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                                        Family and Work


The coal industry in the Jharia coalfield had started working from the 
decade of the 1890s. The laboring masses, in an increasing number, had begun 
pouring for colliery work from different parts of South Asia. The Mazdoors 
who initially joined colliery came mainly from the contiguous areas and 
neighbouring districts.  The males, females, and children of these families 
worked together in colliery. This was true by and large for both underground 
and surface works.
In my first chapter, I have discussed the nature of streams of mining 
classes taking up colliery work between 1890’s and 1970’s. From the early 
years of the decade the 1900’s, the migration began to flow from relatively 
distant areas into the colliery work . They also joined colliery largely as 
‘Family Mazdoors’. Some of them were, though, single male workers. This 
category of labour swelled in numbers during the boom period of coal trade 
(1915-19) and its aftermath .
The mining community lived in three kinds of homes in the coalfield. One- 
those miners who lived in their Bustees in the nearby mines. Second, those 
who lived in the Dhowrahs obtained from the Company. Third those who lived 
in self-built huts of mud and straw. The second and third types of homes 
constituted the dominant form of the colliery bastis/pada/neighborhoods and 
grew around each colliery. This relocation around collieries meant the 
‘re-organisation of their lives’. They had to cope with the ‘colliery 
working and living contexts’ (at the work place and the Dhowrahs).  For 
instance, the mining people who worked in a “family gang”, had to habituate 
to the situation when women workers were withdrawn from underground work 
from the decade of the 1920’s onwards . In reaction there was an exodus from 
collieries. Some miners protested. Similarly, Mazdoors’ families had to 
struggle and devise ways for sustaining the combination between task of 
production and reproduction (of physique as well as generation). While, the 
industrial regime worked to redesign the organisation of their lives and 
scope of familial- social obligation, workers sought to maintain their own 
conception of family life.
This chapter is intended to study the following set of questions. What was 
the form of organisation of ‘socio-familial relation’ of mazdoors? How did 
they apprehend the ‘socio-familial time’? In what ways and, how far the 
labour/time regime in the mines affected the organisation of mazdoors’ 
socio-familial relation? How did mining community react to the challenges?

                   I

What do I understand by the term ‘family’? We have at least two sets of well 
acknowledged definitions of ‘Family’.
1.	A group of people tied with each other along the blood- line and sharing 
one household.
2.	A group of people who share a marital and generational bond between each 
other. And, they are a part of a household economy.
I see some limitations in these conceptions. They heavily emphasize on  
‘biological ties’ & ‘legal relation’, and household economy. In contrast, a 
family of a group of people may exist, whose members feel a sense of 
ties/attachment with each other. And the feeling is both substantial and 
concrete. I have deployed this meaning/ understanding of a family in the 
subsequent analysis.
              II

There was more than one form of ‘social- familial organisation’ amongst the 
colliers. [The latter lived and conceived those organisation at different 
levels]. One form of socio-familial organisation was a ‘family gang’. They 
lived in Dhowrahs, allotted to them by companies. The Santhals from 
Hazaribagh & Santhal Pargana, the Bauris from Burdwan, Bakura & Manbhum, the 
Rajwars from Manbhum, the Bhuiyans from Monghyr worked in family gangs . 
These families included the husband, the wife, the children, and even some 
other kith & kin.
But, some of the family miners preferred to live in their houses in bastis, 
and did not live in Dhowrahs. They were predominantly the Santhal of nearby 
areas/bastis.  They lived there with their kith of the same social group. At 
this time members of a social group known as Mahto also lived in those 
bastis. Bishu Mahto reported “people were simple and honest – the original 
inhabitants- the Santhals and Mahtos lived together amicably…almost like 
members of the same family” . There is, hence, a notion of a ‘bastis family’
Dhowrahs were very crowded from the early years of mining. On an average 
around one dozen people lived in a small room.  The workers preferred to 
live with fellow workers of their kith or same caste/ territory/  jila 
(district)/ilaka/gaon- group . I would call these forms of social 
organisation as a communitarian-family. Some of them were socio-familial 
group, which did not maintain regular links to the kin living in their 
bastis of origin. The proportion of this form of labour was very small till 
the 1920’s. It was around 15% of the total work force .
An overwhelming majority of miners maintained their contact with their kin 
and homes in villages. They were located within an ‘extended family’. Chitra 
Joshi has shown largely similar phenomena in the case of Kanpur textile 
workers.  These were Mazdoors from both adjacent and distant areas. The 
single male workers, who constituted a large section of the miners by 
1920’s, were largely of this category. Some of them had to bring their 
female-folks. It was done for obtaining work of malcuttas, a job with better 
pay . A great number of male workers could not bring their female 
counterparts and children.  They preferred to work as a trammer, 
timber-mistri and other surface works, where a family gang did not work. 
They lived in dhowrahs, in which a group of single male workers lived. They 
preferred a fellow worker of own kith & kin, of the same Gaon/ elaka 
(socio-cultural territory, and not essentially administrative one).
Over time the para/ dhowrahs developed along the line of caste/ elaka 
community. We hear of Bhuiya Dhowrahs, Bauri, Paschima Dhowrahs etc. I want 
to explore whether employers planned such type of housing/ spatial 
arrangements. This form of configuration of socio-familial relationship led 
the formation of different cohesive circles of miners.
This socio-familial relation was manifest even at the workplace. A sizeable 
number of miners worked belowground as a family gang. They were not always 
linked to each other through marital and parental ties.  The pairs of 
malcuttas and loaders of family gangs contained the males and the females of 
broad socio- familial groupings. Workers preferred to be paired with the 
colliers of their kin/ caste/ tribe/bastis/elaka.  The Kamins, working 
belowground in the 1910’s and 1920’s, declined to work along side the male 
workers other, than the members of their ‘socio- familial groupings’. The 
Kamins of the social group like, the Santhals, the Rajwars, the Mahtos, the 
Bhuiyans, the Bilaspuris, some of the Bauris, etc refused to accompany 
Paschima male miners, as loaders.

