Role of Women in Indian Coal Mines
Women played a key role in building the coal industry in India since its early days. They were part of a family unit of labour and worked as partners, usually in loading jobs in shallow undergropund mines with a male coal cutter, usually a husband, a father or a brother. The need to fuel the urban–industrial engine from mid-nineteenth century onwards encouraged the British Raj to expand coal mining in Raniganj and Jharia in undivided Bengal. In Giridih, Jharia and Raniganj collieries about 10 per cent of the labourers were Santhals and Kols, around 60 per cent from ‘semi-Hinduised’ castes such as Bauris, Bagdis, Chamars, Telis, Turis, Musahars and Jolhas (weavers) and the rest were Mohammedans (Chief Inspector of Mines Report, 1902). Theselocal communities became known to colonial administrators as ‘hereditary miners’ or ‘traditional coal cutters’. In an inspection report, Stonier (1902: 2) observed: ‘he bauris have cut coal for so long a time—probably for several generations—that they now consider coal cutting to be a caste-occupation.’ Of the various caste groups, the Bauris were the first to bring their women into the collieries followed later by Santhals, Kols, Koras and Bhuinyas. Upper caste Hindu women stayed away from the collieries and were largely confined to their homes. Women worked in early coal mines as shale-pickers and breakers, wagon and truck loaders, helpers in construction, pellet makers, brick carriers and sweepers. Women in collieries were initially employed as ‘gin girls’ (from the term ‘engine’), who had the responsibility of winding the engines to bring to surface the coal baskets from the pits, but they preferred to work in company of other women. Women also performed other surface and underground work when the mechanical system of lifting coal from shallow shafts was phased out (see Lahiri-Dutt 2010; 2006; 1999).
Read more about this topic: Coal Mining In India
Famous quotes containing the words role of, role, women, indian, coal and/or mines:
“Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“The trouble is that the expression ‘material thing’ is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for ‘sense-datum’; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he ‘perceives.’”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“The creation of “strong-minded” women, so-called, is due to the individualism of men, to the modern selfish and speculative spirit which absorbs everything within itself and leaves women nothing but self-assertion for their protection and support.”
—“Jennie June” Croly 1829–1901, U.S. founder of the woman’s club movement, journalist, author, editor. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 44 (February 1870)
“The Indian attitude toward the land was expressed by a Crow named Curly: “The soil you see is not ordinary soil—it is the dust of the blood, the flesh, and the bones of our ancestors. You will have to dig down to find Nature’s earth, for the upper portion is Crow, my blood and my dead. I do not want to give it up.””
—For the State of Montana, U.S. public relief program. Montana: A State Guide Book (The WPA Guide to Montana)
“In those days, the blag slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the side of our hill. Not enough to mar the countryside nor blacken the beauty of our village. For the colliery had only begun to poke its skinny black fingers between the green.”
—Philip Dunne (1908–1992)
“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:M”I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)