One of the most striking aspects of Indian labour historiography is the involvement in fratricidal communal strife during and after the colonial period. The sanguinary riots among the labour unions exhibited the traits of religious-identity and a certain sense of social stratification – ‘community consciousness’ as against ‘class consciousness’. Close readings will unfold that the workers’ protest against the authority was marked by an inherent duality. A strike has always had the potential of turning into a religious or racial riot, on the other hand, contained all necessary elements of rebellion against management. The piece will engage with critical discourse relating to labour, mass transportation, and governance in the history of the global south.
Until recently, the dominant trend in Indian labour historiography was to imitate the European historical experience, focusing on the patron-client relationship, trade union activities, strike and protest movements by the workers. My findings destabilise this notion of understanding the category of labour, to an indigenous discourse on workers’ interpersonal relationships, public participation in labour protests, the roll of the middle-class, the urban poor, and the non-political, social and cultural associations.
Unlike other labour movements, the Calcutta tram workers’ movement in this period was marked with an inner dichotomy. Working people of different sectors in Calcutta, on many occasions were the victim of communal conflicts between the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League. The Calcutta tramwaymen stood ‘long exception’ to this general trend. However, there are evidences galore to display that the composition of tramway labour force was not free from communal inclination. Perhaps, tramwaymen’s movement is the solitary example in the history of India also in south Asia to marsupialised these two ambiguous strands of labour politics.
Image : Birds flock around dead bodies lying at the crossroads after riots in Bhowanipur, South Kolkata a predominantly Hindu and Sikh locality where Muslim casualties were heavy. Source: Getty Images.
During August 1946, Calcutta witnessed the worst ever communal riot. The Great Calcutta Killing led to the loss of uncountable innocent lives. Asok Mitra (an eminent scholar and civil servant), in his memoir represent a graphic eyewitness account of brutality of religious fanaticism. Whereas the Calcutta tram workers stood as the front rankers to fight the ‘flames of civil war’. When on 16 August, large-scale rioting broke out all across the city, a girls’ hostel situated opposite the Rajabazar Tram Depot was a target of attack by some miscreants. As the news broke out, tramwaymen of the Rajabazar depot mobilised themselves under the leadership of Calcutta Tramways Workers’ Union (CTWU; established in 1926) near the hostel area, and took a leading role in protracting the hostel. Moreover, they kept a constant vigil over the area until all girls were evacuated safely from the hostel by the army in the late evening. There are, indeed, several instances that the tramway workers with uniform used to guard the areas dominated by the religious zealots.
The tension of Hindu-Muslim riots created as atmosphere of fear among the commuters. The Hindus often avoided riding a tram when it passed through a Muslim residential zone or vice versa. Hatred and malice against the believer of the other community were engulfed the minds of the Calcuttans. While travelling in trams, the commuters would often tease and made provocative comments about the people belonging to the other community. If heard by the tram conductors, most of them (not all), would take firm stand to ameliorate the communal provocation within the compartment, and appealed to their lofty sense to listen to the voice of sanity.
The enormity and large-scale carnage of Hindu-Muslim riots also impacted the cities outside Calcutta and spread rapidly in Noakhali, Tipperah in East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh, and Bihar. The Calcutta tramwaymen responded to the occasion by sending relief squads to the riot-affected areas of these two places. Suranjan Das in his study on communal riots in Bengal stated the tramwaymen of Calcutta ‘organised peace squads’ during the period of communal frenzy.
However, looking in detail at the movement of the tramwaymen in this period is not a monolithic process related to workers’ unity and trade unionism. Most of the workers in the Traffic and Permanent Way Department were upcountrymen, there were both Hindus and Muslims in large numbers. The Calcutta Tramways Employees Union (registered in 1943) and Calcutta Tramways Mazdoor Union (registered in 1947) both anti-communist organisations were under influence of working-leaders hailing from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. They made pointed propaganda among the non-Bengali labourers that the communist controlled CTWU Executive Committee was made of a large number of English educated Bengali babus who remained indifferent to do anything for them. The government also realised:
The industrial agitators were mostly briefless Bengali barristers, who made it their business to found and preside over Unions, and by no means to lay down the law as to terms on which masters and men are to work together.