                                                                  III

Case study: ‘Household family majdoors’ were employed in two ways in 
colliery works. One, they worked belowground in form of family gangs. Second 
those families whose members worked at surface. Male members worked as 
malcuttas and female members as loaders in the case of belowground work.
They slogged to carry the combined tasks of production and reproduction even 
at the colliery workplace. They took their babies and elder children there. 
The latter members also worked as loaders along side of their parents. The 
attempts of combining production and reproduction tasks seem took some time 
out from work. But, mining families had never seen it in that way. For them 
those tasks were organically associated . L.Barnens in her fieldwork noted 
that the women workers often narrated with joy ‘the work they did below 
ground, the people they worked with, members of their gang- and how they 
used to sing and work’. Mostly, kamins used to revert back to their 
village-homes during the period of child bearing and rearing (initial years 
of it). Santhal women loaders interviewed in the later 1920’revealed that 
“they often absented themselves for 6 months or one year at the time of 
childbirth. After this, they could return to the mines &take up employment 
again”.  Thus, Kamins could combine production & reproduction /familial 
tasks in the collieries at this time, as in the pre colliery days.  While’ 
male members could largely continue their work. It has been the conventional 
conception that industrial economy created disjunction between the temporal 
organisation of productive task and reproductive/ familial –obligations at 
the work. In the case of Jharia collieries the miners strove for combinely 
carrying on both “tasks”.


              They were subject to the process of regidification of labour 
regime/work regime during second half of the decade of the 1920’s.  These 
took place especially in big mines (European owned). These mines had gone 
through the progression of investment in technological capital. Colliery 
owners wanted quick and greater return from their investment in 
technological upgradation, so they also wanted their miners to use maximally 
those machines and organization of production. Mazdoors, thus, witnessed and 
experienced the increasing demand from their employers for  ‘greater 
regularity’ at work and greater attention towards it.  This resulted in 
intensification of work for respective miners.
This change (business strategy) influenced and was manifest on the 
employers’ talks/discourses of time routine. Employers, managers and 
supervisory authorities, towards the late 1920s, began to bemoan 
vociferously against the ostensible ‘irregular, irrational and 
non-disciplined/non-efficient working pattern’ of Indian miners. From 1925 
onwards CIMAR (D.P.Denman), European and big colliery owners agreed-in 
contrast to their position in previous years-“that women at present keep 
cost up by hampering the work. They are very largely in the way and prevent 
speeding up. They lead to difficulties about discipline and that sort of 
thing reduces output”.


Now, the Kamins suffered from their forceful gradual removal from 
belowground works.  It had begun to take place even before the declaration 
of act of 1929 (seeking the withdrawal of Kamins from belowground). From 
1929-30 onwards their withdrawal increased, particularly in those big 
collieries favoring such replacement or/and retrenchment. Some collieries 
tended to provide works at surface to some withdrawal Kamins. It was 
allotted according to the pressing need of work to Kamins. In practice, the 
munshi authorized for allotting such work demanded sexual favour from 
respective Kamins.

