India's Struggle For Independence Part 8

The main mobilization was done through extensive propaganda via meetings, speeches, pamphlets, and door to door persuasion. Special emphasis was placed on the mobilization of women and many women activists like Mithuben Pet.i.t, a Parsi lady from Bombay, Bhaktiba, the wife of Darbar Gopaldas, Maniben Patel, the Sardar's daughter, Shardaben Shah and Sharda Mehta were recruited for the purpose. As a result, women often outnumbered men at the meetings and stood firm in their resolve not to submit to Government threats. Students were another special target and they were asked to persuade their families to remain firm.

Those who showed signs of weakness were brought into line by means of social pressure and threats of social boycott. Caste and village panchayats were used effectively for this purpose and those who opposed the movement had to face the prospect of being refused essential services from sweepers, barbers, washermen, agricultural labourers, and of being socially boycotted by their kinsmen and neighbours. These threats were usually sufficient to prevent any weakening. Government officials faced the worst of this form of pressure. They were refused supplies, services, transport and found it almost impossible to carry out their official duties. The work that the Congress leaders had done among the Kaliparaj people also paid dividends during this movement and the Government was totally unsuccessful in its attempts to use them against the upper caste peasants.

Sardar Patel and his colleagues also made constant efforts to see that they carried the const.i.tutionalist and moderate leadership, as well as public opinion, with them on all important issues. The result of this was that very soon the Government found even its supporters and sympathizers, as well as impartial men, deserting its side. Many members of the Bombay Legislative Council like K.M. Munshi and Lalji Naranji, the representatives of the Indian Merchants Chamber, who were not hot-headed extremists, resigned their seats. By July 1928, the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, himself began to doubt the correctness of the Bombay Government's stand and put pressure on Governor Wilson to find a way out. Uncomfortable questions had started appearing in the British Parliament as well.

Public opinion in the country was getting more and more restive and anti-Government. Peasants in many parts of Bombay Presidency were threatening to agitate for revision of the revenue a.s.sessments in their areas. Workers in Bombay textile mills were on strike and there was a threat that Patel and the Bombay Communists would combine in bringing about a railway strike that would make movement of troops and supplies to Bardoli impossible. The Bombay Youth League and other organizations had mobilized the people of Bombay for huge public meetings and demonstrations. Punjab was offering to send jathas on foot to Bardoli. Gandhiji had shifted to Bardoli on 2 August, 1928, in order to take over the reins of the movement if Patel was arrested. All told, a retreat, if it could be covered up by a face saving device, seemed the best way out for the Government.

The face-saving device was provided by the Legislative Council members from Surat who wrote a letter to the Governor a.s.suring him that his pre-condition for an enquiry would be satisfied. The letter contained no reference to what the pre-condition was (though everyone knew that it was full payment of the enhanced rent) because an understanding had already been reached that the full enhanced rent would not be paid. n.o.body took the Governor seriously when he declared that he had secured an 'unconditional surrender.'5 It was the Bardoli peasants who had won.

The enquiry, conducted by a judicial officer, Broomfield, and a revenue officer, Maxwell, came to the conclusion that the increase had been unjustified, and reduced the enhancement to 6.03 per cent. The New Statesman of London summed up the whole affair on 5 May 1929: 'The report of the Committee const.i.tutes the worst rebuff which any local government in India has received for many years and may have far-reaching results . . . It would be difficult to find an incident quite comparable with this in the long and controversial annals of Indian Land Revenue.'6 The relationship of Bardoli and other peasant struggles with the struggle for freedom can best be described in Gandhiji's pithy words: 'Whatever the Bardoli struggle may be, it clearly is not a struggle for the direct attainment of swaraj. That every such awakening, every such effort as that of Bardoli will bring swaraj nearer and may bring it nearer even than any direct effort is undoubtedly true.'7

17.

The Indian Working Cla.s.s and the National Movement

The modern worker makes his appearance in India in the second half of the 19th century with the slow beginnings of modern industry and the growth of utilities like the railways and the post and the telegraph network. The process of the disparate groups of workers in various parts of country emerging as an organized, self-conscious, all India cla.s.s is inextricably linked with the growth of the Indian national movement and the process of the Indian 'nation-in-the-making' because the notion of the Indian working cla.s.s could not exist before the notion of the Indian 'people' had begun to take root.

Before the Indian nationalist intelligentsia began to a.s.sociate itself with working cla.s.s agitations towards the end of the 19th century, there were several agitations, including strikes by workers in the textile mills of Bombay, Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Surat, Madras, Coimbatore, Wardha, and so on, in the railways and in the plantations. However, they were mostly sporadic, spontaneous and unorganized revolts based on immediate economic grievances, and had hardly any wider political implications.

There were also some early attempts at organized effort to improve the condition of the workers. These efforts were made as early as the 1870s by philanthropists. In 1878, Sorabjee Shapoorji Bengalee tried unsuccessfully to introduce a Bill in the Bombay Legislative Council to limit the working hours for labour. In Bengal, Sasipada Banerjee, a Brahmo Social reformer, set up a Workingmen's Club in 1870 and brought out a monthly journal called Bharat Sramjeebi (Indian Labour), with the primary idea of educating the workers. In Bombay, Narayan Meghajee Lokhanday brought out an Anglo-Marathi weekly called Dina-Bandhu (Friend of the Poor) in 1880, and started the Bombay Mill and Millhands'a.s.sociation in 1890. Lokhanday held meetings of workers and in one instance sent a memorial signed by 5,500 mill workers, to the Bombay Factory Commission, putting forward some minimum workers' demands. All these efforts were admittedly of a philanthropic nature and did not represent the beginnings of an organized working cla.s.s movement. Moreover, these philanthropists did not belong to the mainstream of the contemporary national movement.

