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‘Produce or Perish’. The crisis of the late 1940s and the place of labour in post-colonial India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2019

RAVI AHUJA
RAVI AHUJA*
Affiliation:
Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article argues that the late 1940s in India should no longer be reduced to the twin events of partition and independence. A generalized political crisis unsettled, for a brief period, the structures of social and economic power, and not just intercommunity relations and the constitution of the state. These years were thus, among other things, a catalytic moment for the definition of ‘labour’ as both a political category and a parameter of post-colonial politics: processes dating back to the First World War, at least, were consolidated, under pressure from this crisis, into a new labour regime that has withstood political pressure for almost seven decades. The article offers an analysis of the almost-forgotten post-war strike movement, which was nevertheless unprecedented in its social and geographical spread. The movement elicited both repressive and reformist responses: the extraordinary level of emergency powers applied to suppress it are, therefore, as much examined as the series of momentous legislative and institutional changes of the late 1940s. In conclusion, the long-term consequences of this cycle of strike–reform–repression for India's post-colonial labour regime are adumbrated. A strongly etatist, potentially authoritarian, regime of industrial relations, it is argued, was checked by an enduring political trade union pluralism. At the same time, divisions within India's working classes were deepened and consolidated as labour law and social legislation sealed off the comparatively small ‘core workforces’ of public sector and large-scale industrial enterprises from the majority of workers in what would soon be called the ‘informal economy’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , July 2020 , pp. 1041 - 1112
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

Acknowledgements: This article is the result of a slow research process spread out over many years. On the way, I have accumulated many debts. I am grateful to all who commented on earlier versions presented at seminars and conferences in Berlin, Braunschweig, Cambridge, Delhi, Göttingen, Hamburg, Kolkata, and London. I have benefited in particular from comments and queries by Jan Breman, Vasudha Dalmia, Leon Fink, Chitra Joshi, Marcel van der Linden, Prabhu Mohapatra, Franziska Roy, Aditya Sarkar, Samita Sen, David Washbrook, and, as always, Nicole Mayer-Ahuja. I have learned much from the recent studies of younger scholars, especially the dissertation research of Ahmad Azhar, Shahana Bhattacharya, Maya John, D. W. Karuna, Robert Raman, Anna Sailer, and Partha Shil. Essential was the hard work of student research assistants—I thank Mechthild Becker, Anja Collazo, Shaivya Mishra, Karl Müller-Bahlke, Maria Pomohaci, and Naima Tiné. Librarians and archivists supported me in many places, but colleagues at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta and the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge were particularly generous. The article could not have been written without Sumit Sarkar's untimely and, therefore, eye-opening interventions over several decades. All errors remain, of course, my own. Archival abbreviations are: ACH (P. C. Joshi Archives of Contemporary History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi); BL: OIOC (British Library: Oriental and India Office Collections); CSAS (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge); NAI (National Archives of India); TNA (The National Archives, United Kingdom, London).

References

1 Jawaharlal Nehru, press conference, Bombay, 27 February 1946, quoted in Amrita Bazar Patrika, 28 February 1946.

2 Sarkar, Sumit, ‘Introduction’ to Chapter 3, in: S. Sarkar (ed.), Towards Freedom. Documents on the Movement for Independence in India 1946, Part I, Delhi: Indian Council for Historical Research/Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 423.

3 Haynes, Douglas, Small Town Capitalism in Western India. Artisans, Merchants and the Making of the Informal Economy, 1870–1960, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 287CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Guha, Ramchandra, India after Gandhi. The History of the World's Largest Democracy, London et al.: Macmillan, 2007Google Scholar. I refer here, pars pro toto, to one scholarly work only that exemplifies high methodological standards of historiography. However, I am aware of the much greater (and presently growing) impact of crudely instrumentalist, often government-prescribed, texts and rituals of historical remembrance that have no respect for historical evidence if it comes in the way of defining the legitimate ‘national’ for narrow political purposes.

5 Cf. International Labour Office, Labour Legislation in India, New Delhi: ILO, 1957, pp. 4–9Google Scholar.

6 The ILO office in Delhi produced detailed monthly reports on issues of Indian labour and social policy between 1929 and 1969. Most of these reports have been digitized, provided with a searchable finding aid, and are available at http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/324221.html, [accessed 8 March 2019].

7 A concise summary of this programme can be found in: ILO, Monthly Report on India (hereafter: ILOrep), October 1946, pp. 11–18.

8 Cf. International Labour Organization, Labour Legislation in India, pp. 4–9. In Bombay alone, according to official figures, more than 25,000 workers had been made redundant by May 1946. NAI, Government of India (GoI), Home (Political) Department, filed 21/6/46, Fortnightly report for Bombay for the second half of May 1946.

9 Cf. Caru, Vanessa, Des Toits sur la Grève. Le Logement des Travailleurs et la Question Sociale à Bombay (1850–1950), Paris: Armand Colin, 2013, pp. 344–347Google Scholar.

10 Indian Labour Gazette, 1, 8 (February 1944), p. 191; ibid., 2, 3 (September 1944), pp. 90–94; ibid., 4, 4 (October 1946), p. 123; ibid., 6, 8 (February 1949), p. 546.

11 Capital, 6 December 1945, p. 784. Actual job cuts in the railways turned out to be much lower, however, according to official figures: the reduction of about 150,000 jobs between 1946/47 and 1947/48 in Indian railway statistics appears to have been largely due to the fact that Pakistani railway employees were no longer counted in the latter year. Indian Labour Year Book 1949–50, Delhi: Govt. of India, 1951, p. 15.

12 Capital, 11 October 1945, p. 502.

13 Cf. Deshpande, Anirudh, Hope and Despair. Mutiny, Rebellion and Death in India, Delhi: Primus, 2016, pp. 35fGoogle Scholar.

14 Cf. Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian Working Class. A Historical Review’, Economic and Political Weekly, L, 15 (18 April 2015), p. 51f.

15 See, for example: Panagariya, Arvind, India. The Emergent Giant, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 67Google Scholar.

16 See, for example: Ahsan, Ahmad, Pages, Carmen and Roy, Tirthankar, ‘Legislation, Enforcement and Adjudication in Indian Labor Markets: Origins, Consequences and the Way Forward’, in: Mazumdar, D. and Sarkar, S. (eds), Globalization, Labor Markets and Inequality in India, London: Routledge, 2008, p. 248Google Scholar; Chatterjee, Anup, Industrial Policy and Economic Development in India, 1947–2012, New Delhi: New Century Publications, 2012, p. 239Google Scholar.

17 See, for example: Lal, Deepak, The Hindu Equilibrium. India circa 1500 BC–AD 2000, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008 (rev. edn), p. 236Google Scholar.

18 The three-way polarization of the trade union movement in the late 1940s between Congress, communist, and socialist unions resulted in N. M. Joshi's withdrawal from active trade union leadership. V. V. Giri, the leading representative of a ‘Geneva approach’ towards collective bargaining within the Congress Party, stepped down as labour minister in 1954 after hitting a roadblock within the government (see below).

19 The best overview of the rise of popular politics in the course of the crisis following the First World War is still: Sarkar, Sumit, Modern India, 1885–1947, London: Macmillan, 1989 (2nd edn), Chapter 5 and esp. pp. 237–253CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 ILOrep, October 1941, pp. 18f.

21 Capital, 11 October 1945, p. 502, and 1 November 1945, p. 605.

22 Cf. Punekar, S. D., Industrial Peace in India. The Problem and its Solution, Bombay: Vora Publishers, 1952, pp. 41fGoogle Scholar.

23 Kamtekar, Indivar, ‘A Different War Dance: State and Class in India, 1939–1945’, Past and Present, 176 (2002), pp. 187–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The difference between India's war experience where ‘the price revolution of 1942–44 changed the distribution of income in society in favour of industrialists and the growers of certain agricultural commodities’ and that of ‘other countries, where controls were early imposed and successfully administered’ in order to ‘soften the incidence of the price rise on the wage earners and the salariat’ was already noted by D. R. Gadgil in 1949. Gadgil, D. R., ‘Foreword’, in: Sovani, N. V., Post-War Inflation in India—A Survey, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Publication No. 21, Pune: Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, 1949, pp. iii–ivGoogle Scholar.

24 Palekar, Shreekant A., ‘Real Wages in India 1939–50’‚ The Economic Weekly, Annual Edition, January 1957, p. 160.

25 Palekar, S. A., Problems of Wage Policy for Economic Development. With Special Reference to India, London: Asia Publishing House, 1962, p. 68Google Scholar. For calculations showing similar trends, see: Singh, V.B. (ed.), Economic History of India, 1857–1956, Bombay et al.: Allied Publishers, 1975 (1st edn, 1965), pp. 607, 629Google Scholar. For a detailed analysis, see: Warren, Bill, Inflation and Wages in Underdeveloped Countries. India, Peru and Turkey, 1939–1960, London: Frank Cass, 1977, pp. 57–83Google Scholar.

