ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a particular episode from the indigo agitation as an instance of a commodity entering into a field of cultural production and generating a cultural economy with its own currency and rules of transaction. Thus the deeply divisive and brutal commerce of indigo led to a secondary, social life of the commodity in which the negotiations over its fate touched on a hitherto invisible realm of emotion and affect. The chapter considers generally various genres of print that appeared during the indigo disturbances, but particularly the English translation of Dinabandhu Mitra's play Nil-Darpan, titled The Indigo-Planting Mirror. Following the submissions of the Indigo Commission in 1860, a war of words broke out over indigo in every conceivable print genre – newspaper reports, pamphlets, letters, books, minutes, government reports, plays and even songs were deployed on both sides of the indigo divide.
