Red Flags in the Mills: Workers, Communists and Socialists

While Congress negotiated with the Raj, another politics was being built in the mills and docks of Bombay and Calcutta. Trade unions, communists and socialists turned workers into a political force, staging the strikes that shook the government, surviving the Meerut conspiracy trial, and eventually pushing the Congress itself toward an economic programme. This is the story the standard nationalist narrative often hurries past.

Before the AITUC: the first labour pioneers

Organised labour did not begin in 1920. Sasipada Banerjee founded the Working Men's Club in Calcutta and the journal Bharat Sramajibi, the first sustained attempt to speak for Indian workers. In Bombay, N.M. Lokhande founded the Bombay Millhands' Association in 1890 - India's first workers' organisation - and edited the Marathi paper Dinbandhu, demanding weekly holidays and shorter hours decades before unions were legal.

The birth of organised labour: AITUC

Industrial India's working class had been striking since the late 19th century, but 1920 gave it a national voice. The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was founded at Bombay on 31 October 1920, with Lala Lajpat Rai as its first president, a signal that the mainstream national movement took labour seriously. The AITUC coordinated strikes, demanded the eight-hour day, and linked workers' grievances to the demand for independence.

The decade's high point was the Bombay textile strike of 1928, led by the communist-influenced Girni Kamgar Union, which shut the mills for six months. Workers also built explicitly political formations: the Workers and Peasants Parties (1925-27) in Bengal, Bombay, Punjab and the United Provinces acted as the communists' legal front, organising workers and peasants as a single political constituency.

The communists: Tashkent to Kanpur

The Communist Party of India was founded at Tashkent in October 1920 by M.N. Roy and a small group of émigré revolutionaries. Its formal all-India conference was held at Kanpur in December 1925, by which time communist groups were already active in the trade unions. The party's influence in AITUC grew through the late 1920s, until the government struck back.

Two dates, two places, one party - do not mix them up. The Communist Party of India was founded at Tashkent on 17 October 1920 by M.N. Roy and his associates. The party's first organised formation inside India came later, at the Kanpur conference of December 1925. The PDF-style shorthand 'CPI founded 1925' refers to Kanpur; the Tashkent date is the party's formal birth.

Repression: Meerut and the 1929 laws

The Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929-33) arrested over thirty trade union and communist leaders, including Sohan Singh Josh of the Kirti Kisan Sabha, on charges of conspiring to overthrow the government. The marathon trial, lasting four years, backfired on the Raj: it turned obscure organisers into national figures and drew international attention to Indian labour.

Alongside the trial, the government pushed the Trade Disputes Act (1929), which banned strikes without notice and outlawed sympathetic strikes, and the Public Safety Bill (1929), aimed at deporting 'undesirable' foreigners, widely read as a weapon against communist influence. The revolutionaries Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw their bombs in the Assembly precisely during the Public Safety Bill debate, to protest exactly this repressive turn.

The scale of 1928 must be felt, not just read: in that one year the strike wave cost over 31 million working days - and the Bombay textile strike alone kept some 150,000 workers out for six months. It was the largest working-class upsurge colonial India had ever seen, and it is what frightened the government into the conspiracy trials.

The conspiracy cases: how the Raj tried to crush the left

Unable to break the strikes, the government tried to break the organisers in court:

Note for the exam: keep these conspiracy cases (1922-33, against communists and trade unionists) strictly separate from the revolutionary cases of the same years. The Assembly Bomb Case belongs to the other family: on 8 April 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly to protest the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill - deliberately courting arrest to carry their message into the courtroom.

The socialists inside the Congress

In May 1934 at Patna, young Congressmen who thought the party's economic programme too timid founded the Congress Socialist Party (CSP), with Acharya Narendra Deva as president and Jayaprakash Narayan and Minoo Masani as its driving spirits. The CSP chose to work inside the Congress, pushing it toward land redistribution, workers' rights and a socialist programme, a democratic socialism rooted in Indian conditions rather than Comintern dictates.

The CSP's pressure showed: socialist ideas entered the Congress mainstream through the 1930s, culminating in the National Planning Committee (1938) under Nehru. When Subhas Chandra Bose broke with the Congress in 1939, he founded the Forward Bloc as a further-left alternative.

War, mutiny and the end of the Raj

The Second World War radicalised labour again. The Quit India Movement (1942) drew in railway and mill workers; the post-war wave of strikes in 1945-46, including the great railway and postal strikes, paralysed communications. When the Royal Indian Navy ratings mutinied in February 1946, Bombay's workers downed tools in solidarity, and figures like Aruna Asaf Ali openly advised the ratings. The left had come full circle: from the mills of 1920 to the docks of 1946, workers were now a force no transfer-of-power negotiation could ignore.

The capitalists: FICCI and the Bombay Plan

The national movement absorbed one more great constituency in the 1920s: the capitalist class. Men like G.D. Birla, Jamnalal Bajaj, J.R.D. Tata and Walchand Hirachand were building Indian industry under colonial handicaps: discriminatory tariffs, entrenched British managing agencies, and a state that taxed Indian enterprise while protecting British firms. They concluded that only political freedom would give Indian capital a fair field, and their alignment with the Congress was tactical rather than ideological: they wanted reforms, not revolution, and kept a careful distance from labour militancy.

