Prabhabati Dasgupta
Prabhabati Dasgupta was one of the very few women who took part in the trade unionist movement in colonial Bengal.
Early life
Dasgupta was born into affluence. She was the daughter of Tarakchandra Dasgupta and Mohini Devi; K. C. Das, a noted Indian enterpreneur, was among her siblings. In 1920, Dasgupta obtained a MA in psychology from University of Calcutta;[1] the same year, she was accepted as a Barbour Scholar at the University of Michigan. In 1927, she received a PhD from Heidelberg University.[1]
Activism
While in Germany, Dasgupta met M. N. Roy—then, a leading member of the Communist International—and was inspired to return to Calcutta and take to labor activism;[2] Samita Sen notes her to be one of the very few women who took part in the trade unionist movement in colonial Bengal.[3]
All Bengal Scavengers' Union
Beginning late 1927, Dasgupta became a regular visitor to the residence-slums of the manual scavengers in Kolkata; in the process, she socialized with them extensively—breaching caste purity norms—and came to be known as "Dhangar Ma" (lit. Mother of Scavengers).[2] Soon, working alongside Muzaffar Ahmad and Dharani Goswami of the Communist Party of India, she aided them form the All Bengal Scavengers' Union (ABSU) and and went on to become its innaugural president.[2] In June 1928, Dasgupta was arrested for using abusive language against menial municipal employees who tried to break a local strike, organized by ABSU.[2]
Tanika Sarkar, a pre-eminent historian of gender in colonial India, notes Dasgupta to have belonged to a generation of avant-garde women—from privileged backgrounds—in inter-War Calcutta who defied the social norms of the time as much out of a personal desire to revolt as due to a commitment to leftist political ideology.[2] Notably, such a defiance drew both sympathy—from the Nationalists who, for example, were horrified at an young educated lady, working for social upliftment, being arrested by the Police—and ire—from the conservative press who took umbrage at a Baidya woman intermingling with the untouchables—in the contemporary society.[2][3]
Bengal Jute Workers' Union
The Bengal Jute Workers' Union (BJWU) was formed in late 1928 out of a merger between the Bengal Jute Workers' Association, which had come up in present-day North 24 Parganas, and the Chengail and Bauria Jute Workers' Union which had a foothold in Howrah and Budge Budge.[4] Apart from the Kankinarah Labour Union (KLU)—noted for its moderate stances and fervent opposition to Communism—it was the only significant trade union in the jute mill sector in Bengal.[4][5]
In May 1929, Dasgupta was elected as the president of BJWU; the election was necessitated by the colonial government choosing to arrest Kalidas Bhattacharya, the founder-president of the Union, for alleged involvement in a communist conspiracy to overthrow the Government.[4] In the same election, Kali Kumar Sen was elected the chairman; a leading Communist, he eschewed a more radical brand of politics than Dasgupta and this led to factional rivalry.[4]
Jute mill strike (1929)
In July 1929, as the Indian Jute Mills Association (IJMA) increased mandatory work hours and decreased bonuses, workers began defying the management by refusing to work beyond the old requirements and then engaging in total strikes.[4][5] Rumours of an increase in work-time had been rife for months and the two unions had met as early as May when Dasgupta and others—unlike Sen—rejected striking in favour a discussion-based approach.[4] Even in mid-July, Dasgupta had refused to concede to a strike and even urged workers to rejoin work before conceding to a compromise where the workers joined work but produced fewer clothes; this plan, however, did not work as intended as the mill-owners resorted to mass-layoffs.[4]
As tensions increased, sometime around late July, Dasgupta expressed her support—out of compulsion or not[a]—for a full-blown strike; in the next few days, Sen, Bankim Mukherjee, and other colleagues from BJWU utilized the existing networks of communist labour activists to spread the call throughout the jute belt and integrate local strikes under its purview.[4] However, Dasgupta maintained a politically mellower stance than her rival, Sen, throughout — Anne Sailer, a labour historian of Colonial Bengal, notes that while the latter's public addresses invoked the vocabulary of class conflict, her's were predicated on honour, responsibility, and solidarity; supporters routinely introduced Dasgupta as the caring Mother of the workers and she was even deified as Lakshmi.[4][5]
Finally, on 3 August, Dasgupta called for a general strike in Jagatdal and Titagarh, to begin from two days later.[4][b] By 6 August, several mills across Kolkata and its immediate suburbs[c] had joined what was an unprecedented confrontation between the labouring class and industrialists; the strike even spread into areas where BJWU barely had any organizational hold.[4][5] By mid-August, even the mills from the extremities—Uluberia, Budge Budge, Bauria, etc.—had joined in though often with unique—and even opposing—demands that didn't find a place in the strike's official agenda, set by Dasgupta; "intensive picketing, processions of bands of workers carrying red flags, and extensive distribution of radically worded pamphlets and posters printed on red" became routine as about 3 million labourers refused to join work until their demands were met with.[1][5]
