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SociologyContributions to Indian

DOI: 10.1177/0069966799033001101999; 33; 205Contributions to Indian Sociology

Rajnarayan ChandavarkarQuestions of class: The general strikes in Bombay, 1928-29

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Questions of class: The generalstrikes in Bombay,1928-29

RajnarayanChandavarkar

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar is Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and Lecturer in

History, University of Cambridge, Cambridge,CB2 IT Q.

This essay presents an argument aboutthe processes which, marked as much bycontingencyas by conflict, shaped the formation of class identity. It argues that the formation of class

consciousness is contingent upon the specific historical context in which it develops. Its

presence at one moment has not ensured its persistence at the next. Class consciousness is

neither latent nor immanent within the workingclasses, but is most fruitfully analysed as a

construct of politicalstruggle and debate. Accordingly, the essay examines the construction

of class in the course of thegeneral strikes of 1928-29 in Bombay.These strikes involved at

their core over 150,000 workers in more than eighty mills over a period of about eighteen

months, but they also pulled into their orbit workers in other trades and occupations in thecity and beyond; and, in addition, theydeveloped and manifested widespreadsupport among

workers for the communists. In particular, the essay delineates a range of influences which

shaped the political context of 1928-29 and informedthese struggles. Finally, it sketchesthe conditions for the break-up of the solidarities of 1928-29 and the ebbing tide of classconsciousness in the 1930s.

In recent years, the workingclasses have commanded increasing atten-

tion from historians of India. The flow of books, articles and doctoral

theses addressing various aspects of the history of the workingclasseshas been impressive. Some of this work has been inspired by, or built

upon, sometimes even attempted to apply the insights of, the pioneeringwork in English and European social history of the 1960s and 1970s. Of

course, there have been other points of departure: from long-standinghistoriographical neglect to the immediacy of the ferocious trade union

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to the participants at the conference on ’The worldsof Indian industrial labour’ at CASA, Amsterdam in December 1997, and especially to

Jonathan Parry and Douglas Haynes,for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.









206

battles in India in the 1970s and 1980s or the effects of ’liberalisation’ in

directing our attention to cities and industries. Nonetheless, it is a strik-ing paradox that workingclass history is seemingly in terminal declinewithin English and European (though not perhaps American) history. Asthe threat of the workingclasses within the contemporary polity, and ofMarxism as a political and intellectual force, has receded in the West, the

investigation of its politics, its history and its social character appears to

have lost its urgency.But in British and European historiography, the study of the work-

ing classes had been too intimately linked to, and had, therefore, never

sufficiently taken its distance from, the history of socialism. From 19th

century socialism, historians of the ’Western’ workingclasses inheritedthe assumption that economic development determined the character of

labour, its social organisation and political consciousness. The patternand pace of industrialisation, it was supposed, shaped the character of thesocial struggle and its political forms. The notion of the stages of indus-trialisation yielded a matchingevolutionary scheme of the stages of class

consciousness. The history and developmentof the labour movement

was, thus, assumed to constitute the prelude to the rise and triumph ofsocialism. In this way, the history of the working class came to be stud-ied as an inseparable part of the rise of socialism. The point of interestin studying the history of the labour movement was to investigate howits historic mission, the achievement of socialism, could be advanced or

even realised and to track its progress or explain its setbacks. Underlyingthis history was the assumption that class consciousness arises naturallyfrom the proletarian condition. It was expected to lead to the formation oftrade unions; but it could also be developed, in the course of trade union

struggles in defence of jobs and wage levels, into a more sophisticatedform of political consciousness and action.

The failure of workingclass movements to conform to such theoretical

expectations thus constrained historians to seek counter-factual explana-tions for the weakness of class consciousness and the persistence of sec-

tionalism and difference. From this teleological perspective, the historyof the working class came to be viewed in rather narrow and increas-ingly rigid terms. However, as social historians became more alert to

the range and diversity of sources of identity, so the assumption thatthe emergence of a proletariat would eventuate in the foimation of classconsciousness appeared rather less compelling. The response of socialhistorians was often to treat diverse social identities as if they were in

competition with each other. Significantly, as recent debates about ’the









208

retreat before caste, religious, linguisticand national identities. The binary

opposition of (what is sometimes awkwardly called) ’communitycon-sciousness’ and classconsciousness poses a false problem (Chakrabarty1989). Historians or Britain and Europe may have been taken bysurprisein the 1970s and 1980s to find that the sectionalism fostered by skill,occupation and the division of labour, region and religion, nationalismand gender divided the workingclass. There is less reason or excuse,

considering the lines along which their own subject has developed, for

Indian historians to be caught unawares. Similarly, scholars have some-

times implicitly retained the conceptual distinction between ’a class initself’ and ’a class for itself’. Consequently, historians are still given to

pondering whether even if ’class in itself’ formed within the colonial

economy, ’the deeply impoverished masses’ of India could be expectedto act as a ’class for itself’ (Washbrook 1990). Furthermore, even when

they have sought to place the concept at the centre of their analysis, his-torians have sometimes adhered to a strongly unitary conception of class.

Thus, they have remained hesitant and uncertain about the significance of

the sectionalism and fragmentation of the labour force, especially when itwas fostered as much by the effects of industrialisation as by the variousor competingidentities which characterise social being. To recognise thatthe working classes were fragmentedby the very processes which consti-

tuted them has appeared to some as nothing less than the rejection of the

concept itself or the denial of the possibility of class consciousness. The

working class in this reasoning constituted a unitary formation. The evi-

dence of its internal divisions requires us, in this view, to measure whetherthe forces of its fragmentation,which emanated in part from the organisa-tion of production, were more powerful and more compelling than those

directing it towards unity and homogeneity. The theoretical assumptionthat the workingclass has common interests, albeit converging at some

level of abstraction, has led to the quest, or the vigil, for its manifestationin the developmentof class consciousness. In this way, class conscious-ness is conceived as a latent, even immanent reality, always about to findfull

expression,within the

workingclass.

these evolutionary, a-historical notions of class, have tended to attributeto it a fixed identity and to return its analysis to the traditional tautologyof matching stages of economic developmentto levels of social con-

sciousness. In place of the assumption that class consciousness flowed

naturally from the proletarian condition, it would perhaps be more fruitfulto explore its political construction in a way which allows for the multipleand changingidentities which played upon it. Class as much as any other









210

in Bombay, was to tell the RoyalCommission on Labour in India in 1929,it was difficult to imagine that Sassoons would not ensure efficient work-ing.4The Sassoon mills were among the best run mills in Bombay. Butthe weavers’ experience over the previous two decades suggested thatthere was much room for manipulating orders, machines and wage rates

in ways which would reduce their earnings and increase their workloads.

They went on strike but in a month their resistance had been broken. ByJanuary 1928, Sassoons extended their scheme to cover all their mills andincreased workloads in spinning. Women workers in the windingdepart-ment now brought out the two thousand workers in the Jacob SassoonMill on 3 January 1928.5 When they were threatened with immediate dis-missal, they decided to generalise their action: they stoned the other millsin the Sassoon group and forced them to close as well. For two months,pearly 14,000 workers were on strike.6 Between August 1927 and April1928, strikes had occurred in twenty-f9ur mills.7 Many mills, however,had continued to alter their conditions of work, manipulate their wagerates and retrench workers. The Sassoon strike, followed by another strikein the Spring Mills of the Bombay Dyeing group, provided a focus aroundwhich the grievances of a wider body of the millworkers came together.

It was probably the incident of the police firing on 23 April 1928, whenParshuram Jadhav was killed, which marked the point at which the strikebecame general. In the early 1980s, millworkers still remembered his

name, but few could say precisely who he was. Many thought vaguelythat he was a legendary leader of the past. Very few knew his story. Hewas on his way to work with Kondiba Maruti when they saw a crowd

running towards them from the direction of the Swan Mill, having justclosed it down. Superintendent Power on seeing the crowd opened fireand shot Jadhav.8 As the strike gathered momentum, the trade unions

already in existence, the Girni Kamgar Mahamandal (GKM) and the

Bombay Textile Labour Union, vacillated and divided. The coterie of

4 Royal Commission on Labour in India, Evidence, BombayPresidency, Mr F. Stones,

superintendent of mills, E.D. Sassoon & Co. Ltd, Bombay. 1, i: 478-99 and 1, ii: 407-25.5 Bombay Presidency Police, Secret Abstracts of Intelligence [henceforth, BPP, SAI]

1928, no. 3, 21 January, para 68.6 Ibid., 1928, no. 10, 10 March, para 266.7 Proceedings of theMeerut conspiracy case, statement by S.A. Dange,made in the court

of R.L. Yorke, I.C.S., additional sessions judge, Meerut, 26 October 1931, p. 2414.8 Times of India, 14 May 1928; Government of Bombay [henceforth, GOB], Home

department [henceforth, Home] (special), file 543 (10) C Part B of 1928, Maharashtra State

Archives [henceforth, MSA].









