An Indian freedom fighter

By RIITTA PIETILÄ In 1948, an Indian medical student and trade union activist named Shanti Patel organised his first strike. Around 10,000 engineering metalworkers were fighting for their wages and consequently paralysed the port of Bombay, where the ships carrying food for starving Indians - the country was on the brink of famine - could not deliver their cargo. "Gandhiji didn't condemn the strike but he expressed his deep concern twice in his speech. You know, in the evenings he gathered people of all religions and they'd pray together... So the socialist leaders like Ashok Mehta, who was the president of my union and the General Secretary of HMS (Hind Mazdoor Sabha, a national centre), suggested: 'Why not meet Gandhi? If you succeed to convince him, the Central Congress and government will come to your side and that's it'," recalls Shanti Patel some 50 years later. MAHATMA GANDHI - A TRUE IDOL At that time Patel was 26 - and exhilarated. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the greatest spiritual and political leaders of the century, was (and is) for him a true idol, a life-time example of humanity. And he was going to meet him! Young Patel took it very seriously, preparing himself for questions and getting his notions right. On the Great Day he found himself in a taxi stuck in a huge crowd of religious people as it seemed, going the same direction for prayer. Nervous about missing the appointment of his life, Patel got out of the vehicle and continued struggling forward on foot. What's this mess all about anyway, he asked... "Don't you know? Gandhi has been shot!" "I always said that this was the saddest day of my life. I had been on the way to meet a man who had transformed my whole world - and there was only his dead body to discover the day after," says Shanti Patel. It was January 30, 1948. Due to the sudden murder, the 46 days' strike had to be withdrawn, yet after the intervention of the chief labour commissioner a settlement conceding over 60per cent of the demands was signed. A MIRACLE HAPPENED Mahatma Gandhi is often referred to as the father of India's Independence, but who remembers that he also founded one of the first labour unions in the country? Always fighting for fundamental equality between all humans in a society extremely divided into different castes, religions and languages, Gandhi persisted with his idea of unity, fundamental rights and basic living conditions for everyone. (The real scope of this 'unit' will be discussed below.) Even before 'Gandhian socialism' became the very core of his life and work, Shanti Patel was of course aware of the harsh realities of a country where today 40 per cent of the population lives in absolute poverty. In the '30s, in the small village of Virpur (in the state of Gujarat), the outcastes or 'untouchables' still had to sweep away every footprint they left on the ground so as not to pollute others, and a widow's social position was slightly superior to that of a dog, although she could now count on not being burnt alive at her husband's funeral. "Gandhi once said that after having created a widow God washed his hands - he criticised the God! Before I learnt to know about Gandhi's thinking, I was a very religious child who used to offer prayer to Hindu gods... But following his example I came to respect all religions, which also means that no religious belief should be misused to account for social injustice." Since actions are supposed to speak louder than words, Patel consciously wanted to break borders in his personal life, too. When he wanted to marry, he married a woman from another caste (which technically means becoming outcaste), from another province and from another language. His parents of course opposed this - even today 90 per cent of marriages are arranged and keep within the same caste - and Patel's mother announced that she would commit suicide: "We were weeping, both of us, and I said to her: 'No you won't because you love me so much.' And a week before my marriage a miracle happened: my mother changed completely! She was a common illiterate woman but very bold since she dared to revolt against the beliefs in Hindu society." FROM UNDERGROUND ACTIVITIES TO TRADE UNIONISM By that time Patel had already chosen the same career as his father, who was a medical doctor, well off by Indian standards. Shanti Patel graduated with an MBBS degree in 1950 and worked for three years part-time in a hospital as a 'workers' doctor' - and he had had enough. He never wanted to practise his profession privately and soon quit the hospital as well. At that time he was already deeply involved in politics and chose the trade union movement instead. Of course it was, again, Mahatma's 'fault'. "He was miraculous, I have seen it with my own eyes. The question is: how to wake up millions of illiterate, ignorant people? Yet he did it and youngsters like me were affected politically for the rest of our lives." For some, this was not a very long time... One of Shanti Patel's first contacts with the metal industry was to get in touch with the railway - literally. In the last phase of the Independence struggle, started in 1942 by Gandhi, Shanti Patel was involved in committing various acts of sabotage against the British administration, such as putting bombs under railway lines. The targets were British troops moving from one place to another to restore order, and also gun transports - ironically guns were the only metal industry product the British overlords allowed to be manufactured in India! "Had I got caught, I wouldn't be sitting here," smiles Patel, who went on to become a doctor, mayor of Mumbai, member of Parliament... His present curriculum vitae comprises some three impressive pages of presidencies, chairmanships and memberships in trade union organisations, both nationally and internationally. However, when passing the paper to me, he put a special mark on a single occupation: Freedom Fighter. "We had been sent for underground activities far into the countryside, where ultimately all my young colleagues except me were arrested. So I returned to the city (Bombay) and continued my studies besides acting in the student movement." STARTED ORGANISING THE WORKERS At that time Patel also plunged himself into the trade union movement. He had come in contact with Peter Alwares and H.Z Gilani, both founders of the Congress Socialist Party and leading trade unionists in Bombay, and started organising the workers of the Alcock Ashdown Company and other metal factories under their guidance. The Alcock case in the Industrial Court became a historic one, since Patel's demand for retrenchment compensation for the discharged workers became the first one ever conceded - today it is provided for by law. He was also introduced to Ishwarbai Patel in what is now the Mumbai Port Trust, Dock & General Employees' Union - the oldest union (1920) - and started working there. With HMS Patel has been associated right from its inception (1948), also as president, and he has played a role in the Steel, Metal & Engineering Workers' Federation of India (also HMS), the National Joint Council for Steel Industry, and significantly in the International Metalworkers' Federation, where he became the first Executive Committee Indian member ever, in 1993. I met Patel in February in his office in Mumbai, at the National Union of Seafarers of India (NUSI) - its 77-year-old president is still