‘Pet ke waaste’ : Rights,resistance and the East Indian Railway Strike,1922

I

Much analysis of the ‘liberal conception of rights’ has indicated its limitation in a colonial context. Nivedita Menon has noted that the notion of individual rights in India was not ‘unambiguously and universally emancipatory.’ ¹⁵ Dipesh Chakrabarty critiqued the history of Indian modernity because ‘the only permitted subject of history is the citizen.’ ¹⁶ He summarised Indian nationalist thought as presuming the universality of ‘individual rights’ and ‘abstract equality,’ which he dismissed, in Gandhi’s voice, as ‘English rule without the Englishman.’ ¹⁷ He concluded that the ideal of the citizen and nation-state must be dislodged from ‘narratives of historical transition’ and that other non-modern modes of political organisation must be privileged in order to combat the persistent myth of the Indian state’s inadequate modernity. ¹⁸ Gyan Prakash echoed Chakrabarty’s critique of modernity and pushed it further. He argued that the colonial past ‘secured the dominance of the state but corroded the authority of its institutions.’ ¹⁹ Both of these authors have claimed that citizenship is a foreign concept in India and they have meditated on the ways in which colonisation imposed a Eurocentric model of development that enforced a statist political paradigm.

Recent scholarship has reassessed the concept of citizenship in a colonial context and has argued that rights are achieved historically, not imposed. ‘The whole history…of the evolution of social welfare interventions and affirmative action procedures,’ Sumit Sarkar pointed out, has been a ‘struggle for differential treatment.’ ²⁰ In the context of the East Indian Railway strike, this struggle resulted in workers asserting a power that marked them as a distinct ‘political constituency.’ Consequent to emerging as a political constituency, workers were able to make citizenship-based claims on the state by challenging the arbitrary racial superiority that was maintained on the railway. ²¹ More recently, Mrinalini Sinha argued that ‘a language of rights,’ in colonial India, ‘developed both alongside and against classical European liberalism.’ Indeed Sinha notes a ‘double move’ that simultaneously demonstrated the limitations of European concepts and remade them as universal. A similar move can be seen in workers’ politics in interwar India. ²² Sinha specifically studied how debates over marriage reform enabled women to make claims on the state in terms of ‘agonistic liberal universalism.’ My goal is to demonstrate that railway workers, by their actions during the strike, also participated in such claims-making. Peter Robb has argued that the twentieth century provided a vocabulary of rights that workers began to deploy. This article will expand on Robb’s conclusions, particularly by exploring the mechanics of resistance in an industrial setting and demonstrating that strikers creatively employed liberal institutions in order to undermine the authority of colonial capitalism. ²³

Historians of colonial India have commonly excluded industrial workers from a citizenship-based discourse on rights because of the perception that they had made an incomplete conversion from peasant to proletarian. ²⁴ Subho Basu has argued that this formulation of Indian labour not only allowed the colonial government to ‘contras[t] the industrialized West with the predominantly agrarian non-Western countries,’ but also has caused recent historians to conceive of workers as ‘hapless victims of colonial capitalism,’ rather than actively negotiating workplace power dynamics. ²⁵ The lack of hegemony of any single social class not only opened space for workers to contest the socio-political power of propertied classes but also, I argue, that contestation was articulated precisely in an incipient idiom of citizenship. ²⁶ By acknowledging the distinct activity of workers as workers, it becomes easier to recognise them, at least in the interwar period, as ‘paradigmatic citizen-subjects’ both because of the rhetorical fusion of social and political demands for pay and racial equality and the ‘cross-communal solidarity’ of their actions, including in this instance to paralyze the railway. ²⁷

The emergence of workers as a distinct political constituency in the interwar era was facilitated by what T.H. Marshall has called social citizenship. Marshall defines this concept as the ‘range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society.’ ²⁸ Magnussen and Nilssen have confronted emerging scholarship on this concept and have identified a tendency to take a connection between social citizenship and an increase in ‘individual and collective autonomy’ for granted. They contend that such a relationship is theoretical and the two should not be linked without requisite empirical analysis. ²⁹ Margaret Somers, building on Marshall and anticipating some of the criticism of his concept, has furnished an integral interpretation of citizenship by arguing that it is available to all people based solely on membership in a society. Following Somers’ definition of social citizenship as ‘the right to have rights’, this article will explore the specific contours of Indian workers claiming rights based in an idiom of citizenship during a strike in interwar north India. ³⁰ Of particular importance for this argument, workers demanded, as their right, improved pay and improved protection for Indians against the racially motivated violence that was common in their experience at work. Thus, the privilege of social membership in the case of the East Indian Railway strike was asserted simultaneously with workers’ demands on the railway company and the colonial state.

