SPECIAL ARTICLE

Forty Years After

The Great Indian Railway Strike of 1974
Ranabir Samaddar

Even as one of the most distinctive aspects of the Great

Railway Strike of 1974 was the autonomy of the rank and
file, the significance of the struggle had much to do with
the nature of the times. The country was in the midst of
a general political crisis; even sections of the peasantry
were in revolt. Despite these favourable circumstances,
and the expression of solidarity from the industrial
working class, the National Coordination Committee for
Railwaymens Struggle was not resolute and decisive
enough, as much as the situation demanded, and in this
respect it failed the rank and file. In the absence of a
political vanguard, the uprising was left without
a determined subject.

he strike in the Indian Railways in May 1974 was

marked by massive participation of railway workers and
employees. About 15 lakh workers participated in the
great strike and it continued for about three weeks. It started
on 8 May 1974 with a charter of demands that included issues
of bonus, work hours, safety of working conditions, and other
matters. The government brutally suppressed the strike by
arresting and jailing tens of thousands of workers, dismissing
and terminating hundreds and resorting to other forms of
victimisation. There were also a few deaths. A section of the
union government employees under the leadership of the Confederation of Central Government Employees participated for
five days. Many other sections of the working class also participated and showed solidarity in various forms. The strike
was suppressed, but after the Janata government came into
office in 1977, many of the demands of the railway workingmen were met. Bonus was first declared for the railway
workers and later for all central government employees. However, many of the dismissed workers were not taken back
into service.
The threat of workers insubordination and revolt remained
fresh in the memory of the ruling class for a long time. Even 25
years later, on 6 July 2000 P N Dhar, one-time lieutenant of the
then Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, recalling the
events of that time commented:
...every political system requires a matching political culture. We in
India adopted the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy
but the political culture that should accompany it is taking a long time
to evolve. There is thus this hiatus between system and culture, something which continues to this day in our country. Today, we in India
assume that democracy means election after election. Elections are a
necessary condition but not a sufficient condition of democracy. To be
effective, we must inform the system with liberal values. The result is
that, for instance, the Opposition parties often behave as though they
are not facing a representative government and often adopt methods
that amount to insurrection. So although I am not saying that Indira
Gandhi is not to blame, I am also saying that it was brought about by
circumstances. Take the railway strike of 1974 and the methods used
to press the demands of railway men. Mughalsarai, the largest railway
yard in Asia, was to be made a graveyard for goods trains.1

Ranabir Samaddar (ranabir@mcrg.ac.in) is with the Calcutta Research

Group.
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The railway strike appeared as subverting representative

democracy. It was considered as an attack on the liberal system. The workers had applied massive force in the form of an
indefinite nationwide strike to get their demands accepted.
They had not obeyed the rules of conciliation laid down in a
liberal political system.
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There were indeed rules of conciliation in the railways. Set up

in 1951 when Lal Bahadur Shastri was the Minister of Railways,
there was a three-tier permanent negotiating machinery, respectively at the levels of management, the Railway Board, and an
ad hoc tribunal, the latter to be headed by a retired Supreme or
high court judge. Also, there were arrangements for separate
quarterly meetings between the Railway Board and the All-India Railwaymens Federation (AIRF) and the National Federation of Indian Railwaymen (NFIR). Besides, there was a Joint
Consultative Machinery and Compulsory Arbitration set up by
the Government of India with a view to promoting harmonious relations between employers and employees on matters of
common concern. The system functioned at three levels:
national council, departmental council, and regional council.
There were also anomaly committees to settle the anomalies
arising out of the Pay Commissions recommendations.
One of the most contentious issues was that of regulation of
the employment hours, arising out of the obligations undertaken by the Indian government to the International Labour
Organization (ILO). The situation had required, in 1930, an
amendment of the Indian Railways Act 1890, to regulate hours
of employment, periods of rest, and payment of overtime.
Moreover, to have systemic participation of railwaymen in
management to improve the railway system and make it efficient, a corporate system was set up at the central level in the
Ministry of Railways in 1972. The stated aim was to ensure
free flow of ideas. These were also set up in the zonal railways.
Through all these measures, the idea was to ensure that the
staff could bring questions concerning conditions of service,
and matters of common interest could be discussed. Also, staff
councils could function on various welfare committees and
advise on all welfare activities.
Thus, in 1972 the first step was taken by the Railways Ministry, which constituted a Corporate Enterprise Group (CEG) of
Management in order to give opportunities to organised labour
to highlight their views on the working of the Indian Railways
and also suggest measures needed to be taken for improving
the efficiency of the railways. This machinery was introduced
on a three-tier basis: the Railway Board level, the Zonal level,
and the Divisional level. Nominated members from the recognised trade unions could participate in these meetings. At the
Railway Board level, members of the respective departments
and union representatives brought up questions related to investment, particularly in housing and other requirements of
workers and employees, and identified areas needing attention and proposed actions. At the levels below, railway workers other than those at the supervisory level participated.
Thus, wage-earners belonging to the Paschim Railway Mazdoor Sangh, Jaipur Western Railway Employees Sangh, Hubli
Central Railway Employees Sangh, Allahabad Railway Mazdoor Congress, Bilaspur Shramik Congress, Bhubaneswar
Central Railway Mazdoor Sangh, Jabalpur Railway Mazdur
Sangh were represented on the Labour Advisory Committee
that had 78 branches.
Yet there were protests over issues of bonus and working
time as in 1917, when workers had organised 26 sit-in
40

