கவனிக்க: இந்த மின்னூலைத் தனிப்பட்ட வாசிப்பு, உசாத்துணைத் தேவைகளுக்கு மட்டுமே பயன்படுத்தலாம். வேறு பயன்பாடுகளுக்கு ஆசிரியரின்/பதிப்புரிமையாளரின் அனுமதி பெறப்பட வேண்டும்.
இது கூகிள் எழுத்துணரியால் தானியக்கமாக உருவாக்கப்பட்ட கோப்பு. இந்த மின்னூல் மெய்ப்புப் பார்க்கப்படவில்லை.
இந்தப் படைப்பின் நூலகப் பக்கத்தினை பார்வையிட பின்வரும் இணைப்புக்குச் செல்லவும்: Reviews

Page 2 Publish Explaining the nature of the birth of Capital, Marx a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital Com blood and dirt. in a way, SO does tea. Perhaps, in relation to tea, the expropriation of the of their means of production into capital, did not ti in England. It may be that the expropriation assume Yet, the content seems to be the very same - Vic it is through Marx that we learn the capabilities of the the year 1769 and 1770 the British had manufactu refusing to sell it again except at a fabulous price. over a million people had died of hunger, the reas Quoting one of the lists laid before Parliament by thi was able to enrich itself by 6,000,000 pounds betw from the Indians. The gradual decomposition of the pre-existing syste and torture, set the stage for a new process of fic Mr. Nadesan lucidly proceeds to record the violenc system and the subsequent violence which continue the persistence of violence against labour has been the Plantation economy. The infamous Citizenship Act, the repatriation proces: and Sri Lankan Governments on plantation labour, (particularly the program of 1981 which was notab these events and process need to be viewed in t The author also records the birth and evolution O revolt which could have easily identified itself with the if not for the prejudices of the petti-bourgeois, wh of social chauvinism in a somewhat veild form po: "fifth-columnist" approaches which have attempted i of the plantation economy. It is in this context it has become imperative to pres the true account of the people's history of the Ta it is to the credit of Mr. Nadesan that he provides u as a whole. His presentation of this history seems Subject, perhaps due to the fact that the different c approaches towards the plantation system. Nandalala Publishers Hatton, Sri Lanka r’S NOlte wrote that if money had come into this world with es dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with labouring poor and the corresponding transformation ke place in terms of "enclosures", as was the case d different forms in the case of Plantation economies. ylence. British in creating famines. He records that between red a famine in India by buying up all the rice and In the province of Orissa alone, in the year of 1866, on being the exclusive trade monoply of the British. e East India Company, Marx shows how the company een the years 1757 and 1766 by way of gifts alone m, coupled with the combined systems of Ryotwary orced migration of the rural poor. :e which had acompanied the birth of the Plantation s to persist upto the present day. We may note that a major strategic aspect of preserving and maintaining s and the related laws, the Agreements between Indian the carnages that took place between 1977 - 1983 ly confined to certain specific plantation areas) - all hat light. the revolt occurred within the plantation system, a struggles of other expropriated classes of this country, ch class, at many instances displayed and element sing as "economic" and "market" theories as well as a profoundly erroneous manner to explain the crisis ent before other expropriated classes of this country, mil people of the plantations. a fair account of the history of the plantation system to differ in essence from many other studies on this asses of our society have different perspectives and

Page 3 A Comprehens - Radhika COC Mr. S. Nadesan's book A History of the Up-Country of its subject and an important contribution to the sch is rarely written which concerns the poor and the a group of Indian scholars who have brought this questi history" which is an attempt to remedy this by writin marginalised by the historic process. Mr. Nadesan's book is an attempt to write such a people. As Kumari Jayawardena Writes in her introd plantation sector, there have been a very few whic his attempt to write this history from the viewpoint in a pioneer and much needed effort to fill the ga Mr. Nadesan, who grew up on a British managed e. He was secretary of the Ceylon Students Associat a student, a member of the Democratic Workers Cor WOrkers Union Of Which he is President. He is als Trade Union Committee of 16 trade unions which their demands. Mr. Nadesan's book begins with a description of th writes, "British rule in India had incidentally create nothing other than their labour power to sell. India only to the African continent." Out of this labour mark who were brought to Sri Lanka initially to work for