Working class of India C.3

To write on the emergence and movement of the Indian working class has been a great deal more difficult than I had expected as the subject is not merely a history in the conven tional sense.

The working class of India, as of everywhere else, emerged as concomitant circumstances of the capitalist society, but in the course of history the growth of the working-class movement as an economic and political force has presented itself as the antidote to the same very capitalist order. This book is therefore, I venture to say, simply not a history of the trade union move ment of India in the hide-bound traditional manner, rather in a wider national and international context it has been sought to thoroughly deal with in this book the interaction of politics and economics in the struggle of the working class of India, the class which by now has grown not only in number but also in its political importance.

The emergence of the Indian working class took place at a, period when India fell under the absolute domination of a colo nial rule. The emergence had therefore its own problems and peculiarities as are not generally found in the growth of the working class of a metropolitan country. And since the birth, the working class of India had to confront two basic antagonis tic forces an imperialist political rule and economic exploita tion both by the native and foreign capitalist classes. Conse quently, the trade union movement of India became inter twined with the political movement for national liberation and thus an attempt has been made in this book to place the work ing men's struggle in the right perspective of the people's poli tical struggle for emancipation of the country from the yoke of British imperialism, while trying at the same time to separate the threads and trends of such intertwining of the two struggles.