Hope and despair

Textile workers in Kanpur in 1937-38 and the 1990s

Bibliographic Data

ID5155341
AuthorsChitra Joshi (0009-0006-6799-489X, Indraprastha College for Women, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume33
Issue1-2
Pages171-203
Publication date1999-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueContributions to Indian Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0069-9659 • E-ISSN: 0069-9667
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/006996679903300109
OpenAlexW2033995253
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited9

This essay focuses on two moments in the lives of Kanpur textile workers: 1937-38 and the 1990s. The first was a time of militant working-class struggle, often represented as a period of 'red Kanpur'. I look at the different ways in which this was narrativised. What seems to distinguish May 1938 from other periods of strike is the sense of a whole city in upsurge. It was a period when workers felt empowered, when existing hierarchies were questioned, when rules at the workplace were publicly flouted and order inverted. Industrialists, gripped with panic, had visions of a workers' take-over. The 1990s present a contrast. The textile industry is in a state of crisis, most mills are closed, the labour movement is fragmented and the working class appears decimated. For workers, closure is more than a threat to economic survival. Their lives and identities are closely intertwined with work in the mills. Work was physically empowering, its absence created a sense of weariness and physical disability, a loss of identity. I look at the ways in which this crisis is experienced by workers and how this moment of despair and worklessness reshapes the working class memory

Aesthetics · Art · Business · Closure (psychology · Identity (music · Militant · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Vision · Working class · Indian Economic and Social Development · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts

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