Comrades in Mumbai: Tracing the rise and fall of the trade union movement

In central Mumbai or Girangaon (village of mills), once home to as many as 130 textile mills, vestiges of the mills dot the 600-acre stretch where the skyline was once punctuated by mill chimneys. This Bombay of yore is quickly being gobbled by mushrooming, shiny, glass towers. "Not just mills. Mill workers' chawls too are making way for highrise residential blocks for the rich and mighty," laments 68-year-old Comrade Shankar Moshetty, a Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM cadre for 42 years. "We mustn't forget, these communities gave the city its unique working class ethos that has helped shape not only Mumbai but also to a great extent, Maharashtra."

The bastion

Effects of this change are being felt in Janshakti, at Worli, a Communist bastion built in 1960, which has hosted trade unionists like George Fernandes, PB Rangnekar, his wife Ahilyabai and Datta Samant among others. "It was here, strategies for various strikes/agitations which shook Mumbai and sent shivers down the spines of capitalists and those in power, were planned over chai and heated discussions," remembers Moshetty who was present at several of these meetings.

In the dusty, decrepit hall the walls of which are occupied by large, framed portraits of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Che Guevara and smaller ones of Indian Left icons, tubelights cast long shadows in the empty space where Moshetty now sits with a young activist, Rameshwar Shere. Ask him of the lack of buzz in the run-up to Labour Day and Moshetty shrugs. "We'll gather and hoist the red flag. But the numbers have been dwindling," he says.

"The establishment, in cahoots with capitalists, has managed to create such a fear of loss of livelihood that nobody wants to organise. They don't realise this lack of unified mobilisation opens doors to further exploitation and subjugation."

But how could things have come to this in a city where the father of the country's trade union movement, Narayan Lokhande (a prominent colleague of Mahatma Phule) mobilised textile workers in the19th century, crusading for better working conditions and laying the foundation for labour laws that benefited millions? General secretary of the Girni Kamgar Sangharsha Samiti, Datta Iswalkar points out how Lokhande was the first to protest hiring of children as mill hands. "It was his struggle that got mill workers a weekly holiday on Sunday, a half-hour recess in the afternoon, working hours between 6.30 in the morning and sunset with extra pay for extra hours, compulsory dispensing of salaries to workers by the 15th of every month," he says. "Until he came along, millowners were looked up to as benevolent masters, in a feudal hangover of sorts, who distributed largesse."

Supported by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and his mentor Phule, Lokhande's movement struck roots and saw textile workers mobilise not only in Mumbai but also in Surat Kolkata, Chennai and Coimbatore. "In Maharashtra, it went on to manifest a politically larger role beyond trade unionism," remarks Iswalkar.

Mainstream resonance

This was made possible by the leadership of BT Ranadive, SA Dange, SS Mirajkar and others who took the movement to textile centres in Solapur, Thane, Dhule and Jalgaon. In 1930, the working classes and people of Solapur revolted against British rule, ousting the British and seizing control of the township. "But this Solapur Commune faced massive crackdown by the British who deployed the army for repression. Four leaders of the struggle — Mallappa Dhanshetty, Shrikisan Sarda, Qurban Husain and Jagannath Shinde — were hanged on January 12, 1931," recounts Aruna Mirajkar, the great granddaughter of the Mirajkar. "Less than three months later, on March 23, 1931, the British hanged three other illustrious and revolutionary martyrs — Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. Now the Left movement was beginning to go out of the industrial and textile units into mainstream politics."

It was during the February 1946 mutiny by Naval Ratings in Mumbai, which spread like wild fire to other ports that the Communists dramatically took centrestage. The late doyenne of the Communist movement, Ahilyabai Rangnekar, had told this writer in 2003 about how the Congress and the Muslim League refused to support this revolt in what was still called the Royal Indian Navy (RIN). "One of Mumbai's oldest newspapers also snubbed them for "biting the hand that feeds them". When naval ratings approached the Communist Party, it not only extended support, but mobilised thousands of textile workers who erected barricades across Mumbai to prevent British armoured vehicles despatched to crush the revolt from passing. From February 18th to 22nd, the British gunned down over 400 workers," the octogenarian had recounted with moist eyes. "A bullet missed me narrowly and hit Kamal Donde. My sister Kusum Ranadive, who was also on the spot, was hit in the leg by a bullet."

The Congress' plan to break Mumbai away from the state gave further fillip to the mainstreaming of the Communists. They forcefully opposed the Morarji Desai government, which was then ruling what was still the Bombay Presidency. The state reacted by ordering the police to fire on demonstrators at Flora Fountain on November 21, 1955, killing 106. Within three months, the Communists formed the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti, with Praja Samajwadi Party, the Peasants and Workers Party and the Republican Party, which dealt a massive blow to the Congress in the 1957 Parliamentary and assembly elections; several leaders of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti won. Forced to concede, the Centre agreed to the creation of the state of Maharashtra with Mumbai as its capital on May 1, 1960, which is globally marked as International Labour Day.

At a nadir

From the zenith of that era to the utter disarray the movement finds itself in now is a result of several factors, insists socio-cultural historian and labour studies scholar Dr Sobita Mukhopadhyay. "Realising they couldn't win in a fair contest with the Communists, the Congress began cultivating lumpens to create the Shiv Sena. Several prominent businessmen who felt communists-led trade unions were eating into profits also actively funded the Sena."

Dr Mukhopadhyay also underlines how trade unions became victims of their own success. "By the 70s, Mumbai saw successive strikes by multiple trade unions fighting less for workers and more for political currency," she says. "George Fernandes (CITU) and Datta Samant (INTUC) grew increasingly militant after successful strikes resulted in substantial wage hikes for their followers. Though Samant won assembly elections on a Congress ticket, Indira Gandhi had him arrested in 1975 during the Emergency. Two years in jail increased his popularity and emboldened him to lead mill workers in a strike that shut the city's textile industry through 1982. Fearing port and dock workers would join him, the government refused to budge despite severe economic losses."

Remembering the Krishna Desai murder and then Datta Samant's, she recounts how the ascendant regional force, the Shiv Sena was set upon the Left trade unions, and was used to cut deals with mill owners to break the strike. "After a prolonged stalemate, the strike collapsed. There were no gains, thousands were left unemployed, and in the succeeding years, owners called mills unprofitable and moved them out of Mumbai. The Congress' Sudhakarrao Naik government's had already introduced the Development Control Rule 58 which allowed textile mill owners to redevelop surplus lands ostensibly so that the money accruing from this could be used to modernise other mills owned by the owners, settle dues and pay back loans to Financial Instituions. While many millworkers are still struggling for a one-room home, mill owners grabbed prime land to build real estate empires."

She blames the Communist leadership equally for this state of affairs. "On one hand the party patronises its followers and on the other there is a complete absence of ideological motivation among its middle and upper leadership. The presence of less than 6.5 per cent younger-than-25 cadres has acted like the last proverbial straw on the camel's back, has also significantly contributed to what is left of the Left."

Hope, however, springs eternal among old timers like Comrade Moshetty. "While people are kept busy with nationalism and communal issues, capitalists are stepping up exploitation. People will eventually realise the ride they are being taken on and rise up in revolt. It is not a question of whether but when. When I see the pressure tactics of the current dispensation and its fringe outfits, it makes me happy that they are only hastening this process."