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Nitin Varma

Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, ERC Project - Timely Histories, Department Member

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Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient

Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi

Satya Shikha Chakraborty

The College of New Jersey

Jana Tschurenev

Free University of Berlin

The National Museum of Denmark

University of Delhi

Victoria K Haskins

The University of Newcastle

Queen's University Belfast

Christina Casey

Pramod K. Nayar

University of Hyderabad

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Books by Nitin Varma

Servants' Pasts: Late-Eighteenth to Twentieth-Century South Asia – Vol. 2

by Nitin Sinha and Nitin Varma

The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on ear... more The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on early modern, modern and contemporary history. The volumes in the series cover new ground across a broad spectrum of subjects such as cultural, environmental, medical, military and political history, and the histories of 'marginalised' groups. It includes fresh perspectives on more familiar fields as well as interdisciplinary and original work from all parts of South Asia. It welcomes historical contributions from sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

The Many Lives of Ayah: Life Trajectories of Female Servants in Early Nineteenth-Century India

2019

In 1822, Ramoonee, a woman aged approximately 30 and identified as an ayah, 1 was being searched ... more In 1822, Ramoonee, a woman aged approximately 30 and identified as an ayah, 1 was being searched for in the context of a trial brought before the Supreme Court at Fort William in Calcutta. 2 Ramoonee was expected to testify as a witness in a case brought forward by one Major Robert Cunliffe-an army captain stationed in the north Indian cantonment town of Cawnpore-who had accused his wife Louisa Cunliffe of having committed adultery and had applied for the dissolution of their marriage.

Servants' Pasts

by Pankaj Jha and Nitin Varma

Orient Blackswan, 2019

History of domestic servants' has never been systematically researched in India. This edited volu... more History of domestic servants' has never been systematically researched in India. This edited volume is the first attempt to take a concerted look at the issue by the three editors and a number of established and budding scholars. A longish introduction of 88 pages sets up the long premodern to colonial historical context as well as shares sustained reflections on the theoretical and conceptual problems of writing about the 'servants'. A must read for anyone trying to make sense of the at once ubiquitous and invisible class of service providers in modern India.

Coolies of Capitalism

Coolies of Capitalism tells the story of women, men and children being recruited and transported ... more Coolies of Capitalism tells the story of women, men and children being recruited and transported to work on the plantations of tea being set up in nineteenth century colonial India. The making of these workers into so called coolies was a broader global process of disciplining labour in the nineteenth century revealing deep lineages and linkages with slave labour and " free " wage labour. The process of producing coolies revealed deep and organic relationship between colonial state and private capital. The author particularly highlights the human dimension of this story by showing how the coolies themeselves were actively intervening and transforming the nature of plantation capitalism in a colonial world.

Papers by Nitin Varma

Servant Testimonies and Anglo-Indian Homes in Nineteenth-Century India

To be at Home, 2018

On August 21, 1818, Ramonee, a thirty-year-old woman from Patna in eastern India, appeared before... more On August 21, 1818, Ramonee, a thirty-year-old woman from Patna in eastern India, appeared before the Supreme Court at Fort William, Calcutta.1 Ramonee, who worked as an ayah (child's nurse, lady's maid), was called as one of the witnesses in a case brought by her former employer, Major Cunliffe. A British military captain stationed in Cawnpore (a cantonment in northern India), Cunliffe was accusing his wife Louisa of adultery.2 A charge of adultery directed against wives, as in England at that time, allowed husbands to sue their wives' accused lovers for damages. This was usually followed by proceedings in the ecclesiastical side of the court over the separation of bed and board of the estranged couple (similar to legal separation). A full divorce was extremely rare and often the privilege of the rich and influential. This required a private act of the British parliament and usually cost a fortune.3 There was another problem for the British residents of India if they wished to or were capable of taking this route. The witnesses required to establish the charge-servants, other household members, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues-could not usually travel to England to appear before parliament. In 1820, a change in regulation allowed the Supreme Courts of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay to summon witnesses and collect evidence to substantiate the allegations made by the husbands on behalf of the British parliament. The evidence and trial details were then forwarded to London for further action. The details of this particular case, including Ramonee's testimony, became available when Major Cunliffe applied for a full divorce in 1823. A premium on morality marked a break from the nabobs (Europeans who made a fortune in India and often imitated the lifestyle of Indian elites) of the late eighteenth century who lived a life of excess and had several liaisons with the native bibis (Indian mistresses of nabobs).4 The growing presence of white women in the colony in the nineteenth century provoked new anxieties and their transgressions appeared to threaten the patriarchal order; the act of 1820 was a gesture in that direction.5 The change from white nabobi homes to memsahib households was noted in handbooks written for British subjects and servicemen in India published in 1810 and 1825.6 Here I 1 I am extremely grateful to Felicitas Hentschke for her constant encouragement and intellectual input in finalizing this essay. I must also extend my gratitude to James Williams for his extremely useful feedback on an earlier draft. This essay forms part of a larger research project on the history of domestic servants in India funded by a European Research Council Starting grant project (ERC stg. DOS 640627). I am grateful to my friend and principal investigator Nitin Sinha for helping me develop many ideas presented here. 2 The details of the divorce proceedings are recorded in the annual Proceedings of the British House of Lords for the relevant years. I have been able to collect around thirty trials spanning a period of forty years (early 1820s to early 1860s) held at the

