Nayanjyoti Kalita

Labour Relations in a British Empire's Frontier: Coercion in the Hills of Colonial Northeast India, 1870s to 1950s

My ongoing PhD dissertation examines how British colonial rule from the 1870s to the 1950s in the hill districts of Northeast India reconfigured labour through the entwining of military conquest with various initiatives aiming at the legal reinvention of "custom." I explore how imperial governance was intrusive in several ways such as monopolizing violence through disarmament of tribal villages, suppression of raids and headhunting, imposing house tax, and selectively abolishing or safeguarding forms of servitude. Drawing on global labour history’s emphasis on plural labour relations beyond wage work, the study maps the coexistence of impressment, tributary labour, fixed gangs (melvengs), imported coolie labour, and emergent wage regimes.

since 2023
PhD in History, Central European University, Vienna

2020–2022
MPhil In Humanities and Social Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati

2012–2014
MA in History, Ambedkar University, Delhi