Revolutionary Desires by Loomba Ania

Author:Loomba, Ania
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

4

THE POLITICAL IS PERSONAL

Not far from the Bombay Commune was a world that was both connected to, and far removed from it: Girangaon, or the textile mill district in Bombay, in which a very different kind of female revolutionary was honed from the late 1920s onwards. Protests by Bombay’s mill workers had been escalating. Between October 1928 and April 1929 there were more than 70 strikes, and these actions gave birth to trade unions and labour organizations in Girangaon (Menon and Adarkar 154–55).1 The 1928 strike was the first action in which Communist Party cadres, led by the charismatic (and controversial) trade union leader S. A. Dange, emerged as undisputed leaders of the mill workers. This led to the establishment of the Girni Kamgar Union (GKU), also known as Lal Bawta (Red Flag), the first union to organize women. Ushabai Dange and Parvatibai Bhore were among the women who emerged as leaders and organizers of the Union. Labour and feminist historians have noted their importance to various mill actions but have not engaged with the autobiographies of these two women. These are important documents in themselves, particularly because we do not have many accounts of women labour organizers from that period. Indeed, it is particularly remarkable that they were written at all, because neither woman was highly educated, nor thought of herself as extraordinary and important. What makes these books especially valuable is that both Ushabai and Parvatibai frankly detail the cross-hatching of their intimacies – love, cohabitation, child-rearing, and familial relations – with their political consciousness and the class dynamics within the trade unions and Communist Party.

The two women knew each other – Parvatibai felt enabled by watching Ushabai in action – and they and felt a kinship with one another. Both were acutely self-conscious about their difference from the better-educated and more cosmopolitan women within the CPI. At the same time, the two were far from identical. Ushabai hailed from a Brahmin family, whereas Parvatibai came from the low nai (barber) caste. Ushabai’s life was shaped by her marriage to S.A. Dange, the trade union leader, while Parvatibai’s was a constant attempt to escape her marriage to a spouse who had no political engagement at all. Ushabai felt that her domesticity was fraught because it was too enmeshed with the Communist Party, while Parvatibai’s was fractious because it was too far removed from the political world to which she belonged. Thus, their lives took contrasting paths towards the same arena of public engagement. As this chapter will show, each imbibed communism in a very different fashion, and communism also impelled them to inhabit marriage and motherhood in divergent, almost opposite, ways.

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The early pages of Ushabai Dange’s autobiography, Pan Aikta Kaun (Who Listens to Me) shares much with the narratives of the first generation of Maharashtrian social activists, but it also dramatically departs from their concerns.2 Ushabai recounts her dramatic journey from child widow to a leader of workers in Bombay’s textile mills, dwelling on her marriage, motherhood, her desires, and fears.

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