z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-04.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 222
222 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
less than slavery. But is there any provision for manumission ? And if there is such a provision, is it a reasonable and a possible condition which workers can be expected to satisfy ? The condition is that you must show 50.1 per cent. membership of the total number of workers then and then alone you can escape the chains and the throes and the punishment of your master. Is that a possible condition ?
Now, Sir, we, who have been what my honourable friend probably likes to call misguided fellows, have been asked to turn our attention to the ideal situation that exists in Ahmedabad. We are asked to take a leaf out of that Ahmedabad book and to follow that ideal. I am prepared to do that. As I study the example it becomes necessary to ask this question : is there any possibility, under this Bill, of even the Ahmedabad Majoor Mahajan becoming a free union ? I cannot see any hope of that union becoming a union of free workers. Ahmedabad is certainly a most ideal place ; as the Royal Commission has pointed out, there does not exist anywhere in India such an ideal institution. There, there are employers who belong to the same religion as the employees, barring a few Mahomedans, who are weavers, and who are outside the union ; the workers speak the same language as their masters. Cultural unity there exists in abundance. Therefore, whatever fissiparous tendencies, whatever recalcitrant tendencies, that one might expect in other situations do not exist there. On top of that, there is the great personality of the Mahatma, to whom every recalcitrant may refer and bow, and fall in line no matter what his personal grievances may be. The Ahmedabad Majoor Mahajan has grown under such auspices. It has had a life of more than two decades ; I am told it has been in existence for eighteen years. What is the state of that union ? I have got figures here in this book, called the Labour Gazette for May 1938, and on Analysis I find this to be the situation at Ahmedabad. I am taking only the textile industry. The total number employed in the Ahmedabad textile industry is
90,000. What is the total number of workers who are included in the union ? The Majoor Mahajan, as everybody knows, is a federation of five different unions ; and the total number is 22,000. That is on the first of May 3938. Sir, that works out—I am a poor mathematician, I will stand corrected if somebody rectifies my figures—that works out, according to me, at 21 per cent. of the total ; that is to say, the union membership is 21 per cent. of the total number of workers in the textile industry. Applying that test, as I said, even to Ahmedabad, can anybody say that the Ahmedabad Majoor Mahajan, if it were to apply for registration today, could do without the approval of the employers ? No.
(The House re-assembled after recess at 2-30 p.m.)
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Mr. Speaker, Sir, before recess I was trying to emphasise that under the conditions prescribed in this Bill there is no possibility of any free union growing up in this country and I illustrated what I wanted to say by reference to the position of the Ahmedabad mill workers’ union, and I showed that even under the most propitious conditions