to the tea plantations. The British system also introduced what Nadesan of recruitment and why the system acted as a ma could never quit the system because they were ir The Kangany himself was indebted and under obli "chain slavery " as Mr. Nadesan calls it kept the pl Mr. Nadesan chronicles in detail the route of plar the amount of hardship and deaths suffered by th in the plantations. The early route via Mannar and of the number that perished along the way. Thoug part of academic descriptions, Mr. Nadesan gives that existed in the system. Though in the twentie creation of the Ceylon Labour Commission, the Ind still much misery in what was now come to be For Mr. Nadesan, one of the Central Concerns of his Mr. Nadesan himself was stateless unitil 1969. Mr. sive Treatment )maraswamy — People in Sri Lanka is a comprehensive treatment holarship in ethnic studies. It is often said that history inderprivileged in society. Recently there have been on into focus by introducing a subject called "sub-altern g history from the viewpoint of those who have been history from the viewpoint of the Up-Country Tamil uction, though there has been a lot of books on the :h record the struggles of the plantation workers. In of the workers, Mr. S. Nadesan has been involved p in historical research. state has been an organiser from the very beginning. ion in the United Kingdom at the time that he was gress and a founder member of the United Plantation o the main guiding spirit behind the Joint Plantation has recently led plantation workers in struggle over e Colonial legacy which is the plantation system. He d a mass of dispossessed people who had little or was transformed into a great labour market second (et came the forefathers of the up-country Tamil people the Coffee plantations but later to offer their labour called the "notorious Kangany system" as a means jor block on the mobility of the worker. The workers debted to the Kangany and through him the estate. gation to the plantation management. This system of antation management on a stable and lucrative mode. tation labour, the changes in immigration policy and e plantation workers in their trek toward employment the North Road was called the Death Road because h many have written about the recruitment policy as is a strong sense of the suffering and the exploitation th century, the system was more organized with the O-Ceylon Railway and the Mandapam camp there was (nown as the "cooly trade". book is the question of citizenship and statelessness. Nadesan is convinced that even today the provisions

Page 4 on citizenship are still discriminatory. He argues tha Criminatory against registered citizens. He argues that between citizenship by registration and citizenship by which claims that existing laws even if they are incons this has not been challenged in a court of law the His arguments do not only pursue the legal point of up-country Tamils in Sri Lanka that of being a Mr. Nadesan chronicles in detail and also SOmeWhi to the plantation sector. He looks into the details of Bandaranaike, the United Front governments and a a concise and detailed manner so that the Conseq section on the plantation workers struggle 1945 to 1 of resistance among plantation labour during the y Mr. Nadesan also has a special section on estate Sc toward these schools adopted by successive governn of adequte schooling as part of the development pr especially for the plantations. On the one hand it every child to be educated in his own language and has to offer. On the other hand, it is also a truism to note that ur by the very system which educated them. Recent sta both in the North and the South of A level graduate these educated youth do not wish to follow tradition They wish to have jobs which are relevant to their As a result a very explosive situation exists with For the last two generations, the plantations have of the plantation youth being educated and a large nu in the plantation sector, the problem is exacerbate the problem of the educated unemployed in the pl unfold in the coming few years. Mr. Nadesan's book is a well written comprehensive book which as Kumari Jayawardena Suggests sho vernacular educated intelligentsia and students will in the book. it all citizenship Acts contain provisions that are disthe recent amendment which abolishes the distinction descent is overruled by section 18 of the Constitution istent with the Constitution continue to prevail. Though re is room for the argument made by Mr. Nadsean. but reflect what he feels is the crux of the position Second class Citizen. at dispassionately the government policy with regard the actions of Dudley Senanayake, John Kotelawala, lso J. R. Jayawardene. He chronicles the actions in uences are made clear for the historical record. His 973 is also a weath of information