Non-Brahmans and Communists in Bombay

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Non-Brahmans and Communists in BombayAuthor(s): Gail OmvedtSource: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 8, No. 16 (Apr. 21, 1973), pp. 749-759Published by: Economic and Political Weekly

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SPECIAL ARTICLES

Non Bralimansn d ommunists n ombay

Gail Omvedt

This paper studies the radical working class movement which emerged in Bombay in the late1920s and which brought together, in curious fashion, an emerging communist leadership with the leadersof the largely peasant-based non-Brahman movement. The ambiguities and outcome of these contacts and

-conflicts were decisive not only for the development of social radicalism but also for the direction of thenationalist movement in Maharashtra.

While the focus of the paper is on the Bombay wvorkingclass, the larger issue is the relationship ofthe 'cultural revolutionary non-Brahman movement with nationalism and communism. The purpose is toprovide some additional insight into why the nationalist movement in India consolidated itself under a con-servative leadership.

Caste elitism, it is argued, was a major barrieir o the spread of the Maharashtrian communist move-ment. Receptivity to a radical ideology existed among both urban and rural masses, but an anti-communistand conservative section of the non-Brahman elite was also there, ready to take advantage of any failure

of the communists. These failures, along with the effectiveness of British repression, were decisive.I

IntroductionIN the late 1920s a radical workingclass movement arose in Bombay whichbrought together, in curious fashion, anemerging Communist leadership withthe leaders of the largely peasant-basednon-Brahman movement. The ambi-guities and outcome of these contactsand conflicts were decisive not only forthe development of social radicalismbutalso for the direction of the nationalist

movement in Maharashtra. This paper,therefore, will focus on the Bombayworking class, but the larger issue weshall be concerned with is the relation-ship of the "cultural revolutionary"nen-Brahmanmovement with nationalismandCommunism, and the purpose is toprovide some additional insight into thereasons the nationalist movement inIndia consolidated itself under conserva-tive leadership as compared with theradical consolidation of the Chineserevolutionary movement.1

It is important to begin with someanalytical background. We can speak

of three types of social movement inthe colonial context: a national move-ment which arises as a political.revolu-tion directed against the alien colonialelite, and a social movement directedagainst the domination of the nativeupper classes which itself takes twoforms, a movement of cultural revoluttonfocusing primarily on the elite definedin "traditional"terms as a caste elite,and a movement of economic revolution

focusing primarily on the elite definedin "modern" terms as an emergingbourgeoisie. The political revolution

finds its first social basis among thenative upper classes; the culturalrevolu-

tion finds its base in the countryside inthe antagonism of peasants to landlordpower; and the economic revolutioriemerges with a base among the urbanworking classes. In terms of Marxisttheory, we might describe these move-ments as directed against colonialism,feudalism, and capitalism.

A truly effective nationalist movementhas to appeal to social revolutionaryimpulses in order to mobilise masses ofthe population; it is for this reason that

Marxists have argued that a strongnational movement must be led by theworking class (rather, a worker-basedCommunist party) since the vacillating"national bourgeoisie" will compromisewith imperialism out of fear of socialrevolution from below. Conver.sely,aswvesternscholars continually point out,an effective social revolution in colonis-ed societies has to represent the im-pulses of nationalism to consolidate itspower. We may say that the strengthof a colonised society's revolutionaryforces depends upon the unification ofthe impulses of political, economic and

cutltural radicalism. However, thecolonial context of a society such asIndia tends to separate these. Becausethe national movement is led at firstby native elites, it cannot attain a massbasis and antagonises the leaders ofthe social movement. At the sametime, within the social movement, cultu-ral and economic revolutionary forcesdevelop also in separation and some-times conflict: a cultural revolutionarymovement draws leadership from amiongthe economic elites of a culturally dis-advantaged group, and these leaders

tend to underplay the economic aspectsof opposition to the native elite. Con-

currently,the economically revolutionary(communist or socialist) movementsdraw their leadership first from nativeintellectuals who as caste elites areliable to downplay the role (if caste andculture. Thus in spite of many pressuresfrom below for unification of thesemovements, they tend to develop inopposition.

The first expression of social revolu-tion in Maharashtrawas the non-Brah-man movement, which gained organised

form with Jotirao Phule's SatyashodhakSamaj ("TruthseekersSociety"), organis-ed in 1873 as a cultural revolutionarymovement directed against the tradi-tional caste system and the religious andsocial domination of Brahmans. By the1920s it had attained a strong baseamong the peasant masses in many dis-tricts of Western Maharashtra andVidarbha, and was beginning to takeon strong economic overtones.. Increas-ingly it defined itself as the movementof the bahujan samaj ("masses" or"majority ommunity") whose primaryenemieswere not only bhatjisor Brah-mans, but also shetjis, the merchantsand moneylenderswho were frequentlyde facto or actual andlords s well: infact the 1920s saw two importanttenant-poor peasantagitations underSatyashodhakleadership. Again, upuntil 1920 the movement liad firmlyopposed he nationalmovement whichxvasoverwhelmingly ominated, speci-ally in Maharashtra,y the Brahmanelite. By the early 1920s, however,many non-Brahmans were feelingnationalistmpulses,and in the middleof the decade the leadership of the

movementpassedto a groupof youngradicalswho mountedan increasingly

749

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April 21, 1973 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY

severe attack on Brahmans but at thesame time defined themselves as nation-alists: they argued that the basic con-flict was between the Indian masses andtheir Britishrulers,but that the Brabmanleaders of the national movement onlylbetrayed the nationalist cause through

their elitism and continuing attachmentto caste orthodoxy which served todivide the Indian people.

The issue at this point was not somuch whether the non-Brahman pea-sant masses in Maharashtrawould jointhe national movement, but whetherthey would (1o so in a way that allowedthem decisive influence over the emerg-ing nationalism or whether they wouldbe simply co-opted by the upper classand tipper-caste elite that continued tocontrol the Congress party. The leadersof the young non-Brahman radicals,

KeshavraoJedhe and DinkarraoJavalkar,had by 1926 obtained a statewidereputation. After 1927 Jedhe beganto be increasingly attracted by theNational Congress as its Gandhiahleadership appeared to offer a socialreformist alternative that promisedto undermine the old dominanceof Maharashtrian orthodox Brahmans.Here a crucial role was playedby such local "Gandhians" as N VGadgil, who was able to speak in thelanguage of and in terms of the needsof the bahuan samaj or non-Brahmancommunity, and it was in fact Jedhe'salliance with Gadgil which was givenprimary credit for leading non-Brah-mans into the Congress in the 1930civil disobedience movement -nd after.

As this alliance was forming, how-ever Dinkarrao Javalkar was com'inginto contact with emerging radicalismamong the Bombay cotton mil workersand with the Communist leadershipwhich offered an alternative direc-tion for the Indian revolutionarymovement. Javalkar emerged from hisexperience as a Marxist who aimed atleading the non-Brahman movement in

a different and more radical directionfrom that represented by Jedhe, andbefore his early death in 1932 hadmade beginnings of such organisation.The existence of this more radicalimpulse among influential non-Brah-mans and the correlated possibility ofgaining a peasant basis for the Commu-nist movement is important. Even moreso was its failure and the subsequentincorporation of non-Brahmansinto aCongress party which continued to becontrolled at the top by a caste eliteand the Indian bourgeoisie. It is this

possibility and failure that will be exa-nminedhere in the context of Bombayworking class movements.

It

Social Organisation in Bombay City

Bombay city, the urban-industrialcentre of Bombay presidency, was atypical cosmopolitical colonial port city.It was not a political centre for Marathi

or Gujarati speakers in the same waythat Calcutta was unambiguously aBengali city and Madras a Tamilcentre.2 Because of its particular socialstructure, "non-Brahmanism" did notexist there as a movement in the wayit did in the Marathi-speaking ruraldistricts. However, upperclass non-Brahman politics did exist, and partlyreflected the connections that non-Brahmans of all classes maintained withthe rural areas. Similarly, the largemajority of the lower and workingclasses were Maharashtrians,most draw

from the rural districts of the Konkanwhere as tenant peasants they cameinto conflict with largely Brahman (butalso high-caste Marathi) khot landlords.Thus the working class organisationthat developed did so at least partly inthe context of the non-Brahmanmove-ment, and this was to have importantconisequences.

Within the Bombay presidency, thecity overwhelmingly dominated whatindustrialism existed: by 19.31 itcontained 381 out of 794 factoriesemploying more than ten persons, ascompared to 162 for

the other Marathi-speaking districts.3 The cotton textileindustry, which dated its beginningsfrom the late 1850s, was again heatvilydominant within the presidency aDd thecity itself. By 1931, out of a total of563,787 earners and working depen-dents in Bombay, 176,433 , wereemployed in "industrial" categories andof these, 114,960 were in cotton textilefactories of various types.4 Itwas these workers who were pre-dominantly Maharashtrians, mainlyimmigrants from the Konkan districts,secondarily from the Deccan plateau;

a few came from the United Provinces,almost none from the Gujarati districts.

