Page:Gandhi and Saklatvala - Is India different.pdf/35

 under them in most parts of Europe or America. The standard of wages in Ahmedabad is, on the average, lower than that prevailing in Bombay.

Despite all this nothing will hinder Ahmedabad labour from carrying on its own experiments, merely because it affiliates to the All-India Trade Union Congress. All over the world the Trade Union Congresses of various countries contain within them labour federations and trade unions of different trade and provinces pursuing different policies, and yet united together for national demands and general stan dards. That neither the All-India Trade Union Congress nor any federation of textile workers can afford to remain for ever without its branches in an important industrial city like Ahmedabad is quite obvious, and your policy is only forcing a division in Ahmedabad itself.

We had in Britain a very unfortunate example of a miners' organisation in Fifeshire, attempting such aloofness to the detriment of both sides, but they have at last seen the wisdom of working for unity. I do not see that any of your reasons prove that the circumstances in Ahmedabad are peculiar and necessitate its holding aloof to such an extent as to justify a damaging breach in the All-India Trade Union movement. The best that Ahmedabad can do is to agree to the affiliation to the T.U.C. The question of Ahmedabad policy being a model of help and assistance to other unions can arise and be of practical value only after such affiliation. Your personal decision as to whether you should confine your interest in labour to Ahmedabad alone, or should extend it to the larger national movement, can remain the same even if the Ahmedabad Labour Union becomes affiliated to Congress.

Now with regard to your labour policy, which you explain so clearly, do let me submit at once that whatever your individual views may be on policy and whatever may be acceptable to, or not acceptable to, the workers of Ahmedabad, all that has no bearing on Ahmedabad's affiliation to the T.U.C. of India, and all that provides no justification for Ahmedabad's aloofness from and splitting of a large national movement.

Your idea of a policy for labour, as you explained, would in reality put you outside even those who are regarded as the "friends of the workers," never mind the champions of their cause. However, you confess that you are still in a dream, and even that it may all be a delusion, you show the ordinary confusion of thought of all apologists for capitalism by not