Abstract
The tea plantations of Assam, which constitute the country’s 53.97 per cent tea area, 49 per cent tea worker population, and 52.04 per cent tea production, occupy an important place in the economy, culture and polity of the state. The onset of tea plantations during British colonial rule has not only changed the landscape of the upper Brahmaputra valley through green tea bushes being nourished by tea tribes from east-central India, but also evolved a distinct tea culture. Although formation of small tea growers has added a new dimension to the growth of tea industry of Assam in recent times, the culture that emerged due to the long continued interaction of British planters, tea worker tribes and indigenous Assamese is well reflected in the language, way of life, work culture, food habits and many other socio-cultural practices in most of the large tea estates in the state. In fact, the impact of tea culture is so penetrative that it has been able to bring about development in the form of tea festival, tea tourism, tea folk songs and dances, etc. in the state. An attempt is made in this paper to explore the role of tea plantation and the people associated with it to the socio-cultural transformation of Assam based on both secondary data and primary data through field study. The primary data have been collected from selected tea estates, tea garden worker colonies, tea-tribe villages and urban dwellers.
Highlights
Socio-cultural transformation is a highly complex, dynamic and universal process
After the discovery of tea in Assam in 1823 by Robert Bruce and the success of the first experimental tea estate in Chabua, Dibrugarh, there was a tremendous growth of the tea industry in Assam during the last three decades of the 19th century due to the continuing immigration of cheap labour force, rising demand of British for Indian tea, easy availability of large tracts of cheap virgin lands due to Wasteland Rules1 and opening up of auction centres in different parts of India
The family relations of the tea tribe women workers are not always cordial as occasional family quarrels with physical assaults on them by their drunken husbands and sons is a regular feature of the tea garden colony line as men generally spend a substantial amount of their earning at the cost of their family’s needs on country liquor (Joseph, 2009; Roy, 2005). These findings bear resonance to the earlier studies where these tea garden women like their Assamese counterparts and women living in other parts of the world suffer from domestic violence mainly because of poverty and existent patriarchal norms (Vauquline, 2015; ; Das et al, 2015; 2016).the findings reveal that, majority of the tea tribes suffer from indebtedness mostly due to insufficient income and excessive expenditure habits
Summary
Socio-cultural transformation is a highly complex, dynamic and universal process. The change may be termed as endogenous, if the force enables from within the social structure or exogenous, if they arise due to forces impinging on society from outside. The most significant of all these phenomena is the culture that emerged due to the long continued socio-cultural exchange, interactions and assimilations between the British planters, the indigenous Assamese society and the tea tribes. These can be well interpreted in the tea drinking habits and food habits, language, way of life, work culture, and many other socio-cultural practices in most of the large tea estates in the state. Taking these backgrounds into account, this study is taken up to present the origin and growth of tea plantations in Assam, to understand their socio-cultural transformation with regard to tea drinking pattern, dietary system and to analyse the transformation and diffusion of the tea workers’ community in the state and their relationships with greater Assamese society
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