While it was the. second largest

TABLE 1 PLACE OF ORIGIN OF MILL WORKERS5

District of Origin Per Cent of Total Mill Hands

1911 1921 1931

Ratnagiri 49.16 35.53 25.37

Satara 7.27 6.63 5.15

Kolaba 6.22 4.47 3.04

Poona 5.65 6.18 5.72Kolhapur 3.07 1.85 0.51

Total of above 72.83 57.65 41.80

Born in Bombay city 10.92 18.87 26.33

United Provinces 3.05 9.42 11.82

Indian city of the colonial period,Bombay wasprobablythe premierIoidiau7industrial city. Unlike Calcutta, whosetrade and industry was for a long timeoverwhelmingly dominated by Euro-peans partly by reason of generalgovernment patronage, Bombay Indians

had played a much greater role asbusinessmen, collaborating with Euro-peans "on a basis of something likeequality".6 These businessmen, includ-ing the mill owners and managers, wereoverwhelmingly Gujarati-speakers, in-cluding Parsis, Gujarativanis (merchantcastes) and Muslim business minoritycommunities such as the Bohras,Khojas and Memons.7

In contrast, the educated and pro-fessional classes of Bombay cityhad from early days been dominated byMarathi-speakers,but these had found

it difficult to establish their leadershipvis-a-vis the business communities.8And Brahman dominance among themwas not nearly so absolute as in therest of Maharashtra.For example, whilePoona delegates at the first session ofthe Indian National Congress in 1883had all been Brabmans, the Bombaydelegates included seven Parsis, fiveBrahmans, three Banias, two Muslimsand one CKP.9 One result of this wasthat caste orthodoxy was less strong;Brahman moderates like Gokhale couldfind a greater basis in the more cosmo-

politan centre of Bombay, and Bombayand Poona presented markedly differentpolitical styles.

Finally, Muslims existed in greaterproportion in Bombay as compared tothe rest of Maharashtra, with theresult that Hindu-Muslim tensions hada greater impact on the life of the city:they were 18 per cent as comparedto 68 per cent in Bombay in 1931,contrasted with 8 per cent and 90 percent in the Deccan districts at thattime.10

For these reasons, the non-Brahman

question did not arise in Bombay citywith the same intensity it did in the*rest of Maharashtra. Although a an'a

750







ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY April 21, 19713

urban centre Bombay produced oneof the earliest Satyashodhak branchesand the newspaper of the organisation,Din Bandhu, the movement itselfNvas wveak there. Broad-based non-Brahman social reform found anexpression instead in the more religi-ously moderate Maratha.

AikyecchuSabha which was active from the 1890sthrough 1910. The term, "Maratha" inits .title was interpreted not in thecaste sense, but to include all NMarathi-speaking non-Brahman castes exceptuintouchables (though many of itsleaders actively supported untouchableleaders), and its leaders 'Included mensuch as Krishnarao ArjnmraoKeluskar,the Maratha writer; NarayanraoLo-khande, the Mali Satyashodhak workerand labour leader, and S K Bole, theBhandari political leader of the non-Brahman Party. Indeed, Bole's career

illustrates much of the particular natureof Bombay non-Brahmanism. Born in1869, he took an early lead in castereformn ctivities, founding an organisa-tion of his own subeaste in 1889 andbecoming the first president of theBhandari Education Conference in1913. He took a leading role in orga-nising tenant agitation against khotlandlords in the Konkan, was the mostimportant non-Brahman leader ofworking class welfare organisationsafter 1900, and became one of theleaders of the non-Brahman party in

the Legislative Council in the 1920s.But he was never a member of theSatyashodhakSamaj, and later joinedthe Hindu Mahasabha, one of the veryfew non-Brahman eaders to go in thatdirection.l

It would be useful to examine moreclosely the class and caste relation-ship of non-Brahmans n Bombay. Withno representation among the highlevell)usiness community and very littleamong the intelligentsia and profes-sional classes, the non-Brahman sectionnevertheless did include some well-to-do men, mostly merchants and

contrac-tors. (Typical of this perhaps was thefact that Telugu Malis and associatedgroups of contractors had providedmost of the early support for Phulein Bombay city.) In spite of the effortsof such organisations as the MlarathaAikyecchu Sabha, it seems that casteremained a significant factor of socialintercurse, splitting the non-Brahmangroups.'? Even among Marathas, dis-tinctions between aristocrats and"kunbis"as well as distinction betweenMarathas from the Konkan and Mara-thas from the Deccan, continued to be

important well into the 1920s. Thusthe earliest Maratha caste organisations-

represented separately the "Deshastha"and "Konkanastha" Marathas; thesehad managed to unite in 1912 in the"Ksatriya Maratha Dnyatisamaj", butthis remained an organisation dominatedby aristocrats, with its office in thewealthy area of Girgaum and with acti-vities

including preparation of lists andbiographies of "KsatriyaMarathas".13ncontrast, a "MarathaSamaj"founded in1891 included reformist leaders likeR S Asavale, Bapurao Avte, Laxman-rao Thosar and Vasudevrao Birze; thisorganisation considered Din Bandii andBarodavatsal as affiliated newspapersand aimed at unity, education andsocial reform but evidently did niotsurvive for long.14 Instead, localisedorganisations, including organisations ofMarathas from one district, continuedto predominate.

For less aristocratic Marathas, the

centre of much activity was CrawfordMarket and Koliwada Hall in njearbyMandvi was said to be the "headquar-ters for all Marathas".'5 It was herethat Phule had been honoured in1888,16 and it was the site for nume-rous community meetings including onein 19.30 attended by Jedhe and Gadgilwith the aim of bringing the Marathacommunity into Congress. The NMarathamerchant community of this area wasnot an educated one, but did have ex-tensive connections. Many of its lead-ing men had come to Bombay secking

their fortunes from the villages, andthey maintained their connections withthe rural areas. They took part inwelfare associations, some oriented tocaste activities,17 some to labour wel-fare activities, some to education andsocial reform; through these thev main.-tained relationships with and influenceover the wider group of lower-classBombay non-Brahmans. Among thesemerchants were men such as Mansing-rao Jagtap, a grass merchant fromSatara who was loosely involved inpolitics both in his home taluka of Waiand in Bombay and

patronisedwrestl-

ing, tamashas and a wide number ofsocial organisations; or Dhondji Patil-Bhosle who had come to Bombay fromSatara as a labourer making boxes andthen organised his own business andwas also a philanthropist, a patron ofwrestling and an important funder ofthe Rayat Shikshan Sanstha of Satara.18

Perhaps the most important of suchb)usinessmen-politicians and a crucialbehind-the-scenes patron of Bombaynon-Brahmanismwas Govindrao "Bhau-saheb" Shinde. Born in 1879 in Nasik,he had come to Bombay with his

widowed mother in 1890, opened asmall shop in 19&2 and eventually

established an ayurvedic mnedicineshopat Delisle Road which became one ofthe most important purveyors of medi-cine for workers in that area. His homeat Delisle Road became a centre fornon-Brahman activities in Bombay thatwas said to be an equivalent of the

"Jedhe mansion" in Poona; indeed the1927 special meeting of the Non-Brabman Party which was called to de-cide whether non-Brahmans shouldenter Congress, was held in his com-pound. He too was involved in casteactivities (he founded in 1916 aMaratha Vidyarthi Sahayyakari Mandalto provide scholarship help to students)and in labour organisations such as theSocial Service League of N M Joshi.19

Men such as Shinde and Jagtapand through them the political non-Brahman leaders of Bombay - mrrain-tained a connection with working class

non-Brahmans through such welfareactivities and through sponsorship ofgymnasiums and wrestling societieswhich were important in working classsocial life. More significantly, perhaps,they evidently had close relationshipswith a number of the "jobbers" whowere so crucial in the organisation ofthe Bombay labour force.20

Jobbers overwhelmingly dominatedthe social organisation of the mill areasat this time and were a crucial linkinggroup in relationships of the workers.They were responsible for the recruit-

ment and management of labour, andtheir influence extended from the vil-lages where they recruited to the imillsand the working class tenements aswvell. The "jobber's gang" was in facta social unit that often followed himfrom one mill to another. Jobbers madecontacts for labourers to borrow moneyand frequently loaned it themselves.All this gave them tremendous socialpower and an income derived in largepart from taking a cut of the incomeof the wvorkers nown as dasturi (fee,b)ribe, commission). Their caste- comn-position was almost exactly equivalentto that of the workers and occasionallythey themselves had risen from theranks.2"They have been described asa city equivalent of the village patil(headman), and although their positionwas not hereditary, this is probably apt,for they represented a conservative,patron-client form of social organisa-tion.

Bombay non-Brabman society, then,though heavily stratified by class andcaste, was in many ways a fluid one,and these relationships that linkedworkers, jobbers, businessmen, and poli-

tical leaders formed the social basis forthe early labour organisations of Bom-

75;1








bay. They help to make understandablea part of Bombay labour history - butnot all of it. For, as Morris David Mor-ris has noted,

the Bombay industry has a long andbitter tradition of industrial conflict.There have been more labour disputesin the Bombay cotton textile indus-

try and they have been of greaterintensity than in any other place orindustry in the country. The tradeunions which have emerged have hada complicated, tumultuous and un-stable career.=

The main characteristicsof this insta-bility have been incredible tenacity instrikes coupled with the continuedpotential of becoming a revolutionarypolitical force on the one hand, and onthe other an inability to maintain astrong and militant union.22 Organisa-tionally, radical (Communist or socia-list) unions have upto the present been

successful in calling masses of workersout on strike while in normal timesreformist unions, supported by thegovernment, have succeeded in main-taining their positions as representativeunions. Two types of unionism, then,have existed among the Bombay millworkers, one based to a large degreeupon the social structure outlined above,the other upon spontaneous workerradicalism (itself in part connectedwith non-Brahman anti-elitist tbemes)and militant leadership. It is the rela-tionship between these that will be dis-

cussed in the following two sections.

