The Life, Melody, and Rhythm of Tea Garden Workers

The corporate greed of British imperialism in the late 19th century planted the roots of slavery in the green plains of Bengal, and its scars continue to bleed even 150 years later. Every green tea leaf in the hilly valleys of Sylhet, Moulvibazar, Habiganj, or Chattogram is actually a tangible document of the workers' blood, sweat, and silent cries. These tea gardens are not ordinary industrial enterprises, but concentration camps or labor camps built through the joint cooperation of capitalists and the state, where everything from a person's birth to death remains confined within company-owned sheds. This imprisoned life is not merely a geographical limitation; it is a well-planned institutional framework designed to suppress human consciousness and development, helping to maintain the absolute dominance of capital.

The inception of the 19th-century tea industry was based entirely on bloodshed and deceit. The British tea planters or garden owners of the time falsely promised impoverished indigenous people from various underdeveloped regions of Chota Nagpur, Santhal Pargana, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha. They were told that going to the gardens of Assam or Sylhet would yield gold and make their lives prosperous. In reality, a living hell awaited them. Trapped in the web of the indenture system or contract labor laws, their identities were stripped away. They became property purchased by the company, bought and sold with a signature or thumbprint.

Today, in the 21st century, even within bourgeois democratic society, tea workers are never regarded as free citizens by the management. Their identity remains simply "coolie"—a derogatory term that marks them forever as sub-human or underdeveloped. The state or capitalists have never had any genuine desire to free them from this historical continuity because they know that mountains of profit are built upon this bondage of workers. Although labor freedom exists in the eyes of the law, the geographical isolation of tea gardens completely cuts workers off from the outside world, trapping them in invisible generational chains. To maintain absolute control over capital, management joins hands with local administration to establish a reign of terror where any expression of opinion or attempt at independent organization is brutally suppressed. The ghost of colonialism still roams every branch of the tea gardens, trampling human rights to continuously safeguard capitalist interests. The purpose of writing about this is my belief that this issue needs to be discussed, because these proletariat workers are our actual strength—they who ought to be conscious are instead falling victim to even greater deception under the guise of trade union politics.

The Cruel Reality of Poverty, Deprivation, and Survival Among Tea Workers

Behind the aesthetic beauty and greenery visible from the outside of the tea gardens lies a severe humanitarian disaster. Every morning, with baskets strapped to their backs, male and female tea workers step out to pluck tea buds amid biting cold or stifling heat, driven solely by the struggle to survive. But what do they receive in return? A meager amount of money—which vanishes just buying a handful of rice for two meals in today's era of extreme inflation. Their daily wages are so inadequate that they fall far below the poverty line defined by the World Bank or the International Labour Organization.

The housing of tea workers, known as "lines," largely consists of rows of unsanitary, dilapidated huts. A severe crisis of clean water, inadequate sanitation, and a lack of healthcare have pushed their lives into permanent darkness. During the rainy season, the condition of these lines becomes deplorable, with pathways submerged in mud. Children suffer from malnutrition and lose their vitality in early childhood. Deprived of any touch of education, healthcare, and modern life, they survive merely as raw materials for production. To capital, the worker is not a creature of flesh and blood, but a mere productive machine; when it wears out, management simply replaces it with a new machine or worker. Malnutrition, tuberculosis, malaria, and various skin diseases are their constant companions. Healthcare is limited to the garden's nominal dispensary, where no advanced medicine other than paracetamol is available. Deprived of maternity leave and suffering from malnutrition, female workers experience premature physical and mental breakdown. Long-term impacts of malnutrition place pregnant women at extreme risk, making maternal mortality rates in tea gardens significantly higher than the national average. This ruthless statistic of infant mortality is not merely a failure of the healthcare system; it is a direct structural homicide of capitalist exploitation.

The Violent Form of Capitalist Production and Unpaid Labor

The economy of the tea garden does not rest solely on nominal wages; behind it lies horrific labor exploitation and the pressure of overproduction. A worker is required to pluck more than a specified amount of leaves every day. If the set quota is not met, their wages are docked, or they must endure severe humiliation. Through this process, family members ranging from children to the elderly are forced to engage in labor in some form, as running a household on a single income is impossible.

Therefore, it is clear that capitalism does not stop at appropriating surplus value; it devours the entire entity of the worker. In the case of tea gardens, this process of devouring is even more brutal, as the worker's housing, land, and all sources of livelihood depend on a single company. If a worker protests, they not only lose their job but are evicted along with their family, losing the roof over their heads. This structural culture of blackmail and hostage-taking binds the workers' hands and feet so tightly that they dare not speak out against injustice. Standing on their labor, tea company owners live luxurious lives at home and abroad, while the workers who give birth to those leaves spend their lives in the darkness of huts. Through this system, capitalists do not merely execute economic exploitation; they control the psychology of the workers in such a way that they are forced to accept their fate as an absolute truth. There is no overtime pay for extra labor, and female workers must additionally shoulder the burden of domestic labor after work, accelerating their overall physical and mental degradation.

