Some Aspects of Labour History of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century

Description

Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ranajit Das Gupta’s Some Aspects of the Labour History of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century presents a sharply posed conversation between them in October 1981 on working-class consciousness in Bengal. The arguments posited here show that rather than being a direct, mechanical outcome of the capitalistic mode of production, working class consciousness is a process. Asking questions about the morality of labour, history of peasant revolts, capitalist intervention, and so on, this is a classic work on labour history.

About the Authors

Dipesh Chakrabarty is Lawrence A. Klimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History and South Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Chicago, USA.

Ranajit Das Gupta was a Fellow at the CSSSC in the 1970s, and later joined the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, as faculty.

Contributor

Janaki Nair

Table of contents

About the Authors

About the Editors

About the Introduction Writer

General Introduction to the Series

Partha Chatterjee and

Rosinka Chaudhuri

Preface

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Introduction: ‘Class

Consciousness’—A Concept

in Crisis or in Terminal

Decline?

Janaki Nair

Some Aspects of the Labour

History of Bengal in the

Nineteenth Century

1 Class Consciousness

and Labour History of

Bengal: A Critique of

Ranajit Das Gupta’s

Paper ‘Material

Conditions and

Behavioural Aspects of

Calcutta Working Class

1875–99’

Dipesh Chakrabarty

2 A Reply

Ranajit Das Gupta

Index