ABSTRACT
The life-world of the plantation workers in the colonised Indian south, as well as in the post-colonial situation, presents fi ve major facets as explored in the preceding chapters. The binality of the accumulating classes and the pauperised masses formed but one facet of the plantation system. The worker-families came from many different parts of south India, each with its own language, culture and custom; however, they shared a common social origin in that they were largely the Dalits – the most economically and socially deprived of the local populace. The majority of the workforce consisted of fi rst-generation agrarian slaves who had been set free in the midnineteenth century with the abolition of slavery. And most of the workers were Dalit women, with the entire family being engaged in work directed towards the accumulation of greater surplus for metropolitan capital, subsequently Indian big capital. The plantations thus presented the picture of a labouring class composed of women, men and their children that was hegemonised by the patriarchs of class, race and caste; the global tea commodity chain was thus not merely socially embedded but historically hierarchised as well.
