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

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Making of the Indian Working Class: The Case of the Tata Iron and Steel Co., 1880–1946 * Ravi Kalia (bio) The Making of the Indian Working Class: The Case of the Tata Iron and Steel Co., 1880–1946. By Vinay Bahl. New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, Calif., and London: Sage Publications, 1995. Pp. 432; tables, notes, bibliography, index. $36. Interpretations of Indian history have been influenced by many Western ideologies; Marxists, Freudians, McLuhanites, Saidians, and subalternists all have their labels for the stage India is in, each group according to its own scheme of evolution. It should thus come as no surprise that Vinay Bahl, in The Making of the Indian Working Class: The Case of the Tata Iron and Steel Co., 1880–1946, acknowledges his intellectual debt to the British Marxist historian E. P. Thompson and makes a particular effort to challenge the prevailing subalternist orthodoxy, which gained legitimacy in the 1980s by focusing specifically on peasant revolts during British rule. Bahl accomplishes [End Page 782] his task with meticulous research and remarkable candor. This volume is a valuable contribution to the growing literature on India’s industrialization and the working-class movement. Bahl argues that the workers at the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) did not acquire working-class consciousness simply by recognizing themselves as a group. Rather, they acquired that awareness through a complex process in which social, cultural, political, and economic forces of the region interacted with the nationalist movement and global capitalistic trends. The development of the Indian steel industry was not a result of the formulation of Indian venture capital, nor did it develop as a result of the enlightened policy of the British administration. In fact, the Liberal Governor General Lord Ripon’s efforts in the early 1880s to start a steel industry in India were rejected by the home government (p. 55). After 1880, however, when British industrial primacy came to be challenged by Germany and later by the United States (pp. 48-51), the British government found it advantageous to set up a steel industry in India. Unable to attract British capital to invest in Indian steel and burdened by the rising costs of imported steel from Europe and America, the British felt pressure from the growing nationalist movement in India. The British government finally allowed Indian capital to be invested in the steel industry. Other factors facilitating the rise of India’s steel industry were the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885, the introduction of the railways in India after 1900, and the accumulation of surplus capital in India during World War I. In chapters 2 through 7, Bahl discusses the factors promoting the formation of the Indian working class. British policies that contributed to recurring famines created a migratory labor force and surplus labor market in India. At TISCO, the workers were exploited by the management, who closely controlled them by keeping them divided along lines of religion, language, caste, and gender. The Indian National Congress treated TISCO as a “national industry,” but the Tatas did not identify themselves with the congress until it suited their interest. The TISCO workers themselves were slow in developing a class consciousness and were first organized by Western-educated congress leaders. In crushing the labor movement, the TISCO management was assisted by the British, who saw it as a threat to wartime efforts, and by the Indian National Congress, which considered it a challenge to the growing Indian bourgeoisie. Moreover, the congress was anxious to co-opt the workers’ movement before the Communists could do so. As a reaction to these forces, the TISCO workers came to identify themselves as a group and develop a class consciousness. Bahl has consulted a wide range of primary and secondary sources in India and Britain, including private papers of several important leaders, such as Rajendra Prasad, Purshotamdas Thakurdas, M. N. Roy, and Homi Modi. The author also interviewed the late J. R. D. Tata. This book deserves [End Page 783] a wide readership not only among South Asian scholars but also among those interested in comparative and world history. Ravi Kalia Dr. Kalia teaches the history of South Asia at The...