Hub van Wersch - The 1982–83 Bombay Textile Strike and the Unmaking of a Labourers’ City

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Hub van Wersch came to India for the first time in 1972. He married an Indian hailing from Maharashtra and has been visiting and studying the country since then. Van Wersch qualified as a social anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. His study of the greatest industrial cataclysm of our time, Bombay Textile Strike 198283 , was widely acclaimed as a substantial contribution to the understanding of the disastrous developments during that period.

Later Van Wersch moved to different fields of activity (communication and politics). Apart from scientific contributions, he presently writes novels and short stories.

PRAISE

The book continues to be the foundational academic study of this key moment in the contemporary history of South Asian labour.

Professor Ravi Ahuja, Georg-August-Universitt, Gttingen, Germany

A most important contribution to the study of labour relations and Government legislations which has such a pervading influence.

A. Thyagarajan, The Hindu

The strike was the story not only of employers and workers, but of the government, the police, the press, the unions, the peasants who donated food and the relatives who maintained the striking workers. The most impressive contribution of the book is narrating how each of them related to the strike. The outcome is a grimmer picture than was portrayed in the press.

Tirthankar Roy, The Indian Economic and Social History Review

One may disagree with some of van Werschs views and formulations. One can hardly disagree, however, about the immense value of the results of his research into the Bombay textile strike. It undoubtedly fills, and fills very competently, a glaring gap in the chronicle of the trade union movement and labour struggles in India.

Bagaram Tulpule, Economic and Political Weekly

The massive tome of more than 200,000 words is the result of a year of study in Bombay, including residence in a workers chawl in Prabhadevi, extensive interviews and careful analysis of secondary materials. The thesis dispels many popular myths put out by the mass media, and lends substance to what the intelligentisa has believed all along. A close look at this description of a strike which might get into the Guinness Book is eminently worthwhile.

E.A. Ramaswamy , Business India

For
Jairam, Anil, Shamrao, Haricharan and Baluram

CONTENTS

PART 1
THE STORY OF THE STRIKE

PART II
COPING WITH THE STRIKE

LIST OF TABLES

Key to numeration: 1 lakh = 1,00,000

1 crore = 10 million

ABBREVIATIONS

AICC	All India Congress Committee
AITUC	All India Trade Union Congress
ATIRA	Ahmedabad Textile Industrys Research Association
BIR Act	Bombay Industrial Relations Act, 1946
BMOA	Bombay Millowners Association (also: MOA)
BMS	Bharatiya Mazdoor Sabha
BTRA	Bombay Textile Research Association
CITU	Centre of Indian Trade Unions
CM	chief minister
COD	Charter of Demands
CPI	Communist Party of India
CPI (M)	Communist Party of India (Marxist)
DA	Dearness Allowance
ESIS	Employees State Insurance Act, 1948
ESMA	Essential Service Maintenance Act
FE	Financial Express
GKS	Girni Kamgar Sabha (Janata Party) Girni Kamgar Sena (Shiv Sena)
GKU	Girni Kamgar Union (later: MGKU)
GOI	Government of India
GOM	Government of Maharashtra
HMS	Hind Mazdoor Sabha
HOSOCTI	Handbook of Statistics on Cotton-Textile Industry
HPC	High Power Committee
HRA	House Rent Allowance
ICMF	Indian Cotton Mills Federation
IE	Indian Express
ILO	International Labour Organization
INTUC	Indian National Trade Union Congress
KKS	Kapad Kamgar Sanghatana
LBGKU	Lal Bawta Girni Kamgar Union
LNP	Lal Nishan Party
MGKU	Maharashtra General Kamgar Union (Datta Samant) Maharashtra Girni Kamgar Union (Datta Samant) Mumbai Girni Kamgar Union (before: GKU)
MLA	Member of the Legislative Assembly
MMS	Mill Mazdoor Sabha
MOA	Millowners Association (Bombay)
MP	Member of Parliament.
NSA	National Security Act
NTC	National Textile Corporation
RMMS	Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh
SSS	Sarva Shramik Sangh
SV	Shramik Vichar
SC	Scheduled Castes
TLA	Textile Labour Association (Ahmedabad)
TOI	Times of India
TUJAC	Trade Unions Joint Action Committee

PREFACE

During that time [198283], a strike had begun in my fathers [textile] mill, which never ended. And by trusting upon the union leaders assurances, my father eventually passed away Father passed away, and the mill has closed down too. And now, on the same textile mill lands stands a huge and posh [shopping] mall. Whenever I see a poor and helpless person in that mall, I feel that in their mind the strike still goes on.

Mumbai Meri Jaan , 2008

The above text that evokes the historic 198283 Mumbai textile strike is from a Hindi film Mumbai Meri Jaan . The film, released in 2008, revolves around the serial bomb blasts that took place in 2006 in the Mumbai local trains. The reference to the mill workers and the 198283 strike appears very briefly and only towards the end of the film when Tukaram Patil, a policeman performed by actor Paresh Rawal, is giving a farewell speech on the eve of his retirement. While talking about Mumbais transformations, Patil talks about his mill worker father and how the trade union leaders misjudgement resulted in the eventual closure of the textile mills which subsequently jeopardised the lives of mill workers and their families. Over the past two decades, the 198283 strike conducted by the Mumbai mill workers has appeared in popular Marathi and Hindi feature films but mostly in the background. In a way, this is not surprising but a reflection of the developments since the 1980s which, as Ahuja argues, saw a severe depreciation of labour as a political category (Ahuja, 2013: ix).

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