on the movements 'ears after Independence. hools in his book. It is a detailed record of the policies nents. This is particular important given the importance ocess. Education is in some ways a JanuS faced gift is compulsory and necessary, a fundamental right of to procure the full benefits that the education system employed secondary school leavers are left frustrated tistics point to the fact that there is 40% unemployment s. This unemployment is particularly important in that hal occupations in the agriculture and the plantations. education but the system does not deliver the goods. regard to these youth. been spared this reality. But with increasing numbers mber of them not wishing to find traditional employment d. Unless effective policy is especially made to meet antation sector there will be a major crisis which will book which raises all these questions. It is an important uld be translated into Sinhala and Tamil SO that the have the opportunity to gain the insights contained

Page 5 A Marker of a NeW - Dr. Jayadev Mr. S. Nadesan's book on the history of the up-cou of events and processes in Sri Lanka. The state all the plantations for about 20 years since their na of production, management, labour control, Sales and ship between plantation capital and labour has also has dominated the mainstream politics of organized of a governing coalition with the UNP, is also in that coalition. In this backdrop, the Sinhalese nation labour, which is reminiscent of a similar campaign in re-producing traditional and archaic ethnic biases a Lanka's working class. At a time of heightened ethnic estrangement, ant: the polity to resolve its own inter-ethnic conflicts, strategy of ethnic mobilization of labour in order to the state appears to have reached the end of the class demands of plantation workers, on the assu failed to arrest the re-entry of private capital, bott the emerging political vacuum, capital-labour contrad sector. Hence the still more relevance of class pers politics among the plantation labour. It is in this context that S. Nadesan's book should b hopefully, of a new intellectual direction in which rese For quite some time, scholars in Sri Lanka have n few texts produced some time ago still remain semi can be credited with initiating this branch of scholarsh journal Young Socialist in the early sixties, were prod of labour Scholars, Dr. Kumari Jayawardene did in movement in Sri Lanka while Dr. Wisumperuma fo labour. Both these volumes are doctoral dissertatic have also contributed significantly to our understa of immense suffering experienced by the first gener plantation labour in Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, a few scholars have recently researche labour. The names of Dr. Kumari Jayawardene ar of scholarship. Mr. Nadesan's book has a specific character; it i Written from the perspectives of a labour leader a the struggle of plantation workers for over four dec intellectual Direction ra Uyangoda — ntry Tamil people appears at an important conjuncture , which has owned, managed and controlled almost tionalization, has partially withdrawn from the sphere reinvestment. Consequently, the nature of the relationbegun to change. Meanwhile, the CWC politics, which plantation labour for about 17 years within a framework a Crisis which is likely to end up in the break up of alist ideological onslaught against the plantation Tamil the late 1920s, has gained a new momentum, thereby nd prejudices against an important Community of Sri agonisms and strife, fuelled by continuing inability of class perspective becomes enduringly relevant. The win certain economic and political concessions from road as much as the communalist rejection of any Imptions of narrow majoritarian frenzy, has singularly h local and foreign, into the plantation economy. In ictions are very likely to be sharpened in the plantation Oectives to an adequate understanding of the emerging e viewed as an interventionist effort, and as a marker, archers and scholars once again turn to labour studies. ot been working much on labour history, although the nal contributions to the field. The late Mr. Neil Kuruppu ip. His essays appeared mostly in the LSSP's theoretical ucts of painstaking research. Among the next generation the late sixties a major study on the rise of the labour cussed exclusively on the Indian immigrant plantation )ns. Paul Casperz, Donovon Moldrich and Jeyaraman hding of the early history, a history replete with tales ation of poor peasants-turned-emigrant workers of Tamil | extensively on the conditions of the women plantation d Dr. Rachel Kurien prominently figure in this sphere s a political narrative of the up-country Tamil people, hd organizer whose own biography is intertwined with ades. Therefore, it is a narrative of an involved author.