26 B. T. Ranadive thus claimed in April 1947 that real wages had been forced down in all industries by 30 to 40 per cent for which he found evidence in the cost-of-living and wage figures published in the official Indian Labour Gazette: Ranadive, B. T., ‘Anti-Strike Legislation in India’, Communist, 1, 1 (April 1947), pp. 7, 9Google Scholar. D. R. Gadgil criticized the post-colonial government's ‘decontrol’ policy as a politically dangerous continuation of the war government's redistributive policies that had solely benefited capital and parts of the peasantry. Gadgil, ‘Foreword’. For a British analysis stating that ‘the knowledge that large profits were made in Industry during the war’ was crucial for explaining the high level of labour unrest, see: TNA: DO/142/88 (Secret Report by the Labour Adviser of the UK High Commission in India to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 19 May 1948, ‘Appendix on Labour Situation in Madras’).

27 Cf. Kamtekar, ‘A Different War-Dance’, p. 203. Congress trade unionist Khandubhai Desai even claimed that ex-mill prices of cloth in May 1943 were 5.5 times higher than pre-war prices, while consumer prices were considerably higher yet. Desai, K., ‘Indian Textile Industry’, Harijan, 19 January 1947, p. 497.

28 Sovani, N. V. (ed.), Reports of the Commodity Prices Board, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Publication No. 20, Pune: Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, 1948, pp. xiii–xiv. See also: Kamtekar, ‘A Different War-Dance’, pp. 203f.

29 Cf. Punekar, Industrial Peace in India, pp. 41f. This figure combines strikes caused by wage issues and by conflicts over bonuses (about 30 per cent and 10 per cent respectively in 1947 and 1948). The proportion of wage-related strikes had declined since 1939, while strikes over bonuses had gained prominence from 1942 onwards. The decline of the former was also due to the greater importance of issues categorised as ‘personnel’, often indicating disputes over retrenchment, which was registered as the main cause of almost 30 per cent of industrial disputes in 1948. These figures need to be used, however, with some caution. An analysis of arbitration awards issued by labour tribunals across India demonstrates that industrial disputes usually involved extensive and variegated catalogues of demands. While wage demands were almost always prominent, other demands should not be disregarded. Cf. Labour Law Journal, 1 (1949) and 2 (1950) parts 1 and 2.

30 A secret British report on Bombay held, for instance, that ‘[m]ost workers in Bombay have little or no political consciousness. They are interested mainly—as workers would be—in such matters as increased pay and more holidays […].’ TNA: DO/142/88 (Enclosure to Secret Despatch No. 87, High Commission of the UK in India, New Delhi, to P. Noel-Baker, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 19 May 1948).

31 Thompson, Edward P., ‘The Moral Economy of the Crowd’, in: Thompson, E. P., Customs in Common, London: Penguin, 1993, p. 185Google Scholar.

32 Resistance on the part of railway workers at Golden Rock, Tiruchirappalli on 5 September 1946 to the attempt of the police to arrest union president Ismail Khan resulted, for instance, in an escalation of violence. The police responded with a ‘lathi [baton] charge’ that left 100 strikers injured and, subsequently, by opening fire, which killed three railway workers and injured another nine. Amrita Bazar Patrika (Allahabad edn), 6 September 1946, p. 3; Times of India, 6 September 1946, p. 7 (‘Lorry burned by rioters’). The issue of reinstating strike leaders or of enforcing their release from prison also crops up frequently in contemporary reports. For a detailed narrative, see, for instance: Guha Ray, Siddharta, ‘Protest and Politics: Story of Calcutta Tram Workers’, in: Sarkar, T. and Bandyopadhyay, S. (eds), The Stormy Decades: Calcutta, Delhi: Social Science Press, 2015, pp. 162–170Google Scholar.

33 All-India Trade Union Congress (hereafter: AITUC) Report, 22nd Session, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 49f.

34 Various reports in the Times of India suggest that clashes with the police involved Dalit workers more often than other groups: Times of India, 16 January 1946, p. 8 (‘Two killed in Gwalior firing’); ibid., 16 August 1946, p. 5 (‘Lathi charge on sweepers’—Madras); ibid., 27 March 1947, p. 8 (‘Sweepers attack police’—Jabalpur); ibid., 25 March 1948, p. 5 (‘Labour trouble in Chhattisgarh State’); ibid., 2 July 1948, p. 1 (‘Bombay police fire on mob of sweepers’); ibid., 26 May 1949, p. 1 (‘Lathi charge on Quilon strikers’); ibid., 8 November 1949, p. 1 (‘Bomb thrown at police’—Calcutta).

35 When the district magistrate of Kanpur ordered the arrest of 250 strike activists, the ensuing confrontation between workers and the police involved a police baton charge against striking workers, a counter-attack on a police station, and opening fire on the strikers, which left five workers dead and about 40 injured. Amrita Bazar Patrika (Allahabad edn), 7 January 1947, pp. 1 and 5; ibid., 9 January 1947, pp. 3f. For a detailed report, see: Sardesai, S. G., ‘Cawnpore General Strike’, Communist, 1, 2 (May 1947), pp. 66–74, 87. For other reports on police firing at protesting workers, see, for example: Times of India, 19 October 1945, p. 1 (‘Three killed in police firing’—Bhilad); ibid., 23 November 1945, p. 1 (‘11 killed and 125 hurt in Calcutta firing’); ibid., 20 March 1946, p. 10 (‘Madras firing incident’); ibid., 27 March 1946, p. 10 (‘Dacca strikers fired on’); ibid., 29 August 1946, p. 1 (‘Police fire on defiant Amalner mob’); ibid., 16 January 1947, p. 7 (‘Rubber workers fired on’—Bombay); ibid., 27 March 1947, p. 1 (‘Bihar police strike spreads’); ibid., 19 June 1947, p. 1 (‘Police fires on strikers’—Dhanbad); ibid., 26 July 1947, p. 7 (‘Mob led by communists raids Dhanbad power house’); ibid., 3 September 1948, p. 7 (‘Strikers attack police party’—Calcutta); ibid., 12 September 1948, p. 1 (‘Troops fire on rowdy police-strikers in Bangalore’).

36 An analysis of the legal awards documented in the Labour Law Journal of 1949 (which contains a wide range of labour tribunal awards from the Madras Province in addition to judgments of central and provincial courts) shows that although victimization issues cropped up frequently, they rarely resulted in orders for reinstatement. Labour Law Journal, 1 (1949), passim.

37 Times of India, 22 March 1947, p. 8.

38 One such instance is that of Asher Textiles Ltd. in Tiruppur, where in July 1949 workers damaged machines in protest against the dismissal of 11 workers who had participated in a one-day stay-in-strike. Labour Law Journal, 1 (1949), p. 594. See also the report on locked-out Bombay railway workers who were accused of stopping trains, attacking strike-breakers, and attempting to set fire to a local train. Amrita Bazar Patrika (Allahabad edn), 2 July 1947, p. 3. See further: Times of India, 11 June 1947, p. 5 (‘Strikers assault mill offices’—Dacca).

39 See, for instance: Times of India, 18 January 1946, p. 7 (‘Mill workers in Nagpur clash’); ibid., 25 July 1946, p. 7 (‘Bombay skeleton service’); ibid., 21 July 1947, p. 11 (‘Over 60 hurt in workers’ clash’—Calcutta); ibid., 23 July 1947, p. 6 (‘55 injured in dock workers’ clash’—Bombay); ibid., 27 July 1947, p. 7 (‘Press worker stabbed’—Bombay); ibid., 16 October 1947, p. 7 (‘Clash in Cawnpore’); ibid., 20 March 1948, p. 12 (‘Strike in Lucknow workshops: 8,000 railwaymen idle’); ibid., 28 March 1948, p. 2 (‘Coimbatore mill strike’); ibid., 7 August 1948, p. 5 (‘Incident near mill’—Bombay); ibid., 18 May 1949, p. 5 (‘Eight hundred men join loyal sweepers’—Bombay); ibid., 5 July 1949, p. 5 (‘Loyal sweepers attacked’—Bombay); ibid., 14 August 1949, p. 9 (‘Twelve hurt in Calcutta workers’ clash’).

