Adivasis and non-Adivasis in the tea estates of Assam

 Fr. William Horo

The tea bush was discovered by Robert Bruce in 1823 in Assam. This year, Assam tea celebrates 200 years of its discovery. In fact, tea is one of the significant contributions the British have left in India. Within ten years of its discovery, in 1833, a tea garden was established by the British colonial government at Chabua. With the arrival of the fine-quality tea from this garden in 1938 in London, the commercial circle of the city took a keen interest in tea plantations in Assam. In 1840, a tea company known as the Assam Company was established. It took over the administration of the tea garden from the East India Company and started production of tea on a commercial basis in Assam.

Any production in the economy requires resources. The resources are known as factors of production in the economy. The economists divide the factors of production into four categories: land, labour, capital, and entrepreneurship, or management. For the tea production in Assam, the first and last two factors were available, but labour was scarce to find because it required a large labour force. Initially, attempts were made to recruit labourers from within Assam, but for various reasons, it did not work out. First of all, Assam was less populated then. According to one estimate, in 1853, the density of population per square mile in Lakhimpur and Sibsagar districts was only 9 and 30, respectively, and in 1872, it rose to 27 and 64, respectively. Secondly, the management wanted an unfree labour force with a particular mode of control and authority over its labouring population.

After much study and research on the problem of labour supply, the British planters located some places in present-day Jharkhand, such as Charisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, etc., that lay hundreds of miles away from Assam. The tribals of these places had lost their lands in the hands of Zamindars, Sahukars, Bania, and the colonial state. They were alienated from their land, and ironically or tragically, they had become landless labourers in their own land. They were harassed and dejected. They could hardly meet their subsistence requirements. Under these circumstances, the impoverished peasants and tribesmen wanted to escape from these places. In such a context, the planters, with the help of the government, turned to these areas for the recruitment of labourers. In the given situations, they were easily allured and deceived to come to Assam and work in the tea industry. They were told that it was enough to shake the trees in Assam, TE, and money would fall. Even the naked violence mechanism was employed to recruit labourers for Assam tea. There was no legal recruitment of labourers at all, writes Ranjit Das Gupta in his article, ‘From Peasants and Tribesmen to Plantation Workers’.

From among the labour-recruitment places mentioned above, Chotanagpur plateau, Jharkhand, was the most fertile place. According to J.B. Ganguly’s presented data, in 1884–85, 44.7 percent of the labour force for Assam tea was from Chotanagpur. By 1889, the proportion had increased to 50 percent. Chotanagpur was then inhabited by tribals as well as non-tribals. They were called Adivasis and Sadans. They are now known as Adivasi and Mulwasi, categorised as Schedule Tribes and Schedule Castes in our constitution. The scholars opine that there are some 32 scheduled tribes in Jharkhand. From among them, the prominent ones are the Mundas, the Hos, Santhals, Oraons, Kherias, Gonds, Baigas, Asurs, Birhors, Cheros, Karmalis, Banjaras, Bhumijs, Kharwars, Goraits, Chick Baraiks, Mahlis, Koras, Mal Paharias, Paharias, and others. Whereas, the schedule castes are Bhoktas, Rawatias, Kurmis, Dhanwars, Ghatwars, Malhors, Pradhans, Nagbanshis, Sunars, Tantis, Telis, Jhoras, Turis, Kumars, Lohars, etc.

They lived in perfect harmony, though they lived in their own village territories. Adivasis had their own distinct tribal languages. The Sadans spoke Sadani, which is also known as Sadri now. The Adivasis were mostly farmers and depended on the Sadans for their farming instruments, such as ploughshares, earthen pots, bamboo buckets, paella, and so on. In every tribal village, there would be some Sadan families like a Lohar, a Turi, and a Mochi to assist the tribals in their agriculture. In the process of their day-to-day interaction, tribals learned Sadri and vice versa. However, the tribal Sadri differs from the Sadan Sadri. By 1845, there were already some converts to Christianity among Adivasis in Jharkhand. Thus, in the period of migration to the Assam tea industry, both the Adivasis and the Sadans, including some Christian Adivasis, were recruited from Chotanagpur. In some TEs, the management tried to club them separately according to their tribes or castes in the Labour-Line houses. Munda-line in the Hejelbank TE, Dibrugarh, Urang-line, Khowang, Dibrugarh, etc., can be cited as examples.

It is a historical fact that the migrated labourers were exploited as slaves in the TE of Assam, both physically and psychologically, by their contractors, sirdars, babus, managers, and other taskmasters, under the protection of the government. Their physical exploitation included low wages and unhygienic living conditions. According to Amit Kumar Nag, a garden labourer earned Rs. 3 per month in 1883, whereas a village labourer received Rs. 7 for the same period of work. Besides, they were given corporal punishments for any silly reasons. If a mother was caught feeding her child in her breast, she was caned on her naked buttocks. This was meant to make them unfree labourers in the TEs. “The poor coolies led veritably the life of beasts of burden,” writes A.K. Nag in his paper ‘The Condition of Tea Garden Labourers in NE India and its Background. He further says, “They were treated like beasts,” both by the European managers and by Babus and their underlings.

The physical oppression and verbal abuse left deep wounds in their psyches. It installed in their brains a terrible fear-psychosis like that of Nazi concentration camps in the years 1933–39. The labourers were afraid to stay in the tea industry, and at the same time, they were more scared to run away from it, for if they were caught, they would be beaten to death. But the worst means employed to destroy them psychologically was to alienate them from their identity. They called them with derogatory names such as coolies, Bongalis, labours, Baganiyas, Chah-Jonojati, Cha-Jonogushti, Ona-Oxomiya, Notun Oxomiya, Chah-Patiya Jati, Mozdur, etc., and they identified them as such. To restore their identity, two Munda Adivasi leaders, namely, Simon Singh Horo and Santosh Kumar Topno, formed the Assam Chotanagpur Chatra Sanmilan (ACCS) in 1946 and became its president and secretary, respectively. It went on evolving thereafter, and finally, in 1976, it turned out to be the Assam Tea Tribe Students Association (ATTSA). Leaders like Dineswar Tassa, Barki Prasad Telenga, and others thought of replacing the derogatory identity of their people with a more refined term, the ‘tea-tribe’.

However, the search for their real identity did not stop there; it continued. The Adivasis and the non-Adivasis working in the TEs of Assam were officially called the Tea Tribe, but the Adivasis never accepted it at their gut level. They knew that they were not the tea tribe; they were the Adivasis. In spite of their nomenclature as a tea-tribe, Adivasis continued their fight for Schedule Tribe status, which they enjoyed all over India through their own associations such as the Adivasi Council of Assam, Adivasi Seva Samiti, and so on. Finally, in 1996, the All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam was formed, with Justin Lakra and Joseph Minj as its president and secretary, respectively. Thereafter, tension was brewing between ATTSA and AASAA. It came to a climax when Padma Shri Dulal Manki, a prominent Munda Adivasi Jhumur artist, made a controversial statement about his own Adivasi community in his recent interview on July 20, 2023, to the Vision News channel, saying, “We are Adivasis all over India, but in Assam, we are a tea tribe.”

In this background, one must remember that both the Adivasis (ST) and the non-Adivasis (SC) have been working in the TEs of Assam from its very inception. Both should be given their proper identity with their own rights and privileges. It is not enough for the Chief Minister of Assam to say that either tea-tribe or Adivasi is acceptable to the government, provided the community chooses one of them. The government of Assam should accept both the Adivasis and non-Adivasis and restore their lost identity.