211

young communists of the Bombay Labour Group,fretting for action, had

from the earliest stages of the dispute urged them to organise a generalstrike. In March 1928, they effected a coup within the divided GKM

and with the help of the faction led by Arjun Alve, took it over.9 Inthe following weeks, the communist leaders advocated and promoted a

confrontational response to the employers’ initiatives. As the disputedeveloped, they began to establish closer linkages with the workers on

the shopfloor. ’What happenedin this strike’, Dange recalled a few yearslater, ’was that the rank and file was forcing the lead on the organisationsand not that the leadership was consciously and effectively guiding therank and file.’ 10 As the strike developed, the communists came to dom-inate the Joint Mill Strike Committee, which included the delegates ofthe BTLU, largely through their skilful organisation of mill and neigh-bourhood committees, their reliance upon the initiatives and knowledgeof the workers and their unremitting insistence upon giving workers’ mil-

itancy its head. They built up a massive popular followingprimarily bybeing most easily and willingly led by the ’rank and file’. By December

1928, the now renamed Girni Kamgar Union had 54,000 paid-up mem-

bers. 11 .This scale of participation and organisation was unprecedentedand probably never matched in the history of the Indian labour movement

under colonial rule. Moreover, it was significant that this organisationalachievement had been influenced and informed by a specific politicalvision. As Syed Munawar, a ’moderate’ trade union leader, estimated,some sixty or seventy thousand workers supported the communists in1929. ’Communistic principles’,he declared, ’have captured the mindsof the textile workers to a great extents 2

The general strike lasted for six months until October 1928. It was con-

ducted almost entirelywithout dispute between workers. The employerswere unable to muster blacklegs. It was a demonstration of solid, unified

strength. But this is not to suggest that its conduct on such an exten-

sive scale was free from strains and devoid of tensions. At various times

9Proceedings of the Meerut conspiracy case, examination of A.A. Alve, before

R.L. Yorke, I.C.S., additional sessions judge, Meerut, 12 August 1931, p. 961; BPP, SAI,1928, no. 20, 19 May,para 793; GOB, Home (special), file 543 (18) C of 1928, MSA.

10 Proceedings of the Meerut conspiracy case, statement by S.A. Dange,p. 2424.11 Labour gazette 8, 5 (January 1929), ’Trade unions in the Bombay Presidency’; Report

of the court of inquiry into a trade dispute between several textile mills and their workmen,(Bombay,1929), p.11.

12 Proceedingsof the Bombay Riot Inquiry Committee [henceforth, BRIC], 1929, oralevidence, SyedMunawar, file 3, p. 267ff., MSA.









212

during the strike, especially at the end of May, in early July and at the

beginning of August, these tensions were exacerbated when the millown-ers, intent upon dividing the strikers, prepared to throw open the mills

to those who might decide to return. Of course, throughoutthe strike,the workers and their families faced starvation. Despite their dependenceupon the goodwill of the workingclass neighbourhoods, the graindealersof Girangaonsometimes withheld credit. There were complaints about

landlords seeking to evict their tenants, to attach their property or simplyto harass and threaten them. The prospect of negotiations, sometimes

through the intervention of the provincial government or the goodofficesof the mayor or other public figures, generated an optimismamong work-ers which gave way, when these initiatives failed, to a mood of ’despon-dency’. 13Pickets and union activists sometimes had to endure the roughattentions of the police. ~4The attempt by the millowners to re-open theirmills yet again in early July gave rise at first to ’a feeling of alarm and

panic’ in the mill districts Strikers and their leaders were anxious that

opening the mill gates would divide their ranks. But skilled and supervi-sory workers-oilmen, fitters and mechanics-as well as clerks did not

go to work for fear, it was said, of ’being turned back by the determina-

tion of the female volunteers.’ Certainly, at a strikers’ meeting at NaguSayaji’s Wadi, a communist stronghold in the mill district, speakers hadwarned that women workers ’will not hesitate to &dquo;broom&dquo;every blackleg,who tries to go to work.’ 16 By the end of July, the balance of power had

begun to shift. Now some millowners appeared to be even more eagerthan the workers to bring the strike to an end. At a meeting held at the

Damodar ThackerseyHall on 21 July R.S. Nimbkar asked his audience’if they would resume work even if their doles were exhausted’ and the

workers declared that ’they would resume only on one of two conditions:

that the Joint Strike Committee advised them to do so or the millowners

conceded their demands.’ » A week later, they responded with ’enthu-

siastic clapping’ when Ben Bradley declared that they were as united as

they had been at the beginning of the strike and ’not even the prospectof starvation and death was

goingto affect their

solidarity.’18 The

forg-ing of this apparent solidarity was neither simply inspired by the stirring

13 Indian National Herald, 14 June 1928.14 Ibid., 6 June 1928.15Ibid., 3 July 1928.16 Ibid., 29 June 1928.17 Ibid., 22 July 1928.18 Ibid., 30 July 1928.









213

speeches of the leading communists nor a reflection of an effusive enthu-

siasm for the cause. It was also the product of a deeper consideration

and debate in the chawls, tea-shops and wadis of Girangaon. On his first

visit to Parel and Dadar on I August, one observer found strikers ’who

were busy discussing the situation. At times, a group was to be seen

solemnly listening to the newspaper articles read to them by one amongthemselves. If there were any sympathetic or appreciative references to

their grim struggle and heroic sufferings, they seemed to be much elatedin spirit. Any unkindly references were greatly resented.&dquo;9

In

August,1928, the millowners once again attempted to open a group

of mills ’on their own terms’ to prepare the ground for breaking the

strike, four months after it had officially begun.20The areas chosen by the

millowners for this attempt to drive a wedge through the strikers’ defenceswere Ghorapdeo, the domain of the anti-communist dada (gangster),Keshav Borkar,2~and Kalachowky.On 6 August, these districts, it was

said,

resembled an armed camp. Parties of armed police in motor lorrieswere posted at important centres, large numbers of constables armedwith lathis were present at the mill gates and a contingent of mountedsowars were held in readiness. The Police Commissioner, the DeputyCommissioners and Superintendents moved about in motor cars....

And this appeared all the more ridiculous in view of the fact that therewas not even a single striker to be found in the mill area.22

The police commissioner seemed to concur in the judgement that his pres-

ence had scarcely been necessary. The millowners’ attempt to break thestrike, he noted, had ’ ..failed miserably. Not a single striker presentedhimself at the mill gates...I do not believe the millowners can starve

the strikers into submission.’ In his view, it was far more likely that theMillowners’ Association would splinter and that some mills would tryseparately to ‘ ...make their own terms with the strikers. This would

probably be a complete triumph for the communists.’23 Gandhi, who

had in the 1920s held fast to the view that labourers lacked the discipline

19 Ibid., 4 August 1928.20 Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, GOB, Home, 7 August 1928, GOI,

Home poll, file 18/XVI/28 (Pol), National Archives of India, [henceforth, NAI].21 For a sketch of Borkar’s career, see Chandavarkar(1994: 204-12).22 Indian National Herald, 7 August 1928.23 Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, GOB, Home, 7 August 1928, GOI,

Home Poll, file 18/XVI/28 (Pol), National Archives of India.









214

and education to participate in the non-cooperation movement,24must

havecontemplated

this scene withenvy,

as at least150,000

workers25conducted a bitterly fought dispute with a disciplined non-violence thathis satyagrahas had not always been able to achieve.

