and new roads and bridges (pakki and pool) could be seen as development rolling out of the metropolis to the periphery. Not only did it end the physical and cultural isolation of the village, but also carried new tastes and demands to the interior. The life the villager had lived so far no longer remained the same. A revisit to Laldaha village in Birbhum after two decades (1957) indicates the growth of a bizarre spirit of enterprise to earn more. Paddy cultivation had expanded to wastelands. A few families had started growing potato, sugarcane, and new varieties of fruit trees, (p.304) while others had taken to ‘new industries such as carpentry, gur and mat making’. Many moved out of the village to work outside, raising the number of earning members in the family. During 1937–57, per-capita income increased from Rs 1.87 to Rs 21.15, leading to improved housing and use of consumer preferences like cycle, torchlight, shoes, and umbrella. Another 10 years since then, the peasant’s age-old headgear in the rains, peka, had been totally replaced by the umbrella in even Page 13 of 22

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Conclusion the remotest part of southwestern Bengal.61 A revisit to another village similarly confirmed the ‘rudimentary expression of striving for improvement of their farming enterprise’, although the ‘worker–dependent ratio in the family had changed slightly for the worse’. The most notable feature of the new spirit was the spate of house building, besides wasteland reclamation, increased use of fertilizer, and use of hired labour.62 The rising food prices and the lure of consumerism had hit hard the new breed of salaried people in the village: school/post/station masters, and clerks in the settlement office, police, and court. ‘They do not reduce their expenditure on the social and religious ceremonies incidental to their position, though the expense of maintaining that position has increased of late.’63 Everyone, the teacher excluded, misused his power to earn more, with the police symbolizing the corruption. The following complaint was received against a station master: Your station master used to give you a bribe to be placed at the particular station. His salary was negligible but stations were allotted wagons which were the gift of the station master to the merchant who booked them, so his income was enormous. He paid to the district traffic superintendent and the company inspector who’d go down their district once a month, when a brown envelope was slipped into their hands containing this tip.64 The artisan and the menial became restless. A field study in the 1960s observed the near absence of oil-milling and blacksmithing in Medinipur, with the miller either working as a field labourer or helping the carpenter. Blacksmiths mostly migrated to Howrah, as weavers and bamboo workers lost half of their work. In Bardhaman, the potter suffered the most, followed by the weaver, although the ‘carpenter and blacksmith retained their position’.65 In Bankura, a sizeable section of conch-shell workers and traditional oil millers (p.305) took to farming.66 In Birbhum, husking, oil milling, and carting declined; but occupations like blacksmithing, carpentry, fishing, and shopkeeping grew. With some villagers preferring to live outside, share cropping expanded everywhere. Jalpaiguri showed some dissimilar signs.67 The shift from traditional costume to sari, with which the railways had flooded the area, ended the old practice of domestic weaving by women. A similar replacement of timber by brick as the primary material for house building reduced the demand for the carpenter. He had a brisk trade earlier as wooden, not mud, houses were more common in the region due to ecological reasons. All these changed the old village that was based on a hierarchy of social isotopes. With the state asserting itself more and more in the locality, the notion of community changed. The individual, as a citizen of the modern state, no longer needed the protection of the caste/village society in the way his predecessors had done earlier. Technology improved not just the connectivity of space but also resulted in a better communion of minds. As the old social Page 14 of 22

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Conclusion organization of occupations caved in, psychological intimacy among villagers increased across the limits of caste, kin, and community. To all these, new games and sports, such as the village football, had a role. A post-colonial study on rural Birbhum found the caste councils losing control, with the festivals organized by them becoming restricted to private celebration. From a festival of pomp and grandeur celebrated by only a privileged few, Durga Puja on the other hand began to emerge as an important space of public celebration and social gatherings in the village.68 Deep in the interior of Hooghly, Kodalia had a peripheral group of north Indian blacksmiths called lohar. Unable to afford the luxury in private, they used to have all their ritual celebrations collectively at a common place. In 1904, a north Indian trader-settler built an open house with mud walls and thatched roof at the site. Half a century since then, it had emerged as the baro-yiaritala, or the common assemblage point of the village, so much so that in 1958, it had been turned into a brick and cement structure with public subscriptions.69 As the village had received so much from the metropolis through the improved connectivity, the peripheral culture of the baro-yiar (literally, 12 friends), implying social association beyond barriers, sneaked (p.306) into the colonial metropolis, Calcutta, to become the focal point of its social and cultural expressions. Notes:

(*) ‘The mango tree yields berries, tamarinds bear neem. Fear chills me down; these omens may spell doom’—folk song from Purulia district. (1.) ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical Association’, Calcutta Review, 36 (March, 1861), p. 112. Bipan Chandra, Essays on Colonialism (Delhi, 1999 [Reprint, 2000]), pp. 291–2. (2.) Agra folklore used by David Arnold in ‘Bodies of Knowledge/Highways of Steel and Technology in Modern India’, in Railways in Modern India, ed. I.J. Kerr (Delhi, 2001), p. 262; Census Report of the United Provinces 1931, Part I, p. 525; L.S.S. O’Malley, Popular Hinduism: The Religion of Masses (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 183–4. The signal worship narrated by K.C. Nag, Station Master, Daltonganj Railway Station, 1950–55. ‘During the Mutiny, the mutineers got possession of one of the East Indian Line Stations where stood several engines. They did not dare to approach them but stood a good way off and threw stones at them.’ D.R. Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress (Oxford, 1988), p. 66. (3.) V. Elwin, The Agaria, (London, 1942), p. 15; David Arnold, Bodies of Knowledge’, p. 262; Pather Pancali, filmed by Satyajit Ray. (4.) From the Hooghly to the Himalayas: Being an Illustrated Handbook to the Chief Places of Interest Reached by the Eastern Bengal State Railway (Bombay: The Times Press, 1913), pp. 30–1. Page 15 of 22

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Conclusion (5.) Purna Chandra Basu recalled his journey across the Son Bridge, when the din of the rolling wheels and the astonishing speed made him feel dizzy. Harriet Bury, ‘Novel Spaces, Transitional Moments: Negotiating Text and Territory in Nineteenth Century Hindi Travel Accounts’, in 27 Down: New Departures in Railway Studies, ed. Ian J. Kerr (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007), pp. 14–15. (6.) Ian J. Kerr, ‘Reworking a Popular Religious Practice: The Effects of Railways on Pilgrimage in 19th and 20th Century South Asia’, in Railways in Modern India, ed. Ian J. Kerr (Delhi, 2001), p. 313. (7.) ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical Association’, p. 118. (8.) Elliot’s letter to William Grey, Secretary to the Government of Bengal, Burdwan, 18 October 1855, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. XXIV, p. 164. (9.) Major Sherwill has been cited in ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical Associations’, p. 116. (10.) Hitavadi, Calcutta (21 February 1906), cited in Report on the Native Press, Bengal (hereafter RNP), Bengal. (11.) Grambarta Patrika, Kashimpur Station on the Kushtia–Goalando route. Cited in RNP. Som Prakash (28 February 1870), cited in RNP, p. 42. Mr Yule’s note has been cited in ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical Associations’, p. 140. (12.) National Archives of India (NAI), Note by A.E. Perkins, Offg. Deputy Construction Engineer to Govt of Bengal, Railway Department, on the subject of opening of the Eastern Bengal Railway (EBR) line up to Kushtia, PWD, Railway Progs, December 1862, p. 2. (13.) NAI, Letter no. 325 dated 1 October 1860, from Jt Sec., Govt of Bengal, PWD, Rly Br., to the Offg Sec. to the Govt of India, PWD Progs, December 1860, (14.) Grambarta Patrika (April 1868); Gooyatulee (1872); incidentally, Hindu Hitoishi (20 June 1868) also made the same comparison in connection with an accident on the EBR; all cited in RNP. (15.) ‘Rajmahal, Its Railways and Historical Associations’, p. 112. (16.) Ibid., p. 140; ‘The East Indian Railway’, Calcutta Review, LXI, pp. 236–7. (17.) ‘Up-country traders, in addition to a large number of people from Bengal, move in to start shops in areas near railway lines, and many carters and drivers of pack-bullocks found remunerative employment in the vicinity of railway lines.’

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Conclusion Reports of the Assam Valley for 1897–98 cited by Shyam Bhadra Medhi, Transport System and Economic Development in Assam (Gauhati, 1978), p. 185. (18.) Kurt Morck Jensen, Non-Agricultural Occupations in a Peasant Society: Weavers and Fishermen in Noakhali, Bangladesh, Centre for Development Research, Report No. 12, Copenhagen, 1987, pp. 25–7. (19.) Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, Ganadevatā (Calcutta, 1409 BS), pp 3–4. (20.) Hein Streefkerk, Industrial Transition in Rural India: Artisans Traders and Tribals in South Gujarat, (Bombay, 1985), pp. 75–8, 100, 123. (21.) Cited D.R. Headrick, Tentacles, p. 63; ‘The East Indian Railway’, p. 235; G. Huddleston, History of the East Indian Railway (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1906), pp. 14–15. (22.) Gazette (3 January 1868), cited in RNP. With 18 pice per mile for the first 100 miles and 12 pice per mile beyond, the first class journey was cheaper. NAI, Letter No. 454 R. dated 7 August 1860, J.C. Butchelor, Traffic Manager to Agent, East Indian Railway Co.; No. 2308, December 1860, J.P. Beadle to Govt of Bengal on Passenger Fares, EIR, PWD Progs Railways, July–December 1860. Incidentally, transport cost in pālki was eight ānnās per mile. Henry T. Bernstein, Steamboats on the Ganges: An Exploration in the History of India’s Modernization through Science and Technology (Delhi, 1960 [Reprint 1987]), p. 21. (23.) Dainik-O-Samachar Chandrika (28 May 1895), cited in RNP, p. 259. Saṃbād Purṇocandradaya (3 February1869), cited in RNP. (24.) Sambad Prabhakar (23 July & 26 August 1868), cited in RNP. Letter from Jt Sec., Govt of Bengal, to Offg Sec., Govt of India, PWD, No. 325, dated 1 October 1860, Home, PWD Progs, Railways. (25.) Colesworthey Grant, Letters from an Artist in India to His Sisters in England (London, 1860), p. 114; Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Early Railwaymen in India: “Dacoity” and “Train-Wrecking” (c. 1860–1900)’, in Essays in Honour of Prof. S. C. Sarkar, eds B. De et al. (Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1976), pp. 536–7. E.W. Gait, Census Commissioner, in Census of India, 1901, Bengal, Vol. VI, Part I. (26.) ‘Rajmahal, Its Railways and Historical Associations’, p. 122. (27.) ‘Zamindars allow land to be held rent free for the first three/four years and this exactly suits these unsophisticated aborigines, who do not mind the physical labour involved in breaking down the jungle, but have very great aversion to payment of rent. They remain until rent is demanded and then move on leaving

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Conclusion the land they have brought under cultivation to be occupied by others.’ E.W. Gait in Census, 1901, Vol. VI, Part I, p. 58. (28.) Sukumar Sinha (ed), Village Survey Monograph on Bhumij Dhan Sol, Census of India 1961: West Bengal & Sikkim, Vol. XVI, Part VI (5), Delhi, Govt of India Publication Division, 1967, p. 5, 14. (29.) Ibid., p. 132; Census of Bengal, 1872, Part II, p. 140. (30.) Letter no. 713G, dated Boalia, 14 July 1892 cited by E.W. Gait in Census, 1901, Vol. VI, Part I, p. 58, p. 3; L.S.S. O’Malley, Rajsahi, 1916, p. 53. (31.) ‘Uriyās are chiefly Brahmans and act as cooks. It is a well-known fact that the Barendra, who form the great bulk of the Brahmin population of Rajsahi, unlike their brethren of the Rarh, feel it derogatory to their dignity to resort to cooking as a profession. The consequent want of Brahmin cook … in this district has been thus satisfied by the employment of Uriya Brahmin.’ E.W. Gait in Census, 1901, p. 3; L.S.S. O’Malley, Bihar and Orissa District Gazetteer (Cuttack), pp. 38–9, italics added. (32.) Census of Bengal, 1872, Part II, p. 140; E.W. Gait, in Census, 1901, p. 132. Walter Hamilton observed, ‘Although Rangpur is 260 travelling miles from Calcutta and roads indifferent and intersected by an amazing number of rivers and water courses, yet in a palanquin the journey is with ease gone in four days’—cited in J.A. Vas, Rangpur, 1911, p. 95. Rangpur Barta (27 August 1850), cited in RNP. (33.) Ramesh Sen, Kurpālā (Calcutta 1353 BS), a Bengali novel written in the 1920s, p. 6. (34.) For trends in change in women’s dress, see Sukumar Sinha (ed.), Village Survey Monograph on Raibaghini, Census of India 1961: West Bengal & Sikkim, Vol. XVI, Part VI (4) (Delhi: Government of India Publication Division, 1966), p. 29. (35.) S. Sinha, Raibaghini, pp. 32, 35. (36.) Benoy Kumar Sarkar, ‘Arthik Jagate Adhunik Nari’, Arthik Unnati, II, no. 10 (Magh 1334 BS), p. 783; T. Bandyopadhyay, Ganadevatā, p 8. For more on consumption of tea, see Sugata Dasgupta, ‘Social Change in Village in West Bengal’, in Problems of Rural Change—Some Case Studies, ed. M.S. Gore (Delhi: Delhi School of Social Work, 1963), pp. 155–6. Calcutta-based foreign firms making soap, vegetable oil, and cosmetics spread their sales to the interior. In the early 1960s, their sale records for Birbhum suggest constant upward revision of targets, ‘achieved with the help of a thoroughly organised and

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Conclusion efficient chain of distribution arrangement’. Chittapriya Mukherjee, Urban Growth in a Rural Area (Santiniketan: Visva Bharati, 1972), p. 125. (37.) S.P. Desai, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Kamrup District (March 1928), p. 18. (38.) S. Sinha, Raibaghini, pp. 38–40, 120. (39.) J.C. Sengupta (ed.), Village Survey Monograph on Kodalia (Hooghly), Census of India 1961: West Bengal & Sikkim, Vol. XVI, Part VI (1) (Delhi: Government of India Publication, 1962), p. 9. (40.) J.C. Sengupta (ed.), Village Survey Monograph on Kamnara, Census of India 1961: West Bengal & Sikkim, Vol. XVI, Part VI (2) (Delhi: Government of India Publication, 1963), p. 10. (41.) L.S.S. O’Malley, Darbhanga (Calcutta 1907), p. 90; emphasis added. (42.) T. Bandyopadhyay, Ganadevatā, pp, 7–8; translation mine. (43.) H. Streefkerk, Industrial Transition in Rural India, pp. 75–8, 100, 123. (44.) Final Report of the Rangpur Survey and Settlement Operations (Calcutta, 1931), p. 39; L.S.S. O’Malley, Bankura, p. 52. (45.) Murshidabad Factory Records, Proceedings of the Council of Revenue at Murshidabad, as cited in K.M. Mohsin, A Bengal District in Transition: Murshidabad (Dhaka, 1973), pp. 19–20. (46.) L.S.S. O’Malley, Dinajpur, pp. 322–3; Reginald Heber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825 (London: J. Murray, 1828), Vol. I, pp. 21–2. (47.) J.A. Vas, Rangpur, p 93. (48.) L.S.S. O’Malley, Dinajpur, p. 323. For the feud over Rangamati–Beldanga markets see, K.M. Mohsin, A Bengal District in Transition, p. 20. For Baidyabati in Hooghly and Thakurpukur village near Barasat, see Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay, Sangbadpatre Sekaler Katha (Calcutta 1401 BS), Vol. I, pp. 178– 80. (49.) Final Report of the Rangpur Survey and Settlement Operations, pp. 36, 40, 39, 40; Letter no. 706 dated Rangpur, 16 March 1892 cited in Census, 1901, p. 3. Acharyya Prafullachandra Roy, Bangalir Mastiska O Tahar Apabyabahar (Calcutta, 1985), pp. 1–27. (50.) Final Report of the Rangpur Survey and Settlement Operations, pp. 36, 38, 39. Page 19 of 22