going strong. In the book PROFILES - Short biographies of 101 trade union leaders in India, the section on Patel (the longest one) ends with him declaring his main ambition as "unity of the trade union movement - one union in one industry!" Once again the notion of 'unity' comes up. "Only 10 per cent of workers in India are organised. Every single political party wants its own labour wing; in each brand you have 4-10 unions competing with each other while multinational companies don't even accept free unions... It's terrible. And yet in this state of absolute fragmentation all the political parties on the central and state levels follow exactly the same policy of liberalisation. As if 'privatisation' were a solution for everything..." CAR FACTORIES OR STEEL PLANTS? Let us take a few steps back in time, for example in the metal industry - but there was no such a thing as the metal industry in the old British days, when any industrial development, except in textiles, was prohibited. After Independence there was only one (initially British) steel plant in India, so the country began to strive towards economic autonomy by establishing nine new ones, under government ownership. It was a mixed economy under the leadership of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who very wisely chose a rarely travelled path somewhere between British or American 'laissez-faire' and Soviet totalitarianism. "Under foreign rule India had missed the first industrial revolution and had immense setbacks in many spheres. So we had to determine the basic and key industries, choose our priorities: shall we build car factories or steel plants? Of course steel plants, since by producing steel first we can establish more factories in other industries too. "On the other hand, the problem with steel industry is that it won't give quick returns - a steel plant begins to make profit only in 7-8 years - and furthermore capitalism of course requires some investment, i.e. the capital! So the government's choice was also an ideological one - but not merely... The capitalists who wanted only quick returns were not interested in them and wished the government to take up the responsibility." SENT TO PRISON Talking about Nehru, three more important strikes were still to be launched by Patel and other leaders, with increasingly dramatic consequences each time. In 1958, port and dock workers nation-wide demanded a wage rise and classification of categories of workmen; Nehru had to intervene, and a satisfactory settlement was assured. In 1966, the union resorted to a strike to gain 12 hours' wages for 12 hours' duty for shore crews; the Central Labour Minister then declared the strike illegal and issued orders for the arrest of Shanti Patel and the entire Working Committee of the Union (the order was left unenforced after intervention by a chief minister). In 1975, Shanti Patel and other union officials were actually sent to Nashik Central Prison without trial for an indefinite time, which in this case turned out to be about 100 days. Patel was an important Congress leader in Bombay, but he had opposed the 'Emergency' - authoritarian rule proclaimed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi; or rather he had condemned the annulment of all political rights or free trade unionism, and was expelled from the Congress Party. Having been released, Patel was associated with the formation of a new party called Janata ('people'). In 1978 he organised an opposition movement against an Industrial Relations Bill which on the whole was contrary to the interest of the workers: "A meeting was convened in Bombay where all Central Trade Union organisations were called together, for the first time in history! And the bill was abandoned by the government - it was a victory for the Indian trade union movement!" And for the workers, too, not only in India but everywhere in the world... after all, we live in a global society. However, in Patel's mind realising this is not enough - it must be accepted. We might note that when the ILO was founded in 1919, it declared in its Convention that "poverty anywhere in the world is a danger to prosperity elsewhere." This is even more relevant now than it was then and can certainly also be read as a political warning: poverty stinks - of violence. THE METAL INDUSTRY IS DOING BETTER Even with its slow beginning, the Indian metal industry is now doing well, or at least better. It started with steel, heavy engineering, power plants... Later electrical engineering and automobile industry emerged, the shipyard and aerospace industries developed; nowadays India can even produce satellite components, specialising in such dynamically growing industries as electronics and software. Bangalore is the Indian equivalent of Silicon Valley - and yet its success story is worlds removed from the realities of some 400 million people - more than a third of the population - who live in poverty. "I sometimes said to my Western colleagues: 'We are talking about poverty - have you seen poverty?' For example, unemployment in India really means being thrown to the wolves. Every day I see half-naked children in the street and feel so sick... I fought for Independence because I wanted those people to have a happier life - and I haven't succeeded!" Apparently it is not all Patel's fault. The philosophy of the free-market economy is for him the main cause of the present situation, which began to escalate in 1990-91 when India was in particularly bad shape. In the name of efficiency and competition, it was forced to accept conditions dictated by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other financial and trade organisations. These included the privatisation of some successful and profitable units. "The unregulated globalisation in India has led to a situation where plants are closing and only sub-contracting or exploitative jobs are on a relative increase. It's jobless economic 'development', where multinationals will soon be dictating all the terms, hiring and firing workers as they like under the philosophy of neoliberalism. "In the automobile industry this has already resulted in a united opposition movement - funnily both foreign and Indian automobile companies, which were for liberalisation, have recently changed their attitude since they fear that nobody will buy new cars. Second-hand Western cars are so much cheaper, due to free import..." AN ALTERNATIVE PROGRAMME A Tobin Tax ... that is Shanti Patel's suggestion for a counter-strategy, or one of them. An alternative programme to that of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is urgently needed in 'developing economies' like India, and the International Metalworkers' Federation should concentrate on this. On the other hand, a Western worker's fear of cost-saving programmes - his job moving all of a sudden to India, for example - isn't based on real facts, and Patel strongly warns against national interests or protectionism, which are unfortunately common in today's international trade union movement: "What we really need now is international solidarity of working people. We must face unitedly the newly emerging situation due to unregulated globalisation, and take appropriate steps in the interest of the whole global working class: 'Let other countries develop and see our own jobs protected also'." The world - the basic unit? .............................. Riitta Pietilä is a free-lance journalist.