Their organisation was FICCI, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, founded in 1927 on G.D. Birla's initiative with Purshottamdas Thakurdas as its first president. It was the all-India voice of Indian business: it funded the Congress, exposed colonial economic exploitation, and refused to negotiate with the British without Congress consent.

Their constructive programme was the Bombay Plan (1944): a fifteen-year blueprint for a planned economy drawn up by eight industrialists including Tata, Birla and Lala Shri Ram. It proposed massive state-led investment in industry and infrastructure, including public ownership of key sectors, to more than double national income. It is the clearest evidence that Indian capitalists were not free-market doctrinaires: they wanted a strong developmental state, a vision independent India would partly adopt.

Key Terms

• G.D. Birla, Jamnalal Bajaj, J.R.D. Tata and Walchand Hirachand: These four were leading Indian industrialists of the nationalist era who combined business success with support for the freedom movement. Birla and J.R.D. Tata co-authored the Bombay Plan of 1944, Jamnalal Bajaj was Gandhi's close associate and Congress treasurer, and Walchand Hirachand pioneered indigenous shipping and aircraft manufacture. For UPSC, they exemplify the nationalist capitalist class that backed the Congress and helped shape independent India's economic vision.
• Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry: The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, FICCI, is India's oldest and largest apex business chamber, a non-governmental not-for-profit body founded in 1927 on Mahatma Gandhi's encouragement by industrialists including Purshottamdas Thakurdas, G.D. Birla, and Jamnalal Bajaj. It articulates industry's views to policymakers, promotes trade and investment, and networks over 250,000 companies through regional chambers. For UPSC it matters for economy answers on industry-policy dialogue and ease of doing business advocacy. FICCI is consulted by the government in pre-Budget discussions as the recognised voice of Indian industry.
• Royal Indian Navy ratings mutinied in February 1946: The Royal Indian Navy ratings mutinied in February 1946 is the full factual statement of the RIN mutiny: beginning 18 February 1946 at HMIS Talwar, Bombay, Indian naval ratings struck against bad food, racial discrimination and the INA trials, and the revolt spread across ships and shore establishments. It was suppressed but signaled that the armed forces could no longer be relied on. It matters for UPSC as the clearest prelims-ready marker of the armed forces turning against the Raj. HMIS Talwar, Bombay (18 February 1946)
• All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC: The All India Trade Union Congress is India's first national trade union federation, founded in Bombay in October 1920 with Lala Lajpat Rai as its first president. It organized industrial workers behind demands such as the eight-hour day and better wages, and it linked the labour movement to the nationalist struggle. It remains relevant for UPSC as the beginning of organized trade unionism and the labour dimension of the freedom movement. Its founding in 1920, a year after the creation of the ILO, connected Indian labour to the emerging global labour standards movement.

• Assembly Bomb Case (8 April 1929): Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly to protest the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill.

• Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case (1924): Dange, Nalini Gupta, Muzaffar Ahmad and Shaukat Usmani tried for preaching communism; gave the accused a national platform.

• Workers and Peasants Parties (1925-27: The Workers and Peasants Parties were left-wing organisations formed between 1925 and 1927, beginning with the Labour Swaraj Party in Bengal founded by Muzaffar Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam and others, with provincial groups uniting into an all-India party in 1928. Communists used them to work inside the Congress and to organise labour. UPSC asks about them under the rise of the left and the communist movement in the freedom struggle. Labour Swaraj Party of Bengal, November 1925
• Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt: Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt were revolutionaries of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association who threw two low-intensity bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi on 8 April 1929. They deliberately courted arrest to use the trial as a platform, shouting slogans like 'Inquilab Zindabad' and protesting the Public Safety Bill and Trade Disputes Bill. For UPSC modern history, the act exemplifies the revolutionaries' strategy of propaganda by deed combined with public courtroom advocacy. Their trial gave Bhagat Singh a national platform, and his hunger strike in jail for political prisoner rights won wide public sympathy.
• Bombay textile strike of 1928: The Bombay textile strike of 1928 was a six-month general strike of cotton mill workers, running from April to October 1928, against wage cuts and the millowners' rationalisation scheme. It was led by the communist-led Girni Kamgar Union under S.A. Dange and his colleagues, and ended in partial success for workers. For UPSC, it matters because the government responded with the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929, arresting 31 labour leaders. The general strike that began on 26 April 1928 and the subsequent March 1929 arrests in the Meerut Conspiracy Case.
• Bombay on 31 October 1920: The founding session of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), India's first central trade union federation, began in Bombay on 31 October 1920 at the Empire Theatre. Lala Lajpat Rai was elected its first president, with leaders such as N.M. Joshi and Dewan Chaman Lal driving the organisation. For UPSC, the date marks the formal beginning of the organised national trade union movement. The AITUC's first session at the Empire Theatre, Bombay, on 31 October 1920.

• Peshawar Conspiracy Case (1922-27): First communist conspiracy trial: muhajir communists returning from Soviet Russia tried for conspiracy against the King-Emperor.

• Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929-33: The Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929-33) was the British prosecution of 31 communist and trade-union leaders, including S.A. Dange and Muzaffar Ahmad along with British communists Philip Spratt and Ben Bradley, for conspiring to establish a Comintern branch in India. The four-and-a-half-year trial under Lord Irwin backfired: the accused used the courtroom as a platform, and the Allahabad High Court reduced sentences in 1933. For UPSC modern-history mains and prelims, it marks the colonial state's crackdown on the labour movement. Muzaffar Ahmad, sentenced to transportation for life by the sessions court