W orkers ’ M ovements Factory production began in India in the early part of the 1860s. You will recall our discussion on the specific character of industrialisation in the colonial period. The general pattern of trade set up by the colonial regime was one under which raw materials were procured from India and goods manufactured in the United Kingdom were marketed in the colony. These factories were, thus established in the port towns of Calcutta (Kolkata) and Bombay (Mumbai).
Later factories were also set up in Madras (Chennai). Tea plantations in Assam were established as early as in . In the early stages of colonialism, labour was very cheap as the colonial government did not regulate either wages or working conditions. You will remember the manner in which the colonial government ensured supply of labour in the tea plantations (Chapter ).
Though trade unions emerged later, workers did protest. Their actions then were, however, more spontaneous than sustained. Some of the nationalist leaders also drew in the workers into the anti-colonial movement. The war led …the Siliguri subdivision peasants’ conference proved to be a great success.
The peasants, quickened and strengthened by their earlier militant struggles, looked forward expectantly. Faces deadened and dulled with the grinding routine of labour on the jotedars ’ fields in sun and rain glowed with hope and understanding. According to Kanu Sanyal’s later claims, from March to April , all the villagers were organised. From , to , peasants were enrolled as wholetime activists.
Peasants’ committees were formed in every village and they were transformed into armed guards. They soon occupied land in the name of peasants’ committees, burnt all land records ‘which had been used to cheat them of their dues’, cancelled all hypothecary debts, passed death sentences on oppressive landlords, formed armed bands by looting guns from landlords, armed themselves with conventional weapons like bows, arrows and spears, and set up parallel administration to look after the villages… Source: Sumanata Banerjee “Naxalbari and the Left Movement” in ed. Ghanshyam Shah Social Movements and the State (Sage, Delhi ) pp. – The guerrilla movement was heralded by the forcible cutting of crops from the land of a rich landlord at Garudabhadra, near Boddapadu in the plains area on November .
More significant was the action in the hill tracts the next day, when in Pedagottili village of the Parvatipuram Agency area, about Girijans from several villages armed with bows, arrows and spears... raided the house of a …landlord cum moneylender... and took possession of his hoarded paddy, rice, other food grains and property worth about Rs. , .
They also seized documents.