III

Early Non-Brahman LabourOrganisations

To a very considerable extent, earlylabour welfare organisation grew out ofnon-Brahmanactivity. It is a Satyasho-dhak leader, Narayan Meghaji Lokhande,who is credited with being India's first

labour leader.23Born in 1848 in a Malifamily of Thana, he had been educatedupto high school and began life in

Bombay under, the patronage of aKhoja merchant and eventually becamea head clerk in a cotton mill. Thoughlittle in detail is kmownabout his earlylife, Satyashodhak sources tend tostress that "unlike the panderpeshalawyers, barristers and solicitors wholead today's unions", Lokhande hadbeen a "worker" himself and hadlived in the tenements of Parel andByculla.24 Though this was an exagge-ration since he was a clerk and not amanual labourer, there is little doubtthat he was closer socially to theworkers than upper-caste leaders such

as N M Joshi. He learned of theSatyashodhak movement early enough

to "becomea member in its second yearin 1874, and began activities on its be-half in Bombay. In 1880 he was giventhe editorship of its paper Din Bandhu,which began to call itself the "Journalin the Interests of the Working Clas-ses", and with this opportunity he lefthis service for social work and foundedthe Millhands Association.

Lokhande differed little in style fromother early upper-class labour leadersin that his role was primarily in repre-senting the workers' grievances before

the British and in attempting to amelio-rate conditions that caused unrest ratherthan in organising the workers to presstheir demands directly. However in 1884he was responsible for organising meet-ings of textile workers out of which

5,000 signed a petition of deniands tothe Factories Commission,25 and theMillhands Association did have an

organisational basis among jobbers.26The Association itself was weak andshortlived, but it evidently remained as

a tradition among the workers; duringthe 1920 general strike an organisationunder that name appeared and distri-buted a leaflet of demands.27

The Association'swork was continuedpartly by the MarathaAikyecchu Sabha,which involved Lokhande in its leader-ship and which represented workers'grievances by taking part in the agita-tion for a twelve-hour day in 1905.28

However, it was the Kamgar Hitawar-

dhak Sabha, founded by S K Bole andothers in 1909, which became the mostprominent of the workers' welfareassociations and lasted until develop-ing radicalism among workers in themid-1920s cut away its strength. TheKHS defined its aims as aiding workersin tixnes of difficulty, sponsoring lec-tures and handbills on useful subjects,

opening schools for workers' children,and helping workers to "settle"struggleswith factory owners.2> By the 1920s it

did indeed have three night schoolsand evening classes and sponsoredsporting competitions and gymna-

siums.30 It represented workers' grie-vances during the 1918-19 textile

workers' strike, and in 1919 it orga-nised "the first conference of Bombayworkmen" which supported a nine-

hour day, urged medical care and

workmen's compensation - and warn-

ed workers against falling victim to

outside agitators.3' It also formed partof the deputation to the governor andMontague in 1917 which demandedcommunal representation for non-Brahmans.

The KHS organisation was based

primarily on jobbers, and it developedthe strongest organisation for its time,

with 200-300 members who were saidto have influence over approximately10,000 workers due to their role as job-bers in the early 1920s. Its centres werein Parel, Chinchpokli anid DelisleRoad, the central Bombay workingclass areas. It would appear that itsupperclass lines of support were pri-marily non-Marathas, such as Bole andManuji Rajaji Kalewar, a wealthy con-tractor whose meeting hall, "Manaji's

wada", became its centre; at the lowerorganisation level however there is noevidence of caste differentiation.32

The Social Service League, foundedin 1909, wag in seeming contrast tothe KHS since it involved fulltimesocial workers but no jobbers in anyobvious role.33 its most prominent lea-der was N M Joshi, the noderateBrabman labour leader of Bombay,who was appointed to many conferen-

ces as a labour representative andwhose testimonials before enquiry com-mittees were invariably the mostthoroughly researched and effective.This gave the League less of -a "back-ward class" character; yet it involvedsuch persons as Govindrao Shinde,3"and it is likely that through him andthe group of jobbers he was connectedwith it had many of the same linkagesas the KHS.

This was a particular style of labour

organisation. Organisationally theseassociations brought together educated

social workers, non-Brahman politiciansand businessmen and jobbers and bas-ed themselves on the traditional socialorganisationof the mill areas. Ideologi-cally they were conservative and refor-mist, seeking to represent the workers'grievances to the owners and thegovernment, but consistently opposingstrikes. It appears that this style wasthe basic model for the Bombay TextileLabour Union which arose in 1925 andgrew to become the main competitorwith the militant, communist-led GirniKamgar Union in the last half of thedecade. The BTLU brought together

the main upper class labour-orientedpoliticians of Bombay - Bole, Joshi,Asavale, Jhabwala, Ginwala - and hadan effective centralised bureaucracy.Newman contrasts it with the Girni

Kamgar Mahamandal (the initial basis

for the GKU; see below), arguing that

it had only qualified jobber support and

was not able to build on jobbers'gangs.35 Yet it did apparently have

jobber support through the more infor-mal connections of the non-Brahmanleaders (see also note 20). Rather, the

difference was that the BTLU repre-

sented essentially the evolution of thetraditional labour org~n1sation into a

752







ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY April 21, 1973

formalised union, wNhereas the GKMand the GKU built on sometlhingnew:a developing wave of worker inilitancythat griew in opposition to suich tradi-tional authority of jobbers and educat-ed "outsider" labour leaders.

IV

New Labour Movement: Commu-nists and Non-Brahmans

The 1920s in fact produced radical-ly new developments. Three phases ofdiscontent - period of rising prices in1918-20, a period of wage cuts from1922-25, and a period of standardisationfrom 1927-29 - produced each twogeneral strikes and an increasinglyeffective trade union.38 Behind thesewere two coalescing trends of radicali-sation. Both were militant in expressing

some form of class struggle ideology ascontrasted to the earlier mediationistapproach; both were modern in repre-senting a new form of worker's organi-sation fundamentally opposed to tradi-tional jobber control. One was a miove-ment for "workers'control" that develop-ed in opposition to all forms of outside,upper-class, non-worker leadership:this was expressed in the Gimi Kam-gar Mahamandal and later in the GKUmill committees of 1928-30. The otherwas the Communist movement. Thoughseemningly pposed - the Communists,

largely Brabmans, were in a sense"outsiders"of an extreme type - theynevertheless came together in the for-mation of the most impressive labourunion in India of the time, the GirniKamgar Union, known to the workersas the Lal Bavta or "Red Flag"Union.37

The Girni Kamgar Mahamandal cameto the fore as a niillworker's organi-sation during the 1923 strike. At thistime it claimed a membership of 900in 17 mills, but grew to a strength of3,500-4,000 in 1926 and 1927.38

Two non-manual workers were initial-ly involved as leaders: Mayekar, aBhandari clerk and storekeeper whohad organised a rather nominal GirniKamgar Sangh in 1919, and D ABhatavdekar, a Brabman jobber. Mostof its other members were actuallabourers and mainly Marathas andallied castes. As it grew, the CKMencroached directly on the areas ofstrength of the KI-IS,with three clustersas its nucleus, one of which was atDelisle Road; as a resuilt, the KHSdisintegrated. This growth involvedthree correlated trends. The first vas amovement towards a more aggressiveand militant policy, particularly after

1926 andc associated wvith relationahipsvith emnergingCommuunisteaders. The

second was the inheritance of the anti-elitist attitui(les of the non-Brabmanmovement; as Newman puts it, as theGKM took over the social basis of theKHS, "a section of the anti-Brabman

movement was transplanted into thenew union". And third, Mayekar andBhatavdekar were excluded as theybegan to quarrel 'with more miilitantleaders, and their ouster "was accom-panied by the rise of the ordinarymillhands to positions of real responsi-bility in the union".39

Most important of these militantworker leaders were A A Alve, a Vani,and G R Kasle, a Maratha fitter.40Both had been originally tenant far-mers in the Konkan, and though drivenby poverty to seek early work in the

mills maintained their relations with thevillages; Alve himself had made effortsto organise against the landlords. Bothhad come up from the ranks as workersbut had previous political cxperience.Kasle had attended the first AIlUC"on a delegates' ticket given him by alawyer who was trying to promote him-self as the leader of a labour organi-Sation"'4and Alve had taken part inCongress campaigns during the non-co-operation movement but had becomedisillusioned. Because of their peasantas well as worker background, and pro-

bably because of experience of Brah-man social exclusiveness,42 it was r;otunnatural for such men to see inoney-lender-landlordpower, capitalist oppres-sion, Brahman caste dominance and anelite-led Congress party as all of onepiece.

