Question

Who are the Agaria?

Answer 1

• They were a community of iron smelters who lived in Central India.
• A series of famines devastated the dry tracts of India in the late nineteenth century.
• Many of the Agarias never worked in their furnaces again.
• Many of the Agaria iron smelters in Central India stopped work.
• These Agarias had to leave their villages and migrate to other places to work and survive.
• The craft of iron smelting was in decline by the late nineteenth century.
• In most villages the amount of iron produced came down and furnaces fell into disuse.
• Iron smelters could not collect wood that was needed for charcoal, as the British Government made laws which prevented people from entering reserved forests.
• Hence, Agarias could not sustain their occupation for longer periods of time, therefore they were forced to search for alternative means of livelihood.
• Although in some areas, access was granted to the forests, these iron smelters were forced to pay huge taxes to the forest department for every furnace they used, thereby massively reducing their incomes.
• In addition, the demand for iron produced by local smelters reduced drastically due to imports from Britain by the late nineteenth century.
• The Agarias had helped Dorabji Tata find the source of iron ore which ended up being the source of supply for the newly established Bhilai Steel Plant.