Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India Tirthankar Roy CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India The majority of manufacturing workers in South Asia are employed in industries that rely on manual labour and craft skills. Some of these industries have existed for centuries and survived great changes in consumption and technology over the last 150 years. In earlier studies, historians of the region focused on mechanized rather than craft industries, arguing that traditional manufacturing was destroyed or devitalized during the colonial period, and that `modern' industry is substantially different. Exploring new material from research into ®ve traditional industries, Tirthankar Roy's book contests these notions, demonstrating that, while traditional industry did evolve during the Industrial Revolution, these transformations had a positive rather than a destructive effect on manufacturing generally. In fact, the book suggests, several major industries in post-independence India were shaped by such transformations. Tirthankar Roy is Associate Professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Bombay. His recent publications include Artisans and Industrialization: Indian Weaving in the Twentieth Century (1993). Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society 5 Editorial board C. A. BAYLY Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St Catharine's College RAJNARAYAN CHANDAVARKAR Fellow of Trinity College and Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge GORDON JOHNSON President of Wolfson College, and Director, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society will publish monographs on the history and anthropology of modern India. In addition to its primary scholarly focus, the series will also include work of an interdisciplinary nature which will contribute to contemporary social and cultural debates about Indian history and society. In this way, the series will further the general development of historical and anthropological knowledge and attract a wider readership than that concerned with India alone. 1 C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780±1880 0 521 57085 9 (hardback) 0 521 66360 1 (paperback) 2 Ian Copland, The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917±1947 0 521 57179 0 3 Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry 0 521 45363 1 4 Sumit Guha, Environment and Ethnicity in India 1200±1991 0 521 64078 4 Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India Tirthankar Roy PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING) FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia http://www.cambridge.org © Tirthankar Roy 1999 This edition © Tirthankar Roy 2003 First published in printed format 1999 A catalogue record for the original printed book is available from the British Library and from the Library of Congress Original ISBN 0 521 65012 7 hardback ISBN 0 511 01748 0 virtual (netLibrary Edition) Contents List of illustrations page vi List of maps vii List of tables viii Acknowledgments x 1 Introduction 1 2 Markets and organization 12 3 Handloom weaving 61 4 Gold thread ( jari)99 5 Brassware 128 6 Leather 155 7 Carpets 197 8 Conclusion 231 References 236 Index 250 v Illustrations 3.1 Pit loom in western India, c.1950 page 76 (Hamilton Studio, Bombay) 3.2 Frame loom in western India, c.1950 77 (Hamilton Studio, Bombay) 4.1 Tinsel workers, undated (possibly 1920s) 101 (old postcard, collection of University of Mumbai) 4.2 Jari weavers in Surat, c.1950 121 (Hamilton Studio, Bombay) 4.3 Jari manufacture by mechanized process, c.1950 122 (Hamilton Studio, Bombay) 6.1 Tanning house, Cawnpore Tannery, c.1915 178 (Playne, Bombay Presidency) 6.2 Skin-drying and scaling yard, M. S. A. Rahman's 179 export ®rm, Amritsar, c.1915 (Playne, Bombay Presidency) 6.3 Selecting hides, Fatehmahomed Dostmahomed's export 180 ®rm, Amritsar, c.1915 (Playne, Bombay Presidency) 6.4 Mochi workshop, central India, c.1900 191 (Russel and Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes) 7.1 Loom operated by young apprentices, Shaikh Gulam 216 Hussun's factory, Amritsar, c.1915 (Playne, Bombay Presidency) vi Maps 1.1 India in 1939 page 2 3.1 Textile centres, c.1940 62 5.1 Brassware centres, c. 1940 129 6.1 Tanning and leather manufacturing centres, c.1940 156 vii Tables 2.1 Male workers in industry page 17 3.1 Approximate monthly earnings of weavers, 1925±1927 67 3.2 Segmentation of handlooms by ®neness of cotton yarn 78 3.3 Distribution of coarse weaving, 1940 81 3.4 Import of silk yarn and cloth, 1901±1938 96 4.1 Production and employment in the jari industry at Surat 120 6.1 Export of hides and skins by sea, 1890±1939 165 6.2 Employment in leather, 1901±1931 170 6.3 Production of kips in India, 1945 185 7.1 Export of carpets and rugs by