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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2014
This article explores Gandhi's engagement with the industrial workers of Ahmedabad city and his effort to integrate them into urban society. As the emergence of a large textile industrial sector shaped Ahmedabad as one of the first industrial cities in India, migrants flowed into the city in search of work, and settled in makeshift slums surrounding the textile mills. Concepts such as citizen and citizenship were progressively redefined so as to place the whole city in counterpoint to the countryside. For the migrants, becoming a citizen meant conforming to a lifestyle which reflected the ideal model of urbanity. In 1918, one year before launching the first national satyagraha, Gandhi led the mill workers of Ahmedabad in a ‘righteous struggle’ in opposition to the city's industrialists. While he led the workers in their quest for higher wages, Gandhi also acted on a broader level to help workers integrate in the city as ‘citizens’.
* This article benefited from very useful comments received in three occasions: it was first presented in a seminar at the Royal Asiatic Society (London), in January 2010; later the same arguments were discussed in a seminar at the University of Torino (April 2012) and at the Centro Studi Piero Gobetti (Turin) as part of a seminar series on labour and trade unionism, May 2012. I am grateful to all those who contributed to developing my arguments about the role of Gandhi in ‘urbanise’ the migrant-labourers of Ahmedabad. Still, I alone am responsible for any remaining inconsistencies.
1 See, for instance, Erik Erikson's path-breaking work: Erikson, Erik H., Gandhi's truth : on the origins of militant nonviolence (New York and London, 1993)Google Scholar. Important references for the elaboration of this article were also taken from Lelyveld, J., Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India (New York, 2011)Google Scholar; Hardiman, David, Gandhi in his Time and Ours : the Global Legacy of his Ideas (London 2003)Google Scholar; Brown, Judith M., Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (New Haven, London, 1989)Google Scholar; Partha Chatterjee, “Gandhi and the Critique of Civic Society”, (ed.) R. Guha (New Delhi, 1984).
2 A recent, fierce debate between Perry Anderson and Ananya Vajpeyi brought Gandhi again to the fore of academic interests. Anderson, Perry, “Gandhi Centre Stage”, London Review of Books, vol. 34, n. 13 (2012), pp. 3–11 Google Scholar; Vajpeyi, Ananya, “Nimbus of Empire, Charisma of Nation. A response to Perry Anderson”, Seminar, 636, (2012) (online access http://www.india-seminar.com/2012/636/636_essay.htm)Google Scholar.
3 Shani, Ornit, “Gandhi, Citizenship and the Resilience of Indian Nationhood”, Citizenship Studies, vol. 15, n. 6–7 (2011), pp. 659–678 Google Scholar; Vinay Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship, and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, Dr. Mohan Singh Mehta Memorial Lecture, Udaipur (India), 2008, pp. 1–25. Here, in particular, see Vinay Lal, p. 3, and Ornit Shani, p. 5.
4 Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p.11; Shani, “Gandhi Citizenship and the Resilience of Indian Nationhood”, pp. 663–664.
5 Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”, p. 6. See Shani, also, Ibid, pp. 663–664 Google Scholar.
6 Shani, Ibid, p. 661; Lal, Ibid, p.11.
7 Gandhi, M. K., The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, (henceforth quoted as CWMG), vol. XXIX, p. 42, 26 August 1924 Google Scholar. All the references to Gandhi's speeches, letters and leaflets are taken from the complete collection of his works, the 2001 revised edition in 100 volumes, available on-line at www.gandhiserve.org in PDF format.
8 Reportedly, by the mid of the XIX century, the opium trade was worth ten times the commerce of cotton, traditional activity for the merchants of Ahmedabad. Gillion, Kenneth L., Ahmedabad : a study in Indian urban history (Berkeley, 1968), p. 49 Google Scholar.
9 Spodek, Howard, “Traditional Culture and Entrepreneurship; A Case Study of Ahmedabad”, Economic and Political Weekly, Review of Management (February 1969)Google Scholar.
10 For a thorough analysis of the early phases of industrial expansion in Ahmedabad see Gillion, Ahmedabad, chap. III; Breman, Jan, The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class; Sliding Down the Labour Hierarchy in Ahmedabad, India (New Delhi, 2004), pp.18 ffGoogle Scholar.
11 Breman, Working Class, pp.18 ff.
12 The Report of the Royal Commission of Labour in India (1929), p.277, quoted in Paresh Majmundar, An Anatomy of Peaceful Industrial Relations (Bombay, 1973), pp. 237–238. The word chawl, generally used to define quarters where migrants and working class people are housed, can describe different types of settlement according to the city it refers to. In Ahmedabad, chawls are one-storey tenements of usually one room each, aligned along narrow, unpaved, alleyways.
