Labor's Pioneering Role In This Subcontinent: An Introduction
By Farooque Chowdhury
Countercurrents.org
Pioneer: With heroic struggle and unforgettable sacrifice labor played a pioneering role in this sub-continent's struggle for independence from colonial rule. Labor's undeniable leading role is also there in making the society humane and democratic. In areas and at times, labor struggled alone for the causes in this land. But it's a march to progress for all.
Labor's struggle for liberation from all forms of bondage and backwardness should be inscribed bright in the pages of history. Only many epics can recite labor's historic struggle in this land. But labor's role and sacrifice goes unsung.
Contradiction between labor and capital began the moment capital enslaved labor. From
The struggle spanned from the loco sheds in
Plundered: The colonial rule was nothing but plundering a land – about 1,800, 000 square miles or more than twenty times the area of
The land was rich in resources. Clive, as he was quoted in the Indian Industrial Commission Report 1916-'18 [henceforth IICR], found Murshidabad in 1757 was “rich as the city of
Path with Steel: Following predecessor Lord Hardinge's 1848 minute on construction of railways in
Fund allocation for construction of roads in the northern parts of the sub-continent was started from 1830. The total length of roads reached 9,000 miles by 1852. The roads increased capacity to transport commodities, about 10 times.
In 1861, the colonial rulers issued an order on reclamation of degraded land. It was issued to encourage cotton cultivation. Cotton supply to the British Isles from
The East India Company exported the first consignment of jute in 1793: 100 tons. The first jute mills came into existence in 1855, and by 1869, 5 jute mills were operating with 950 looms. By 1910, 38 companies exported more than a billion yards of clothes and more than 450 million bags. By 1939, the number of looms increased to 68,377. (Samita Sen, Women and Labor in Late Colonial India, The Bengal Jute Industry, 1999, and WorldJute.Com)
In 1834, Lord Bentinck submitted a proposal to the East India Company Council of Directors on the possibilities of tea industry in the sub-continent. The first tea consignment from
The 1894-1914 was the period of establishment of mining industry in the subcontinent. In 1895, 3 million tons of coal was extracted. Railways, jute and textile industries, engineering and foundry workshops, rice mills and brick kilns increased the extraction of coal. Extractable and exploitable all areas were exploited only to enrich the colonial masters. And, massive hunger was visiting the land.
People Starved: Famines, as is cited in Romesh Chunder Dutt's Open Letters to Lord Curzon on Famines and Land Assessments in India, The Cambridge Economic History of India, B M Bhatia's Famines in India: A Study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India With Special Reference to Food Problem, 1860–1990, Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, David Hardiman's “Usury, Dearth and Famine in Western India” (Past and Present, 152), ravaged the land: the Great Bengal Famine (1769-'70), the Chalisha Famine (1783-'84), the Skull Famine (1791-'92), the Upper Doab Famine (1860-'61), the Orissa Famine (1865-'67), the Rajputana Famine (1868-'70), the Bihar Famine (1873-'74), the Great/South Indian Famine (1876-'78), the Indian Famines (1896-'97 and 1899-1900), the Bengal Famine (1943-'44). These were only a few among many others. The famines claimed their toll: millions of lives. Dutt mentioned “sad record of twenty-two famines within a period of 130 years of British rule in
However, there was an opposite reality. Citing D. Rothermund's An Economic History of India (1988) and Dutt's Open Letters … Davis finds, “[b]etween 1875-1900 — a period that included the worst famines in Indian history — annual grain exports increased from 3 to 10 million tons; … this quantity equaled the annual nutrition of 25 million people.” (ibid.)
Payment: And, the imperialism was extracting its avania, tribute: dividends, interests, commissions. The sub-continent, writes Marx in Capital (vol. III), had to pay millions of pounds “in tribute for ‘good government,' interest and dividends of British capital, etc., not counting the sums sent home annually by officials as savings of their salaries or by English merchants as part of their profit …” The imperial filch had “noetic” causes: financing imperial expeditions, invasions, wars, and payments for mutiny! “Already saddled with a huge public debt that included reimbursing the stockholders of the East India Company and paying the costs of the 1857 revolt,
And, massacres and killings including the
And, there were incarceration and banishment of and gallows for freedom fighters. Many they were. There were Bhagat Singh and Surja [mostly spelled Surya] Sen, and Khudiram, one of the youngest revolutionaries in
Precedent: And, there was the poverty-stricken people, pauperized population, and laboring multitude, an emerging class of working people interacting with capitalist production in the sub-continent. It's, as Marx sarcastically coins in Theories of Surplus-Value “another wonderful prospect”. (Part II, vol. IV of Capital) “[T]he labouring class has to bear all the ‘temporary inconveniences' – unemployment, displacement of labour and capital …” (ibid.) The laboring class in the sub-continent bore all the “temporary inconveniences” capital was “gifting”. “If the history of British rule in India were to be condensed into a single fact, it is this: there was no increase in India's per capita income from 1757 to 1947” (Angus Maddison, Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run, 1998, quoted in Mike Davis, “The Origin …”) An imperial “great success” story it was. And, now, the former masters without sense of honor shamelessly preach the people in the sub-continent! They claim it's their duty to democracy! And, pitifully, they have dependents and disciples! Masters have sense of humor.