Labour and industrialisation have been important preoccupations of historians of colonial India who have devoted considerable attention to industrial mills in Kolkata, Mumbai and, more recently, Kanpur. ³¹ There has been comparatively less scholarship on the history of railway workers in India. George Huddleston, a former official of the East Indian Railway, was among the first to document the history of that company. However, his 1939 reflections are rather cursory and pay little attention to the history of workers or their politics. ³² Ian Kerr provides a more contemporary perspective on this history of the Indian railway system with a focus that shifts ‘from railway operation to railway construction, and from the workers to those who exercised authority over them.’ ³³

Most research on Indian railways has focused attention on construction and management and has sought to portray them as a driver of modernity. ³⁴ Though agitations by railway workers have not been systematically studied, workers have not been altogether excluded from this narrative. My research will push existing scholarship further by arguing that strikers’ demands, though articulated disparately in Gandhian, economic, and racial terms, were rooted in a nascent idiom of social citizenship as a distinct political constituency. Lajpat Jagga first attempted to chart interwar railway worker resistance to, and negotiation with, their employers and the colonial state. In his 1983 article, Jagga argued that railway agitation carried a dual significance: it was evidence that Indian nationalism was penetrating worker politics and that an industrial proletariat was emerging. ³⁵ Laura Bear’s monograph Lines of the Nation is a full-length, ethnographic account of the conditions of life and the politics of ethnic lineage for the ‘railway caste’ of Anglo-Indians in Kharagpur colony, Bengal. ³⁶ Bear relies on Jagga for her analysis of Indian worker resistance on the East Indian Railway but she refines his impression of the nationalist influence on the strike by noting that ‘the nationalist intent of the strike pre-existed and was independent of any actual political involvement by Congress in the events.’ ³⁷ Diverging from Jagga and Bear, Nitin Sinha contends that ‘rigid categories like racialism or nationalism are of little help in unraveling the complexities of workers’ choices and their politics.’ ³⁸ Whereas Jagga gives credence to the colonial narrative that strikes were caused by outside agitators, Sinha rejects notions of outright ‘political exploitation’ by nationalists. ³⁹ Instead, he argues that totalising narratives of worker resistance refuse to acknowledge that the ‘issues and the languages used by individual activists were loosely knit and discrete.’ ⁴⁰ However, the discrete languages that Sinha has identified are not sufficient to understand the radical assumption of citizenship happening among workers in early-1920s India.

II

The relationship between the strike and nationalism, that Jagga, Bear, and Sinha have studied, was especially salient for colonial officials. This section will demonstrate that the British perception that the strike was instigated by nationalists, due to the precarious culture of unionism in the 1920s, was superficial. Regardless of the considerable impact that the strike had on railway operations, in terms of available workers and secure transportation of goods, the government maintained a fixed view of the strike that focused on the political manipulation that workers suffered at the hands of nationalist organisers. The first article on the strike published in The Times of London emphasised the key elements of the colonial government’s view of the strike: it began without warning; the allegations were untrue; the strike was incited by non-cooperation; and ‘a grave feature of the situation is the inability of important industries to obtain coal supplies.’ ⁴¹ The Associated Press circulated an ‘authoritative report,’ which was widely published by Indian newspapers and it emphasised that the strike began without proper representation of grievances. Charles Alexander Innes, the Commerce member of the Council of State who would later become Governor of colonial Burma, made a direct reference to the lack of grievances during the Council discussion of the strike. Innes had very little patience for the strike and he was convinced that the lack of representation and speed with which workers struck indicated the involvement of nationalists. ⁴²

The Indian Year Book of 1923 and the Report of the Administration of Lord Reading provide a useful context for the mechanics of strikes in this era. According to Lord Reading’s report, the unions on the railway were better organised than the majority of industrial unions, which would disappear ‘very often as soon as a strike is settled.’ ⁴³ The Indian Year Book made no distinction between industrial unions and railway unions when it noted that ‘there is a nascent Trade Union movement in India. This movement lies rather more on the surface than in deep roots, but it flares up in times of labour unrest.’ ⁴⁴ Both reports contend that unions at this time were little more than strike committees. ⁴⁵ Once the East Indian Railway strike had begun, two associations claimed that they were each the sole representative body for the workers and attempted to negotiate with the railway company in the interest of the workers. The East Indian Railway Indian Labour Association (EIRILA) was the most visible organisation throughout the strike. It was primarily led by Swamis Darsanand and Viswanand, both of whom were involved in other labour disputes during the early 1920s. ⁴⁶ The other organisation, the East Indian Railway Indian Labour Union (EIRILU), was less involved in the daily maintenance of the strike but did release a list of demands on behalf of the strikers. These organisations appear to have had different goals and motives. The leadership of the EIRILA was more consistently aligned with workers whereas the EIRILU was associated with well-known nationalists. The ostensible philosophical differences notwithstanding, these organisations merged in in June 1922 and became the East Indian Railway Labour Union. ⁴⁷

The relatively temporary constitution of many labour unions in India and the upsurge in industrial disputes that occurred in the early-1920s led the Year Book to provide some ‘characteristics of strikes’:

The frequency of the strike without notice.