Servants' Pasts: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century South Asia. Vol. I

This book is part of a two-volume publication on the history of domestic servants in early modern... more This book is part of a two-volume publication on the history of domestic servants in early modern and modern South Asia. The volumes have emerged out of the research conducted under the European Research Council (ERC)-funded Starting-grant project (DOS 640627, 2015-18). The project has run for three years at two different institutions in Berlin. Nitin Sinha is based at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Centre for Modern Oriental Studies) and Nitin Varma at IGK, Re:Work, Humboldt University. They were the main researchers on the project. They thank the ERC for funding this project, and the members, both academic and administrative, of their respective host institutions for all the support they have received in successfully running the project. The project was stipulated to cover the period from the mideighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. However, it was not easy to compartmentalise the history of domestic service, servitude and servants into neat brackets of historiographical periods. In choosing the above timescale , the quest was to understand the nitty-gritty of the colonial period but we were also aware of the importance of putting this period in dialogue with what happened before, and what social, political and discursive regimes of master-servant relationship carried into the colonial period from precolonial times. This indeed pressed on us the necessity to take the early modern period very seriously in our efforts to write the history of domestic servants. Our association with Pankaj Jha grew gradually over the last three years: in the beginning from being the 'temporal cousins' across the divide of the modern and the early modern with similar interests in questions of social and political formations and historical changes related to social marginals to a firm friend and colleague female guards waqianavis news reporter zanan-i parsa women-servants zikr/dhikr to mention, to remember

Servants' Pasts: Late-Eighteenth to Twentieth-Century South Asia. Vol. II

New Perspectives in South Asian History, 2019

The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on ear... more The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on early modern, modern and contemporary history. The volumes in the series cover new ground across a broad spectrum of subjects such as cultural, environmental, medical, military and political history, and the histories of 'marginalised' groups. It includes fresh perspectives on more familiar fields as well as interdisciplinary and original work from all parts of South Asia. It welcomes historical contributions from sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

Servant Testimonies and Anglo-Indian Homes in Nineteenth-Century India

To be at Home, 2018

Coolies of Capitalism

Coolies of Capitalism, 2016

Work in Global and Historical Perspective is an interdisciplinary series that welcomes scholarshi... more Work in Global and Historical Perspective is an interdisciplinary series that welcomes scholarship on work/labour that engages a historical perspective in and from any part of the world. The series advocates a definition of work/labour that is broad, and especially encourages contributions that explore interconnections across political and geographic frontiers, time frames, disciplinary boundaries, as well as conceptual divisions among various forms of commodified work, and between work and 'non-work'.

Coolie Strikes Back: Collective Protest and Action in the Colonial Tea Plantations of Assam, 1880–1920

Indian Historical Review, 2006

The introduction of tea in the early part of the nineteenth century in Assam was actualized by th... more The introduction of tea in the early part of the nineteenth century in Assam was actualized by the active support and backing of the colonial state. Political troubles with the Chinese government over the &#x27;opium issue&#x27;, and the abrogation of the trade monopoly of the East India ...