The average income in the sub-continent was “just enough”, write Professor K T Shah and K J Khambata in The Wealth and Taxable Capacity of India, “either to feed two men in every three of the population, or give them all two meals in place of every three meals they need, on condition that they all consent to go naked, live out of doors all the year round, have no amusement or recreation, and want nothing else but food, and that the lower, the coarsest, and the least nutritious.” From 1872 to 1921, the life expectancy of ordinary Indians fell by 20 percent, writes K. Davis in Population of India and Pakistan (1951), and Mike Davis comments on the “development”: “[A] deterioration in human biology probably without precedent in the subcontinent's long history”. (“The Origin …”)
The population, to survive on that income, had to “forget” health care and education. The Report on an Enquiry into Working Class Budget in Bombay [Mumbai] compared budgets of
“[B]ut”, the commission found, “it is of little avail if the labour is inefficient and unorganised.” So, there is a great opportunity – organize these limbs and muscles in an efficient way – to have a higher profit! And, to organize the limbs is to regiment labor, shackle it.
The colonial crown's acts were nothing but savage. “There is no end”, Lenin wrote, “to the acts of violence and plunder which goes under the name of the British system of government in
The wage “slaves” were coerced or allured out of their villages with the power of starvation. “[B]etween the years 1921 and 1931 the number of industrial workers employed in establishments of more than 10 workers rose from 2.6 million to 3.5 million. In the intervening decade, and especially in the last two and a half years of the war with the large increase in heavy war industry, this number has rocketed by leaps and bounds. … [T]he industrial proletariat numbers [were] far more than the 5 million estimate of 1931. To this core of true industrial workers must be added about 20 million handicraft workers who work in places employing less than 10 people. These are wage workers and constitute a reserve for the industrial working class. … In addition to this there [was] an agricultural proletariat … approximately 130 million.” (Ted Grant & Andrew Scott, “The road to India's freedom”, Workers' International News, vol. 5 nos. 3&4, presumably June 1942) A part of the “slaves” were being mobilized by capital in newly established factories and mills with regimentation and rule.
Children of these “slaves” were not even allowed to stay beyond the tentacles of capital. “If the children of workers are provided with education under tolerable conditions of life, a new generation of workers will grow up, who will learn to regard mill work as their fixed occupation.” (IICR) So, there's arrangement for perennial supply of labor! And, they were already there. “Children between the ages of 9 and 14, generally known as half-timers, are employed in mills for six hours a day …” (ibid.) Long ago, Marx found the fact in the home of the imperial masters as he quoted the 17th January, 1860 issue of Daily Telegraph: “Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate….” (Capital, vol. I) The sub-continent was chained by capital. So, why should capital spare children of wage slaves in the sub-continent? Yet, capital teaches “civility” and “humanity”!
Pack: From the very beginning the property owning classes related to industry and commerce were organized: the British Chamber of Commerce – in 1834 in Bengal, the Bombay Mill Owners' Association – in 1875, the Duars Planters' Association by the European tea planters – 1878, the Indian Jute Mills Association (during formation, it was Indian Jute Manufacturers' Association, and the renaming was done in 1902) – in 1884, Ahmedabad Textile Mills' Association – 1891, Indian Tea Planters' Association – 1918. Sugar, mining, engineering, paper, etc. found similar organizations within a short period. The Indian Chambers of Commerce was in close relations with the Indian political leadership dependable to the colonial rulers. Deep impact of the relations between this political leadership and economic interests, writes C B Kumar in The Development of Industrial Relations in India, by these types of organizations were felt at latter stage. During the World War I, the British colonial rulers got assistance from the Tata's iron, steel, cement and hydro-power establishments. It was a business of mutual benefit – comprador serving its master and the master blessing the comprador. “Only moneylenders, urban merchants, and a handful of indigenous industrialists seemed to have benefited consistently from
Pathfinders: At the same time, new industrial centers were turning into centers of protest and resistance. The industrial workers in the sub-continent waged struggles in its economic and political interests, and for the country's freedom from colonial chains. For more than a century, the struggle, part of class struggle, was waged in waves. The working people, it's found:
(1) On occasions, established command over situation. Working people, in one such occasion, smashed colonial administration in
(2) Set examples of peaceful protests. In
(3) Never resorted to terrorism, conspiratorial approach, individualistic adventurism although a part of enlightened middle class temporarily practiced the method. The labor's non-resorting to conspiratorial work is a show of its strength. Resorting to conspiratorial work, it should be mentioned, is an infantile approach. Resisting/defying capital was begun by the emerging class itself since its very early days, and that was not through conspiracy and terrorism. The emerging class gradually resorted to collective resistance.
