Ahmedabad mill strike

Also called: Ahmedabad mill strike 1918, Ahmedabad satyagraha · Topic: The National Movement: Gandhian Era · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement"

Meaning

The Ahmedabad mill strike (1918) was a wage dispute in Gujarat. Gandhi led the cotton mill workers of Ahmedabad against the mill owners. He fasted to keep the workers firm. The owners then agreed to arbitration (a neutral person decides the dispute), and the workers won a 35 per cent wage increase. [2]

It matters because it was the first time Gandhi used satyagraha for industrial workers. It is also often called his first hunger strike in India. It was one of the three local campaigns of 1917–18 that made him a champion of the poor before he moved into all-India politics.

Explanation

Background and causes

• The quarrel was about pay.
• During the plague, the mills had given workers an extra payment called a plague bonus.
• The owners later took this bonus away.

• Prices were high, so the workers asked for a large pay rise.

• Textbook accounts say the workers asked for about 50 per cent and the owners offered about 20 per cent.

• It was a hard case for Gandhi.
• The mill owners were his friends, and some of them gave money to his work. Ambalal Sarabhai was the best-known of these owners.
• The workers were poor. Their side was taken up by Anusuya Sarabhai, Ambalal's own sister.
• Gandhi studied the case and backed the workers. He advised them to ask for 35 per cent.

How the satyagraha worked

• The pledge: the workers took a vow to stop work. They also promised to stay non-violent, to hate no one, and not to go back to work until the demand was met.
• They met every day under a tree near the Sabarmati. Gandhi spoke to them and printed leaflets to keep them united.
• The strike began to weaken.
• As the weeks passed, hunger set in and some workers lost heart.

• A few began to drift back to the mills.

• Gandhi's fast

• Gandhi went on a fast to hold the workers to their pledge. [2]
• It was not meant against the owners. It was meant to keep the strikers' promise alive.

• Still, the fast put moral pressure on the owners too, and Gandhi himself admitted this.

• The settlement: within a few days the owners agreed to arbitration. Gandhi ended his fast.

Results

• The workers got a 35 per cent wage increase. [2]
• The campaign later grew into the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association. This was a disciplined, non-violent trade union.

• It solved disputes through talks and arbitration, not class war.

• Gandhi's standing grew among the urban poor, just as Champaran had raised it among peasants.

• It added to the pattern of his early campaigns: local grievance → enquiry → pledge → non-violent pressure → settlement.

Time, place and evidence

• When: 1918. This is the Gandhian era, soon after Gandhi came back from South Africa in 1915.
• Where: Ahmedabad, Gujarat, the main cotton textile centre of western India. Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram was in the same city.
• Key people:
• Gandhi, who led the strike and fasted.
• Anusuya Sarabhai, who led the workers.
• Ambalal Sarabhai, the leading mill owner.

• The mill workers.

• Where it sits in the sequence:

• Champaran, 1917 (Bihar, indigo tenants)
• Ahmedabad, 1918 (Gujarat, mill workers)
• Kheda, 1918 (Gujarat, peasants seeking cuts in land revenue)

• Rowlatt Satyagraha, 1919 (Gandhi's first all-India political action)

• How we know:

• NCERT Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India" says Gandhi went to Gujarat in 1918 to organise satyagraha among cotton mill workers.
• NCERT Class 12, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement" places it among his early local campaigns.
• Gandhi describes the strike and his fast in his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.
• Britannica records the fast, the arbitration and the 35 per cent rise. [2]

Don't confuse with

• Kheda Satyagraha (1918): also in Gujarat and also in 1918. But it was a peasant campaign for remission of land revenue (cancelling or postponing land tax) after crop failure and plague. Vallabhbhai Patel became a leader there. [2] Ahmedabad was about industrial wages.
• Champaran Satyagraha (1917): Gandhi's first satyagraha in India. It was in Bihar, against the tinkathia system of forced indigo planting. [3][4] Ahmedabad was his first fast and his first campaign for factory workers.
• Rowlatt Satyagraha (1919): Ahmedabad was local and economic. Rowlatt was Gandhi's first all-India political campaign. It was against a law that allowed detention without trial (jail without a trial).
• Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association vs All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC): the first was a local, Gandhian union that grew out of the 1918 strike. The AITUC was a separate, national federation of trade unions.

Prelims Hooks

• Ahmedabad mill strike: 1918, Gujarat. It was a dispute between cotton mill owners and workers after the plague bonus was withdrawn.
• Outcome: Gandhi fasted, the owners accepted arbitration, and the workers got a 35% wage increase. [2]
• It is widely called Gandhi's first hunger strike in India. Trap: Champaran (1917) was his first satyagraha in India, not his first fast.
• Correct order: Champaran (1917) → Ahmedabad mill strike (1918) → Kheda (1918) → Rowlatt Satyagraha (1919).
• Person–role pair: Anusuya Sarabhai led the workers, while her brother Ambalal Sarabhai was among the mill owners.
• Legacy: the strike led to the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association, a non-violent trade union model.

Mains Points

• It showed that satyagraha could work in a factory dispute.
• Champaran and Kheda were peasant struggles. Ahmedabad brought the method to the industrial working class.
• The answer was not class war. It was a non-violent pledge, moral pressure and arbitration.

• This Gandhian model of labour relations (talks and arbitration, not confrontation) shaped the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association. It differs from the later left-led unions that preferred direct confrontation.

• The fast is still debated: was it moral force or pressure?

• Gandhi aimed the fast at his own followers, to keep their pledge alive.
• But it also pushed the owners, who were his friends and funders, into a settlement. Gandhi himself saw this weakness.

• This tension ran through all his later fasts, so it is useful when judging Gandhian methods.

• It was part of building a base for mass politics.

• Together with Champaran and Kheda, the strike gave Gandhi a name among the poor and a team of trusted helpers.
• It also tested a practical method before he confronted the colonial state itself in the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919.
• All three campaigns were local and economic. This is why they are best read as the groundwork for the later all-India movements.

Related concepts

• Satyagraha
• Rajkumar Shukla
• Champaran satyagraha
• Tinkathia system
• Kheda satyagraha
• Mahadev Desai
• Rowlatt Act
• Rowlatt satyagraha
• Jallianwala Bagh massacre
• Michael O'Dwyer

Read more

• Satyagraha in action: Champaran, Ahmedabad, Kheda; Rowlatt and Jallianwala Bagh