The Kurukh's Friend, Chapter 5 - Visitor's Novel

by Ratan Lal Basu
(Kolkata, India)

The Chinese Emperor Shen Nung, who always took boiled water as a hygienic precaution. During a summer in 2737 B. C, while he was taking rest in course of his routine visit of the distant regions of his country, his servants boiled water for him as usual and placed on his table for cooling. Suddenly dried leaves from a nearby bush, being carried by wind, fell into the boiling water and the leaves emitted a brown liquid into the water. The Emperor had a scientific bent of mind and he got interested in the new liquid, drank some and found it very refreshing.

Thereafter, the Emperor encouraged cultivation of the bush and drinking of the juice of its leaves as a refreshing medicine. Soon tea became a popular drink all over China and it was named by the letter ‘cha’ in the Chinese pictorial alphabet. Later on drinking of tea were spread to Japan and all the neighboring countries of China and soon it became a very popular beverage in those countries. It, however, remained unknown to Europe and the West till the sixteenth century. The Dutch navigators first introduced tea to Europe and soon it became a popular drink in Europe and America. The import of tea from China to the West was first the monopoly business of the Dutch East India Company but with the increasing demand of Chinese tea in Europe the British East India Company entered the business and gradually cornered the Dutch. It was the British who first introduced the modern methods for processing of tea from raw leaves. The word ‘cha’ was distorted first to thea and then to tea by the Europeans.

In 1834, the British Government did away with the East India Company's monopoly of the tea trade between China and Britain. So the Company decided to cultivate tea in India. They started planting tea by importing seeds of Camellia Sinensis from china. This variety, originating from the Yunnan province of China, is grown mainly in the hilly tracts and the first experimental tea garden by the Company was established in 1935 in Assam and later on the garden was sold to a managing agency house. Thereafter the private planters discovered that the best regions for cultivating this variety are situated at the Darjeeling hills and since then this variety of tea, manufacture in India, is known as Darjeeling tea and all its subcategories are very popular in the world for the excellent flavor. Soon indigenous varieties (Camellia Assamica) discovered in Assam forests were successfully cultivated in Assam.

The history of discovery of the Assam variety is like this.

Charles Bruce, an officer of East India Company was deputed to head an expedition to the land in-between India and Burma with the mission to assist local tribal chiefs get rid of Burmese slave traders, so that tribal refugees from the Indo-Burma region stop flooding into British India. After completion of the mission in 1823, he was presented a sapling of a plant by Bisa Roja the chief of the Singpho tribe. The plant was revered by the tribal people as being both medicinally and spiritually beneficial. Upon his return Charles Bruce presented the sapling to the botanical laboratory in Calcutta but none could recognize the plant as the indigenous tea plant growing in jungles of Assam. Only in 1935 the lab reported that it was tea plant and the East India Company took initiative to bring seeds and saplings to be planted in the plains, the lands suitable for this variety.

All though tea plantation began in India during the mid nineteenth century it did not make much progress before 1850s and after 1852 many new tea gardens were coming up and plantation of tea spread to the Duars and Terai regions of North Bengal, Darjeeling hills, and Nilgiris and other areas of South India.

Soon there was a craze for tea plantation and British managing agency houses, which had made money in other areas of business, started entering tea plantation during the 1860s leading to the crisis of 1866 owing to supply overstepping demand. A number of concerns failed during the crisis but recovery began since 1871 and there was steady expansion both in production and export since then. Better methods of processing were innovated during this period of prosperity and by the end of the 19th century Indian tea exports successfully drove out Chinese tea from the markets of U.K. However, rapid expansion led to labor shortage and laborers had to be imported from the tribal areas.

Till 1860 the local labor supply had been sufficient for the needs of the tea gardens. But thereafter there was rapid growth of tea industry and local labor supply could not meet the increased demand. So coolies had to be imported from outside. These coolies were generally recruited at this time through the agency of contractors of labor in Calcutta. The price of labor had risen very high and it was highly profitable for the labor contractors to recruit all kinds of coolies from among the tribal people of Chhotanagpur and send them to North Bengal and Assam.

The major agents of labor supply were the large managing houses of Calcutta who employed local agents and contractors to conscript labor. The business was highly rewarding and the famous managing agency houses like Duncan Brothers & Company, Williamson Magor & Company, Alex Lawrie & Company, Davenport & Company, Andrew Yule & Company, Shaw Wallace & Company, Jardine, Skinner & Company and James Finlay & Company entered the labor supply business. Later on the methods of recruitment was through the agents called garden sardars, sent by individual employers to the houses of the tribals and recruit them directly for their respective gardens.

The contractors and agents (arkathis), to save cost, adopted worst possible methods of transportation and a large proportion of these coolies died in course of the journey. The contractors and agents lured the tribals through false assurance of bright prospects in the tea gardens and when the coolies reached the gardens, they could realize that they had been deceived and had become virtual serfs. They had to give their thumb impressions on the contract form before leaving their native place and there were legal provisions (Workmen’s Breach of Contract Act, 1859) that if a collie, accepting the contract, runs away or refuses to work, he could be arrested and brought back to the garden or imprisoned. Moreover there were the fears of illegal punishments by the goons of the planters. In each garden there were chowkidars to keep strict watch on the laborers so that they could not leave the gardens and to prevent any outsider to enter the coolie lines. There was no question of forming trade unions.