demonstrations in front of the general managers office with

the demand that some textile mills had granted 10% bonus to
their workers and they should also be given bonus. In certain
cases, as in 1965, Parliament was approached after the railwaymen had demanded, as a matter of principle, payment of
bonus according to the rules applied with regard to a toy factory and other establishments employing 20 or more unskilled
manual labourers, or an establishment which is a factory and
pays, as per the Factories Act (1948), salary, wage, and dearness allowance (that is to say, all cash and other allowances
which the employee receives as incentive), as also, retrenchment compensation and gratuity. Discussions went on, but all
the mechanisms of conciliation (mentioned above) failed.
Working hours and payment of bonus were among the issues
that provoked the strike. A secret ballot confirming the strike
call provided the stunning launching pad.2
The conciliation machinery that had been put in place had
obviously failed; such machinery regularly fails in other industries too. But either there is no strike as a consequence of such
failure, or the resultant strike does not cause a furore. One
may argue that the sheer size of the Railways warranted such
a response from members of the ruling class such as P N Jha.
The argument has merit. But this precisely should set us thinking: Was not size a detriment to such a massive action? Given
the fact that the labour structure in the Indian Railways was
characterised by occupation and skill-based unions, divisions,
languages, crafts, political loyalties, zones, and other kinds of
horizontal and vertical cleavages, could such a massive strike
take place only because of the failure of the conciliation
machinery?
Long after the strike, a radical organisation pointed to the
factor of repeated government attempts to restructure the
Indian Railways in order to rationalise its operations that began with attempts to create smaller zones. The analysis spoke
of the perils of such attempts, the inherent social-service obligations of the railways versus the profit compulsion, the crumbling infrastructure, the misplaced sense of priority areas of
investment, which excluded the task of renewal of infrastructure, etc, and pointed to how all these were aimed at reducing
the number of employees without taking concomitant steps to
improve efficiency and renewal of the entire system. The
review ended with the following lines while referring to the
desire of the ruling class to privatise the Railways an agenda
being pursued from colonial times:
Indian railwaymen should seriously ponder over the issue of restructuring of IR and over the inherent weakness of [the] railway trade union movement to confront such conspiracy of the ruling class. Since
[the] mid-70s, particularly after the May 74 historic railway strike, the
railwaymen have been gradually isolated from the mainstream of
working class movement in our country. They fell prey to the machinations of the reformist leadership in the railway trade union movement.
During the last quarter century, numerous strike actions took place in
other sectors, but the railwaymen remained mute spectators, let alone
the question of taking part in Bharat Bandhs or in events like the last
general strike of the Indian working class on April 16 this year. Now it
is too late to lament over the past. At this critical juncture the Indian
railwaymen who have a heroic tradition of struggle should rise to
the occasion to build a permanent bridge of solidarity with other
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
sections of the working class and the people to end their isolation.
Indian Railways, the heartbeat of the country, can only be saved from
the clutches of the merchants of Washington and Delhi through
protracted struggle and in the womb of such struggle can germinate
an embryo of mass political movement, paving the way for a new
society. The whole country awaits the resurrection of such [a]
movement.3

We have here the expression of a desire that the railway

workers have to recapture the consciousness of a social mission and the lost glory, yet groping as to how this had once
been a reality and how this can once again come about. One
can also find, in the report, traces of a realisation that the issue
of restructuring of the railways loomed large over the conflict,
even though wages, work hours, and bonus were the immediate issues.
If radicals wanted to draw lessons appropriate to them from
the Great Strike, it was also a lesson fit to be included in a
manual of administrative training. Two authors, M K Das and
Jitendra Ray chronicled a fascinating story of two days in the
life of an officer during the strike and the lessons to be derived
from his conduct. Let us listen to the chronicle, which sticks as
closely as possible to the original version.
2

It was 1974. Dhar, an officer of the West Bengal Civil Service

(Exe) cadre, was posted in Chandannagar sub-divisional EAD
quarters as one of three deputy magistrates. Chandannagar
was then otherwise a very beautiful place to live in. It had
been a French colony and was culturally rich, having a heritage background. In May 1974, the All-India Railwaymens Union called for an indefinite strike of the Indian Railways all
over the country under the leadership of F Gomes, who later
became a central minister. The strike started on 7 May. Dhar
was deputed as an executive magistrate for law and order duty
at the Kamarkundu Railway Station on the Tarakeswar-Sheoraphuli line. Kamarkundu was a very important place from the
trading point of view. It was the first subdivision for him. He
was full of energy and dynamism with a belief in teamwork.
He had successfully rehabilitated about 30,000 evacuees from
Malda to Rajshahi in Bangladesh in 1972. On account of the
severe crisis in cement, petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL),
baby food, rations and electricity that prevailed, and strikes in
numerous jute mills, work had to continue well after office
hours. The subdivisional officer (SDO) made it a point to arrange for refreshments in the late evenings for his officers so
that their energy levels did not drop and the massive workload
could be handled. When his officers camped outside the headquarters for law and order duty as during Muharram, he drove
out to them with magazines and food.
Dhar reached Kamarkundu railway station by the office jeep
early in the morning of 7 May 1974. An Inspector of Police had
also reached by then along with a group of other police
personnel and was holding a temporary camp office in a
tent. There was a restroom meant for railway officials at
Kamarkundu railway station and Dhar put up there. None of
the railway employees attended their duties but many of them
were standing outside the station watching the situation. Dhar
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asked them to come in and join their duties but it was of no