40 Times of India, 3 March 1948, p. 7 (‘“No conditions for industrial truce”: Sir A. Dalal denies reported socialist charges’). B. C. Mehta, chairman of the Bombay Millowners’ Association, similarly condemned the ‘dastardly assaults on the supervising staff’ and demanded that the government and the public ‘curb this tendency’. Ibid., 3 April 1948, p. 5 (‘Need to deal firmly with strike threats’).

41 Cf. Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, Decolonization in South Asia. Meanings of Freedom in Post-Independence West Bengal, 1947–52, Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2009, pp. 40–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 See, for example: the reports on the following incidents: at the Port Engineering Works at Howrah, the manager and two European and two Bengali assistants were allegedly assaulted by workers who were also accused of having destroyed the office: NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department, filed 14/5/46, Fortnightly report for Bengal for the first half of May 1946. A violent confrontation between workers and members of the management was reported at the Delhi Cloth Mills (under Indian ownership): Times of India, 31 March 1947, p. 6. In Bombay, a spinner was accused of having injured a spinning master with a sword: Times of India, 28 May 1947, p. 5 (‘Alleged assault’). In the Raymond Woollen Mills in Thane, workers were accused of having attacked the manager, Mr DeSouza; destroying his car, and severely injuring another weaving-master: Times of India, 10 August 1947, p. 1.

43 TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner for the UK in India, 8 April 1949: ‘Arrest of Communist Leaders and Trade Unionists’).

44 TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 13 June 1949: ‘Monthly Review for May 1949’).

45 Labour Law Journal, 1 (1949), p. 490.

46 TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 13 June 1949: ‘Monthly Review for May 1949’).

47 Bombay Chronicle, 30 May 1946 (‘Five textile workers fast unto death’).

48 Times of India, 24 January 1946, p. 7; ibid., 7 February 1946, p. 1; ibid., 18 February 1946; ibid., 23 March 1946, p. 5; ibid., 5 September 1946, p. 7; ibid., 25 September 1946, p. 7; ibid., 3 March 1947, p. 6; ibid., 23 April 1947, p. 5; ibid., 21 July 1947, p. 11; ibid., 28 July 1947, p. 7; ibid., 2 April 1948, p. 7; ibid., 3 April 1948, p. 7; ibid., 4 April 1948, p. 7; ibid., 8 April 1948, p. 1; ibid., 27 January 1949, p. 3; ibid., 7 February 1949, p. 9; ibid., 17 March 1949, p. 5; ibid., 21 July 1949, p. 3.

49 Times of India, 10 April 1949, p. 9 (‘Textile workers’ fast’).

50 TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 13 June 1949: ‘Monthly Review for May 1949’).

51 See, for example: the photographer Margaret Bourke-White's account of conversations with Delhi textile mill workers (probably in late 1947) on issues of dearness, black marketing, and Gandhi's approach to the question of ‘decontrolling’ food and cloth prices. Bourke-White, Margaret, Halfway to Freedom. A Report on the New India in the Words and Photographs of Margaret Bourke-White, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1949, pp. 49–58.

52 TNA: DO/142/88 (Secret Report by the Labour Adviser of the UK High Commission in India to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 19 May 1948, ‘Appendix on Labour Situation in Madras’).

53 Deputy High Commissioner (Delhi) Alexander Symon to Baxter (?), 5 April 1948, reproduced in: Carter, Lionel (ed.), Weakened States Seeking Renewal. British Official Reports from South Asia, 1 January–30 April 1948, Part II, New Delhi: Manohar, 2013, p. 725.

54 Bombay Chronicle, 22 May 1946. ‘Ram Rajya’, the reign of god Rama, signifies an ideal and just political order.

55 Mashruwala, K. G., ‘The Labour Day’, Harijan, 1 May 1949, p. 65. ‘Kisan-Mazdoor Raj’, the rule of peasants and workers.

56 This drawing has been reproduced in: Chittaprosad, 1915–1978. A Retrospective, New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery, 2011, Vol. 2, p. 334.

57 Ibid., pp. 250–301.

58 NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department, filed 1/11/45, Fortnightly report for Bihar for the first half of October 1945. The report refers to an article in Amrita Bazar Patrika on 5 October 1945. This issue is unfortunately not available in the Hitesranjan Sanyal Memorial Collection, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, as digitized by the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme.

59 Alam, Javed, ‘State and the Making of Communist Politics in India, 1947–1957’, Economic and Political Weekly, 9 November 1991, p. 2573.

60 In a later publication, the photographer provided the following caption: ‘Workers’ demonstration, with chapati bread tied to placards, demonstrating for better wages for food, clothing, and housing, Bombay, 1940s'. Janah, Sunil, Photographing India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 165.

61 Capital, 8 November 1945, p. 631.

62 Indian Labour Gazette, 5, 11 (1948), p. 763.

63 NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department, filed ?/8/46, Fortnightly report for Central Provinces and Berar for the second half of July 1946.

64 Amrita Bazar Patrika (Allahabad edn), 21 September 1946, p. 5.

65 Sarkar, Towards Freedom, p. 423. This was certainly the case in Calcutta where many factories closed down temporarily or registered low attendance rates after ‘Direct Action Day’ and no new strikes occurred in subsequent weeks. Cf.: NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department, filed 7/10/46, Fortnightly report for Bengal for the first half of September 1946. The Government of UP similarly recorded for June 1946 a ‘general improvement in the labour position’ and a related ‘tendency of labour […] to line up on communal lines and a consequent reluctance of Muslim labour to join in recent strikes […]’. NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department, filed 22/7/46, Fortnightly report for United Provinces for the second half of June 1946.

66 The diagrams in Figures 3–6 are based on official figures, which have been collected and published by governmental labour administrations since 1921. International Labour Organisation, Industrial Labour in India, Geneva: ILO, 1938, p. 138Google Scholar; Myers, Charles A., Labor Problems in the Industrialization of India, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958, p. 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Indian Labour Gazette, IX, 1 (1951), p. 59; Giri, Labour Problems in Indian Industry, pp. 82, 84, 88; Indian Labour Statistics 1960, Shimla: Labour Bureau, 1960, p. 135; ILORep, October–November 1957, p. 115; ibid., July 1958, p. 52; ibid., July 1959, p. 49; ibid., October 1960, p. 54; ibid., November/December 1961, p. 61; Indian Labour Statistics 1970, p. 180; Indian Labour Year Book 1972, p. 70; Indian Labour Year Book 1980, p. 95; Indian Labour Year Book 1991, p. 7; Indian Labour Statistics 2000–2001, p. 111; Indian Labour Statistics 2000–2003, p. 207; Indian Labour Statistics 2006, p. 179; Indian Labour Year Book 2009–2010, p. 95; Indian Labour Year Book 2013–2014, p. 100.

67 For significant exceptions see: Sarkar, Sumit, ‘Popular Movements and National Leadership’, in: Sarkar, S., A Critique of Colonial India, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1985, pp. 133–164Google Scholar; Kamtekar, Indivar, ‘The End of the Colonial State in India, 1942–1947’, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1988, pp. 83–110, 151–186. See also: Alam, ‘State and the Making of Communist Politics’, pp. 2573–2583; Chibber, Vivek, Locked in Place. State-Building and Late Industrialization in India, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003, pp. 110–126Google Scholar. A monograph dedicated to the early phase of the post-war social movements is helpful mainly for its descriptive accounts of individual movements: Dutta Ray, Keka, Political Upsurges in Post-war India, New Delhi: Intellectual Publishing House, 1992Google Scholar.

68 Bandyopadhyay, Decolonization in South Asia, pp. 39–48; Guha Ray, ‘Protest and Politics’, pp. 151–176 (esp. pp. 170–176); Jeffrey, Robin, ‘India's Working Class Revolt: Punnapra-Vayalar and the Communist Revolt of 1946’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 18, 2 (1981), pp. 97–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deshpande, Hope and Despair; Dutta Ray, Political Upsurges; Shil, Partha Pratim, ‘Towards Postcolonial Statehood: Constabulary Strikes and the Question of Colonial “Inheritance”. British India 1945–7’, in: Das, S. K. (ed.), India: Democracy and Violence, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 29–57Google Scholar.

69 V. V., Giri, Labour Problems in Indian Industry, Bombay et al.: Asia Publishing House, 1965 (reprint of 2nd, enlarged 1959 edn), p. 85Google Scholar.

70 Cf. Rao, B. S., ‘Some Methodological Aspects of Strike Statistics’, Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 20, 4 (1985), pp. 481–490Google Scholar.