The strike ended on terms which the workers could regard with some

satisfaction. Wages were to be restored to their pre-strike level and issues

relating to wage reductions as well as the efficiency schemes and work-

ing practices were to be negotiated by the millowners and the strikecommittee before an arbitration panel. ’The strike is not ended,’ the

communist newspaper Kranti declared on 13 October 1928, ’but it isonly suspended.’26Between October 1928 and March 1929, there were

nearly eighty strikes in the industry largely about victimisation, wagerates and the surreptitious introduction of efficiency measures. 27

Just before the Fawcett Committee published its report on the negotia-tions which had followed the 1928 strike, virtually all the most prominentcommunist leaders of the GKU were arrested on the charge of conspiracyto overthrow the King Emperor and taken to Meerut. The Meerut Con-

spiracy Casewas

the outcome of a plot by the Government of Bombayand the Bombay Millowners’ Association which eventually swept a more

reluctant New Delhi into its embrace. Communists elsewhere in Indiawere also arrested, partly to avoid giving the impression that the state

had selected the GKU leaders for special attention. But the decision to

prosecute was the result of discussions initiated by the rriillowners during1928, to which some officials in Bombay were sympathetic and others,including, at times, the police, were opposed; and New Delhi remained

sceptical virtually to the end (Chandavarkar 1998: 156-76). Moreover,the Fawcett Report accepted that the millowners should proceed with

24 Young India, 16 February 1921; Collected works of M.K. Gandhi (Delhi, 1966), Vol.

XIX, p. 366.25 The actual number of workers on strike is, of course, very difficult to estimate. So is the

size of the industry’s labour force. The Millowners’ Association only returned figures for’the average number of hands employed daily.’ In 1928, this figure for eighty-twomills was

129, 275 having declined from 154, 398 in the previousyear. The daily average, would tend

to underestimate the total number of millworkers byexcluding a proportion who could onlyfind casual and intermittent employment.Once allowance is made for them, the number of

workers involved in, or affected by, the strike would be considerably greater. If workers’

families and dependants are taken into account, the numbers involved in the strike would,of course, multiply further.

26 Kranti, 13 October 1928; Proceedings of the Court of Inquiry, file 23, exhibit 1 (17),Girni Kamgar Union leaflet, 12 October 1928, MSA.

27 Proceedingsof the Meerut conspiracy case, statement by S.A. Dange,p. 2507.









215

rationalisation and standardisation, but advised them to postpone the wagecuts. 28 In the followingweeks, the millowners appeared willing to acceptthe GKU as a representative union and the bargaining agent of the work-ers. But victimisation proved to be a stumbling-block. Individual mills

were rapidly replacing those workers who had raised their heads abovethe parapet in 1928, especially those who were active on the mill andchawl committees.29 The Millowners’ Association had never been ableto effectively dictate policy to individual mills. In its negotiations with

the GKU, it now played for time, dissembled, denied and promised. On24 April 1929, the leaders of the GKU put the word about through themill committees, public meetings and leaflets that in two days’ time the

workers should enter the mill, work until the mid-day recess and then

simply leave the mills. ’This programme,’ the Government of India’s

Home Member noted, ’was carried out in a perfectly peaceful way andwith remarkable unanimity: somethinglike 80 per cent of the men after

leaving the mills at mid-daydeclining to return.’3oIt wouid be difficult under these circumstances to dispute the force of

K.F. Nariman’s observation in August I 929 that ’a new spirit of organisa-tion and class consciousness has come into existence among our labouringclasses.’-~ ~The combined, peaceful and organised action of over 100,000workers in eighty-two mills who downed tools at the same moment andwalked out in unison was remarkable. But it only continued the expe-rience of the previous year when a general strike was conducted for sixmonths, not only without dissent but with such unity that, for once, themillowners failed to recruit blacklegs to break it. The mill committeesand chawl committees had proliferated throughout the mill districts of the

city, especially in the latter stages of the 1928 strike and in its aftermath.Elections to the mill committees had shown a lively and vigorous democ-

racy at work. 32 The Joint Mill Strike Committee was able to command

enough money, largely from international trade union and communist

28 Reportof the BombayStrike EnquiryCommittee, [henceforth, BSEC] 1928-29, Vol. I

(Bombay, 1929).29 Note by Secretary, GOB, Home (special) 29 April 1929 in GOB Home (special) file

543 (10) E Part D of 1929, pp. 15-17; Proceedings of the Court of Inquiry, Evidence, files6 & 7, MSA; Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, pp. 224-28, MSA.30 Notes on a conversation with Mr Kelly, Commissioner of Police, Bombay, on 4 June

1929 by Mr H.G. Haig’, 4 June 1929, in GOI, Home Poll file 303/1929 and KW’s I & II,NAI.

31 Times of India, 8 August 1929.32 See Proceedings of the Meerut conspiracy case, Vol. X, Marathi exhibits, especially

Girni Kamgar Union minute book; see also Chandavarkar 1981: 635-39.









216

donors to distribute nearly one lakh rupees in grain and cash to some

25,000 strikers during the 1928 strikes Much of this mightseem simplylike the ordinary business of trade unions in an extraordinary moment ofstruggle. But we need to recognise the enormous impedimentsagainstindustrial action and the range of disciplinary sanctions which employerscould impose upon the strikers. To strike was to risk dismissal and put in

jeopardy the remittances upon which the survival of the strikers’ families

and their village plots depended. To strike for six months was to liveon the brink of starvation. To remain on strike effectively for eighteenmonths, eking out a living in the city, surviving as best one could, encoun-

tering repression in the workplaceand the neighbourhood, was nothingless than a political act. It did not arise naturally from the proletariancondition. It called for the exercise of stark moral and political choices.

Moreover, the organisation and conduct of the general strikes invited a

response from the working class neighbourhoods. In 1928, this responseappeared solidaristic. The second general strike opened up differencesbetween workers, publicists and trade unions and to some extent dividedthe mill districts as well. In 1928, there is some evidence that grain-dealers in the workingclass neighbourhoodsextended credit, landlordsallowed for arrears and creditors rolled over their debts-not alwayshappily or with good grace Certainly the strains which the strikes

imposed upon the social organisation of the neighbourhoodsharpenedthe tensions which were manifested after the strikes. As the facade of

unity began to crack in 1929, Girangaon was more fully drawn into the

conduct of the strike. The millowners recruited jobbers and dadas to

visit the workers’ chawls to induce them to return to work. Similarly,the Girni Kamgar Union tried to picket the chawls. At times, the policeescorted blacklegs into work and drove their lorries through the red flagpickets at the mill gates.35Under these circumstances, the potential for

violence between rival group of workers or between the police and the

strikers was considerable. With the help of politicians and other neigh-bourhood bosses, millowners tried to recruit blacklegs from a caste or

religious or linguistic group different from that with which most strik-ers in a mill or a

particular departmentwere associated: Dalits for the

33 N.M. Joshi Papers, file 48, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library [henceforth, NMML];Proceedings of the Meerut conspiracy case, statement by S.A. Dange, pp. 2439-40,2451-52, 2459-61 and 2489-93.

34 Transcript of interview with S.V. Ghate, by Dr A.K. Guptaand Hari Dev Sharma, p. 29,Oral History Project, NMML; Indian National Herald, 30 August 1928.

35 Times of India, 8 August 1929.









217

weavingsheds or Muslims where the Hindu workers were in the majorityon strike or Pathans who were perceived as potential hands to replace any

group.36The result, in this case, was ’communal riots’ in February andMay 1929. 37In these riots, workers who were on strike attacked those

who had been recruited to replace them and in February, both Hindu andMuslim workers assaulted Pathans who has served as their lenders of lastresort during the prolongedgeneral strike of the previous year. When the

riot became more clearly ’communal’ and extended beyond Girangaonto other parts of Bombay, the violence subsided in the mill districts and,in anycase, millworkers appear to have played no further role. Signifi-cantly, whether in the solidaristic mood of 1928 or in the more fractious

temper of 1929, the disputes of the workplace were placed before the

neighbourhoodsas a whole and the workers as well as their unions were

brought into public and political confrontation with their employersandthe state.

The ‘general’ strike of 1928 signifiedthat it was general to the cotton

textile industry in Bombay. But its effects extended to other groups ofworkers and to other centres of industry. Workers in various occupationsexpressed their grievances, organised unions and sometimes took indus-trial action: tramwaymen, railway workers, municipal workers, printers,oil mill workers and some dock workers. Even the domestic servants inthe ’middle class’ district of Girgaum decided to demonstrate and tookto the streets.3g The Ahmedabad millworkers collected over Rs 5,000for the strike committee.39 The Sholapur workers went on strike and

increasingly, thereafter, backed communist leaders with close connec-

tions to Bombay.4~’If there is any bond of comradeship, brotherhoodand a sense of cooperation’ wrote one visitor to the mill districts, duringone of the more vulnerable moments of the 1928 general strike,

36 Bombay Millowners’ Association, [henceforth, BMOA], annual report. 1928, p. 71 and

Appendix48; GOB, Home (Poll) file 344 of 1929, pp. 113-15, MSA; Report of the BRIC,p. 7; Times of India, 6 May 1929.

37 Reportof the BRIC; GOB, Home (Poll) file 344 of 1929 and GOB, Home (special) file348 Part II of 1929, MSA.

38 Thedaily

course of events in these strikes were

closelyand

sympatheticallycovered

in the Bombay Chronicle, the Indian National Herald and Nava Kal, and perhaps less

sympathetically in the Times of India.39 Proceedings of the Meerut conspiracy case, statement by S.A. Dange, p. 2496;

N.M. Joshi Papers, file 48, NMML.40 GOB, Home (special) file 543 (53) D of 1935, MSA. The course of the 1928 strike in

Sholapur can be followed in the Labour Gazette and the Bombay Chronicle. For a recent

account of the strike, see Kamat (1997: 90-99).









