My dissertation focuses upon the various intersections between time and working-class politics through a study of the North Indian industrial city of Cawnpore (now Kanpur) in the early 20^th century. I interpret time here in two ways.

First, in its objective sense, as in its interpretation as linear time, represented through the ‘tyranny of clock time’. In other words, how time played a central role in the formation of the work culture in colonial India, ie, the working day and the working night and the spaces in-between, and in that sense, became part of a larger civilisational discourse. Second, in its subjective sense, which pertains more to the various ways in which the working-classes in the city, a large portion of them conditioned to agrarian work-rhythms, perceived and interpreted time and refashioned its meanings for their political activities. By looking at a longer history of the city, from the establishment of the industries in the 1880s to the famed 80-day strike of 1955, I seek to look at the working-classes in a period of transition from agrarian work to co-existence with advanced machinery, and centre time and work as the object of their politics.

My visit to the African and Asian Studies library at the British Library, London has been instrumental in shaping the direction of my dissertation, thanks to the material in the India Office Records. Copies of the Labour Bulletin, published from the 1940s onwards by the United Provinces Department of Industries and Labour, with their essays by different stakeholders on issues plaguing the workers in Kanpur, gave depth and context to the heavily contested policy decisions made by the Government. Reports on the working of the Indian Factories Act, published by the Government annually, also give important insight into the implementation of the working day. They cover common ways in which the rules of the working day were broken, such as walking around, abandoning posts, and spending too much time in the lavatories, the inversion of which is a central method of research. I was particularly struck by the records of worker deaths due to negligence or accidents, and the language in which deaths are framed. The documents relating to the 1913 Macchlibazaar (Fish Market) riot, particularly a copy of the speech made by Islamic socialist and freedom fighter Maulana Azad Subhani and photographs of the aftermath were an exciting find, putting focus on an event that has only started receiving attention by historians.

The private papers of Sir Alexander MacRobert, particularly those pertaining to the beginning of his career as the manager of the Cawnpore Woollen Mills, the biggest mill in the city, and later the Elgin Mills, led me to the discovery of a new form of material: photography. Photographs of the Mills, and particularly the Princess of Wales’ visit to the city and the mills reveal things about the living conditions of workers that were inaccessible with text alone. There were also photographs and maps of the cotton mills taken after a fatal shooting incident in 1924 which led to the death of four workers and was hailed as a reminder of the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. Reports on the working of individual mills and the supply of labour from the neighbouring regions are particularly important in sketching out a picture of the working classes that British industrialists sought to ‘modernise’ and make more efficient.

Looking at the more popular reports, such as the one submitted by the Royal Commission on Labour in India and that on the infamous Cawnpore riots of 1931, offered me access to a surprising number of archival scraps that have since become important to my study. Particularly interesting are memoranda submitted by caste associations in the city to the Royal Commission, which highlight the intersections between different temporal rhythms of politics, in this case caste and class. The evidence submitted to the Committee investigating the riots of 1931 had similar ‘attachments’, including testimonies by the members of the Muslim League.

I would like to express my deep gratitude for the Society, whose research bursary directly funded my travel from Germany to the UK, and my stay at Rosebery Hall, LSE for two weeks. The archival research has provoked a number of questions that have shaped the directions in which my research will proceed, particularly informing a chapter about the role heat played in setting the temporal rhythms of work in the mills, thanks to the discovery of a file related to the activities of the Indian contingent at the 1936 International Labour Conference in Geneva.

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