use. There were constant announcements outside over the
microphone urging the employees to make the strike a success.
But Dhar had something else in his mind. From the very beginning his mission was to run the train services at least between
Sheoraphuli and Tarakeswar, which is a major pilgrimage centre with a Shiva temple. Moreover, Tarakeswar is the terminal
station of this railway line and the farthest point of the subdivision. The region was very rich in agriculture and the produces were sold in different parts of the state. An indefinite
strike would result in heavy economic loss. The first day was
uneventful. From 8 May, the second day of the strike, Dhar
began doing groundwork. He tried to convince the employees
to join their duties and assured them of their security. At the
same time he contacted the concerned officers of the divisional
superintendents office (DS Office), Howrah Railway Division
asking for their help and services in resuming a shuttle train
service between Sheoraphuli and Tarakeswar during the
strike.
The groundwork for breaking the strike started yielding results from 9 May. The station master and one or two sweepers
joined duty on that day. More were in the queue. Overhead
electrical wires had been either removed or damaged. Dhar
requested the DS Office, Howrah, to repair and restore the
overhead electric wires and to repair the rakes lying at Tarakeswar railway station by sending technical staff through a
dummy train. The police officer camping at Kamarkundu railway station was requested to arrange patrolling in the residential
area of the railway employees, the road between the residential complex, the railway station, and the bazaar area where
the staff willing to join duty were expected to go. On 10 May in
response to Dhars suggestions DS Howrah sent a train with
extra staff to Tarakeswar. They took one of the three rakes lying
at Tarakeswar railway station for using it in the shuttle service.
However, miscreants had cut the motor cables. Therefore, the
rakes had to be sent to the workshop for repair. Overhead electric wires were replaced and/or repaired and the electric connection restored.
Some passengers were put into the dummy train that ran on
that day as a signal to both the striking employees and the
regular commuters. Electricity in Tarakeswar was also restored. The SDO came to meet Dhar to review the latest situation on 10 May, and after that he regularly looked after Dhars
family in his absence. Unlike the present day, the telecommunication system was then very poor. Dhar could not keep direct
contact with his family. The SDO regularly kept him informed
about his family members. On reaching Tarakeswar railway
station on 11 May, at 8.15 am Dhar found the station master
and the commercial transportation inspector (CTI) deputed
from Bandel to provide phone connection with Howrah Control and electricity at Tarakeswar railway station. By then, a
group of technical personnel the permanent way inspector
(PWI), signal inspector (SI), and the traction driving inspector
(TDI) had reached Tarakeswar railway station with a patrolspecial. They informed him that there was a rake in operative
condition and could run as shuttle up to Howrah. The TDI was
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initially a motorman. On Dhars request the TDI hesitatingly

agreed to drive the train but requested him to take the approval of the divisional operating superintendent (DOS), Howrah. The latter immediately approved of the scheme and desired to talk to the TDI who in turn told him that the rake was
not in a condition to move to Howrah and that the magistrate
(Dhar) was unnecessarily forcing him to drive the defective
rakes. He further stated that being a senior TDI he could not
drive a Rake without getting clearance from the train examiner. When the discussions between the DOS and TDI were
over, Dhar again talked to DOS and informed him that the TDI
had earlier certified that the rake was all right for moving to
Howrah and that he was willing to drive it.
After the conversation, Dhar asked the TDI why he made
such a contrary statement to the DOS. In reply the TDI stated
that he could not run a rake based on the orders of a magistrate and what was actually required was permission from the
chief operating superintendent (COS), the superior of DOS. He
also denied his earlier statement expressing his willingness to
drive the rake if he got permission from the DOS. Neither had
any force been applied on him nor had he been insisted upon
to drive the rake. So he was asked to explain why he used the
words unnecessary force while talking to the DOS. At this he
begged apology. Dhar made it clear to him that whatever he
was doing was in the sole interest of the public at large and
that if a shuttle service could be run between Tarakeswar and
Sheoraphuli, great public confidence could be earned. He
found the TDI most unwilling. Dhar could not understand if his
request to run the rake had hurt the ego of the TDI. In any case,
Dhar began making other alternative arrangements. He was
successful in running a special train between Tarakeswar and
Chandannagar, and one special train ran up to Howrah with
the help of senior technical staff.
Apparently, the report tells us, that there was enormous
popular support when the first Special was started. The
engineer-in-chief approved Dhars action, and then engaged
his men to get the rake examined and certified. Banerjee informed Dhar at about 12.05 hours that the rake was ready for
movement, and that 80% of the work had already been done.
The vendors compartment in that special train was full of
vegetables, and the local people rejoiced. Dhar also asked
the police officer-in-charge to make the railway employees
feel that they were not insecure. He arranged lunch for the
engineer-in-chief and his assistant engineer, Pillai. He informed higher ups of the necessary arrangements made to run
regular shuttle services between Tarakeswar and Sheoraphuli
with the available rake.
There was great risk in doing all this. His life would have
been endangered by the extremists amongst the strikers but
that did not happen. Dhar felt that his conscience prompted
him to do what he had done. On the recommendation of the
SDO the home department of the state government later sent
him a Letter of Appreciation in recognition of the services
rendered. The chronicle of a dutiful officer ends here. At one
level this is a banal story of an officer trying to break a strike,
but we must remember that the Strike of 1974 has, in its dark
42