sea from India, 1901±1938 209 viii To Sudakshina Acknowledgments Since this book was taken up, I have been a frequent visitor at the library of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, to use its rich collection on small-scale and traditional industry. I would like to thank the library staff and the institute faculty, especially Smriti Mukherji, for their help during these visits. In addition to the Gokhale Institute, I have worked in a number of other libraries, of which the National Library at Calcutta, the Royal Commonwealth Society collection at Cambridge, and the India Of®ce at London have been especially useful. Among those who read the draft and helped improve its quality, I should mention ®rst of all the referees of the Cambridge University Press. Dharma Kumar read and edited an earlier version of chapter 6, which was published in the Indian Economic and Social History Review. She has also encouraged me in this line of work from long before the idea of this book took shape. Association with Douglas Haynes has bene®ted this work, especially on the interpretation of and sources for textile history. A fellowship at Cambridge in 1996 gave me access to some of the sources available in the UK, and the right environment to complete the ®rst draft of the book. I am grateful to the Charles Wallace India Trust for the fellowship, and to Gordon Johnson, Raj Chanda- varkar and C. A. Bayly for making my stay a productive and pleasant one. Key arguments of the book were presented in four seminars. Two of these were at the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, and one each at the Madras Institute of Development Studies and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Bombay. Each seminar was an occasion to rethink the main ideas and write them up with more clarity than before. A summary of some of the ideas appeared in an article called `Music as Artisan Tradition' in the Contributions to Indian Sociology. Sections in the book dealing with the same themes bene®ted from comments and editorial suggestions received from the journal. My employer institution, the Indira Gandhi Institute of Develop- ment Research, generously supported my local travel and other needs connected with the work, for which I am grateful to the Director, Kirit x Acknowledgments xi Parikh, and the Acting Director, Jyoti Parikh. Members of Dastkar supplied some of their ®eld data, which are used in chapter 7. For the photographs, I am obliged to the Librarian of the University of Mumbai (Fort campus), Messrs Mitter Bedi and Hamilton Studio (Bombay), Rusheed Wadia, and A. K. Banerji, and for the maps to Prasad Gogate. Sudakshina Roy saw me through the ®nal stages of typescript preparation. 1 Introduction The questions Two sets of problems motivated this study on traditional industry, or the artisans,1 in colonial India. The ®rst arises in South Asian historio- graphy, and the second in comparative development. The experience of the artisan has long been used to illustrate opinions about the impact of British rule on the economy of India and, therefore, has been a controversial topic in Indian historiography. The evidence on the artisan, however, is ambiguous. There are too many variations by region, industry and period to permit easy or uniform generalizations. The question remains: can a suf®ciently general and convincing account of the artisanate be found? The book is primarily an attempt to answer this question. The answer proposed here leads to a desire to see South Asia in a larger context. The book suggests that traditional industry modernized and played a creative role in Indian industrialization. That traditional industry can play such a role is a familiar theme in the economic and social history of early modern Europe and prewar East Asia. A question naturally follows: which elements in the South Asian story are special to the region, and which shared with industrialization in general? The period of the study is, roughly, from the 1870s to the 1930s. Occasionally, more recent trends will be cited for comparison. The raw material consists of descriptions of industries in which artisan enterprise was signi®cant in this period, and remained so beyond the period. There are ®ve such studies, on handloom weaving, leather, brassware, carpets, and gold thread (jari). Two of these industries, handloom weaving and jari, were deeply in¯uenced by exposure to imported substitutes. 1 In this study, the term `artisan' or `traditional industry' refers to industries that combine three loosely de®ned features: tool-based technology, non-corporate organization, and precolonial origin. In some contexts, `artisanal' may refer to industries which are today run with electric power, but have artisanal origins, and re¯ect the connection in aspects of industrial organization.