The Manifesto adopted unanimously by the delegates to the foundation congress of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 1920 states, “Workers of India! There is only one thing for you to do. You must realize your unity…. Let unity and brotherhood of man be your watchwords.” Also passed was a unanimous resolution that said, “Every mill, factory and workshop where women are employed should be provided with special accommodation where the women workers can keep their children during the working hours.” (AITUC 50 Years) In response to these calls, a number of women activists came forward to champion the cause of the working class throughout India, and especially in Bengal and Bombay.

There have been some outstanding women trade unionists of Bengal and Bombay. Four of these pioneering women labour leaders are Santosh Kumari Devi, Dr Prabhabati Das Gupta, Sakina Begum and Sudha Roy. Not one of them being part of the history of our working class movement has the recognition that she deserves.

Santosh Kumari Devi

Santosh Kumari Devi, an ardent nationalist and supporter of the great swarajist leader, Desbandhu Chittaranjan Das, started working among the jute mill workers of the Gouripur Naihati region in the industrial suburbs of greater Calcutta. Though she was a highly educated, well-to-do lady, she worked tirelessly among jute workers from 1922 to 1927 through the industrial jute belt of Bengal from Naihati to Budge Budge. She mixed freely with workers who were Urdu speaking Muslims and those who would now be known as dalits. She quickly became the Mairam (Mother) of thousands of jute workers.

What is remarkable is that she told the workers  in every meeting, in every area and in all her writings in her journal Sramik Patrika  that they should unite, form unions and stand on their own feet. She first formed the Gouripur Jute Mill Workers` Association and then the Bengal Jute Workers` Association, and led a number of successful strikes. As a result of these strikes, Gouripur was declared to have the best working conditions and the highest scale of wages. (V.B. Karnik, Strikes in India).

In an interview she said, “We set up night schools and even health centres for working men, women and children. Unfortunately, the national leaders of that time gave little or no thought for the toiling masses.”

In Sramik Patrika she wrote, “If we want to liberate the oppressed peasants and workers, then many of the laws of the present society have to be destroyed and shall have to be fundamentally restructured according to new ideals.” (22 February 1925)

She repeatedly noted that she was not a communist, but was grateful for the splendid cooperation that she received from early communist trade unionists such as Kalidas Bhattacharya, Kali Sen and Bankim Mukherjee. She was completely non-sectarian.

When she spoke about the workers, the exploitation that they suffer and their struggles, she seemed to go back more than 50 years and her whole being seemed to light up. She was for the moment no longer a frail old woman but `Mairam` of thousands of workers of that period.

Dr. Prabhabati Das Gupta

Scavengers and sweepers throughout India have been looked down upon as untouchables–the wretched of the earth. In 1928, the early communists Muzaffar Ahmed, Dharani Goswami and an outstanding woman, Dr. Prabhabati Das Gupta, became the unquestioned leaders of the scavengers. Their struggle led to the formation of the Scavengers Union of Bengal. Prabhabati Das Gupta was the President, Muzaffar Ahmed the Vice President and Dharani Goswami the Secretary.     

On 5 March of the same year, 8,000 scavengers went on strike in Calcutta. Prabhabati Das Gupta and others went to the workplaces and the slums of the scavengers, making speeches and holding group meetings. Their demands were wage increase, suitable housing and accommodation, 15 days leave per year, medical benefits and free primary education for their children. The strike was settled by J.M. Sen Gupta, the then Mayor of Calcutta.

Begum Sakina

A decade later, a militant strike of the scavengers of Calcutta Corporation was led by a highly educated Muslim lady, Begum Sakina Faruk Sultana Moazeda. She is, unfortunately, one of our forgotten people, even among the historians of the working class movement. And yet, there was a time in 1939-40 when her name was magic to thousands of scavengers working in Calcutta Corporation.

On 26 March 1940, nearly 18,000 workers went on strike for seven days. Their main demand was to be granted a dearness allowance. It was during this strike, by dint of her tireless activities, that Begum Sakina became the unchallenged leader of the Calcutta scavengers. Few trade union leaders in 1939-40 enjoyed such immense popularity and prestige among the Bengal working class as did Begum Sakina.

Sudha Roy

A somewhat different outstanding woman labour activist of the 1930s and `40s was Sudha Roy. She was a school teacher in South Calcutta all her life. Almost every afternoon, she went to Kidderpur dock, to work among the dock workers. Her main activity was to educate the dock workers in socialist ideology, a task she carried out admirably. All the workers were Urdu speaking Muslims, and young Sudha Roy was the only woman trade unionist working among them. She was totally unafraid, and the dock workers protected her from all possible attacks by agents of the capitalists. She was `Bahinji` to them. Only those who were familiar with the lanes and by lanes of the dock area can understand the enormous difficulty and dangers that Sudha would have faced when she worked there as a lone woman activist. Among the trade union leaders, Sudha Roy was the first to consciously and explicitly take politics and ideology to the working class.

The Condition of Women Workers in the Jute Mills of Calcutta

The general strike of the jute textile workers in 1929 in Calcutta industrial area was a landmark in the historical processes of the formation of the working class, class struggle and class consciousness in colonial Bengal and India. The language used in the leaflets was distinctive: “Come, brethren, combine, let all unite and start a hartal in every mill. Stand up with chest inflating against the oppression of the pot-bellied owners…Victory is certain, if you fight together.”

What were the conditions of work which the strike opposed? In 1925, Thomas Johnston (British MP) and John Sime (Secretary of Dundee Union of Jute and Flax Workers) inquired into the condition of the jute workers of India. They were shocked by the miserably low wages of women workers and the prevalence of sexual harassment. The workers were housed in vile, filthy, disease-ridden hovels called bustees, which had neither light nor water supply. They also found that half the babies born in the bustees died at a very early age.

After 20 years, in 1943, K.P. Chattopadhyay, Professor of Anthropology, Calcutta University, visited a number of huts, selected at random, in one of the biggest jute workers` bustees in Howrah. None of the huts inspected was any better than those described in Johnston and Sime`s report.

In 1979, Sisir Mitra, labour historian and activist, carried out a survey of a big jute mill in Howrah, in which over 16,000 workers were employed. He interviewed many women workers, who told him that the conditions for women were very bad, and that they would not like their daughters to work in any jute mill. How is it that we hear so bitter a comment 54 years after the horrible conditions of the mills were exposed?

Currently, there are very few women employed in jute mills and almost all who are, are casual workers. The late Kamalapati Roy, General Secretary of the Bengal branch of the AITUC said in 1997 that the only job that women now do in the jute mills is that of sweepers. Women have practically been driven out from employment in the jute industry under various pretexts.