Hazardous Labour Geographies

Archival resources

Tracing Hazardous Labour in the Archives

Archival research is a key methodological framework for the Hazardous Sanitation Labour project and for understanding the historical configurations of hazardous labour across geographies and sectors. The project has sought to draw upon the colonial administrative records and glean labour regimes and identities of workers from these documents.

Our project’s approach to archival research seeks to be self-critical, the imperial archives we mainly consult have come under critique for silences and misrepresentations, especially when marginality is considered. The question of archival and public memory is a live question for communities who are still struggling under similar conditions of stigma and conditions of work, even if the technological bases for these forms of work have shifted. The project engages with the techno-fix solution oriented discourses that often surround sanitation work, not dismissing the potential for technology to reshape social relations, but also recognizing that hierarchical relationships are often resilient to shifting technological bases, and that social hierarchies direct scientific progress and technological adoption in itself. A microcosm of the questions we face in the present also appear in the archival record between the mid-nineteenth century to the early 20th century where we have focused our attention. Colonial administration is fixated upon new technological and infrastructural systems that would modify user experience of hygiene in latrine use and direct waste (nightsoil) flow through crowded cities outside into outlying fields and trenches. The discussions surrounding these systems focus on economy given the paucity of funds, and public health hazards implicated in the systems but hardly consider the labour regimes where in many cases workers are subjected to more intensive workdays and harsher surveillance as a result of infrastructural change. These changes are heralded as signs of modernity and colonial largesse, in language that draws upon biblical metaphors to highlight the civilizational significance of sanitation.

  • Archivesmadeeasy
    Community of researchers providing physical and pragmatic tips on accessing specific archives.
  • Anti-Colonial Research Library
    Holds a collection of open-access articles and books, websites, and YouTube videos on Indigenous and anti-colonial research methodologies.
  • South Asia Open Archive
    Extensive archive of South Asian materials including several collections in the English language.
  • Bangladesh on Record
    Excellent digital archive on historical texts relating to Bangladesh.

Keywords used in searches: sweeper, mehter/mehtar/methor, sanitary, conservancy, night soil

Because Sanitation labour regimes often come to view in registers of disease and medical administration, the following medical archives were extensively used in the project:

Archival Sources (in British Library, Bangladesh National Archives, National Archives of India, and West Bengal State Archives) consulted for this project

Annual Reports of the Sanitary Commissioner for Bengal (Series: 1868-1910). Informative annual report series consisting of compiled reports from different district level officials, including status of conservancy. Earlier years are richer in description than more statistical coverage in later years.

Sanitary. India Proceedings, Home Department. Main resource for official discussions on issues relating to sanitation which was under the Home Department. Conservancy was a key item under the Sanitary Proceedings, though other subjects of importance such as Health Statistics, Vaccinations, Drinking Water, Pilgrimage, come under the remit of these documents. Proceedings are a key resource for extended discussions, however the pre-1900s proceedings are sparse in British Library and not well-maintained in National Archives Delhi (generally rejected for being brittle).

Report on jails of the lower provinces of Bengal (Annual Series, around 1850s- 1910s) Annual Report containing details of inmates in the jails as well as discussions and circulars on jail administration. Regularly feature discussions on sanitation of inmates but mostly limited to technical discussions and not labouring arrangements.

Proceedings of the Railway Department (Ways and Works). Resource from the National Archives, Delhi. Railways hired thousands of sanitation workers and contain important discussion on their working conditions. However, not well-maintained and many requisitioned documents come up brittle or not transferred.

In our archival work, we also encountered different forms of unpaid and marginalized work outside sanitation labour, notably sex work and tea garden labour. An example of the archives found for such work are as follows:

Lock Hospital Files (sex work)– Lock hospitals were a system of confinement developed by the East India Company, and later the British Administration, since 1805 to confine ‘prostitutes’ suspected of being infected with venereal disease. The presence of lock hospitals were controversial as administrators differed on their effectiveness, and the difficulty of restricting European soldiers from seeking sex with ‘prostitutes’. These discussions contained in the Sanitary Proceedings are a key resource for the colonial views on Native/ European women as well as Caste (most confined women as well as the women considered to be risky to European soldiers were working women belonging to lower castes, as they came into proximity of cantonments).

Some mention of sex work can also be found in the public health proceedings at the Bangladesh National Archives, including a striking letter from sex workers to the Government of Bengal, dated July 1869, protesting against police brutality and harassment in Calcutta following the 1868 Infectious Diseases Act (XIV). The letter powerfully remarks how ‘the female honour is not a less valuable jewel in the face of the world‘ (source: BNA, Public Health Proceedings A, 1868-1869).

Proceedings of the Lieutenant Gov- of Bengal. General Department, Fort William. Labour (Emigration)- From the West Bengal State Archives. The discussions in the Labour (Emigration) paper contain rich material on the transport and contracting of coolies for the tea plantations in Assam as well as the labour sent abroad, mostly to plantations. The coolies who were drawn from remote areas (of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand) far away from the depots in Kolkata represented significant investment in cost of recruiting and transport, and also were key to the viability of profitable plantation economies. Hence their conditions of labour, residence, and especially causes of mortality were extensively recorded. The archives also contain frequent mentions of rebellion and recalcitrance among plantation workers, showcasing the agency of workers as well as the dishonest systems of recruitment where contractors kept workers in the dark about labouring conditions when hiring them.

Helpful books/theses/resources on sanitation labour history in South Asia

  • Assaduzzaman, A – The ‘Pariah’ People: An Ethnography of the Urban Sweepers in Bangladesh.
    UPL Press, Dhaka (2001)
  • Vijay Prashad- Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community.
    Open Access on Archive.org (2000)
  • Joel Lee- Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion.
    Cambridge University Press (2021)
  • Waqas Butt- Life beyond Waste: Work and Infrastructure in Urban Pakistan.
    Stanford University Press (2023)
  • Nazia Khanum- Aspects of the Urban History, Social, Administrative and Institutional, of Dacca City 1921-1947.
    PhD Thesis. SOAS Research (1982)
  • Ayesha Siddequa Daize- The Sweeper Community in Urban Bangladesh: A Study on the Nature of Social and Economic Exclusion and Vulnerability (2017).
    PhD Thesis. University of Dhaka Repository.
  • IDSN archive on manual scavenging.

There are many many more, please reach out for further resources, or to add one to this list!