This, for example, wac reflected inAlve's criticisms of the Congress leader-ship, criticisms wvhichreflected a moreclass-conscious version of the generalnon-Brahman opposition. Workers, heexplained, had understood swvaraj omean that there would be a halt to

moneylending, cheaper land, higherxvages, and an end to capitalist oppres-sion. But they had found Congress tolbe only a negotiating body making de-mands for factory owners, landlordsand the edtucated intelligentsia: "Ittherefore became evident to ime wvhatSwvarajwas and what wvouild be thecondition of uis worikers and reasantswhen it would come into the hands ofsuch rich men."43 Ideological themesunderlying the GKM were those ofworkers control: Its trend s to ex-clude middle-class patronage, to be anorganisation

purely of the working class.But'it is important to note that its anta-gonism to educated elite outsiders was

directed not only againistBrahunans, utalso against upper class inon-Brahmans.Not only did Alve express hostility tothe "autocratic obstinacv" of N MJoshi,44he also opposed the KHS forsimilar reasons. As he described the1923 strike negotiations,

Messrs Bole, Talcherkar aindothers ofworkers' institutions like the "Hita-wardhak"put together something andplaced it before the committee andthese sensible and humanitarian per-sons represented as false the side ofthe workers placed by me before thecommittee, got it proclaimed throughthe English newspapers that they werethe real leaders of the workers, that Iknew nothing about the workers' con-dition and such other things. Thecommittee also accepted as true tlheirside, regarding them as sensible out-siders.45

However, the militant workers didneed to deal with outsiders and some-times through outsiders, for all thereasons generally cited in studies ofnon-western unions: the importance ofthe economic regulations of a powerfulgovernment, the necessity of literacy(and literacy in a foreign language) indealing with the millownersand govern-ment.46 Thus GK-M eaders maintainedrelationships with non-Brahman, politi-cians such as A N Surve and R S Asa-vale. But it was not such leaders butrather the largely Brahman Communist.of Bombay city who were to become

the allies of the militant workers in thetumultuouLsvents of the late 1920s, andit was men like Alve and Kasle whotook the lead in bringing them in. Alveand others had early approached theCommunists for help, particularly Jogle-kar, whom Alve had evidently knownin Congress activitv. From the time ofthe May Day rally in 1926, the C(on-mtunistsbegan to be leading speakers,and Mayekar's newspaper Kamkaril)egan to be explicitly anti-capitalist anddescribed communism as the goal of thewvorkers. The GKM became the Com-munists'

main channel to working classsupport, and when it was transforrnedinto the GKU in 1928, it wvasAlvewho played the crucial role of convinc-ing reltuetant wvorkerso allow Com-munist "ouitsider"participation on theuinion official body.47 By. 1929 Alvewvasreferriing to himself as a Com-imutinist.48

How was it that the Coimmunists n-he-ited the workers' militancy? If any-thing, the Communists' own class back-grouindan(d social-cultuiraloutlook wereb)arrierso the development of such rela-

tionships. Coimmunism n Bonmbay ityhad emerged out of a radical faction oflcftwsing nationalists in the city Con-

753







Aprt121, 197$ E(ONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY

gress CoPtunittc:e thiev \wre elli J

similar higi caste and middle or iower-itiddle classhackigrodinld ois political

heroes were extrenmist rainhills.anishch

As Tiak. joglekAr and MirazkarweTre,it seeiiis, the only twYowith some vrevi-oils workin, class 'or uniniOIl involve-

thent.'9 The leader of the groutp vasS A Dange a Brahman whose 1920paiiphlet, 'dandhi and Lenin", ha'dtruarked he beginnings of Marxist lite-ratitre in In(ia and had attracted theatkntioh of M N Roy from abroad.Withth' patronlageof a left-leaning flouirmillowner he was able to build 1uip Marx-ist library and stuidygroups that contri-buted to the growNing influenice of

Marxism o11the young Inclian intellec-tuals. It appears it was the influenceof scattered Comintern (lelegates whodirected the attention of suich leftnationalist intellectuals to wvorking lassorganisation.50 Newman describes themas still "primarilya faction of frustratedCongressmen" in 1925 and N M Joshi

argued in 1926 that they were "niotrealcommunists" (i e, not leaders of theworking class) buit "nationalist beforeeverything' else".'-

It is important to remember, then,the genuine lack of a functioning Com-munist party organisation during the1920s, due to a very large degree toeffective British repression52 which leftIndian communists with very little

chance to operate in comparisonwith, for instance, the Chinese or Indo-nesian parties. The willingness of theseemerging Communist intellectuals toengage in militant working classorganisation and to associate on a day-to-day level with the wvorkerswas riodoubt important.53 But the crucialfactor in the attraction of Comiunismfor militant wvorkers as undoubtedly itsideology. Hferethe subtleties of "right"'versus "left" trends within Comiriternanalysis -were of little importance com-pared to the simple themes that filtereddown to the workers. These were two.

The first of couirsewas the stress on theleading role of the wNorking lass ,.ndthe eventuialgoal of socialism, whetherconceived of in terms of a "proletariandictatorship"or "the democratic dlictator-ship of the proletariat and peasantry".The concept of a "Workers' iaj", whichwas muichdiscuissed n the MeerLit esti-mony, legitimised the already develop-ing themes of workers' control as xx llas non-Brahmiainhemes emphasising therole of the "nmasses".Second, the Miarx-ist-Leninist attitidel towN,rd ThiirdXVorldnational liberation movliments, w7hich

stressed the validitv of nationalismwhile condlemning boulrgeois nlational

leadurtshlp,corrcspondedl almost perfect-

lv with genetal militant' non-irahirian

attitlldes. Thlits the attraction d Coin-

WlUl1iYI .was not .siiply a mattel oit

efricienitand(1e(licate(d uplport of work-ing C.lass "(conomic"I k eands butit

altherthe matter of an ideologv that

fitte(d wviththe developing idleological

radlicalismof militant workers, a radica-

lis,m w'hich itself transcended ecorlio-

mism.

In this context sporadlicbut thlreaten-

inigCommuinist rganisingbegan. While

M N 4lov, the b)rilliantand sometimesarrogant Bengali, vied with representa-

tives of the Commiiunist ar-tyof Great

Britain for leadership over the In-dian

party, their policies and application of

Bolshevik strategy seemed to have dif-

fered little. Communists were urged

both to workwith and form trade unions,

and also to build up a nationalist, mass-based left wing organisation. M N Roy

had earlv phrased this as a "peoples'

party"; it later took the form (f a

Workers' and Peasants' Party which

was conceived of as autonomous but

operating as a "two-classpressujre roup"within the National Congress, a vehicle

for both nationalism and labour crganis-ing.54 Basing this on a Workers and

PeasantsParty alreadyformed in IBengal,

and gaining support for a BombayParty

among mill wvorkerss a restultof their

union vork (Alve, Kasle and Desai, all

GKM people, became WPPmembers),

the Communistsbegan to have impres-

sive success.

With the CKM and its communistallies moving in an increasingly radical

direction, isolated protests againstrationalisation and wx'ageeductions in

1928 coalesced into a six-month longZgeneral strike, the largest in India at

the time: ouit of this arose the

GKU. "The strike wvasnot our ctea-

tion, but wvewere the creation of the

strike," said Dfange.55 Mayekar, ex-

pelled from the GKM, had registered a

rump union under this name, aindthus

the workers of the old GKM joined with

the Coinmtmnistsn a n-ewunion register-

edl as the Girni KamgarUnion (the Red

Flag or Lal Bacta, Union), which novallowed ouitsiders (the Commuinists) o

join with working class leaders in the

central body. The relative suLccessofthe strike xvas ollowed by the tremend-ous expan-sion of the Lunion to thenml)ers of 50,000-100,000 maentioner1above (see footnote .37).

What is importanithere is the form

which this expan-sioniook. It was nlot

simnply hat of affiliation of -workers oa central body controlled by militant

\\ QkrelK olid commull-illinst l-ntellectutals

rather it xvas the exPiansioii of the

"Xorkers' control' imovement nowv tak-

ing the shape of uiill commliitt(c's (go nt

S(anliti/al). The coimmittees were iarade

lip of about 30-40 members elected a<s

representatives fromiieach dteparftmentin1

the miiills;)y Apr l 1929 thelre werc 4:

of suich conimittees on record. Thecommiiittees wNere inform1allvy org a nised;

niwPt onl their own, and ofteni did not

keep in co-respondence with the centtal

tunion leadership; they had a distinict

tendlencv to claimi utnion auithority for

themselves or to "usu-irpit"PB They

took control of enirolmenit and subscrip-

tions, watched petty officials, forrmulat-

ed grievances and bargained before the

onion centrallealders ame in; oinoccasion

they initiatecl strikes. In fact they con-

sidleredthemselves the union, and their

opponents began to see themselves as

such. As H P Mody, chairman of theMillow7ners' Association, wrote, "the

mill conmmittees re in their owvnway

the Union. There is no control over

them on the part of the GKU".57 Al-

most more than the communists them-

selves, it was the committees that fright-

ened the establishment:

The m-ill commifttees did more thananything else to upset the establishedorder in the mills. They caused un-precedented anxiety among the mill-owners, and overexcited the imagina-tion of the government, the law, andmany journalists and historians.A"

The most interesting aspect of this over-

turning of the established order was

that in committees developed in oppo-

sition to the jobbers, the traditional

focus of authority among the w orkers.

