[2] This challenged the earlier view that the class of agricultural labourers had been formed as a result of British exploitation in the nineteenth century[3] Born in a progressive Tamil Brahmin family, her father K. Venkataraman was one of India's leading chemists, and was the director of the National Chemical Laboratory.
Land and Caste addresses the question of whether the large group of landless labourers (constituting as much as 25% of the agrarian working force) which existed in India during the mid-20th century were created before or during the period of colonial rule.
In her works, she attempts to estimate the absolute and relative size of the landless agricultural workforce in Madras Presidency at the beginning of the 19th century, when a regular Census of India data did not exist.
The work, 210 pages long and written in a clear and spare style verging at times on dryness (though spiced with the periodic sarcastic remark in the footnote), established Kumar as an important alternative voice in a debate that was largely dominated at that point by Marxist and nationalist historians.
[10] In her 30-page introduction to the 1992 reprint, Kumar reflects on a number of weaknesses in her own work: "its complete reliance on official records", the neglect of the process of "the conversion of tribals into untouchables and bonded labourers", an excessively strong association of caste and occupation.