Initial Years of Labor Movement in India
In 1920 the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was formed at Bombay by N.M. Joshi and others. Joshi was a philanthropist who was sympathetic to the workers'cause. At that time AITUC did not have a cohesive ideology, but it was sympathetic to the Indian National Congress. When Dange wrote about the founding session of AITUC at Bombay, he brought out the organization's Congress roots:
The AITUC was guided principally by the Congress leaders. The masses at this period were being led by Lokmanya Tilak and his group, in which Lala Lajpat Rai from Punjab, Bepinchandra Pal from Bengal and others had a big place. Mahatma Gandhi had refused to sponsor the idea of founding the AITUC and so he did not attend.
Communists were also largely excluded when, again in Bombay, in 1923, jobbers and mill clerks came together and started Girni Kamgar Mahamandal (Great Association of Mill-Workers). They participated in the long textile strike in 1924.
Read more about this topic: Shripad Amrit Dange
Famous quotes containing the words initial, years, labor, movement and/or india:
“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“When the Prince of Piedmont [later Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia] was seven years old, his preceptor instructing him in mythology told him all the vices were enclosed in Pandora’s box. “What! all!” said the Prince. “Yes, all.” “No,” said the Prince; “curiosity must have been without.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“When the precepts and example of Jesus Christ fully interpermeate society, to labor with the hands will be regarded not only as a duty but a privilege.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Suppose these houses are composed of ourselves,
So that they become an impalpable town, full of
Impalpable bells, transparencies of sound,
Sounding in the transparent dwellings of the self,
Impalpable habitations that seem to move
In the movement of the colors of the mind....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten.”
—Indira Gandhi (1917–1984)