The mainstream nationalist movement in fact was as yet, by and large, indifferent to the question of labour. The early nationalists in the beginning paid relatively little attention to the question of workers despite the truly wretched conditions under which they existed at that time. Also, they had a strikingly, though perhaps understandably, differential att.i.tude towards the workers employed in Europeans enterprises and those employed in Indian enterprises.

One major reason for the relatively lukewarm att.i.tude of the early nationalists towards the question of workers was that, at this time, when the anti-imperialist movement was in its very infancy, the nationalists did not wish to, in any way, weaken the common struggle against British rule - the primary task to be achieved in a colonial situation - by creating any divisions within the ranks of the Indian people. Dadabhai Naoroji, in the very second session of the Indian National Congress (1886), made it clear that the Congress 'must confine itself to questions in which the entire nation has a direct partic.i.p.ation, and it must leave the adjustment of social reforms and other cla.s.s questions to cla.s.s Congresses.'1 Later, with the national movement gaining in strength, and the emergence within the nationalist ranks of ideological trends with less inhibitions towards labour and increasingly with an actively pro-labour orientation, efforts were made to organize labour and secure for it a better bargaining position vis-a-vis the more powerful cla.s.ses in the common anti-imperialist front. While still endeavouring to maintain an anti-imperialist united front, unity was no longer sought at the unilateral cost of the worker and the oppressed but was to be secured through sacrifices or concessions from all cla.s.ses including the powerful propertied cla.s.s.

At this stage, however, the nationalists were unwilling to take up the question of labour versus the indigenous employer. Most of the nationalist newspapers, in fact, denied the need for any Government legislation to regulate working conditions and actively opposed the Factories Act of 1881 and 1891. Similarly, strikes in Indian textiles mills were generally not supported. Apart from the desire not to create any divisions in the fledgling anti-imperialist movement, there were other reasons for the nationalist stance. The nationalists correctly saw the Government initiative on labour legislation as dictated by British manufacturing interests which, when faced with growing Indian compet.i.tion and a shrinking market in India, lobbied for factor legislation in India which would, for example, by reducing the working hours for labour, reduce the compet.i.tive edge enjoyed by Indian industry. Further, the early nationalists saw rapid industrialisation as the panacea for the problems of Indian poverty and degradation and were unwilling to countenance any measure which would impede this process. Labour legislation which would adversely affect the infant industry in India, they said, was like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. But there was also the nationalist newspaper, Mahratta, then under the influence of the radical thinker, G.S. Agarkar, which even at this stage supported the workers' cause and asked the millowners to make concessions to them. This trend was, however, still a very minor one.

The scenario completely altered when the question was of Indian labour employed in British-owned enterprises. Here the nationalists had no hesitation in giving full support to the workers. This was partially because the employer and the employed, in the words of P. Ananda Charlu, the Congress president in 1891, were not 'part and parcel of the same nation.'2 The Indian National Congress and the nationalist newspapers began a campaign against the manner in which the tea plantation workers in a.s.sam were reduced to virtual slavery, with European planters being given powers, through legislation to arrest, punish and prevent the running away of labour. An appeal was made to national honour and dignity to protest against this unbridled exploitation by foreign capitalists aided by the colonial state.

It was not fortuitous, then, that perhaps the first organized strike by any section of the working cla.s.s should occur in a British-owned and managed railway. This was the signallers' strike in May 1899 in the Great Indian Peninsular (GIP) Railway and the demands related to wages, hours of work and other conditions of service. Almost all nationalist newspapers came out fully in support of the strike, with Tilak's newspapers Mahratta and Kesari campaigning for it for months. Public meetings and fund collections in aid of the strikers were organized in Bombay and Bengal by prominent nationalists like Pherozeshah Mehta, D.E. Wacha and Surendranath Tagore. The fact that the exploiter in these cases was foreign was enough to make agitation against it a national issue and an integral part of the national movement.

At the turn of the century, with the growth of the working cla.s.s, there emerged a new tendency among the nationalist intelligentsia. B.C. Pal and G. Subramania Iyer, for example, began to talk of the need for legislation to protect the workers, the weaker section, against the powerful capitalists. In 1903, G. Subramaniya Iyer urged that workers should combine and organize themselves into unions to fight for their rights and the public must give every help to the workers in achieving this task.3 *

The Swadeshi upsurge of 1903-8 was a distinct landmark in the history of the labour movement. An official survey pinpointed the rise of the 'professional agitator' and the 'power of organization' of labour into industrial strikes as the two distinct features of this period.4 The number of strikes rose sharply and many Swadeshi leaders enthusiastically threw themselves into the tasks of organizing stable trade unions, strikes, legal aid, and fund collection drives. Public meetings in support of striking workers were addressed by national leaders like B.C. Pal, C.R. Das and Liaqat Hussain. Four prominent names among the Swadeshi leaders who dedicated themselves to labour struggles were Aswinicoomar Bannerji, Prabhat k.u.mar Roy Chowdhuri, Premtosh Bose and Apurba k.u.mar Ghose. They were active in a large number of strikes but their greatest success, both in setting up workers' organizations and in terms of popular support, was among workers in the Government Press, Railways and the jute industry - significantly all areas in which either foreign capital or the colonial state held sway.

Frequent processions in support of the strikers were taken out in the streets of Calcutta. People fed the processionists on the way. Large numbers including women and even police constables made contributions of money, rice, potatoes, and green vegetables. The first tentative attempts to form all-India unions were also made at this time, but these were unsuccessful. The differential att.i.tude towards workers employed in European enterprises and those in Indian ones, however, persisted throughout this period.

Perhaps the most important feature of the labour movement during the Swadeshi days was the shift from agitations and struggles on purely economic questions to the involvement of the worker with the wider political issues of the day. The labour movement had graduated from relatively unorganized and spontaneous strikes on economic issues to organized strikes on economic issues with the support of the nationalists and then on to working cla.s.s involvement in wider political movements.

