Page:Gandhi and Saklatvala - Is India different.pdf/32

 at all follow that in the economy of modern life our organised workers shall be of less value or shall become a less im portant section of the community than in any other country which is more industrialised and less agricultural, under similar circumstances. If a large country has to depend upon a small number of industrial workers as compared to agriculturalists, the power of the industrial workers does not become any the less on that account.

It is with the above observations that I have been con stantly attempting to direct your mind to the necessity and importance of an organised industrial labour movement within our national activity. Such a movement, in the first place, must be national and embrace the whole country. It is not for you and me to-day to devise new and fantastic organisations when we see the value of the existing trade union movements in all the advancing and powerful coun tries of the world. We must have an All-India Trade Union movement.

I am not at the present moment arguing about your methods or about your ideals. I am only denouncing your idea that the organisation of labour should be sectional, should be communal and should be limited to a little spot like Ahmedabad. Did you ever try to have an Indian National Congress for Ahmedabad alone ? Did you ever try to confine the Khaddar movement to Ahmedabad alone? Did you ever try to have the National Education movement confined to Ahmedabad? Why, then, should you try to restrict your ideal labour movement to Ahmedabad?

You are not weakening the political movement, the Khaddar movement, or the National Education movement by encouraging Ahmedabad or any one important district to fall away and stand aloof from the whole national movement ; then why should you do so in the case of the large national labour movement by asking and encouraging an important industrial centre like Ahmedabad to stand aloof and alone? Let me examine your reasoning at some length.

You say labour in India is extremely unorganised. Do you not say, therefore, that I am right in appealing to you to employ your great power in organising labour on an adequate national basis ? You cannot argue that our numbers are unwieldy, for many Western countries have larger num bers of workers to deal with ; nor can you find fault with the