71 K. R. Shyam Sundar shows that state-level figures diverged from those published by the national Labour Bureau to an extent that raises serious questions about the reliability of the official labour statistics. The State Labour Department of Maharashtra noted, for instance, almost four times the number of industrial disputes for this state in the 1990s than the Labour Bureau. The diminished political importance of all-India statistics for industrial disputes is also borne out by the fact that the latest figures available in early 2016 were for 2011—in the late 1940s they were available regularly for the previous year. Shyam Sundar, K. R., ‘The Gaping Gaps in Labor Statistics in India’, Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 50, 4 (2015), pp. 550–559Google Scholar. See also: Shyam Sundar, K. R., ‘Industrial Conflict in India in the Post-Reform Period. Who Said All is Quiet on the Industrial Front?’, Economic and Political Weekly, 50, 3 (17 January 2015), pp. 43–53Google Scholar.

72 Jagannadham, V., ‘Industrial Disputes in India’, The Indian Journal of Economics, 29, 113 (1948), p. 186Google Scholar.

73 For a pertinent critique of this widening gap, see: Sewell, William H. Jr., Logics of History. Social Theory and Social Transformation, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 50fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Indian Labour Gazette, I, 8 (February 1944), p. 191; ibid., II, 3 (September 1944), pp. 90–94; ibid., IV, 4 (October 1946), p. 123. See also: Government of India, Labour Investigation Committee: Main Report, Delhi: Government of India Press, 1946, p. 13Google Scholar.

75 Reconstruction Committee of Council, Second Report on Reconstruction Planning, New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1944, p. 7.

76 Labour Investigation Committee: Main Report, p. 16.

77 Calculated from figures provided in: ibid., pp. 18f. The persistence of older patterns of geographically uneven industrial growth is also corroborated by the population figures of large cities like Bombay and Calcutta (with more than one million inhabitants), which appear to have grown by 88 per cent between 1941 and the early months of 1944. Cf. Sharma, Tulsi Ram, Location of Industries in India, Bombay: Hind Kitab, 1948 (2nd edn), pp. 234fGoogle Scholar.

78 Calculated from figures provided in: Labour Investigation Committee: Main Report, pp. 18f.

79 Indian Labour Gazette, I, 8 (February 1944), p. 192.

80 Ibid., IV, 4 (October 1946), p. 124.

81 Ibid., V, 2 (May 1948), p. 763.

82 Anon., ‘Wartime Developments in Trade Union Organisation in India’, International Labour Review, 53, 5–6 (1946), p. 352Google Scholar.

83 Bakhtiar, Bashir Ahmed, ‘The Labour Movement and Me’, in: Ahuja, R. (ed.), Working Lives and Worker Militancy. The Politics of Labour in Colonial India, New Delhi: Tulika, 2013, pp. 274–328 (see esp.: pp. 290–293)Google Scholar.

84 Haynes, Small Town Capitalism, p. 287, Chapters 7, 8, and passim. D. W. Karuna's ongoing research traces similar developments in South India.

85 Bhattacharya, Shahana, ‘Rotting Hides and Runaway Labour: Labour Control and Workers’ Resistance in the Indian Leather Industry, circa 1860–1960’, in: Ahuja (ed.), Working Lives and Worker Militancy, pp. 47–96 (see esp.: pp. 68–80).

86 Labour Law Journal, 1 (1949), pp. viiif; for conflicts regarding the recognition of the legal status of ‘employee’ or ‘worker’, see especially the cases between the handloom weavers of Woraiyur (Tiruchirapalli) and their master weavers (pp. 322–326, 753–759), and between ‘bazaar coolies’ and merchants in Guntur (pp. 869–874).

87 NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department, filed 3/9/46, Fortnightly report for Orissa for the first half of August 1946.

88 TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the UK High Commissioner in India to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, UK, 15 May 1948: ‘The Minimum Wages Act 1948’). The Act was to cover the following industries: woollen carpet making and shawl weaving; rice, dal, and flower mills; rubber, tea, and coffee plantations; oil mills; local authorities; road construction and building operations; stone breaking or crushing; lac manufacturing; mica mines; private motor transport; tanneries and leather manufacturing.

89 For a contemporary statement to this effect, see, for example: Sayanna, V. V., ‘Industrial Relations in India’, The Indian Journal of Economics, 29, 113 (1948), pp. 235–242Google Scholar.

90 NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department, filed 30/6/45, Fortnightly report for Madras Province for the second half of June 1945; ibid., filed 2/10/45, Fortnightly report for Madras Province for the first half of September 1945.

91 AITUC Report, 23rd Session, Bombay, 1949, pp. 123–125, 130f. The previous report had already noted, somewhat condescendingly: ‘The sweepers and scavengers, who were so meek and as yet not properly organised are organising themselves and leading big strikes’: AITUC Report, 22nd Session, Calcutta, 1947, p. 48. For strikes of municipal workers outside the geographical strongholds of the labour movement, see, for instance: NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department, filed 12/1/46, Fortnightly report for Central Provinces and Berar for the second half of December 1945.

92 This count is based on a search for the keyword ‘strike’ in the digitalized collections of the Times of India.

93 Pyarelal, ‘A Touchstone and a Challenge’, Harijan, 30 June 1946, p. 201.

94 Cf. John, Maya, ‘Development of Indian Labour Law (1923–1948): Repercussions on the Trade Union Movement and Workers’ Response’, PhD thesis, University of Delhi, 2014, pp. 357, 360. See also: International Labour Office, Labour Legislation in India, p. 75.

95 Gandhi, M. K., ‘Sweepers’ Strike’, Harijan, 21 April 1946, p. 96. See also: Gandhi, M. K., ‘A Harijan's Letter’, Harijan, 12 May 1946, p. 125. Dalit ‘sweepers’ often repudiated the caste name ‘Bhangi’ as discriminatory.

96 Tendencies of political radicalization among Dalits were noted, for instance, in the pages of Harijan when, in a didactic dialogue, the questioner complained to Gandhi: ‘The Communist Party has successfully organized sweepers’ unions and helped them to secure their rights through hartals etc. But the Harijan Sevak Sangh's activities are confined mostly to welfare work. It cannot therefore successfully compete with the Communists for popularity among the Harijans.’ ‘Harijan Sevak Sangh under Fire’, Harijan, 28 July 1946, p. 233. See also the brief discussion of the Bombay ‘sweepers’ strike of 1949, below.

97 See, for example: AITUC Report, 23rd Session, Bombay, 1949, pp. 131–134. See also: Times of India, 20 September 1946, p. 3; ibid., 16 October 1948, p. 9; NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department, filed 2/10/45, Fortnightly report for Bengal Province for the first half of September 1945; ibid., filed 1/11/45, Fortnightly report for Assam for the first half of October 1945; ibid., filed 29/10/45, Fortnightly report for Orissa for the first half of October 1945; ibid., filed 15/5/46, Fortnightly report for Madras for the second half of April 1946.

98 Labour Law Journal, 1 (1949), pp. 96f, 177, 270, 377, 503, 600, 688, 779, 892.

99 AITUC Report, 23rd Session, Bombay, 1949, pp. 131–134. For strikes in large sugar mills, see also: Amrita Bazar Patrika (Allahabad edn), 22 January 1947, p. 7 (on Muzaffarnagar).

100 See, for example: Times of India, 5 February 1946, p. 4; ibid., 8 March 1946, p. 7; ibid., 28 June 1946, p. 3; ibid., 29 June 1946, p. 5; ibid., 6 July 1946, p. 7; ibid., 26 July 1946, p. 3; ibid., 27 January 1947, p. 4; ibid., 19 March 1947, p. 4; ibid., 3 April 1947, p. 7; ibid., 6 August 1948, p. 7; ibid., 25. August 1948, p. 9. See also: Indian Social Reformer, 27 April 1946, p. 274.

101 Conservative Congress politicians like Morarji Desai, for instance, castigated teachers’ strikes as ‘thoughtless’. Bombay Chronicle, 25 March 1946.

102 Bombay Chronicle, 1 May 1946. See also: Indian Social Reformer, 31 August 1946, p. 426.

103 Bombay Chronicle, 31 May 1946.

104 Rajagopal, Arvind, ‘The Emergency as Prehistory of the New Indian Middle Class’, Modern Asian Studies, 45, 5 (2011), p. 1040CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 The advertisement can be found in: The Social Welfare, 17 May 1946, p. 15, and Bombay Chronicle, 4 May 1946.

106 ‘A participant’, An Epic Struggle. A Diary of the Bombay Mahagai Strike 1940. Hectograph, published by the Communist Party India (CPI) Central Committee; preserved in ACH, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

107 See, for example: Times of India, 22 March 1947, p. 8; AITUC Archives: Ajoy Bhavan Documents, vol. 3, file 26, s.no. 788.

108 Calculated from figures provided in the Indian Labour Gazette, I, 8 (February 1944), p. 191; II, 3 (September 1944), pp. 90–94; IV, 4 (October 1946), pp. 123f.