The national upsurge on 16 October 1905, the day the part.i.tion of Bengal came into effect, included a spurt of working cla.s.s strikes and hartals in Bengal. Workers in several jute mills and jute press factories, railway coolies and carters, all struck work. Workers numbering 12,000 in the Burn Company shipyard in Howrah struck work on being refused leave to attend the Federation Hall meeting called by the Calcutta Swadeshi leaders. Workers also went on strike when the management objected to their singing Bande Mataram or tying rakhis on each others' wrists as a symbol of unity.

In Tuticorin, in Tamil Nadu, Subramaniya Siva campaigned for a strike in February-March 1908 in a foreign-owned cotton mill saying that strikes for higher wages would lead to the demise of foreign mills. When Siva and the famous Swadeshi leader Chidambaram Pillai were arrested, there were widespread strikes and riots in Tuticorin and Tirunelveli.

In Rawalpindi, in Punjab, the a.r.s.enal and railway engineering workers went on strike as part of the 1907 upsurge in the Punjab which had led to the deportation of Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh. Perhaps the biggest political demonstration by the working cla.s.s in this period occurred during Tilak's trial and subsequent conviction as has already been discussed earlier.

The Swadeshi period was also to see the faint beginnings of a socialist tinge among some of the radical nationalist leaders who were exposed to the contemporary Marxist and social democratic forces in Europe. The example of the working cla.s.s movement in Russia as a mechanism of effective political protest began to be urged for emulation in India.

With the decline in the nationalist ma.s.s upsurge after 1908, the labour movement also suffered an eclipse. It was only with the coming of the next nationalist upsurge in the immediate post World-War I years that the working cla.s.s movement was to regain its elan, though now on a qualitatively higher plane.

Beginning with the Home Rule Leagues in 1915 and continuing through the Rowlatt Satyagraha in 1919, the national movement once again reached a crescendo in the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movement in 1920-22. It was in this context that there occurred a resurgence of working cla.s.s activity in the years from 1919 to 1922. The working cla.s.s now created its own national-level organization to defend its cla.s.s rights. It was in this period that the working cla.s.s also got involved in the mainstream of nationalist politics to a significant extent.

The most important development was the formation of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 1920. Lokamanya Tilak, who had developed a close a.s.sociation with Bombay workers, was one of the moving spirits in the formation of the AITUC, which had Lala Lajpat Rai, the famous Extremist leader from Punjab, as its first president and Dewan Chaman Lal, who was to become a major name in the Indian labour movement, as its general secretary. In his presidential address to the first AITUC, Lala Lajpat Rai emphasized that, '. . . Indian labour should lose no time to organize itself on a national scale . . . the greatest need in this country is to organize, agitate, and educate. We must organize our workers, make them cla.s.s conscious . . .' While aware that 'for some time to come' the workers will need all the help and guidance and cooperation they can get from such among the intellectuals as are prepared to espouse their cause, he maintained that 'eventually labour shall find its leaders from among its own ranks.'5 The manifesto issued to the workers by the AITUC urged them not only to organize themselves but also to intervene in nationalist politics: 'Workers of India! . . . Your nation's leaders ask for Swaraj, you must not let them leave you out of the reckoning. Political freedom to you is of no worth without economic freedom. You cannot therefore afford to neglect the movement for national freedom. You are part and parcel of that movement. You will neglect it only at the peril of your liberty.'6 Lajpat Rai was among the first in India to link capitalism with imperialism and emphasize the crucial role of the working cla.s.s in fighting this combination. He said on 7 November, 1920: 'India . . . has . . . been bled white by the forces of organized capital and is today lying prostrate at its feet. Militarism and Imperialism are the twin-children of capitalism; they are one in three and three in one. Their shadow, their fruit and their bark all are poisonous. It is only lately that an antidote has been discovered and that antidote is organized labour.'7 Reflecting the emerging change in nationalist att.i.tudes towards labour employed in Indian enterprise, Lajpat Rai said. 'We are often told that in order successfully to compete with Manchester and j.a.pan, capital in India should be allowed a high rate of profit and cheap labour is a necessity for that purpose . . . We are not prepared to admit the validity of this plea . . . An appeal to patriotism must affect the rich and the poor alike, in fact, the rich more than the poor . . . Surely . . . the way to develop Indian industries . . . is to be . . . (not) at the expense of labour alone . . . The Indian capitalist must meet labour half way and must come to an understanding with it on the basis of sharing the profits in a reasonable and just proportion . . . If, however, Indian capital wants to ignore the needs of labour and can think only of its huge profits, it should expect no response from labour and no sympathy from the general public.'8 Similarly at the second session of the AITUC, Dewan Chaman Lal while moving a resolution in favour of Swaraj pointed out that it was to be a Swaraj, not for the capitalists but for the workers.

Apart from Lajpat Rai, several of the leading nationalists of the time became closely a.s.sociated with the AITUC. C.R. Das presided over its third and fourth sessions, and among the other prominent names were those of C.F. Andrews, J.M. Sengupta, Subhas Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Satyamurti. The Indian National Congress at its Gaya session in 1922 welcomed the formation of the AITUC and formed a committee consisting of prominent Congressmen to a.s.sist its work.

C.R. Das, in his presidential address to the Gaya Congress, said that the Congress must 'take labour and the peasantry in hand . . . and organize them both from the point of view of their own special interests and also from the point of view of the higher ideal which demands satisfaction of their special interests and the devotion of such interests to the cause of Swaraj.' If this was not done, he warned, organization of workers and peasants would come up 'dissociated from the cause of Swaraj' and pursuing 'cla.s.s struggles and the war of special interest.'9 The working cla.s.s responded to the changed political atmosphere in a magnificent manner. In 1920, there were 125 unions with a total membership of 250,000, and a large proportion of these had been formed during 1919-20. The workers' partic.i.p.ation in the major national political events was also very significant. In April 1919, following the repression in Punjab and Gandhiji's arrest, the working cla.s.s in Ahmedabad and other parts of Gujarat resorted to strikes, agitations and demonstrations. In Ahmedabad, Government buildings were set on fire, trains derailed, and telegraph wires snapped. Suppression led to at least twenty-eight people being killed and 123 wounded. Waves of working cla.s.s protest rocked Bombay and Calcutta.

