Sonia Mehra Chawla
In the past few years, I have explored the complex relationship between colonial power and scientific knowledge, studying the entanglements between identity, time, collective memory, and ecological imagination. My creative endeavours frequently encourage immersions into botanical realms and their politics, imperial histories and memories, and future worlds—an invitation to be in relation with the natural world through language, imagery, visualizations, and poetical evocations. Addressing the political legacies and residues of colonialism in South Asia, and in conversation with the fields of art and science, they have focused on issues such as state, democracy, and identity politics; forms of social and ecological justice, representational blind spots, and the recognition of plants as political actors. Furthermore, I am keenly interested in exploring how colonial inheritance can be comprehended using different analytical perspectives.
Archives can be instrumental in preserving cultural heritage and ensuring historical accountability by presenting a range of perspectives, voices, and narratives. My practice revolves around the concept of research as a lived process as well as creating an ‘active’ archive by exploring archives as sites that rekindle cultural, personal, and historical memories. Using various methodologies, immersive settings, multi-media experiences, and storytelling, I invite viewers to uncover remnants and residues of the past that still exist today. My recent project, PAAT (Jute), supported by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, University of Dundee, University of Edinburgh, and the Botanical Survey of India, explored the long and tangled thread of Jute, shaped by the legacies of colonialism. The story of Jute stretches from West Bengal in India, where I was born and raised, to Dundee in Scotland, a noted centre for processing raw fibres into finished products. My work follows the links in the chain, including colonial power, botanical history, identity, political struggle, ecology, and climate change.
চা: Interwoven Narratives
The story of Tea Through Time
During the Plants on Paper residency, where I served as a tutor, I was predominantly concerned with the British tea empire and its afterlife in the former colonies. For this project, I introduced a multispecies approach that emphasizes and highlights the intertwined ecologies of plant and human life, as well as a political ecology concerned with power, infrastructures, and resources that enabled the development of the massive British tea empire. The workshop and symposium presented me with the opportunity to reflect on how historical natural history collections of works on paper represent, conserve, and encompass knowledge. It enabled the fostering of an ongoing sense of community among participants.
As a natural extension of the work I began in Edinburgh, the second phase of this project involves innovative documentation and substantial archival research in India. Engaging with a wealth of rich historical materials, including exquisite works on paper such as botanical illustrations and rare books, herbarium specimens, historical slides, and photographic images from the collections of the RBGE, the Getty Museum, the Botanical Survey of India, and Indian Museum Kolkata, alongside comprehensive research, documentation, and creative methodologies, this ongoing project aspires to foster an innovative and interdisciplinary comprehension of visual and material culture. This effort responds to the interconnected and persistent histories of colonialism, capitalism, and climate change.
Field notes from Darjeeling District in West Bengal, 2025
Used for millennia by Buddhist monks, Chinese, and Indigenous tribes of India —both as a herb and fermented as a sacred healing liquor, tea is now the world’s second most-consumed beverage after water. It has become an integral part of every culture it has touched and is deeply interwoven into our lives. However, tea is also closely linked to power and exploitative capitalism: the widespread cultivation of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) has led to colonial expansion and appropriation of territories, imperial wars, scientific research, and exploration, as well as the exploitation of people, land, and ecosystems.
Northeast India’s Darjeeling region, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, is well-known for its premium tea. The hilly region of the district comes under the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, a semi-autonomous council under the state government of West Bengal. West of Darjeeling city lies the easternmost province of Nepal, followed to the east by the Kingdom of Bhutan, to the north by the Indian state of Sikkim, and further north by the Tibet Autonomous Region in China. Tea cultivation began in the Darjeeling area during the mid-1800s. During this period, the British were in search of a substitute source of tea, distinct from China, and endeavoured to cultivate the plant in various locations across India. They cultivated the recently identified Assamica variety and the Sinensis variety; however, the sloped drainage, cool winters, and cloud cover were more advantageous for var. Sinensis. The British established a multitude of tea plantations, with the majority of the workforce being Gorkhas and Lepchas from Nepal and Sikkim. Following independence, all estates were subsequently sold to businesses in India and governed by Indian laws. With its distinctiveness and quality, Darjeeling tea garnered a reputation that led to increased marketing efforts in Western Europe, as many estates secured organic, biodynamic, and Fairtrade certifications, and the Tea Board of India worked on the authentication and global promotion of Darjeeling teas.
