4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
temporary academic scholars, especially in the pre-Independence era, had hardly any reason or occasion to come in contact with the life and living experiences of industrial labour. That is why even those scholars who were not otherwise unaware of the relationship between colonial exploitation and the tardy, lopsided or enclave-style development ot the country's industries, did not show much keenness about studying labour and its problems.
Strike Struggles of 20s and Labour Study
It is no accident therefore that in the pre-First World War period, the published number of books, periodicals or monographs on Indian industrial labour was so small that they could be counted on one's finger tips, (this comment however needs some amendment in the case of Assam plantation labour and we shall discuss this matter later on). Till this time problems of industrial labour were usually equated with those of the poor in general. The characteristics of the former as a distinct social category remained veiled under the overall cover of poverty. Hence it was their poverty, lack of education or of social and moral "virtues' that received the attention of some progressive social reformers and politicians loosely associated with a still more loosely organised Indian Association and later on, the Indian National Congress. The noted Bengali reformer, Sashipada Banerji's activities among Bengali jute workers during the last quarter of the last century, may be cited here as an example of this attitude.
This philanthropic and condescending attitude towards labour began to change after the war when labour unrest, mainly in the form of strikes, broke out in all the organised industries in India (including Assam tea) and continued unabated for about four years (1919-1922). The intensity, frequency and spatial dimensions of labour unrest, transgressing all barriers of casteism, communalism or regionalism, made labour a subject matter of national importance and hence a serious subject of study. Industrialists of all shades, nationalist leaders, journals, newspapers, various chambers of commerce, as well as the police and administration were forced by the events of the day to realise that a new force had emerged in the Indian society whose significance could be underestimated only at the cost of existing social, political and industrial 'stability'. Various committees (mainly official, a few non-official) were set up from time to time to inquire into the causes of such massive and widespread unrest. Proceedings of provincial and central legislaturs of the day contain innumerable references to debates on this subject, indicating how serious that problem appeared to those who were concerned or involved with the maintenance of law and order in the social and industrial structures of the country.
We can identify broadly the main points of enquiry: whether the strikes and other forms of labour unrest were spontaneous, arising out of genuine economic and other grievances of the workers or whether they were the result of instigation and interference by 'outsiders' i.e. mainly nationalist politicans, out to involve labour with the contemporary anti-imperialist movement. Since the two questions were interlinked, it is but natural that opinions would differ on both counts. While the police, administration and employers maintained that workers had no genuine grievances and that the unrest was deliberately fanned by outsiders (i.e. non-co-operators), the motive being to create social, industrial and administrative disorder, the outsiders themselves vehemently denied such charges and asserted that the causes of unrest were to be found in the economic and other disabilities from which workers suffered.