womb, hundreds of such stories, mostly untold, and waiting

for the historian to bring them to light.
These stories will give us an idea of the ground dynamics of
the strike, which because of its enormity and unbelievable expanse can be seen only from the top, yet in that view from the
top it leaves something to be always wondered at, something
beyond comprehension. What is surprising or perhaps should
not have been so, if one recalls the various usages of the Battle
of Algiers,4 this story became a model for the future strike
breakers. So after telling us the story of the dutiful officer
Dhar, the two authors drew moral lessons from the narrative.
We may forget the details, but it will be instructive to see what
the main lesson in essence was. To say the least, it was a lesson
in how to run a government and manage a crisis: through sincerity and devotion to duty; the capacity of an officer like Dhar
to shoulder responsibility; involvement of civil administration
even in case of a strike; the presence of an energetic and supportive higher authority; appreciation of tactical points in a
crisis, like understanding the crucial location of Kamarkundu,
quick deployment of police personnel in a proactive manner, a
similar proactive role of the executive magistrate and the initiative taken to restore normalcy; the human approach of Dhar
as he was sensitive about the problems of the people at large;
the sincere, methodical functioning of the executive magistrate; proper planning to restore services and to combat obstacles such as miscreants cutting motor cables; the supportive
role of a superior officer such as the SDO carrying lunch and
keeping Dhar informed of the well-being of his family; the
perseverance of Dhar notwithstanding the initial failure;
clarity of the objective that the train service had to be resumed
by any means; and finally, the administrative acumen of the
magistrate.5
If the event chronicled above became part of a governmental manual to teach its officers how to cope with a strike, even
break it, other chronicles spoke of the role of the rank and file.
Ordinary workers made the strike a success, though we cannot
ignore or underestimate the role of the leadership. The strike,
symbolised as a stormy event, for one moment (to be precise in
the first two weeks of the strike) effected the rare union of
rank and file and the leadership, though the synergy broke
down with the withdrawal of the strike never to return. The
institution of the National Coordination Committee for Railwaymens Struggle (NCCRS) had achieved the unity of the mass
of workers and leaders, craft unions and large unions or federations, militants and moderates, vanguard and followers,
the steadfast strikers and the hesitant who joined the strike
emboldened by the courage of others.
It was a rare institution. The mode of forging unity of the
rank and file through the formation of such an institution was
also rare. It symbolised the autonomous energy of the workers
autonomous from the state and rationalisation of the government, autonomous of the tradition of old bureaucratic functioning of the railway federations, which often proved discordant with the mood, energy, and determination of the rank and
file. Yet NCCRS was a dialectical unity between autonomy and
political leadership, consciousness and leadership every one
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of the three elements that contributed to the making of a strike

that from the beginning became a political strike, soon to
acquire the nature of a general strike. While there is a need for
greater discussion of that moment May 1974 whose rarity
must astonish and dazzle us with its brilliance, for the present
it is important to flag the issue of rank-and-file in any discussion on the Great Strike. The stakes are very high in terms of
an analysis of worker activism in contemporary India; even
though May 1974 may never recur or may come back in a
moment of fury only to sweep away and take with it old memories and one may then not even recognise May 1974 in it. At
the heart of the matter is the question of the rank and file and
its importance in any plan or discussion of a movement that by
its sheer breadth and intensity has acquired the nature of
a revolt.
The political backdrop of the national Emergency imposed
in 1975 was an obvious factor in the growing militancy of the
worker. Yet while much has been written about the Emergency
which followed a year later, the most widespread revolt by the
working class in independent India has received comparatively
little attention from labour historians. Rank and file militancy
made the strike a unique event. The strike in fact occurred at a
time when, as one observer has pointed out,6 labour militancy
was at its highest in independent India: the number of workdays lost owing to all industrial disputes in India touched 40
million in 1974, more than double of those recorded in any single year during the preceding decade. While political unrest
was growing, workers protests also kept up the pace of social
discontent. Therefore, from the liberal to the Left, all political
parties had to spell out their respective stands on the workers
strike. And though the strike was suppressed with brutal
methods and massive deployment of military and paramilitary
machinery, it achieved later what it sought to attain. Yet labour
historians have not paid due attention to the Railway Strike
of 1974.
3

There is one exception. Written 25 years later, Stephen Sherlocks book, The Indian Railway Strike of 1974: A Study of Power
and Organised Labour7 fills the gap to a great extent and
records workers resistance as meticulously as possible. It is
important to keep in mind the limits of such an enterprise,
because the strike was organised throughout the country with
nearly two million workers joining against heavy odds. Yet the
book to some extent recaptures images of terror unleashed by
the governments at the states and at the centre.
In his book, Sherlock described at length the three principal
actors in the conflict the Indian state, the railway management, and the workers unions. He showed how though theoretically the Railway Board was to act on behalf of the state
representing the public purpose, the board, in effect, acted as
the classic boss the employer enjoying complete autonomy in
day-to-day matters, probably more than what the government
wanted to concede. Probably the colonial legacy, which laid
the basis for the Indian Railways after independence, was
partly responsible for such a state of affairs. But the Boards
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autonomy, in essence managerial autonomy, also increased because the railway bureaucracy became used to dealing with
reformist leaders of the railway workers. These two trends defeated, for years, attempts by workers to establish their own
unions, independent or autonomous of the federations led by
these reformist leaders completely absorbed in bargaining and
talks with management only.
Sherlock pointed out that while the government, as employer, perceived the unions as devices with which it could discipline the workers, the unions, over a period of time, had
grown into bureaucratic structures alienated from ordinary
workers.8 The strike symbolised workers refusal to accept the
patron-client character of the major unions which claimed
to work on their behalf. All in all, the situation was thus ready
for activism from below. The strike was the plank on which
George Fernandes was elected president of the AIRF before
the strike.
It is important to also note Sherlocks documentation style.
Because he wanted to predicate the account from the top with
accounts of explosive dynamism below, he collected literature
ranging from union sources to those of government and railway management, plus newspaper reports, and was able to
show how the strike was not a sudden action, but a culmination of protests and strikes by railway workers across the country in 1967, 1968, 1970 and 1973. In all these senses therefore
one can say that the 1974 strike was led by rank and file workers, particularly the newly-emergent crafts unions among the
rail workers. Sherlock has made the uncanny observation that
while labour historians generally regard crafts unions as being
restrictive in their class consciousness, and prone to the pulls
of sectarian rather than wider class loyalties, such crafts unions broke the stranglehold that the big federations had on
workers initiatives.
The last thing to note in Sherlocks account is the importance he gave to the loco-running staff. Whoever has studied,
for instance, the legendary railroad workers movement in the
United States will know the strategic importance of the loco
running staff because of their work conditions, long working
hours, high-pressure job for days without a break, and the
bond of solidarity that the loco men form through their work.9
As Sherlock pointed out, historically, many of the British-run
rail networks had termed the work of the loco staff as continuous, implying that workers would have to remain at work as
long as the train ran on its trip, often for several days at a
stretch, especially on the goods trains. There was not much
change after Independence. The widespread introduction of
diesel engines led to intensification of work in the 1960s and
resentment among the workers, while the eight-hour working
day was violated with impunity. The big federations remained
insensitive to the rising tide of protests.
The ascendancy of the Loco Running Staff Association
(LRSA) was crucial in mobilising the workers for the strike. In
some sense, with the firemen joining the rank and file, railwaymen were now ready for action because they had found
their natural leaders. In 1968, the Firemen of Southern and
South Central Railways struck work for 21 days demanding
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eight hours of duty. While negotiation with the deputy railway

