This article concerns the labours of the miners who extracted the primary energy resource of the British Indian Empire. The year 1995 marked the centenary of Jharia, India's single most productive coalfield. The study of its meteoric growth, dependence on family labour and dramatic disasters has wide-ranging interdisciplinary implications. The miners of Jharia expended their lives in the most backward of environments, yet without them neither the Railways nor the large-scale machine industry could have functioned. An analysis of the state—labour—capital relations in Jharia is a means of addressing the institutional origin of physical events and the character of colonial industry. It is also a starting point for comprehending workers' struggles in the coalfields of independent India, and its links to the tribal movements of the hinterland. Despite being forcibly relocated and placed in an alienated universe, 'labour' retained a degree of recalcitrance, even if this did not result in incessant confrontation. It was manifested as cultural disaggregation and the assertion of traditional identities, by silent departure from the scene of operations or by renegotiations.
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