218

it is to be found among these people at the present time. The mill

workers, the railway workers and others are bound together by ties ofcommon brotherhood and kinshipand are swayed by the same emotionsand considerations of mutual help and common welfare.... They have

begun to realise that workers must make a common cause to fight theircommon enemy: the capitalist.41 .

It was becoming increasingly apparent during the strike of 1928 and inits aftermath that these feelings of mutuality and common interest amongthe workers had acquired an explicitly political character.

Until at least the middle of 1929, many observers viewing the milldistricts from a safe distance and some who were more immediatelyinvolved believed that Girangaon was in the midst of a revolutionaryinsurrection. S.K. Boie, a labour leader for over two decades, founder ofthe Kamgar Hitwardhak Sabha, and a prominent figure in the 1919 and1925 strikes, parted company with the strike committee and feared that’even now my life is in danger.’ 42If his paranoia grew out of guilt as

much as fear, his hopes and strategies for the revival of his fortunes in

the labour movement may also have coloured his views. Rao BahadurB.N. Athavale, who had been the officiatingmagistrate in a case againstthe police after the shooting of Parshuram Jadhav, claimed that he couldnot enter the mill districts, because workers had been ’told to take a goodview of my appearance, mark me very well and do the needful.... Peoplewere actually being instigated to take revenge on me merely because Ihad expounded the law.’ 43 Between the two general strikes, mill man-

agers complained that workers had taken to turning up with red flagsand planting them in the compound or attaching. them to their machines.They also complainedof ’indolence’ and ‘insubordination.’~ Some werealarmed that workers asked for managerial or supervisory instructions to

be routed through their mill committees. Homi Mody, leading figurein the Bombay Millowners’ Association, complainedthat Ramchandra

Yeshwant, the president of the mill committee of the Morarji GoculdasMill ’sometimes regarded himself not as a worker...but as the owner

of the mill.’ Mill hands, he observed incredulously, ’really thought thatsome sort of workers’ Raj was coming up, that they were the bosses of themill and not the management.45J.H. Roebuck, a Lancastrian officer of

41 Indian National Herald, 4 August 1928.42 Proceedings of the BRIC, oral evidence, S.K. Bole, file 3, p. 245, MSA.43 Ibid., Rao Bahadur B.N. Athavale, file 3, P. 163, MSA.44 Proceedings of the Court of Inquiry, Evidence, especially, file 7, MSA.45 Ibid., examination of Mr H.P Mody in Camera. 19 August 1929, file 7, pp. 29-30, MSA.









219

the Kastoorchand Mill, expressed a widespread sense of alarm when hewrote that ’no officer in any mill is sure of coming away without serious

injury to himself anyday of the week’, labour ’is entirely out of hand andcannot be controlled’ and workers ’openlyboast they are not afraid of the ’police but will fight them.’46 Women workers, it was said, had masteredthe art of humiliating the police on picket duty so that nobody was quitesure how to respond. Indeed, the Government of Bombay took stock ofthis threat to public order, opened a file entitled ’measures for dealingwith women’, and issued instructions. 47

Thesolidarity displayedduring

the 1928 strike and themilitancy

whichmarked the following year impressedmany observers and participants.The romantic notion that Girangaonhad a distinct if warm, defiant and

integrated culture which both set it apart from the rest of the city and unitedits residents emergedfrom this strike and was probably first inscribed on

the public imagination by the novelist Mama Varerkar, a communist sym-pathiser at the time, in Dhavta Dhota. The court of inquiry appointed to

investigate the 1929 strike took the view that in its use of the strike and its

relationshipwith its mill committees, the Girni

KamgarUnion ’disclosed

a revolutionary tendency.’4~Colonial officials occasionally persuadedthemselves---especially if repressive measures were under discussion-that the workers now accepted the ‘lurid hopesheld out by the communists

that, if only they combine to overthrow capitalism and Government...theresult will be a millennium for themselves.’49 At other times, officials as

well as the police made a calmer assessment. But none warmed to thenotion of an imminent revolution more enthusiastically than the coterieof communist leaders themselves.

Theytook to

comparing Bombaywith

Petrograd and saw themselves as a revolutionary vanguard. K.N. Joglekartold the Meerut sessions court that in taking the decision to call off the

1928 strike he and his comrades were following ’a revolutionary tacticof retreat.’50 Similarly, S.G. Sardesai recalled in the early 1980s, that,on the eve of the 1929 strike, as they contemplated the radical indepen-dence resolutions at the annual Congress sessions in the late 1920s, the

proliferating railwaystrikes, the Bardoli satyagraha and industrial action

46 J.H. Roebuck to Duff Cooper, 18 January 1929, Private Office Papers, L/PO/1/23(i),pp. 84-87. British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections, London, [henceforth,OIOC].

47 GOB, Home (special) file 800 (48) of 1932, MSA.48 Report of the Court of Inquiry, p. 19.49 GOB, Home (special) file 543 (18) K of 1929, departmental note, 23 January 1929,

p. 21, MSA.50 Proceedings of the Meerut conspiracy case, statement by K.N. Joglekar, p. 1747.









220

elsewhere in India, the communist leaders, all of them in their twentiesbelieved that the revolution beckoned and they should if possible seizc

the moment.51The fact that so many observers imaginedthat they were

witnessing a revolutionary moment or something close does not mean

that Bombay was on the verge of revolution. However, their imaginationwas not fed on fear, guilt or hope alone; it was informed also by whatseemed to many to be a ’spirit of class consciousness.’

On conventional expectationsof workingclass behaviour, none of thisshould have happened. This workingclass consisted largely of migrantsfrom the countryside, most of whom left their families behind, retained

their village connections, remitted money, returned to help with the har-vest and retired to their rural homes in old age. They operated in an over-

stocked labour market, in which uncertain conditions of employmentwere

a common experience. Casual workers supplied about one-third of the

industry’s labour force. For much of the period from 1922 until 1939, the

industry was depressed and contracting while the city’s population was

growing. The working class was divided by gender and caste, religionand language, as well as by skill and the division of labour. No policies ofthe employers or the state and no changes in market conditions could berelied upon to affect the workforce in the same way. In addition, attemptsto organise the labour force invariably encountered the sustained hostil-

ity of employersand the state. As a result, trade unions in the city were

fragile and evanescent formations, ordinarily incapable of commandingthe adherence of the majority of the millworkers or effectively able to

represent them (Chandavarkar 1994, 1998: ch. 3).The weakness of trade union organisation did not simply reflect either

the level of economic development or of political consciousness amongindustrial workers. The terrain upon which the Indian working class,indeed any workingclass, fought its battles was usually determined byits enemies. Industrial action placed jobs in jeopardy. Faced with a

strike, the employers’ first option was simply to replace those who hadrefused to work. If the mood of the strikers was too determined and thestrike too complete to permit victimisation, an employercould lock themout

until theywere harassed

bytheir

moneylendersor their landlords

to return. Alternatively, the employerscould attempt to organise a new

set of jobbers and workers to replace the strikers. When an employerwanted to end a strike swiftly, his best plan was to keepproductiongoing,essentially by recruiting blacklegs, shepherding them into the workplace

51 Interview, March 1981.









221

and workingas many mills as possible. Faced with this threat to their jobs,the employershoped, the strikers would drift back to work. As workers

began to return, it became easier to break the strike. As soon as some

workers returned, the danger of losing their jobs brought several othersback to the workplace. The effect of this reaction once set in motioncould overcome a sizeable section of the workforce. The employerwas

then placed in a position from which he could dictate the terms on whichthe workers would return. Significantly,this gave him an opportunityto choose which of the workers he would re-employ, often replacing the

most militant sections of his workforce.The threat to jobs was greatest when a strike was partial. In the face

of workers’ solidarity, it was difficult for employers or their jobbers to

recruit strike breakers. But, for the workers themselves, it was difficultto estimate how complete a strike would be, soon after it was called.Because industrial action jeopardised their jobs, the strength of the strikewas an important element in the decision of workers and jobbers to joinit. For this reason, the

beginningof strikes was marked

by hesitancyand

vacillation. Workers would appear at the mill gates on the morning ofthe strike to check whether the general tendency favoured a stoppage.In many ways, this constituted a vital stage in the conduct of a strike.Workers thus collected might join the stampedeto cross thinly manned

pickets, or alternatively turn upon those who were trying to go to work. At every stage of a strike, the commitment to industrial action imposed

complex calculations upon the workforce. They had to consider not onlytheir immediate chances of

success,but also the extent to which their

urban as well as rural resources would enable them to bear the costs ofindustrial action. It was sometimes necessary for workers to go on strike

simply to force their grievanceson the employers’ attention. However, to

create the possibility of negotiations, let alone obtain concessions from the

employers, and yet preserve their jobs, it was imperative for the workersthat the strike be complete.