109 Indivar Kamtekar has discussed what he aptly calls a ‘bureaucratic explosion’ during the Second World War in his as yet sadly unpublished paper ‘Freedoms Lost and Gained: A Perspective on the Impact of the Second World War on India’, which emphasizes the unprecedented growth of administrative and police employment in the course of the 1940s.

110 Morris, Morris D. and Dudley, Clyde B., ‘Selected Railway Statistics for the Indian Subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) 1853–1946/47’, Artha Vijñāna, XIII, 3 (1975), p. 18Google Scholar.

111 Capital, 25 July 1946, p. 145.

112 For a brief contemporary summary of the development of this strike, see: ILORep, July 1946, pp. 46–49. For a more detailed descriptive historical account, see: Dutta Ray, Political Upsurges, pp. 51–70.

113 AITUC Report, 23rd Session, Bombay, 1949, pp. 121–123, 129–130, 135; BL: IOR/L/PJ/5/306, Weekly Political Report from UK Deputy High Commissioner, Bombay, 11–17 October 1948; ibid., Weekly Political Report from UK Deputy High Commissioner, Bombay, 6–12 September 1948.

114 Cf.: Shil, ‘Towards Colonial Statehood’, pp. 33–49.

115 BL: IOR/L/PJ/5/181, Dow to Wavell, 25 May 1946. Quoted in: Kamtekar, ‘The End of the Colonial State’, p. 93. In this brilliant, and inexcusably unpublished thesis, Kamtekar gives a brief account of unrest among the lower ranks of the police: ibid., pp. 93–95.

116 For a more detailed analysis of police strikes in Delhi and Bihar, see: Shil, ‘Towards Postcolonial Statehood’, pp. 37–49.

117 Cf.: Bombay Chronicle, 18 April 1946.

118 Punnu Khan, a leader of the ‘Naval Central Strike Committee’, is reported to have said that the intention of the ratings was still ‘to have a mass sit-down strike in all ships and establishments’ and not to ‘mutiny’, which they understood ‘to be the violent and bloody overthrow of the officers commanding us’. Gourgey, Percy S., The Indian Naval Revolt of 1946, Chennai: Orient Longman, 1998, p. 23Google Scholar. See also: Deshpande, Hope and Despair, p. 4. For the public debate, see, for example: Indian Social Reformer, 2 March 1946, pp. 206f.

119 For a report on a local strike of 290 soldiers of the Indian Signal Corps of Jabalpur, see, for example: Amrita Bazar Patrika, 1 March 1946; Bombay Chronicle, 28 March 1946. While pay raises were the central demand, political overtones such as the reference to the unequal pay of British and Indian soldiers or the demand for the release of the Indian National Army (INA) prisoners are also perceivable.

120 CSAS: Benthall Papers, Box 8, Diary entry for 18 February 1946. (R.I.N.: Royal Indian Navy; R.I.A.F: Royal Indian Airforce.)

121 NAI, GoI, Home (Political) Department (1946), Note by N. P. A. Smith, Director of Intelligence, quoted in: Sarkar, Towards Freedom, p. 424.

122 ILOrep, October 1946, pp. 11–18.

123 The agenda of the 6th Plenary Session of the Tripartite Labour Conference in October 1944 thus included the following issues, all of which led to major legislative initiatives in the post-war years: revision of the Trade Disputes Act (including legislation regulating standing orders), a social insurance scheme for industrial workers, and minimum wages. For a report on the proceedings of this conference, see: ILOrep, October 1944, pp. 3–8. See also: Capital, 1 November 1945, p. 605. For a brief account of Ambedkar's term as labour minister, see: Jaiswal, Shivangi, ‘Caste and Labour in the Official Discourse of India, 1942–52’, Labour and Development, 21, 1 (2014), pp. 52–56Google Scholar.

124 Omvedt, Gail, Dalits and the Democratic Revolution. Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India, New Delhi: Sage, 1994, pp. 217fGoogle Scholar.

125 Quoted from: Glennerster, Howard, British Social Policy since 1945, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995, pp. 22fGoogle Scholar.

126 B. R. Ambedkar, Presidential Address to the 2nd Plenary Session of the Tripartite Labour Conference, New Delhi, 6 and 7 September 1942, quoted in: ILOrep, August 1943, pp. 4f. See also: BL: OIOC, IOR/V/25/670/45, p. 4, Summary of the 5th Labour Conference (2nd Tripartite Conference), 6–7 September 1943, New Delhi: Government of India, 1944. For Ambedkar's view of the potential of war for labour, see also: Jaiswal, ‘Caste and Labour’, pp. 55f.

127 Indian Labour Gazette, III, 8 (February 1946), p. 238.

128 Kaviraj, Sudipta, The Trajectories of the Indian State, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2012, pp. 106–118Google Scholar. See also: Alam, ‘State and the Making of Communist Politics’, p. 2577. The role of judicial authorities in these processes should not be underrated and requires further investigation.

129 The main features of the structure of post-war legislation had been chalked out by 1944. See: BL: OIOC, IOR/V/25/670/45, Summaries of the 6th Labour Conference, 27–28 October 1944, New Delhi: Government of India, 1945, and of the 7th Labour Conference, 27–28 November 1945, New Delhi: Government of India, 1946. See also: Capital, 1 November 1945, p. 605.

130 An ILO survey on Indian labour legislation published in the late 1950s commented on this as follows: ‘This emergency war legislation ceased to be operative from 30 September 1946. War time experience of the working of the rule, however had convinced the Government that the rule was extremely useful and that its incorporation in the permanent labour law of the country would do much to check the industrial unrest which was gaining momentum owing to the stress of post-war industrial readjustments. The main provisions of the Defence of India Rule 81A in so far as they related to public utility services, were therefore retained intact in the Industrial Disputes Act (XlV) of 1947, which on l April 1947 replaced the Trade Disputes Act of 1929, and is, in its basic form, currently in force.’ International Labour Office, Labour Legislation in India, p. 77.

131 Numerous references can be found in the ILO reports on India. See, for example: ILORep, April 1947, pp. 2 and 5; ibid., July 1947, p. 3; ibid., September 1947, p. 5; ibid., March 1948, p. 64; ibid., May 1948, p. 69; ibid., July 1948, p. 62; ibid., September 1948, pp. 69f; ibid., December 1948, p. 62; ibid., October 1949, p. 36. ‘It is interesting to note,’ remarked an ILO survey, ‘that State Governments have made considerable use of the powers granted to them under the Act to declare specified industries to be public utility services for specified periods’. International Labour Office, Labour Legislation in India, p. 78.

132 Amrita Bazar Patrika (Allahabad edn), 12 October 1946, p. 5. Labour Minister Jagjivan Ram could be heard to insist, too, that ‘factory is a sector of the home front and each worker is a soldier’. Quoted in: Jaiswal, ‘Caste and Labour’, p. 51.

133 Ramaswamy, E. A., Power and Justice. The State in Industrial Relations, Delhi et al.: Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 25–33Google Scholar.

134 Cf. Capital, 1 November 1945, p. 605.

135 BL: IOR/V/27/670/6, B. P. Adarkar, Report on Health Insurances for Industrial Workers, Simla: Government of India, 1945. For references to Beveridge and to the Royal Commission on Labour in India, see esp.: pp. 1, 12–14. For a systematic study of the making of the Employees State Insurance Act, see Ahuja, Ravi, 'A Beveridge Plan for India? Social Insurance and the Making of the “Formal Sector”', International Review of Social History, 2019 (forthcoming).

136 Maya John has demonstrated this attitude in detail for the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1923, one of the first ‘protective’ labour laws in India: John, ‘Development of Indian Labour Law’, pp. 347–351. The quote is from a speech made by C. A. Innes when introducing the bill in the Legislative Assembly on 13 September 1922, quoted in ibid., p. 348.

137 International Labour Office, Labour Legislation in India, pp. 8, 104.

138 Ibid., pp. 26f.

139 Indian Labour Gazette, IV, 8 (February 1947), pp. 328–330.

140 International Labour Office, Labour Legislation in India, p. 8.

141 Ibid., p. 54.

142 Cf. Mohapatra, Prabhu, ‘Regulated Informality: Legal Construction of Labour Relations in Colonial India 1814–1926’, in: Bhattacharya, S. and Lucassen, J. (eds), Workers in the Informal Sector: Studies in Labour History 1800–2000, East London: Macmillan, 2005Google Scholar; Mohapatra, P., ‘Shifting Boundaries of Freedom: Genealogies of Informalisation and Informal Labor in India’, unpublished paper presented at the workshop ‘Boundaries of “Free Labor”: XIX and XX Century Perspectives’, IGK Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History, Berlin, 21–22 June 2012.