Though some jobbers had initially assist-

ed mill organising, conflicts quickly

developed anid he old discipline collaps-

ed; jobbers were attacked anid often

beaten, their power coming to an end.

The Bombay mill committees thus

represented a distinctly miioderncrm of

worker organisation, and have to be

seen as a parallel to similar "factorycourncils" that have (leveloped with al-

most equivalent spontaneity tinder re-

volutionary condlitions throuyghout he

wvorld. During the Rtussianrevolution,

for example, the Bolsheviks actually

gained mutchof their power base among

the working class by suipportinig a simi-

lar factory-coutnicil based "workers'

conitrol" movement which was fighting

a Menshevik-controlledI trade uniion

bureaucracy.59 Although the Bolsheviks

subsequently uniider he pr-essureof a

revolutionarywar substituted a national-

ised bureaucracyfor vorkers' collectivemansagement nsthe factories and ova-

754







ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY April 2Ir 1973

rode the independent power (if thefactory councils,60 support of such com-mittees or councils remained an inmport-ant theme of Communist union organis-ing. Similarly in Italy, while the right-wing Socialists controlled the unionbureaucracy, the left wingers (especiallythe group In Turin under the leadershipof Antonio Gramsci) who were later tobecome the nucleus of the Italian Com-munist Party, based themselves upon asimilar factory council movement. Infact, it was Gramsci w7ho becamethe primary Marxist tlheorist ofsuich bodies. He argued that thefactory councils, unions and the(Leninist) party were the three crucialworking class institutions: of these theunion as a form born of struggle with-in capitalist society tended to be limitedconsistently by capitalist legalitiesa'nd to fall prey to bUreaucratisa-

tioni, while the councils in con-trast wvereboth incipient organs of apotential socialist state and a revolu-tionary force that constantly telnded tooverride the limits of such legality: theparty must base itself upon factorycouncils but continually insure that thesewere not treated mechanistically but re-mained democratic organs representingall tendencies within the working class.

We say the present period is revolu-tionary precisely because we can seethat the working class, in all countries,is tending to generate from wvithin t-self, with the utmost vital energy...

proletarian nstitutions of a new type:representative in basis and industrialin arena. We say that the presentperiod is revolutionary because the\vorking class tends with all its erlergyand all its will-power to found its ownState. That is why we claim that thebirth of the workers'Factory Councilsrepresents a major historical event -the beginning of a new era in the his-tory of humanity ... The party andthe trade union should not imposethemselves as tutors or ready-madesuperstructures for the new institu-tions ... They should become theconscious agents of its liberation fromthe restrictive forces concentrated in

the bourgeois state.61While the realisationl of the actualhiistorical mportance of such forms asthe mill conmmittees was behind theCoininiterni tress on them as a form ofunion organisation, it is perhaps doubt-ftil wvhetheralJ Communists sharedGramsci's enthusiasm for them; it iscertain that the Bombay Communists(lid not. Newman reveals a definiteambiguity in their attitude:

The mill committees were the mostcontroversial part of the union'sorganisation .. The Cornmunists, intheir recollections about the union's

growtfl, einlplhasise the fact that them-ill comsmittees were a p,racticalnecessity.62

In fact, the intellectual Communistleadership showed a clear distrust ofthe workers:

They feared that the transfer ofpower to the millhands might beclivisive if local and communal loyal-ties had not first been subsum-ed in a wider class consciousness.63

Underlying this distrust was the factthat the Communists, who were notthinking in terms of immediate revolu-tionary organising in any case, wereconstituting themselves as the union'sbureaucratic leadership in a context ofnegotiating with the millowners; theybegan to be the channels through vhichthe owners had the only hope of con-trolling the millhands, and were readyto make and abide by agreements evenat the risk of unpopularity and to looktoward the creation of an orderly work-force. But it was this orientation which

brought them into conflict with the com-mittees at many points as they triedto dampen disputes and control thevolatile local branches of the union.64As Newman puts it, "The employerstherefore had to deal with two unions,the union of the militant workers andthe union of the leaders."65 This wasan emerging split, and what was happen-ing was that instead of securing athorough and organic basis among thewvorking class, the Communist intel-lectuals were becoming a bureaucratisedleadership over the workers.

In this context, the militant workers'distrust of "outside leadership" wasbound to be reactivated. And it wasprecisely at this point that members ofthe more conservative Bombay non-Brahmanelite began to undertakea con-scious effort to reactivate it, and totransformantagonism to "outsiders" ntoanti-Brahmanism and by implicationanti-Communism. The primary movershere were BhaskarraoJadhav, the leaderof the non-Brahmanpolitical party, andGovindrao Shinde. Jadhav had in 1924suggested to British officials the forma-tion of a labour union along conmmunallines to counteractGongressorganising;66he showed no hesitancy in advocatingthe samelc tactics vis-a-vis the Com-muniiists. As he noted later in his diary,

I told how the Non-Brahmanpartyhad decided to save our men thelabourers from the evil influence ofthe Communists who hacl capturedthe labour unions. We worked uponAlwe and Kasle. Kasle came over touIs. But we advised him not to giveuip his Vice Presidency of the GKUbut to work there in gaining mrloreadherents who will oppose the Coin-munists and iultimately will expeltherm.67

The nlon-Bsahlsia11eadlers wseresaid tobe getting money for propaganda

purposes from H P Mody and the Mill-owners Association, while their niews-paper Kaivari was also financed bycontributions from the Crawfordmarketarea merchant community.68 Theyworked through this paper as wellas through their personal coLtactswith many workers and jobbersin the Delisle Road area centred onShinde's home. They invoked the tradi-tion of Lokhande, declaring him to bea true worker and implyng that alSostainy non-Brahman, as a member of the

bahiujaln amaj, could be consi(lered arepresentative of the workers, as contra-sted with middle class Brahman leader-ship. Kasle was indeed won over, andthe entire Delisle Road area, earlier acentre of strength for the GKM-GKU,developed into an area of opposition.69

Kaiva-ri carried a wide range of

non-Brahman news, but emphasisedits labour orientation with extensivefeature articles week after week accus-ing the "Communist bhats" of betrayingthe workers.70 Edited at this time byDinkarrao Javalkar, whose role will bediscussed below, its line illustrated bothJavalkar's own version of non-Brahmanradicalism at that time and the signi-ficant degree to which Communistideology itself had caught hold of theworking class. Militantly expressedsupport for the union itself was comb-ined with strong, crude and often witty

accusations of betrayal and caste elitismby the Communist Brahman leaders.Brahmans, it argued, could never beeither true nationalist or workers'leaders: "if anyone can be a trueCommunist, it is a non-Brahnian""1

The basic theme was a return to themesof "Workers' control":

The Red Flag Union must endure;the Red Flag Union Fund must grow,but the Union should be in the handsof the workers and there should ben-o room for bhatiis.

Thus direct anti-Communismwas it-

self never a basis of appeal but wasrather fostered on the base of the work-ers' distrust of outsiders. Even so, theCommunistsmight have learned to over-come these difficulties had they beengiven time. But the Government, fear-ful of a powerfully developing Com-munist movement, arrested 31 Com-munists and union leaders in the famousMeerut case, including both Alve andKasle. As a result, what has been des-cribed as a "young and inexperienced"communist leadership moved in to filltheir places in the union. The result

\\..s (lisaSter, A secon(d precipitousstrike of the CKU iesulted in therac-tical destruction of the union and Coin-

7E55







April 21, 197.3 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY

iist influence within it;73 it declinedto not more than 800 members by De-cember 1929, and the rump was for atime captured by the Royists who nowrepresented a separate faction.74 Alongwvith his the mill committees fadedaway as jobber influence reasserted it-self with their role in recruiting newand strikebreaking workers: the oldpatterns were reasserting themselves atthe expense of both forms of militancy.And this loss of the GKU was parallel-ed by the Communists' self-isolationfrom the nationalist struggle of 1930and similar reckless strikes and splitswvithresulting losses of almost all theirunion base.75

Most stucdies of this period arguethat the disaster watsthe result of Com-inunists following Comintern (airectivesof a period of "ultraleftism"which em-phasised

oppositionto

and isolation frombourgeois nationalisrn and trade uuionreformisil.76 But in first Cominterndirectives on these issues appear to me,at least, to be highly ambiguous. Inregard to participation in the nation-alist movement, the most authoritativeinternational directive, the "Theses onthe Revolutionary Movements in theColonies and Semi-Colonies" was anambiguQuus ocument resulting from asomewhat unresolved discussion in theSixth Comintern Congress debate of1928. It emphasised disillusionmentwith the national bourgeoisie (reflectingthe Chinese Party's disastrousexperiencewvith he Kuomintang) and urged Com-munists to d-evelopan independent andillegal party and to demarcate them-selves from all "petty bourgeois groups".But at the same time it advocated par-ticipation in nationalist struggles and"temporary agreements"with nationalistorganisations, and was viewed by theIndonesian party at least as giving toomany concessions to nationalism.77

In this the Indian. bourgeoisie wasnot included among those who badjoined the "camp of counter-revolution"l)ut was said to be vacillating betweenimperialism aind revolution. Only afterthist in resolutions of the Tenth ECCIPlenumttind in the "Draft Platform ofAction- of the Communist Party ofInidia" of 1930 was a more ultraleftlinie expressed, of treating the nationalbourgeoisie as counter-revolutionary.Thus, in 1929, Indian workersand pea-sants were urged to carry out a revolu-tionary struggle led by the proletariatagrainst Blritishmperialism,Indian feudaluleris and Inidian national capital; in

1931 "proletarian eadlership n the revo-

l1utionarviberationallmoveiment f themasses"wsasagain urged.73 Clearly this

\NAS a11 ambiguous policy coIImbinlingstrongly expressed opposition to Gandhiand the national bourgeoisie with thefamiliar theme of participation in a li-beration movement. What is importantto note is that when the Meerut pri-soners who opposed the ultraleft ten-dencies of the Communist leaders out-side vmquested urther international ar-bitration, there was an early result inan "Open Letter to the Indian Com-munists" in June 1932 which criticisedtheir isolation from the national move-ment.79 In sum, it appears that inter-national directives were often ambigu-ons and as much responsive to Indianappeals as controlling Indian actions.

