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SUMMARY:'Produce or perish'.  The crisis of the late 1940s and the place o
 f labour in postcolonial India - Professor Ravi Ahuja\, University of Gott
 ingen
DTSTART:20160504T160000Z
DTEND:20160504T170000Z
UID:TALK65352@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Barbara Roe
DESCRIPTION:A major strike movement emerged in India soon after the end of
  the Second World War extending into the early years of independence (1946
 -1950). Though it has rarely been discussed by historians\, it was charact
 erized\, a decade later\, as a period of ‘industrial strife unprecedente
 d in the history of India’ (V.V. Giri). At its peak in 1946 and 1947\, t
 his strike movement was spread more widely than ever before across geograp
 hical space\, involved many workers outside the older\, factory-centred la
 bour movement strongholds and included\, among others\, numerous employees
  of the expanded Indian state apparatus. It triggered a spurt of legislati
 ve activity on the part of the Interim Government and the first Government
  of independent India. In fact\, crucial foundations of Indian labour and 
 social legislation were laid during these years. I attempt a preliminary a
 nalysis of this event\, of its interdependence with other contemporary soc
 ial and political mobilizations and of its political repercussions. My spe
 cific contention is that India’s late 1940s were\, among other things\, 
 a catalytic moment in the definition of ‘labour’ as a political and so
 cial category. I argue that the years from 1946 to about 1950 should be co
 nceived of as a catalytic moment because long-term processes that dated ba
 ck to the First World War at the least were condensed then under the press
 ure of a profound social crisis that unsettled\, for a brief period\, the 
 structures of social and economic power and not only inter-community relat
 ions and the constitution of the state. Consequently\, this acceleration o
 f a long-term tendency gave rise to a regime of labour regulation that has
  proved\, in several of its elements\, resilient to change over almost sev
 en decades. 
LOCATION:Seminar Room SG1\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambri
 dge CB3 9DT
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