Some Aspects of Labour History of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century
Subtitle: Two Views
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 112
ISBN-13: 9780199486670
Description: Part of the 'Occasional Papers' series of CSSSC, this essay is a brief, and sharply posed, exchange between Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ranajit Das Gupta on working class consciousness in Bengal. it posits that this consciousness is not a mechanical outcome of the capitalist mode of production, it is not a thing but a process; that even failure must be taken on board in order to flesh out that process; that not only was the working class present (and therefore conscious) of its own making, but drew from rich pre-capitalist cultural traditions of dissent, rebellion and republicanism. 0the essay asks pertinent questions about the morality of labour, history of peasant revolts, capitalist intervention, religious discrimination among labourers etc.