“Caste and kinship ties were vital to the social organization of workers: but so were the affinities of region and religion, workplace and neighbourhood, trade unions and political parties, all of which cut across each other. To insist that the culture of migrant workers was characterized by ‘strong primordial ties of community, language, religion, caste and kinship’ is to obscure the extent to which their interaction produced something quite different and it is to remain blind to the extent to which their ‘culture’ was also informed by work and by politics, and indeed, by the daily struggles of workplace and neighbourhood" (Chandavarkar 1997, p. 187).
