One for the recondite
Shahid Alam is delighted by a tale of weavers
You want to know about the weavers of Bengal and their famed (in history and folklore) products during a particular period? Then go to Hameeda Hossain's The Company Weavers of Bengal: The East India Company and the Organization of Textile Production in Bengal 1750-1813. The title and subtitle are a dead giveaway of the period covered, although to get a detailed, illuminating and extensive description of the weavers (male and female) at work and their products, you have to pay close attention to almost every page of the close to two hundred pages of text and appendices. However, be warned, it is anything but light reading, one, in fact, that the serious scholar or aficionado of the subject matter would probably find the greatest interest in, and most out of, but the casual reader could find it evocative of tales heard from (often with suitable, and pleasantly excusable, embellishments) parents, grandparents, and other golden-agers of the glory and prowess of the Bengal weavers and textiles they magically wove and produced. But The Company Weavers of Bengal is also about murky tales of corruption and exploitation, committed by both Europeans and locals, and a vivid portrayal of what the British East Indian Company presaged: full-fledged colonialism engaged in by the government of Great Britain in what was easily the jewel in her imperial crown: India. The book is, in the author's words, "the outcome of my research for a PhD thesis at Oxford University." And, as might be expected of a doctoral dissertation carried out at a prestigious institution like Oxford, the research work has been carried out meticulously. Hameeda Hossain explains the study's objective, which is to take a look at "the changes which took place in the production of cotton textiles in Bengal during the latter half of the eighteenth century. It attempts to relate these to changes in the life and conditions of the artisans who supplied the East India Company's investment particularly from 1750 to 1813." Here, too, she competently manages to nail the variety of these changes, which actually tell a bleak story of steady decline represented by both a falling demand for cloth and a reduced capacity of production by the weavers. Hossain's finding that the value of cloth purchased from the Dhaka arangs "had fallen from Rs 2,850,000 in 1747 to Rs 1,401, 545 in 1797" is an eloquent testimony to the downfall in the fortunes of a once-prolific and productive community and their handiworks. And, what an assortment of textiles the Bengal weaver community (mostly from Dhaka) produced between 1750 and 1800: malmal, abrawahs, allaballi, addatis, terrandam, shabnam, sarkar ali, chikan, kashida, raing, and others, exported to places as far and diverse as London, mainland Europe, Manila, Borneo, Jeddah, and other places, the entirety likely to send one down the nostalgic lane of tales heard, or read, or, on the rare occasion, seen. Hossain homes in on the micro-level constraints to partly explain the causative factors of the decline. Strange as it might sound today, cotton piece-goods was Bengal's leading export item, including in the eighteenth century. The author provides figures to stress the importance of cotton textiles to Bengal's export industry: "in 1766 they formed 75.3 per cent of the (East India) Company's total exports; their proportion rose in 1772-3 to 80.4 per cent. Even as late as 1801-2 they provided 50 per cent of the total exports of the Company and the private merchants." And, yet, this flourishing and profitable industry started to decline as the eighteenth century was drawing to a close, in a large measure because the producers were getting enough of a raw deal from various quarters for them to gradually abandon their age-old profession. Hossain's findings explain the nature of this exploitation: "Although arang employees worked for a fixed salary which ranged in 1792 from Rs 5 for the junior employee to Rs 50 for the gumashta, it became customary to extract a fee for all transactions from weavers. Some of these changes were recognized as legitimate, such as the muhrir's fees for maintaining the weavers' accounts; the gumashtas also added a commission for brokerage. In addition the weaver often had to make illegitimate payments or bribes before his cloth could be selected. These invisible charges added to actual costs. In order to accommodate the demands of the intermediaries within the price structure dictated at the Factory, the weavers were forced to debase the quality of the product. In the long run, the financial interests of the arang employees interfered with the Company's procurement, which was not conducive to efficient commercial management. As long as their purpose was served by the siphoning off a part of the weavers' earnings, they made little effort to organize production more systematically or to improve the weavers' capacity to produce." Hossain spends much time on the weavers' lives, including the social and personal intricacies that shaped them. There were both Hindu and Muslim weavers, whose division of labour was based on gender, age and caste. From among a long list of such division and the attendant associations, complexities, and nuances of relationship, a few are cited here for providing a kaleidoscope on them. All classes of weaver women in Bengal were engaged in the part-time activity of yarn spinning. The Muslim weavers were divided into jamdani tantis and the inferior julahas. The Hindu weavers fell in a low category of nine castes known as nabasudras. They were classified into two major castes, the higher status tantis and the jugis. Hossain elaborates on some of their specification: "As a rule, caste panchayats regulated the social relationships within each caste. But it is not certain to what extent these relationships were a function of economic activities. If the formalized structure of the guilds was not applied uniformly in all castes, labour control and trade interests were maintained through various methods. The Dhaka rafugars were tightly organized and kept their skills strictly within the patrilineal family by refusing to teach their daughters' children, whilst other embroiderers such as chikandases, had no such inhibitions." The weavers were exploited, by both the locals and the foreign traders. However, their lack of organizational strength and bargaining power contributed significantly to their failure to evolve an effective social organization that could effectively fight for their interests. This, in spite of a community of interests that developed among the weavers and other artisans who supplied their goods for the export trade. Hossain believes that, among other reasons, the social divisions of labour that were heightened by the presence of intermediaries prevented a link-up between different occupational groups. As a result, "While different forms of resistance were adopted there was little possibility of the weavers being able to organize a collective response…. Some of them sought to escape the system by migrating from their villages and arangs or deserting their occupations." There! The beginning of a steep decline of a legendary profession was signaled. The East India Company comes in for some intense scrutiny by the author for doing essentially what it was in India for: to make money by exploiting the locals. Her conclusion in correlating the Company's rise in power and influence and the decline of the Bengal weavers is incisive: "It was not until the early nineteenth century that Bengal's textiles became redundant to the Company's commerce. Until then, as the export sector had evolved in response to overseas demand, it had provided a profitable commerce to European commercial enterprises. This had induced the East India Company to involve itself directly with the system of procurement and production. Yet this interaction did not contribute to the development of the production sector, for in the last decades of the eighteenth century it was unable to keep peace with expanding demand. It coincided with the period when the East India Company emerged as a major buyer of textiles and acquired political and administrative power. It was thus able to influence economic activity and to provide a centralized direction to trade and production. Yet in spite of its increased procurement targets, the results were a reduction in output, deteriorating conditions of producers and a decay of the arangs." The Company Weavers of Bengal will be a delight to history buffs and a trip back in time, providing readers an opportunity to ruminate over what Bengal once had, and then lost.
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