On the contrary, it was the capital owning classes and their political cohorts and suppression-machine that were ceaselessly resorting to conspiracy, terror, violence, armed assault. Laws and courts of law were used against the working classes although it was unremittingly propagated that law and its court were impartial. There's instance of court of law fined trade union, which was trying only to raise and realize justified demands of its members – industrial workers, and thus the court stood against labor. The position compelled the working masses to resort to forceful resistance. Labor always resorted to collective resistance after only a few resistances at individual level at its initial days. The practice – collective approach – was praxis of democracy within its sphere, and in its struggle for survival.
(4) Stood against imperialist power. On occasions, it was the working class that raised the banner of resistance against imperialism before any other class in the sub-continent could initiate the job. It opposed unjust war. The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in its
(5) Stood by national struggle for independence. Swadeshi movement found labor by its side. Native rulers in princely states, Marx observed, were most formidable obstacle on the path to advancement of the sub-continent. (“The native states”, July 25, 1853, New York Daily Tribune) Labor struggled for democracy in the princely states. Labor was in solidarity with broader society as it took active participation in the broader society's political struggle for independence. Labor raised its banner of resistance during the Red Fort Trial of Indian National Army (INA) members in 1945. Its role and participation along with students and other sections of the mass in Kolkata protesting the trial was heroic. At its initial days, labor lacked political program, a natural consistency. The political program developed gradually as labor was gaining knowledge from political developments and from its fights against capital. At the Kolkata Congress, 50,000 workers demonstrated with the slogan: An independent socialist
(6) Established alliance with peasantry. It was established, among other places, in Jalpaiguri by tea plantation workers in the 1920s. Labor expressed solidarity with the revolting peasantry during its Chouri Choura trial although Congress leadership abandoned the Chouri Choura-peasantry that followed Congress' call for mass upsurge.
(7) Stood against communalism although capital and its politicians tried to spread poison of communalism in the camp of labor.
(8) Stood for dignity. On occasions, labor struggled for recognition of its union as its representative, which is identified by a number of labor historians as question of dignity.
(9) On occasions and in areas, organized it on its own. Organizations and leadership from among the ranks of labor emerged, on occasions, through its fights in factories and mills.
(10) With its struggles, confirmed class struggle as the key to social advancement. With its struggle, thus, labor carried forward the historic task of advancement in the sub-continent. It carried on the task since its days of inception. No other class in the land has embarked on this task as labor. In this task, labor held high the banner of equity, equality, equitable distribution, people's control over all public resources, and the task of smashing of capitalism, imperialism and remnants of feudalism.
Power Unleashed: On the contrary, labor had to face all the adversaries and force capital and the state in its command could unleash and heinous tact these could adopt:
(1) Brutal force, murder, killing, massacre, treachery, coercion, threat, surveillance. State resorted to its freedom in using firearms in the face of labor's justified collective protests/resistance/demands. At those moments, labor had nothing but gravels, bricks pieces, and on one or two occasions, parts broken from machines to protect it. Even, labor's minimum demands for a better working condition, an essential for regeneration of capital, were initially denied, brushed out, unheeded, gagged down. Capital and state felt scared with labor's most primary moves, with labor's search for recourse in its roots in village life and in its spiritual practices, with slightest signs of labor's very primary initiative for education (organizing library) and amusement or spiritual practices (organizing puja, prayer). The state, as is claimed by revolutionary theoreticians of proletariat, was always faithful to its duty: serve capital, and very naturally, administrative machine, law and courts of law were nothing but drumbeaters although a lot of theoreticians always propagate and demand non-partisan administrative machine, which is not only an illusion, but a damn lie also.
(2) Spreading of confusion and communalism in the ranks of labor, forcefully keeping labor isolated from broader society, collaboration between capital and its political representatives that posed as leader of the masses, taking hold of leadership. On occasions, political leadership tried to keep labor away from participating in political activities. But labor thwarted those ill-efforts.