Railway workers' agitations for economic demands and against racial discrimination also coincided with the general anti-colonial ma.s.s struggle. Between 1919 and 1921, on several occasions, railway workers struck in support of the Rowlatt agitation and the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movement. The call for an all-India general strike given by the North-Western Railway workers in April 1919 got an enthusiastic response in the northern region. Lajpat Jagga has shown that for railwaymen in large parts of the country Gandhiji came to symbolize resistance to colonial rule and exploitation, just as the Indian Railways symbolized the British Empire, 'the political and commercial will of the Raj.'10 In November 1921, at the time of the visit of the Prince of Wales, the workers responded to the Congress call of a boycott by a countrywide general strike. In Bombay, the textile factories were closed and about 1,40,000 workers were on the streets partic.i.p.ating in the rioting and attacks on Europeans and Parsis who had gone to welcome the Prince of Wales. The spirit and the urges that moved the workers in these eventful years, the relationship seen between the nationalist upsurge and the workers' own aspirations, is best expressed in the words of Arjun Atmaram Alwe, an illiterate worker in a Bombay textile mill, who was later to become a major figure in the working cla.s.s movement: 'While our struggle . . . was going on in this manner, the drum of political agitation was being beaten in the country. The Congress started a great agitation demanding rights for India to conduct her own administration. At that time we workers understood the meaning of this demand for Swaraj to be only this; that our indebtedness would disappear, the oppression of the moneylender would stop, our wages would increase, and the oppression of the owner on the worker, the kicks and blows with which they belabour us, would stop by legislation, and that as a result of it, the persecution of us workers would come to an end. These and other thoughts came into the minds of us workers, and a good many workers from among us, and I myself, enlisted ourselves as volunteers in the Non-Cooperation Movement.'11 Any discussion of these years would remain incomplete without mentioning the founding in 1918 by Gandhiji of the Ahmedabad Textile Labour a.s.sociation (TLA) which, with 14,000 workers on its rolls, was perhaps the largest single trade union of the time. Too often and too casually had Gandhiji's experiment based on the principle of trusteeship (the capitalist being the trustee of the workers' interest) and arbitration been dismissed as cla.s.s collaborationist and against the interests of the workers. Apart from the fact that the TLA secured one of the highest hikes in wages (27 1/2 per cent) during a dispute in 1918, Gandhiji's conception of trusteeship also had a radical potential which is usually missed. As Acharya J.B. Kripalani, one of Gandhiji's staunchest followers, explained: 'The Trustee by the very term used means that he is not the owner. The owner is one whose interest he is called upon to protect,' i.e., the worker. Gandhiji himself told the textile workers of Ahmedabad 'that they were the real masters of the mills and if the trustee, the millowner, did not act in the interest of the real owners, then the workers should offer Satyagraha to a.s.sert their rights.'12 Gandhiji's philosophy for labour, with its emphasis on arbitration and trusteeship, also reflected the needs of the anti-imperialist movement which could ill-afford an all-out cla.s.s war between the const.i.tuent cla.s.ses of the emerging nation.

After 1922, there was again a lull in the working cla.s.s movement, and a reversion to purely economic struggles, that is, to corporatism. The next wave of working cla.s.s activity came towards the end of the 1920s, this time spurred by the emergence of a powerful and clearly defined Left Bloc in the national movement.

It was in the second half of the 1920s that a consolidation of various Left ideological trends occurred and began to have a significant impact on the national movement. Various Communist groups in different parts of India had by early 1927 organized themselves into the Workers' and Peasants' Parties (WPP), under the leadership of people like S.A. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, P.C. Joshi and Sohan Singh Josh. The WPPs, functioning as a left-wing within the Congress, rapidly gained in strength within the Congress organization at the provincial and the all-India levels.

Also, by working within a broad Left from under the WPPs, Communist influence in the trade union movement, marginal till early 1927, had become very strong indeed, by the end of 1928. In Bombay, following the historic six-month-long general strike by the textile workers (April-September 1928), the Communist-led Girni Kamgar Union (GKU) acquired a pre-eminent position. Its membership rose from 324 to 54,000 by the end of 1928. Communist influence also spread to workers in the railways, jute mills, munic.i.p.alities, paper mills, etc., in Bengal and Bombay and in the Burma Oil Company in Madras. In the AITUC too, by the time of the 1928 Jharia session, the broad Left including the Communists had acquired a dominating position. This resulted in the corporatist trend led by people like N.M. Joshi splitting away from the AITUC at the subsequent session presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru. By the end of 1928, the Government was anxiously reporting that 'there was hardly a single public utility service or industry which had not been affected in whole or in part, by the wave of communism which swept the country.'13 The workers under Communist and radical nationalist influence partic.i.p.ated in a large number of strikes and demonstrations all over the country between 1927 and 1929. The AITUC in November 1927 took a decision to boycott the Simon Commission and many workers partic.i.p.ated in the ma.s.sive Simon boycott demonstrations. There were also numerous workers' meetings organized on May Day, Lenin Day, the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and so on.

The Government, nervous at the growing militancy and political involvement of the working cla.s.s, and especially at the coming together of the nationalist and the Left trends, launched a two-p.r.o.nged attack on the labour movement. On the one hand, it enacted repressive laws like the Public Safety Act and Trade Disputes Acts and arrested in one swoop virtually the entire radical leadership of the labour movement and launched the famous Meerut Conspiracy Case against them. On the other hand, it attempted, not without some success, to wean away through concessions (for example the appointment of the Royal Commission on Labour in 1929) a substantial section of the labour movement and commit it to the const.i.tutionalist and corporatist mould.

