Page:Gandhi and Saklatvala - Is India different.pdf/29

 Anasuyabai and Shankerlal Banker, as also Gulzarilal and Desai, are absolutely free agents, they have exercised their choice of accepting my guidance in framing their labour policy and administration. I must therefore shoulder my share of the responsibility for what is happening about labour in Ahmedabad. I have certainly advised them to keep Ahmedabad labour aloof from the other labour movements in India so long as Ahmedabad labour chooses to remain under their guidance.

My reason is exceedingly simple. Labour in India is still extremely unorganised. The labourers have no mind of their own when it comes to national policy or even the general welfare of labour itself. Labourers in various parts of India have no social contact and no other mutual ties. It is provincial, and even in the same city it is highly com munal. It is not everywhere wisely guided. In many places it is under selfish and highly unscrupulous guidance.

There is no absolute cohesion amongst provincial labour leaders, and there is little discipline among sub-leaders. The latter do not uniformly tender obedience to their provincial chiefs. Leaders in different provinces have no single policy to follow. In these circumstances an all-India union can only exist on paper. I hold it to be suicidal therefore for Ahmed abad to think of belonging to it.

My own conviction is that Ahmedabad is rendering a service to labour all over India by its abstention, or, as I call it, self-restraint. If it can succeed in perfecting its own organisation it is bound to serve as a model to the rest of India, and its success is bound to prove highly infectious.

But I am free to confess that there is as yet no assurance of success in the near future. The energy of the workers is sorely tried in combating disruptive forces that ever con tinue to crop up. There is the Hindu-Muslim tension. There is the question of touchables and untouchables in Hinduism, etc.

Add to this extreme ignorance and selfishness among the labourers themselves. It is a marvel to me that labour in Ahmedabad has made the progress it has during the last 12 years of its corporate existence. If, then, Ahmedabad remains isolated it does so not selfishly, but for the sake of labour as a whole.

One word as to the policy. It is not anti-capitalistic.