54 SOCIAL SCIENTIST their wage, but, not unexpectedly,still below the demanded level. In retaliation, he organised a group of rowdies from nearby villages and in league with other influential landlords in the neighbourhood attacked the men and molested the women labourers, who had defied traditional hierarchy on 28, April 1938. And despite open violence, the police refused to intervene—explaining their reluctance by the prominence and influence of one of the mirasdars who had actively participated in the affair.2 Some years later, when the struggle had taken deeper roots among the people and had strengthened the organization of the people, an official observer noted: "it is of interest to note that some of the mirasdars accustomed to abject slavery on the part of their labourers are unable to adapt themselves to the altered conditions around and feel an exaggerated sense of indignity at the attitude of the labourers especially the Adi-Dravida labourers.}?3 In the early stages of the movement, this attitude of the mirasdars, who had been accustomed to unquestioned loyalty from their labourers who were bound not only by economic service but by a particularly rigid structure of caste oppression, gave rise to unbridled attack on any protest from this section of the people. Emerging Class Unity On the other hand in the course of struggle, new combinations among the working people emerged. In the struggle in Kali yakudi village the Magistrate noted: "For the first time the pada-yachis (or hired labour) whose position is above that of the Hari-jans in the social scale but whose economic status is very similar to theirs, seem to have made common cause with them, and it also appears that a type of labour leader has arisen in connection with the dispute.?)4 The experience is very significant especially because two caste groups had overcome their age-old opposition—sanctified by religion and guarded by social isolation—in response to a common, class issue. The labourers and share-croppers were, of course, not organized4nto unions at this time, and the organization of the first Agricultural Labourers' Union (Vivasaya Thozhilalar Sangam) by independents in 1939, in an area where spontaneous struggles reflected the militancy of the toiling people, provided new strength to the fight against oppression. From the beginning, the partial demands relating to the economic condition of the toiling people were linked up with stirring democratic protest against their social vulnerability inherent in the oppressive Hindu caste structure. At the inaugural meeting there was a demand for