The labour movement suffered a major setback partially due to this Government offensive and partially due to a shift in stance of the Communist-led wing of the movement. We shall look at this aspect in more detail later on; suffice it to say that from about the end of 1928, the Communists reversed their policy of aligning themselves with and working within the mainstream of the national movement. This led to the isolation of the Communists from the national movement and greatly reduced their hold over even the working cla.s.s. The membership of the GKU fell from 54,000 in December 1928 to about 800 by the end of 1929. Similarly, the Communists got isolated within the AITUC and were thrown out in the split of 1931.

A CPI doc.u.ment of 1930 clearly brings out the impact of this dissociation from the Civil Disobedience Movement on the workers of Bombay: '. . . we actually withdrew from the struggle (civil disobedience) and left the field entirely to the Congress. We limited our role to that of a small group. The result was . . . that in the minds of workers there grew an opinion that we are doing nothing and that the Congress is the only organization which is carrying on the fight against imperialism and therefore the workers began to follow the lead of the Congress.'14 Nevertheless, workers partic.i.p.ated in the Civil Disobedience Movement all over the country. The textile workers of Sholapur, dock labourers of Karachi, transport and mill owners of Calcutta, and the mill workers of Madras heroically clashed with the Government during the movement. In Sholapur, between the 7th and the 16th of May, the textile workers went on a rampage after the police fired to stop an anti-British procession. Government offices, law courts, police stations and railway stations were attacked and rebels virtually took over the city administration for some days. The national flag was hoisted over the town. The Government had to declare martial law to crush the insurgents. Several workers were hanged or sentenced to long-terms of imprisonment.

In Bombay, where the Congress slogan during civil disobedience was that the 'workers and peasants are the hands and the feet of the Congress,'15 about 20,000 workers mostly from the GIP Railway struck work on 4 February 1930. The day Gandhiji breached the salt law, 6 April, a novel form of Satyagraha was launched by the workers of GIP Railwaymen's Union. Batches of workers went to the suburban stations of North Bombay and prostrated themselves on the tracks with red flags posted in front of them. The police had to open fire to clear the tracks. On 6 July, Gandhi Day was declared by the Congress Working Committee to protest against large scale arrests, and about 50,000 people took part in the hartal that day with workers from forty-nine factories downing their tools.

There was a dip in the working cla.s.s movement between 1931 and 1936. Neither did the workers take an active part in the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1932-34. The next wave of working cla.s.s activity came with provincial autonomy and the formation of popular ministries during 1937-1939.

The Communists had, in the meantime, abandoned their suicidal sectarian policies and since 1934 re-enacted the mainstream of nationalist politics. They also rejoined the AITUC in 1935. Left influence in nationalist politics and the trade union movement once again began to grow rapidly. The Communists, the Congress Socialists and the Left nationalists led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose now formed a powerful Left consolidation within the Congress and other ma.s.s organizations.

When the campaign for the 1937 elections began, the AITUC, barring a few centres, gave its support to the Congress candidates. The Congress election manifesto declared that the Congress would take steps for the settlement of labour disputes and take effective measures for securing the rights to form unions and go on strike. During the tenure of the Congress Provincial Governments the trade union movement showed a phenomenal rise. Between 1937 and 1939 the number of trade unions increased from 271 to 562 and the total membership of these unions increased from 261,047 to 399,159. The number of strikes also increased considerably.

One of the princ.i.p.al factors which gave a fillip to the trade union movement in this period was the increased civil liberties under the Congress Governments and the pro-labour att.i.tude of many of the Congress ministries. It is significant that a peculiar feature of the strikes in this period was that a majority of them ended successfully, with full or partial victory for the workers.16 World War II began on 3 September 1939 and the working cla.s.s of Bombay was amongst the first in the world to hold an anti-war strike on 2 October, 1939. About 90,000 workers partic.i.p.ated in the strike. There were several strikes on economic issues all over the country despite the severe repression let loose by a government keen to prevent any disruption of the war effort.

However, with the n.a.z.i attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, the Communists argued that the character of the War had changed from an imperialist war to a people's war. It was now the duty of the working cla.s.s to support the Allied powers to defeat Fascism which threatened the socialist fatherland. Because of this shift in policy, the Communist party dissociated itself from the Quit India Movement launched by Gandhiji in August 1942. They also successfully followed a policy of industrial peace with employers so that production and war-effort would not be hampered.

The Quit India Movement, however, did not leave the working cla.s.s untouched, despite the Communist indifference or opposition to it. Immediately after the arrest of Gandhiji and other leaders on 9 August 1942, following the Quit India Resolution, there were strikes and hartals all over the country, lasting for about a week, by workers in Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Bombay, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Jamshedpur, Madras, Indore and Bangalore. The Tata Steel Plant was closed for thirteen days with the strikers' slogan being that they would not resume work till a national government was formed. In Ahmedabad, the textile strike lasted for about three-and-a-half months with the millowners in their nationalist euphoria actually cooperating! The partic.i.p.ation of workers was, however, low in pockets of Communist influence though in many areas the Communist rank and file, actively joined the call of Quit India despite the party line.

There was a tremendous resurgence in working cla.s.s activity between 1945-47. The workers in large numbers partic.i.p.ated in the post-war political upsurge. They were part of the numerous meetings and demonstrations organized in towns and cities (especially in Calcutta) on the issue of the INA trials. Towards the end of 1945, the Bombay and Calcutta dock workers refused to load ships going to Indonesia with supplies for troops meant to suppress the national liberation struggles of South-East Asia.

Perhaps the most spectacular action by the workers in this period was the strike and hartal by the Bombay workers in solidarity with the mutiny of the naval ratings in 1946. On 22 February, two to three hundred thousand workers downed their tools, responding to a call given by the Communist Party and supported by the Socialists. Peaceful meetings and demonstrations developed into violent clashes as the police intervened. Barricades were set up on the streets which were the scene of pitched battles with the police and the army. Two army battalions were needed to restore order in the city; nearly 250 agitators laid down their lives.