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Conclusion (51.) R. Sen, Kurpālā, pp. 2–3, 6, 21–3; translation mine. (52.) Deepak Kumar, Science and The Raj, 1857–05 (Delhi, 1995), pp. 90–1, 206; Uma Das Gupta, ‘Rabindranath Tagore on Rural Reconstruction’, Indian Historical Review, IV, no. 2 (January 1978), pp. 359–60; J. Roy, Arthik Unnati, 2, no.1. (53.) D. Kumar, Science and The Raj, p. 206. On an average, Rs 85 amounted to the price of the rice output of two acres of land. Directorate of Agriculture, Average Prices of Staple Food Crop (Rice) in Bengal, 1867 to 1934 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1935), pp. 4–5. In Purnea, the carpenter ‘received fifteen to twenty seers of grain for each plough at harvest time and in consideration of this allowance he happily kept the agricultural implements in repair’. Rangpur blacksmiths in the 1930s had been suffering due to the ‘local nature of their trade’. L.S.S. O’Malley, Purnea, p. 109. Report of the Rangpur Survey and Settlement Operations, p. 39. (54.) K.M. Jensen, Non-Agricultural Occupations in a Peasant Society, p 27; R. Heber, Narrative of a Journey, vol. I, p. 22; H.H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic Glossary (Calcutta, 1891[Reprint, Calcutta, 1981]), pp. 539–40. During 1901–51, the share of self-supporting women to total population declined by 17 per cent in Bengal. Directorate of National Employment Service, Unemployment among Women in West Bengal, November, 1958 (Calcutta, 1959), Table: III, p. 3. Satinath Bhaduri, Dhonrāi Charit Mānas (Calcutta: Bengal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Edition, 2004). (55.) Smritikumar Sarkar, ‘Social Organization of Artisan Production in India: Changing Role of the Market, Technology and Merchant-Creditor, 18th to 20th Centuries’ in History of Science, Philosophy and Culture of Indian Civilization, Vol. VIII, Part III, Economic History of India from Eighteenth to Twentieth Century, ed. Binay Bhusan Chaudhuri (New Delhi, 2005), pp. 194–5; Heber, Narrative of a Journey, pp. 292–3. (56.) The railway construction led to skill dispersion at the lower level. W.R. Gawthrop argued with regard to Assam that in the beginning ‘when an engineer, driver, plate layer or other artisan was wanted, agriculturist was taken and trained to the work. The agriculturist had of course propensity to learn things taught by others and in due course they turned out to be good workmen’. W.R. Gawthrop, The Story of the Assam Railways & Trading Company Limited, 1881– 1951 (London, 1951), p. 38; S.B. Medhi, Transport System and Economic Development in Assam, p. 195. (57.) Prajnanda Banerjee, Calcutta and Its Hinterland—A Study in Economic History of India, 1833–1900 (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1975), p. 100; W.R. Gawthrop, The Story of the Assam Railways, p. 9. B. Bandyopadhyay,

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Conclusion Sangbadpatre Sekaler Katha, Vol. I, p. 183. Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, Gramer Chithi (Calcutta, 1986), p. 192, in Bengali, translation mine. (58.) S. Sinha, Raibaghini, pp. 6, 25. (59.) H. Streefkerk, Industrial Transition in Rural India, pp. 75, 100, 101, 123; Ian Derbyshire, ‘The Building of Indian Railways: The Application of Western Technology in the Colonial Periphery, 1850–1920’, in Technology and the Raj: Western Technology and Technical Transfer to India, 1700-1947, eds Roy Macleod and Deepak Kumar (Delhi, 1995). L.S.S. O’Malley, Howrah, p. 90; Burdwan, p. 109; Purnea, p. 109–10; Balasore, p. 101. A field study on the Nadia blacksmith suggested a progressive rise in the share of the village harvest, but not in proportion to price rise. Interviews of Shyam Karmakar (82 years), Netai Pramanik (75 years) of Kanchkuli, and Ananda Karmakar (70 years) of Dahakula in Mudagachcha–Matiari cluster of villages, February 2004. K.M. Jensen, NonAgricultural Occupations in a Peasant Society, pp. 26–7. The census of 1901 showed three-fourths of the Bengali chamar population as labourers. Census, 1901, Vol. VI, Part I, pp. 485–6. P. Banerjee, Calcutta and Its Hinterland. (60.) R. Sen, Kurpala, p. 6. (61.) S. Sinha, Raibaghini, p. 30. For the increasing import of umbrellas, see note 130 in Chapter 5 of this book. (62.) S. Dasgupta, ‘Social Change in Village in West Bengal’, pp. 153–7. In 1961, a study on Supur stated the introduction of sugarcane, jute, mustard, and potatoes by the refugee families settled in the low land along the Ajoy River. Supur: A Village in a Paddy Producing Area (Sriniketan: Visva Bharati, 1961), pp. 138–9. G.C. Mandal and S.C. Sengupta, Studies in Rural Change—Kashipur, West Bengal: 1956–1960 (Santiniketan: Agro-Economic Research Centre, VisvaBharati, 1962). The ratio slid from 2:3 in 1956 to 3:5 in 1960. G.C. Mandal and S.C. Sengupta, Kashipur, pp. 79, 84–5. (63.) Census, 1911; Vol. V, Part I, Report on Bengal, p. 66. (64.) Cited in D.R. Headrick, The Tentacles, pp. 76–7. (65.) A.K. Das, ‘Trends of Occupation Pattern through Generation in Rural Areas of West Bengal’, Bulletin of the Cultural Research Institute, Special Series No. 10, Government of West Bengal (Calcutta, 1968), p. 33. (66.) S. Sinha, Raibaghini, p. 10. (67.) G.C. Mandal, & S.C. Sengupta, Studies in Rural Change, pp. 79, 93; A.K. Das, ‘Trends of Occupation’, p. 33. (68.) S. Dasgupta, ‘Social Change in a Village in West Bengal’, pp. 151–9. Page 21 of 22

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Conclusion (69.) J.C. Sengupta, Kodalia, pp. 2–3.

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Glossary

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

(p.313) Glossary Agaria an iron-working tribe of central India akhra a place of meditation for the Vaishnava religious order anna one anna was the 1/16th part of a rupee, which was prevalent nearly all over eastern India Baladiya/ladu-bepari petty trader carrying goods on bullocks banjara a group of professional carriers carrying goods on draught animals bazra a commodious boat used by rich men for long-distance travel bepari localized small trader bhat/bhata cooked rice bhar cargo boat bigha a unit of measurement amounting to 14,400 square feet of land; three bighas make an acre. chamar leather-working caste charka spinning wheel cottah one-twentieth part of the bigha Page 1 of 4

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Glossary dhangar scavenger dhenki foot-mill traditionally used to husk paddy dhuti men’s wear used by the well-off people (p.314) ganja market town located on a major river/land route of trade ghani a variety of traditional oil mill ghat boat-loading point; also the place for bathing in a river/tank goladar owner of a traditional sugar factory; also a rice merchant owning a storehouse gur molasses gurrah a kind of cloth woven in Birbhum kal instrument, machine kamar/karmakar blacksmith caste of Bengal kangsabanik brazier merchant kansari/ kasera brazier karkhana factory/workshop kayastha caste of scribe holding high social rank, next to the brahmin khandsari traditional sugar-making factory of north India. kuti, kutni, or bhanuni husker katua/charkash spinner kalwar professional distiller karati sawyer of conch shell kistiwala boatman in charge of cargo boat kolhu Page 2 of 4

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Glossary traditional oil miller, like the teli, tili, or kalu kumhar potter kunbikurmi peasant jham a kind of very large curved shovel made of canes jolha/jugi coarse weaver jotedar big peasant lakh 100,000. crore 10,000,000 loha pool iron bridge lohar/luhar blacksmith lohiya iron merchant mahajan merchant/financier modak confectioner mofussil suburban area (p.315) mokam major paddy/rice trading market muchi leather-working caste pakki macadam road palki a sort of covered sedan carried by bearers patella heavy cargo boat pie three pies made a pice, four pice an anna and sixteen anna or sixtyfour pice made a rupee; a pice (copper) represents one-fourth of an anna and sixty-fourth part of a rupee (silver). purbi person or product of eastern Bengal ramgariha Page 3 of 4

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Glossary a group of blacksmith/carpenter of north-western India. rarhi an inhabitant or a product of the south-western Bengal sadak major road connecting a cluster of villages in the interior to the river port sahib Englishman/European sankhari conch-shell working caste sankhabanik dealer of conch shells sari cloth for female wear most widely used in India sonar goldsmith suthar carpenter haat weekly or bi-weekly village market tantee/tanti weaver thaterian coppersmith udukhal or ukli hand-driven pestle used for husking jugee a class of weaver (p.316)

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Primary Records

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Primary Records Archival Records

Finance & Commerce Dept, Statistics & Commerce Branch, December 1899, Progs A. Finance Department (Commercial Branch) IQ Nos 5–12, March 1916. General Department, Proceedings. Government of India, Progs, Dept of Commerce, Statistics & Commerce (Customs), A Progs 1922–23. Government of India, Progs, Dept of Agriculture, Revenue and Commerce, Foreign Trade of Calcutta. Home Public Progs, Vol. II. Home, Revenue & Agricultural Dept, Agriculture & Horticulture, Progs: A. Public Works Department Progs, Rly Branch. Revenue and Agriculture (Famine Branch) Proceedings A Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Serial I.

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Other Primary Sources

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Other Primary Sources Bibliography references: Abul Fazl. The Ain-i-Akbari, H. Blochmann trans. London, 1873 (Reprint, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1993). Allen’s Indian Mail and Register of Intelligence for British and Foreign India, China and All Parts of the East. London: W.M.H. and Company, 1850. (p.318) Buchanan, Francis Hamilton. An Account of the District of Bhagalpur in 1810–1811. Patna, 1939. Buchanan, Francis Hamilton. An Account of the District of Sahabad in 1812– 1813. Patna, 1934. ———. An Account of the District of Shahbad in 1809–1810. Patna, 1934. ———. An Account of the Districts of Bihar and Patna in 1811–1812. Patna, 1930. ———. Bhagalpur Journal. Patna, 1810. ———. A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar, Vols I–III. London, 1807. Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description of Dinajpur. Calcutta, 1833. Manrique, Sebastian. Travels of Sebastian Manrique 1629–1643. Hakluyt Society, 1926. Martin, Montogomery, The History, Antiquities, Topography and Statistics of Eastern India, Comprising Districts of Behar, Sahabad, Bhagalpoor, Goruckpoor, Dinajpoor, Purniya, Ringpool and Assam. Vols 1–3. London, 1838. Page 1 of 2

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Other Primary Sources

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Government Publications

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Government Publications Reports

Abstract of Names of Castes and Corresponding Numbers of Emigrants from Chotonagpore to Assam and Kachar from January 1864 to December 1867 Obtained from the Office of the Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi. Calcutta, 1868. Administration Report of Assam, 1915–1916. Administration, Report of the Department of Industries, Bengal, 1920. Administrative Reports of the Department of Industries, Bengal, for the period from Oct. 1917 to Dec. 1919. Calcutta, 1919. Brass and Bell-Metal Industry: A Type Study, State Statistical Bureau. Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1959. Census Report of the United Provinces for 1931, Part I. Central Food Research Institute (CFRI). Some Facts About Rice. Mysore: Government of India, 1960. Classified List of Factories in Bengal, 1939. Calcutta, 1942. Classified List of Factories in Bengal, 1939. Calcutta: Government of Bengal, 1939. Consulting Engineer to the Government of India & Director of the Railway Department; Papers on the Proposed Railway in Bengal (Home) 1853; in Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Serial 1.