Even within this extreme deprivation and web of chains, workers have not lost their unique tunes and rhythms. To forget the fatigue of labor, mask the pangs of hunger, and feel the pull of lost roots, they sing their own folk songs, jhumar, or panchayat melodies. The songs of tea workers are not merely entertainment; they are the language of their resistance, the preservation of collective memory, and a unique expression of the struggle for survival.

As they toil in the sun all day in the gardens, the muffled sound of drums and a tune resembling a sigh drift through the spaces between the leaves. Within this melody and rhythm lies the dormant seed of their rebellion. Cheating the eyes of the babus and ignoring the fear of the sardar's whip, when they light fires and play drums in the dark of night, that very rhythm echoes the history of their ancestors' deprivation. This culture is their only refuge for survival, where they share their inner pain wrapped in collective empathy. Hidden in every step of their dance, the beat of the dhamsa drum, and lines of their folk songs are memories of their lost homeland and an earnest yearning for liberation from present servitude. This culture has taught them how to maintain humanity amidst utter despair. The lines of folk songs are not merely melodic waves to them, but a living document of protest passed down through generations, serving as the final fortress of their identity.

Melody, Rhythm, and the Secret Cry of the Hills: The Hilly Valley Awaiting Promised Liberation

"Thinking I Will Go to Assam"—this folk song from the Goalpara region of India, deeply admired by people for its harmony of rhythm, beat, and tempo, continues to haunt us with its sorrowful tune. The song "Thinking I Will Go to Assam" is not just an ordinary folk melody; it is a historical tragedy of colonial deception. Every fold of this song contains a description of the injustices inflicted upon Assam's tea workers, portraying their sorrow and suffering with subtle precision.

When the British initiated commercial tea cultivation, they destroyed the hilly forests of Assam and Sylhet, then invited locals to take up labor. When locals failed to respond to such grueling labor, they lured people from poverty-stricken regions. They bound approximately 116 indigenous communities and lower-caste groups—including the Santhal, Telugu, Lohar, Rabidas, and Goala—under lifelong labor contracts, collecting them from regions like Ranchi, Hazaribagh, Santhal Pargana, Dumka, and Gaya in Bihar; Madras; Uttar Pradesh; Mayurbhanj, Ganjam, Sambalpur, and Chaibasa in Odisha; and Raipur, Rampurhat, Jabalpur, and parts of West Bengal. Part of this enticement was the exaggerated description of the tea gardens: that the tea garden was a land of gold, with golden leaves on every tree, where a simple shake would make golden leaves fall (tree shake, get money), and the only work was leaf plucking. The song lines "Thinking I will go to Assam, upon going to Assam I will find you" or taking a job in Assam served as metaphors for that very temptation.

When destitute, starving people arrived in Assam lured by these promises and saw reality, they were systematically trapped. The unfamiliarity with the harsh mountain life, combined with the rigorous labor of the tea gardens, made the workers' lives unbearable. "The babu says work, the sahib says catch them, and that sardar says I'll take the skin off your back"—the strict orders of the "babus" (British officials) were executed by the "sardars" appointed by the British themselves. If anyone tried to escape from the tea garden, the sardar would drag them back and inflict severe torture.

"O Yaduram, you cheated and led me to Assam"—the task of luring innocent people with false stories was carried out by middlemen like Yaduram or Baburam mentioned in the song. These commission-earning brokers of the British were called Arkattis at the time.

"And do letters fool the heart without a sight?"—once a step was taken into Assam, every arrangement was made to imprison tea workers in the gardens, including contracts reducing them to labor slaves. A metallic currency called T-tokens was introduced for workers. These tokens could only be spent at specific shops within the garden; they had no value outside, and workers had no money to travel beyond the boundaries. Thus, life became bound to the borders of the tea garden, denying workers any chance of a "sight" of their families outside Assam.

"Thinking I will go to Assam and string a pair of fans"—the dream of going to Assam to build a happy home together was never fulfilled; instead, ordinary people were turned into company property. "The white sahib cheated and led me to Assam"—the white sahibs here refer to the British, who initiated tea cultivation in India when tea imports from China were halted.

"You made me a female laborer-coolie, you hung a bag on my back, hung a bag and made me a beggar"—British masters forced over a hundred thousand people, including women and children, into captivity to work in the tea gardens. They were made to labor for nominal wages. Disobedience met with the kick of a British boot or the lash of a whip—an effort to strip the skin off their backs, as mentioned in the song. Such slave-like treatment, coupled with deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases, eventually pushed the workers to the wall. They resisted and declared rebellion, sparking the Mulluk Cholo (Return to the Homeland) movement.