The last years of colonial rule also saw a remarkably sharp increase in strikes on economic issues all over the country - the all-India strike of the Post and Telegraph Department employees being the most well known among them. The pent-up economic grievances during the War, coupled with the problems due to post-war demobilization and the continuation of high prices, scarcity of food and other essentials, and a drop in real wages, all combined to drive the working cla.s.s to the limits of its tolerance.

Also, the mood in antic.i.p.ation of freedom was pregnant with expectation. Independence was seen by all sections of the Indian people as signalling an end to their miseries. The workers were no exception. They too were now struggling for what they hoped freedom would bring them as a matter of right.

18.

The Struggles for Gurdwara Reform and Temple Entry

The rising tide of nationalism and democracy inevitably began to overflow from the political to the religious and social fields affecting the downtrodden castes and cla.s.ses. And many nationalists began to apply the newly discovered technique of non-violent Satyagraha and mobilization of public opinion to issues which affected the internal structure of Indian society. Quite often this struggle to reform Indian social and religious inst.i.tutions and practices led the reformers to clash with the colonial authorities. Thus, the struggle to reform Indian society tended to merge with the anti-imperialist struggle. This was in part the result of the fact that as the national movement advanced, the social base of colonialism was narrowed and the colonial authorities began to seek the support of the socially, culturally and economically reactionary sections of Indian society. This aspect of the national movement is well ill.u.s.trated by the Akali Movement in Punjab and the Temple Entry Movement in Kerala.

The Akali Movement developed on a purely religious issue but ended up as a powerful episode of India's freedom struggle. From 1920 to 1925 more than 30,000 men and women underwent imprisonment, nearly 400 died and over 2,000 were wounded.

The movement arose with the objective of freeing the Gurdwaras (Sikh temples) from the control of ignorant and corrupt mahants (priests). The Gurdwaras had been heavily endowed with revenue-free land and money by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Sikh chieftains and other devout Sikhs during the 18th and 19th centuries. These shrines came to be managed during the 18th century by Udasi Sikh mahants who escaped the wrath of Mughal authorities because they did not wear their hair long. (Many ignorant people therefore believe that these mahants were Hindus. This is, of course, not true at all). In time corruption spread among these mahants and they began to treat the offerings and other income of the Gurdwaras as their personal income. Many of them began to live a life of luxury and dissipation. Apart from the mahants, after the British annexation of Punjab in 1849, some control over the Gurdwaras was exercised by Government-nominated managers and custodians, who often collaborated with mahants.

The Government gave full support to the mahants. It used them and the managers to preach loyalism to the Sikhs and to keep them away from the rising nationalist movement. The Sikh reformers and nationalists, on the other hand, wanted a thorough reformation of the Gurdwaras by taking them out of the control of the mahants and agents of the colonial regime. The nationalists were especially horrified by two incidents - when the priests of the Golden Temple at Amritsar issued a Hukamnama (directive from the Gurus or the holy seats of the Sikh authority) against the Ghadarites, declaring them renegades, and then honoured General Dyer, the butcher of Jallianwala ma.s.sacre, with a saropa (robe of honour) and declared him to be a Sikh.

A popular agitation for the reform of Gurdwaras developed rapidly during 1920 when the reformers organized groups of volunteers known as jathas to compel the mahants and the Government-appointed managers to hand over control of the Gurdwaras to the local devotees. The reformers won easy victories in the beginning with tens of Gurdwaras being liberated in the course of the year. Symbolic of this early success was the case of the Golden Temple and the Akal Takht. The reformers demanded that 'this foremost seat of Sikh faith should be placed in the hands of a representative body of the Sikhs,' and organized a series of public meetings in support of their demand. The Government did not want to antagonize the reformers at this stage and decided to stem the rising tide of discontent on such an emotional religious issue by appeasing the popular sentiment. It, therefore, permitted the Government-appointed manager to resign and, thus, let the control of the Temple pa.s.s effectively into the reformers' hands.

To control and manage the Golden Temple, the Akal Takht and other Gurdwaras, a representative a.s.sembly of nearly 10,000 reformers met in November 1920 and elected a committee of 175 to be known as the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee (SGPC). At the same time, the need was felt for a central body which would organize the struggle on a more systematic basis. The Shiromani Akali Dal was established in December for this purpose. It was to be the chief organizer of the Akali jathas whose backbone was provided by Jat peasantry while their leadership was in the hands of the nationalist intellectuals. Under the influence of the contemporary Non-Cooperation Movement - and many of the leaders were common to both the movements - the Akali Dal and the SGPC accepted complete non-violence as their creed.

The Akali movement faced its first baptism by blood at Nankana, the birth place of Guru Nanak, in February 1921. The mahant of the Gurdwara there, Narain Das, was not willing to peacefully surrender his control to the Akalis. He gathered a force of nearly 500 mercenaries and armed them with guns, swords, lathis and other lethal weapons to meet the challenge of the peaceful Akali volunteers. On 20 February, an Akali jatha entered the Gurdwara to pray. Immediately, the mahant's men opened fire on them and attacked them with other weapons. Nearly 100 Akalis were killed and a large number of jathas under Kartar Singh Jhabbar's command marched into the Gurdwara and took complete control despite dire warnings by the Deputy Commissioner. The mahant had already been arrested. The Government policy was still of vacillation. On the one hand, it did not want to earn the ire of the Sikhs, and, on the other, it did not want to lose control over the Gurdwaras.

The Nankana tragedy was a landmark in the Akali struggle. As Kartar Singh Jhabbar, the liberator of the Nankana Gurdwara, put it, 'the happening had awakened the Sikhs from their slumber and the march towards Swaraj had been quickened.' The tragedy aroused the conscience of the entire country. Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Lala Lajpat Rai and other national leaders visited Nankana to show their solidarity.