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Government Publications Fifth Report of the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, 1812: Final Report of the Rangpur Survey and Settlement Operations. Calcutta, 1931. Geographical and Statistical Report of the District of Bhagalpur. Calcutta, 1869. (p.319) Industrial Survey of the United Provinces. Allahabad, 1924. Lushington, C.H. ‘Report of the Proceedings in Taking the Land and Other Property Required for the Railway’, Bengal Government Selections, Serial No. 4. Report of the Bengal Industrial Survey Committee, 1948. Report of the Bengal Paddy and Rice Enquiry Committee. Calcutta, 1938. Report of the Bengal Rice Mills Association for the year 1948. Report of the Census of Bengal, 1872. Report of the Census of Bengal, 1891. Report of the Census of India, 1901, Vol. VI. Report of the Census of India, 1911, Vol. VI. Report of the Census of India, 1921, Vol. V. Report of the Census of India, 1951, Vol. VI. Report of the Census of the City of Calcutta, Census 1911. Report of the Census of the City of Calcutta, Census of India, Vol. V, 1911. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Famine in Bengal and Orissa, 1866. Report of the Famine in the Madras Presidency, 1896–97. Report of the Ferry Fund Committee in Rangpur, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. XXIV. Report of the Indian Industrial Commission, 1916–1918; IIC Evidence. Report of the Indian Industrial Commission. Calcutta, 1918. Report of the Indian Sugar Committee, 1921. Simla, 1921. Report of the Indian Tariff Board (Cotton Textile Enquiry Committee), 1932. Report of the Indian Tariff Board on the Glass Industry. Calcutta, 1932. Page 2 of 8

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Government Publications Report of the Indian Tariff Board on the Sugar Industry. Calcutta, 1931. Report of the Indian Tariff Board, Match Industry, 1928 (ITB, Match). Calcutta, 1928. Report of the Minimum Wages Advisory Committee for Rice Mills in West Bengal. Calcutta, 1957. Report of the Oilseeds Crushing Industry Inquiry Committee, 1956. Delhi: Ministry of Food & Agriculture, Government of India, 1956. Report of the Panel on Hosiery Industry. New Delhi: Department of Industries and Supplies, Government of India, 1946. Report of the Rice Milling Committee, 1955. New Delhi: Government of India, 1955. Report of the Rice Trade Enquiry Committee, Burma. Calcutta, 1937. Report of the Village and Small Industries Committee, 1955. New Delhi: Government of India, 1955. Report of the Village and Small Industries Committee. New Delhi, 1955. Report on an Enquiry into Conditions of Labour in the Match Industry in India, 1945. (p.320) Report on Commerce and Customs of Ceded Provinces, 1804. Report on the Administration of Assam, for various years, 1875–76 to 1885–86. Report on the Administration of Bengal, 1873–1874. Report on the Administration of Bengal, 1927–28. Calcutta, 1929. Report on the Condition of the Lower Classes of Population in Bengal. Calcutta, 1888. Report on the Development of Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1921. Calcutta, 1921. Report on the Enquiry into the Existing Working Conditions of the Owners-cumWorkers of Brass and Bell-metal Industries in West Bengal. Calcutta, 1973. Report on the Extension of the Railways to Rajmahal by F.W. Simms, Report on the Growth of the Joint Stock Companies in Bengal. Calcutta, 1937. Report on the Industrial Development of Bengal. Calcutta, 1915. Page 3 of 8

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Government Publications Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the Year 1880–81. Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the Year 1881–82. Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the Year: 1876–1877. Calcutta, 1878. Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the Year: 1877–78. Report on the Internal Trade of Bengal for the Year: 1882–83. Report on the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Bengal, 1926. Calcutta: Dept of Agriculture, Govt of Bengal, 1927. Report on the Marketing of Rice in India. New Delhi: Government of India, 1951 Report on the Operation of the Director of Supplies, Bengal, 1918–1920. Calcutta, 1920. Report on the Survey of Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1924. Report on the Trade of Bengal by River and of Calcutta by All Routes, 1900–01. Report on the Woollen Hosiery Industry (Tariff Commission), Government of India. Bombay, 1952. Report on the Work of Department of Industries, Bengal 1932–33. Reports of the Assam Valley Districts for the Year, 1897–98. Reports of the Secretary of the Ferry Fund Committee of Sarun and the Superintendent of Roads on the Traffic of the District, etc., in Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. XXIV. Reports on the Administration of Joint Stock Companies in India. Secretary to the Government of Bengal, dated Bardhaman 18 October 1855, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. XXIV. Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, Serial No. 24. Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Serial No. 19. Statement of Industrial Labour for 1901–05 Containing All Concerns in Which the Average Daily Number of Persons Employed Was Not Less Than 50 throughout the Year. Calcutta, 1906. Statistical and Geographical Report of the 24-Parganas in 1857. Calcutta, 1860. (p.321) Statistics of Sugar within the Presidencies of Bengal, Fort St. George & Bombay. Calcutta, 1848. Page 4 of 8

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Government Publications Sugar Plants and Sugar: Statistics relating to (1) the Area under Sugar Plants, (2) the Outturn of Coarse Sugar and (3) the Trade in Sugar. Simla, 1887. Supplementary Report on the Survey of the Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1924. The Sugar Technologists’ Association of India, Cawnpore, Year Book, 1939–40. Trends in Industries of West Bengal 1950–57. Calcutta: State Statistical Bureau, 1958. Authored Reports

Adarkar, B.P. Report on the Labour Conditions in the Chemical Industry. 1946. ———. Report on the Labour Conditions in the Rice Mills. Delhi: Government of India, 1946. All India Handicrafts Board, Brass and Bell-metal Crafts of Gauhati. New Delhi, 1961. ———. Report on the Survey of the Brassware Industry at Moradabad. New Delhi, 1964. Ascoli, F.D. Report on the Development of Cottage Industries in Bengal, 1921. Calcutta, 1921. Barrat, James. Report on the Iron Works of Beerbhum. Calcutta, 1857. Bengal Industrial Survey Committe, Cottage and Small-scale Industries in West Bengal. Calcutta, 1950. Bower, G.N. Report on the Maritime Trade of Bengal for the Year, 1922–23. Calcutta, 1923. Chakraborty, N.C. Report on the Survey of Handloom Weaving Industries in Bengal. Calcutta, 1942. Collin, E.W. Report on the Existing Arts and Industries in Bengal. Calcutta, 1892. Cumming, J.G. Review of the Industrial Position and Prospects in Bengal in 1908 with Special Reference to the Industrial Survey of 1890, Part II of Special Report. Calcutta, 1908. Das A.K. and S.K. Banerjee. Impact of Industrialization on the Life of Tribes of West Bengal. Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1962. ———. ‘Trends of Occupation Pattern through Generation in Rural Areas of West Bengal’, Bulletin of the Cultural Research Institute, Special Series No. 10. Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1968. Page 5 of 8

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Government Publications Datta, K.L. Report on the Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in India, 1915. Calcutta, 1915. (p.322) Department of Agriculture. District Handbook on Agricultural Marketing for the District of Birbhum. Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1963. Department of Agriculture. District Handbook on Agricultural Marketing for the District of Burdwan. Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1970. ———. Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Bengal. Calcutta: Government of Bengal, 1926. Department of Cottage and Small-Scale Industries, West Bengal. Locks and Keys Industry in Howrah: A Type Study. Calcutta: West Bengal Government Press, 1961. Desai, S.P. Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Kamrup District. March 1928. Deshpande, S.R. Report on Enquiry into Conditions of Labour in the Match Industry in India, 1945. Delhi, 1946. Directorate of Agriculture. Average Prices of Staple Food Crop (Rice) in Bengal, 1867 to 1934. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1935. ———. District Handbook on Agricultural Marketing for the District of Midnapore. Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1966. Directorate of National Employment Service, Unemployment among Women in West Bengal, November, 1958. Calcutta, 1959. Dixon, E., ‘A Survey of the Indian Glass Industry’, Bulletin of the Indian Industrial Research, No. 2. Simla, 1936. Fox, C.S. ‘Notes on Glass Manufactures’, Bulletin of Indian Industries and Labour, No. 29. Calcutta, 1922. Gastrell, J.E. Geographical and Statistical Report of the Districts of Jessore, Fureedpur and Backerganj. Calcutta, 1868. Ghosh, A.P. Report on the Investigations into the Possibilities of Match Industry in Bengal. Calcutta, 1923. Greathed, W.H., ‘Report on the Communication between Calcutta and Dhaka, Preliminary, 1856’, in Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Serial No. 19.

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Government Publications Grierson, G.A. Bihar Peasant Life, Being A Discursive Catalogue of the Surroundings of the People of That Province. Calcutta, 1885. ———. Notes on the District of Gaya. Calcutta, 1863. Haldar, S.K. Report of the Family Budget Enquiry into the Living Conditions of the Rice Mill Workers in West Bengal, 1949–1950. Calcutta: Government of India, 1952. Hooker, J.D. Himalayan Journal. London, 1854. Hunter, W.W. A Statistical Account of Bengal. London: Trubner & Co., 1876 (Reprint Delhi: DK Publishing, 1974). ———. Annals of Rural Bengal. London, 1897. Jameson, A.K. Report on the Final Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Medinipur: 1911–1917. Calcutta, 1918. Lander, P.E. Report on the Indian Vegetable Oil Industry. Lahore, 1927. (p.323) Long, James. ‘Report on the Nuddea Rivers and the Advantages Derived from the Measures Annually Adopted for Facilitating Navigation’, dated Kishnaghur, 14 July 1848 in Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. VIII. M’clelland, J. Report of the Geological Survey of India for 1848–1849. Calcutta, 1850. ———. Report of the Geological Survey of India for 1848–1849. Calcutta, 1850. Macpherson, D. Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Pabna and Bogra for the Years 1920–1929. Calcutta, 1930. Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Rice Economy of India, 1961. Oldham, Thomas. ‘Report of the Proceedings for 1851–1852’, in Superintendent, Geological Survey of India, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No. 8. Sengupta, J.C., ed. Village Survey Monograph on Kamnara, Census of India 1961: West Bengal & Sikkim, Vol. XVI, Part VI (2). Delhi: Government of India Publication, 1963. ———, ed. Village Survey Monograph on Kodalia (Hooghly), Census of India 1961: West Bengal & Sikkim, Vol. XVI, Part VI (1). Delhi: Government of India Publication, 1962.

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Government Publications Sinha, Sukumar, ed. Village Survey Monograph on Bhumij Dhan Sol, Census of India 1961: West Bengal & Sikkim, Vol. XVI, Part VI (5). Delhi: Government of India Publication Division, 1967. ———, ed. Village Survey Monograph on Raibaghini, Census of India 1961: West Bengal & Sikkim, Vol. XVI, Part VI (4). Delhi: Government of India Publication Division, 1966. Sunder, D.H.E. Survey and Settlement of the Western Duars, Jalpaiguri, 1889– 95. Calcutta, 1895. Superintending Engineer, Planning & Monitoring Circle, Rate Analysis for the Public Works Department, West Bengal, Schedule of Rates. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 2010. Swan, J.A.L. Report on the Industrial Development of Bengal. Calcutta, 1915. Thompson, G.H. Notes, Geographical, Statistical and General on That Portion of the Lohardugga or Chota-Nagpore District Known as Palamow Written during 1862–1866. Calcutta, 1866. Westland, James. A Report on the District of Jessore: Its Antiquities, Its History and Its Commerce. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Office, 1871. White, J. Claude. Sikhim and Bhutan: Twenty-One Years on the North-East Frontier 1887–1908. London, 1909 (Reprint Delhi, 2008). Wylie, M. Bengal as a Field of Missions. London: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1854.

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Monographs

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

(p.324) Monographs Bibliography references: All India Handicrafts Board. Brass and Bell-metal Crafts of Gauhati. New Delhi, 1961. Blennerhassett, Arthur. Monograph on the Cotton Fabrics of the Central Provinces. Allahabad, 1898. Dampier, G.R. A Monograph on the Brass and Copper Wares of the NorthWestern Provinces and Oudh. Allahabad, 1894. Hoey, William. A Monograph on Trade and Manufacture in Northern India. Lucknow, 1880. Hornell, James. ‘The Sacred Chank of India: A Monograph of the Indian Conch’, Madras Fishery Bulletin, no. 7 (Madras 1914). Monograph on Iron and Steel Works of Assam. Shillong, 1907. Monograph on the Cotton Fabrics of Assam. Shillong, 1897. Mukherjee, Trailokyanath. Monograph on the Brass and Copper Manufactures of Bengal. Calcutta, 1894. Social Aspects of Small Industries in India: Studies in Howrah and Bombay of Selected Turning Shops, Blacksmithies, and Art Silk Units. Delhi: UNESCO Publications, 1962). Thurston, Edgar. Monograph on the Silk Fabric Industry of the Madras Presidency. Madras, 1899.

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Monographs Watson, E.R. A Monograph on Iron and Steel Work in the Province of Bengal. Calcutta, 1907.

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District Gazetteer

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

District Gazetteer Bibliography references: Coupland, H. Bengal District Gazetteer, Manbhum. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1911. Garrett, J.H.E. Nadia, 1910. Gastrell, J.E. Geographical and Statistical Report of the Districts of Jessore, Fureedpur and Backerganj. Calcutta, 1868. Gupta, J.N. Bogra. 1910. Jack, J.C. Bengal District Gazetteer: Bakarganj. O’Malley, L.S.S. Howrah. Calcutta, 1909. ———. 24-Parganas. Calcutta, 1914. ———. Bakharganj. 1918. ———. Balasore. Calcutta, 1907. ———. Bankura. ———. Bihar and Orissa District Gazetteer. Cuttack, [n.d.]. ———. Birbhum. Calcutta, 1910. ———. Darbhanga. Calcutta, 1907. ———. Jalpaiguri. Allahabad, 1911.

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District Gazetteer (p.325) O’Malley, L.S.S. Jessore. Calcutta, 1912. ———. Khulna. 1908. ———. Midnapore. 1911. ———. Murshidabad. Calcutta, 1914. ———. Pabna. Calcutta, 1923. ———. Patna. Calcutta, 1907. ———. Purnea. ———. Rajsahi. 1916. ———. Singbhum, Saraikela & Kharswan. Calcutta, 1910. Peterson, J.C.K. Bengal District Gazetteer, Burdwan. Calcutta, 1910. Sachse, F.A. Mymensingh. Calcutta, 1917. Strong, F.W. Bengal District Gazetteer, Dinajpur. Allahabad, 1912. Vas, J.A. Eastern Bengal and Assam District Gazetteers: Rangpur. Allahabad, 1911. Webster, J.E. Noakhali. 1911.

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Private Papers

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Private Papers Bibliography references: Basu, Sujit K., Manish C. Bhattacharjee, Satyesh C. Chakraborty, N Ramachandran, and Alok Ray. ‘A Survey of Hosiery Industry in West Bengal’, 1986, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, MSS, Typescript copy. Bengal National Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Souvenir, 1887–1962. Calcutta, 1964. Ghosh, Rabindranath. ‘Gopal Hosiery: An Account of the Old Days’, Handwritten MSS, BHMA. Papers of the Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association (BHMA); BHMA, Golden Jubilee Souvenir; Diamond Jubilee Souvenir. Calcutta, 1983. Papers of the South India Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association (SIHMA), Tiruppur, Tamilnadu. Report of the Bengal Rice Mills Association for the years 1944 and 1945.

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English Books

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

English Books Bibliography references: Amin, Sahid. Sugar Cane and Sugar in Gorkhpur: An Inquiry into Peasant Production for Capitalist Enterprise in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press,1984. Anstey, Vera. The Economic Development of India. London, 1957. Arasaratnam, Sinnappah. Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650–1740. Delhi, 1986. Ashraf, K.M. Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan. Delhi, 1959. Awwal, Itikhar-ul, The Industrial Development of Bengal. Delhi, 1982. (p.326) Bag, S.K. The Changing Fortunes of the Bengal Silk Industry. Calcutta, 1989. Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. Private Investment in India, 1900–1939. Cambridge, 1972 (Reprint New Delhi, 1980). Baker, C.J. An Indian Rural Economy 1880–1955: The Tamilnad Countryside. Delhi, 1988. Ball, V. Jungle Life. London, 1880. Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, Abhijit Dasgupta, Willem van Schendel, eds. Bengal Communities, Development and States. Delhi, 1994. Banerjee, B. Industrial Profile of the Calcutta Metropolitan District. Calcutta, 1967. Page 1 of 11

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English Books Banerjee, Prajnanda. Calcutta and Its Hinterland—A Study in Economic History of India, 1833–1900. Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1975. Banerjei, C.N. An Account of Howrah: Past and Present. Calcutta, 1872. Banga, Indu, ed. The City in Indian History: Urban Demography, Society and Politics. Delhi, 1991. Basalla, George. The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge, 1988. Bayly, C.A. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870. Delhi, 1992. Berna, James J. Industrial Entrepreneurship in Madras State. Bombay, 1960. Bernier, Francis. Travels in the Mughal Empire, 1656–68. Translated by Irvine Brock, revised and annotated by A. Constable. London: W. Pickering, 1891 (Reprint Delhi, 1968). Bernstein, Henry T. Steamboats on the Ganges: An Exploration in the History of India’s Modernization through Science and Technology. Delhi, 1960 (Reprint 1987). Bhattacharyya, Amit. Swadeshi Enterprise in Bengal, 1900–1920. Calcutta, 1986. Bhattacharyya, Sabyasachi and Pietro Redondi, eds. Techniques to Technology, A French Historiography of Technology. Delhi, 1990. Birdwood, G. The Industrial Arts of India. Picadilly, 1880. Biswas, Arun Kumar, eds. History, Science and Society in the Indian Context. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 2001. Browne, James W. Calcutta Exhibition of Indian Art Manufactures. Calcutta, 1882. Buchanan, D.H. The Development of Capitalistic Enterprise in India. New York, 1934. Buckland, C.E. Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, Being a Narrative of the Principal Events and Public Measures during Their Periods of Office from 1854– 1898. Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri & Company, 1901. Carey, W.H. The Good Old Days of Honorable John Company. Calcutta, 1882 (Reprint, Calcutta, 1964). (p.327) Chadha, G.K. The State and Rural Economic Transformation: The Case of Punjab 1950–1985. New Delhi, 1986.

