Relational labour, respectable labour: Public works construction and caste in colonial India

Description

Drawing on the famine records from late nineteenth century Punjab and North Western Provinces, this talk will contextualise the practices on famine public works construction within the trajectories of caste, gender and labour in South Asia. On famine public works, labourers, including a large number of women, worked in the construction of railways, roads, canals, and tanks in return for a subsistence wage. We will demonstrate that a relational definition of labour was central to the construction of caste respectability on famine works, thus opening up new ways to understand the relationship between caste, property and labour. Answering the question of who worked where and why, the talk will also show that women’s labour was constitutive of caste, and not merely its marker.

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Madhavi Jha is a postdoctoral fellow at Centre for South Asian Civilizations, Department of Historical Studies. Based on her PhD research, she is currently working on a book manuscript titled Women at Work: Women Labourers and Public Works Construction in Colonial India. Departing from the usual histories of construction work which present masculine experiences, this book offers insights gained from accounting for women labourers in a sector that remains the second largest employer of women in India today. Her research interests include labour, gender, infrastructural history, social stratification, and social and political movements. Her postdoctoral research explores the history of groups associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, like the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh.