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All Outputs (11)

Producing Artisans: Apprenticeship and Skill Training in Colonial India (2025)
Journal Article
Kumar, A. (in press). Producing Artisans: Apprenticeship and Skill Training in Colonial India. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 48(6),

This article examines the institution of apprenticeship in artisanal production during the second half of the British colonial rule in India (1850–1950). It proposes that apprenticeships were used strategically by various types of businesses that emp... Read More about Producing Artisans: Apprenticeship and Skill Training in Colonial India.

Pre-independence Consumption Expenditure Survey: Agrarian Poverty in Colonial Uttar Pradesh: The Dufferin Inquiry, 1887–1888 edited by Shireen Moosvi, Delhi: Primus Books, 2023; pp lxxix + 290, ₹1,750 (hard cover) (2024)
Journal Article
Kumar, A. (2024). Pre-independence Consumption Expenditure Survey: Agrarian Poverty in Colonial Uttar Pradesh: The Dufferin Inquiry, 1887–1888 edited by Shireen Moosvi, Delhi: Primus Books, 2023; pp lxxix + 290, ₹1,750 (hard cover). Economic and Political Weekly, 59(35),

The Life of Contract Capitalism and the Building of the Colonial Railway (2022)
Book Chapter
Kumar, A. (2022). The Life of Contract Capitalism and the Building of the Colonial Railway. In G. Cederlöf (Ed.), The Imperial Underbelly: Workers, Contractors, and Entrepreneurs in Colonial India and Scandinavia (26-55). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003317227-2

Capitalism thrives on contracts. From recruiting workers and employees to transacting everyday business and selling commodities, the contract ideology is the absolute necessity for capitalism to function. Contracts are to ensure a regime of secure, l... Read More about The Life of Contract Capitalism and the Building of the Colonial Railway.

Reading of social and educational history documents through the lens of the Marxist Interpretation (2021)
Other
Kumar, A. (2021). Reading of social and educational history documents through the lens of the Marxist Interpretation

This document case study will study how historians analyse archival source material that relates to social, economic and education history. In this particular case, we will look at a nineteenth-century pamphlet written by a British parliamentarian on... Read More about Reading of social and educational history documents through the lens of the Marxist Interpretation.

Letters of the Labouring Poor: The Art of Letter Writing in Colonial India (2019)
Journal Article
Kumar, A. (2020). Letters of the Labouring Poor: The Art of Letter Writing in Colonial India. Past and Present, 246(1), 149-190. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz035

This article examines the emergence of mass letter-writing in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial north India, a region marked by the growth of an unprecedented labour mobility, postal expansion, vernacular print, and workers' l... Read More about Letters of the Labouring Poor: The Art of Letter Writing in Colonial India.

The ‘Untouchable School’: American Missionaries, Hindu Social Reformers and the Educational Dreams of Labouring Dalits in Colonial North India (2019)
Journal Article
Kumar, A. (2019). The ‘Untouchable School’: American Missionaries, Hindu Social Reformers and the Educational Dreams of Labouring Dalits in Colonial North India. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 42(5), 823-844. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2019.1653162

This article investigates Dalits’ dreams and desires for education in the United Provinces by examining hitherto unexplored records of the American Methodist Church missionaries and the Arya Samaj from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centurie... Read More about The ‘Untouchable School’: American Missionaries, Hindu Social Reformers and the Educational Dreams of Labouring Dalits in Colonial North India.

Skilling and Its Histories: Labour Market, Technical Knowledge and the Making of Skilled Workers in Colonial India (1880–1910) (2018)
Journal Article
Kumar, A. (2019). Skilling and Its Histories: Labour Market, Technical Knowledge and the Making of Skilled Workers in Colonial India (1880–1910). Journal of South Asian Development, 13(3), 249-271. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973174118810050

Written in the backdrop of the emerging official discourse around occupational skill training in contemporary India, this article returns to the past to explain how the meanings of skill and skill training were produced through the interaction of the... Read More about Skilling and Its Histories: Labour Market, Technical Knowledge and the Making of Skilled Workers in Colonial India (1880–1910).