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English Books Chakraborty, N. A Design for Development of Village Industries. Calcutta, 1959. Chakraborty, N.C. The Problem of Bengal’s Rice Supply. Calcutta, 1939. Chandra, Bipan. Essays on Colonialism. Delhi, 1999 (Reprint, 2000). ———. The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India. New Delhi, 1982. Chatterjee, A.C. Notes on the Industries of the United Provinces. Allahabad, 1908. Chatterjee, Anjali. Bengal in the Reign of Aurangzeb 1658–1707. Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1967. Chatterjee, Kumkum. Merchant Politics and Society in Early Modern India, Bihar: 1733–1820. Leiden, 1996. Chatterjee, Santimay, M.K. Dasgupta, Amitabha Ghosh, eds. Studies in History of Sciences. Calcutta, 1997. Chatterjee, Suniti Kumar. The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language. Vols I–II. Calcutta, 1985. Chattopadhyay, K. India’s Craft Tradition. Delhi, 1980. Chaudhuri, K.N. and C. Dewey, eds. Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History. Delhi, 1979. ———. The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Chaudhuri, N.G. Cartier, Governor of Bengal, 1769–1772. Calcutta, 1970. Chaudhuri, Rohini Mohon. The Evolution of Indian Industries. Calcutta, 1939. Chaudhury, Binay Bhushan, ed. Economic History of India: 18th to 20th Centuries. Delhi: PHISPC, 2005, Vol. VIII, Part II; III (Delhi, 2008). Chaudhury, Sushil. From Prosperity to Decline: Eighteenth Century Bengal. Delhi, 1995 (Reprint 1995). ———. Trade and Commercial Organization in Bengal 1650–1720. Calcutta, 1975. Chicherov, A.I. India: Economic Development in the 16th–18th Centuries, Outline History of Crafts and Trade. Moscow: Nauka Publishing House, Central Department of Oriental Literature, 1971. Cipolla, C.M. The Fontana Economic History of Europe. Vol. 4: 1. Glasgow, 1980. Page 3 of 11

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English Books Cipolla, Carlo M. The Economic History of World Population. Middlesex: Penguin Books 1962 (Seventh Edition, 1978). Clow, A.G. The State and Industry. Calcutta, 1928. Colebrook, H.T. Remarks on the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal. Calcutta, 1804. Crawford, J. Sketch of the Commercial Resources, Monetary and Mercantile System of British India. London, 1837. (p.328) Das, Chittaranjan. ‘Address to the Second Annual Conference of Bikrampur Sammilani, Bikrampur (Dhaka)’, vol. IV, no. 9 (Paus, 1323 BS). Dasgupta, S.C. Evolution of a Cottage Match Industry and Its Apprehended Extinction. Sodepur: Khadi and Village Industries Commission, 1959. Datta, R.L. ‘The Bleaching of Hosiery’, Bulletin of the Department of Industries, Government of Bengal (DOIB), no. 34. Calcutta, 1928). Datta, Rajat. Society, Economy and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, c. 1760–1800. Delhi, 2000. Davidson, Edward. The Railways of India with an Account of Their Rise, Progress and Construction, Written on the Basis of the India Office Records. London, 1868. Davis, Kingsley. The Population of India and Pakistan. Princeton, 1951. Deshpande, S.A. The Rice Milling Industry in Vidarbha. Nagpur: Nagpur University, 1973. Dharampal. Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition. Varanasi, 1971. Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Delhi, 1980. Dutt, R.C. The Economic History of India, Vol. I: Under Early British Rule. London, 1901 (New Delhi, 1960; Reprint 1989). ———. The Economic History of India, Vol. II: In the Victorian Age 1837–1900. London, 1901 (New Delhi, 1960; Reprint 1989). Dutta, G.C. A Monograph on Ivory Carving in Bengal. Calcutta, 1901. Dutta, Maya. Jamshedpur. Calcutta, 1977. Eastern Railway, Symphony of Progress: The Saga of Eastern Railway, 1854– 2003. 2003. Page 4 of 11

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English Books Eaton, Richard M. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760. Delhi, 1994. Elwin. Verrier. The Agaria. London, 1942. From the Hooghly to the Himalayas: Being an Illustrated Handbook to the Chief Places of Interest Reached by the Eastern Bengal State Railways. Bombay: The Times Press, 1913. Gadgil, D.R. The Industrial Evolution of India in Recent Times, 1860–1939. Delhi, 1979. Gait, E.A. History of Assam. Calcutta: Thacker Spink & Co. 1863. Gawthrop, W.R. The Story of the Assam Railways & Trading Company Limited, 1881–1951. London, 1951. Glamann, K. Dutch Asiatic Trade 1620–1740. Copenhagen, 1958. Government of India, Builders of Modern India: Romesh Chunder Dutt. Delhi, 1968. Grant, Colesworthey. Letters from an Artist in India to his Sisters in England. London, 1860. (p.329) Greenough, P.R. Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943–44. Oxford, 1982. Grierson, G.A. Notes on the District of Gaya. Calcutta, 1863. Guha, Ranajit and A. Mitra, eds. West Bengal District Records: New Series Bardhaman Letters issued 1788–1800. Calcutta, 1956. Gupta, G.N. A Survey of the Industries and Resources of Eastern Bengal and Assam, for 1907–1908. Shillong, 1908. Gupta, Ranjan. The Economic Life of A Bengal District, Birbhum: 1770–1857. Bardhaman: Burdwan University, 1984. Hamilton, Alexander. A New Account of the East Indies from the Year 1688 to 1723. London, 1739. Hamilton, Walter. The East Indian Gazetteer. Calcutta, n.d. Hardgrave, Jr., R.L. The Nadars of Tamilnadu. Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1969. Headrick, Daniel R. The Tentacles of Progress. Oxford, 1988.

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English Books ———. The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1981. Heber, Reginald. Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825, Vol. I. London: J. Murray, 1828. Hedges, William. Diary of William Hedges, Esq. (1681–1687), issued by the Hakluyt Society, Vol. II. London, 1886. Hilaly, Sarah. The Railways in Assam 1885–1947. Varanasi, 2007. Hilding, Per. Technology in a Controlled Economy: The Match Industry in India. Stockholm: Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies (Monograph Series No. 62), 1992. Hobsbawm, E.J. Industry and Empire. Suffolk, 1978. Holmstrom, M. Industry and Inequality: The Social Anthropology of Indian Labour. Cambridge, 1985. Holwell, J.Z. Interesting Historical Events Relative to the Provinces of Bengal and the Empire of Hindostan. London: T. Becket and P.A.D. Hondt, 1767. Hossain, Hameeda. The Company Weavers of Bengal. Delhi, 1988. Huddleston, G. History of the East Indian Railway. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1906. Hwa, Cheng Siok. The Rice Industry of Burma, 1852–1940 (Kuala Lumpur 1968). Iqbal, Iftekhar. The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840-1943. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Islam, M.M. Bengal Agriculture: 1920–1946. New Delhi, 1978. Jensen, Kurt Morck. Non-agricultural Occupations in a Peasant Society: Weavers and Fishermen in Noakhali, Bangladesh. Centre for Development Research, Report No. 12, Copenhagen, 1987. (p.330) Johnstone, D.C. Monograph on Brass and Copper Ware in the Punjab in 1886–1887. Lahore, 1888. Joshi, N.M. Urban Handicrafts of the Bombay Deccan. Pune, 1936. Kadri, Shamsul Haqu. ‘Hosiery Trade in Northern India’, Department of Industries, Government of Bihar & Orissa, Bulletin No. 18 (Patna, 1926). Kangle, R.P. The Kautiliya Arthashastra. Bombay, 1969 (Reprint 1986).

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English Books Karim, Abdul. Dacca, the Mughal Capital. Dhaka, 1964. Kerr, Ian J., ed. 27 Down: New Departures in Railway Studies. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007. ———, ed. Railways in Modern India. Delhi, 2001. Kling, Blair B. Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India. Calcutta, 1981. Kulkarni, A.R. The Indian Village with Special Reference to Medieval Deccan (Maratha Country), General Presidential Address at the 52 Session of the IHC (Pune, 1992). Kumar, Deepak. Science and The Raj, 1857–1905. Delhi, 1995. L.S.S. O’Malley. Popular Hinduism: The Religion of Masses. Cambridge, 1935. Lele, Uma J. Food Grain Marketing in India: Private Performance and Public Policy. Cornell University, 1971. Lienhard, John H. Inventing Modern: Growing up with X-rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfilms. Oxford, 2003. Long, James. Selections from the Unpublished Records of the Government. For the Years 1748 to 1767 Relating Mainly to the Social Condition of Bengal. Calcutta, 1869. Macleod, Roy M. and Deepak Kumar, Technology and the Raj: Western Technology and Technical Transfer in India, 1700–1947. Delhi, 1995. Majumdar, J.K. Cottage Industries of Bengal. Calcutta, 1927. Majumdar, R.C. History of Ancient Bengal. Calcutta, 1984. Mandal, G.C. and S.C. Sengupta. Studies in Rural Change: Kashipur, West Bengal: 1956–1960. Santiniketan: Agro-Economic Research Centre, VisvaBharati, 1962. Mantoux, Paul. The Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England. London, 1964. Marglin, Stephen A. The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines a Community. New Delhi, 2009. Marshall, P.J. East India Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

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English Books McCrowny, James T. ‘Small Industry in a North Indian Town: New Delhi’, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Govt of India, 1956. Medhi, Shyam Bhadra. Transport System and Economic Development in Assam. Gauhati, 1978. (p.331) Medlicott, J.G. Cotton Hand-Book for Bengal: Being a Digest of Information Available from Official Records and Other Sources on the Subject of the Production of Cotton in the Bengal Province. Calcutta, 1862. Mitra, D.B. The Cotton Weavers of Bengal. Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay Private Ltd, 1978. Mitter, S.C A Recovery Plan for Bengal. Calcutta, 1934. ———. The Conch Shell Industry of Bengal, Calcutta: Department of Industries, Government of Bengal, Bulletin No. 24, 1924. ———. The Rice Milling Industry. Calcutta: Department of Industries, Bulletin No. 33, 1928. Mohsin, K.M. A Bengal District in Transition: Murshidabad. Dhaka, 1973. Moreland, W.H. India at the Death of Akbar: An Economic Study. London, 1920 (Indian edition, New Delhi, 1983). Mukherjee, Chittapriya Urban Growth in a Rural Area. Santiniketan: Visva Bharati, 1972. Mukherjee, Hena. The Early History of the East Indian Railway 1845–1879. Calcutta, 1994. Mukherjee, Nilmani. A Bengal Zamindar: Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara and His Times 1808–1888. Calcutta, 1975. Mukherjee, Trailokyanath. Monograph on the Brass and Copper Manufactures of Bengal. Calcutta, 1894. Mukhia, Harbans. Exploring India’s Medieval Centuries: Essays in History, Society, Culture and Technology. Delhi, 2010. Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. London, 1955. Nandy, S.C. Life and Times of Cantoo Baboo: The Banian of Warren Hastings. Bombay, 1978. Naqvi, H.K. Urban Centres and Industries in Upper India, 1556–1803. Bombay, 1968.

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English Books Nilekani, Nandan. Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century. Penguin Books, 2009. Oakley, Kenneth P. Man the Tool Maker. London, 1950. Orme, Robert. Historical Fragments of the Mughal Empire. London, 1805. Palit, Chittabrata. Growth of Commerce & Industry in Bengal. Calcutta: BNCCI, 1999. Pet, Paul C. Rail across India: A Photographic Journey. New York: Abbeville, 1986. Playne, Somerset. Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa: Their History, People, Commerce and Industrial Resources. London: The Foreign and Colonial Compiling & Publishing Co., 1917. Ray Rajat K., ed. Entrepreneurship and Industry in India 1800–1947. Delhi, 1994. Ray, D. Food Administration in Eastern India: 1939–1954. Visva Bharati, 1958. (p.332) Raychaudhuri, Tapan. Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir. Delhi, 1966. Risley, H.H. The Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary. Calcutta, 1891 (Reprint: K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1981). Roy, R.K. Industrialization in India: Growth and Conflict in the Private Corporate Sector, 1914–1947. Delhi, 1979. Roy, Tirthankar. Artisans and Industrialization: Indian Weaving in the Twentieth Century. Delhi, 1993. ———. The Economic History of India, 1857–1947. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. ———. Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India. Cambridge, 1999. Royle, J.F. On the Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India. London, 1851. Rutten, Mario. Farms and Factories: Social Profile of Large Farmers and Rural Industrialists in West India. Delhi, 1995. Saberwal, Satish. Mobile Men: Limits to Social Change in Urban Punjab. New Delhi, 1976. Saikia, Rajen. Social and Economic History of Assam (1853–1921). Delhi, 2001. Samal, J.K. Economy of Colonial Orissa 1866–1947. Delhi, 2000. Page 9 of 11

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English Books Samanta, Arabinda. Malarial Fever in Colonial Bengal 1820–1939. Calcutta, 2002. Sanyal, Hiteshranjan. Social Mobility in Bengal. Calcutta, 1981. Sanyal, Nalinaksha. Development of Indian Railways. Calcutta, 1930. Sarkar, Jagadish Naranyan. Mughal Economy: Organization and Working. Calcutta, 1987. Sarkar, Sumit The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908. Delhi, 1973 (Reprint 1977). Satow, Michael.and Ray Desmond. Railways of the Raj. London, 1980. Sen, S.K. Studies in Economic Policy and the Development of India, 1848–1926. Calcutta, 1966. ———. Studies in Industrial Policy and Development of India, 1858–1914. Calcutta, 1964. Sengupta, S. Highlights and Halftones: The Review of Indian Art 1850–1905. Delhi/Sydney: Asia Pacific Research Information, 1997. Settar, S. and B. Misra, eds. Railway Construction in India: Select Documents, Vol. I: 1832–1852. New Delhi: ICHR, 1999. Sharma, H.C. Artisans of the Punjab: A Study of Social Change in Historical Perspective (1849-1947). Delhi, 1996. Sharma, K.L. Social Stratification and Mobility. New Delhi, 1994. Spate, O.H.K. India and Pakistan: A General Regional Geography. London, 1954. (p.333) Srinivasan, Roopa, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas, eds. Our Indian Railways: Themes in India’s Railway History. Delhi: Foundation Books, 2006 (Reprint, 2007). Steefkerk, H. Industrial Transition in Rural India: Artisans, Traders and Tribals in South Gujarat. Bombay, 1985. Stephenson, Rowland M. Report upon the Practicability and Advantages of the Introduction of Railways into British India. London, 1844. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal. Delhi, 1990. ———, ed. Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India. Delhi, 1990.