We are led back then to a focus onthe new communist leadership withinIndia and general Indian conditions foiresponsibility for the "ultraleft"and iso-lationist policies of 1929-32. The most

important of these new leaders in Bom-lbay were B K Ranadive and S V Desh-pande. Ranadive, a brilliant economist,a party theoretician and a longtime op-ponent of Dange, has consistently re-presented "left" trends within the party.Deshpande was also primarily an iritel-lectual, effective in study groups andin bringing middle class youth ii1to themovement, but too preoccupied withthese and with general party duties tohave many contacts with the workers.80

Both the ultraleftism and the faction-alism characteristicof Indian communismare held by many leftwing critics of theCPI leadership to be a result of the"petty-bourgeois"origin of the leaders.Criticism of Party attitudes towardsmass organisation such as unions andpeasant leagues emphasises that theleaders had a "mechanistic"attitude to-ward these bodies, were unwilling towork N7ithdifferent trends within themass movements, and treated them in-stead as organisations capable of beingdirected at will by the leaders. ThusM N Roy argued that:

trade unions under its control are not

mass organisations, because the pro-gramme of the Party is imposed onthem. As a matter of fact the CPdoes not seem to know the differencebetween the political party of theproletariat -and the trade union.8"

This was well illustrated by the Com-munist leaders' attitude toward the millcommittees. Sulvivals of old, Brabman-based ideas of the leading role of theintellectuals and an unconscious distrustof the masses could very well constitutean intellectual elitism leading to a me-chanistic attitude toward mass o;ganisa-tions; this in turn resulted in the vacil-

l at ohn (f Inli.an communism, ratherthan a steadlierpolicy more responsive

to lower-class m-oods,as oIie Or aniotlheI

faction with its ideas of how to diirectthe struggle gained control. In thecontest of mass self-assertiveness cha-racteristic of the period in Maharashtra,this was bound to give some credenceto those who claimed that Communismwas only Brahmanismin disguise. The

mere fact that a new middle-class Com-munist leadership could see itself asmoving immediately into control of theorganisations hat were beginning to beestablished suggests the pervasivenessand disruptiveness of this fundamentalunderlying attitude; many workers evi-dently resisted this control and this it-self was producive of splits.82 Dange'sowvn criticism of the Ranadive factionitself illustrates the tendency: "Into thehands of the young and inexperiencedleaders that were left behind fell anorganised working class, pots of itoney

in the Trade Unions and boundless en-thusiasm."83

This was a period in which radicaltendencies in rural areas were beingco-opted by a seeming responsive Con-gress leadership symbolised by Gandhiand activated by men like N V Cadgil.Though the Communists had nio ruralbasis to counteract this, they had es-tablished an urban basis in alliancewith similar militancy among the work-ers, but this was thrown away. Andupperclass non-Brahman and Congressleadership was ready to move in. When

Jawaharlal Nehru visited Bombay in1930 after serving as president of theAITUC in Nagpur, Govindrao Shindepresided over the mass workers' meet-ing that honoured him. MansiingraoJagrap, who also spoke at the meeting,recalls it as having been a "non-Brah-man, anti-Communist effort".8' Shindewas also leader of a group of jobbersand associated intermediary elites whoaround this time began to conceive ofa "nationlist mill workers union" thatwould be opposed both to the Com-munists and the loyalist activities ofleaders like Asavale, Bole, etc.85 Andwhen such a union, the Rashtriya MillMazdur Sangh, was formed in 1946, itwas able to build up its support amongthe workers on the basis of the Com-munists' second period of isolationfrom the nationalist movement after1941.86 The RMMS appears in fact torepresent the reincarnation of the old,traditionalist based, reformist style oftinionism represented by- the BTLU inthe 1920s, buit continues to maintainits hold upon the millworkers in theface of the GKU's continuing inabilityto l)ase itself uipon the revolutionary

mill committees.87

Thus the emergence of a genuinely

756







ECONOMIC ANI) POLITICAL WEEKLY April 21, 1973

radical trend amnong iiiweorkers failed

to gaiin any hegemoniy in the face of

British repression, Communist elitism,and an effective, conservative, co-optat-

ing response by non-Brahmani eaders.

But the genuine possibilities that did

exist for a consolidation of Conmmuniststrength not only amnong he working

class but also to some degree in the

rural areas are illustrated by the influ-

ence of the workers' movement on

Dinkarrao Javalkar; it is to javalkar'srole that we now turn.

(To be >-oncluded)

Notes

1 The role of colonialworking lassesin nationaland socialrevolutionarymovements s perhapsone of themost important ssues in the ana-lysis of colonialism, et there is adearthof studies analysing heir

socialorganisationnd activities. nregard to India in particularwehave a plethoraof Nvorkersealingwith elites, village social systems,,caste associations nd regionalandnational political arenas,but verylittle on the working lass as such.There is, for instance, nothing ofthe quality of Jean Chesneaux'study of the Chinese workers al-though Indian workers in the1920s played as important, f notas dramatic, role. Workson tradeunion organisation nd Communistparty history have dealt mostlywith the upperleveland formalor-ganisation f such groups, withoutdelving into the social organisationof the workerswho formed theirmembership nd withoutmakinguse of vernacularources. See forinstanceV B Karnik, IndianTradeUnions: A Survey",Bombay: La-bour Education Service, 1960;Gene D Overstreetand MarshallWindmiller, Communismn India",PrincetonUniversity Press, 1971and HaroldCrouch,"TradeUnionsand Politicsin India", Bombay:Manaktalas, 966.) Bombay cottonmillworkers one of the mostimportant ections of the workingclassthroughouthe late nineteenthand twentieth centuries havebeen more studiedthan most, but

none of the studies, including avery useful recent work by Ri-chardNewman,use Marathi ourcematerials. (MorrisDavid Morris,"The Emergenceof an IndustrialLabourForcein India",Universityof California Press, 1965; R KNewman, "LabourOrganisationnthe Bombay Cotton Mills, 1918-1929"(PhD Dissertation,Universi-ty of Sussex,1970);Ravinder trike,mar, "The BombayTextile Strike,1919" n Indian Economicand So-cial History Review, March 1971,pp 1-30. Yet such Marathimate-rial does exist, and while it is ra-rely producedby membersof the

working class themselves, t pro-vides importanit insightsinitothepositionof workers n the overall

social structure of Bonlbay city andreveals the degree to which theworking class was intimately in-volved with the social movementsof the period in Maharashtra.Non-Brabman sources, for example, in-clude labour-oriented newspapersand pamphlets edited by intellec-tuals and biographies of lower level

elites xvho forned important inksvith the working class; these revealthe degree of interaction betweenvillage and city, the involvementof the major noin-Bralman leadersin the state with working class po-litics, and the radicalising influenceof working class activity uiponthedirectioniof Indian politics. Thesesources, together with the studiescited above, will form the basis forthis paper.

2 The major languages of Bombay,in thousands, were as follows:

Marathi 553Gujarati 242Konkani 41

Western Hindli 197Sindhi 27

Total population 1,161

(from 1931 Census, VolumeVIII:Part II, page 360 if.)

.3 1931 Census, VIII: I, Statement no23, p 261.

4 1931 Census, VIII: II, ImperialTable X. Reports of the Inspectorof Factories gave slightly differentfigures: of 381 factories in Bom-bay city employing 167,024 work-ers, 77 were cotton spinning, weav-ing and related factories employing124,963 workers (Volume VIII:I,pp 2578).

5 From Morris David Morris, op citpp 63-65.

6 Amiya Kumar Bagehi, "Entrepre-neurship in India, 1900-1931" inEdmund Leach and S Mukherjee,(ed), "Elites in South Asia" (Cam-bridge University Press, 1970), pp244-6. As a source of this diffe-rence, Bagehi cites early participa-tion of Indians in trade, the specialrelationship of the British and Par-sis, and the longer political inde-pendence of the Maratha hinter-land.

7 Ibid, pp 248-50. A few "Kunbis"are listed as owners or managersof cotton factories but these arelikely to have been the Gujarati-

speaking group now known as Pa-tidars, a caste similar in status toMarathas but one that had muchearlier gained a commercial foot-hold and business orientation.