minister for a solution was going on, the leaderships of two
major unions, the AIRF and NFIR, entered into an agreement
with the Railway Board for a 14 hours duty from signing on to
signing off. The strike was broken in this way, resulting in the
victimisation of the workers. However, the Loco Running Staff
had learnt an important lesson. They decided to stand on their
own feet. A number of Firemen Councils besides other running
staff unions already existing in the country were organised
throughout the country. These firemen councils and running
staff associations formed the All India Loco Running Staff
Association in 1970 at Vijayawada.
During the 1960s, unrest had grown amongst railway workers on the issue of low wages, harsh working conditions, and
long hours of work. The inability of the two recognised Federations (AIRF and NFIR) to fight for the demands of the workers
and protect their interests had generated a sense of frustration
and alienation among workers. While the authorities required
loyal and reformist union leadership, the workers were developing an autonomous spirit of struggle. The formation of the
Loco Running Staff Association was additionally significant in
this context. The militancy of the Loco men provided the necessary plank for further development of rank and file militancy. The agitated loco men organised a nationwide strike
from 2 August 1973. The strike resulted in an agreement on a
workday of 10 hours. The struggle boosted the self-confidence
of the railwaymen, and had a direct impact on the subsequent
formation of NCCRS and the historic strike of May 1974.10
Besides the loco men the workers in the railway workshops
also proved crucial. Some of the workshops, like the ones in
Lahore and Jamalpur, had long histories of militant unionism.11 Long back in 1882, the number of workshop employees
was 53,435, which rose in 1943 to 140,000.12 In Jamalpur alone
there were 70-plus workshop complexes and about 11,000 employees in war time.13 Discontent over labour conditions in the
workshops led to a report in 1946 on labour conditions. There
was also talk of discontent among circulating labour in the
construction of railways.14 In the 1974 strike, workshops such
as the ones in Kharagpur and Jamalpur played a crucial role.
Around the workshops, railway colonies and towns had been
built. Police reports show how these towns and workshops became pillars of strength and mobilisation of the workers.15 Accident reports were often the bones of contention.16 Traffic and
route miles had increased much faster than improvement in
designs and safety conditions. In 1861 the figure for operating
route miles was 1587; in 1941 it was 41,052; in 1951 (after the
division of assets in 1947) it was 33,230; and in 2001 it rose to
39,077.17 Accidents were at times due to poorly designed
bridges;18 plus there were mechanical failures, such as
brake and coupling failures.19 Discontent over labour conditions in the workshops and running conditions (rails, engine,
work safety norms, etc) thus proved equally crucial. Not surprisingly, the grass-roots unions were most sensitive to the
work conditions and the possibility of accidents and casualties,
and the initial impetus for the strike came from the
independent unions.20
44

The NCCRS was formed in February 1974 with the AIRF,

AILRSA, AIREC, AITUC, CITU, BRMS and around 125 railway
trade unions joining hands to launch the biggest labour strike
ever seen by the country. Around 15 lakh railway employees
participated and the entire railway traffic was paralysed.
Around 1 lakh employees were removed from service under
14(ii)/149. About 50,000 casual labourers were terminated
without any notice, and 30,000 employees kept under suspension.21 The strike ended on 28 May. Later in June 1975 internal
emergency was declared by Indira Gandhi.
The importance of the strike can be understood from the
fact that with the main leaders being arrested by the government while negotiations were proceeding (Fernandes was
arrested at the Lucknow railway station on 2 May, followed by
countrywide arrests of thousands of railway workers), the success of the strike now depended greatly on zonal and local
union leaders, and of course, the rank and file. Workers from
other industries and services immediately expressed solidarity. This would have probably been impossible without the
loco-staff leading from the front. If the workers resolve was
matched by the governments determination to crush the
strike, the latters actions could not deter the workers. The
action of the government provoked the workers to go on an
immediate strike instead of waiting for 8 May.
Sherlock noted how in Mumbai, electricity and transport
workers as well as taxi drivers joined the protests. In Gaya
hundreds of striking workers and their families squatted on
the tracks. More than 10,000 workers of the Integral Coach
Factory in Perambur, Tamil Nadu, marched to the Southern
Railway headquarters in Chennai to express their solidarity
with the striking workers. Mughalsarai became the scene of
pitched battles between thousands of workers and the police
and the paramilitary forces. In some areas lines were uprooted,
the signal system was attacked and route relay cabins were
smashed. Protests in a variety of forms erupted across the
country. Not a single important rail centre in India was immune. The strike had become the symbol of national revolt
against authoritarian rule. It was necessary to mention the
book in some detail because Stephen Sherlock has given us the
lead which any labour historian working on the 1974 strike can
fruitfully pursue and bring to light the role of rank and file in
such a critical moment. For the present writer it has a special
resonance, because on the occasion of the death of a union
militant, he raised the following question in the course of a
memorial account: how will one write the chronicles of
the ranks?22
4

