UNIV. OF

VING

LABOUR IN INDIA

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

INDIA is passing through a time of strain, and it is inevitable that attention should centre on the more obvious causes of unrest. While this is so, changes that will have great influence on her future are going on almost unnoticed. Mining areas are being enlarged and new mills are being built. The congestion of thousands of workers in limited areas is increasing. Many who are alive to the urgency of agricultural and village problems have not realized that in certain localities the industrial development is one side, and not an unimportant side, of the village problem as that exists to-day. Since the meetings of the Washington Labour Conference in 1919, Indian Labour has been definitely linked up with International Labour. Not only within the boundaries of Hindustan, but throughout the world, its influence will be felt. Through the gates of modern industry, pioneer groups of outcastes, finding their way to emancipation, take their first steps on the path to self-respect and independence, and their eventual influence on the future of India will be coloured by their experiences on the journey.

India shares with other countries the economic difficulties that arise with industrialism. There are also, for her, special problems associated with factory life because of her social customs and her climate. Further perplexities arise because of the wide-spread belief that all industrial problems would be easy to solve were Indian

Home Rule an established fact. "Once Self-Government is attained, there will be prosperity enough for all, but not till then," is not an isolated expression of belief. For while a considerable strength of opinion amongst Nationalists is ranged against modern developments, and would fain see India once again a land of agriculture and village industry, a very powerful propaganda is at work to secure for her a foremost place in the world's markets.

There is no cause for wonder that a nation with a great past, reawakening to new possibilities for the future, should be moved by an intense desire to gain supremacy, whether that supremacy be along the lines of the spiritual conquest of the world, or of commerce and a leading place in industrial matters, in coming years. But such a desire is a serious development at a time when ideals of world-wide comity and mutual co-operation are striving to make themselves felt and understood, and when there has arisen the hope of securing better international relationships which shall minimize the elements in commerce that tend to separate the peoples of one nation from those of others, and shall lay the foundations of lasting peace. The demand that India should have a free and equal place amongst the commercial nations of the world is apt to give place to the demand that India shall lead the nations as she did of old, when she was the centre of commerce for the East and when her manufactures were the choicest merchandise in the markets of the West. But it is possible that the years will prove to future generations of Indians and English alike that the effort for world supremacy in industrial matters is in direct opposition to progress in the conditions of labour, and must for that reason eventually defeat its own aims.

If it be admitted that the conditions of industrial workers in India attract little attention, it must further be realized that those conditions that affect women workers have still less hold on public thought. To many in the West, the mere coupling of Indian women and "modern

Reported from the Presidential Speech of Mr. Dadabhai Naorji at the National Congress of 1906.

industry" is startling. If thought is turned in that direction it falters because there is so little in experience to which it can attach itself. Books, and conversation with those who have some knowledge of India can open the mind to many sides of the life and thought of that great continent. But the particular subject of this study has no place in literature, and cannot embody itself in imagination.

Some knowledge of women's place in modern European mills and factories, and a floating picture of graceful figures in brilliantly coloured saris, with a sense of the incongruous in trying to fit factory stringency into the leisurely life of an Eastern people, and an effort to imagine the mutual reaction of agelong custom on mechanical device, are all that even an interested traveller carries on board. But as such a voyager looks back to blocks of mills, to crowded dwellings, to bazars, the picture which had not even outlines is filled in magically. For that which had no existence in the mind has become a living entity. India's labouring people have laid hold of the imagination. But they have done more than that. They have escaped from the separating adjective and are just "people."

It is true that there are distinctive features, and that these features must be understood and reckoned with in any effort to understand problems and possibilities as they appear in the great industrial centres; but the fact borne in on the imagination is that the questions raised are world questions, and that those who are implicated in the solving of them, or who suffer for their non-solution, are living, breathing individuals, possessors of personality, with capacity to bring to the future real contributions that no others of the world's citizens may bring.

It is not easy to convey any sense of the pull on heart and conscience of the great crowds of inarticulate India, nor to express the double consciousness that arises, of the mass on the one hand and on the other of the personalities of those who compose it. For in city and in village alike, possibilities of direct human relationship, across barriers of race and language, constantly occur.

A trifling accident, an unexpected happening, the gesture of a child, a touch of humour, are of the things that unite, and then that secret breath of comradeship, than which in its fullness there is no more gracious gift in life, mingles for a moment the alien races.

In spite of the ignorance that prevails widely with regard to the conditions of women's labour in India, a real public interest has been aroused. This has been evident for a long time, but it has become much more conscious since the publication of the Conventions of the Washington Conference and the consequent discussions with regard to the extent to which these can be applied to Indian conditions. Outstanding instances of Welfare Work, Medical Research and the rising of Trade Union Organization have each helped to spread the interest. Public opinion as yet, however, has not the means for coming to an accurate knowledge of the facts. In a country like England, where much has been written about Labour, it is possible to count on a background of knowledge, and in writing of a single group of workers to deal almost entirely with the circumstances peculiar to them. This directness is impossible in the present instance. Though the special subject of inquiry is the conditions and surroundings of Indian women in textile mills, the survey must be broader, and must include, at least in outline, some indication of labour conditions generally. The woman cannot be separated from the man. Only quite recently, and still only to a very small extent, have women begun to work in groups apart from their menfolk. And the circumstances of mill-workers cannot be treated without reference to those of other workers, and to problems that are common to other types of work.

The fact that the entrance of women into factories in India is of recent date and is still on a very small scale, when the whole mass of the population is considered, makes it easier than it would otherwise be to judge what factory life means to an Indian woman. Her sisters who are not, so far as their work is concerned, affected by modern conditions can be found all over India, and

their lives and surroundings can be compared with those of the factory labourers.

It is impossible to be in India just now without being forcibly brought up against the political situation, on the one hand, and against the unfairness of the present way of working the industrial system, on the other. Varying points of view on both these subjects affect the progress of the Indian labourer and may have to be cited. But it simplifies matters greatly to know that, in the main, the subject of this book can be considered apart from theories on politics or on the industrial system. What answers the years will bring to the many questions of world-wide import that are agitating intellectual life today it were vain to conjecture; but whatever these answers may be, the conditions in which women are working in the mills of India have an interest of their own. There are wide divisions of thought about what must happen to industrialism, or in spite of it, before rational relationships between the different members of communities can be established and maintained; but there are demands in which all serious-minded men and women can unite, and in order to know how these may be met, it is necessary to learn as much as possible of what the actual conditions are. The working out of modifications of these conditions will affect the world, whatever change of spirit or change of form leads the industrial enterprise of the world on to higher planes. And whatever relationship may eventually exist between India and Britain, or between India and other nations, all countries will gain by every better standard accepted and by each growing avenue of sympathy.

Before going on to consider conditions in detail, it will probably be wise to try to find a standard by which these conditions may fairly be judged, and with regard to which suggestions may be made. It would obviously be unjust to judge by abstract ideals, or to measure eastern conditions by western. Two things, however, may be claimed. One of these is that there are certain things in the relations between man and man that are definitely anti-social; that are a discredit to the human