From the perspective of the colonial state, the EIR strike was mostly consistent with such characterizations. Though assessments of the degree of organisation differed, the lack of notice, the ill-defined complaint, and the extravagance of claims were all part of the authoritative account. The similarities between an account of commonalities among strikes and the unique complaints lodged about a particular strike on the East Indian Railway should give us pause to reflect on why the ‘lack of representation’ was seen to be such a remarkable breach of protocol. Fundamentally, the lack of prior notice implied to observers that workers lacked any actual grievance. A lack of proper grievance prior to striking suggested that the workers had coordinated to strike in advance of the allegation of assault. Typically, workers were not considered capable of such coordination. Therefore, concern about outside, especially nationalist, agitation was particularly common in newspapers and in the chambers of the Council of State.

During the debate in the Council of State, Innes revealed ‘my information is—I am unable to say whether it is true or not—that for days before this strike…certain non-co-operator agitators had been at work among the loco staff at Tundla…and the men were stampeded out on strike.’ ⁴⁹ In a ‘chronological statement of the facts’ in the 27 February edition of The Leader, the author notes that on the day the strike began ‘officers found the strikers strongly supported by non-co-operators wearing badges and flying flags.’ ⁵⁰ Non-cooperation was of considerable concern for the government in early February 1922. Immediately after the strike began, the riot at Chauri Chaura occurred, where 23 police were burned alive. ⁵¹ The tragedy at Chauri Chaura put the non-cooperation movement squarely in the view of colonial officials. This violence led Gandhi to announce the Bardoli resolutions on 12 February 1922, which suspended non-cooperation. ⁵² The EIR strike was placed in the same narrative of non-cooperation that produced Chauri Chaura. Shahid Amin has demonstrated that peasants had an uncertain perception of Gandhi and non-violent direct action. Thus, tying Gandhi’s political programme directly to any popular agitation in this period is problematic. Moreover Gandhi was particularly direct with his thoughts on industrial strikes. In February 1921, he declared that they ‘do not fall within the plan of non-violent non-cooperation.’ ⁵³ Therefore, it is unwise to credit Gandhian nationalism with causing popular unrest.

The differences between the strikers and nationalist agitators were summarised by Muhammad Yasin, the President of the Burdwan District Congress Committee, who was the invited speaker at a strikers’ meeting there. The full speech is not available but the Amrita Bazar Patrika published an instructive exchange between a member of the audience and Yasin:

‘We, men of the Congress and you, strikers, are all fighters. We fight for Swaraj, for India’s all round salvation, while you are fighting for yourselves.’

This interaction clearly indicates the chasm that existed between Congress politics and the demands of the workers. The Times claimed simply that ‘Mr Gandhi could not now control his disciples, even if he would;’ however, Yasin states in certain terms that the workers did not have the support of Congress and, ostensibly, never would. ⁵⁵ Though The Times understood shouts of ‘Gandhi ki jai’ to indicate workers’ commitment to non-cooperation, historians have observed that ‘Gandhi’s name did not necessarily mean adherence to Gandhi’s principles, but acted more as a legitimising force.’ ⁵⁶ The political salience of Gandhi’s name was complicated by the workers’ perception of a racial bias against them by the railway company. The dissemination of this perception is the focus of the next section.

III

In a telegram to the Secretary of State, the Home Department dismissed the strike by claiming that it was caused by ‘exaggerated rumours of injuries’ causing ‘considerable excitement.’ ⁵⁷ Some historians have long emphasised on the role of rumour in disseminating news and mobilising people, typically peasants, against the oppression of landowners, the colonial administration and moneylenders. ⁵⁸ Others have argued that such scholarship is a ‘replication of colonial discourse’ which insists on Indian ‘susceptibility to rumour.’ ⁵⁹ Thus, ‘rumour’ itself is a problematic genre in the colonial context and needs to be dislodged from the narrative of this strike.

The level of coordination that the strike attained by the middle of February casts doubt on the salience of rumour in worker mobilisation. Instead, the demands that workers made for a pay increase, housing allowance, investigations into Ramlal’s accusation, publication of previous cases of racially motivated violence on the railway, and the prevention of future violence are evidence of a kind of communication that transcends rumour. ⁶⁰ C.A. Bayly has provided a framework that facilitates a rehabilitation of subaltern forms of communication. His meditation on ‘knowledge-gathering institutions,’ such as the army, the political services, and the revenue, legal and educational establishments, allows for a reconfiguration of worker information networks as non-institutional and non-official. ⁶¹ Thus, the term ‘rumour’ should be understood as a pejorative mischaracterisation of the channels available to non-elite actors in their access to, and dissemination of, information. Awareness of non-institutional information networks allows for the rigorous understanding of the mechanics of colonial rhetoric and worker resistance which informs the analysis of the current article. The strike meeting was a central component of this non-institutional information network.