2. Contracts, Contractors and Coolies

The consensus within the official-planter circles regarding the "coolie solution", as hinted in t... more The consensus within the official-planter circles regarding the "coolie solution", as hinted in the preceding chapter, held the promise of becoming a permanent remedy for the imminent work/labour anxieties on the Assam tea plantations of the late 1850s. The labour/work crisis, induced by the continued vacillation of the Assamese peasants towards plantation work and the enhanced bargaining capabilities of the local labouring groups (like the Kacharis) in the backdrop of "plantation industry", could be offset and stabilised by the sustained and systematic influx of workers from outside the province-identified as coolies. The early incidence of migration of workers, especially during the "tea mania" of the 1860s, exhibited tendencies of privatisation of recruitment, soaring rates of mortality during transit, and a general climate of "unwillingness to work" and "unsettlement" on the plantations.123 This stood in stark contrast to the anticipated situation of a steady traffic of "cheap", "disciplined" and "settled" labour. Migrant workers were not naturally assuming the roles and function of coolies. Taking this as the point of entry, the chapter traces and situates how the processes and strategies to frame coolies were articulated through a crystallizing nexus of the plantation labour regime and the coolie market. Qualifying a uniform/unchanging nature of plantations and the labour regime in Assam, the discussion would be attentive to the changes and shifts in the discursive and material strategies and practices. The first section discusses the formalisation of the Assam contract in the first half of the 1860s. It mainly interrogates as to how the contextual anxieties-for "protection" and "exceptionalism"-became a justification for its indispensability and retention throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The next 123 The spectacular and speculative growth of the Assam tea industry during the 1860s and the consequent human cost has been subject to a host of official enquiries, contemporary commentaries and historical studies. The "crisis" in the industry which immediately followed this period was investigated in reports commissioned by the Bengal government in the late 1860s and early 1870s. In the same period, a colonial offer named William Nassau Lees offered a firsthand account of the turbulent times.

3. Unpopular Assam

Coolies of Capitalism, 2016

Perceptions of Assam as a place of agreement (contract) closely resembled the notion of Girmitiya... more

1. Tea in the Colony

5. Dustoor of Plantations

On Homes, Work, and Personhood: An Interview with Prabhu Mohapatra

6. Gandhi baba ka Hookum

4. Drink and Work

„Leisten wir bessere Arbeit, wenn wir zu einem gewissen Grad mit der Tätigkeit vertraut sind, über die wir eigentlich sprechen? … Ich glaube nicht, dass es unsere Arbeit schlechter macht“ Ein Interview mit Seth Rockman

Der alte und der neue Materialismus in der Geschichte der Sklaverei

Jha, "Introduction" to Servants Pasts, vol. 1

by Pankaj Jha, Nitin Sinha, and Nitin Varma

Orient Blackswan, 2019

Domestic servants have been ubiquitous in South Asian history. But they are equally invisible in ... more Domestic servants have been ubiquitous in South Asian history. But they are equally invisible in historiography. This Introduction to the volume begins with an investigation of this absence and goes on to describe the challenges facing historians who might want to undo this. These challenges are both methodological as well as empirical. The author makes an audacious attempt to tentatively trace patterns of change in the history of domestic servants in north India from early historical times to the present. An attempt is also made to suggest a few fruitful lines of enquiry for future.

Servant Testimonies and Anglo-Indian Homes in Nineteenth-Century India

To be at Home: House, Work, and Self in the Modern World, 2018

Servants' Pasts: Late-Eighteenth to Twentieth-Century South Asia – Vol. 2

by Nitin Sinha and Nitin Varma

The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on ear... more The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on early modern, modern and contemporary history. The volumes in the series cover new ground across a broad spectrum of subjects such as cultural, environmental, medical, military and political history, and the histories of 'marginalised' groups. It includes fresh perspectives on more familiar fields as well as interdisciplinary and original work from all parts of South Asia. It welcomes historical contributions from sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

The Many Lives of Ayah: Life Trajectories of Female Servants in Early Nineteenth-Century India

2019

In 1822, Ramoonee, a woman aged approximately 30 and identified as an ayah, 1 was being searched ... more In 1822, Ramoonee, a woman aged approximately 30 and identified as an ayah, 1 was being searched for in the context of a trial brought before the Supreme Court at Fort William in Calcutta. 2 Ramoonee was expected to testify as a witness in a case brought forward by one Major Robert Cunliffe-an army captain stationed in the north Indian cantonment town of Cawnpore-who had accused his wife Louisa Cunliffe of having committed adultery and had applied for the dissolution of their marriage.

