The paper brings a critical argument on plantationocence (Haraway 2015) and examines Assam's tea plantations beyond this concept. The idea of plantationocence offers many essential aspects in exploring the plantation ecologies and the plantations' past, which eventually shaped the present. Despite the new perspective, the paper critically examines why this concept diminishes the deep history of adivasi struggle and sexual oppression, which shapes the plantations' political economy. The paper argues that Assam's tea plantations can be seen as a site of ethnic, class, caste and gender repression. Also during the postcolonial period, such segregation does not go away. The paper also examines political mobilisation narratives among the adivasi tea plantation workers; I highlight a general shift in mobilisation narratives from those centred around nationalist trade unions, such as Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS) to more recent descriptions of affiliation with student associations, demanding Scheduled Tribe status, land and language rights.
Based on the ethnographic work, the paper examines the role of trade unions, students' associations and adivasi women organisations in mobilising the plantation labourers through class, caste, ethnicity and gender. It also examines the changes in the political mobilisation of the tea plantation labourers and how the trade unions and student associations are trying to deal with the problem of 'identity' related issues fermented by politics in postcolonial Assam. I suggest that changes in mobilisation narratives among the tea plantation labourers reflect how the trade unions and student associations differently conceptualise and recognise 'identities', such as in place-specific and language-based terms or as 'open' categories of identification and belonging.
