Page 7 - Lessonnote_ Social Movement

1. The Naxalite struggle – It started from the region of Naxalbari (1967) in Bengal.
The central problem for peasants was land. The Naxal movement is a growing

force even today.
2. The ‘new farmer’s movements’ - It began in the 1970s in Punjab and Tamil Nadu.
These movements were regionally organised, were non-party, and involved
farmers rather than peasants. The basic ideology of the movement was strongly
anti-state and anti-urban. The focus of demand were ‘price and related issues’.
Novel methods of agitation were used like blocking of roads and railways,
refusing politicians and bureaucrats entry to villages, and so on.

Workers’ Movement:

 Factory production began in India in the early part of the 1860s.
 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 1839.
 In the early stages of colonialism, labour was very cheap as the colonial government did not
regulate either wages or working conditions.
 Though trade unions emerged later, workers did protest. Their actions were more
spontaneous than sustained.
 Some of the nationalist leaders also drew in the workers into the anti-colonial movement.
The war led to the expansion of industries in the country but it also brought a great deal of
misery to the poor.
 There were food shortage and sharp increase in prices. There were waves of strikes in the
textile mills in Bombay.
 In September and October 1917 there were around 30 recorded strikes. Jute workers in
Calcutta struck work. In Madras, the workers of Buchingham and Carnatic Mills (Binny’s)
struck work for increased wages.
 Textile workers in Ahmedabad struck work for increase in wages by 50 per cent. (Bhowmick
2004)

Trade Union
 The first trade union was established in April 1918 in Madras by B.P. Wadia, a social
worker and member of the Theosophical Society.
 During the same year, Mahatma Gandhi founded the Textile Labour Association (TLA).
 In 1920 the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was formed in Bombay.

The AITUC was a broad-based organisation involving diverse ideologies.
 The main ideological groups were the communists led by S.A. Dange and M.N. Roy, the
moderates led by M. Joshi and V.V. Giri and the nationalists which involved people like Lala
Lajpat Rai and Jawaharlal Nehru.