Sudha Bhardwaj: Seventy-Five Years Since Independence, Industrial Working Class Still Struggles for Rights

The Indian working class was a proud participant in the anti-imperialist struggle against British rule in India. Whether it was the six-day strike of the working class of Mumbai in 1908; the attempts of the Ghadar Party organised by Punjabi immigrant workers in Canada, who sailed to India in 1914 to overthrow the British; the four-day old Solapur Commune of 1930, the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929 in which 31 working class leaders from all corners of India were rounded up and tried; the storming of the Calcutta Congress Session by the workers in 1930 spurring on the “Poorna Swaraj Resolution”; the actions of the Kisan Sabha and the Workers Peasants Party which in 1937 led to resolutions of zamindari abolition by the United Provinces; the actions of the dock workers of Mumbai and Kolkata in 1945 refusing to load ships taking supplies to British troops during the Second World War; and finally the heroic support of the Mumbai working class to the Mutiny of the ratings of the Royal Indian Navy in 1946, which received no support from either the Congress or the Muslim League, but which resonated in massive protests not only of Indian recruits in the Navy and Air Force from Karachi to Calcutta, but also the citizens of Ahmedabad and Trichinopoly.

This proved to be the last nail in the coffin of the British Raj. The official count of the civilian fatalities in Mumbai on February 24, 1946 was 236 but unofficial sources say more than 400 workers and common people lost their lives...

https://thewire.in/labour/seventy-five-years-since-independence-industrial-working-class-still-struggles-for-rights

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