(3) Unemployment, competition, burden of decreased profit, illiteracy, uncertainty, starvation, indignity. Capital was always using hunger to force labor capitulate. Capital was reducing wages while its profit was rising. During boom in economy, capital intensified its exploitation of labor, and burdened it during period of bust. Capital increased working hours as it got hold of electricity. Kolkata jute mills workers had the experience. Holidays on occasions of religious festivals including eid, rathjatra and
Perseverance: But no conspiracy, no threat and terror, no murder and killing, no imposition of boundary by law and force could deter labor in its fight for a better life – a life with freedom and dignity, a life with safety and security, a life with opportunities to pursue humane excellence. In waves of strikes across industry and across the land, labor spread its movement with loss of millions of working days in the sub-continent, and at times, compelled capital and its state to surrender. In areas, labor turned market places into staging ground for mobilization and resistance. There's instance that a library evolved into a TU and a typed newsletter of a few hundred copies had to be printed in larger number for distribution around the land.
It took years for a red flag to appear in a labor procession in this sub-continent; and at a time of triumph, labor was spreading its message with red flags on a locomotive engine that was moving from place to place. It was labor's moment of victory in the sub-continent-wide struggle of railway workers in 1946.
Embryos of trade union almost simultaneously came into being in more than one place in the sub-continent as it was organizing on its own although an assumption prevails that TU activities began in a single area. The pattern – simultaneous – is meaningful.
Labor's movement in the sub-continent supports the claim, to put it briefly, reality shapes ideas. In its initial days, labor in the sub-continent was tied to ideas and culture of its old home: village, and ghosts and ill-spirit, etc. Many of its faiths were ancient. To get free from exploitation, a part of labor, in its initial days, in the sub-continent sought help of gods that lived eternally somewhere in forests and hills. It even imagined Kaiser as a god, who had the capacity to free labor from the clutches of feereengee, the eengrej, the English, the British colonial rulers, and its collaborators. It should not be imagined that all old ideas and concepts evaporated the moment labor interacted with machine, with modern production process, with capitalist production. But new ideas, concepts, method, style, imaginations crept in. Those might be partial, might be mixed; but old ones were coming into conflict with new ones, and giving in to the new.
In areas, because of type of production, labor was kept isolated from broader social community/towns/villages; they had to work in small groups; even one group of workers were isolated from other groups, and the groups were smaller in number. Effective and organized forms and methods of protests, other than falling sick or deserting work place, were unknown to labor in the area. It was difficult for news of political and social developments in the broader society to reach labor in the area. Political leadership at national level, at times, even, was not taking initiative to reach the labor there. But that didn't permanently kept labor away from organizing collective struggle. It's a meaningful signal to comprehend.
But with perseverance, labor learned. On the path to learning, mistakes were there as were failures. Successes also raised their victorious flags. Successes were teachers as were mistakes and failures.
Responsibility for failures in political struggle and political development, for failures to foil onslaught by forces of reaction and retrogression, for fratricidal bloodbath engineered and instigated by capital in no way falls on labor, a young class not developed fully at that period, as at no moment in the history of this sub-continent labor was in full control of political situations, which was always developing through competition and conflicts. Labor's contending classes were older, stronger, having more interactions with science, finance, diplomacy and geopolitics, modern knowledge, and with other countries, and were politically more organized, matured and powerful. The class in collusion with imperialist rulers, and standing opposed to labor was more matured than all other classes in the sub-continent. Labor, despite its inexperience, weaker organization, and theoretical incompleteness, stood against backward, reactionary political ideas and activities, and stood for progress. A historical responsibility it was. Labor always stood for fraternity and solidarity. No other class in the sub-continent can make similar claim throughout the period.
Forms and methods of protest, resistance and struggle that emerge in spheres of society depend on prevailing reality, which is a historical growth. Politics can't escape the reality as it can't bury prospects also. Adopting appropriate strategy and tactics takes time. At times, initially obviously, resistances and barricades may crumble down as those initially can't overpower relevant process. But despite failures and temporary crumbling downs the clarion call for a humane life and humane dignity remains alive. It's one of the teachings by labor in the sub-continent. “[W]e have to work very hard to … preserve the dignity of human beings as creatures with the ability to reason and choose. Resistance lives! As we say in
It's a modified English version of “Shoochanaa” (“Introduction”), Upamahaadeshe Srameek Aandoloner Kaalpanjee (Notes on Labor Movement in this Sub-continent, in Baanglaa), by Farooque Chowdhury, May 2015. Observations made above are on the basis of findings mentioned in the Notes on …
Farooque Chowdhury contributes from
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