KARACHI: Revival of trade unions stressed at book launch
By Hasan Mansoor
KARACHI, June 17: Speakers at the launch of the two-volume translation of a book featuring the life and struggle of great Indian trade unionist Comrade Shankar Guha Niyogi said what Pakistan needed was the courage and commitment within the trade unionism as intense as late Niyogi practised throughout his life in the Indian state of Chattisgarh till his assassination 15 years ago.
The book ‘Sangharsh Aur Nirman’ (Struggle and Construction) is originally written by late Niyogi in Hindi and edited by Anil Sadgopal and Shyam Bahadur ‘Namr’, is translated in many languages and has attained a biblical status for trade unionists in India and various countries across the world. The book is a compilation of Niyogi’s writings, speeches, interviews, as well as his reminiscences by his comrades and friends.
Renowned trade unionist Riffat Hussain popularly called as ‘Baba’ among his contemporaries has translated the book from the original source of Hindi and named it ‘Jeddojuhed Aur Tameer-i-Nau’.
The programme organised by the Piler, an NGO, at the Arts Council of Pakistan, was presided by Shafiq Qureshi. Trade union leaders Ghulam Farid Awan, Shaikh Majeed, Sharafat Ali, Mir Zulfiqar, Mustafa Hashmani and Shaikh Riaz and Prof Tauseef Ahmed Khan spoke.
According to the speakers, Comrade Shankar Guha Niyogi was one of the most extraordinary and creative trade unionists of India. He was killed by an assassin hired by the capitalists of Chattisgarh on the night of June 3, 1992. Thus the programme was also aimed at paying him tributes on his 15th death anniversary.
In an era when trade unionism was drawn more into the mire of economism, Niyogi and his Chattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh (CMSS) stood out for their political commitment to the revolutionary transformation of every conceivable aspect of life, the speakers pointed out.
Late Niyogi held that struggle against exploitation and oppression should go along with the constructive work of building an alternative. The struggle against capitalists should go hand in hand with the struggle against decadent aspects of the working class culture: alcoholism, wife beating, illiteracy, faith in magic rather than in modem medicine. For him, they said, the straggle for better wages and working conditions as well as the struggle for democratization of trade unions should go together. He introduced the working people of Chattisgarh not only to the methods of militant trade union struggle but also to the very complex questions of agrarian change, Chattisgarh nationalism, feminism, environment, health and education for the masses.
The book contains Niyogi’s speeches and interviews as well as several articles and pamphlets written by him. Most of these addressed to the struggling workers of the region are situated in the context of political and trade union struggle.
The speakers maintained that Niyogi was primarily interested in organising the contract workers employed in the coal and iron ore mines. The workers mainly belonged to Chattisgarh or were tribal people from neighbouring regions, they said. The lands on which the mines were situated belonged to their forefathers who hunted, gathered and practised mobile agriculture. They had been driven away from these lands where modern mines and industries were set up. This in no way helped generating employment for the local people or providing benefits of urbanisation to the region, they pointed out.
The trade union leaders related the plight of the local people of Chattisgarh with that of Gwadar and various other parts of Pakistan saying that the people of Chattisgarh were employed in low-paid manual labour and did not enjoy any regular employment and were subject to the whims of contractors. They were constantly under threat of unemployment due to mechanisation.
“The fact remains that Niyogi sought to address the issue of industrial sickness and sought its roots in the nexus between bureaucrats and imperialists, to the detriment of the interests of both production and labour,” said Riffat Hussain.