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English Books Tavernier, J.B. Travels in India. Vol. II. London, 1889. Taylor, G.R. The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860. New York: Rinehart, 1951. Taylor, J.A. A Sketch of the Topography and Statistics of Dacca. Calcutta, 1840. Tendulkar, D.G. Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Delhi, 1966 (Reprint 1969, Publication Division, Govt of India, Vols VII, VIII). Thorner, Daniel and Alice Thorner. Land and Labour in India. Bombay, 1965. Thurston, Edgar. Monograph on the Silk Fabric Industry of the Madras Presidency. Madras, 1899. Timberg, Thomas A. The Marwaris: From Traders to Industrialists. New Delhi, 1978. Tomlinson, B.R. The Economy of Modern India, 1860–1970, The New Cambridge History of India. Cambridge University Press, 1993 (Indian Edition, Delhi: Foundation Books, 1993). Tripathi, Amales. Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793–1833. Calcutta, 1956. Tripathi, D. Historical Roots of Industrial Entrepreneurship in India and Japan. Delhi, 1997. Tripathi, Rasananda. Crafts and Commerce in Orissa (in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries). Delhi, 1986. White, J. Claude. Sikhim and Bhutan, Twenty-one Years on the North-East Frontier 1887–1908. London, 1909. Williams, Monier. A Sanskrit–English Dictionary. Oxford, 1899 (Reprint Delhi, 2005). Wilson, C.R. The Early Annals of the Bengal. London: W. Thacker & Co.; Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co.

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Bengali Books

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

(p.334) Bengali Books Bibliography references: Baker, Abdul. Tangail Jelar Itihas O Aitihya. Dhaka, 1990. Bandyopadhyay, Brajendranath. Sangbadpatre Sekaler Katha. Vols I and II. Calcutta, 1401 BS. Bandyopadhyay, Tarashankar. Ganadevatā. Calcutta, 1409 BS. Bandyopadhyay, Tarashankar. Gramer Chithi. Calcutta, 1986. Bandypodhyay, Bibhutibhusan. Aranyak. Calcutta, 1386 BS. Bhaduri, Satinath. Dhonrai Charit Manas. Calcutta: Bengal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Edition, 2004. Biswakarma. Lakshmir Kripalav: Bangalir Sadhana. Calcutta, 1969. Bose, Nirmalkumar. Hindu Samajer Garan. Calcutta, 1356 BS. Chakraborty, Mukundaram. Chandi. Calcutta: Basumati, (?). Dey, Sushil Kumar. Bangla Prabad: Chada O Chalti Katha. Calcutta, 1359 BS. Gangopadhyay, Soumendra. Swadeshi Andolan O Bangla Sahitya. Calcutta: Basudhara Prakashani, 1367 BS. Ghosal, Padmanava. Relpathe Bharat Bhraman. Calcutta, 1291 BS. Ghosh, Benoy. Banglar Nabajagriti. Calcutta, 1979. Ghosh, Manmathanath. Manishi Bholanath Chandra. Calcutta, 1331 BS. Page 1 of 2

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Bengali Books Karan, Sudhir. Simantaradi O Jharkhandi Banglar Gramin Sabdakosh. Calcutta, 2002. Karim, Abdul. Dhakai Maslin. Dhaka, 1372 BS. Kumar, Jnanendra Nath, ed. Bangsha Parichay. Vol. 14. Calcutta, 1341 BS. Majumdar, K. Dhakar Bibaran. Calcutta, 1910. Mukherjee, Atindra. The Charyyapads. Calcutta, 1967. Mukherjee, Harisadhan. Kolikata Sekaler O Ekaler. Calcutta, 1915. Mukhopadhayay, Indira. William Carey O Sanskrita Sadhana. Calcutta, 1998. Roy, Acharyya Prafullachandra. Bangalir Mastiska O Tahar Apabyabahar. Calcutta, 1985. Roy, Niharranjan. Bangalir Itihas, Adi Parba. Vols I and II. Calcutta, 1980. Roy, Panchanan Kavyatirtha, Taraknath Pramanik. Calcutta, 1937. Sen, Ramesh. Kurpala. Calcutta, 1353 BS. Sen, S. Bangla Sthan Nam. Kolkata: Ananda Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1393 BS. Sen, Satyendra Nath. Bankim Rachana Sangraha. Vols I–III. Calcutta, 1973. Sengupta, Subod, ed. Sangsad Bāngāli Charitāvidhān. Calcutta, 2002. Seth, Harihar. Sangkhipta Chandannagar Parichay. Chandannagar, 1370 BS. Seth, Santoshnath. Bange Chaltatta (A guide book for the wholesale rice trade in Bengal). Calcutta, 1332 BS. Seth, Santoshnath. Mokamer Banijyatatta. Kalikata, 1327 BS. Shastri, Sivnath. Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj. Calcutta, 1903 (Reprint 1983).

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English Articles

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

(p.335) English Articles Bibliography references: Agarwala, G.L. ‘Indian Hosiery: An Overview’, Business: Explorer Times, Calcutta, vol. II, May 1991, No. 23. Alaev L. ‘The Systems of Agricultural Production: South India’. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. I: c. 1200–c. 1750, edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). Ali, H.A. The Rice Industry in Lower Birbhum: A Survey, 1931–1934, Visva Bharati Rural Studies Series, No. 3. Sriniketan, 1934. Arasaratnam, S. ‘The Rice Trade in Eastern India 1650–1740’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 22, no. 3 (1988). ———. ‘Weavers, Merchants and Company: The Handloom Industry in Southeastern India 1750–1790’. In Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India, edited by Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Delhi, 1990. Arnold, David. ‘Bodies of Knowledge/Highways of Steel and Technology in Modern India’. In Railways in Modern India, edited by I.J. Kerr. Delhi, 2001. Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. ‘De-industrialization in Gangetic Bihar 1809–1901’. In Essays in Honour of Prof. S. C. Sarkar, edited by Barun De. New Delhi, 1976. ———. ‘European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India’. In Elites in South Asia, edited by E. Leach and S.N. Mukherji. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

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English Articles Bairoch, Paul. ‘Agriculture and the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1914’. In The Industrial Revolution, edited by Carlo M. Cipolla. Glasgow, 1980. Banaji, Jairus. ‘Capitalist Domination and the Small Peasantry: The Deccan Districts in the Late Nineteenth Century’. In The World of Rural Labourer in India, edited by Gyan Prakash. Delhi, 1994. Bayly, C.A. ‘From Ritual to Ceremony: Death Ritual and Society in Hindu North India since 1600’. In Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, edited by Joachim Whaley. London, 1981. Bhadra, Gautam. ‘Social Groups and Relations in the Town of Murshidabad, 1765–1793’, The Indian Historical Review, vol. II, no. 2 (January 1976). Bhattacharyya, Reba and Sourin Bhattacharyya, ‘The Indian Economic Scene and Swadeshi Industries from Nabagopal Mitra to 1905’. In Concept of National Education in India. Calcutta, 1967. (p.336) Bhattacharyya, Sabyasachi. ‘Cultural and Social Constraints on Technological Innovation and Economic Development: Some Case Studies’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 3, no. 3 (September 1966). ———. ‘Iron-smelters and the Indigenous Iron and Steel Industry of India’. In Aspects of Indian Culture and Society, edited by S. Sinha, pp. 133–52. Calcutta, 1972. Bhattacharyya, Sabyasachi. ‘Regional Economy: 1757–1857, Eastern India’. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II c. 1757–c. 1970, edited by Dharma Kumar. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). Bhattasali, N.K. ‘Some Facts about Old Dacca’, Bengal Past and Present, vol. 51 (1936). Bose, Santipriya. ‘Marketing of Rice at Bolpur’, Visva Bharati Rural Studies Series, 1934–1936, No. 4, pp. 6–7 (Reprinted in Sankhya, ISI, Calcutta, Vol. II, Part II, 1936). Brennig, Joseph J. ‘Textile Producers and Production in Late Seventeenth Century Coromandel’. In Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India, edited by Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Delhi, 1990. Brown, A.E. ‘The Economic Conditions of the Cotton Weavers of the Bankura District’, Bengal Economic Journal, vol. I, no. 3 Calcutta (January 1917). Bury, Harriet. ‘Novel Spaces, Transitional Moments: Negotiating Text and Territory in Nineteenth Century Hindi Travel Accounts’. In 27 Down: New Page 2 of 9

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English Articles Departures in Railway Studies, edited by Ian J. Kerr. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. ‘Early Railwaymen in India: “Dacoity” and “TrainWrecking” (c. 1860–1900)’. In Essays in Honour of Prof. S. C. Sarkar, edited by B. De et al. Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1976. ———. ‘The Colonial Context of the Bengal Renaissance: A Note on the Early Railway Thinking in Bengal’. In Our Indian Railway: Themes in India’s Railway History, edited by Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas. Delhi, 2006. Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. ‘Industrialization in India before 1947: Conventional Approaches and Alternative Perspectives’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 19, no. 3 (1985). Chandra, Bholanath. ‘A Voice for the Commerce and Manufactures of India’, Mukherjee’s Magazine, April, 1873. Chatterjee, U. ‘Swadeshi Industries of Bengal: 1905 to 1947’. In Concept of National Education in India. Calcutta, 1967. Chaudhuri, B. ‘Agrarian Relations: Eastern India’. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II c. 1757–c. 1970, edited by Dharma Kumar. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). Chaudhuri, B.B. ‘Regional Economy (1757–1857): Eastern India, Part II’. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II c. 1757–c. 1970, edited by Dharma Kumar. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). (p.337) Chaudhuri, K. N. ‘Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments (1757– 1947)’. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II c. 1757–c. 1970, edited by Dharma Kumar. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). Chaudhury, Benoy ‘Agrarian Relations in Bengal, 1859–1885’. In The History of Bengal, (1757–1905), edited by N.K. Sinha. Calcutta, 1967. Choudhury, Anjana Roy. ‘Caste and Occupation in Bhowanipur, Calcutta’, Man in India, vol. 44, no. 3 (September 1964). Crawford, D.G. ‘Satgaon and Tribeni’, Bengal Past and Present, vol. 3 (1909). Das Gupta, Uma. ‘Rabindranath Tagore on Rural Reconstruction: The Sriniketan Programme, 1921–41’, Indian Historical Review, vol. IV, no. 2 (January 1978). Page 3 of 9

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English Articles Dasgupta Subhendu. ‘Satish Chandra’s Journey from Nationalization to Nationalism’. In Studies in History of Sciences, edited by S. Chatterjee, M.K. Dasgupta, and A. Ghosh. Calcutta, 1997. Dasgupta, Ashin. ‘Indian Merchants and the Trade in the Indian Ocean’, In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. I: c. 1200–c. 1750, edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). Dasgupta, Sugata. ‘Social Change in a Village in West Bengal’, In Problems of Rural Change—Some Case Studies, edited by M.S. Gore. Delhi: Delhi School of Social Work, 1963. Derbyshire, Ian. ‘Eastern Bengal and Its Railways’, The Calcutta Review, vol. 36 (March, 1861). ———. ‘Economic Change and the Railways in North India, 1860–1914’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 21, no. 3 (1987). Reprinted in Railways in Modern India, edited by Ian J. Kerr (Delhi, 2001). ———. ‘The Building of India’s Railways: The Application of Western Technology in the Colonial Periphery, 1850–1920’. In Technology and the Raj: Western Technology and Technical Transfer to India, 1700-1947, edited by Roy M. Macleod and Deepak Kumar. Delhi, 1995. Derbyshire, I.D. ‘Competition and Adaptation: The Operation of Railways in Northern India: Uttar Pradesh 1860–1914’. In Our Indian Railways: Themes in India’s Railway History, edited by Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas. Delhi: Foundation Books, 2006 (Reprint 2007). Directorate of Cottage and Small-Scale Industries, ‘Small Industries Seminar in the Districts of West Bengal’, Bankura, Governmentt of West Bengal. Calcutta, 1969. Dutta, Achintya Kumar. ‘Rice Trade in the “Rice Bowl of Bengal”: Burdwan 1880–1947’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 49, no. I (2012). (p.338) Feldbaeck, Ole. ‘Cloth Production and Trade in Late Eighteenth Century Bengal: A Report from the Danish Factory in Serampore’, Bengal Past and Present, vol. 86 (Diamond Jubilee Number, Calcutta Historical Society, 1967). Gandhi, M.K. ‘The Condition of India: Railways’, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule (1921). Republished in Railways in Modern India, edited by Ian J. Kerr (Delhi, 2001).

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English Articles Ganguly, Indrani. ‘Of Rajas and Prajas: Leadership in Colonial Town’. In The City in Indian History: Urban Demography, Society and Politics, edited by Indu Banga. New Delhi, 1991. Ghosh, Aurobindo. ‘English Enterprise and Swadeshi’, Bande Mataram, 4 September 1906. Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram and Early Political Writings. Pondicherry, 1973. ———. ‘The Next Step’, Bande Mataram, 31 March 1908. Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram and Early Political Writings. Pondicherry, 1973. Ghosh, D.B. ‘On the Occasion of the Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association BHMA Diamond Jubilee’, Diamond Jubilee Souvenir of the Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association (BHMA), Calcutta, 1983. Ghosh, H.H. ‘Rice Manufacture’, Report of the Indian Industrial Conference 1906. Calcutta. Goswami, Omkar. ‘Sahibs, Babus, and Banians: Change in Industrial Control in Eastern India, 1918–50’, in Entrepreneurship and Industry in India 1800–1947, edited by Rajat K. Ray. Delhi: Oxford University Press, Paperback Edition, 1993. Guha, A.B. ‘Prospects of Cotton Mills in Bengal’, Modern Review (February 1936). Guha, Amalendu. ‘Raw Cotton of Western India 1750–1850’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. IX (1972). Guha, Sumit. ‘Handloom Industry of Central India: 1825–1950’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 26, no. 3 (1989). Habib, Irfan. ‘Technology and Barriers to Social Change in Mughal India’, Indian Historical Review, vol. 5, nos 1–2 (July 1979–January 1980). ———. ‘The Monetary System and Prices’, In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. I: c. 1200–c. 1750, edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). Harnetty, Peter. ‘De-industrialization Revisited: Handloom Weavers of the Central Provinces of India, c. 1800–1947’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 25, no. 3 (1991). Hole, R.S. ‘Iron industry in the Central Provinces’, Agricultural Ledger, vol. 5, no. 17 (1903).

