To write on the origin of May Day and eight-hour's struggle and their development in India was a long-thought-of project for me to be completed before the May Day centenary, but insurmountable difficulties that stood in the way caused inevitable delay in publication of this much cherished volume.
Hundred and two years have clasped since Chicago's Hay-market episode. During this hundred years, the spirit of May Day has continued to inspire the working-class movement of the world. What happened between May 1 and May 4 of the year 1886 at Chicago was the climax of the eight-hour's movement that was raging in Europe and America in the second half of the nineteenth century. And this unleashed a new phase of the International working-class movement not just on the question of eight-hour's day, but on issues with wider ideological implications.
Subsequent to the Haymarket happenings, the eight-hour movement or more precisely the movement for shortening of working hours did not, however, remain confined in Europe and America only. It spread to other parts of the world too with the onset of modern industrial capitalism there. After the decision of the Paris Congress of 1889, May Day began to be observed gradually in other countries also.
In India too, which fell subjugated to the British colonialists in the middle of the eighteenth century, the movement for shortening of working hours began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century when a modicum of industrialization started appearing. For India, however, it took a pretty long time for the working class to concretely voice the demand for eight-hour's work and to start observing May Day, as the day of solidarity of the international working class.
But the Haymarket episode was not just an outburst of the eight-hour movement in America. More than so, behind it lay a revolutionary philosophy, though not fully coherent, which guided the organizers of the labour movement in America.
The first part of the book deals with the evolution of the revolutionary ideology of Marx and Engels so far as the labour's interest for shortening of working hours and the formers' guidance of the labour movement on eight-hour demand are concerned.
Simultaneously, it analyses in pretty details the complicated process of the development of the American labour movement and gradual shaping of the ideological moorings of the leaders of that movement ultimately leading to the May Day happenings.
This part also deals with the poignant events taking place subsequently of May Day becoming internationalized, sharpening of contradictions within the international labour movement resulting in desperate attempt by a powerful section of the labour movement to dilute the revolutionary tradition and significance of May Day and also the resistance to such attempt by the adherents of the philosophy of a revolutionary working-class movement.
The second and third parts of the book relate exclusively to India as to the emergence and development of the struggle for shortening of working hours, the first attempts for observing May Day in the country and its background.
The series of Commissions set up by the then Government of India to enquire into the working conditions of the factory labour and the enactments that followed in gradually restricting their working hours have really an exciting background with a number of antagonistic interests working together.
While inside India two contradictory forces acted-one from the side of the labour and their philanthrophic well-wishers to reduce the working hours-the other acted from the side of the factory owners whose interests lay in further lengthening the working hours or at least to maintain status quo.
In India's colonial background, a third force also operated, and quite powerfully in favour of shortening of the working hours and that was the capitalist interests within Great Britain. To them, abnormally long working hours and cheap labour in India were most disadvantageous in competing with the capita-lists-both British and Indian-operating in India. So, the out-side interest also joined the fray and to a great extent influenced the policy of the British Government and their colonial administration in India.
Interaction of these various forces in ultimately deciding the working hours of the Indian labour makes an interesting study.
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