Making of Indian Working Class: A Case of the Tata Iron and Steel Company, 1880-1946, The

Bahl, Vinay. The Making of Indian Working Class: A Case of the Tata Iron and Steel Company, 1880-1946. New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London: Sage Publications, 1995.432 pp.

Vinay Bahl's book is most welcome because of its grand agenda to challenge the popular, especially among the "progressive circles" in India, subaltern historiography which, the authoress contends, largely focuses on a static model of working class culture. Most of Bahl's ambitious agenda is realized, for the bulk of this large well bound book is at the same time a rich, intuitively liberating reading of a vast literature on labor, social science, economics, politics, autobiographies and sociology. It is also a serious work examining the origins, growth, and development of the trade unions of the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) in north India as well as an authentic offering of a sound methodological strategy demonstrating the interaction of varied and complex forces making "the TISCO working class" at Jamshedpur. By reviewing the conclusions of numerous existing works and labor leaders, Bahl, an American trained Indian sociologist at the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton, concludes that the steel company's workers "were already placed in particular historical circumstances which were not created by them" (p. 495). Following the Marxist analysis, Bahl, certainly not an advocate of materialistic interpretation of history, argues, justifiably so, that the workers' struggle for improved working conditions were results of conflict and cooperation of labor and capital as well as other forces both in India and outside India.

The immediate objective in this study is to identify those forces which contributed to the process of the making and shaping of the TISCO's massive unions. In essence, she explains both India's process of industrialization and the steel workers' achievements and failures in the face of opposition not only by the Tata management but also by some nationalist leaders, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, and others. In eight chapters, detailing the emergence of the steel industry in India in the 1880s (chapter one) and assessing the role of capitalists and national leaders in the shaping the workers' militant movement (chapter eight), she examines the rise of a trade union (1920-21), the struggle for recognition (1921-25), the triumph of the Congress Party's hegemony, 193046 (chapter seven), and the unhealthy role of the colonial state in the trade union movement. Yet these diverse chapters are well linked by a single thesis that, while the steel industry got impetus from the Tatas and Lord Curzon, the workers at Jamshedpur "learnt how to struggle against the united forces of capitalism, nationalism and colonialism" (p. 275). And this analysis is done with consummate force and provocative analysis; she notes that the working people's fate was not exclusively shaped by the working men's culture alone. Indeed, there were three broad forces affecting the precarious but sustained growth of the workers' Movements in India.

First, Bahl explains historically that the state under British administration purposely restricted the rise of militancy among the producers of steel. She notes that earlier the East India Company and later the British government encouraged the export of primary products to Britain and as such was not interested in manufacturing industries in India. It took more than twenty years to approve the proposal for a steel industry simply because Britain wanted to avoid any competition with the British steel industries. When the steel factory was set up, the colonial government in New Delhi, being interested in "the smooth running of the steel industry because of the demand for steel" (p. 375) in strategic military industrial complexes, helped the colonial machinery at Jamshedpur with military and police force during several workers' strikes. The obvious conclusion, as drawn by Bahl, is that although the first trade union in TISCO Jamshedpur Labor Association (JLA) - was the product "of the colonial education system" (p. 402), `Britain introduced restrictions such as compulsory registration, persecution of union leaders, etc. in order to maintain British interests. The colonial government wished to have "responsible labor leaders" (p. 401), which, in essence, meant limited workers' agitation.

Second, Bahl examines the role of major nationalist leaders in the development of trade unionism. The first significant Congress leader, Subhash Chandra Bose had "profound distrust in the Indian working class" because, Bose believed, "they were led by irrational suggestions" (P. 383). Nor was Pandit Nehru "concerned about the legitimate demands of the workers" at Jamshedpur (p. 380). At the local level, contends Bahl, regional leaders such as Manick Homi acted irresponsibly in creating serious division among the workers, "leading to the formation of rival union," and this was due to his personal ambition to keep leadership for political ambition (p. 389). She thus suggests here that "capitalism's systematic coercion" might not be the only explanation for the poor plight of the workers in India. In the same vein, she argues further that "orthodox Marxian theory" was ill prepared to deal with the Third world emergence of working class; thus it would be incorrect, she seems to conclude, to argue that the workers' struggle was completely internal. The making of the working class, as E.P Thompson's famous work, The Making of the English Working Class, (preface in Bahl's book) had earlier suggested, should not be seen only in the context of the capita -labor relationship.