The Muslim League repeatedly tried to organise tram workers on communal line. During the time of World War II, the tramwaymen were afraid of losing their jobs. In such situation, T Ali, the Deputy Speaker of the Bengal Legislative Assembly went to the Calcutta Tramways Company (CTC) Agent along with the support of Calcutta Tramways Muslim League (CTML) to secure positions of Muslim officers and subordinate staffs at every section of the Tramway Company. The CTML alleged on behalf of over 2,000 Muslim tram employees that the CTWU’s activities regarding labour interests was a ‘bogus’ endeavour. It has been observed:
The CPI’s firm hold aver the CTWU was seriously affected at least, temporarily by communal riots which shook Calcutta for a number of days following the Direct Action Day. A large number of Hindu workers took shelter in the Congress-led Hisdusthan Mazdoor Sangha. At this time, the Revolutionary Socialist Party was attempting to win over a section of the tram workers.
Careful observation unravels these labour unions implicated a hierarchical sense of political loyalties. The CTML named their organisation in line with Muslim League, and Congress reciprocated to encourage the activities of the Hindu workers to form their Mazdoor Sangha. The word Sangha has its epistemological derivation from Swadeshi ideology that accentuates religion in political action. The popular slogan of the rebellious workers was ‘Victory to mother goddess’ (জয় মা কালী!) It is then axiomatic that religious community consciousness was an exclusive element in Indian labour polity for gradual separation among the workers which escalates communal antagonism.
The executive committee of CTWU, mainly consisting of outside political workers had little contact with the ‘ordinary’ workmen. There were hardly any day-to-day activities of the union. Moreover, the expulsion of leaders like Chatur Ali, Gopal Acharya, Md Ismail, Naren Sen and Somnath Lahiri the union became weak. In the absence of the previous leadership, the new group which included Bankim Mukherjee and others could not gain the confidence of the general workers. Alternatively, the distress workers found solace in their communalistic values. Looking through newspaper reports we can identify how the community consciousness had been skilfully injected in the minds of the labourers.
The Communist leaders of Bengal introduced a fund known as ‘Lenin Day Fund’ and pursued the workers to raise money for this fund. A worker in Park Circus Depot, being approached by the collectors for donation, asked, ‘Why should I pay? I am a member of Hindu Mahasabha.’
Examples like this showcase a strong current of identity politics, which became the dominant strand in working class history in the colonial and post-colonial eras.
The invocation of the tram as a social entity and a way of life stood in shaping broader identities of a community which was ever-present in its own making and remaking. The English-educated middle class Bengali literati always avoided to go to the second-class compartment. The conductors in the first-class carriage would often yell to the passengers who looked poor or working class: ‘Go to the car at the back, this is first-class!’.
If the trade unions were to be a crucial precondition of buoyant collective bargaining, the regional, linguistical or communal identities would not create any divisive impact on the tramway workers. Labourers were correlated with the allegory of ‘uneducated’, ‘uncultured’, ‘superstitious’ and ‘conservative’. Poverty forced the impoverished peasants to jump into an altogether new city-environment – more repulsive, more nauseating, more unbearable, where they toiled and starved, found ‘the liquor-shop, the only place where he can forget the toils and worry of the day. The bazar girl or the prostitute in his sole recreation and luxury. Under the influence of raw country liquor, he plays the hooligan and sets about doing mischief.’
The workers only used the trade unions as a tactical tool to secure their economic demands instead of a radical agenda of fundamentally transforming the socio-economic system. Strikes, therefore, appeared to be a defensive strategy of survival in the flimsy and crowded labour market of twentieth-century Calcutta.
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