The railway strike of 1974 admittedly owed a lot to the disposition of the independent unions and the nature of the labour
process in the pre-automated era in the Indian railways when
just-in-time production achieved through technological rationalisation was not present, and which gave rise to craft unions
which played a crucial role in the strike. Also, the delicate balance between the strength of the large masses of workers stationed like army detachments in various towns and workshops
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SPECIAL ARTICLE

and the fluidity and thus the extent of communication and

reach due to the circulating staff like the loco men, signal staff,
and the gang coolies was achieved. This balance proved a catalyst for the Strike. It also stimulated the autonomy of the rank
and file, balanced by the effective leadership of the NCCRS.
However, the Great Strike of 1974 had a lot to do with the
special nature of the times. We are speaking here of the general political crisis in the country at that time, to which we
have already made reference. It was a classic Leninist crisis,
that is to say, the economic, social, and political conflicts had
merged to create an explosive mix; the ruling class was finding
itself unable to rule in the old way; and the ruled found themselves unable to accept the rule in the manner they had hitherto tolerated. Of these three factors contributing to such a
crisis, one has to note, only one was objective; the latter two
were subjective. So the question is: what is a crisis? And, why
are we saying that the crisis of 1973-74 was a special one, a
special time when the rank and file felt emboldened to come
forward and spearhead an epic struggle?
Lenin was not, of course, only defining a crisis. He was
saying that not all crises were revolutionary; only some were
revolutionary in nature. In many senses the situation of 1973-74
could be termed as a time of revolutionary crisis. The country
had witnessed massive agrarian unrest from 1967; there was
unrest over the prices and availability of food and kerosene;
educational institutions were scenes of student revolt; labour
troubles were widespread; the government, finding itself in a
state of financial distress, had nationalised major Indian
banks; the monopoly of the Congress Party over governmental
power in the country had ended; and there was a massive civil
disobedience movement in the entire country. The government had tried to deflect the crisis temporarily when the war
with Pakistan had broken out in 1971.
Globally too, it was a time of disorder the Vietnam struggle, the campus revolts, the oil shock, etc. Lenin analysed the
symptoms of a revolutionary crisis, in The Collapse of the
Second International in this way: When it is impossible for the
ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change in one
form or another; the consensus among the upper classes is
broken, and there is a crisis in the policy of the ruling class,
leading to a fissure through which the discontent of the oppressed classes bursts forth. For a revolution to take place, it is
usually insufficient for the lower classes not to want to live in
the old way; it is also necessary that the upper classes should
be unable to live in the old way. Plus, of course, when the suffering and deprivation of the oppressed classes have grown
more acute and they cannot live in the old way. And thus, as a
consequence, there is a considerable increase in the activity of
the masses.23
The definition cannot be reduced to theoretical precision,
and hence revolutionary crises need to be studied with utmost
rigour. The elements are interdependent and cannot be considered in isolation. Elsewhere Lenin stresses the importance
of the support of the middle classes for the proletarian cause in
bringing about a shift in balance of forces in the latters favour.
Once again, this support cannot be taken as an objective
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criterion because it materialises only through its relation to

other prerequisite phenomena. Other classes support the
workers when the latter show determination and resoluteness.
Thus the Leninist definition involves interplay of various elements in complex and variable ways. We do not have here any
luxury of matching a model with some objective yardsticks.
The premises condition each other. The intermediate layer is
not visible. It becomes visible only when the struggle of the
workers forcibly detaches the latter from the ruling class. At
the same time it eventually demoralises the rulers.
This is not the occasion to go into a theoretical exegesis of
the Leninist grammar of politics. Yet his ideas on strategy and
tactics, which formed for him the soul of politics, cannot be
ignored whenever we analyse a critical situation, particularly
when we are discussing a grave crisis that may turn or has the
possibility of turning into a revolutionary crisis. It is like preparing for a war. It is interesting that in the Leninist vision, the
vanguard, the party, the leadership, plays a crucial role in the
formation of a revolutionary crisis or, let us simply say, a grave
crisis. Leadership is crucial because it provides the subjective
element to the objective changes. Government never falls in a
crisis if it is not toppled.24 The organisation is thus the agency
that transcends the tentative status of the different conditions
of an acute crisis; it also links these conditions together and
unifies them. The nodal point of the crisis is no longer located
in one particular objective element, but is transferred within
the organisation-subject that combines and incorporates them.25
In short, the situation in the country with all its contradictions
was not only reproducing itself, it was also engendering its
own crises, the points of rupture. The situation was different
from say the mid-1960s roughly a decade earlier when a
similar economic crisis had appeared, but the subjective elements were lacking. The capacity of the subjective elements
climaxed in the years of 1970-74. The self-regulating mechanisms of the system failed one by one like the vital organs of a
body. And it was only with the defeat of the workers, the ruthless suppression of the rebellious peasantry, and the purge (in
form of the National Emergency of 1975-77) of the undesirable
existences in the polity that the economy could be revived. In
other words, the difference between the period in which the
decisive battles are fought and the foregoing or the following
period is in the fact that the subject works towards its resolution, which will be accomplished only through capturing political power and destroying the old political machine.
The question is: from being an acute crisis, was the situation
in 1974 heading towards a revolutionary crisis? This is where
we are confronted with two of the most serious questions in
the working class movement. One, was the working class prepared for the final surge? Also, were the peasants ready to begin the long march ahead? Second, was the leadership ready
to lead the troops? The answers to the two questions are interlinked. In whatever way one chooses to describe the situation
of that time, one can locate spontaneity, the spontaneous willingness to march for war. All intelligence reports, union reports, newspaper reports, and analyses of the railway strike
suggest widespread and spontaneous actions by the common
45