13 Raychaudhuri, Siddhartha, “Colonialism, Indigenous Elites and the Transformation of Cities in the Non-Western World: Ahmedabad (West India), 1890-1947”, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 35, n. 3 (2001), pp.716 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Shankarlal Banker was at that time Secretary of the Home Rule League in Bombay. Anasuya Sarabhai (1885–1969), after two years of stay in London, where she studied at the London School of Economics and came in close contact with the Fabian Society, came back to Ahmedabad. In 1916 she started doing social work and founded a night school in a working class area. Sister of the mill-owner Ambalal Sarabhai, she spent her life to the service of the poor and the labourers in Ahmedabad, and contributed to found the mill workers’ trade union, the Majoor Mahajan, of which she became life president.
15 Gillion, Ahmedabad, Chapter IV.
16 Ibid , p.144.
17 Ibid , p.144.
18 Raychaudhuri, “The Transformation of Ahmedabad 1890–1947”, p. 678. See also, Gillion, Ahmedabad, pp. 144 ff. and 160 ff., on the dialectic between traditional caste ties and social change.
19 Pathak, Devarat and Sheth, Pravin, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. From Civic to National Leadership (Ahmedabad, 1980), pp. 43–68 Google Scholar. In this section a detailed account of Patel's confrontation with the Municipal Councillor, Mr Shillidy, is provided.
20 Parikh, Narhari D., Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Ahmedabad, 1953), pp. 270–271 Google Scholar.
21 Ibid , p. 271.
22 Among the extensive literature on the field, a thorough analysis of the social dimension and the story of the working classes in Ahmedabad has been written by Jan Breman, Working Class. Two other books, from different perspectives, provide with interesting analyses and important information about the same topic: Sujata Patel, The Making of Industrial Relations; the Ahmedabad Textile Industry, 1918–1939 (New Delhi, 1987); Majmundar, Anatomy of Peaceful Industrial Relations.
23 Majmundar, Anatomy of Peaceful Industrial Relations, p. 76.
24 Ibid , p. 76.
25 Ibid , p. 82.
26 Ibid , p. 78. Mahadev Desai, Gandhi's personal secretary, published a full account of the episode in 1951, including the text of the leaflets which were distributed to the workers during the days of the lock-out. See Desai, Mahadev, A Righteous Struggle: A Chronicle of the Ahmedabad Textile Labourers’ Fight for Justice (Ahmedabad, 1951)Google Scholar. Also, for a critical revision of the episode see J. Breman, Working Class, pp. 40 ff.
27 J. Breman, Working Class, p. 41.
28 CWMG, vol. XI, p. 335.
29 Ibid , vol. XI, p. 336.
30 Breman, J., Working Class, p. 42 Google Scholar.
31 See for instance Mahadev Desai, Righteous Struggle, Introduction.
32 CWMG, vol.16, p. 313, 7 March 1918.
33 It is worth noticing, here, how Gandhi considers, in his moral critique of poverty, making debts as a cause, rather than a symptom of poverty.
34 CWMG, vol.20, p. 218, 18 April 1920.
35 Breman, Jan, Working Class, pp.50 ffGoogle Scholar.
36 CWMG, vol. 64, pp. 109–110, 29 June 1934.
37 CWMG, vol.24, p. 386, 8 June 1921. Following Partha Chatterjee, such an organic conception of society is in line with Gandhi's utopia of an “enlightened anarchy” in which each person becomes part of a “perfect system of reciprocity in the exchange of commodities and services”, P. Chatterjee “Gandhi and the Critique of Civil Society”, p. 165.
38 “No workers should take liquor, commit theft or treat the Dhed or the Banghi as untouchable. This is what I expect from you” [Italic in the original]. CWMG, vol.23, p.387, 13 April 1921.
39 CWMG, vol.16, p. 351, 19 March 1918.
40 Marshall, T. H. and Bottomore, Tom, Citizenship and social class (London, 1992)Google Scholar; T. H. Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class” (first published in 1950), (ed.) Manza, Jeff and Sauder, Michael (New York, 2009), pp. 148–154 Google Scholar.
41 Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class”, p. 150.
42 Sharit K. Bhowmik, “The Politics of Urban Space in Mumbai. ‘Citizens’ versus the Urban Poor”, (ed.) M. E. John, P. K. Jha and S. Jodhka (New Delhi, 2006), pp. 147 - 162.
43 Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class”, pp. 148 – 149; Bhowmik, “The Politics of Urban Space in Mumbai”, pp. 148 - 148.
44 Lal, “Gandhi, Citizenship and the Idea of a Good Civil Society”; “Shani, Gandhi, Citizenship and the Resilience of Indian Nationhood”.
45 Douglass, C. M. and Friedmann, John, Cities for citizens: planning and the rise of civil society in a global age (Chichester, 1998), pp.1–2 Google Scholar.
46 See, for instance, CWMG, vol.29, p.41, 26 August 1924.