The stringent constraints imposed upon industrial action forced work-

ers to exert pressures outside the workplace in an attempt to enforce thecompleteness of a strike. They might exercise social pressures throughtheir kinship and neighbourhoodconnections to dissuade other workersfrom going to work, and if they failed, subject them to social boycotts or

various other forms of public humiliation. Such conflicts could readilyspill over into violence. Similarly, these constraints also help to explainwhy so many lightning strikes occurred. By giving notice of a strike,workers were often providing their employers with the opportunity as









222

well as the time to replace them and, indeed, to subvert industrial action.

’Wild cat’ strikes were not, then, simply an expression of uninhibitedspontaneity; more frequently they entailed strategic calculation. Underthese conditions, strikes or even simply the expressionof grievanceswere

unusually fractious affairs. They brought workers into conflict with eachother as well as their employers, with the social institutions of the neigh-bourhood as well as the agencies of the state. They ensured that a strikewas a highly political act and that it was expressedas such by the workingclasses. However, they make it no easier to account for the scale of indus-

trial action or the depth of class consciousness which workers displayedin 1928-29.

Two sets of developments contributed to the particular conjuncture ofthose general strikes. First, some fundamental changes in the organisa-tion of production and industrial relations contributed to the expandingscale of industrial action. Second, the strikes of 1928-29, must be set inthe context of the changing political experience of the workingclasses.

Although the general strike of 1928 was in many respects the most spec-tacular of these struggles, it was in fact the fifth general strike to occur inBombay since 1919.SZ

Since at least the late 1880s as N.M. Lokhande, President of the

Bombay Millhand’s Association, observed, ’strikes are of frequent occur-

rence in every one of the mills in this city.’ However, it was also the case

that ’any general stoppage among all the workers of a factory, still more

than any organised refusal to work among the operatives of several facto-ries at the same time, is of very rare occurrence.’ S3 Similarly, the FactoryLabour Commission in 1908 distinguished between ’local strikes’ and’concerted action’ on a larger scale. While workers readily effected local

strikes, they were ’as yet unable to combine over any large area.’S4 Yetthis could not be attributed to their elementary stage of social conscious-ness. To suggest that they had simply not learnt as yet how to effect

large-scale strikes is to beg the question or invite its reformulation. Onthe contrary, the frequent strikes which occurred in Bombay since the1880s were largely attempts to resist wage cuts or other related

policiesoff the millowners. Thus, when such initiatives were taken across a group

52 For an account of the general strikes which occurred between 1919 and 1929, see

Newman (1981).53 RoyalCommission on Labour, 1892: Foreign and colonial reports: Memorandum on

the labour question in India, Parliamentary Papers, 1892, Vol. XXXVI, p. 107. Forarecent

study of Lokhande, see Kadam 1995.54 Report of the Indian Factory Labour Commission (Simla, 1908), Vol. I, p. 20.









223

of mills, workers combined to resist them at this level: for example,in the case of the strike in the mills of Heeramaneck and Company in1892. Similarly, in 1893 and 1901, strikes were conducted on an exten-

sive scale; in the latter case, it involved over 20,000 workers over ten

days and ended with the withdrawal of the wage cut.55 In 1908, the city’smills were closed down for a whole week in protest against Tilak’s con-

viction,56but there were various factors which had a bearing upon thisaction and there seems little reason to treat it as the exceptional case of a

’political strike.’

Increasingly, if intermittently, in the early 20th century, the BombayMillowners’ Association attempted to regulate aspects of labour policyfor the industry as a whole. The nature of the industry ensured that themillowners had diverse and conflicting interests. They submitted rarelyand unwillingly to the authority of their Association. But disparities in

wages, hours of work and the conditions of machineryand material couldnot only generate competitionfor labour between mills but heighten work-

ers’ discontent. Thus, the Millowners’ Association had tried to limit the

wage competition which followed the introduction of electric lighting andthe extension of the workingday after 1904. Its members acceded to its

authority when they feared that the existing situation was ’likely to disor-

ganise the labour market and lead to further strikes and riots.’57 Similarly,inflation during the First World War provoked a spiral of wage demands

and, since conditions were buoyant, some millowners acting individuallygranted increases. The threat of wage competition and industrial actiononce again led the millowners to submit to an industry-wideformula for

wage increases.5g When the boom petered out in 1923, attempts to cut

wages at the level of the individual mill produceddisruptive, if localised,resistance. Wage increases had been given in the form of a bonus by theMillowners’ Association; once again, it seemed preferable and conve-

nient for individual mills to coordinate wage cuts through the withdrawalof the bonus. Similarly, in 1925, a further attempt to reduce wages was

effected at the level of the whole industry (Chandavarkar 1994: 321,349f, 419). The general strikes which occurred after 1918 had taken place

55 See Mehta (1954), P. 82; Indian textile journal (1901) XI, 29: 235.56 See Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, GOB, Judicial, 27 August 1908,

in GOB General department,Vol. 114 of 1908, MSA; Cashman 1975: ch. 8; and Reisner

and Goldberg1966.57 BMOA, annual report, 1906. p. 18.58 Ibid., 1921, pp. 39-43; Report of the Industrial Disputes Committee (Bombay,

1922), p. 2.









224

in response to initiatives by the Millowners’ Association for the whole

industry. In part, therefore, changes in the scale of industrial action after1918 reflected changes in the level at which the policies of the employerswere being formulated. By 1928, the city’s millworkers had already built

up a considerable experience of combined action across the industry as

a whole.It may be argued that the general strike of 1928 did not arise directly

from policies formulated across the industry by the Millowners’ Associa-tion. Indeed, in 1927 and 1928, mills had been effecting piecemealchangesin wages and workingconditions and composition of output,independently of central direction. By the late 1920s, however, the Mill-owners’ Association had become increasingly ambitious about coordi-

nating policies for the whole industry. In particular, it had become

increasingly aware that the initiatives of individual mills could have largeand damaging consequences for the industry as a whole. So it was more

concerned to act to prevent or limit such damage.The piecemeal introduc-tion of rationalisation schemes only quickened the Association’s sense of

urgency about the need to try and standardise conditions between mills.Not surprisingly, they encountered resistance from their members. Forindividual millowners remained extremely reluctant to allow the Associ-ation to intervene in their affairs. Thus, even in 1928, the perspective ofboth workers and millowners upon industrial relations extended beyondthe individual mill to the industry as a whole. The fact that the generalstrike of 1928 was not a direct response to the industry-wide initiatives ofthe Millowners’ Association sets it apart from the other general strikes

of the period. That the strike was constituted through the generalisationof individual disputes should fortify the view that the working classes

were at this time more acutely aware of their common interests.

Changes in the position of the jobber within the social relations of the

workplaceand, indeed, the neighbourhoodalso affected the developmentof workers’ politics in the 1920s. As agents of labour recruitment and

discipline, jobbers were a pervasive feature of Indian industry, so thatthere has sometimes been a

tendencyto

explaintheir existence in cultur-

ally specific terms. But there is little that is exclusively Indian about theforeman. The jobbers’ role was to ensure a regular supply of labour inthe face of fluctuating demand, not to act as cultural mediators between

managers and.workers or to facilitate the cultural adaptation of migrantsto the city. In return for fulfilling this complex task, employersdelegatedconsiderable powers to them and thus sometimes locked themselves out









225

of large areas of factory management. Millowners remained perpetuallyuneasy about this self-denying ordinance and complainedbitterly aboutthe jobber’s use and abuse of power. Historians have followed them byinvariably exaggerating the strengths and overlooking the weaknesses ofthe jobber.59The jobber now cuts a figure of awesome power. Indeed,his place within the industry has often been analysed in terms of func-

tionalist models of social control. But these have increasingly appearedinappropriate. There were many kinds of jobbers and some were rela-

tively insignificant in the politics of the workplace. They competed with

each other and also with others in the managerial hierarchy who usurpedand exploited what historians normally understand as the jobber’s func-tion. Their power and control was weakened by the obligations of reci-

procity which their relationship with the workers imposedupon them.Clients humoured their patrons; patrons honoured their clients. From

the employers’ viewpoint, they did not offer the most efficient system oflabour management, but they acted until the 1920s as an effective bul-

wark against workers’ combination. Once strikes began to be coordinatedacross the

industryas a whole, the bulwark cracked and crumbled and

eventually, with a quiet heave, collapsed (Chandavarkar 1994: 99-110,195~-200, 295-307).