From its commencement on 2 February, the strike achieved considerable organisation over the course of the first week. A primary reason for increased organisation was the use of the strike meeting, a tactic which began just days after the strike but was used continuously throughout the strike’s duration. At Tundla, representatives from the EIRILA presided over an ‘overcrowded meeting’ that occurred after the workers were convinced that the railway authorities refused to form a ‘Joint Committee of officials and representatives to enquire into the assault case.’ ⁶² On 9 February, workers in Allahabad held a meeting at Gurdiya ka Taalaab, a public park just south of the railway station. This meeting also propounded the cause of racial justice and implored workers to remain on strike until a resolution to discrimination was found. ⁶³

Strikers at stations in eastern Bihar and Bengal, such as Burdwan, Asansol, and Gaya, were particularly militant. The fact that the EIRILA was based in that region might be a clue to the reason that strikers there clamoured for official recognition of the union in a way that was distinct from other strike centres. On 24 February, at a meeting in Gaya, strikers proclaimed ‘we unanimously hereby resolve that we only want the fulfilment of the demands of our E.I.R. Indian Labour Association (Asansol). The said Association is our only representative body.’ ⁶⁴ A few days after the Allahabad meeting, 5000 workers from Asansol gathered ‘under the presidentship of a labourer.’ Swami Viswanand ‘explained the difficulties and inconveniences which may come during the strike period.’ The correspondent for The Leader claimed that the workers responded to the Swami in unison that ‘only our Associations’ [sic] demands should be fulfilled and nothing more’. ⁶⁵ The Amrita Bazar Patrika presented the strike meeting differently. In its report on a 25 February meeting, it noted that 4000 strikers were present in a demonstration of solidarity in the face of the threat of termination from the Railway Board. Moreover, not only were strikers present, but also ‘some Bengalee [sic] clerks…came to the meeting and joined hands with their fellow striker brothers.’ ⁶⁶ Reports on these meetings make a conscious effort to indicate that the strikers were advised to be peaceful; such guidance was not always within the control of the strikers.

In early March, workers at Bamangachi, ‘the principal loco shed of the East Indian Railway in Howrah District,’ joined the strike after receiving a printed notice from Danapur requesting sympathetic action against the EIR’s unresponsiveness. The notice and an Urdu letter, which urged the strike and ‘abuses against the loyalists and non-strikers,’ were read aloud to a congregation of workers. By midnight, the workers had joined the strike but renewed fears of violence complicated negotiations. At seven o’clock on 5 March, as a large group of strikers approached the residence of the Locomotive Foreman, a European worker identified one of the Indians, Mohamad Ehiya, as the leader of the group. Mr McMohan, one of the Europeans, allegedly assaulted Ehiya and, to ‘overawe the crowd’ and keep them at bay, reportedly drew a pistol.

Not all of the workers agreed that the strike at Bamangachi was inspired by the events at Tundla. Ram Ekbal Singh, an elected representative of the workers, argued that workers struck because of local grievances, such as abuse and deprivation of leave. A shunter named Korban insisted that the strike was ‘declared as a protest against injustice done to his own countrymen at Tundla and elsewhere.’ Even with variance among the workers, Korban was able to convince a large contingent to go on strike and an attempted negotiation between these workers and the police had ambivalent results as some returned to work while others remained on strike. A representative for the Amrita Bazar Patrika interviewed some of the strikers and learned that they ‘regretted that they had not struck work during the past 33 days’ and that their decision to strike was motivated by a need to ‘show some sympathy towards their fellow workers.’ ⁶⁷ The persistent perception of race-based violence, even though the importance of the allegations at Tundla was questioned, continued to play a considerable part in worker resistance, either moving people to stop work or renewing their commitment to the original demands.

McMohan’s outburst against Ehiya was yet another example of Europeans and Anglo-Indians accosting Indian workers. Violence was also a common aspect of worker resistance in the interwar period to which the letter encouraging abuses against loyal workers at Bamangachi attested. As Chandavarkar pointed out, workers would often have to resort to force in order to maintain the salience of the strike and the value of their labour as both were threatened by blacklegs. ⁶⁸ The majority of resistance to strike-breakers is articulated in vague terms, as in the case of the Asansol coal yard, where 700 strikers cleared all loyal workers. The story of Islam, a striker in Andal, Bengal, is a uniquely specific case of resisting strike-breakers and an example of the efficacy of the non-institutional communication network and how workers acted on the information they received.