143 Chandavarkar, Raj, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India. Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

144 Chandavarkar, R., ‘From Neighbourhood to Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Left in Bombay's Girangaon in the Twentieth Century’, in: Chandavarkar, R., History, Culture and the Indian City, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 158fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

145 Sailer, Anna, ‘Workplace Matters. The Bengal Jute Industry between the 1870s and the 1930s’, PhD thesis, University of Göttingen, 2015.

146 The Commission stated that ‘conditions under which factory labour lives […] are in the highest degree antagonistic to any improvement in efficiency’. Report of the Indian Industrial Commission, 1916–18, Calcutta: Superintendent of Govt. Printing, 1918, p. 71 and passim. The issue recurred frequently; see, for instance: the Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India, London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1931, p. 208 and passim.

147 Natarajan, B., ‘Absenteeism in Organized Industries in the Madras Province’, Labour Law Journal, 1 (1949), p. 284Google Scholar. The impression appears to have been that absenteeism and labour turnover increased during the war: ibid., pp. 273–284. For the expanding engineering industry, the employers’ association estimated that labour turnover had risen from 1 per cent per month before the war to 2 to 3 per cent. In other words: between one-quarter and one-third of the workforce were replaced in the course of one year. Cf.: Adarkar, B. P., Report on an Enquiry into Conditions of Labour in the Engineering and Minerals and Metals Industries in India, Simla: Government of India Press, 1946, p. 258Google Scholar.

148 Morris, Morris D., The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965, pp. 84–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

149 James, Ralph C., ‘The Casual Labor Problem in Indian Manufacturing’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 74, 1 (1960), p. 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a brief survey of this debate, see: Breman, Jan, ‘The Study of Industrial Labour in Post-colonial India—the Formal Sector: An Introductory Review’, in: Parry, J., Breman, J. and Kapadia, K. (eds), The Worlds of Indian Industrial Labour, New Delhi et al.: Sage, 1999, pp. 4–12Google Scholar.

150 ‘A New Chapter in the History of Labour Legislation’, Times of India, 3 April 1948, p. 8.

151 Cf. Ministry of Labour, Economic and Social Status of Women Workers in India, New Delhi: Government of India, 1953, Chapter 3 and appendix.

152 Ibid., pp. 19, 88. The proportion of female workers in mines declined from 24.67 per cent in 1946 to 20.46 per cent five years later.

153 Interestingly, this became the key issue of a strike in a Bombay rubber factory. Cf. Times of India, 20 May 1948.

154 ‘Capitalist System Needs New Lease’, Times of India, 28 February 1948, p. 5.

155 An excellent analysis of the relevant negotiations between big business leaders and the incoming Congress government can be found in: Chenoy, Kamal Aron Mitra, The Rise of Big Business in India, Delhi: Aakar, 2015Google Scholar, particularly Chapters 3 and 4 (pp. 96–185).

156 Sovani, Post-War Inflation, p. 54. The above paragraph is largely based on Sovani's survey; on the lucid analysis of its results in D. R. Gadgil's ‘Foreword’, in: ibid., pp. 46–57, i–xiv, and on Chenoy, The Rise of Big Business, pp. 110–112. For a participant account of the political process resulting first in ‘decontrol’ and then in ‘recontrol’, see: Deshmukh, C. D., Economic Developments in India, 1946–1956. A Personal Retrospect, Bombay et al.: Asia Publishing House, 1957, pp. 43–62Google Scholar. For the broader context of rationing and the political implications, see: Kamtekar, ‘The End of the Colonial State’, pp. 155–162.

157 Gadgil, ‘Foreword’, in: Sovani, Post-War Inflation, pp. vi–vii.

158 Cf. Frankel, Francine R., India's Political Economy, 1947–2004, Delhi et al.: Oxford University Press, 2005 (2nd edn), p. 72Google Scholar.

159 Quoted in: BL: IOR/L/PJ/5/305, Fortnightly Political Report from UK Deputy High Commissioner, Bombay, 16–30 November 1947.

160 Prasad, Bimal (ed.), Jayaprakash Narayan. Selected Works, Vol. 5: 1948–1950, Delhi: Manohar, 2005, p. 83fGoogle Scholar (Statement on Labour Union's Strike, New Delhi, 15 November 1948). See also: ibid., pp. 87f (Address at the Annual Conference of East Indian Railway Employees’ Union, Moghalserai, 18 November 1948). A similar statement by J. P. Narayan that ‘labour has not as yet learned to fight under conditions of Fascism’ was reported in: TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 30 November 1948: ‘Monthly Review for November 1948’).

161 See, for example: Political Thesis (adopted at the Second Congress, 28 February to 6 March 1948), in: M. B. Rao (ed.), Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, Vol. VII: 1948–1950, p. 93. See also: Gopal, Sarvepalli, Jawaharlal Nehru. A Biography, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979, Vol. 2, p. 70Google Scholar.

162 For a detailed report on the Industries Conference, see: ILORep, December 1947, pp. 22–31. For the full text of the ‘Industrial Truce Resolution’, see: Report of the Millowners’ Association, Bombay, for the Year 1947, Bombay: Claridge, 1948, p. 80.

163 ILOrep, May 1948, pp. 8f, 11.

164 Report of the Millowners’ Association, Bombay, for 1947, p. 80.

165 From the summary of Mookerjee's speech in: ILOrep, December 1947, p. 22.

166 Ibid., p. 25.

167 For a verbatim reproduction of Nehru's broadcast talk, see: Indian Labour Gazette, 5, 8 (February 1948).

168 Nehru, in his broadcast talk of 18 January 1948, argued that the withdrawal of productive capacity imperilled the nation (ibid.). For a later version of the argument brought forward by the Bombay Labour Minister Gulzarilal Nanda, see: Times of India, 13 June 1948, p. 9.

169 Quoted in: BL: IOR/L/PJ/5/306, Weekly Political Report from UK Deputy High Commissioner, Bombay, 18–24 January 1948.

170 Quoted from: Report of the Millowners’ Association, Bombay, for 1947, p. 80.

171 ILOrep, April 1948, p. 35; ibid., May 1948, p. 75. For a concise account of the steps for implementing the resolution up to May 1948, see: TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to High Commissioner of UK in India to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service Overseas Dept., 20 May 1948: ‘Government of India's Labour Policy’).

172 ILOrep, August 1950, pp. 26–28.

173 ‘Fair Wages’, The Eastern Economist, 17 June 1949, pp. 971f.

174 ILOrep, August 1950, pp. 26–28.

175 ILOrep, April 1950, p. 31.

176 International Labour Office, Labour Legislation in India, p. 70.

177 AITUC Report, 23rd Session, Bombay, 1949, p. 58.

178 Cf. ILOrep, July 1948, p. 70; TNA: DO/142/115 (High Commissioner of the UK in India, New Delhi, to Secretary, F. and E. Dept., Commonwealth Relations Office, London, 16 October 1948).

179 Cf. ILOrep, December 1947, p. 18; ibid., June 1948, pp. 57f; ibid., July 1948, p. 70; ibid., June 1949, p. 22.

180 ‘Fair Wages and Profit-Sharing’, Indian Social Reformer, 11 June 1949, p. 323. See also: ‘Appeal to Capital’, ibid., 5 March 1949, p. 212.

181 Times of India, 9 July 1948, p. 4 (‘“Profit-sharing plan impractical”: Mr. G. D. Birla's view’).

182 Commerce, 2 October 1948, pp. 1–2 (‘Profit-sharing committee's report’).

183 TNA: DO/142/115 (High Commissioner of the UK in India, New Delhi, to Secretary, F. and E. Dept., Commonwealth Relations Office, London, 16 October 1948).

184 ILOrep, July 1949, p. 2.

185 Giri, Labour Problems in Indian Industry, pp. 206f.

186 Quoted from: Report of the Millowners’ Association, Bombay, for 1947, p. 80.

187 Times of India, 3 April 1948, p. 8 (‘Million Houses for Workers’). See also: Giri, Labour Problems in Indian Industry, pp. 310f.

188 TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 13 June 1949: ‘Monthly Review for May 1949’).

189 Cf. Giri, Labour Problems in Indian Industry, pp. 310–312.

190 High Commissioner Sir Terence Shone deplored, however, Nehru and other cabinet members’ ‘half-measures’ and reluctance to implement a ‘coordinated drive to root out Communism altogether’. He predicted further ‘Communist-directed attempts […] to provoke serious strikes, agrarian trouble and the disruption of communication’, although he assumed that the communists were not well enough organized for a successful insurrection. BL: IOR L/PJ/12/772, High Commissioner Sir Terence Shone to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Philip Noel-Baker, 18 June 1948, reproduced in: Carter, Lionel (ed.), Completing the First Year of Independence. British Official Reports from South Asia, 1 May–17 September 1948, Part 1, Delhi: Manohar, 2016, pp. 374–382Google Scholar. For an early version of the accusation that labour tensions were being exploited for political purposes, see: Gulzarilal Nanda's speech at the inauguration conference of INTUC in May 1947, reproduced verbatim in: Harijan, 19 May 1947, pp. 158–160.