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English Articles (p.339) Hurd, John M. ‘Railways’. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II c. 1757–c. 1970, edited by Dharma Kumar. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). Kerr, Ian J. ‘Reworking a Popular Religious Practice: The Effects of Railways on Pilgrimage in 19th and 20th Century South Asia’. In Railways in Modern India, edited by Ian J. Kerr. Delhi, 2001. Kipling, John Lockwood. ‘Brass and Copper of the Punjab and Kashmir’, Journal of Indian Art and Industry, vol. I (1886). Kling, Blair B. ‘Economic Foundation of the Bengal Renaissance’. In Aspects of Bengali History and Society, edited by R.V.M. Baumer. Honolulu, 1976. Krishnamurthy, J. ‘De-industrialization in Gangetic Bihar during the Nineteenth Century: Another Look at the Evidence’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 22, no. 4. ———. ‘The Occupational Structure’. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II c. 1757–c. 1970, edited by Dharma Kumar. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). Lilley, Samuel ‘Technological Progress and the Industrial Revolution 1700–1914’. In The Industrial Revolution, edited by Carlo M. Cipolla. London, 1973. Macpherson, W.J. ‘Economic Development in India under the British Crown, 1858–1947’. In Economic Development in the Long Run, edited by A.J. Youngson. London, 1972. McAlpine, M.B. ‘The Effects of Markets on Rural Income Distribution in Nineteenth Century India’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. XII, no. 3 (July 1975). Mitra, Kishori Chand. ‘Territorial Aristocracy of Bengal: The Cossimbazar Raj’, Calcutta Review, vol. 37 (1873) Morris, Morris D. ‘Large-Scale Industry’. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II c. 1757–c. 1970, edited by Dharma Kumar. The Cambridge University Press, 1982 (Indian Edition, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1984). Moulik, T.K. and P. Purushotham, ‘The Match Industry in Sivakasi, A Case Study of Technology, Working Conditions and Self Employment’, Economic and Political Weekly (May 1982). Mukherjee, Chittapriya. ‘Productivity of Rice Milling Industry in Birbhum’, Khadigramodyog (December 1966).

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English Articles Mukherjee, Mukul. ‘Impact of Modernization on Women’s Occupations: A Case Study of the Rice-Husking Industry of Bengal’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 20, no. 1 (March 1983). Mukherjee, Nilmani. ‘Foreign and Inland Trade’. In The History of Bengal, 1757– 1905, edited by N.K. Sinha. Calcutta: Calcutta University, 1967. (p.340) Pande, Gyan. ‘Economic Dislocation in Nineteenth Century Eastern Uttar Pradesh: Some Implications of the Decline of Artisanal Industry in Colonial India’. In Rural South Asia: Linkages, Changes and Development, edited by Peter Robb. London, 1983. Perlin, Frank. ‘Mint-Technology and Mint-Output in an Age of Growing Commercialisation’. In Essays in Medieval Indian Economic History, edited by Satish Chandra. Delhi: IHC, 1987. ———. ‘Money-use in Late Pre-colonial India and the International Trade in Currency Media’, in Richards, J. F. (ed.), The Imperial Monetary System of Mughal India, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987). ———. ‘Proto-Industrialization and Pre-Colonial South Asia’, Past and Present, vol. 98, no. 1 (1983). ‘Rajmahal, Its Railway and Historical Association’, Calcutta Review, vol. 36 (March 1861). Ray, I. ‘Problems of Modern Rice Mills in West Bengal’, Proceedings of the Seminar on Modernisation and Utilisation of By-products of Rice Milling Industry (Calcutta, 1988). Roy, D. ‘Prospects of Hand-Pounding of Rice in East India’, The Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. XV, no. 1 (January–March 1960). Rungta, S. ‘Bowreah Cotton and Fort Gloster Jute Mills 1872–1900’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 22 (1985). Salomon, Jean-Jacques. ‘What Is Technology? The Issue of Its Origins and Definitions’. In Techniques to Technology: A French Historiography of Technology, edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and P. Redondi. Delhi, 1990. Sarkar, Jadunath. ‘Old Murshidabad’, Krishnath College Centenary Commemoration Volume: 1853–1953. Berahampore, 1954. Sarkar, Smritikumar. ‘An Aspect of Artisanal Technology in India: Some Methodological Arguments’. In History, Science and Society in the Indian Context, edited by Arun Kumar Biswas. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 2001.

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English Articles ———. ‘Caste, Occupation and Social Mobility: A Study of the Kānsāris in Colonial Bengal’. In Bengal Communities, Development and States, edited by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Abhijit Dasgupta, and Willem van Schendel. Delhi, 1994. ———. ‘From Autonomy to Subordination: A Study of the Changing Organization of Artisan Production in Colonial Bengal, the Cases of the Kānsāris and the Shankharis‘, The Calcutta Historical Journal (University of Calcutta), vol. 14, no. 2 (July–December 1994). ———. ‘Indian Craft Technology: Static or Changing—A Case Study of the Kānsāri‘s Craft in Bengal 16th to 18th Centuries’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 33, no. 2 (1998). (p.341) Sarkar, Smritikumar. ‘Land Acquisition for the Railways in Bengal, 1850–62’, Studies in History, vol. 26, no. 2 (August 2010). ———. ‘Lokavidya: Conceptualizing People’s Housing in India’. In Traditional Knowledge Systems and Archaeology, edited by D.P. Agrawal. Delhi, 2007. ———. ‘Social Organization of Artisan Production in India: Changing Role of the Market, Technology and Merchant-Creditor, 18th to 20th Centuries’. In History of Science, Philosophy and Culture of Indian Civilization, Vol. VIII, Part III, Economic History of India from Eighteenth to Twentieth Century, edited by Binay Bhusan Chaudhuri. New Delhi, 2005. ———. ‘The Changing Image of the Craftsman: Blacksmith in Colonial Jharkhand’, The Calcutta Historical Journal (University of Calcutta), vol. 18, no. 2 (July–December 1996). ———. ‘The Rice Milling Industry in Bengal, 1920–1950: A Case Study of the Impact of Mechanization on the Local Peasant Economy’, The Calcutta Historical Journal, vol. 13, nos 1–2 (July 1988–June 1989). ———. ‘Understanding the Concept of People’s Housing in India: Case of the Koch-Rajbangshi’, Journal of Historical Research (Dibrugarh University), vol. XIV (2004). Sarkar, Suvobrata. ‘Technological Momentum: Bengal in the Nineteenth Century’, Indian Historical Review, vol. 37, no. 1 (June 1910). Shah, P.G. ‘The Copper and Brass Industries of India’. In Report of the Indian Industrial Conference, Bunckipore, 1912. Calcutta, 1912. Simmons, C.P. ‘Indigenous Enterprise in the Indian Coal Mining Industry, c. 1835–1939’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 13, no. 2 (1976).

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English Articles Sinha, Nirmal Kumar. ‘Indian Business Enterprise: Its Failure in Calcutta: 1800– 1848’. In The Economic History of Bengal, 1793–1848, Vol. III, edited by Narendra Krishna Sinha. Calcutta, 1970. ———. The Economic History of Bengal, 1793–1848. Vols I–III. Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1956. Specker, Konrad. ‘De-industrialization in Nineteenth-Century India: The Textile Industry in the Madras Presidency, 1810–1870’. In Arrested Development in India, edited by Clive J. Dewey. London, 1983. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. ‘Notes on the Sixteenth Century Bengal Trade’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 24, no. 3 (1987). ———. ‘The Portuguese, the Port of Basrur, and the Rice Trade, 1600–1650’. Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India, edited by Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Delhi: OUP, 1990. Director. Supur: A Village in a Paddy Producing Area. Sriniketan: Visva Bharati, 1961. (p.342) Tagore, Surendranath. ‘A Plea for Small Scale Factories in Bengal’, Industrial India (Society for the Advancement of Scientific and Industrial Education of Indians), Calcutta, vol. II, no. 1 (January 1905). Tann, Jennifer and John Aitken. ‘The Diffusion of the Stationary Steam Engine from Britain to India 1790–1830’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 29, no. 2 (1992). ‘The East Indian Railway’, Calcutta Review, vol. LXI. Tully, Mark. ‘A View of the History of Indian Railways’. In Our Indian Railways: Themes in India’s Railway History, edited by Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari, and Sandeep Silas. Delhi: Foundation Books, 2006 (Reprint 2007). Varady, Robert G. ‘Modern Agents of Change’. In Railways in Modern India, edited by Ian J. Kerr. Delhi, 2001. Vicziany, M. ‘Bombay Merchants and Structural Changes in the Export Community 1850–1880’. In Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History, edited by K.N. Chaudhuri and C. Dewey. Delhi, 1979. Walter, Henry. ‘Census of the City of Dhaka, 1830’, Asiatic Researches (The Asiatic Society), vol. XVII (1832).

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Bengali Articles

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Bengali Articles Bibliography references: ‘Akh Mara Kal’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. II, no. 2 (Chaitra, 1308, BS). Akhtar, Farida. Interview of Raghunath Basak of Bajitpur, Chinta, vol. II, no. 23 (30 July 1993). ‘Aluminium Dhatupatrer Apakarita’, Kajer Lok, vol. 12, no. 2 (February 1913). ‘Arambage Chaler Kal Paridarshan’, Arthik Unnati, Oriental Press, Calcutta, vol. 4, no. 10 (Magh, 1336 BS). Bandyopadhyay, B.B. ‘Birbhumer Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. I (Kartik 1308 BS). Basak, S.K. ‘Dhaka O Dhakar Bahirer Tama Pital O Kansa Shilpa’, Arthik Jagat (15 September 1941). Basu, Nemai Charan. ‘Kotchandpurer Chinir Kal’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. I, no. 5 (Ashar 1308 BS). ‘Bharater Kal’, Mahjanbandhu, vol. 1, no. 5 (1308 BS). Biswas, Sitanath. ‘Kendagachhir Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. II, no. 4 (Jaistha, 1309 BS). Chandra, Nagendra Lal. ‘Bikrampurer Shilpa Itihaser Upadan’. In Bikrampur, edited by J.N. Gupta, vol. 4, no. 4 (Dhaka, Shraban 1330 BS). ‘Chattagrame Jahajer Byabsa’, Arthik Unnati, vol. 2, no. 7 (Kartik, 1334 BS); vol. 6, no. 1 (1338 BS). Page 1 of 3

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Bengali Articles (p.343) Chattopadhyay, H.D. ‘Khanduar Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. II, no. 7 (Bhadra 1309 BS) Chattopadhyaya, Bankimchandra. ‘Bangadesher Krishak’. In Bankim Rachana Sangraha, Vol. I, edited by Satyendranath Sen. Calcutta: Paschimbanga Niraksharata Durikaran Samiti, 1973. Das, Chittaranjan. ‘Amader Byabsay O Banijya’. In Desher Katha. Calcutta: Sukumar Ranjan Das, n.d. ———. ‘Krishaker Katha’. In Desher Katha, edited by Sukumar Ranjan Das. Calcutta: Itiban Book Club, n.d. Das, Sonali. ‘Tanter Chhara O Kabita’, Chintā, Dhaka, vol. II, no. 23 (30 July 1993). ‘Deshiya Bastra’, Sadharani (7 Chaitra 1282 BS). Dey, Harinarayan. ‘Birbhume Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. II, no. 1 (Phalgun, 1308 BS). ‘Dhan Bhana Kal’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. 4, no. 3 (1311 BS). ‘Diasalai Shilpa’, Byabsa O Banijya, vol. I, no. 6 (Aswin 1333 BS). ‘East Bengal River Steam Services’, Byabsa O Banijya, vol. I, no. 1. Gangaram. ‘Maharastrapuran’, Bangiya Sahitya Parishat Patrika, vol. 12 (1312 BS). ‘Ganjeer Kal’, Byabsa O Banijya, vol. I, no. 11 (Phalgun 1333 BS). Kumar, Jnanendra Nath, ed. Bangsha Parichay, vol. II (Phalgun 1328 BS). ———, ed. Bangsha Parichay, vol. XIV (1341 BS). ‘Moimonsinghe Chaul O Teler Kal’, Arthik Unnati, vol. I, no. 1 (Baisakh, 1333 BS). Mukhopadhayay, Prabhat Kumar. Rabindra Jibani O Rabindrasahitya-Prabeshak. Visva Bharati, 1977. Nag, J.N. ‘Dhakar Kutir Shilpa’, Banik, vol. VI, no. 5 (Bhadra 1328, BS). Rakshit, Umeschandra. ‘Gobardanga Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. I, no.10 (Agrahayan 1308 BS). ‘Ramkrishnapure Chauler Kaj’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. 4, no. 3 (Baisakh 1311 BS [1903]). Page 2 of 3

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Bengali Articles Roy, Prafullachandra. ‘Bangalir Annasamasya’, Arthik Unnati, vol. II, no. 8 (Agrahayan 1334 BS). ———. ‘Bilate Arthik Safar’, Arthik Unnati, vol. I, no. 7 (Kartik 1333 BS). Saha, Motilal. ‘Basirhate Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. II, no. 11 (1309 BS). Sanyal, Charuchandra. ‘Jalpaiguri Saharer Eksho Bachchar: 1869–1969’. In Jalpaiguri District: Centenary Souvenir, 1869-1969, edited by C.C. Sanyal, K.K. Chakraborty, Pratinidhan Roy, and Rebati Mohan Lahiri. Jalpaiguri, 1970. Sarkar, Benoy Kumar. ‘Arthik Jagate Adhunik Nari’, Arthik Unnati, vol. II, no. 10 (Magh 1334 BS). (p.344) Sarkar, Benoy. ‘East Bengal River Steam Service Ltd.: Interview with the Jadunath Roy, Spokesperson of Srinath Roy & Brothers, Managing Agents’, Arthik Unnati, vol. II, no. 1 (Baisakh 1334 BS). Sarkar, Smritikumar. ‘Bhabanipur: Prak-Upanibeshik Kolkatar Pratham Shilpakendra’, Itihās Anusandhān, vol. VI (1991). ———. ‘Howrah Ramkrishnapur, Unish Shataker Kolkatar Chaler Bazar’, Itihas Anusandhan, vol. V (1990). ———. ‘Sankhobaloy O Sāmājik Sachalatā’, Itihas Anusandhān, vol. VII (1992). Sarkar, Srinath. ‘Kajer Kal: Ramkrishnapur Rice Mill’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. IV, no. 1 (Phalgun 1310 BS). ‘Shantipure Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. II, no. 1 (Phalgun 1308 BS). ‘Sukhcharer Chinir Karkhana’, Mahajanbandhu, vol. III, no. 7 (Bhadra 1310 BS). ‘Swadeshi Savan’, Arthik Unnati, vol. 7, no. 8 (1339 BS). Tagore, Rabindranath. ‘Atyukti’, Bharat Barsha O Swadesh, Rabindra Rachanabali (Calcutta, 1368 BS). ———. ‘Samabayniti’, Rabindra Rachanbali, Vol. XIII. Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1990. ———. ‘Swadeshikata’, Jeevan Smriti (Calcutta 1360 BS).