May 1921: A Blood-Stained Tragedy

In this very month of May 1921, more than 30,000 workers attempted to return to mulluk, their native lands. Having been imprisoned in the tea gardens for a long time, they did not know the routes; they only knew that if they somehow reached the Chandpur river port, they could board ships and return home. Therefore, they decided to march along the railway tracks toward the port. However, at the behest of the heartless garden owners and sardars, the British government suspended railway services and called a river transport strike. With no other option, the aggrieved workers resolved to return home on foot, and when they reached Chandpur railway station on May 20, Gurkha soldiers—acting on the orders of Commissioner K.C. De—opened fire on the sleeping workers in the dark of night. Hundreds of hungry and exhausted workers lost their lives, and many had their abdomens slit open and were thrown into the waters of the Meghna River. The helpless workers could never return to their homelands. Afterwards, through political maneuvering, the movement was concluded via a four-point compromise. The blood-red waters of the Meghna and the floating corpses of the workers later accelerated the movements for the end of British colonial rule.

Songs like "Thinking I Will Go to Assam" or later Kali Dasgupta's "Come Minna, Let's Go to Assam" actually describe the deceit and massacre inflicted upon tea workers. Yet, just as that sorrowful history became lost in the performance style of the song, there is no trace of this history or any memorial anywhere at Chandpur railway station or the banks of the Meghna. Regrettably, the Bangladeshi state has taken no initiative to preserve this tragic and significant event. In 1921, Chandpur was part of Tripura; century-old documents contain no mention of this incident, and in the absence of documentary evidence, this brutal massacre exists today only in oral tradition. Therefore, bringing up the issue on this platform today was a historical task.

When people from impoverished and marginalized communities were imprisoned in tea gardens through force, false promises, and the web of the indenture system, a modern system of serfdom began. Although the British-era indenture system ended on paper, the living standards of tea workers in contemporary Bangladesh have not undergone any fundamental changes. Crushed between the profit-making machine of capitalists and the deception of broker trade unions, they still live at the ruthless margins of history. Yet, the words of "Thinking I Will Go to Assam"—"Cruel Assam, you made me weep life after life"—still seem to express the anguish of tea workers; uttering them makes the heart heavy and forces us to take a moral stance against this prolonged exploitation.

The Terrifying Void of Trade Union Politics and the Search for Alternatives

The political or labor organizations that should have stepped forward to free tea workers from this prolonged cycle of misery and exploitation have proven themselves utterly failed and compromised. Looking at conventional trade unions reveals a terrifying void. While a few nominal labor unions exist, in reality, they operate as brokers or tamed pets of the management.

The so-called trade union culture operational in Bangladesh's tea gardens is a subtle tool to silence workers' voices rather than secure their rights. For years, so-called union leaders have made backroom compromises with owners to stall demands for minimum wage increases. During elections, they make grand promises to secure workers' votes, but when agreements are signed inside the luxurious guest houses of garden owners, the workers' lot is only intensified exploitation.

These trade unions have blunted the true class consciousness of the workers. They have taught workers to compromise, not to protest. Consequently, whenever workers spontaneously erupt from their own anger—as seen in recent wage-increase protests—the leadership of these unions is the first to side with management and conspire to pacify workers or crush the movement. This institutional betrayal has created a deep void in the lives of tea workers, leaving them entirely alone and disoriented in securing their demands. Broker union leaders remain busy feathering their own nests while workers starve and waste away. Unless this void is filled, workers' liberation is impossible, because this broker syndicate creates internal divisions among workers to weaken their unity. However, history is not stagnant. The suppressed sighs of tea workers and that rebellious rhythm of the drums will one day bring an end to this long servitude. The day workers find their own source of power, no babu or sardar's whip will be able to subdue them.

What is the way out of this terrifying void? Relying on conventional parliamentary politics or broker trade unions will bring no change to the conditions of tea workers. A radical transformation is required; the situation teaches us that the liberation of workers must come through their own direct actions, autonomy, and direct struggle, not through the charity of any intermediary political party or bureaucratic union.

First, corporate ownership and state control over the tea gardens must be permanently abolished. The true owners of the gardens are the workers who have sweated for generations to make this land fertile. Control of the gardens must be completely vested in workers' direct democratic committees (Workers' Councils). At every level of production, distribution, and management, workers will make decisions themselves—no bureaucrats or capitalist intermediaries will be present.

Second, subservience to centralized and bureaucratic trade unions must be abandoned in favor of building internal solidarity and direct action among workers. True liberation can only be achieved by cornering management through strikes, boycotts, and keeping the wheels of production under their own control.

Third, the cultural and social liberation of tea workers must be integrated into a broader organizational struggle. Their folk tunes and rhythms must not be treated merely as fodder for entertainment, but transformed into weapons of class struggle. When their songs and culture directly take the form of protest against exploiters, an irresistible social force will emerge. Through this alternative struggle, workers will not only win their economic demands but challenge the overall power structure of society, laying the foundation for a new egalitarian society. Passing through this long dark age of exploitation, only by ensuring the genuine liberation of working people can the history of this hilly valley attain its logical and just conclusion.