Syed Mahammad Husain, the EIRILA Secretary, provided the following account of Islam’s story in a letter to the Amrita Bazar Patrika. As a loyal employee was leaving work ‘four lathies [cudgels] fell upon him.’ The worker shouted in pain and got the attention of military soldiers, who were charged with keeping peace at the station. The soldiers asked the worker if he recognised his assailants. He responded ‘one man seemed to me to be Islam, but I could recognise none.’ Subsequent to this accusation, ‘armed policemen proceeded to the Bazar [sic] and began to push and break doors of Bazar people. They broke open the door of a barber’s house and began to show their guns to him. All the male and female members of the house fled by a back door.’ The ‘bazar people’ protested the police’s tactics and implored them not to ‘interrupt the public peace.’ It is only after invading the barber’s house that the officers found Islam in the railway quarters, because of his ‘shrilling shout.’ ⁶⁹ The only additional information regarding Islam’s case is contained in two subsequent reports. On 2 March, the same newspaper reported that two other men had been arrested in connection to the assault but all three had been released on bail and their hearing had been scheduled for 9 and 10 March. There was no follow-up story regarding the hearing. The same article noted that the Deputy Magistrate for Andal ‘promised that he would warn the Military Commander and the town police never to handle any matter roughly unless obtaining [sic] the sanction of the Magistrate.’ This comment seems to refer to the invasion of the barber shop that caused considerable discontent among local people. ⁷⁰ Three weeks after the initial report about Islam, the Amrita Bazar Patrika published a list, compiled by R.N. Mishra, the Travelling Secretary of the EIRILA, of 99 employees of the East Indian Railway in Bengal and Bihar and Orissa who had been arrested during the strike. This list observed that Islam was employed as a gunner and that his accomplices were Hari Charan Kumar and Subhan and that the case was still pending. The list only indicated charges in cases concerning Indian Labour Association members. In the cases of railway employees, first names, occupations, and trial dates were consistently provided but charges were not. This asymmetry of information, provided by the Indian Labour Association, is difficult to interpret beyond acknowledging that the labour association may have tended to focus more on the strikes as a whole than on strikers’ actions. ⁷¹

Thus, Islam’s case not only provides insight into the ways in which worker information networks were actualised in order to protect their position, but also allows for a more thorough understanding of the relationship between strikers and the town. In early March, Roy Chaudhury, a labour member of the Council of State, attempted to undermine the position of the strikers within the surrounding community. In an interview he reflected on the profusion of new applicants who were ‘prepared to face any risk for the sake of their living.’ He based his comments on a communique from G.L. Colvin, the Agent of the East Indian Railway. This communique caused Chaudhury to note that the struggle of the unemployed and their desire for work was leading to their disillusionment with the strike, and he cautioned that this phenomenon ‘should be brought home to the strike leaders, who…are running the risk of losing their case and alienating the sympathy of the public.’ ⁷² At Andal, people ‘requested the soldiers not to interrupt public peace’ in the course of their search for Islam. The reason that the soldiers had begun their search in the bazar rather than in the railway quarters is unclear but the resistance that local residents voiced to their presence may suggest some solidarity with strikers. This interpretation is buttressed by other references to the relationship between townspeople and strikers.

The ‘local bazar people,’ who protested the police chase after Islam, were also engaged in boycotting strike-breakers. ⁷³ A report circulated in late February observing that ‘the townspeople [in Burdwan] have refused to sell foodstuffs to the loyal railway staff, both Indian and non-Indian.’ ⁷⁴ Thus, ‘sympathy of the public’ is not a single, straightforward concept and may have varied regionally. Burdwan was a major hub of the strike and the local community may have given more support to it there than elsewhere. Though Chaudhury might have only been referring to the waning sympathy of an unemployed public, the relationship between townspeople, strikers, and loyal workers was clearly fraught throughout Bengal in late-February and early-March 1922. The information network, which centred on strike meetings, facilitated the articulation of workers’ socio-political demands. Furthermore, the information that maintained the strike filtered through to the surrounding community and led to a social and economic boycott of loyal workers, which demonstrates the support that the workers’ demands received from the townspeople. This solidarity served as the foundation for the complicated political strategies that followed from the strike and enabled the workers to express a distinct claim to social citizenship through their demands.

IV

Having outlined the strike’s movement from station to station and assessed some of the salient features of its relationship to contemporary nationalist politics, the townspeople, and the state, it is now necessary to return to Mrinalini Sinha’s concept of the ‘double move.’ Defined as ‘both the demonstration of generic European concepts as partial or parochial, and their simultaneous remaking as potentially universal,’ this concept is critical to understanding the developing language of social citizenship. ⁷⁵ The strike effectively appropriated four interconnected discourses, which conventionally affirmed British colonial administration, in order to repudiate colonial power. The ways in which workers engaged with legal, penal, judicial and medical practices not only exemplified the limitations of Eurocentrism that Sinha examined, but also encourages an analysis that highlights the repudiation of British power through a distinctly liberal set of ideals.