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Unpublished PhD Thesis/Report

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

Unpublished PhD Thesis/Report Bibliography references: Basu, Ruma. ‘Changing Fortunes of Artisan Production in Bengal and Bihar, 1892–1921’, PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Calcutta, 1986. Hussain, Jaweda. ‘Awakening of Women in Orissa in the First Half of the 20th Century’, PhD thesis, Department of History, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, 2004. Jensen, Kurt Morck. ‘Non-agricultural Occupations in a Peasant Society: Weavers and Fishermen in Noakhali, Bangladesh’, Centre for Development Research, Report No. 12, Copenhagen, 1987. Mukherji, S. ‘Trade in Rice and Jute in Bengal: Its Effects on Prices, Cultivation and Composition of the Two Crops in Early 20th Century, 1900/01 to 1920/21’, PhD thesis, Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, 1971. Sarkar, Smritikumar. ‘Small-Scale Unorganised Industries of Bengal, Their Role in the Industrial Economy of the Province: 1900–1947’, PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Calcutta, 1992.

Page 1 of 1

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Index

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

(p.345) Index Agricultural and Horticultural Society, 2 Agriculture Society, Calcutta, 143 agro-industry in Punjab, 12–13 Ain-i-Akbari (Abul Fazl), 81 Albion Flour Mills of London, 1, 232 All India Hosiery Manufacturing Co., 198–9, 203 aluminium wares, 101 Amritabazar Patrika, 197 Amrit Match Factory, 187 Anderson, James, 64, 259–60 anti-colonialism, ideology of, 179 artisan settlements in Bengal, 83 Asiatic Society, 2 Assam, 22, 28–29, 36, 43, 63, 100, 104, 154, 162, 213, 216, 241, 245, 250, 259 Assam Match Company Ltd. (AMCO), 188 Balasore, 3, 85–6, 98, 100, 246, 295, 303 Bande Mataram Factory, 185–6 banghy burdārs (luggage carriers), 28 banjara caravan, 259 Bankura, 3, 23, 27, 90, 100, 112, 151, 202, 246, 266, 297, 304 Baptist Mission, 2 Barbosa, D., 136 Bardhaman (Burdwan), 4, 23–27, 37, 39, 41, 52, 61, 64, 65, 84, 91, 93, 96–7, 104, 110– 11, 147, 151, 154–6, 159, 161–2, 202, 233–4, 248–9, 255, 259–60, 263, 269–70, 272, 290, 298, 300, 303 Bardhaman Raj, 238 baro-yiaritala, 305 bauri labourers, 110 Bayly, C. A., 240, 248, 250 Behea sugar mill, 163, 301 bell metal, 81, 96–7, 100–1 Page 1 of 15

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Index Bengal Chemicals, 182 Bengal Enamel Works, 101 Bengal Hosiery Company, 195–6, 212 Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association (BHMA), 204, 206, 208 (p.346) Bengal Iron and Steel Company, 105–6 Bengal Legislative Council, 184, 195 Bengal National Chambers of Commerce, 31 Bengal Paddy & Rice Enquiry Committee (BPREC), 149 Bengal Safety Match Manufacturing Co., 185 Bengal’s textiles, 81–2 Bengal Waterproof Works, 184 Bentinck, William, 78 bhadralok, 87, 154, 179, 181–2, 185, 201, 210; culture of Bengal, 11–12 bhagar, 298–9 Bhagirathi River, 23, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 233, 237, 241, 299 Bhagowangola, 39–40, 85, 141, 241–2, 246, 257 Bihar, 13, 88, 90–1, 107–10, 131–2, 135–7, 141, 147, 149, 152, 154–9, 161, 163–5, 216, 238–9, 251–2 Birbhum, 23–4, 27, 52, 54, 82–3, 90–1, 96, 104, 106, 147, 151, 154, 156, 159, 165, 202, 234–5, 238, 246–50, 256, 260, 266, 270, 290, 292, 294, 297, 302, 303, 305 blacksmiths, 81, 104–13, 124, 305; in environment of technological change, 105–8; iron smelting technique, 104–5; lock and key industry, 110–11; new opportunities and varied responses, 109–13; Sheffield of the East (Howrah), 108–9; ship building, 108 boatmen, 30–4, 47, 233, 242, 244–5, 255–9 boats: bhar (boora), 33; Bhojpuri patlia, 33; coal boats, 36; ‘despatch boat’, 34; hiring of, 30–1; houseboats (bajra), 31; for long-distance travel, 31; pansi boat, 32; registration of, 31; relay boats, 32; for river transport, 28, 30–1; transit costs, 30. See also steamboats Bolpur, 60, 147–9, 154–5, 234, 237–8, 253–4, 263, 271, 286, 297 Bolpur Rice Mills Association (BRMA), 149–50 Bose, Amritalal, 165, 273 Bose, Bhupendrnath, 185, 195–6, 203–4 Bose, Chandranath, 181 Bowreah Cotton Mills, 89 Bramah, Joseph, 164 braziers: brass manufacturing, 102–3; Page 2 of 15

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Index brassware, demand for, 100; foreign competition, 96; ‘glory of the kangsabanik’, 98; hard times of the 1920s, 100–2; kansari caste association, 101; post-Independence re-organization, 102–4; shift to the new technique and growth, 95–100; socio-religious issues, 96–7; tool techniques, 81, 95; use of ingots, 99 bridges, construction of, 62–7; masonry-arch technique for, 65 Britannia Iron Works, 107 British Raj, 180, 290 Browne, James W., 106 Brussels Sugar Convention (1903), 158 Buchanan, Francis, 106, 137, 249, 299–300 bullock cart, 25–8; cart traffic along GT Road, 260–2; cost of carting, 263; in the districts of (p.347) Bengal, 26; impact of railways on, 259–66; as principal rural transport, 259 bullocks and ploughs: in non-rice-milling districts, 267; in rice-milling districts, 264 ‘bullock train carts’, 61 Burn & Company, 50, 61–2, 108 Burton, John, 289 Calcutta, 1–11, 23, 25–6, 30–47, 53, 57–62, 67, 91–3, 96–101, 108, 110–11, 114–16, 143, 145–52, 156–8, 161, 163–5, 183–219, 237, 242–6; jute miller, 142; rice market, 55 Calcutta Agricultural Exhibition (1864), 301 Calcutta Match Factory, 186 Calcutta Rice Mills’ Association, 152 Canning, Lord, 280n65, 288, 292 Carey, William, 2, 18n19 cargo boats: possession of, 244; registration of, 31 cargo rice, supply of, 142 carpenters, 4, 12, 79, 91, 108, 110, 137, 228n105, 233, 248, 250, 254, 292, 298, 299, 302–5 carts and bullocks, availability of: in non-rice-milling districts, 268; in rice-milling districts, 265 cast iron, 66, 106, 111 Chakraborty, Dipesh, 72n47, 236, 276n22 Chandra, Bholanath, 181–2, 221n10 charka. See spinning wheel Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra, 57, 179, 180–1 Page 3 of 15

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Index Chattopadhyay, Ramananda, 182 Chaudhuri, A. K., 206 Chittagong, 41, 88, 91, 114, 162–3, 165, 187, 191 chhotolok, 179 Chhotonagpore, 163 child labour, 190 Chinese technology: hosiery articles, 205; yarn production, 214 cobblers, 234 coconut oil, 165 Colvin Austin Cowie & Co., 45 Commonwealth Trust, 215 communal violence, 92 Comul, Ram, 38 conch shell bangles, 113 conch shell–cutting machine, 115 Cossipore Sugar Works, 156, 158, 161 cottage industry, 87, 186, 190, 193, 209 crop hypothecation, 247 cultivators, property of, 251 Curzon, Lord, 301 Cuttack, 86, 100, 105, 247, 290, 295 daak, 28 daak bungalow, 28 daha (river port), 29 Dalhousie, Lord, 37, 41, 49 Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway, 239 Das, Chittaranjan, 182 Das, Gurudas, 99 date sugar industry, 138 Datta, Akshoykumar, 180 Deshpande Committee, 189 Dhaka, 4, 7, 24, 28–9, 32–3, 36, 41–2, 62, 79–80, 82–3, 85–7, 89–92, 96–7, 101–2, 113, 115, 135, 140, 159, 161, 163–4, 181, 187, 189, 191, 200–2, 212, 240, 252 (p.348) Dhakeshwari Mills, 89 dharma gola (community store), 273 dhenki, 132, 134, 143–4, 253–4, 270 Dhoba Sugar Co., 156 Diamond Harbour, 40, 43–4, 199 Dinajpur, 24–5, 27, 30, 43, 83, 85, 90, 96, 106, 114, 131, 133, 135, 137, 140–1, 148, 151– 2, 161, 163, 239, 242, 246, 249, 294, 300 District Food Inspector (DFI), 150 division of labour, 130, 184, 209 Don Society, 182 Dufferin Enquiry Committee, 132 Durga Puja, 305 Dutt, R. C., 180–2, 274 Eastern Bengal Railway (EBR), 36, 41–4, 238, 269; land acquisition for, 56 Page 4 of 15

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Index East India Company (EIC), 2, 82, 156, 232 East Indian Railway Company (EIR), 39–41, 47, 53, 61, 149, 234, 293 edible oil, 164–5 Elliot, W. H., 290 Empress Hosiery Mills, 207 Esavi India Match Manufacturing Co., 189 European imperialism, 14 Fairy Queen (rail engine), 1 famine of 1943–44, 97 Food Grains Control Order, 150, 173n60 Fort Gloster industrial complex, 89, 164 Fort William, 34, 40 Fulchari Oil Mill, 165 Gandhi, Mahatma, 237 Garden Reach dockyard, 37, 40 Gauripur Oil Mill, 164 ghani oil, demand for, 166 ghāt, 25, 292 Ghosh, Aurobindo, 180, 182, 219n3 Ghosh Committee, 186 Ghosh, Ram Gopal, 38–9 Ghosh, Subodh, 207, 212, 218 Ghusuri mills, 89 gola (river port), 29 Gopal Hosiery, 207, 211–13, 218 grain market of India, 29; factor determining the location of, 243 grain trade. See rice trade Grand Trunk Road (GT Road), 25, 64, 235, 258, 260 Great Britain, 11, 232 Greathed, W. H., 7 Gujarath Islam Match Manufacturing Co., 186 Gur Control Order, 163 gur-making, 162–3 Guwahati, 32 haats. See village market Hamilton, Alexander, 233 Hamilton, Walter, 133 Handloom Development Corporation (HDC), 94 Harcourt, F. H., 203 Hardgrave, Robert, 190, 191 Headrick, Daniel R., 15 Heber, Bishop, 108, 233, 299–300, 302 Hedges, William, 33 High Prices Committee, 273 Hilding, Per, 188, 190 Hindusthan Cocoanut Oil Mill, 165 homestead, notion of, 7, 52, 134, 238

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Index Hooghly (Hughli), 4, 27, 30, 34, 37, 40, 45, 49, 52, 59, 61, 64, 85–6, (p.349) 89, 91, 98, 111, 151–2, 156, 202, 233, 237, 250, 260, 272, 305 hosiery entrepreneurs, of Bengal, 196, 210–11, 215–16 hosiery industry: All India Hosiery Manufacturing Co., 198–9, 203; Bengal Hosiery Company, 195–6, 212; Bengal Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association (BHMA), 204, 206, 208; division of labour, 209; early growth and localization, 198–203; Empress Hosiery Mills, 207; first hosiery enterprise of India, 193–5; first World War and after, 203–5; Gopal Hosiery, 207, 212; hosiery factories, types of, 209; hosiery labour in Bengal, composition of, 218; industrial organization, 209–12; Japanese competition, 196, 205–6; Kalighat Hosiery, 200; Kusum Hosiery Mills Private Ltd, 207; Labour Hosiery, 211; machines ‘driven by steam power’, 197; Mymensingh hosiery factory, 201; Oriental Hosiery Manufacturing Company Ltd., 193; Pabna Shilpa Sanjibani Company Ltd., 196–8, 202–3, 206; during post-partition period, 212–19; protection of, 206–8; Siddhesari Hosiery Factory, 213; Students’ Economic Hosiery of Taltala, 198, 204, 211; Tiruppur industry, 215; during World War II, 218 Hosiery Samavay Samity, 211 Hosiery Training Institute, 219 house building, European notion of, 112 Howrah, 1, 8, 18, 25, 39–41, 45, 50, 52, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 89, 108–11, 146–7, 151, 156, 158, 164–5, 201–2, 233, 235, 249, 256, 303, 304 Howrah Ghat, 46, 233 Hunt, Bray & Elmsley of London, 61–2 Hunter, W. W., 43, 147, 237, 256 Hurd, John M., 241, 255, 259, 285n115 hurricane lantern, use of, 297, 300 husked rice, 131, 144; demand for, 132–3 India General Navigation and Railway Co. (IGNR), 36–7 India General Steam Navigation Co. (IGSN), 35 Indian Civil Service, 274 Indian Factories Act, 197, 198, 209 Indian Industrial Association, 198 Indian Industrial Commission, 196 Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, 217 Indian Match Factory Ltd., 185 Page 6 of 15

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Index Indian Merchandise Marks Act (1889), 206 Indian National Congress, 195 Indian Tariff Board (ITB), 206 Indian textile market: Bengal’s textiles, 81–2; gender specific division of, 88; textile zones, 82 Indo-China war (1962), 155 industrial entrepreneurship, 10–11 Industrial Revolution, 3, 11, 14, 79, 82 industries of Bengal, 10, 253 iron smelting, 104–5 Irrawaddy Flotilla Co., 35 (p.350) Japanese technology: hosiery machine, 198, 204–10; indigenization of, 146; match boxes, 187; Over Lock machine, 212; religious–cultural ethos of, 9 John Perks & Sons, Wolverhampton, 107 joint-stock company, 193 jolha caste, 87, 90–1 Jones, William, 2 jute cultivation, 97 jute industry, 10, 142, 254 jute mills, 108, 141, 142, 164, 182, 213–14, 238; rate of wages in, 210 jute transport, 257 Kaibarta, Rama, 180 Kaiser Plough, 107, 301 Kalighat Hosiery, 200–1 Kalyani Spinning Mill, 94, 210, 213, 217 kansari caste association, 101 karati (sawyer), 113–4, 116 Karimbhoy Match Manufacturing Co., 189 kerosene lamp, 298 kerosene oil, 23, 33, 297, 300 Kesoram Cotton Mills, 209–10, 217 Khan, Rakhaldas, 146 Kurpala (Bengali novel), 301 Kushtia mill, 89 Kusum Hosiery Mills Private Ltd, 207 Labour Enquiry Committee (1945), 192 Labour Hosiery, 211 leather worker, 303 lohar. See blacksmiths London–Liverpool millers, 142 lanterns, 297–8, 300 Lushington, C. H., 44, 48–9 McGowan, John, 30 Madura Cotton Mills, 213, 217 Page 7 of 15