The Government now changed its policy. Seeing the emerging integration of the Akali movement with the national movement, it decided to follow a two-p.r.o.nged policy. To win over or neutralize the Moderates and those concerned purely with religious reforms, it promised and started working for legislation which would satisfy them. It decided to suppress the extremist or the anti-imperialist section of the Akalis in the name of maintaining law and order.

The Akalis, too, changed their policy. Heartened by the support of nationalist forces in the country, they extended the scope of their movement to completely root out Government interference in their religious places. They began to see their movement as an integral part of the national struggle. Consequently, within the SGPC, too, the non-cooperator nationalist section took control. In May 1921, the SGPC pa.s.sed a resolution in favour of non-cooperation, for the boycott of foreign goods and liquor, and for the subst.i.tution of panchayats for the British courts of law. The Akali leaders, arrested for the breaking of law, also refused to defend themselves, denying the jurisdiction of foreign-imposed courts.

A major victory was won by the Akalis in the 'Keys Affair' in October 1921. The Government made an effort to keep possession of the keys of the Toshakhana of the Golden Temple. The Akalis immediately reacted, and organized ma.s.sive protest meetings; tens of Akali jathas reached Amritsar immediately. The SGPC advised Sikhs to join the hartal on the day of the arrival of the Prince of Wales in India. The Government retaliated by arresting the prominent, militant nationalist leaders of the SGPC like Baba Kharak Singh and Master Tara Singh. But, instead of dying down, the movement began to spread to the remotest rural areas and the army. The Non-Cooperation Movement was at its height in the rest of the country. The Government once again decided not to confront Sikhs on a religious issue. It released all those arrested in the 'Keys Affair' and surrendered the keys of the Toshakhana to Baba Kharak Singh, head of the SGPC. Mahatma Gandhi immediately sent a telegram to the Baba: 'First battle for India's freedom won. Congratulations.'1 *

The culmination of the movement to liberate the Gurdwaras came with the heroic non-violent struggle around Guru-Ka-Bagh Gurdwara which shook the whole of India. Smarting under its defeat in the 'Keys Affair,' the Punjab bureaucracy was looking for an opportunity to teach the Akalis a lesson and to recover its lost prestige. It was further emboldened by the fact that the Non-Cooperation Movement had been withdrawn in February 1922. It began to look for a pretext.

The pretext was provided by events at a little known village, Ghokewala, about 20 kilometers from Amritsar. The mahant of the Gurdwara Guru-Ka-Bagh had handed over the Gurdwara to the SGPC in August 1921, but claimed personal possession of the attached land. When the Akalis cut a dry kikkar tree on the land for use in the community kitchen, he complained to the police 'of the theft of his property from his land.' The officials seized this opportunity to provoke the Akalis. On 9 August 1922, five Akalis were arrested and put on trial. The Akali Dal reacted immediately to the new challenge. Akali jathas began to arrive and cut trees from the disputed land. The Government started arresting all of them on charges of theft and rioting. By 28 August more than 4,000 Akalis had been arrested.

The authorities once again changed their tactics. Instead of arresting the Akali volunteers they began to beat them mercilessly with lathis. But the Akalis stood their ground and would not yield till felled to the ground with broken bones and lacerated bodies. C.F. Andrews described the official action as 'inhuman, brutal, foul, cowardly and incredible to an Englishman and a moral defeat of England.'2 The entire country was outraged. National leaders and journalists converged on Guru-Ka-Bagh. Ma.s.sive protest meetings were organized all over Punjab. A ma.s.sive Akali gathering at Amritsar on 10 September was attended by Swami Shraddhanand, Hakim Ajmal Khan and others. The Congress Working Committee appointed a committee to investigate the conduct of the police.

Once again the Government had to climb down. As a face-saving device, it persuaded a retired Government servant to lease the disputed land from the mahant and then allow the Akalis to cut the trees. It also released all the arrested Akali volunteers.

With the Gurdwaras under the control of the SGPC, the militant Akalis looked for some other opportunity of confronting the Government since they felt that the larger Gurdwara - the country - was not yet liberated. In September 1923, the SGPC took up the cause of the Maharaja of Nabha who had been forced by the Government to abdicate. This led to the famous morcha at Jaito in Nabha. But the Akalis could not achieve much success on the issue since it neither involved religion nor was there much support in the rest of the country. In the meanwhile, the Government had succeeded in winning over the moderate Akalis with the promise of legislation which was pa.s.sed in July 1925 and which handed over control over all the Punjab Gurdwaras to an elected body of Sikhs which also came to be called the SGPC.

Apart from its own achievement, the Akali Movement made a ma.s.sive contribution to the political development of Punjab. It awakened the Punjab peasantry. As Mohinder Singh, the historian of the Akali Movement, has pointed out: 'It was only during the Akali movement that the pro-British feudal leadership of the Sikhs was replaced by educated middle-cla.s.s nationalists and the rural and urban cla.s.ses united on a common platform during the two-p.r.o.ngedAkali struggle.' This movement was also a model of a movement on a religious issue which was utterly non-communal. To further quote Mohinder Singh: 'It was this idea of liberation of the country from a foreign Government that united all sections of the Sikh community and brought the Hindus, the Muslims and the Sikhs of the province into the fold of the Akali movement.'3 The Akali Movement also awakened the people of the princely states of Punjab to political consciousness and political activity. There were also certain weaknesses with long-term consequences. The movement encouraged a certain religiosity which would be later utilized by communalism.

The Akali Movement soon divided into three streams because it represented three distinct political streams, which had no reasons to remain united as a distinct Akali party once Gurdwara reform had taken place. One of the movement's streams consisted of moderate, pro-Government men who were pulled into the movement because of its religious appeal and popular pressure. These men went back to loyalist politics and became a part of the Unionist Party. Another stream consisted of nationalist persons who joined the mainstream nationalist movement, becoming a part of the Gandhian or leftist Kirti-Kisan and Communist wings. The third stream, which kept the t.i.tle of Akali, although it was not the sole heir of the Akali Movement, used to the full the prestige of the movement among the rural ma.s.ses, and became the political organ of Sikh communalism, mixing religion and politics and inculcating the ideology of political separation from Hindus and Muslims. In pre-1947 politics the Akali Dal constantly vacillated between nationalist and loyalist politics.

