"This book connects the history of labour movements with the transformation of workplace relations in South Asia from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s. Contending that labour conflicts in the Bengal jute industry must be understood against the backdrop of a radical change in the organisation of work in this period, Sailer shows how this led to a rupture in worker's relations in the workplace and beyond. Moving away from polarities such as class/culture or modernity/tradition and reconsidering the context around industrial conflicts in this period, Workplace relations in Colonial Bengal offers a new framework to analyse the changing organisation of work in colonial India, and identifies the implications for worker relations both inside and outside the factory. Focusing on a major colonial era industry, this book opens up new perspectives n the history of workers and colonial capitalism in modern India"--

This book connects the history of labour movements with the transformation of workplace relations in South Asia from the late 19th century to the 1930s. Contending that labour conflicts in the Bengal jute industry must be understood against the backdrop of a radical change in the organisation of work in this period, Sailer shows how this led to a rupture in worker's relations in the workplace and beyond. Moving away from polarities such as class/culture or modernity/tradition and reconsidering the context around industrial conflicts in this period, Workplace relations in Colonial Bengal offers a new framework to analyse the changing organisation of work in colonial India, and identifies the implications for worker relations both inside and outside the factory. Focusing on a major colonial era industry, this book opens up new perspectives n the history of workers and colonial capitalism in modern India.

Samita Sen's history of labouring women in Calcutta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries considers how social constructions of gender shaped their lives. Dr Sen demonstrates how - in contrast to the experience of their male counterparts - the long-term trends in the Indian economy devalued women's labour, establishing patterns of urban migration and changing gender equations within the family. She relates these trends to the spread of dowry, enforced widowhood and child marriage. The book provides insight into the lives of poor urban women who were often perceived as prostitutes or social pariahs. Even trade unions refused to address their problems and they remained on the margins of organized political protest. The study will make a signficant contribution to the understanding of the social and economic history of colonial India and to notions of gender construction.

Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ranajit Das Gupta’s Some Aspects of the Labour History of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century presents a sharply posed conversation between them in October 1981 on working-class consciousness in Bengal. The arguments posited here show that rather than being a direct, mechanical outcome of the capitalistic mode of production, working class consciousness is a process. Asking questions about the morality of labour, history of peasant revolts, capitalist intervention, and so on, this is a classic work on labour history.

A critical work of synthesis and interpretation of agrarian change in India over the long term.

Increased flows of people, capital, and ideas across geographic borders raise urgent challenges to the existing terms and practices of politics. Comparative political theory seeks to devise new intellectual frames for addressing these challenges by questioning the canonical (that is, Euro-American) categories that have historically shaped inquiry in political theory and other disciplines. It does this byanalyzing normative claims, discursive structures, and formations of power in and from all parts of the world. By looking to alternative bodies of thought and experience, as well as the terms we might use to critically examine them, comparative political theory encourages self-reflexivity about the premises of normative ideas and articulates new possibilities for political theory and practice. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory provides an entry point into this burgeoning field by both synthesizing and challenging the terms which motivate it. Over the course of five thematic sections and thirty-three chapters, this volume surveys the field and archives of comparative political theory, bringing the many approaches to the field into conversation for the first time. Sections address geographic location as a subject of political theorizing; how the past becomes a key site for staking political claims; the politics of translation and appropriation; the justification of political authority; and questions of disciplinary commitment and rules of knowledge. Ultimately, the handbook demonstrates how mainstream political theory can and must be enriched through attention to genuinely global, rather than parochially Euro-American, contributions to political thinking.

Like other pre-colonial socio-economic formations, the profession of prostitution underwent a dramatic change in Bengal soon after the British take-over. Under the Raj explores the world of the prostitute in nineteenth century Bengal. It traces how, from the peripheries of pre-colonial Bengali rural society, they came to dominate the center-stage in Calcutta, the capital of British India--thanks to the emergence of a new clientele brought forth by the colonial order. Sumanta Banerjee examines the policies the British administration implemented to revamp the profession to suit its needs, as well as to screen its practitioners in a bid to protect its minions in the army from venereal diseases. He also analyzes the class structure within the prostitute community in nineteenth century Bengal, its complex relationship with the Bengali bhadralok society--and, what is more important and fascinating for modern researchers in popular culture--the voices of the prostitutes themselves, which we hear from their songs, letters, and writings, collected and reproduced from both oral tradition and printed sources.

