INDIAN LABOUR HISTORIOGRAPHY 9 icceiving end in the labour-capital transaction system. Major forms of labour protests usually manifested themselves in labourers' attempts to abscond from tea gardens or to put up individual resistance when the situation became too unbearable, particularly tor women labourers. Traces ot collective resistance were of course there but they did not yet appear as a major trend of movement. This lack of collective protest, and the prevalence of individual attempts to abscond or to put up vain resistance to save the honour of female labourers and to fraudulent practices adopted in matters of recruitment, are sharply reflected in these early writings. Those who had deep sympathy for labour could best express their anger and agony through the exposure of planters' misdeeds and the government's total indifference towards protecting and defending the victims. Their main target of attack was the while planter and not the colonial state. But they did not fail to express their disapproval of the slip shod manner in which the government was tackling such a serious problem. Contemporary writings however do not give us any indication of collective resistance. Though this phenomenon was not yet a predominant from of workers' protest, yet such incidents were not totally absent. In fact at least from 1880 onwards, their numbers were increasing. For example, we have evidence to believe that during the period 1882 to 1893, there occurred 580 cases of'unlawful assembly' (of workers; 31 cases of'murder' and more than 500 cases of'assaults'. Assam Immigration Reports contain valuable information on this point. Such incidents were also published in contemporary newspapers but only as news items; they were not reflected in the labour studies. How do we account for the absence of reference to collective resistance in the labour studies undertaken by the pioners ? Can it be that workers' poverty and misery evoked their sympathy but not their collective resistance against the planter and his community because of their own class ideology and oudook and the historical setting in which mey were functioning ? Aftermath of the Chargola Exodus The tea garden workers' collective protest and resistance movements reached their peak in 1921, culminating in the famous Chargola Exodus (May 1921). As is well known, during this period strikes broke out almost in all the tea gardens of Assam. What made Chargola so famous was the unique nature of protest movement: more than 50 percent of the total number of workers in the Cnargola Valley not only struck work but also decided to quit the gardens for ever ! For this purpose, thousands of workers simulaneously left tea gardens and proceeded on foot to the nearest railway station, Chandpur. No amount of threat or coercion succeeded in preventing them from proceeding according to their original plan of quitting tea gardens. Ultimately the police and the administration came to the help of planters : at Chandpur railway station, police opened fire (at mid-night) on the totally unprepared workers, among whom were many women and children ! This unprovoked and brutal attack had no parallel in the history of Indian labour. This ruthless firing on a non-violent and perfecdy legal labour movement evoked country-wide protest against police action. There was hardly any section of Indian public opinion which supported the government's action. On this occasion the government was totally alienated from all sections of the people, except those representing British capital. This widespread strike was immediately followed by the equally famous Assam