Following Ramlal’s allegation against the two Europeans on the night of his assault, the strikers demanded that the railway and local government carry out independent investigations. Local officials attempted to satisfy this demand, first, by an investigation by the Chief of Police and, then, through a Magisterial inquiry. ⁷⁶ The results of this inquiry were registered during the Council of State debates by members Raza Ali and C.A. Innes. Both men recited the fact that the inquiry found the allegation to be a fabrication. However, the striking workers were unsatisfied with these results and ‘repudiated that inquiry,’ thereby asserting an alternate legal authority. ⁷⁷ Indeed, S.N. Banerjea, a prominent nationalist leader and traveling secretary of the East Indian Railway Indian Labour Union, presented a petition that rejected the magisterial inquiry and ‘demanded a new enquiry [sic]’ conducted by a five to one Indian majority committee. ⁷⁸ Underlying the Council members’ insistence that the railway company properly acknowledge and confront the gravity of the allegation was also the rejection not only of the inquiry, but also of magisterial authority. Moreover, the workers’ determination to contribute to an alternate inquiry clearly indicates that they intended to participate in the practice of local governance and the maintenance of law and order in a manner that suited their sense of justice. Thus, instead of simply arguing that the workers were recalcitrant in the light of unsympathetic findings, I argue that the mechanics of the liberal state were being appropriated by the workers to establish an alternate authority regarding their treatment at work.

Nonetheless, due to the official investigations, the government and print media largely remained incredulous to Ramlal’s claims. Indeed, the Magistrate opined that ‘whatever happened on the engine, there is no doubt that it was a most trivial occurrence and one which could not possibly be taken up in any criminal court.’ ⁷⁹ The Magistrate’s belief that the allegations would not stand in an Indian court of law is indicative of the official position on the strike. The Pioneer articulated the relationship between law and the strike more forcefully by stating that ‘the strike is entirely due to the preaching of lawlessness and racial hatred among the more ignorant classes of the community.’ ⁸⁰ Thus, the strike and legality were presented as mutually exclusive. However, though many newspaper reports championed the pre-eminence of colonial courts, the strikers pursued a distinctly judicial approach to support their case. Immediately following the alleged assault, striking workers requested that ‘an Indian judge should reside [sic] at the court of enquiry,’ thus demonstrating the lack of faith that workers had in the ability of a European or Anglo-Indian to honestly and accurately investigate the claims and bring Ramlal’s assailants to justice. ⁸¹

The strikers’ attitude to the colonial legal apparatus was further complicated within the realm of the railway station. ‘The strikers at Ghaziabad have now taken up a definitely political line,’ observed G.L. Colvin, the Agent of the railway, ‘and with the aid of a Khilafat organiser from Delhi have instituted their own courts and have even punished non-strikers with solitary confinement for a few hours at a time.’ ⁸² Though the issue of strikers intimidating strike-breakers and loyal workers has already been discussed, the focus now is to acknowledge the appropriation of the court structure, especially convicting and sentencing the accused, under the authority of the strike. This act of appropriation is integral to understanding the degree to which this event simultaneously repudiated European legitimacy while pursuing justice and maintaining the strength of the strike through a penal framework.

As part of the official investigation into Ramlal’s allegations he was sent to the Indian Sub-Assistant Surgeon, whose medical opinion was that there was no evidence to substantiate the kind of abuse alleged. ⁸³ In an interview, Mr Hudy, a person identified as a strike leader, revealed that, in Kolkata, Ramlal ‘secured a medical certificate establishing the alleged assault committed on him at Tundla.’ ⁸⁴ Though medical examiners at Agra were unable to detect the kind of injuries that would be induced by being beaten with a shovel, as the allegation goes, doctors in Kolkata were able to certify his complaints. The inconsistency between the diagnosis of local doctors and those in Kolkata was not overlooked by The Englishman. ‘One is curious to know why Calcutta was chosen in preference to other stations like Agra, Cawnpore or Allahabad where there are a goodly number of medical men.’ ⁸⁵ The truth of the allegation is secondary in this instance. Of primary concern is that workers subverted colonial order and sought a second opinion, one that was beyond the reach of the railway administration. Through seeking an alternate diagnosis in Kolkata, workers lodged a clear protest against medical opinion that was authorised by their employers and were determined to find an opinion that certified abuse.

Along with the remedy of violence, the issue of pay was a central concern during the strike. In its earliest version, the list of the strike’s demands included ‘the removal of the existing racial discrimination in the matter of status, pay, examination, and appointments to higher posts in the railway.’ ⁸⁶ However, this demand was quickly parsed and the issue of pay was given special attention. By 27 February, the EIRILA released a set of demands that included a 25 per cent pay increase. ⁸⁷ Moreover, according to an interview in The Leader, which was published on 1 March, ‘the additional 25 per cent increase in pay as per the Jhansi mass meeting of last year has not been granted as yet.’ ⁸⁸ Thus the issue of pay went from a demand that was rooted exclusively in issues of racial equality to an issue of contractual rights. ‘Temporally, colonial law installed evolutionary stages of capitalist development,’ Ritu Birla has argued, ‘distinguishing between premodern relations of status and those of contract.’ ⁸⁹ Birla has observed that colonial power was generally represented in the contract; however, precisely this power was being undermined during the strike. Though a record of the ‘mass meeting at Jhansi’ is difficult to find and though the Railway Board claimed not to have issued an order for such an increase in pay, workers were nonetheless determined to stay on strike until the terms of the contract were met. ⁹⁰ The institutional memory of the Railway Board notwithstanding, the perception that a contract had been breached was integral to the mobilisation of workers against their employer.