"By reclaiming the historical relationship between domesticity, housework, and domestic service in colonial Bengal, Men, Women, and Domestics contributes to a comprehensive understanding of domestic politics in the construction of national identity. Swapna M. Banerjee provides new insights into the Bengali middle-class perception of domestic workers, a subject that has not received much scholarly attention in social history writing in India." "Focusing upon stories of employers and servants, she demonstrates how caste-class formation among the predominantly Hindu Bengali middle class depended much upon its relationships with the subordinate social groups, of which domestic workers formed an integral part. Examining a wide variety of literary and official sources, the book establishes that the articulation of the Bengali middle-class self-identity was predicated on the definition of its women, who in turn, were carefully distinguished from members of lower socio-economic groups." "This book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asia history, gender studies, culture, and social anthropology, as well as the growing readership of cross-cultural and comparative studies on the institutions of family, domesticity, domestic labour, and related forms of servitude."--BOOK JACKET.

Focusing primarily on the politics of jute workers in Bengal, this study explores the interaction between workers' politics, nationalist movements, and the colonial state at various levels in the period between 1890 and 1937.

Preface: The present work examines the industrial experience of Bengal during the period 1900 to 1939 with particular emphasis on the role of the government as the main instrument for growth. For this work, available statistical material has been utilized for the sake of precision as well as to strengthen the qualitative evidence. The book contains eight chapters. While Chapter I builds up the case for industrial development, Chapter II examines in detail the industrial policy of the Bengal government in the light of its own limitations as a subordinate authority to the Government of India and that of Whitehall. Chapter III is an investigation of the labour market in Bengal with emphasis on the supply of labour to jute, tea and coal industries in relation to wages and conditions of work. In Chapter IV, I have examined the rates of profitability and security of industrial investments. In this chapter, I have also examined the financial institutions of the time and their role in the industrial development of the province. Chapter V points to some of the difficulties experienced by Indian entrepreneurs, and in the above light looks at their contribution to the larger industrial establishments of Bengal. The next two Chapters VI and VII examine the growth and development of the two biggest manufacturing industries of our period - jute and handloom cotton weaving industries. The concluding chapter is an estimate of the industrial progress made in the province during the period under review. This book is a slightly revised version of my Ph.D. thesis submitted to the University of London in 1978. In the preparation of this thesis, I have accumulated an enormous debt of gratitude to my Supervisor, Dr. K. N. Chaudhuri whose careful vigilance and timely intervention saved me from many factual errors and infelicities of style. My thanks are also due to Mr. I. B. Harrison, who went through some of my preliminary chapters during the absence of Dr Chaudhuri in 1975-76 and made many useful observations. I am also indebted to Dr. Sirajul Islam of Dhaka University for helping me with some necessary corrections. Here I take this opportunity also to express my deep gratitude to the UK Commonwealth Commission which offered me a scholarship for three years which enabled me to undertake this research work. Needless to say, without their financial help it would have been virtually impossible to pursue this course of studies. I also wish to thank the University of Dhaka for granting me the necessary study leave. There remains also a special group of people - without whose co-operation, patience and tolerance, this work would not have seen the light of day. In this group belong the library staff of the British Library (including the Newspaper Section at Colindale), Senate House Library, the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and particularly, the India Office Library and Records (including their Newspaper Section at the Bush House). I take this opportunity to thank Mr. J. Sims of the India Office Library and Records for being so helpful in tracking down apparently untraceable official documents. I wish to thank the staff of the Bangladesh Secretariat Record Room and of the Secretariat Library, Dhaka for extending me all possible facilities in carrying out my research work. Finally, I owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife, Lilly whose support and constant encouragement over these years was invaluable in completing this work. - A. Z. M. Iftikhar-ul-Awwal