Servants' Pasts

by Pankaj Jha and Nitin Varma

Orient Blackswan, 2019

History of domestic servants' has never been systematically researched in India. This edited volu... more History of domestic servants' has never been systematically researched in India. This edited volume is the first attempt to take a concerted look at the issue by the three editors and a number of established and budding scholars. A longish introduction of 88 pages sets up the long premodern to colonial historical context as well as shares sustained reflections on the theoretical and conceptual problems of writing about the 'servants'. A must read for anyone trying to make sense of the at once ubiquitous and invisible class of service providers in modern India.

Coolies of Capitalism

Coolies of Capitalism tells the story of women, men and children being recruited and transported ... more Coolies of Capitalism tells the story of women, men and children being recruited and transported to work on the plantations of tea being set up in nineteenth century colonial India. The making of these workers into so called coolies was a broader global process of disciplining labour in the nineteenth century revealing deep lineages and linkages with slave labour and " free " wage labour. The process of producing coolies revealed deep and organic relationship between colonial state and private capital. The author particularly highlights the human dimension of this story by showing how the coolies themeselves were actively intervening and transforming the nature of plantation capitalism in a colonial world.

Servant Testimonies and Anglo-Indian Homes in Nineteenth-Century India

To be at Home, 2018

On August 21, 1818, Ramonee, a thirty-year-old woman from Patna in eastern India, appeared before... more On August 21, 1818, Ramonee, a thirty-year-old woman from Patna in eastern India, appeared before the Supreme Court at Fort William, Calcutta.1 Ramonee, who worked as an ayah (child's nurse, lady's maid), was called as one of the witnesses in a case brought by her former employer, Major Cunliffe. A British military captain stationed in Cawnpore (a cantonment in northern India), Cunliffe was accusing his wife Louisa of adultery.2 A charge of adultery directed against wives, as in England at that time, allowed husbands to sue their wives' accused lovers for damages. This was usually followed by proceedings in the ecclesiastical side of the court over the separation of bed and board of the estranged couple (similar to legal separation). A full divorce was extremely rare and often the privilege of the rich and influential. This required a private act of the British parliament and usually cost a fortune.3 There was another problem for the British residents of India if they wished to or were capable of taking this route. The witnesses required to establish the charge-servants, other household members, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues-could not usually travel to England to appear before parliament. In 1820, a change in regulation allowed the Supreme Courts of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay to summon witnesses and collect evidence to substantiate the allegations made by the husbands on behalf of the British parliament. The evidence and trial details were then forwarded to London for further action. The details of this particular case, including Ramonee's testimony, became available when Major Cunliffe applied for a full divorce in 1823. A premium on morality marked a break from the nabobs (Europeans who made a fortune in India and often imitated the lifestyle of Indian elites) of the late eighteenth century who lived a life of excess and had several liaisons with the native bibis (Indian mistresses of nabobs).4 The growing presence of white women in the colony in the nineteenth century provoked new anxieties and their transgressions appeared to threaten the patriarchal order; the act of 1820 was a gesture in that direction.5 The change from white nabobi homes to memsahib households was noted in handbooks written for British subjects and servicemen in India published in 1810 and 1825.6 Here I 1 I am extremely grateful to Felicitas Hentschke for her constant encouragement and intellectual input in finalizing this essay. I must also extend my gratitude to James Williams for his extremely useful feedback on an earlier draft. This essay forms part of a larger research project on the history of domestic servants in India funded by a European Research Council Starting grant project (ERC stg. DOS 640627). I am grateful to my friend and principal investigator Nitin Sinha for helping me develop many ideas presented here. 2 The details of the divorce proceedings are recorded in the annual Proceedings of the British House of Lords for the relevant years. I have been able to collect around thirty trials spanning a period of forty years (early 1820s to early 1860s) held at the

Servants' Pasts: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century South Asia. Vol. I