To hold a team of workers together, it was essential for the jobber to

both satisfy their needs and to reconcile them to the employers’ policies.But as disparities between mills increased, the jobber was often groundbetween the demands of the workers and the disciplines and constraintsexercised by the employers. The wage competition and labour mobilitywhich occurred in the first decade of the 20th

centuryhad

already exposedthe weaknesses of the jobber’s position. The wage demands and strikesbetween 1917 and 1920 at first threatened to disrupt the labour marketand increase disparities.60In addition, the immediate aftermath of theFirst World War witnessed a rapid expansion of the industry. The aver-

age number of workers employed daily increased by more than one-thirdbetween 1914 and 1922.61 This’expansion facilitated the entry of new

social groups into the workforce: especially migrants from the Punjaband the UP, Mahars and other Dalits from the

Deccan,and Marathas from

59 This assumption of jobber dominance, especially in an industrial workforce, has longheld the status of orthodoxyamong historians of labour in India. It has not been sufficientlyexamined and it is extensively replicated in the now growingliterature.

60 See Reportof the Industrial DisputesCommittee.61 Calculated from BMOA, annual reports, passim.









226

Ahmednagar and Nasik.62 The diversification and growthof the labourforce

heightenedrivalries between

jobbers. Finally,when strikes were

coordinated across several departmentsand especially mills, jobbers were

less effective in their role as bulwarks against industrial action. As wagesbegan to be cut in the mid-1920s, the jobbers’ position had been con-

siderably weakened and they found it increasingly difficult to reconcileworkers to the demands of their employers. The declining efficacy ofthe jobbers only heightened the ambivalence of the millowners towardsthem. From the late 1920s onwards, the millowners began to institute

changeswhich undermined the

jobberfurther even if

they didnot

whollydestroy his position at the workplaceuntil the 1950s. It was the growingscale of industrial action which triggered the decline of the jobber system(Chandavarkar 1994: 295-307). However, its decline increased the ten-

sions and conflicts in the workplace and rendered them more difficult to

manage. In particular, these tensions could no longer be contained easilywithin the workers’ gang, the department or the individual mill.

Third, the Bombay cotton textile industry transformed itself betweenthe 1890s and 1920s from a

producerof low count

yarn, in part for exportto China, to weaving coarse cloth for the domestic market, before expand-ing gradually into finer varieties (Chandavarkar 1994: 64-67, 239--60,319-23). This shift in the character of the industry was accompanied bya marked wage differential in favour of the weavers in order to attract

skilled workers to the city as well as to induce spinners to master thecraft. As mills began to buy up looms, ’weavers were definitely at a

premium’.63Mills competed for the best weavers and wage differentials

widened. In the post-war boom, wage increases calculated as a percent-age of the existing wages widened the differential further and, in anycase, weavers were allowed a higher percentage increase.64 Weavers inthe first two decades of the 20th century appropriateda significantmea-

sure of control over their own labour. They were designated as skilledworkers. From the mid-1920s onwards, once their markets slumped, the

62 RCLI, evidence, Bombay Presidency, Government of Bombay,Vol. I, part 1, p. 5;L.J. Sedgwick, ’The composition of the Bombay city population in relation to birthplace’,Labour gazette ( 1922) 1, 7: 15-19.

63 Proceedings of the textile labour inquiry committee, 1938-1940, [henceforth, TLIC],main inquiry, oral evidence, Mr F. Stones, Director, Messrs. E.D. Sassoon & Co. Ltd., file

72, p. 3883, MSA.64 RCLI, evidence, Bombay Presidency, Government of Bombay, ’A supplementarynote

on movements of wages in recent years in relation to prices and cost of living(pre-war and

post-war)’, Vol. I, part 1, p. 155.









227

millowners sought to claw back the privileges of skill, status and controlwhich the weavers had wrested from them

(ibid.: 320-22, 347-69).In

any case, if they were to effect economies, increase productivity or adaptflexibly to new markets, they would have to make increasing demandson the weavers. But the weavers represented the most militant sectionof the workforce. Between 1918 and 1929, more than half the numberof disputes which occurred within particular departments began in the

weavingsheds.65 Weavers, especially Marathas from Ratnagiri, were

reported to be the most prominent in industrial disputes and in political

action. From the mid-1920s,weavers

increasingly complainedthat piecerates were being pared down or that changes in the lines of productionwere not matched bycorresponding adjustments in wage rates.66 In 1928,the only wage cut to which the millowners admitted was a reduction of7.5 per cent in the wages of weavers, and they went on to argue that

30 per cent was ’fully justifiable.’ The more militant weavers becamethe more frequent was the millowners’ refrain that they were paid ’farmore than the spinner in relation to the work he performs.’67In the late

1920s and 1930s, the millowners attempted to cut the weavers’ wages andto flatten the differentials between them and the spinners. In importantrespects, rationalisation was an attempt to break the bargaining strengthof the weaver and dilute and redefine his skill (ibid.: ch. 8).

Furthermore, the formation of the mill districts as a distinct area withinthe city occurred between 1900 and 1930. After the Second World War,the concentration of millworkers in Girangaonwas reduced (Chandavarkar1994: ch. 5). In 1925, it was said, nearly all the millworkers lived within

walkingdistance of their workplace.68 After 1950, growingnumbers hadto commute over greater distances to the mills. I have argued elsewherethat the social relations of the workplace were intimately connected to

the social organisation of the neighbourhood. Faced with the enormous

constraints upon combinations and action in the workplace, workers hadto organise in the neighbourhoodsto effect and sustain strikes. It shouldnot be supposed that the neighbourhoodrepresented a social arena of

harmony and solidarity. Nonetheless, the general strikes of the 1920s

and 1930s occurred at a time when the workplaceand the neighbourhoodwere most closely integrated. This interrelationship had a considerable

significance for the organisation and conduct of the general strike of 1928.

65 Calculated from Newman (1981), p. 63, Table III.66 Proceedings of the BSEC, 1928-29, Vol. 1, pp. 66-68, MSA.67 Ibid., VoL 1, pp. 12, 15-16, MSA.68 Labour gazette ( 1925) 4, 7: 745-47.









228

But its implications may be pushedfurther. It meant in 1928, and indeedthroughout the 1920s and 1930s, that the disputes of the workplacewere

readily generalised and placed before the neighbourhoodas a whole. Inthe public arenas of the street and the neighbourhood, the political con-

tent and character of a strike became indistinguishable from its economiccauses. Wage disputes could turn swiftly into the contestation of powerand authority both within the workplaceand the wider polity. The con-

ditions and grievances of the workplace could be more easily identifiedwith political programmes which bore no immediate relationship to them.

Similarly, a more expansive political vision could be developedfrom the

daily social relations of the workplace (Chandavarkar1998: chs 4-6).The immediate political experience of the millworkers, as it had devel-

oped over the preceding decade, contributed crucially to the conjunctureof 1928. Three factors shaped their experience of politics: the strikeswhich had gained widespreadparticipation since 1919; the workers’ rela-

tionship to and perceptions of an increasingly interventionist state; andthe role of the communist leaders in 1928. Between 1917 and 1920, the

textile industry had witnessed nearly 200 strikes (Bumett-Hurst 1925:

146-47). At their core lay the fact that wages lagged behind prices and

profits in a period of scarcity, inflation and economic boom. Underlyingthis wage pressure were a wide range of issues about the organisationof production, jobbers, wage rates and the composition of output. Mostmillowners were reluctant to individually raise wages in advance of theirrivals. But they were even more reluctant to risk a stoppage when demandwas buoyantand profits rising. So the strikes of this period were charac-terised

by wagedemands, initial resistance

bythe millowners, a strike or

a threat of a stoppage followed by concession. In fact, this was a patternof response designed to encourage strikes. Workers often embarked on

a strike believing that they had a reasonable chance of success. Such

optimismmarked the conduct of the general strike of 1919 as well as, to a

lesser degree, the general strike of 1920. In the 1919 strike, workers feltthat they were present at a new beginning. On 10 January 1919, the Com-missioner of Police noted, ’the deliberations of the strikers overnighthad

strengthenedthem in their resolve to

bring about,if

possible,a

generalstrike of labour throughout Bombay.’In the course of the followingweek,strikes took place in the Mint, the cloth market, the docks, the engineer-ing workshops, the Tramway Company and ’even private servants held

meetings and formulated demands.’ Attempts to mediate in the disputeby publicists of the Home Rule League, the Kamgar Hitwardhak Sabha,various jobbers and intermediaries, and the police commissioner, FattyVincent, well known for his command of Marathi terms of abuse, were