8 For a description of their earlyconflicts, see Christine Dobbin,"Competing Elites in Bombay CityPolitics" in "Elites in South Asia",pp 79-94.

9 New India, pp 295.10 Census of India 1931, VoluimeVIII,

Part I: Table VI, pp 374-5.11 Thomas Peters, "Who's Who in

Western India" and "Rao BabadurJanmashatabdi Gaurav Granth"(Bole Memorial Book) (Bombay,

1969);interviews. Underlying Bole's

membership n the Mahasabhlawereanti-Mu-?limfeelings (his fa.ther

had been killed in a Hindu-Muslimr ot), tenision with Marathas whowere joinina the Congress en massein the same period, and an attractionto Savarkar's radicalism on casteissues which made the Bombaychapters of the Mahasabha some-what more socially radical thanthose in the rest of Maharashtra.

12 One indication of this is that in theBole memorial books and otherscited here there is relatively littleparticipation- in testimonials acrosscaste lines.

13 Report to the seventh session ofthe Maratha Education Conference,1913.

14 Report to fifth session of the Mara-tha Education Conference, 1911.

15 Interview, K V Bandal.16 Dhananjay Keer, "MahatmaJotirao

Phooley", p 235.17 For example the Crawford Market

Maratha Samaj and the MandviKoliwada Maratha Samaj were list-ed as affiliated organisations of theMaratha Education Conference (re-ports of 1913 and 1914); a Mara-tha Co-operative bank near themarket was also started by fruitdealers and merchants.

18 Vishvanath Wable, "Shri Mansinglao KeshavraoJagtap: Alp Parichay"(Bombay, 1952); interview B NNalavde.

19 B B Palekar, "Shri GovindraoYashwantrao Shinde: Jivanvru-tant" (Bombay, 1955), pp 2-9, 17-19.

20 "Jagtap Alp-Parichay",p 14; "Shin-de Jivanerutant",p 107. Morris, opcit, pp 129-36; Newman, "LabourOrganisation... " pp 34-38. Accord-ing to Newman, 59.9 per cent

of jobbers were Marathas andallied castes, 22.2 per cent wereKolis and backward castes, 9.1 percent Muslims (p 34). As an exam-ple of a jobber risen from the ranks,the son of a spinning master atKurla describes his father as havingfirst been a labourer before he roseto a position where he was rmakingRs 600 a month at the time of hisdeath; he became a member of theKurla municipality in 1931 and co-operatedwith N M Joshi and Bakhlein the Bombay Textile LabourUnion. His sons were educated;one began in politics in the late1920s as secretary of the Maratha

Social Club and the Young Men'snon-Brabman Association, organis-ed a "Chatrapati Mela" in Kur]aunder the inspirationof Jedhe, andlater became a leader in Poona dis-trict politics (interview, K V Ban-dal).

21 Morris, op cit, p 5.22 Ibid, p 186, 196.23 V B Karnik, "Indian Trade

Unions", pp 3-4.24 According to R G Rane, in Madhav-

rao Bagal, (ed), "SatyashodhakSamaf Harik Mahotsav Granth"(Kolhapur, 1933), chapter 10. Seealso Keer, "MahatmaJotirao Phoo-ley", pp 154-6.

25 Karnik,"IndianTrade Unions",p 3.26 Din Bandhu, April 14 and 21, 1895

reports meetings of "masters and

757








imiukaddaitis."27 Morris, "Emergenice. ., p 181.

Evidence here is very sketchy;while Morris feels it had no rela-tion to Lokhande's organisation,S S Mirazkar reports that the tra-ditioin of Lokhande's work didexist among the millworkers.

28 Newman, "Labour Organisation..."

p 130. The Maratha AikyecchuSabha was thus an important linkorganisation, wvith leaders such asLokhande and S K Bole over lapp-ing with the earlier Millhan(dsAsso-ciation and the later KIIS.

29 Bole Memorial Book, p 5.30 Newman, "LabourOrganisation...",

pp 124-33.31 Bombay Chronicle, December 16,

1919.32 Newman states that its activities

were "biased" towards backwar(dclasses and minorities, "especiallyMarathas and untouchables, and toa lesser extent, the Muslims" (p124) - a rather strange phrasing,since these were the overwhelmingmajority of the working classes.

33 Newman, ibid.34 He was chairmanof the League for

two years according to Rashtravir,December 14, 1926; see also "Jivan-vrutant", p 30.

.35 Newman, "Labor Organisation...p 205.

36 Ibid, p 105.37 Although the GKU's membership

wildly fluctuated over the years, itspeak of 54-100,000 in 1929-30 faroutdid the BTLU's height of 9,800or the 25,732 of the Ahme-bad (Gandhian) Textile Labour As-sociation at that time (see Karnik,"Indian Trade TJnions", p 100;

Morris, "Emergence... .", p 183-4).Morris cites the figure of 54,000 forthe GKU; Newman gives 50,000members by December 1929 and65,000 by January 1930 fromLabour Office Statistics but himselfestimates the membership at over100,000 in terms of income (dues)figures (p 300). In later years theRMMS (the Congress union inBombay textile mills) reached aheight of a claimed 84,000 in 1957and the Ahmedabad union over80,000 in 1956 (Karnik, p 100 ancdCrouch, p 272).

38 This account bases itself on New-man's work, (see pp 181-4, 222-4)

though at crucial points I differwithNewman's analysis.39 Newman, "Labour Organisation...",

p 184, p 236.

40 Information is provided by theirtestimony in the Meerut ConspiracyCase, where they were convictedas pro-Communist leaders of theGKU, though Kasle by this timehad renounced Communism andAlve had become disillusioned; seeTestimony of Arjun AtmaramAlve,August 12-September 2, 1931 andof Govind RamehandraKasle, 8-15September 1931, "Meerut Conspi-racy Case" (SessionisTrial no 2 of1930). There is also a biography of

Alve in Kaivari, January 12, 1929.41 Newman, p 183; this was likely anon-Brahman, possibly Asavale.

4-2 Accordiing to the Kaica-ri articlc,Alve had been discriminatedagainstby a Brahmanteacher as a child.

43 Meerut testimony, pp 943-6, 978-9.44 Ibid, pp 950-53.45 IbidI,p 947.46 Still the antagonism to suich lea-

(lership and the strong basis itdeveloped is strikingwhen consider-

ed next to such statements as this:"A further factor was the relativeauthoritarian and status-consciousorganisation of Indian society whichtended to prevent both managersand workersfrom conceiving of thepossil)ility that both groups shouldmeet as equals at the bargainingtable... The working class badbeen conditioned to obey theirsuperiors"; Crouch, "Trade Unionsand Politics", p 29; this of couirseneglects the long tradition of revoltagainst authority.

47 Newman, "LabourOrganisation..."pp 184-5, 222, 246.

48 Article in Kranti, 20 June 1929;cited Meerut Case, Vol II, p 419.

49 Newman, "LabourOrganisation...",pp 211-216. K N Joglekar, a Brah-man, was the SOnof a posthandand a brother of a millhand; S SMirazkar,a Shimpi, was the biotherof a postman; both had beeneffected by the postal workers'strikes in 1919-21 and had alsowitnessed early mill strikes.Mirazkar in addition had at-tended the first AITUC in 1920as a representativeof hotel workers(interview); as a non-Brahman hewas also the only one who main-tained relationships with non-Brah-man activity around 1927.

50 Haithcox, "Communismand Na-

tionalism...", p. 55' and VasudevRao, "History of the Formation ofthe Indian Comnmunist Party"(TeleguiCommunist document tran-slated by KrishnaKumarin) (1943)p 8.

51 Newman, "Labour Organisation...",pp 215-16.

52 Such moves as the Kanpur andMeerut Conspiracy Cases veryeffectively disrupted the formationof a continuing organisation; simi-larly every Comintem delegate(from M N Roy to the British re-presentatives) had more or less tosneak into the country.

53 Thus when Alve urged that Coni-

munists be accepted, he stressednot simply the need for their lite-rary and administrative skills butalso testified that they werethought to have a "true fellowfeeling" towards the workers. (Mee-rut testimony) Newman describestheir daily accessibility in the millareas.

54 Newman, "Labour Organisation...",p 218; Haithcox, "NationalismandCommunism", pp 35-37; Over-street and Windmiller, "Commu-nism in India", pp 59-81.

55 Quoted Newman, p 240.

56 Ibid, p 312. Newman's is perhapsthe first study to stres.sthe irnpor-tant

role of the mill committees,though Karnik, "Strike in Inidia",mentions them.

.5 Quoted ibid,l p 317.58 Ibid, pp 315-16.59 Jay B Sorenson, "The Life anid

Death of Soviet Trade Unionism",1917-28. (N Y: Atherton Press,1969) pp 10ff.

60 Ibid, pp 67-73. See also the pam-phlet, "The Bolsheviks andl Work-ers' Control, 1917-1921" for an

attack on later Russian actions; thereal question is the degree to whichAich overriding of workers' controlwas based on historical necessity;Sorenson for instance stresses therole of the resistance of the mana-gerial groups to collective manage-ment.