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Index Mahajanbandhu (Calcutta-based traders’ journal), 194 mahishya caste, 109–10, 159 Maldah, 24, 27, 29, 34, 41, 43, 81–3, 90–6, 100–1, 135, 141, 161 Marwaris, 1, 9, 22, 83, 89–90, 136, 141, 145, 154–5, 159, 161, 165, 192, 207, 213–14, 217, 224, 238, 240, 246, 257, 300 Marx, Karl, 274 match industry: Assam Match Company Ltd. (AMCO), 188; Bande Mataram Factory, 185–6; Bengal Safety Match Manufacturing Co., 185; Calcutta Match Factory, 186; cottage sector of, 186, 189–92; division of labour, 184; duty on match import, 188; Esavi India Match Manufacturing Co., 189; in Europe, 184; ‘guillotine machine’, 185; Indian Match Factory Ltd., 185; Karimbhoy Match Manufacturing Co., 189; litho-printing units in Sivakasi, 192; M.M. Mehta’s Match Factory, 189; Nadar Mahajana Sangam, 190; Oriental Match Manufacturing Co., 185–6; pioneer in, 184–7; production and wage payment, 191; protection of, 187–8; Swedish Match, 188; transfer of technology to India, 185; Western India Match Company (WIMCO), 186, 188–9, 192 (p.351) Medinipur salt agitation (1930), 207 Mehta, M. N., 187 Messrs Brasey, Paxton, Wythes & Co., 42 Messrs Burn and Co., 235 Messrs Mellor & Sons of Nottingham, 193 Minimum Wages Act, 219 Minto, Lord, 301 Mitra, Kishorichand, 180 Mitra, Ratishchandra, 200 Mitter, S. C., 115 M.M. Mehta’s Match Factory, 189 mofussil, 31, 288, 301 Mohini Mill, 217 mouroosi ryot, 44 mufassal, 146 Mukherjee, Annadaprasad, 193–5, 210 Mukherjee, Lalit Mohon, 193, 211 Mukherjee, Satish Chandra, 182 mulberry cultivation, 83–4 Murshidabad, 23–4, 29, 32, 34, 43, 81, 83, 87, 90, 96, 102, 140, 161, 235, 241–2, 246, 294, 300 Page 8 of 15

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Index Murshidabad Factory Records (1776), 299 musālchees (torch bearers), 28 mutchalka, 258 Myanmar, 35, 141–4, 147–9, 152, 154 Mymensingh hosiery factory, 201 Nadar Mahajana Sangam, 190–1 Nandy, Kali, 84 Nandy, Mahendrachandra, 185–6 Narayanganj Cotton Mills, 210 National Sugar Mills Ltd, 164 Neogy, Haricharan, 200 ‘New Bengal’, 182 North Bengal Sugar Mills, 161 Northern Bengal State Railway (NBSR), 43, 239, 256 oil milling, 141; coconut oil, 165; edible oil, 164–5; Fort Gloster industrial complex, 89, 164; Fulchari Oil Mill, 165; Gauripur Oil Mill, 164; ghani oil, 166; hydraulic press, 164; by machine, 164–5; oil mill and the miller, 165–6 oilseed processing, 139–41 Oriental Hosiery Manufacturing Company Ltd., 193 Oriental Match Manufacturing Co., 185–6 Orissa, 143, 152, 154–5, 159, 165, 216, 239, 241, 249, 251, 252; famine of 1866, 144, 180, 274; ghana and gachhua types of mills, 140; iron foundries, 110; rice mills, 149; ship building, 108; yarn mills, 89 Orissa famine of 1866, 144, 274 Pabna Out Agency, 197 Pabna Provincial Conference (1908), 197 Pabna Shilpa Sanjibani Company Ltd., 196–8, 202–3, 206 paddy husking, 129–35; bulk husking, 144; demand for, 132–3; division of labour, 130; husker’s share of clean rice, 134; wages for, 135 Pal, Bipinchandra, 182 palki-bearers, 295 panchayet, 242, 292, 298 Partition of Bengal (1905), 195 Partition of India (1947), 92–3, 102, 152, 155, 258 Page 9 of 15

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Index (p.352) Patna, 25, 32–3, 41, 53, 82, 87, 111, 156, 200, 202, 205, 240, 242, 256, 290 pattanidar, 44 Permanent Settlement, 180 pig iron, 35, 104, 106 Playne, S., 198 Pramanik, Taraknath, 125n71 Public Works Division (PWD), 64 Quinton, H., 247 Quit India Movement, 218 rail engines, 1, 289 rail transport: acquisition of land for, 6–9, 44–52, 238; bridge building, 62–7; bullock cart, impact on, 259–66; Calcutta–Bardhaman railroad, 37, 39; Calcutta–Rajmahal railroad, 37, 39; carting and dumping of materials, 49; compensation paid for land acquisition, 48, 50, 52, 58–60; compensation paid for trees cut down for laying of railway lines, 51, 52; construction of, 44; Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway, 239; development of, 5; discourse in Bengal, 37–9; Eastern Bengal Railway (EBR), 36, 41–4, 56, 238, 269; East Indian Railway Company (EIR), 39–41, 47, 53, 61, 149, 234, 293; fare charts, 293; folk image of, 237, 289–90; history of, 5; Howrah–Raniganj/Howrah–Rajmahal railways, 233; immediate effects of the technology on, 266–74; impact on the primary transport, 255–66; and incidence of dacoity, 236; Kalna–Rajmahal railroad, 37; and land prices, 58–60; liquidity crisis, 294; masonry-arch technique, for construction of bridges, 65; mobility of the villager due to, 293–5; Northern Bengal State Railway (NBSR), 43, 239, 256; pattern of human settlement and, 232–41; post-1857 reconciliation, 52–8; pre-railway rice trade, 241–5; problems associated with construction of, 60–7; public–private legal entitlement, 8; Regulation I of 1824, 44; rice mill and the rice trade, 245–7; and rural employment, 247–52; Shrirampur railway station, 48; technologies used for construction of, 60–7; telescopic steamer-railway services, 36, 43 railway mart, Bayly’s notion of, 240 Page 10 of 15

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Index railway stations, 48, 54, 91, 106, 112, 145, 147, 155, 234, 237–40, 247, 263, 270, 290–3, 298 railway workforce: demand for carts, 251; in eastern India, 251; recruitment, 251; rural–urban elements in, 248; wages and payments, 252 Rajbhakti, 238 Rajmahal, 29, 36–7, 40, 43, 62, 105, 236, 238, 249, 292 Rangpur, 24, 27–8, 83, 90, 114, 140, 152, 158, 162, 165, 166, 187, 191, 201–2, 210, 212– 13, 218, 239, 295, 300 Rasmoni, Rani, 273 Renwick & Co. of Kushtia, 163 revolt of 1857, 52–3 rice cultivation, 130, 142, 147 (p.353) rice huller: Engel Berg Huller, 145–6; indigenization of imported technology, 146; Rakhaldas Khan’s machine, 146; use of, 145–6 rice markets, 129; bulk supply of paddy on credit, 135; chauler karkhana, 135; export of rice, 146; food control measures, 150; import of rice, 131, 149; imposition of a duty on paddy export, 142; industrial labour, 147; inland trade, 131; permit for the movement of rice stock, 150; pricing, 147–8; rail transport, 147; Regulations of 1943, 150; urban demand for cheap rice, 147 rice milling, 141–5; growth of, 151; as most extensive industry, 150–2; nature of the enterprise, 152–5; during post-independence period, 155–6; steamer freight, 151–2 Rice Milling Committee (RMC), 155, 254 Rice Milling Industries Act (1958), 156 rice mills, 132, 142–3, 147–8, 215; backwash effect on paddy husking, 252; changing size of, 149; distribution of, 152, 153; and railways, 245–7; reorganization of the local trade due to, 246; rice hullers, 145–6; and rural employment, 252–5; Page 11 of 15

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Index sheller-type, 146–50; skilled–unskilled ratio of labour, 252; unemployment created by, 253, 254; workers, 154 rice processing: paddy husking, see paddy husking; rice huller, use of, 145–6; transfer of technology, 145; variations in taste and technique of, 144 rice trade: centres for, 243; hierarchical structure of, 247; during pre-railway period, 241–5; railways, influence of, 245–7; seasonality of, 243 river-dredging techniques, 4 river ports, 30; types of, 29 Rivers Steam Navigation Co. (RSN), 35 river transport, 1, 28–34; by boat, 28–34; European river transport firms, 34; hiring of boats for, 30–1; impact of railways on, 255–9; loss of cargoes during, 30; merchant–boatman nexus, 33; navigable streams, 28; restoration of river for, 30; of rice grains, 151–2; river ports, 29–30; by steamboats, 34–7; transit cost, 30 road transport, 23–5; Grand Trunk Road (GT Road), 25 Roy, Prafullachandra, 97, 101, 180, 182–3, 185, 200, 207, 221n14 rural employment, influence of: railways, 247–52; rice mills, 252–5; skilled–unskilled ratio of labour, 252 rural poverty, 180 Samachar Darpan, 1, 18n18, 47, 170n36, 302 Sambalpur, 105 samiana (Mughal tent), 80 sankhabanik (merchant group), 113, 297 (p.354) sankhari mythological traditions, 113–16 Sanyal, H., 139 saptagrami, 80 Sarda Canal Project, 161 Scott, David, 143 Seal, Mutty Lall, 38–9, 47 Seikh, Hasan, 180 Sen, Nisithchandra, 206 Page 12 of 15

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Index shell-slicing skills, degeneration of, 115 ship building, 108; materials for, 35 Shome, Ramesh Chandra, 199 Sibpur Engineering College, 65 Siddhesari Hosiery Factory, 213 silk trade, 83–4, 87, 121 silk weaving, 83–94; art of vegetable dyeing, 91; ban on manufacturing of coloured saris, 93; change and deterioration in, 89–92; chemical dye, 92; competition and restriction of the market, 88; ecological factors influencing, 83; export of silk, 84, 87; Gajamati and Taj design, 92; mulberry cultivation, 83–4; post-colonial developments, 92–4; prelude to change, 84–6; shocks and survival, 86–9 Sitabganj Sugar Mills, 161 Siuri, 23, 234 Sivakasi, 189–92 small-scale manufacturing, 5, 183 social identity, loss of, 250–1 Society for the Translation of European Books, 2 spinning wheel, 78–81, 83 station masters, 293, 304 steamboats, 34–7; cargo service, 37; dredging boat, 34; energy efficiency, 35; India General Navigation and Railway Co. (IGNR), 36–7; India General Steam Navigation Co. (IGSN), 35; introduction of, 34; iron steamboat, 35; Irrawaddy Flotilla Co., 35; Rivers Steam Navigation Co. (RSN), 35–6; telescopic steamer-railway services, 36, 43 steam-driven railways, 4 steam engine, 1–5, 35, 106, 143, 163, 231–2, 246, 272, 289 steamer station, 36, 197, 292, 300 steam mill, 232 steam navigation, 2 Steam Society, 2 Steam Tug Society in Calcutta, 3 Steefkerk, H., 298 Stephenson, Rowland Macdonald, 6, 37–9, 41, 49, 58–9 Students’ Economic Hosiery of Taltala, 198, 204, 211 Page 13 of 15

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Index sugarcane processing, 136–9; cane acreage in Bengal, 136; cane cultivation, 136; date sugar, production of, 138; duties on Bengal and west Indian sugar, 137; gur, manufacturing of, 137; modak (moyra), 136; tambuli caste, 136 sugar export from India, 156 sugar manufacturing, statement of accounts for, 160 sugar milling: and abolition of import duties on European sugar, 157; early European enterprise, 156–8; and European demand for Indian sugar, 157; import of unrefined sugar, 158; indigenous enterprise, 158–9; investments in, 157; sugarcane cultivation, 159 (p.355) sugar mills: Behea Mill, 163, 301; Gur Control Order, 163; import duty on foreign sugar, 161; National Sugar Mills Ltd, 164; during partition and post-partition, 163–4; processing of sugarcane, 162–3; Renwick & Co. of Kushtia, 163; sugarcane cultivation, 161; Tariff Board enquiries, 161 sugar trade of Bengal, 138 Surajmal Nagarmal Co., 161 swadeshi movement, 87, 89, 96, 181, 194, 200–1 Swan, J. A. L., 198 Swedish Match, 188–9 Tagore, Dwarkanath, 3, 38–9, 47, 157, 181, 237 Tagore, Rabindranath, 180, 183, 189, 197 Tagore, Surendranath, 183–4, 197 Tatma weavers of Darbhanga, 302 Taylor, James, 86–7 technology of handicraft, 79 textile mills, 89 textile zones in India, 82 thaterian (coppersmith), 79 Titagarh, 57, 238–9 Tiruppur industry, 214–15, 217, 219 trademarks, 206, 212 transport, old and new modes of, 296 Turnbull, Geo, 40, 46, 54, 62, 65–6, 235–6, 250, 269 unemployment, created by the rice mill, 253, 254 Varady, Robert G., 250 Vellela Gounders, 215–16 Vijnan Sebadhi, 2 Page 14 of 15

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Index village market, 15, 197, 240, 243, 299 village roads, 25 village society, at the crossroads, 295–306 wage-earners, 103 water transport. See river transport Watt, James, 2, 231 weavers, 81–3; art of vegetable dyeing, 91; Baishgan weavers, 92; jolha caste, 87, 91; ‘plough for loom’ category, 90; silk weaving, see silk weaving; skilled–unskilled weaver ratio, 90; swadeshi ideology, 87 weaving looms: bamboo looms, 79, 83; loom tax, 86; muslin weaver of Dhaka, 80; spinning wheel, 81, 83; thak-thaki tant, 79 West Bengal State Handloom Weavers’ Cooperative Society Ltd., 94 Western India Match Company (WIMCO), 186, 188–9, 192 Western industrial technology, 14–15 Western scientific knowledge, 2 World War: first, 12, 101, 110, 186, 198, 203–5; second, 147, 207–8, 218 zamindars, 20n39, 44, 154, 159, 163, 193, 210, 233, 237, 308n27

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About the Author

Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India 1830-1980 Smritikumar Sarkar

Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198092308 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2014 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001

(p.356) About the Author Smritikumar Sarkar is the Vice Chancellor of the University of Burdwan, West Bengal. He has a PhD in History (1992) from the University of Calcutta. Sarkar began his research on the non-agrarian sector of the rural economy while serving at Brahmananda Keshabchandra College, Kolkata. He later moved to the University of Kalyani, his workplace for over two decades, before retiring as a professor of history and taking over the reins at Burdwan. Starting with his pioneering work on the rice mill, he gradually developed an interest in Indian artisans, focussing initially on the structure of production and trade, outside the oft-visited textile sector. Slowly, his research has moved to the area of social organization and tool techniques of artisan production. His work on blacksmith tribes like the Asur and Agaria drew wide attention. He has published a number of articles in edited volumes and journals.

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