191 The assertion that the CPI would actually lead the labour insurgence was repeatedly made, for instance, in CPI correspondence at the provincial level after March 1948, which is preserved in the AITUC archives in Delhi and was digitized for the ‘Archives of Indian Labour’ (hosted on the website of the V. V. Giri National Labour Institute, but presently not online). A report of the Bihar Provincial Committee for April to August 1948 thus claimed that it ‘is the Party which is leading the upsurge’ and that ‘[t]he masses responded to the call of the Party whenever given’. AITUC Archives: vol. 9-IV, s.no. 804.1, pp. 5 and 9. About a year later, that is, at a time when the post-war labour movement had been largely suppressed, the Secretariat of the Madras Provincial Committee still insisted in a letter dated 17 July 1949 to the Coimbatore District Committee that ‘[…] the Party is no longer a tiny force, but is a major force among the organised working class and kisans, and leading them to the People's Democratic Revolution […]’. AITUC Archives: Ajoy Bhavan Documents, vol. 3, file 26, s.no. 788.

192 This argument of a ‘doubly confirmed red peril’ has been made convincingly by Ahmad Azhar in his trenchant analysis of the Meerut Conspiracy Case proceedings: Azhar, Ahmad, ‘Crossing the Tracks: Railway Workers and the Terrain of Popular Politics in Late Colonial Lahore, circa 1919–47’, PhD thesis, University of Göttingen, 2014, pp. 171–194. It seems equally pertinent to the later phase of the 1940s strike movement.

193 Quoted in: Bombay Chronicle, 22 April 1946.

194 TNA: DO/142/88 (Report on Trade Unionism in Bombay, 28 February 1949, Annexure I to Secret Despatch No. 11, High Commission of the UK in India, Delhi, to P. Noel-Baker, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 28 March 1949).

195 Ibid. (Secret Despatch No. 11, High Commission of the UK in India, Delhi, to P. Noel-Baker, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 28 March 1949). See also a report on eastern India stating that ‘the allegiance of workers to the different parties varies from time to time, and since the Tribunal commenced its sittings several unions which were controlled by the Communists have for various reasons switched over to the Congress Party’. Ibid. (Report on Labour in the Provinces of Assam, W. Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, Enclosure to Secret Despatch No. 87, High Commission of the UK in India, New Delhi, to P. Noel-Baker, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 19 May 1948).

196 Ibid. (Calcutta Special Report, 25 January 1949, Annexure II to Secret Despatch No. 11, High Commission of the UK in India, Delhi, to P. Noel-Baker, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 28 March 1949).

197 Azhar, ‘Crossing the Tracks’; Sailer, ‘Workplace Matters’.

198 The limits of communist influence were being revealed at exactly the time when the strike movement unfolded. During the elections of 1945–46 a mere 650,000 voters polled for the CPI as compared to 11.7 million for the Congress, with the latter even conquering most of the labour seats. Cf. Kamtekar, ‘The End of the Colonial State’, p. 91. Vallabhbhai Patel was clearly relieved when he wrote to V. V. Giri that the communists had lost all labour constituencies to Congress except for the railway constituency of the G. I. P. and the B. B. and C. I. railway lines. CSAS: Patel Papers, vol. 13, Telegram to V. V. Giri, 21 March 1946.

199 Cf. TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 30 November 1948: ‘Monthly Review for November 1948’); ibid. (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 6 May 1949: ‘Monthly Review for April 1949’).

200 ‘An industrial truce was proclaimed […] but all the appeals and the settlement were flouted and set at naught by labour […].’ Report of the Millowners’ Association, Bombay, for 1947, p. 4 (the report was adopted by the BMOA's general meeting in April 1948).

201 Deputy High Commissioner Alexander Symon to Commonwealth Relations Office, 11 February 1948, reproduced in: Carter (ed.), Weakened States, Part I, p. 346.

202 Official observers seemed to concur that arrests were frequent and effectively undermined the strength of the AITUC. TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 30 November 1948: ‘Monthly Review for November 1948’). I have not been able to trace official figures for the total number of arrests, but AITUC's report of March 1949 claimed that ‘over 25,000 trade union and peasant leaders’ had been arrested. AITUC Report, 23rd Session, Bombay, 1949, p. 1. See also: Sen, Sunil Kumar, Working Class Movements in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 111.

203 Times of India, 7 May 1949.

204 This strike of 8,500 workers commenced on 13 May and ended in mid-October with the Municipal Kamgar Union agreeing unconditionally to the resumption of work. Soldiers and strike-breakers had been used to keep up the service. Numerous workers were arrested (under the Essential Services Regulations or the Public Security Measures Act), dismissed, and evicted from municipal quarters. Two hundred strikers were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment within the first month of the strike and as many again were dismissed from service and their living quarters. At the end of the strike, the municipal commissioner declared that those convicted or dismissed would not be taken back into service. For a brief running account of the strike, see: BL: IOR/L/PJ/5/308, Weekly Political Reports from UK Deputy High Commissioner, Bombay, 9–15 May 1949, 16–22 May 1949, 23–29 May 1949, 6–12 June 1949, 20–26 June 1949, 27 June–3 July 1949, 4–10 July 1949, 18–24 July 1949, 25–31 July 1949, 1–7 August 1949, and 3–9 October 1949. For the end of the strike, see also: ‘Bombay Workers. Resumption of Work from Sunday’, Times of India, 15 October 1949, p. 13.

205 TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 8 April 1949: ‘Monthly Review for March 1949’). For a detailed account of the political developments leading to the failure of the all-India railway strike in early 1949, see: ibid. (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 28 February 1949: ‘Threatened General Strike of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers’).

206 TNA: DO/142/72 (Short Notice Question and Answer for the meeting of the Constituent Assembly of India [Legislative] to be held on 28 February 1949. Reproduced as Annexure II to the Secret Report of the Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner in India to the Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, London, 28 February 1949: ‘Threatened General Strike of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers’). See also: BL: IOR/L/PJ/5/306, Weekly Political Reports from UK Deputy High Commissioner, Bombay, 14–20 February 1949, 21–27 February 1949, 28 February–6 March 1949, and 7–13 March 1949.

207 Times of India, 11 March 1949, p. 7 (‘No interference with normal running of trains’).

208 TNA: DO/142/72 (Verbatim reproduction of Nehru's speech in: Report of the Labour Adviser on Strike of Government employees and statement of the Prime Minister, 7 April 1948).

209 See also the companion piece to this article: Ahuja, 'A Beveridge Plan for India?'.

210 Chibber, Locked in Place, pp. 110–126.

211 Cf. Gulzarilal Nanda's speech at the inauguration conference of INTUC in May 1947, reproduced verbatim in: Harijan, 19 May 1947, pp. 158–160. For later instances, see the following report on speeches given by Gulzarilal Nanda, by then vice-chairman of the Planning Commission, and Khandubhai Desai, INTUC chairman: ‘“Trade Unions Must be Free from Political Motives”. Mr. Nanda Urges Parties to Stop Exploiting Workers’, Times of India, 30 October 1950, p. 3.

212 See, for example: Tata, Naval N., ‘Some Aspects of Labour Problem in India’, Commerce, Annual Review Number, December 1947, quoted from a typed copy of that article. CSAS: U.S. Department Central Files, India Internal Affairs, 1945–49, reel 5. Article enclosed in Despatch no. 22, 9 January 1948, from John J. Macdonald, American Consul General, Bombay, to U.S. State Department; Report of the Millowners’ Association, Bombay, for 1947, p. x.

213 See, for example: BL: IOR L/PJ/12/772, High Commissioner Sir Terence Shone to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Philip Noel-Baker, 18 June 1948, reproduced in: Carter, (ed.), Completing the First Year of Independence, pp. 374–382.

214 See: TNA: DO/142/191 (Irving Brown's (1949) report to the American Federation of Labour on his activities in India as representative of this organization).

215 See: footnote 199 above.

216 See, for example: P. C. Joshi's irate denouncement of Ranadive's ‘mentally deranged’ application, in 1949, of the term ‘fascist’ to the Nehru government in a letter dated February 1950, reproduced in: Chakravartty, Gargi (ed.), People's ‘Warrior’. Words and Worlds of P. C. Joshi, New Delhi: Tulika, 2014, p. 184Google Scholar.

