The Tea Plantations

The tea industry in India is a powerful example of how colonial interests shaped early industrialisation. Unlike the industrial revolution in Britain, which grew from internal economic and social changes, India's modern industries were set up to serve the British Empire. The tea plantations show this clearly — not just in how the industry was organised, but in the starkly different lives of the labourers and the planters.

The beginnings of the tea industry

Tea was first planted in India in 1851. Most tea gardens were located in Assam, a region that was then sparsely populated. By 1903, the industry employed 4,79,000 permanent workers and 93,000 temporary workers. Because the tea gardens were often on uninhabited hillsides, there was a severe shortage of local labour. The bulk of the workforce had to be brought in from other provinces, hundreds of kilometres away.

How labourers were recruited

The planters were unwilling to offer the financial incentives or decent conditions that would have attracted workers voluntarily. Instead, they relied on fraud and coercion. The colonial government actively helped them by passing penal laws that made it easier to force people into the tea gardens.

The process was essentially one of deception and force. People were tricked or kidnapped from their home villages and sent to work in a strange land with an unhealthy climate and unfamiliar diseases. Once there, harsh measures were used to keep them from leaving. The colonial administrators were fully aware that these practices were unjust. They admitted that the laws of a colonised country did not have to follow the democratic norms that applied in Britain. The labourers were treated as a resource to be extracted, not as people with rights.

How the planters lived

The life of a British tea planter was one of extreme luxury, even in remote locations. Box 1.6 in the textbook, drawn from a fictional account by Phukan (2005), describes the world of Parbatpuri, a river port where planters and their wives (the "mems") would gather when a steamer docked.

• Their bungalows were huge and sprawling, set on sturdy wooden stilts to protect against wild animals.
• The houses were surrounded by velvety lawns and jewel-bright flower beds.
• A large army of trained servants — malis (gardeners), bawarchis (cooks), and bearers — maintained the household.
• Everything needed for a British lifestyle was imported by steamer: scouring powder, self-raising flour, safety pins, silverware, Nottingham lace tablecloths, bath salts, and even large cast-iron bathtubs. …