Page 6 Writing labour history by labour leaders themselves i. A few years ago, Mr. Pelis Serasinghe, a labour ac courage and commitment. The hope that many others ized. Mr. Nadesan's intervention will hopefully set a write their own history, struggles, victories and defea how the Sri Lankan plantation working class has r When we take the Thompsonian view of a working points to some key areas of research and writing scholars should undertake. Almost all existing Work 'standard history' in the sense that the lives, struggles and survival, in short the struggle for the self-makir is largely dissolved in a history of the politics of the e is treated as peripheral to the history of other 'agent contractors, post colonial governments, trade union indeed, the history of the self-making of the plantati in the official dispatches of colonial administrators, m reports of government agents. Perhaps, some recC old files (which contain accounts of strikes, leaflets, offices, 'crime' records maintained in police stations a Most of the records are surely still alive in the memo and folk-epics, in their oral history, in their language of rituals and deities and cultural practices, and ever the subaltern history of plantation workers indeed Once such a history is written, the epic struggle ( their status of equal citizens in this country, with the citizens of other ethnic Communities, will be a all of us. s a not a genre of writing, much known in Sri Lanka. :tivist and leader, wrote his 'memoirs' with admirable s would follow his example has not yet been materialnother example for working class representatives, to ts, or to use E. P. Thompson's evocative formulation, made itself. class making itself, Mr. Nadesan's history in a way that a new generation of labour activists as well as on the history of the plantation labour are works of defeats, cultures, religious beliefs, forms of resistance ng of a working class culture by workers themselves lites and macro-political institutions. Their lived history s' the Colonial government, European planters, labour and political leaders. on working class, their 'subaltern history' is not found hemoirs of European travellers or in the administration rds of that history still remain buried in duststricken Complaints made by workers) stacked in trade union nd in the memories of labour organizers in the estates. ries of the aged workers themselves, in their folk-tales and idioms, in their poetry and songs, in their invention in their quarrels and disputes. This task of unearthing requires a new archaeology of history. of the Sri Lankan Tamil Plantation workers to assert a legitimate claim to the same virtues and follies of in integral part of the collective historical memory of

Page 7 Contribution Of — Batty W Sithamperam Nadesan has in the title chosen for h in Sri Lanka, given to his subject, the plantation w This is as it should be. The CWC as the major projected for too long for these workers the ILO sta cadre could benefit from the ILO's facilities for migr workers themselves were concerned. The denial population in the late 1940s was an exploitation of the UNP. The insights Nadesan has had, as a trade unionist him the necessary authority to evaluate the plantal of this country despite the fact that they are not an of commercial agriculture commenced by the Britis major contribution of imperialism to this country ar relations than we could see in the late Nineteenth a industry, and Commerce. In fact in this country the tea industry as its adjuncts. The plantation worker, despite the efforts of the C working class in the period of the United Front go of the plantations. Nadesan's evaluation of this peri Over-view of this major change. It is a fact that features which did affect the plantation worker. D provided the one and only opportunity, if properly rights. The Bernard Soysa Commission of Inquiry Repc have given Nadesan a wealth of information on the on the plantation worker himself. This however does not detract from the value of all be thankful to the trade union leader Nadesan present, to make this contribution of undoubted v President, Ceylon Federation of Labour 14th March 1994 Undoubted Value eerakOOn – is book, A History of the Upcountry Tamil People orker of Indian origin, a local habitation and a name. rade union of plantation workers in this country has tus of migrant workers. This was in order that CWC ant workers. It was counter productive as far as the of citizenship rights to this segment of the country's this imposed alienation, for the political purposes by to the life of this sector of the population has given ion workers as part and parcel of the Working class "industrial" segment. Nadesan shows how the branch h, first with coffee and then with tea, has been the ld that it has within it even more of the exploitative nd early Twentieth century manufacturing and service se latter sectors of activity merely supplemented the WC, stood with the rest of this country's organised vernment in the working class push for the take-over od suffers from a failure to take the necessary political in the take-over there were distortions and negative espite this its profoundly positive aspect was that it handled, for the plantation worker himself to win his rt on Agency Houses and Brokering Firms should fact of these agencies being a blood-sucking incubus his book to all concerned in this subject. We must or taking time off his daily routine, in a time like the lue.