61 Antonic Gramsci, "Soviets in Italy"(Institute for Workers' Coptrol,Nottingham, 1971), pp 7-9. Forcomparative Comintern statements,the Ninth plenum of the ECCI andthe Fourth Congress of the RILUurged Communists to "set uip fac-tory committees as the basis of re-volutionary unions" and the ECCI

Tenth Plenum (1929) stated "Fac-tory councils can and must be thenatural basis of class imity frombelow in the factories... Thewinning over of the factory coun-cils is for the CommunistParty andthe revolutionary trade unionmovement one of the most impor-tant roads to the essential indus-trial districts".Jane DeGras, "Conm-munist International: Documents",Vol III, pp 56, 59. See also Vol1, pp 148-9.

62 Newman, "Labour Organisation...",pp 305-6.

63 Ibid, p 295.64 Ibid, pp 292-99, 312-18.

65 Ibid, p 318.66 Letter from Sir M Hayward of 30-4-1924 in Home Department File2937-1.

67 Diary, June 21, 1929.68 Interview, K V Bandal.69- Newman, "Labour Organisation...",

p 323.70 The circulation of Kaivari in 1929

was 3,000, which at that time washigher than the 2,000 oF Kranti(the Marathi-language Coommunistpaper) (Native Newspaper Reports,1929). Bhat was the commoninsult-ing term for Brahmansin Marathi,term for Brabmans in Marathi,somewhat akin to "honkies".

71 Kaivari, February 2, 1929.

72 Ibid, January 26, 1929.73 Newman, "Labour Organisation...",pp 332-41.

74 Haithcox, "Communismand Na-tionalism...", p 161, 181. One evi-dence that anti-Communismwas notitself the issue (assuming that theRoyists were basically promoting aMarxist-Leninist ideology at thetime) was that the leader of theRoyist millworkers, Kandalkar,whobecame later president of theGKU and a vicepresident of theAITUC, was along with Kasle andAlve one of the men that non-Brabman leaders had attempted toappeal to (interview, K V Bandal).

75 Karnik, "Indian Trade Unions", pp51-53; Haithcox, 'Nationalism andCommunism", pp 159-63.

758







76 The weakness of most writing onIndian communism with its re-liainceoniofficial and Englis4-langu-age documents and its neglect ofa full sociologically sensitive studyof the movement within its Ihdiancontext, is this overemphasison theititerniatiomial ontext. Windmilleraind Ovcrstreet, anid Kariiik, aLiovist, represent the clearest ten-dency here of treating all the shiftsand deviations within Ipdian com-

munism in terms of internationaldirectives. The more recent worksof Haithcox and Newman aremore balanced in this respect.In general, it would seem thatmore recent and thorough studiesof Communistsmovements in thirdworld countries would question thedegree of attributing very much tothe shifts in and the "periods" ofComintern policy. There are forinstance, "right" or "left" wingshifts in Asian Communist partiesthat do not at all fit with the"united front" or "class againstclass" periods, e g, the PKI re-bellion in Indonesia in 1926 and1927. Surely it is no

coincidence,either, that the major "left" pe-riods in Comintern and Cominformpolicies coincided with a world-wide depression (1929-35) and theperiod of radicalism following theend of World War II, the increas-ed expectations brought with it,and the tremendous impact of asuccessful Communist revolution inChina (1949-52).

77 in Jane DeGras, (ed), "The Com-munist International, 1919-1943:Documents", Vol II, pp 526-547.Ruth McVery, "The Rise of Indone-sian Communism"(Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1965), p 67.

78 DeGras, "CommunistInternational",

Vol III, pp 22-3, 45, 156. WVind-miller and Overstreet, "Commu-nism in India", p 145.

79' Cited in Windmillerand Overstreet"Communism n India", pp 150-52.Similarly in regard to "dualunionismn",he policy is not at allclear. The most "ultraleft"docu-ment, the Draft Platform, did noturge union splitting but isolationof reformists and their expulsion (atrend that led to splitting only inthe context of radicalisation, disor-ganisation and concurrentefforts ofanti-Communists o expel the Com-munists) and advocated "the crea-tion of a revolutionary trade union

movement... based on factory com-mittees with the leadership directlyelected by the workers"(quoted inKamik, "Indian Trade Unions" pp41-8), something the Bombay com-munists had most clearly failed indoing. The Theses of the TenthECCI Plenum on Economic Strug-gle and the Tasks of CommunistParties (September 4, 1929; quotedin DeGras, pp 62-64) warned fairlyclearly against the tendency ofleaving reformist unions.

80 Ranadive gained control for theperiod of militancy of 1948 thoughhe neglected peasant revolution(though one of the main inspira-tions for the militancy had

beenthe Telengana in.surrection) andevidently concentrated on the or-

ganisation of militant strikes andcity struggles. Windmiller andOverstreet, "Communism n India",1p146, 270-281.

81 Quoted in Karnik, "Indian TradeUnions" p 53.

82 Ibid, 1) 47.83 S A D)aiige, "Wbhei Coinllinlnlists

DJiffer" Bonmbay: Indian Instituteof Socialist Studies, 1970), p 43.

84 Initerview,Jagtap, "Shinde Jivan-vrutant", p 109.

85 lbid, p 107.86 Crouch feels that this explanationfor the GKU decline is "dubious"since the dock workers union hadgrown under equally "collabora-tionist" leadership ("Trade Uniotisand Foliticsi, pp 264-5). However,dockworkers were to a large deg-ree non-Maharashtrian, whereasmillworkers were coming in in-creasing numbers from the Deccandistrict - Satara, Poona, Kolhapur

that had seen the strongest na-tional movement; these workers,with nationalist inclinations, and na-tural links with the Congress eaders,formed a social basic for RMMSorganising

(interview, YashwantChavan). Crouch cites the resultsof a survey (which he does notfully accept) which shows Satara ashaving contributed 13.6 per cent ofthe millworkers in 1940 as com-pared to 5.7 per cent in e-arlieryears (p 229).

87 Not only does the RMMS see itsprimary job as that of maintainingworker discipline and has nevercalled a strike since independence

(ibid, p 122), but it seems tohave taken over somneof the styleand functioning of jobbers. Thuswvorkers accuse the union ofdemanding bribes of about Its2-300 to get a job and lis10-12 to get the pension dueto the wvorkerson leaving ajob (interview, K B Patanker).Inany event, the situation up to nowhas been a stalemate very remi-niscent of the conflicts of the1920s: the GKU exists and is ableto lead workers during strikes butcannot gain membership figures forregistration: the RMMS backs outof strikes but maintains its member-ship through skillful Congressmani-pulation. Finally, the mill commit-tee movement continues to exist,calling for abolition of the IMMS,workers control (no non-workers inthe union), and inclusion of work-ers of all political parties in theunion (a very Gramscian position)but faces opposition both from theCPI-GKU and the Congress-RMMSleadership, through they have mrorerecently gained the backing of an-

other Communist force, the LalNishan Party. Unlike the old CPI,at least some of the leaders of therecent mill committee movementstress the importance of fightingcaste as well as capitalism: (inter-view, Gaikwad, Patankar)the ban-ner at a 1971 united meeting washalf red (the "red flag" of com-munism) and half blue (the "blueflag" of the untouchables' Repub-lican Party).

Mohta Alloys and Steels

MOHTA ALLOYS AND STEELS isentering the capital marketwith an issue(f 2,40,000 equity shares of Rs 10 eachand 9,995 preference shares of Rs 100each. The company is putting up amini-steel plant at Dhandari Kalan nearLudhiana in Punjab. The installed capa-city of the plant will be 28,700 tonnesper annum and the operating capacityabout 23,000 tonnes per annum.The total cost of the project is esti-mated at Rs 143.91 lakhs and it is pro-posed to finance the project by raisingshare capital of Rs 50 lakhs, securedloans (Rs 42 lakhs)> machinery to beacquired against deferred paymentguarantees (Rs 20 lakhs), bank borrow-ings (Rs 27.63 lakhs) and land acquiredon deferred payment terms (4.28 lakhs).According to M K Mohta, Chairmanofthe company, the capital cost of Rs 310per tonne of annual production is per-haps the lowest in the industry. Mohtaclaims that, barring unforeseen circum-stances, the company should earn en-ough profits to pay a minimumdividendof 10 per cent on the equity capitalafter the first year of operation. Twofurnaces one of 10/12 tonnes capacityaindthf other of 5 tonries capacity areto be installed. The first furnace of 10/

12 tonnes has arrived at site and pro-dluction is expected to commence byJuily 1973.

Steel scrap is available in abundancein and around Ludhiana whereas steelingots are in great demand by rollingmills in Ludhiana and the nearbyGovindgarh areas, which have thelargest concentration of rolling mills inthe country. Mohta Alloys is thus as-sured of both raw material and marketfor its products. At present mini-steelplants at Chaziabad, Faridabad, etc,are buying their scrap from Punjab andselling their ingots to Punjab. In thecase of Mohta Alloys, the two-wayfreight would be saved. Electricity ratesin Punjab are the lowest in northernIrndiaand this plant, being located ata 'focal point', will be exempted fromelectricity duty to the extent of 25 percent and totally from sales and pur-chase taxes for a period of five years.The power position in Puwijabshouldimprove considerably with the commis-sioning of the Bhatinda thermal stationand the completion of the Sutlej BeasLink.

The subscriptioin list of the ritublicissue will open on May 7, 1973.

759