Strikers in 1922 focused on remaking the ideals of liberal universalism in India. Concomitant with this strategic double move, a global vitalisation of worker citizenship and rights in the interwar period was gaining momentum. The transnational moment of worker resistance can be emphasised through an assessment of the 1922 general strike in Nairobi.

V

Indian workers and their allies saw themselves as part of a global labour movement. ‘About the same time that the German railway strike and the revolutionary actions of the Rand miners were attracting the tense attention of the world,’ wrote M.N. Roy, ‘India was also visited by an industrial strike of quite a serious and extensive nature, the strike of the workers on the East India Railway.’ ⁹¹ Roy, ‘one of the premier international communists of the colonial world’ who also became ‘an anti-colonial icon,’ was attempting to place the Indian workers in a global context. ⁹² His article, published in International Press Correspondence, a monthly Marxist magazine based in Berlin that published revolutionary news from around the world, provided a broad overview of the significance of the strike for an English speaking audience. He advised that the strike was not ‘brought about through the efforts of the bourgeois politicians’ but, instead, was an ‘action taken by the workers on their own initiative.’ ⁹³ He placed the strike in the global context of interwar industrial resistance by briefly referring to the concomitant, though not identical, struggles of workers in South Africa and Germany. His attempt to present a transnational vantage point is prescient yet insufficient. This section will examine the 1922 worker protests in Nairobi, which will place the EIR strike in a context that highlights the common political, economic and racial contours of interwar anti-colonial resistance.

In British Africa, the emergence of a working class was a contested process, which was complicated by the colonial government’s dual concern for African ‘tradition’ and limited citizenship. ⁹⁴ Frederick Cooper has observed that colonial policy of indirect rule in Africa during the 1920s maintained a temporary workforce that was recruited to the commercial centre periodically but not recruited for long-term employment. Indeed, due to access to other economic resources, it was difficult to recruit long-term African labourers because they rejected the subservience connected to wage labour. ⁹⁵ Colonial logic sought to coerce temporary labour in lieu of risking the creation of a ‘detribalized’ working class. The primary issue, therefore, was negotiating the amount of labour that a ‘civilized government’ could coerce before it became despotic. ⁹⁶ Moreover, the fear of the ‘detribalized’ African was reflected in the colonial rhetoric of protecting African tradition at the expense of citizenship. If Africans were allowed to become educated, urban, Christian or wage earners, according to colonial policy, then the power of the government to delineate access to citizenship along ethnic and racial grounds would be undermined and the fortifications separating tradition from modernity would crumble. ⁹⁷ Yet, events in Nairobi in the aftermath of World War I constituted a moment of political mobilisation that exposed the limitations of colonial power in a time prior to broad-based trade unionism. ⁹⁸ This moment facilitated the subversion of race-based criteria for full legal citizenship, and the rhetoric of paternalism deployed by colonial governments, through a class-based appeal to certain fundamental rights.

On 14 March 1922, Harry Thuku, a well-known leader of the East African Association (EAA), was arrested for sedition under the Removal of Natives Ordinance. ⁹⁹ The arrest was seen by Nairobi’s ‘embryonic urban working class’, which formed the core of the EAA’s membership, as the colonial government’s attempt to silence Thuku’s campaign against racial discrimination and for economic and social justice. ¹⁰⁰ Specifically, the EAA demanded the repeal, or, at least, five year suspension, of the Native Registration Act (known as kipande), which was a punitive means of monitoring African labourers; due respect to native chiefs from district officials; annulment of the Hut Tax and insistence that Africans only pay the Poll Tax, as was the case for Europeans and Indians; and that the colonial administration allow Africans to purchase land throughout Kenya. ¹⁰¹ The colonial administration dismissed the demands as little more than the manipulation of Indian nationalists in Kenya. ¹⁰² Nonetheless, on 16 March, the EAA called for a general strike and between 7000 and 8000 Africans, primarily Kikuyu, descended on the police compound in Nairobi demanding Thuku’s release. ¹⁰³ The police observed that the first day of the strike was peaceful. However, on the second day, as the strike persisted, J.C. Bentley, Acting Commissioner, Kenya Police, claimed that ‘the mob had been continually harangued by its leaders…until the crowd… became excited and almost beyond any control.’ The police attempted to arrest the leaders of the strike but were rebuffed. Then, perceiving that the strikers might start throwing stones, the King’s African Rifles were summoned and subsequently opened fire on the strikers, killing 21 and injuring 31. ¹⁰⁴

The railway strike and the Kikuyu demonstration are both examples of workers protesting against their inequitable treatment by colonial officials and asserting certain rights, based on the logic of social citizenship in a colonial context. The events in Kenya present a powerful comparison to the events in India that highlights workers rejecting their shared subject position. In both Kenya and India, in the aftermath of World War I, Indian and African workers began to demand treatment as equals with other workers, regardless of race. The strikers on the East Indian Railway appropriated colonial institutions and sought alternatives to the existing social order while moving beyond the initial allegations of assault to challenge their subordination as workers. To put these simultaneous resistances in a global context underlines the transformation of worker politics and throws their perceptions of rights and citizenship during the interwar period into sharp relief.