217 Framke, Maria, ‘Fascist Italy: Ideal Template for India's Economic Development?’, in: Schulz-Forberg, H. (ed.), Zero Hours. Conceptual Insecurities and New Beginnings in the Interwar Period, Brussels: Peter Lang, 2013, pp. 87–94Google Scholar.

218 Indian Social Reformer, 13 July 1946, p. 364.

219 Ibid., 3 January 1948, p. 138.

220 Ibid., 11 October 1947, p. 43.

221 For recent evaluations of corporatist ideologies in fascist Italy and their impact on the regulation of industrial relations, see: Pasetti, Matteo, ‘Neither Bluff nor Revolution. The Corporations and the Consolidation of the Fascist Regime (1925–1926)’, in: Albanese, G. and Pergher, R. (eds), In the Society of Fascists. Acclamation, Acquiescence, and Agency in Mussolini's Italy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 87–107Google Scholar; Gagliardi, Alessio, ‘The Corporatism of Fascist Italy between Words and Reality’, Estudos Ibero-Americanos, 42, 2 (2016), pp. 409–429CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

222 Sohoni, Rajan ‘The Right to Strike’, Indian Social Reformer, 3 July 1948, p. 347.

223 Tata, Naval N., ‘Some Aspects of Labour Problem in India’, Commerce, Annual Review Number, December 1947, quoted from a typed copy of that article. CSAS: U.S. Department Central Files, India Internal Affairs, 1945–49, reel 5. Article enclosed in Despatch no. 22, 9 January 1948, from John J. Macdonald, American Consul General, Bombay, to U.S. State Department.

224 Jawaharlal Nehru had, according to Capital, likened strikes with ‘boils and ulcers’: Capital, 8 August 1946, p. 226.

225 These had been key features of the ‘legge Rocco’, the momentous Italian laws of 1926, which regulated collective labour relations for the coming decades. Cf. Pasetti, ‘Neither Bluff nor Revolution’, p. 89.

226 British officials seemed uncomfortable, at times, with what they perceived as unnecessary levels of repression against (non-communist) trade unionists and, more consistently, with the Congress's preferential treatment of INTUC. Their sympathies clearly lay more with the socialists, particularly J. P. Narayan. When the latter reacted to the suppression of a token strike against the rising cost of living in Delhi in November 1948 with the comment that the strike had not lacked support but that ‘labour has not yet learned to fight under conditions of fascism’, the British labour adviser added: ‘Unbiased observers regard this as a very fair statement of the position.’ TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 30 November 1948: ‘Monthly Review for November 1948’).

227 Cf. TNA: DO/142/191 (Irving Brown's 1949 report to the American Federation of Labour): ‘The government through the Congress Party has intervened most drastically in the trade union situation in India. There is no doubt that the INTUC is regarded as an arm of the government by the Congress Party to support and carry out its aims and policies. This does not mean that the INTUC is to be regarded as completely crystallized government labor front in a totalitarian system. […] The extent to which the free trade union world can develop relationships with and assist in the organization of the Indian workers will determine in great measure whether INTUC will become completely free and independent or merely sink back into a form of government labor front.’

228 Cf. Hall, Michael M., ‘Labor and the Law in Brazil’, in: van der Linden, M. and Price, R. (eds), The Rise and Development of Collective Labour Law, International and Comparative Social History, Vol. 6, Bern et al.: Peter Lang, 2000, pp. 79–95Google Scholar; Teixeira da Silva, Fernando, ‘The Brazilian and Italian Labor Courts: Comparative Notes’, International Review of Social History, 55 (2010), pp. 381–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Teixeira da Silva, Fernando and Corrêa, Larissa Rosa, ‘The Politics of Justice: Rethinking Brazil's Corporatist Labor Movement’, Labor: Studies in the Working Class Histories of the Americas, 12, 2 (2016), pp. 11–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

229 British officials reported ‘shady practices by which INTUC are said to be strengthening their position. The perpetrators are generally zealous Congress underlings or employers whose cultivation of INTUC springs from fear of Socialism or Communism’: TNA: DO/142/88 (Report on Trade Unionism in Bombay, 28 February 1949, Annexure I to Secret Despatch No. 11, High Commission of the UK in India, Delhi, to P. Noel-Baker, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 28 March 1949). For the province of Madras it was estimated that official INTUC membership figures were inflated by a factor of six at least, and there was ‘good reason to believe that this membership is largely fictitious because INTUC owing to its financial backing by Congress “big business” and Government is able to show payment of membership fees for many more members than it actually has […]’. Ibid. (Report on Trade Unions in South India, n. d., Annexure III to Secret Despatch No. 11, High Commission of the UK in India, Delhi, to P. Noel-Baker, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 28 March 1949).

230 The quotes are from: Giri, Labour Problems in Indian Industry, p. 53. For a recent version, see: Ahn, Pong-Sul, The Growth and Decline of Political Unionism in India: The Need for a Paradigm Shift, Bangkok: ILO, 2010Google Scholar.

231 British observers emphasized this aspect: ‘the framing of a new Constitution on the basis of adult franchise has increased the importance of labour vote to the political parties; this has directly led to the emergence of INTUC under Congress auspices […].’ TNA: DO/142/88 (Calcutta Special Report, 25 January 1949, Annexure II to Secret Despatch No. 11, High Commission of the UK in India, Delhi, to P. Noel-Baker, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 28 March 1949).

232 Warren, Inflation and Wages, pp. 57–83.

233 Perlin, Enid, ‘Ragi, Rice and Four-yard Dhoties’, Itinerario, 2, 1 (1978), p. 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

234 Chenoy, The Rise of Big Business, pp. 128–185.

235 ‘Sir Ardeshir said that investors had been scared by the threat of nationalisation, the limitation of dividends, the sharing of profits, the legislation for minimum wages, the rapidly mounting costs of labour and the minatory speeches of Ministers about the liquidation of capitalism within ten years, making labour the owners and masters of their factories’: BL: OIOC, IOR/L/PJ/5/306, Weekly Political Report from UK Deputy High Commissioner, Bombay, 15–21 November 1948.

236 Report of the Millowners’ Association, Bombay, for 1947, p. xi.

237 Ibid., pp. v–viii.

238 TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 8 April 1949: ‘Monthly Review for March 1949’); ibid. (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 6 May 1949: ‘Monthly Review for April 1949’); ibid. (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 13 June 1949: ‘Monthly Review for May 1949’).

239 Western India Automobile Association versus The Industrial Tribunal Bombay (Federal Court of India, 30 March 1949). Cf. Labour Law Journal, 1 (1949), pp. 245–257. See also: ILOrep, March 1949, p. 49.

240 TNA: DO/142/72 (Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner of the UK to Secretary, Ministry of Labour and National Service, Overseas Dept., 6 May 1949: ‘Monthly Review for April 1949’).

241 ILOrep, August 1948, pp. 61f

242 Cf. Giri, Labour Problems in Indian Industry, p. 206.

243 John, ‘Development of Indian Labour Law’. This dualism frames and constrains the narrative in large parts of the study and hampers a deeper analysis of the fascinating material John's meticulous research has brought to the fore. See esp.: pp. 340, 385, 404, 425, 435, 466f, 481f.

244 Teixeira da Silva and Corrêa, ‘The Politics of Justice’, pp. 12, 29f.

245 Ibid., p. 15 and passim.

246 The proliferation of labour litigation is indicated, for instance, by the enormous compilations of case law that were published from 1949 (see, for instance: the Labour Law Journal), which still await systematic historical analysis.

247 The following account is based on this report: TNA: DO/142/208 (Confidential Report from the Labour Adviser to the High Commissioner for the UK in India to the Secretary, Minister of Labour and National Service, London, 10 November 1949).

248 Cf. Ranadive, B. T., ‘The Problem of One Union in One Industry’, The Working Class, VI, 12 (1977)Google Scholar, reprinted in: Ranadive, B. T., On Trade Union Movement, Delhi: CITU, 1990, pp. 378–380Google Scholar. Ranadive, who had been an important actor in the labour upsurge of the late 1940s, argued that the multiplicity of trade unions in one industry was the historical offshoot of attempts to establish such a ‘monopoly of recognition’.

249 India, Pakistan and Burma Association, A Report on Conditions in India and Pakistan, London: 1959, pp. 15f.

250 India's First Five-Year Plan, quoted in: Palekar, Shreekant A., Problems of Wage Policy for Economic Development. With Special Reference to India, London: Asia Publishing House, 1962, p. xixGoogle Scholar.