Page 8 A forgotton episode in the - Professor Bert A new book on "A History of the Up-Country Tamil There have been publications on the up country Tar of time. And in Some cases, these Studies have tr of Such studies has been on Some other theme ( Nadesan's book begins with a Survey of Sri Lanka rule of the British. An interesting section there after Agriculture and the Creation of a labour market. It enterprises had to fold up under British rule owing of India was compelled to change into a reservoir ( often to satisfy the labour needs of the imperial The SOrdid Conditions, the miserable situation, in W have been graphically outlined by more writers than this sad story in chapter 3 with admirable object Just as deplorable, if not worse, were the conditio They were victims of cheating, exploitation and ev from the reluctant employer it was grudgingly grar labourer was being pampered. After independence in Sri Lanka since 1948, the u equally serious difficulties. They were rendered "st any protection. They had to endure more when th indigenous racist forces from time to time. Throug victims of capialist employees and unsympathetic that their credit balances remained buoyant. Naturall education and employment then and now . Nadesan with his intense involvement in the labo a workers' history which provides a valuable and by recounting the story of the men and women w Lanka and continue to do as a silent Service tha It is clear that the Indians had played valuable par of Sri Lanka. Although from the early 19th century worked in the tea plantations, those who remaniec much impact in the politics of the island. In a ph and modern but their political influence never equ development. Todays Sri Lankans are indebted to change, but sadly they are grudged whatever little t tells in his book clearly and forcefully. University of Colombo March 1994 Saga of modern Sri Lanka am Bastianpillai - People in Sri Lanka" by S. Nadasan is most welcome. hil People, but they have dealt with aspects or periods eated the up country Tamil inter alia when the focus r topic. , or Ceylon, as the island was then known, and the the next chapter that discusses the Collapse of Indian is well known to many that while Indian indigenous to their policies and practices, the vast sub continent f labour. Only human beings began to be traded and ules. nich labour was brought into many parts of the World one. But in a brief but lucid way Nadesan recaptulates ivity and restraint. ns in which these hepless human beings had to toil. en cruelty and whenever any right due to them was ited and the indigenous inhabitants alleged that the p Country Tamil people have experienced newer but ateless" constitutionally orphaned and left with hardly ey began to be subjcted to physical assaults by the hout their history in the Island they have suffered, administrators, who looked upon them only to ensure y their serious problems were Concerned with housing, Irers fortunes and fate as a trade unionist has written pioneering addition to the literature on Indian labour ho had contributed so much to the building up of Sri is often abused by many if ever noticed. and continue to do so in the economic development the Indians came to man the Coffee estates and later to comprise the upcountry Tamil people never made yscial sense they contributed to build the up-country alled their substantial practical Influence on economic he up-country Tamil people for so much advance and ey may have got in return. It is this tale that Nadesan

Page 9 On behalf of the Publishers We wish to thank all t Book. Mr. M. Thiyagaram Mr. C. Radhakrishnan Mr. M. Navaneethan Mr. M. Dhayumanavan Mr. T. W. Rajaratnam Mr. T. Satchidanandam / Mr. R. C. Karunakaran Mr. A Rajendra Mr. S. Rajakulendra Mr. A. P. Kanapathypillai Mr. Arumugam Pre-Publication Sales Contributions and Loans advanced by Nandalala Board members Contributions below RS. 1000/- (Contributions made below Rs. 1000/- have not hose who gave unsparingly, to help us to publish this 75,000.00 50,000.00 30,000.00 20,000.00 10,000.00 2,000.00 2,500.00 2,500.00 2,500.00 2,000.00 20,000.00 125,000.00 am» 75,000.00 been acknowledged, due to lack of Space).