Axom Deshor Bagisare Sowali: The Girl from the Tea Gardens of Assam

This paper studies the Jhumur songs of the tea plantation workers of Assam, and looks at them as oral histories of the various communities and tribes brought to Assam by the colonial project of growing tea. It traces the history of migration, and the narratives and ever-evolving history and culture of the tea plantation workers of Assam. While looking at themes of alienation, exploitation and colonial/post colonial plantation regimes, this paper also traces the gendered cultural, social and economic politics in the history of migration which produce the fractured positionality of women tea plantation workers in Assam. While the women are usually treated as docile /invisible, in the Jhumur songs their memory is resilient and the songs are irreplaceable in recording loss, memories of ‘home’ and privations of daily plantation life.