Sex, sahibs and bodies: women workers in the tea plantations of colonial Assam

ABSTRACT The recent developments in the evolution of ‘labor history’ as an academic field have injected new direction into theories of Gender, Sex and Bodies. Incidents of sexual violence and gender oppression have long been a brutal part of human history. In contemporary times, plantation societies are finally receiving critical attention as historians embark on gendered reappraisals of history, especially in countries like India. This article sets out to retrieve several accounts of sexual violence in the tea plantations of Assam during the colonial period. It also shows how the colonial masters (Sahibs) of the tea gardens have oppressed/sexualized the bodies of men/women workers in the tea gardens of Assam. An attempt is also made to reconstruct the forgotten stories of two tea-garden working-class women, Mangri Orang alias Malati Mem and Durgi Bhumij alias Durgi Mem, who were sexually abused by the European tea planters. From their objectification as sexualized bodies, the duo later showed their abilities of agency when they joined India’s freedom struggle and transformed into freedom fighters. The paper analyzes the connections between oppressed/sexualized bodies of women tea plantation workers and the colonial capitalist patriarchy in the history of Assam.