Till 1917, the National Congress had refused to take up social reform issues lest the growing political unity of the Indian people got disrupted. It reversed this position in 1917 when it pa.s.sed a resolution urging upon the people 'the necessity, justice and righteousness of removing all disabilities imposed by custom upon the depressed cla.s.ses.'At this stage, Lokamanya Tilak also denounced untouchability and asked for its removal. But they did not take any concrete steps in the direction. Among the national leaders, it was Gandhi who gave top priority to the removal of untouchability and declared that this was no less important than the political struggle for freedom.

In 1923, the Congress decided to take active steps towards the eradication of untouchability. The basic strategy it adopted was to educate and mobilize opinion among caste Hindus on the question. The nationalist challenge in this respect came to be symbolized by two famous struggles in Kerala.

The problem was particularly acute in Kerala where the depressed cla.s.ses or avarnas (those without caste, later known as Harijans) were subjected to degrading and de-humanising social disabilities. For example, they suffered not only from untouchability but also theendal or distance pollution - the Ezhavas and Pulayas could not approach the higher castes nearer than 16 feet and 72 feet respectively. Struggle against these disabilities was being waged since the end of 19th century by several reformers and intellectuals such as Sri Narayan Guru, N. k.u.maran Asan and T.K. Madhavan.

Immediately after the Kakinada session, the Kerala Provincial Congress Committee (KPCC) took up the eradication of untouchability as an urgent issue. While carrying on a ma.s.sive propaganda campaign against untouchability and for the educational and social upliftment of the Harijans, it was decided to launch an immediate movement to open Hindu temples and all public roads to the avarnas or Harijans. This, it was felt, would give a decisive blow to the notion of untouchability since it was basically religious in character and the avarnas' exclusion from the temples was symbolic of their degradation and oppression.

A beginning was made in Vaikom, a village in Travancore. There was a major temple there whose four walls were surrounded by temple roads which could not be used by avarnas like Ezhavas and Pulayas. The KPCC decided to use the recently acquired weapon of Satyagraha to fight untouchability and to make a beginning at Vaikom by defying the unapproachability rule by leading a procession of savarnas (caste Hindus) and avarnas on the temple roads on 30 March 1924.

The news of the Satyagraha aroused immediate enthusiasm among political and social workers and led to an intense campaign to arouse the conscience of savarnas and mobilize their active support. Many savarna organizations such as the Nair Service Society, Nair Samajam and Kerala Hindu Sabha supported the Satyagraha. Yogakshema Sabha, the leading organization of the Namboodiris (highest Brahmins by caste), pa.s.sed a resolution favouring the opening of temples to avarnas. The temple authorities and the Travancore Government put up barricades on the roads leading to the temple and the District Magistrate served prohibitory orders on the leaders of the Satyagraha. On 30th March, the Satyagrahis, led by K.P. Kesava Menon, marched from the Satyagraha camp towards the temple. They, as well as the succeeding batches of Satyagrahis, consisting of both savarnas and avarnas, were arrested and sentenced to imprisonment.

The Vaikom Satyagraha created enthusiasm all over the country and volunteers began to arrive from different parts of India. An Akali jatha arrived from Punjab. E.V. Ramaswami Naicker (popularly known as Periyar later) led a jatha from Madurai and underwent imprisonment. On the other hand, the orthodox and reactionary section of caste Hindus met at Vaikom and decided to boycott all pro-Satyagraha Congressmen and not to employ them as teachers or lawyers or to vote for them.

On the death of the Maharaja in August 1924, the Maharani, as Regent, released all the Satyagrahis. As a positive response to this gesture, it was decided to organize a jatha (a group of volunteers) of caste Hindus to present a memorial to the Maharani asking for the opening of the temple roads to all. Batches of caste Hindus from all over Kerela converged on Vaikom. On 31 October, a jatha of nearly one hundred caste Hindus started their march on foot to Trivandrum. It was given warm receptions at nearly 200 villages and towns on the way. By the time it reached Trivandrum, it consisted of over 1,000 persons. The Maharani, however, refused to accept their demand and the Satyagraha was continued.

In early March 1925, Gandhi began his tour of Kerala and met the Maharani and other officials. A compromise was arrived at. The roads around the temple were opened to avarnas but those in the Sankethan of the temple remained closed to them. In his Kerala tour, Gandhi did not visit a single temple because avarnas were kept out of them.

The struggle against untouchability and for the social and economic uplift of the depressed cla.s.ses continued all over India after 1924 as a part of the Gandhian constructive programme. Once again the struggle was most intense in Kerala.

Prodded by K. Kelappan, the KPCC took up the question of temple entry in 1931 during the period when the Civil Disobedience Movement was suspended. A vast campaign of public meetings was organized throughout Malabar. The KPCC decided to make a beginning by organizing a temple entry Satyagraha at Guruvayur on 1st November 1931.

A jatha of sixteen volunteers, led by the poet Subramanian Tirumambu, who became famous as the 'Singing Sword of Kerala,' began a march from Cannanore in the north to Guruvayur on 21 October. The volunteers ranged from the lowliest of Harijans to the highest caste Namboodiris. The march stirred the entire country and aroused anti-caste sentiments. The 1st of November was enthusiastically observed as All-Kerala Temple Entry Day with a programme of prayers, processions, meetings, receptions and fund collections. It was also observed in cities like Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi and Colombo (Sri Lanka). The popular response was tremendous. Many all-India leaders visited Malabar. Money and volunteers poured in from everywhere. The youth were specially attracted and were in the forefront of the struggle. The anti-untouchability movement gained great popularity. Many religious devotees transferred the offerings they would have made to the temple to the Satyagraha camp, feeling that the camp was even more sacred than the temple.