Locating the Workers ‘Coolies’ in the Tea Plantations of Colonial Darjeeling: A Historical Retrospect

Abstract

The labourers are the pillars of every industry. In fact, tea plantation is a labour-intensive industry in which, most of the works is done manually by the labourers. At the same time, it largely depends on cheap labour procured from the migrant population, however, such process entails structural transformations in the economy and society enabling the evolution of waged labour culture guided by the capitalist industrial model. Such arrangements facilitate the creation of a class who works in the plantation in lieu of wage i.e., the coolies. The coolies in general sense, are a well-researched topic in academia. However, tea plantation workers of Darjeeling with different anecdotal experiences cannot be homogenised with those of other plantation industries and the concerned topic requires separate analysis. Thus, this paper intends to trace the historical processes in the making of coolies in tea plantations and their consequences of Darjeeling using different methodological tools.