SPECIAL ARTICLE

workers even before the strike had formally started. Lenin, in

What Is To Be Done?, had described spontaneity as consciousness in its embryonic form;26 but he had also differentiated
between degrees of consciousness, such as a directionless and
subservient form of spontaneity and a spontaneity freed and
deepened by the leadership. Therefore, for him, the need for
ideological or political preparation was supreme. This is how
the rank and file of the rebellious forces would connect the
leadership with the followers, the common workers.
In many ways, 1974 reached the penultimate stage. This is
evident from the readiness of the rank and file. The widespread recognition of the NCCRS was, on the one hand, a testimony to the autonomy of the workers initiative. On the other
hand, the NCCRS as organisation emerged as a historical subject, the collective will of the labouring class. Yet, what the
situation lacked was the decisiveness of the organisation as a
historical subject, because the NCCRS was no substitute for a
party. There was no revolutionary party as the dialectical
other of autonomy. The NCCRS, rather than being the direct
expression of a revolutionary class, was marked by a gap, a
chasm that separates a class as a political vanguard from its
political spontaneity. The NCCRS lacked the capacity to dream
(we are again referring to What Is To Be Done?)27 to imagine on
the basis of the actions of the ordinary workers the news of
which was reaching them every day, every hour, every minute.
The crisis of 1974 brought what we can call historical truth to
life, well almost, while imagination remained the only power
to achieve in order to bridge the gap between historical truth
and life.
Therefore the railway strike of 1974, in spite of bearing all
the marks of a revolutionary crisis, remained only a great
strike. The strike of 1974 has achieved, of course, today the
mythical status of the last General Strike in Indian labour history the last moment of insurrection. And, as with all such
previous moments of insurrection (for example 1942), the ruling class had taken the moment more seriously than the protagonists of the strike. All we can say, at this point, is: The
peasantry remained all through the labour upsurge of 1974 the
silent other in the organic composition of the crisis, but eloquent as a physical phenomenon in society. There was no way
the workers activism could further develop politically without
taking into consideration the agrarian revolutionary crisis.
This would point to a larger problematic inherent in the reality
of crisis, at least in the crisis of 1974.
The railway strike of 1.5 million workers gives us a picture of
a general will to take on the state. We mentioned earlier how
Notes
1 Rediff interview with P N Dhar, http://www.
rediff.com/news/2000/jul/06inter.htm, accessed
on 3 November 2014.
2 http://www.scribd.com/doc/51242152/INDIANRAILWAYS , accessed on 16 March 2014.
3 http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year_2002/
september/view%20point.html, accessed on 28
October 2013; the same organisation in 1974
had come out with a call to support the Strike,
in Rail Hartal Zindabad, pamphlet where it
characterised the strike as anti-imperialist

46

the multiplicity of the craft unions in the railways helped the

workers to negotiate the problem of the superimposing will of
the big federations. But as the strike entered the difficult period with the state mobilising and applying its full force
against the workers from the end of the first week of the
Strike the leadership vacillated,28 clerical associations prevaricated, and in some places and cases, workers who were
hounded out of their homes and towns, feeling disconnected
and isolated from others in the face of the ruthless suppression
by the state, returned to work. Likewise, there was no organic
relation with the peasants struggles. The peasant insurrections too were likewise disconnected and isolated from each
other. The idea of India as a land of thousand mutinies, asset
as metaphor, proved a cross in reality.
Thus, it may be argued that in the period of 1970-74, the uprising was without a determined subject a struggle without a
subject, with no unity, no wholeness, no identifiable organisation. In the classical theory of revolution, as we tried to explain,
this was seen as a problem, the (revolutionary) subject being a
condition for the possibility of revolt and insurgency. In some
sense, this was therefore a contradictory reality. The uniform
subject in the form of railway workers appeared on the horizon,
a molar block; the working class was also there with a united
front, but only fleetingly. Precisely from this period, but more
noticeably in the following decades, the subjects of protest and
struggles multiplied to the extent that with the primacy of the
multiplicity it became henceforth a molecular uprising. Once
again, good as a metaphor, multiplicity, with its internal differences and hierarchies, was singularly ineffective as resistance
against a differential machine, which the capitalist economy
was turning into. There were only similarities between different resistances, only implicit and explicit references between
the various recurrences. The situation in 1974 was like a divided
presence a deep self-division of the subject with sharing. The
post-1974 years and decades are marked in the insurgent history of postcolonial India as ones continuously wrestling with
the problem of the multiplicity of the subject.
In any case, the promised transition through the General
Strike never took place. At the threshold of the problematic of
transformation of consciousness the crisis of 1974 broke down
indeed, at the very threshold of the concept of crisis. After
1974, postcolonial capitalism and democracy reproduced itself
with changes, which we call reform, consequent to the new
style of governance introduced in form of a series of measures
after 1977. The crisis was over. That story however remains
beyond the scope of the present discussion.

and anti-comprador capital in the context of

the manner in which the Indian Railways was
being used in the interest of imperial and comprador capital, n d NXL 77, P C Joshi Archive,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
4 In 2003, The Battle of Algiers was screened at
the Pentagon in order to offer some insight into
the challenges surrounding the US occupation
of Iraq. See the discussion on the film, Ethics
on Film: Discussion of the Battle of Algiers,
a note of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in
International Affairs, accessed on 4 November

2014, http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/education/ 002/film/reviews/0005.html

5 http://atiwb.nic.in/cs19.pdf, accessed on 16 July
2013.
6 V Sridhar, Chronicle of a Strike, http://www.
frontlineonnet.com/f l1819/18190750.htm,
accessed on 27 September 2013.
7 Stephen Sherlock, The Indian Railway Strike
of 1974: A Study of Power and Organised
Labour (New Delhi: Rupa), 2001; Sridhars
article (fn 6) is a comprehensive discussion of
the book.