This book is part of a two-volume publication on the history of domestic servants in early modern... more This book is part of a two-volume publication on the history of domestic servants in early modern and modern South Asia. The volumes have emerged out of the research conducted under the European Research Council (ERC)-funded Starting-grant project (DOS 640627, 2015-18). The project has run for three years at two different institutions in Berlin. Nitin Sinha is based at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Centre for Modern Oriental Studies) and Nitin Varma at IGK, Re:Work, Humboldt University. They were the main researchers on the project. They thank the ERC for funding this project, and the members, both academic and administrative, of their respective host institutions for all the support they have received in successfully running the project. The project was stipulated to cover the period from the mideighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. However, it was not easy to compartmentalise the history of domestic service, servitude and servants into neat brackets of historiographical periods. In choosing the above timescale , the quest was to understand the nitty-gritty of the colonial period but we were also aware of the importance of putting this period in dialogue with what happened before, and what social, political and discursive regimes of master-servant relationship carried into the colonial period from precolonial times. This indeed pressed on us the necessity to take the early modern period very seriously in our efforts to write the history of domestic servants. Our association with Pankaj Jha grew gradually over the last three years: in the beginning from being the 'temporal cousins' across the divide of the modern and the early modern with similar interests in questions of social and political formations and historical changes related to social marginals to a firm friend and colleague female guards waqianavis news reporter zanan-i parsa women-servants zikr/dhikr to mention, to remember

Servants' Pasts: Late-Eighteenth to Twentieth-Century South Asia. Vol. II

New Perspectives in South Asian History, 2019

The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on ear... more The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on early modern, modern and contemporary history. The volumes in the series cover new ground across a broad spectrum of subjects such as cultural, environmental, medical, military and political history, and the histories of 'marginalised' groups. It includes fresh perspectives on more familiar fields as well as interdisciplinary and original work from all parts of South Asia. It welcomes historical contributions from sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

Servant Testimonies and Anglo-Indian Homes in Nineteenth-Century India

To be at Home, 2018

Coolies of Capitalism

Coolies of Capitalism, 2016

Work in Global and Historical Perspective is an interdisciplinary series that welcomes scholarshi... more Work in Global and Historical Perspective is an interdisciplinary series that welcomes scholarship on work/labour that engages a historical perspective in and from any part of the world. The series advocates a definition of work/labour that is broad, and especially encourages contributions that explore interconnections across political and geographic frontiers, time frames, disciplinary boundaries, as well as conceptual divisions among various forms of commodified work, and between work and 'non-work'.

Coolie Strikes Back: Collective Protest and Action in the Colonial Tea Plantations of Assam, 1880–1920

Indian Historical Review, 2006

The introduction of tea in the early part of the nineteenth century in Assam was actualized by th... more The introduction of tea in the early part of the nineteenth century in Assam was actualized by the active support and backing of the colonial state. Political troubles with the Chinese government over the &#x27;opium issue&#x27;, and the abrogation of the trade monopoly of the East India ...

2. Contracts, Contractors and Coolies

The consensus within the official-planter circles regarding the "coolie solution", as hinted in t... more The consensus within the official-planter circles regarding the "coolie solution", as hinted in the preceding chapter, held the promise of becoming a permanent remedy for the imminent work/labour anxieties on the Assam tea plantations of the late 1850s. The labour/work crisis, induced by the continued vacillation of the Assamese peasants towards plantation work and the enhanced bargaining capabilities of the local labouring groups (like the Kacharis) in the backdrop of "plantation industry", could be offset and stabilised by the sustained and systematic influx of workers from outside the province-identified as coolies. The early incidence of migration of workers, especially during the "tea mania" of the 1860s, exhibited tendencies of privatisation of recruitment, soaring rates of mortality during transit, and a general climate of "unwillingness to work" and "unsettlement" on the plantations.123 This stood in stark contrast to the anticipated situation of a steady traffic of "cheap", "disciplined" and "settled" labour. Migrant workers were not naturally assuming the roles and function of coolies. Taking this as the point of entry, the chapter traces and situates how the processes and strategies to frame coolies were articulated through a crystallizing nexus of the plantation labour regime and the coolie market. Qualifying a uniform/unchanging nature of plantations and the labour regime in Assam, the discussion would be attentive to the changes and shifts in the discursive and material strategies and practices. The first section discusses the formalisation of the Assam contract in the first half of the 1860s. It mainly interrogates as to how the contextual anxieties-for "protection" and "exceptionalism"-became a justification for its indispensability and retention throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The next 123 The spectacular and speculative growth of the Assam tea industry during the 1860s and the consequent human cost has been subject to a host of official enquiries, contemporary commentaries and historical studies. The "crisis" in the industry which immediately followed this period was investigated in reports commissioned by the Bengal government in the late 1860s and early 1870s. In the same period, a colonial offer named William Nassau Lees offered a firsthand account of the turbulent times.

