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:
“Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.”
—Henry George (1839–1897)
“till seven years were gane and past,
True Thomas on earth was never seen.”
—Unknown. Thomas the Rhymer (l. 79–80)
“The labor we delight in physics pain.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“What stunned me was the regular assertion that feminists were “anti-family.” . . . It was motherhood that got me into the movement in the first place. I became an activist after recognizing how excruciatingly personal the political was to me and my sons. It was the women’s movement that put self-esteem back into “just a housewife,” rescuing our intelligence from the junk pile of “instinct” and making it human, deliberate, powerful.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)