229

rejected or nullified.69On several occasions, according to the police, ’amovement manifested itself suggesting a march to the Fort, to the Govern-ment House or to the millowners’ residences on Malabar Hill.’70 Thus,Bombay’s proletariat threatened to subvert elite notions of the propersocial geographyof the city. As one journalist observed, the workers

’openly say that the present strike is altogether different from the strikesthat they have known and if by their conduct they allow it to fizzle out,they would be ruining the chance of a life time.’~ ~ In the event, theybuilt

effectivelyupon their

strengths. Bythe end of the 1920 strike, the

millowners had granted wage increases of 80 per cent for piece-rates and70 per cent on time rates prevailing before 1914. 72

When their markets began to slump, the millowners found it difficultto cut wages. They had to endure a general strike in 1924 before theywere able to withdraw the annual bonus of a month’s wages which theyhad instituted before the war. In 1925, they attempted to cut wages by11.5 per cent and thus provokeda general strike which lasted for nearlythree months and ended

onlywhen

theywithdrew the

proposedreduction

(Chandavarkar 1981; Chatterji 1983 and Newman 1981: ch. 7). Thus, as

the strike of 1928 unfolded, the city’s millworkers could look forward witha confidence and militancy born out of a remarkably successful historyof struggle. Conversely, the millowners had climbed into their trenchesand were determined to reassert their control and break the resistance ofthe workers

69Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, GOB, Judicial, 29 January 1919,

Bombay Confidential Proceedings, Judicial Department, Vol. 46, 1919, pp. 26-28, OIOC.See also ’A report from the Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Government of Bombay,concerning political developments before and during 1919’, Curry papers, box IV, nos.

54 & 55, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge [henceforth, CSAS]. The course ofthe strike and the negotiations which it stimulated can be followed in the newspapers ofthe time, especially, BombayChronicle and Times of India. For accounts of the strike, see

Kumar (1971) and Newman (1981: 119-30). For Vincent’s appellation and his facilitywith terms of abuse in Marathi, see Curry Diaries, ’The Joy of Working’Vol. II, pp. 55-57,

Currypapers, box I, CSAS.

70 Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, GOB, Judicial, 29 January 1919,Bombay Confidential Proceedings,Judicial Department, Vol. 46, 1919, p. 29, OIOC.

71BombayChronicle, 21 January 1919.72 These increases were granted in the form of an allowance for the dearness of the cost

of living. These wage movements are conveniently set out in RCLI, Evidence, BombayPresidency, Government of Bombay, ’A supplementary note on movements of wages inrecent years in relation to prices and cost of living (pre-war and post-war)’, Vol. I, part 1,p. 155.

73 Summary by H.G. Haig, 11June 1929, in GOI, Home Poll, 303/1929 and keep withsI & II, NAI;see also GOI, Home Poll 10/10/1930 & KW, NAI.









230

The wider arenas of politics now registered a growingpresence in the

disputes of the workplaceand the neighbourhood. The general strikes of1919 and 1920, as well as the innumerable strikes which were confinedto individual mills, occurred in the midst of considerable nationalist fer-ment, from the Home Rule League’s activities through the Willingdonmemorial protests and the Rowlatt satyagraha to non-cooperation andthe Khilafat movements (Gordon 1979; Kumar 1977; Masselos 1971).Nationalist rhetoric pilloried the colonial state, mocked its pretensionsand challenged it legitimacy to rule. It identified social and economic

grievances as secondary to the political injustice of British rule, andthus pulled a critique of the state directly into relationship with the dailystruggles of the workplaceand the neighbourhood(Chandavarkar1998:ch. 8). At the same time, the city’s workingclasses had experienced thestate since the late 19th century as an intermittently interventionist andoften brutal force: sometimes in the course of industrial disputes which

spilled out onto the street; in the plague epidemic of the late 1890s and

early 1900s (Arnold 1987; Catanach 1988; Chandavarkar 1988: ch. 7;Klein 1988); in the chawl demolitions and street-building schemes of the

improvement trust (Chandavarkar 1994: 35-44, 175-76 ff.); in the polic-ing of Mohurram (Edwardes 1923; Masselos 1976, 1982); or during the1908 strike. 74 After 1918, the state intervened increasingly in matters

affecting the working classes. It appeared more often as an antagonis-tic force in labour disputes. In the 1920s, the state intervened in strikesnot only directly through the police but at increasingly higher levels inthe conciliation of disputes. Sometimes, the manner of their intervention

could determine which publicists and trade unions could speakfor labour.Dissatisfaction about the outcome of negotiations and the subversion ofindustrial action focused not only the millowners and some trade unionleaders but also upon the state (Chandavarkar1994: ch,. 9, 1998: chs 3,5and 6). Moreover, the policies of government were sometimes directlylinked to the immediate problemswhich workers faced. Thus, when the

millowners instituted an 11.5 per cent wage cut in 1925, they justified it

on the grounds that it was equal to the excise duty imposedupon them bythe colonial state to offset such disadvantage that Lancashire may suffer

from the ’revenue’ tariff levied on imports. No sooner was the excise dutyabolished than the millowners withdrew their wage cut and the generalstrike ended (Chatterji 1983). As the state intervened in the disputes of

74 Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, GOB, Judicial 27 August 1908, in

GOB, General Vol. 1 14 of 1908, MSA; see also Cashman (1975); Reisner and Goldberg(1966).









231

the workplacefrom increasingly elevated levels, so it served to clarify thecommon interests of the

workingclasses. At the same time, it

broughtpolitics to the heart of trade disputes and rendered more transparent formsof class conflict.

Finally, the role played by the communists in the 1928 strike was vitalto the creation of a wider community of sentiment among the workers.Their popularity arose largely from their willingness to give the mili-

tancy of the workers its head. They attached little value to the mediationof the dispute and from early 1928 provided the only consistent advo-

cacyof a

generalstrike. For

them,the

purposesof a strike included

the developmentof the political and revolutionary consciousness of the

workingclasses. As a result, their rhetoric picked up rather readily nianyof the themes which had already begun to contribute crucially to the spe-cific political and ideological context of 1928. Thus, Govind Kasle tolda strikers’ rally at the DeLisle Road Cement Chawls on 21 September1928 that ’your struggle is not limited to your wages. You have to carryon the struggle until capitalism and imperialism are driven out of India.

By imperialism Imean

that imperial government which oppresses andtorments the people.... This agitation is to demolish this sort of govern-ment.’ 75But he was here simply identifying the connections between theconflicts of the workplace and the wider arenas of politics, between thestructures of ownershipand management in the industry and the colonial

state, between the oppressive interventions of the state and the nation-alist critique and agenda which had for some time been at the forefrontof the political experience of the workingclasses. Of course, the com-

munists went further: they offered workers the prospect of power in theheady days of the strike. They would not tolerate the replacement ofcolonial tyranny with nationalist tyranny. ’We want’, they said, ’Soviet

government like Russia.’~6 Perhaps, more crucial than their rhetoricwas their role in the organisation of the strike. No detail was too trivialfor their attention in 1928. They created linkages to the power struc-

tures of the neighbourhood. They established close connections withthe workers. Some learnt a great deal about the workingsof the indus-

try. The mill and chawl committees had a lasting significance, but in theimmediate context, they provided a means of brokering the differencesbetween workers from particular departments as well as between mills and

75 Extract from speechbyGovind Kasale, at the Cement Chawls, DeLisle Road, Bombay,21 September 1928, in GOB, Home (special), file 543 (10) C Part A of 1928, MSA.

76 Speechby S.H. Jhabwala to a meetingof mill strikers, Nagu Sayaji’s Wadi, Bombay, 3June 1928 in GOB Home (special) file 543 (18) C of 1928. MSA.









232

neighbourhoods. They intervened on behalf of workers to square jobbers

and landlords, graindealers and moneylenders. By October 1928, theyhad established a very powerfulpresence within the industry both at thelevel of the individual mill and the industry as a whole. Finally, theirstance of unremitting opposition to the employersand the state identifiedthem as the only group within the’labour movement which acted exclu-

sively in the interests of the workingclasses and served to entrench thermwithin the political culture of Girangaon (Chandavarkar1981).

Already in the midst of the 1929 general strike, divisions within the

working class came to be more freely expressed and the unities of the pre-vious year began to crack open. The conjuncture of 1928-29 was never

again to repeat itself. Many of the elements which had contributed to it

persisted in the 1930s. The Millowners’ Association continued to for-mulate policies to regulate the deploymentof labour across the industry,if anything with greater effect. The millowners persisted in their effortsto reduce the weavers’ skilled status and breach their control over the

labour process. The social organisation of the neighbourhoodremained

as vital as ever to the organisation of work. Nor were the political link-ages created in 1928 wholly ruptured. In fact, the communists were

able to build upon them in the general strikes of 1934 and 1940. The’chawl committees’ which played a vital role in the organisation of the

1934 general strike were modelled upon the mill committees of 1928-29.