3. Unpopular Assam

Coolies of Capitalism, 2016

Perceptions of Assam as a place of agreement (contract) closely resembled the notion of Girmitiya... more

1. Tea in the Colony

5. Dustoor of Plantations

On Homes, Work, and Personhood: An Interview with Prabhu Mohapatra

6. Gandhi baba ka Hookum

4. Drink and Work

„Leisten wir bessere Arbeit, wenn wir zu einem gewissen Grad mit der Tätigkeit vertraut sind, über die wir eigentlich sprechen? … Ich glaube nicht, dass es unsere Arbeit schlechter macht“ Ein Interview mit Seth Rockman

Der alte und der neue Materialismus in der Geschichte der Sklaverei

Jha, "Introduction" to Servants Pasts, vol. 1

by Pankaj Jha, Nitin Sinha, and Nitin Varma

Orient Blackswan, 2019

Domestic servants have been ubiquitous in South Asian history. But they are equally invisible in ... more Domestic servants have been ubiquitous in South Asian history. But they are equally invisible in historiography. This Introduction to the volume begins with an investigation of this absence and goes on to describe the challenges facing historians who might want to undo this. These challenges are both methodological as well as empirical. The author makes an audacious attempt to tentatively trace patterns of change in the history of domestic servants in north India from early historical times to the present. An attempt is also made to suggest a few fruitful lines of enquiry for future.

Servant Testimonies and Anglo-Indian Homes in Nineteenth-Century India

To be at Home: House, Work, and Self in the Modern World, 2018

Unpopular Assam: Notions of migrating and working for tea gardens

Towards a new history of work. Ed. Bhattacharya, S., 2014

Chargola Exodus and Collective Action In The Colonial Tea Plantations Of Assam

Producing tea coolies? : Work, life and protest in the colonial tea plantations of Assam, 1830s- 1920s

“Coolie” is a generic category for the “unskilled” manual labour. The offering of services for h... more “Coolie” is a generic category for the “unskilled” manual labour. The offering of services for hire had various pre-colonial lineages. In the nineteenth century there was an attempt to recast the term in discursive constructions and material practices for “mobilized-immobilized” labour. Coolie labour was often proclaimed as a deliberate compromise straddling the regimes of the past (slave labour) and the future (free labour). It was portrayed as a stage in a promised transition. The tea plantations of Assam, like many other tropical plantations in South Asia, were inaugurated and formalized during this period. They were initially worked by the locals. In the late 1850s, the locals were replaced by labourers imported from outside the province who were unquestioningly designated “coolies” in the historical literature. Qualifying this framework of transition (local to coolie labour) and introduction (of coolie labour), this study makes a case for the “production” of coolie labour in the history of the colonial-capitalist plantations in Assam. The intention of the research is not to suggest an unfettered agency of colonial-capitalism in defining and “producing” coolies, with an emphasis on the attendant contingencies, negotiations, contestations and crises. The study intervenes in the narratives of an abrupt appearance of the archetypical coolie of the tea gardens (i.e., imported and indentured) and situates this archetype’s emergence, sustenance and shifts in the context of material and discursive processes.

Coolie Strikes Back: Collective Protest and Action in the Colonial Tea Plantations of Assam, 1880–1920