                                                                 IV


How did family gangs experience and cope with the attempts by mine owners to 
intensify labour? Intensification disrupted their household-familial 
organisation of their lives. For male counterparts production and 
reproduction obligations became unmanageable. It could have happened due to 
more than one reason. They could hardly afford the non-working/non-earning 
members in existing economy of households. An average real earning of miners 
was inadequate even to the minimum basic subsistence needs of mining 
household-family . Employers, stuck with mercantilist labour economy, had 
been far short of paying ‘family-wage’ in the Jharia coalfield.  There was a 
practice of working together between these labouring poor for their 
sustenance . The male and female members of those families used to share 
household-familial tasks at homes. One old women worker reported to L.Barnes 
that after returning back from work both she and her husband used to jointly 
do house works such as, cooking, child-caring etc.  Theme of joint work 
recurs from their joyful memories of working careers. It is also mentioned 
during the debate on the withdrawal of Kamins participants.  Some old Kamins 
informed me in Dubaree colliery that these Kamins also worked to build their 
own houses of mud and straw. Inadequacy of Dhowrahs and of sharing rooms 
with sometimes more than dozen of members of a socio- family was a problem 
acutely felt by them.

Mining community adopted more than one strategy to cope with the situation, 
and they responded in multifarious ways. They now evolved new tactics. The 
Kamins hid their children in mines, when white men visited, and left ‘older’ 
ones in the care of family members or other retired/old women in Dhowrahs, 
[after the ban on child labour (below 13 years) in 1923].  They, thus, 
contrived to come to term with the regimenting work- discipline. I would 
like to explore further, how colliers came to terms with the new rules and 
regulations?
Yet, some Kamins could not successfully fight the gradual process of 
marginalisation. [The conservative philanthropists, scholars, the 
“masculine”- labour economy of the employers and the State acted in 
collusion against the rights of the Kamins to employment]. One ‘proletariat 
philanthropist’ – Kamini Roy – advocated the voice of such Kamins, and also 
demanded maternity benefit. Some hundreds of family Majdoors remonstrated. 
In 1930-31 several pairs of Malcuttas and loaders -from Santhals, Bauris and 
Bilaspuris- social groups in particular, left the coalmines in search of 
works, in the places they could work together.  In this context some of them 
concentrated themselves in quarry works in coalfield. Thousand of males and 
females Mazdoors organised a protest- demonstration in 1934 in Jamadoba.

[I will discuss the significance of this demonstration for the examination 
of domestic economy.
I would like to explore how workers came to terms with the new rules and 
regulations.]
[One may examine a question: why the mining class could not come to resist 
collectively that onslaught?]

The existing formal labour unions were not opposed to that. In fact, they 
voiced in favour of 1929 Act . Some of the participants of discussion such 
as, Royal Commission on Labour- recommended wage increase otherwise, poor 
miners might get away from colliery works. A trade union leader from second 
half of 1930’s demanded for ‘family wages’ to compensate the loss of income 
to miners- families. It became one of the core demands of labour unions, in 
response to withdrawal of Kamins. This in some way helped to de-prioritise 
the demands/voices of ‘family-miners’.
But, family majdoors struggled to get scope for continuing wage works. They 
steeped, in some collieries, to foster a little reprieving practice. The 
kamins who were lay-off could get work at surface for a few days in a week. 
Here, they had to sometime suffer from the sexual victimisation by Munshi 
responsible for distribution of works. B L E C in 1938, noted that munshi 
used to ask for sexual favour from Kamins in return of award of regular 
employment. There were a higher number of job seekers including women and 
men. Munshis tended to exploit this situation . Every one could not grease 
the palm of munshis. Some Kamins from Bauri social-group in particular 
succeeded in obtaining their ends by serving / making such nexus . The 
formation of such rapport did not essentially disrupt their 
household-familial relation. It in some cases led the making of a 
household-familial relation between those of munshi and Kamins. Illyas Ahmad 
Gaddi discusses such cases of (live-in) in his novel ‘Fire Area’. This was 
also expressed in the folk-tales of a Kamins, I have quoted in chapter one 
(p-5-6, section-I). It is sometime portrayed in terms of intensified 
practice of relation of prostitution in the Jharia coalfield.  I would, 
rather like to suggest that one needs to make distinction between operation 
of ‘socio-familial’ relation, and, of prostitution. The former was beckoned 
aiming to make earning through tasks of actual production.

Now, family miners needed to assert them in one more way. The Kamins had to 
show their regular presence at work. It required a re-designing of relation 
between work and the time of child bearing and rearing. To practice the old 
form of its organisation i.e. to reverting to gaon for a period of ½ to1 
year was ‘costlier’. In this situation those who could secure jobs started 
increasing demand for maternity benefits.


                                                                         V
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.
   this is sent by dhiraj kumar nite. i would like to invite your critical 
comments & suggestions. i have sent drafts on my research project previously 
on dak at sarai.net. i came to know just today that postings are invited on 
reader at sarai.net.

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