The simultaneity of the mobilisations in India and Kenya is not only an early indication of the changing perception among workers of the ways in which they could negotiate the conditions of their labour, but also functions to problematise the narrative of historicism posed by postcolonial critics. ¹⁰⁵ Gopalan Balachandran has brought critical attention to, and attempted to dislodge, the ‘conventional assumptions about the centrality of freedom in capital’s social relationships in the West’ in the pre-war era. Thus, a transnational appreciation of worker resistance in the early 1920s magnifies the importance of the interwar period as an important moment globally for workers making claims to rights as workers. ‘Historicism,’ Chakrabarty has argued, ‘came to non-European peoples in the nineteenth century as somebody’s way of saying “not yet” to somebody else.’ ¹⁰⁶ This kind of historicism contends that non-European people are by definition incomplete and cannot achieve historical developments in advance of Europe. In contradistinction to historicism, then, Chakrabarty provided the concept of ‘peasant-but-modern,’ which allows him to argue that the different modernity that was attained in non-European contexts is modernity nonetheless. ¹⁰⁷ This article’s contention, however, is that this alternate modernity is not the only avenue to modernity available in non-European societies. Thus, the Kenyan case helps to re-contextualise the East Indian Railway strike in a global, interwar moment of worker assertiveness. Not only do non-European societies have access to peasant modernity, but also participate in the global renegotiation of workers’ modernity in the early-twentieth century. ¹⁰⁸

The strike on the East Indian Railway was considered the most disruptive labour dispute in 1922. The economic ramifications for the Railway Company were significant and the power over commerce that the workers demonstrated forced the state to affirm their right to strike as legitimate. ¹⁰⁹ However, that victory was short-lived as the railways came under direct state management in 1925 and a new debate over the legitimacy of strikes on public utilities began. ¹¹⁰ In the aftermath of the EIR strike, the colonial administration expanded the surveillance of worker disputes and the made the Labour Intelligence Officer a permanent part of the Government of Bengal, in order to facilitate official intervention in strikes and repression of workers. ¹¹¹ Moreover, the events on the East Indian Railway confirmed for the colonial Government that strikes were becoming a central aspect of worker politics. Prabhu Mohapatra has observed that the colonial state was forced to produce ‘systematic labour legislation’ after strike activity entered a new phase in the late 1920s, with the general strikes of 1928 and 1929 in Bombay being facilitated by increased cooperation between workers, trade unions and radical politicians. ¹¹²

C.A. Innes denounced the strike because ‘it is not a genuine economic strike; it is a purely political strike.’ ¹¹³ The contested presence of non-cooperation organisers and the shouts of Gandhi ki jai, however, do not form the core of the strike’s politics. The interjection, during the meeting in Burdwan, is suggestive of the politics at hand. Pet ke waaste was an indication that the strike was purposeful, not, as The Leader deemed it, ‘thoughtless action.’ ¹¹⁴ The workers fought together, capitalising on their power over the transport of coal and the railway company’s profits, to force a confrontation with race-based discrimination. Their demands asserted that European legal and medical discourses were inadequate in their colonial articulation and, in order to achieve an adequate resolution to Ramlal’s case, they needed to be reworked and made universal. This activity suggests that workers conceived of themselves as social citizens entitled to the same legal and financial provisions afforded to their European and Anglo-Indian counterparts.

The primary significance of this strike for the study of labour mobilisation in colonial India is the distinct idiom of citizenship within which the workers operated. As Sumit Sarkar has argued, the increased ability of workers to strike because of a perception that rights had been abrogated was connected to the gradual ‘breakdown of authority’ caused by the eruption of mass militancy in the early 1920s. ¹¹⁵ This breakdown signalled a weakness of the colonial state to workers as well as nationalists. Gandhi’s campaign of non-cooperation contributed significantly to the perception that the state was vulnerable. However, the workers’ political actions, which Gandhi denounced, were intended to redress racial violence and pay discrimination and to assume for themselves a rightful place in the narrative of citizenship. Analyses of the Indian labour movement, especially prior to Independence, must appreciate the significance that labourers in India mobilised simultaneously with those in Europe and Africa. Social citizenship, supported by the international movement toward the just treatment of workers, which was beyond the scope of Gandhian non-violence and Congress nationalism, was integral to worker politics in India in the aftermath of World War I.