Moreover, the communists continued to set the pace in the labour move-

ment throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. During the 1934 strike, ’awide range of labour leaders, including those who had opposed the com-

munists, ’felt impelled to join in’ so as ’not to lose such influence withthe workers as they possess.’ Indeed, many appeared willing ’to pose as

communists’ and there were those who ’would at this stage have been

prepared to subscribe to almost any creed in order to be able to join andremain on the [strike] committee.’ In 1934, trade union leaders faced a

simple choice, which had been determined largely by the momentum ofworkers’ militancy: ’to come in or be pushedon one side.’77 It was onlytoo apparent that while the effect of state repression had ’paralysed the

communist movement to a great extent’, ’the subterranean activities ofthe Communists are not effectively kept in check by the measures adoptedby Government from time to times While the workingclasses did not

77 Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, GOB, Home (special), 20 June 1934in GOB Home (special) file 543 (48) L of 1934, pp. 101-2, MSA.

78 Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, GOB, Home (special), 8 August 1935,in GOB Home (special) file 543 (77) of 1935, p. 77, MSA.









233

scale the political heights of 1928-29 again, the labour movement did not

decline without a struggle. Indeed, its decline in the 1930s was slow, andalmost imperceptible.

However, in importantrespects, the conditions in which workingclass

politics developed in the 1930s changedsubstantially. The unravellingof the unities of 1928 owed somethingto the very success of the com-

munists and, indeed, the millworkers. Rival political organisations grewmore interested in securing a stake in an importantand seeminglypower-ful constituency. The Congress, in particular,attempted to effect alliances

with those who had opposedthe communists in 1928. In the early 1930s,after the Meerut arrests, it intervened more fully in the factional rivalriesof the Girni KamgarUnion.79 Moreover, in the aftermath of 1928-29, the

employersand the state acted with greater determination to contain thethreat of the communists. The Meerut arrests in March 1929 removedthe leadership of the Girni Kamgar Union. At the same time, the mill-

owners began to replace within their own mills those workers who were

most closely identified with the strikes Sometimes they did so in the

short term by altering the caste and religious composition of the work-force. Policies were formulated and sometimes legislation passed which

impingedupon the conduct of strikes: from where, when and in what

strength workers could deploy pickets during strikes to the introductionof procedures for the conciliation and arbitration of disputes. Trade dis-

putes legislation, passed in 1929, 1934 and 1938, defined increasinglynarrowly the lawful spheres of trade union action. It placed emphasison the need for unions to be ’recognised’ by the employersand ’repre-sentative’ of the workers. It required workers to give sufficient noticebefore embarkingon a strike and thus removed the element of surpriseupon whose protection workers had long relied. Mills as well as thestate appointed ’labour officers’ ostensibly to represent the interests ofthe workers. In the meanwhile, the Millowners’ Association refused to

recognise the Gimi Kamgar Union. During the 1930s, the GKU was

increasingly distanced from the workplace and its leaders were deniedaccess to the mills.

The repressive actions of the employersand the state was made possi-ble by the slumpof the early 1930s and growinglevels of unemployment.

79 GOB, Home (special), file 750 (39)-II of 1930; GOB, Home (special) file 543 (46) of1934, MSA.80 Proceedingsof the Court of Inquiry, evidence, files 6 & 7, MSA; Proceedings of the

BSEC, Vol. II, pp. 224-28, MSA; Proceedings of the Meerut conspiracy case, statement

by S.A. Dange,pp. 2499, 2507-8.









234

However, repression alone is scarcely a plausible explanation for the

apparent dissipationof class consciousness from the

intensityof 1928-29.

Indeed, repression could have served, and sometimes did, to heightenoppositional sentiments among the working class or to reinforce theirsense of mutuality. In the 1930s, however, the effect of the assault by thestate and the millowners upon the Girni Kamgar Union and its communist

leadership was to create a space for its political rivals at the level of the

workplace, trade unions and political organisation. To put it differently, itallowed for the emergence of alternative interpretations of the conditions

’

of theworkingclasses

andappropriate political

remedies for them. At thesame time, the communists were unable to develop an adequate politicaland intellectual armoury to help them to build upon the achievements of1928-29. As they were excluded from the workplace, they focused uponit. They understood their own role as agents of enlightenment: to leadthe workingclasses, the title of Mirajkar’s autobiography, ’from darknesstowards the light’ (Mirajkar 1980~r as he preferred to put it to strikers’rallies at the time, ’to give an electric light in your heads In the 1930s,

they assessed the degree of developmentof workingclass consciousnessand resolved to strengthen their ’trade union consciousness’ as their firsttask. Their political vision was tied narrowly to the city and they made

few attempts to engage with the problems of the countryside despite seek-

ing to lead a workingclass with strong rural connections. They pinnedtheir hopes on the factory proletariat and found no means of graspingthe situation of ’casual labourers’ to whom it was intimately linked.

Trappedwithin an increasingly rigid discourse of class, they found it dif-

ficult to accommodate or address identities of difference, whether of skill,caste, religion or gender, expect as a function of backwardness or false

consciousness.The remarkable unities created within the labour movement in 1928

were politically constructed. They cannot be captured in metaphorsof

enlightenment or self-realisation. What the city’s workers had achievedin 1928-29 was, in effect, a coalition between the different and conflict-

ing interests among them, negotiated on terms of limited advantage to

each. It had been soldered by a commitment to the political leadershipand programme of the communist coterie who came to dominate the strikecommittee. Moreover, this commitment was, for the most part, endur-

ing ; it survived with varying degrees of vigour until the 1960s. But it

81 Speechby S.S. Mirajkar to mill strikers, Tank Bunder, Bombay, 23 August 1928 inGOB Home (special)file 543 (18) C of 1928, MSA.









235

did not submergethe sectionalism of the workingclass, whether this was

derivedfrom the labour process

anddeveloped by industrialisation,

or

from differences of caste and region, gender and religion. That divisionswithin the workingclasses surfaced in their politics in the 1930s is not

surprising. For there was nothing latent about the unities and the class

consciousness which was expressed at particular moments and notablyin 1928-29. Class consciousness was not necessarily innate to the pro-letarian condition and simply waiting to be realised.

Conversely, the persistence of sectionalism among the workers, and

the divisions which appeared within the labour movement in the 1930s,did not mean that class consciousness, once dawned, disappeared withouttrace. It would be folly to suppose that the weakeningof the unities of1928-29 indicates that the diverse sources of social identity were alwaysliable to overwhelm class solidarities. Nor should it lead to the con-

clusion that caste or gender, religion or nation provided more powerfuland enduring foundations for collective identity than class. In 1928-29,Bombay’s workers identified themselves as workers perhaps more sharply

andmore

clearly than they had done before or perhaps were ever againable to effect. But this did not mean that they thereby foreclosed on

the possibility of identifying themselves or declaring their affinities indifferent terms. Indeed, the tendency to view different forms of social

identity as if they were inherently in conflict and always liable to negateeach other has narrowed our understanding of the nature and possibilitiesof class consciousness. Thus, it has encouraged historians to overlookthe extent to which moments of heightened class consciousness could

sharpen a general awareness of, and sensitivity to, difference and therebyhelp to forge a stronger sense of mutuality. Affinities which derived from

occupation and region, caste and gender, language and religion, com-

munity and nation were not necessarily dissolved in moments of classconsciousness. On the other hand, at times when sectional differencewas more fully expressed, the awareness of common interest and mutual-

ity did not simply disappear. Analytical usages and conventions as muchas political rhetoric and aspirations have nudged us towards attributinga certain fixity to notions of class and class consciousness. As a result,class consciousness has too often been perceived as a state of mind to

be achieved: as a point of arrival towards which working-class historymoves and around which its study is organised. Its consequence is to befound in the continuing reification of class consciousness, so that histo-rians have found it difficult to escape the compulsionto calibrate it andthus to assess whether, or measure how far, this collective state of mind









236

could be said to have developed. The burden of our historiographicalinheritance, with its deeply embedded teleology, has led, by contrast, toa relative neglect of how class solidarities are in fact constructed, whatworkers actually do in specific moments of class consciousness and the

range and variety of forms of expression to which it mightgive rise. The

emergence of class consciousness should more fruitfully be regarded as

a politicallyconstructed outcome of particular experiencesof struggle ina specifichistorical context, upon which it remains dependentand whose

contingencies shape its character.

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