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Plantation systems originated as products of colonialism: as source spaces for raw materials fueling industrialization in Europe, the colonies suffered a progressive process of impoverishment—not only in terms of resources but also ecological damage due to monoculture and tillage-based farming. In the post-independence era, the closure of several tea gardens in the Darjeeling district, coupled with a decline in tea production, labour unrest, migration of workers, and climate change, has resulted in poverty and widespread economic unrest.
In 1986, Darjeeling witnessed the rise of a new violent movement for regional autonomy in the region, led by the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF). The Gorkhaland movement is a crusade to create a separate state within India in the Gorkhaland region of West Bengal, which embodies a relentless fight and struggle for statehood by the Nepali-speaking Gorkha community in Darjeeling, shaped by historical grievances, cultural identity, and socio-economic marginalisation. The tale of Darjeeling tea is equally about hope, strength, and the power of resilience. Several measures have been taken to counter these challenges to save India’s most iconic brew, including holistic farming and biodynamic agricultural practices, permaculture, women’s empowerment, fair trade interventions, and the much-needed attention to women’s contemporary socio-economic life.
The labouring body of women in tea plantations
The labouring body of women is central to the production and reproduction of tea plantations. Female tea pickers are frequently depicted in advertisements as beautiful women in picturesque, mist-covered tea gardens. This conventional portrayal of the plantation labourer has become emblematic of the essence of colonialism in India, frequently diverting our attention from the harsh realities of inadequate working conditions, meagre wages, and oppressive labour practices mandated by the patronage system. Despite being nearly half of the labour force in plantations, women workers have been marginalized in trade unions of plantation workers.
My research aims to uncover the experiences of Gorkha women in tea plantations through the lens of ‘conflict’ or ‘disruption’. The intimate relationship of female labourers with tea plantations conveys their complex feelings of justice and injustice, service, and care. Thousands of women from small villages and labour quarters surrounding the tea plantations set out every morning to pick tender tea shoots, producing only a pound of tea per thousand workers. Tea leaf plucking is a labour-intensive process that necessitates skill, experience, and patience. High-quality tea requires harvesting the topmost leaves and buds, using only the most delicate fingers to ensure the leaves are not bruised or damaged during the process. This process is essential because it enables the plants to promote new shoots and optimize harvest results.
Archives for the future
I am interested in examining how tea cultivation has entangled tea workers in the rhythms and fluxes of global capital: how work and labour practices, leisure, and domesticity, were influenced by structuring global factors of the tea industry. My intention is to create a detailed narrative about colonialism and partition in India by examining the history of tea, the cultures of tea plantation communities, their migration patterns, and the livelihood systems within the plantations. I also wish to examine how trade initiatives reflect broader political and ecological dynamics that affect the communities they seek to aid and support. Finally, this engagement plays a role in shaping a discourse around the notion of Plantationocene through legacies of colonialism, extractivism, capitalism, and ethnicity.
In her article ‘Future Imaginaries: For when the world feels like heartbreak’, historian Heather Davis discusses re-imagining of a future where social and ecological justice are integrated. She says, ‘Colonialism has always relied upon the complete transformation of the biosphere, the atmosphere and hydrosphere. Racial and environmental justice cannot be separated, but are part of an entangled matrix of capitalism and colonialism’. By working with colonial archives and contemporary realities, this ongoing project adopts an intersectional approach that examines overlapping structures of colonial capitalism and systemic marginalization in dialogue with the past, present, and future.