Plateaus to Foothills: The Historical Migration of Tea Garden Labourers from Chotanagpur to North-Eastern Tea Plantation Zones of India during the British Period

Abstract Introduced by British imperialists in the early nineteenth century, tea plantation in India initially suffered from labourer shortages. Far from these tea gardens, the Chotanagpur Plateau region was marked as the major catchment area for recruiting labourers in the period 1840–1940. Thousands of socio-economically weak and marginalised people from the Chotanagpur Plateau were recruited for the newly established tea gardens of North-East India. They were subjected to various forms of exploitation through coercive service conditions. They were confined to these tea plantations for generations, as they had little prospect of moving out of the chain of bondage. That colonial legacy of servitude is still perceptible through the penurious situations of present-day tea garden labourers. This article seeks to analyse the historical context of the major push and pull factors for such large-scale migration of labourers, as well as the forces that rendered them confined to the tea estates through the generations.