Artisans of the Punjab (A Study of Social Change in Historical Perspective 1849-1947)

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Artisans and other low caste communities constituted nearly one-third of the population of colonial India. The present work is a study of the artisans known as Kamins (serving village society under the sepidari or jajmani system in the traditional socio-economic setup) and their response to changing conditions under British rule in Punjab.

The author reviews the objective and subjective social, economic, and political realities in Punjab from the perspective of the lower castes in general and the artisans in particular. In evaluating the changes he has taken into account the impact of the commercialization of agriculture, the influx of manufactured goods from outside, the growth of mechanized industry, canal colonization, the new means of communications, the spread of modem education, and the ameliorative efforts of socio-religious movements. Their cumulative effect brought about a disruption in the complementarity between agriculture and industry and rendered the services of village artisans less remunerative, who then felt obliged to move towards new occupations in the village and outside. This occupational and spatial mobility was accompanied by changes in the structure of social and economic relationships between the artisan and other castes and among the artisan castes themselves. The new social relationships and aspirations eventually led to the emergence of their own socio-religious organizations, and, in some cases, to organized political articulation also. This study is based on a variety of official and unofficial sources analyzed quantitatively and supplemented by fieldwork and personal interviews of the members of different artisan castes.

HARISH C. SHARMA is Reader in History at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. His major areas of interest are social change and political articulation on which he has published a number of articles. He was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, during 1992-4.

Interest in social history, developed in India after independence, is largely due to the growing awareness and concern for tracing the roots of contemporary social problems and economic backwardness of the country particularly the lowly evaluated castes. The socially and economically backward sections particularly the lowly evaluated castes forming a substantial chunk of the Indian population have been the focus of attention. The present work is an attempt to comprehend the position of the artisan castes in the British Punjab where they formed nearly one-fifth of the total population.

The book, the revised version of my doctoral thesis approved by Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar in 1986, is a study of the artisans in their response to the changing social, economic, and political conditions under British rule in Punjab. The terms of reference for the treatment of the subject are origins of change; channels and mechanism of its diffusion; and the nature and consequences of change. In seven chapters the study takes into account the position of the artisans in the traditional socio-economic, technological, and educational developments under colonial rule had a direct or indirect bearing on the artisans; and occupational mobility leading to new patterns of social relationships within an artisan caste and with others. The new patterns of social relations eventually led towards the emergence of socio-political organizations among the lower castes leading in some cases also to political articulation.

The processes that affect people and the traditional institutions are not possible to be studied over a short period, especially when the diffusion of change and the response of the people is exceedingly slow. This, at any rate, is true of the artisans of Punjab. This work, therefore, covers nearly a hundred years of British rule.

The Punjab for the purpose of this study means the territories which remained under direct administration of the British from 1849 to 1947 and, therefore, it does not, include the princely states and the territories of North Western Frontier Province and Delhi which were separated from Punjab in 1901 and 1911 respectively. The hill districts and the districts of eastern and western Punjab in their pattern of agriculture, the composition of the agrarian society, and the level of dependence on the village artisans were different from one another. In the districts of central Punjab plains-nearly half of British Punjab-the framework of the agrarian society of which the village artisans formed an integral part, the pattern of agriculture and traditions were broadly homogeneous. The conclusions are, therefore, mainly on the basis of the data related to this area.

The framework and methods of the allied disciplines, particularly sociology and social anthropology, have been found extremely useful for this study. To trace the pattern of new social relations the interview method was applied and the responses of about one hundred persons selected from various districts of central Punjab, including those who had migrated from Pakistan after partition, were processed and analyzed. The results thus obtained support the hypothesis that readjustments in social relations of different castes following spatial and occupational change, and changes in the general socio-economic context were going on. In fact, in terms of new social relations, it is possible to see broad continuity between the period before and after independence.

I am indebted to the people of the artisan castes of several villages of the districts of Amritsar, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, and Gurdaspur, over a score of whom were from the districts of Montgomery, Lyallpur, and Gujranwala (now in Pakistan). They tolerated my lengthy interviews and my insistence on detail in the course of my fieldwork. Meetings with them have helped me immensely in clarifying my ideas.

I am happy to acknowledge with thanks the help I received from several institutions, particularly the National Archives of India and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi; Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; the Punjab State Archives, Patiala; the Haryana State Archives, the Panjab University Library, Dwarka Dass Library, all at Chandigarh; the Sikh History Research Library, Khalsa College, Bhai Gurdas Library and the libraries of the departments of History, Sociology, and Economics of Guru Nanak Dev University, at Amritsar.

I am thankful to the Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi for awarding me the Contingent and Travel Grant and the Publication Subsidy for the completion and publication of this work.

I am grateful to Shri Ramesh C. Jain for taking a keen interest in the publication of the work.

I wish I could find adequate words to express my deep sense of gratitude to Professor Indu Banga for all the support and guidance that I received during my doctoral research. I continued to get the benefit of her advice in the preparation of the present version. I shall always remain indebted to Professor J.S. Grewal for initiating me into the field of historical research. I am grateful to him for taking a keen interest in my work and encouraging me at all the stages of this study.

To thank Radha, my wife and colleague, for all the informal discussions and critical reminders, academic and otherwise, is to underplay the significance of her role in the final shape of this study. My little daughters Divya and Sumedha too deserve a word of appreciation for their patience and tolerance.