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SPECIAL ARTICLE
8 Sridhar, op cit.
9 Alice Lynd and Staughton Lynd (ed.), Rank and
File: Personal Histories by Working Class
Organizers (Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books,
1973); see, in particular, Wayne Kennedy, An
Absolute Majority, pp 233-52.
10 The facts on Loco Mens Association taken from
http://www.ailrsa.com/history.html, accessed
on 10 November 2014.
11 On the early phase of labour conditions and
militancy in railway workshops, see Ian J Kerr,
The Railway Workshops and their Labour:
Entering the Black Hole in Kerr (ed.), 27 Down:
New Departures in Indian Railway Studies
(Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007), pp 231-71.
12 Ibid, p 238.
13 Ibid, p 234.
14 Ibid, p 232.
15 West Bengal Home Department records of
13-15 April 1974 speak of continuous politics
and strike meetings in Bilaspur, Garden
Reach, Waltair, and Kharagpur where the
South Eastern Railway Mens Federation and
South Eastern Railway Union were strong.
They also speak of secret meetings in Raipur,
dharna by 139 retrenched casual employees,
and work to rule by broad gauge staff at
Gondia. These records speak of several incidents during the entire month of May 1974 at
the Kharagpur workshop and the town (Labour
file 1024).
16 More than 20 years ago Bill Aitken had discussed safety conditions in the Indian Railways
in Exploring Indian Railways (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1991); he had mentioned that
by 1980 the total number of accidents was
12,000. In 1952 the total number of accidents
was over 16,000. Mysteriously it dropped at a

17

18
19
20
21

22
23

steady rate of 2,000 each year (p 235). He

commented, Official statistics are all things to
all men. In the same context he referred to
Rao and Wanchoo (who) stress the huge increase in traffic against which the railways
staff has to exert extra effort in order to
achieve its safety targets (p 236). Aitken also
observed that in view of low grade equipment,
(T)he very permanence of the steel rails
makes this inbuilt danger of slow braking a
constant worry dangling over the head of operations superintendent (p 228). Trade union
leaders also noted the gap between the quantity of rolling stock (with replacements and additions) and the huge increase in passenger traffic and freight. Between 1950-51 and 1975-76
passenger traffic (km) had increased by
122% and freight (tonnes) by 259%, coaches
had increased by 88 per cent, wagons by 92%,
and locomotives by 35%. See Nrisingha
Chakraburty, What Railwaymen Are Striving
For? Will Janata Government Fulfil Their
Aspirations?, A CITU publication, Kolkata,
1977, p 4.
Ian J Kerr, Engine of Change: The Railroads
that Made India (Westport, CT: Pager), 2007,
Table 1.1.
Ibid, p 47.
Ibid, p 101; Kerr also discussed the Kunzru
Committee recommendations (pp 150-51).
Ibid, p 166.
Figures taken from the report of the Loco Mens
Association http://www.ailrsa.com/history.
html, accessed on 10 November 2014.
R Samaddar, Chronicles of the Ranks, Economic & Political Weekly, 45 (4), 3 April 2010.
V I Lenin, The Collapse of the Second Inter
national, Collected Works, Volume 21

24
25

26

27
28

(1914-December 1915; Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), pp 213-14.

Ibid, p 214.
Daniel Bensaid, The Notion of the Revolutionary Crisis in Lenin, Section I (1968), Viewpoint
Magazine, 5 September 2014, at http://viewpointmag.com/2014/09/05/the-notion-of -therevolutionary-crisis-in-lenin-1968/, accessed on
5 November 2014.
V I Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, in his Collected
Works, Volume V: May 1901-February 1902
(Moscow: Progress Publishers), 1961, p 375.
Ibid, p 510.
In spite of a section of NCCRS remaining
militant, the main leadership was reformist.
George Fernandes, the leader of the strike, later wrote, Now, one of the points that I made
earlier was that we did not want a strike. In fact
right from October (1973) personally I did not
want it; later on our effort was to bring about a
settlement. But if the strike came about, it is my
conviction that the government wanted it, the
government was keen on having this strikeI
believe that the railway strike was used as a
kind of a dress rehearsal for the ultimate fascist takeover that took place in our country almost a year later on 25 June 1975 George Fernandes Speaks, ed. George Mathew (New Delhi:
Ajanta Publications), 1991, p 21. Fernandes thus
looked at the strike as a defensive move by the
workers. He admitted however that the strike
created a new level of consciousness among
workers, but said that it was difficult to steer this
to a purposeful direction (p 26). There was no
trace in his writing of a militant socialist vision
of radical transformation of society through
workers struggles for which the general strike
would become the launching pad.

The Adivasi Question

Edited By

Indra Munshi
Depletion and destruction of forests have eroded the already fragile survival base of adivasis across the country,
displacing an alarmingly large number of adivasis to make way for development projects. Many have been forced to
migrate to other rural areas or cities in search of work, leading to systematic alienation.
This volume situates the issues concerning the adivasis in a historical context while discussing the challenges they
face today.
The introduction examines how the loss of land and livelihood began under the British administration, making the
adivasis dependent on the landlord-moneylender-trader nexus for their survival.
The articles, drawn from writings of almost four decades in EPW, discuss questions of community rights and ownership,
management of forests, the states rehabilitation policies, and the Forest Rights Act and its implications. It presents
diverse perspectives in the form of case studies specific to different regions and provides valuable analytical insights.

Authors:
Ramachandra Guha Sanjeeva Kumar Ashok K Upadhyaya E Selvarajan Nitya Rao B B Mohanty Brian Lobo K Balagopal Sohel Firdos
Pankaj Sekhsaria DN Judy Whitehead Sagari R Ramdas Neela Mukherjee Mathew Areeparampil Asmita Kabra Renu Modi M Gopinath
Reddy, K Anil Kumar, P Trinadha Rao, Oliver Springate-Baginski Indra Munshi Jyothis Sathyapalan Mahesh Rangarajan Madhav Gadgil
Dev Nathan, Govind Kelkar Emmanuel DSilva, B Nagnath Amita Baviskar

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