The Story of Ramonee or writing Servant histories through Divorce Trials

CFP SERVANT PASTS

by Nitin Varma, Nitin Sinha, and Servants Past

Conference: Servants' Pasts, 16th to 20th century. The history of domestic servants and service i... more Conference: Servants' Pasts, 16th to 20th century. The history of domestic servants and service in South Asia is an under-researched field. In spite of the ubiquity in both historical and contemporary periods, various strands of history writing-labour, family, socio-cultural-have largely kept servant an invisible subject. This conference, which is part of the European Research Commission (ERC) funded project on 'Domestic Servants in colonial South Asia' invites papers to fill in this historiographical gap. Our major thrust in this conference is to address the history of servants in two broad ways: one, in the relational way that covers the range of forms of relationships instituted and produced between masters and servants and between employers and employees. These include legal and regulatory frameworks, ties of (fictive and constructed) kinship, slavery-servitude continuum, and gender, caste and religious norms and practices. Of course, the major site of locating the changing historical meanings and practices of all the above is the household. We are keen to explore servants' pasts in a range of households which for heuristic purposes could be classified as: native urban elites, European, rural elites, mercantile households and households of lesser means. In order to develop clarity on the role of servants within households, we have intentionally chosen to keep the temporal framework of the inquiry broad. We invite papers from scholars working on both early modern and modern periods (roughly from 16th to 20th centuries). Some of the contributions can, therefore, be overtly theoretical and conceptual in nature. Issues of long term history of words, terms and concepts that encapsulate a form of relationship (such as naukar, chakar, gholam, banda, and so on) are crucial to identify the changing meanings of work and the context behind them over a period of four centuries. Our second thrust is on the use of vernacular materials and sources. We are not restricting ourselves to the exclusive use of vernacular sources, but we particularly welcome contributions which attentively analyse the vernacular courtly, literary, popular, visual, etc sources from different linguistic regions. One lead question could be how different regions have come to be associated with specific skill and service provision; for instance, Oriya bearers, Maithili cooks, and so on? In this regard the papers can also develop interesting case-studies of certain urban centres: Calcutta, Patna, Luck-now, Benares, Lahore, Bombay, Madras; or of important port cities and littoral societies such as Surat, Cochin, the Portoguese Goa and so on. The rural-urban continuum is of great interest, more so when we do know that groups of people in different ser

https://soundcloud.com/lest_umr7317/ayahs-female-domestics-and-subaltern-lives-in-early-nineteenth-century-india

Female Domestics and Subaltern Lives, 2019

final CFP 2nd conference Berlin.pdf

by Nitin Sinha and Nitin Varma

This conference will explore the various regional histories of domestic work and service within S... more This conference will explore the various regional histories of domestic work and service within South Asia, as reflected in different language-based sources. It will also explore comparative similarities and specificities in domestic work across diverse imperial, colonial and postcolonial settings. The temporal range will include the early modern and modern periods (sixteenth century to the contemporary). We nevertheless remain interested in soliciting conceptual and thematic contributions extending further in time that would promise to explore the long history of domestic servitude in South Asia. We invite contributions that explore the ideologies and practices which were deployed to organize domestic work. From the point of recruitment to that of maintaining the boundaries of intimacy and loyalty, among others, law, language, caste, religion, gender, and age played a crucial role in the making and constant reworking of master/mistress-servant relationship. We invite applications exploring the legal and juridical bases of regulation and the everyday maintenance, reproduction and breach of that relationship. This everydayness can include among others gesture, appropriate behaviour, touch, purity, and defilement. Papers based on vernacular sources and visuals exploring these themes are welcome. Moving beyond the ideological macro-structures and practices of organizing domestic work, we wish to enter into the world of material objects, everyday technology, food, and not least, dress. Liveries enhanced masters' prestige. The arrival of new commodities, gadgets, and utilities in the household – refrigerators, electric fans and bulbs, motor cars, sewing machines, piped water, tinned food, television to name a few – reorganized domestic work. How did servants react to them? Did these changes instrumentally affect the terms of employability, wage and work time? Did these new changes affect their own households? We encourage contributions on 'ethnographies of domestic work' that bring out the textured nature of these changes up to the present. The changing forms of organisation of work, home and domesticity are crucial to understanding of servants' pasts. The architecture of the home, the technological

Servants' Pasts: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century, Vol. 1

by Nitin Sinha, Nitin Varma, and Pankaj Jha

Orient Blackswan, 2019

The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on ear... more The New Perspectives in South Asian History series publishes monographs and other writings on early modern, modern and contemporary history. The volumes in the series cover new ground across a broad spectrum of subjects such as cultural, environmental, medical, military and political history, and the histories of 'marginalised' groups. It includes fresh perspectives on more familiar fields as well as interdisciplinary and original work from all parts of South Asia. It welcomes historical contributions from sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

Introduction: Servants' Pasts: Late Eighteenth to Twentieth Century, Vol. 2

by Nitin Sinha and Nitin Varma

Servants' Pasts: Late Eighteenth to Twentieth Century, Vol. 2, 2019

"Introduction", Servants' Pasts: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century, vol. 1

by Nitin Sinha, Nitin Varma, and Pankaj Jha

Servants' Pasts: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century, vol. 1, 2019

Why has domestic servants and service been a marginal theme in the histories of South Asia? The i... more

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