As the strike prolonged, anti-colonialism became an integral part of the protest as the colonial state itself drew umbrage for the poor condition of the workers; further, the strike began to spread across other industries, forcing the government to intervene.[4] Despite not being a registered trade union, BJWU was invited to take part in a tripartite meeting with the IJMA and the government labour officer; Dasgupta was asked to represent BJWU in what was a significant political victory for the nascent organization.[4] On 16 October, a settlement was reached—wherein the IJMA promised to increase the pay proportionately to the increased work hours, restore old bonus schemes, provide maternity benefits, and not retaliate against those who partook in the strike—and Dasgupta called off the strike.[4]
Aftermath and Expulsion
Most of Dasgupta's colleagues were not aware of her negotiations and had rejected an informal offer—roughly to the same effects—from IJMA only a couple of days before; further, the settlement offered no solution to the unique issues that affected individual mills.[4][d] Also, unknownst to almost all workers, the strike never had a demand for increasing wages on the agenda; on 20 August, when workers in Champdani protested the settlement and demanded better wages, she denied support and asked them to wait till the union was in a better shape.[4] In other areas, workers heckled BJWU leaders and even demanded that they be paid a week's salary by the union since the accepted settlement ran parallel to what was informally proposed a week before.[4]
On 25 August, in what was a Communist takeover, Sen took over the mantle of BJWU and Dasgupta was expelled; she promptly re-founded the Bengal Jute Workers’ Association (BJWA) and became its president.[4] Recollecting her life in 1968, Dasgupta blamed the expulsion on jealousy — she also rejected having engaged in any "trade union movement" during the 1929 strike and claimed to have acted merely out of humanist instincts;[5] the mills and its localities were like her zamindari (fiefdom) and she had supposedly banned communists from even entering the areas.[5]
Bengal Jute Workers’ Association
Beginning 1930, the trade union movement became fragmented as rival trade unions began to exercise dominance over different mill areas — in North 24 Parganas, BJWA remained dominant while in the South, BJWU built its stronghold; in Hooghly, neither had a base and a group of revolutionary terrorists reigned supreme.[4] In early March, Dasgupta called for a one-day strike in the mills around Jagatdal and Titagarh to compel the IJMA into negotiating better salaries with the workers; while the strike unexpectedly continued till the end of the month, it was unsuccessful and the workers were compelled to resume work unconditionally.[4]
Retirement
Sometime around late 1931, Dasgupta permanently withdrew from politics for reasons which remain unclear.[3]
Personal life
Dasgupta married Bakar Ali Mirza, a fellow trade-Unionist and then-general Secretary of the Bengal Jute Workers Union.[3]
Footnotes
- ^ The decision, undoubtedly, was precipitated to some extent by an attempt to combat the communist radicalization of BJWU.[5] Notably, KLU, which continued to advocate a moderate response—choosing to characterize the strikes as the handiwork of political disruptors, urging the workers to call off strikes, and even trying to break picket lines—lost almost its entire base by August;[5] however, at the same time, BJWU's initial forays into convincing the workers around Titagarh to strike was unsuccessful and there were remarkably strong anti-strike sentiments.[4] Thus, concludes Sailer, the strikes, "rather than being triggered by workers' agency or trade unionists' activities, ... emerged precisely within the tension between the trade union activity and workers' agency."
- ^ Sailer suggests two reasons for the choice of the place and the date — Sen had been imprisoned a couple of days before, having been arrested by the Police for agitating in a mill, and communist networks were weaker in this region than the South.[4] Thus, Dasgupta had an unprecedented chance to assert her command over BJWA and steer its politics more firmly in the future.[4]
- ^ By 6 August, mills in Rishra, Kankinarah, Jagatdal, Titagarh, and Garden Reach has joined the strike.[4]
- ^ Sailer views Dasgupta to have taken an easy route out to avoid losing control over the course of the strike.[4]
References
- ^ a b c Chattopadhyay, Manju; Chattopadhyaya, Manju (1991). "The Pioneering Women Labour Leaders of Bengal (1920-47): Some Observations". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 52: 744–749. ISSN 2249-1937.
- ^ a b c d e f Tanika, Sarkar (2013). "'Dirty Work, Filthy Caste': Calcutta Scavengers in the 1920s". In Ahuja, Ravi (ed.). Working Lives and Worker Militancy: The Policy of Labour in Colonial India. Tulika Books. pp. 175–176. ISBN 978-93-82381-21-1.
- ^ a b c d Sen, Samita (2021-03-04). "Gender and the Politics of Class: Women in Trade Unions in Bengal". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 44 (2): 362–379. doi:10.1080/00856401.2021.1888190. ISSN 0085-6401.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Sailer, Anne (2022). "'Various Paths Are Today Opened' – working-class politics and the general strike of 1929". Workplace relations in Colonial Bengal: The Jute Industry and Indian Labour 1870s–1930s. Bloomsbury.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Goswami, Omkar (1987). "Multiple Images: Jute Mill Strikes of 1929 and 1937 Seen through Other's Eyes". Modern Asian Studies. 21 (3): 547–583. ISSN 0026-749X.