But, by and large, the millowners along with the RMMS once again began asserting their power over the workers -doing so with a vengeance. Strike activists and other 'undesirable' workers were kept out at will. by the millowners. Excess workloads were imposed on the workers for lower wages. The Payment of Wages Act and Factories Act were trampled underfoot with impunity. Of the approximately one lakh workers who were either dismissed or opted out of their old jobs, thousands were reduced to penury. According to Nawjavan Bharat Sabha, so many jobless textile workers went looking for daily wage work and hamali that the rates of such labour dropped from Rs.7 to Rs.3 for 12 hours of work. 

Gradually, the strikers began the long and painful process of picking up the pIaces of their lives. But the dream of a bada kranti seemed to lie shattered beyond  repair. In the corridors of Shram Shakti Bhavan and Udyog Bhavan in Delhi the very notion of this dream was scoffed at and even ridiculed. The bureaucrats who had dealt with the strike expressed pity and sympathy for the 'poor workers' but concentrated on meeting the millowners' demands for boosting the flagging fortunes of the cotton textile industry. As far as the bureaucracy was concerned the textile strike had already been swept under the carpet of history and it had not taken much doing. Far from the exploision it had seemed in Bombay, the textile strike had not even looked like a potential explosion to Labour Secretary B.G.Deshmukh and his colleagues at the Labour Ministry. Thus, when Deshmukh was asked in all seriousness whether the textile strike had been one of the most important labour vs. state and capital confrontations of our times, his emphatic reply was "Bunkum." (This comment was made at an interview in Deshmukh's office at Shram Shakti Bhavan on the morning of December 31, 1983.) Seeing the astonished reaction of his interviewer Deshmukh proceeded to" explain: "Because all the left trade unionists used to privately say to us that Samant should be crushed. (They knew that) if Samant gets ascendancy he'll put all the others out -CITU, AITUC... (etc.). It was the law of the jungle, no principles were involved. The Bombay textile labourer is the casualty and no one is bothered about it... From Delhi we only knew that it was a fight between unions." 

In Bombay, the Labour Commissioner, P.J.Ovid, independently held a similar view. Referring to the members of the Trade Unions Joint Action Committee (TUJAC), Ovid said: "Some of them wanted to take him (Samant) to a height and drop him from the top." The key issue for the government, millowners and established trade unions alike had been the 'Samant phenomenon' or, as Deshmukh put it, the 'Samant tendency'. In this context no one even in the left ever saw in this (strike) the seeds of a major revolutionary breakthrough' - Deshmukh. 

Did the textile workers suffer from delusions of revolution? Or did the left trade unions fall to grasp the immediate and historical importance of the textile workers' revolutionary: zeal? Certailnly, from the Marxist point of view it was impossible to see any stirrings of revolution in a city-wide strike, however prolonged and historic. As Vladimir I. Ulianov Lenin wrote: "Strikes teach the workers to unite, they show them that they can struggle against the capitalists only when they are united, strikes teach the workers to think of the struggle of the whole working class against the whole class of factory owners and against the arbitrary police government. (Thus) socialists call strikes a school of war but a school of war is not war itself."1 (Emphasis added.) 

The textile strike was only a city-based industry strike and, according to Lenion, it is a mistaken idea that even a general strike in the country can win all. He had added that unless the workers turn their attention to other means of conducting the struggle, they will slow down the growth and success of the working class. Therefore, the communists and socialists could not be expected to tolerate or condone Samant's 'on to death' style of conducting the strike. G.V.Chitnis would recall: "Both Dr. Samant and Yashwant Chavan remained adamant saying that let the strike fail well either win all or nothing. This was wrong, this was not a fight for state power. This wrong policy was the product of wrong politics. Samant is firmly on the side of the workers but that's not sufficient. Today there is need for correct tactics and perspective. A strike leader must be a hard realist. If he ceases to be objective he is likely to go astray." 

But what of the irrepressible upsurge of revolutionary fervour, which held thousands in its way for over a year? The strike was not, in itself, a revolution but could it not be viewed as even a minor uprising in the long and tortuous class struggle? "The process of revolutionary fervour has not started," Chitnis said firmly and proceeded to explain why. "The bourgeoisie has not lost its hold, the government has not lost all its mass base and lave the communists got the unity to lead? Did Naxalbari ignite the working class? They Split many times. Samant has come out well (from the strike) because the workers stilI don't think he has betrayed them. We kept our mouths shut because we didn't want to create confusion in the minds of the workers. Samant would have put the blame on us, so we allowed the strike to come to its logical end," maintained Chitnis. 

The AITUC had publicly supported the strike in recognition of the fact that "in the last 50 years no leader has had such unquestioned support, never before has there been such unity and one voice and such determination." But the methods and professed objectives of this almost heroic leader were open to doubt and were found appallingly tacking. There was a refusal to be swept away by the popular upsurge or overestimate is dimensions. In Chitnis's view Samant had gone grievously astray and lost benefits earned for the textile workers over four decades. Most of the senior trade union leaders maintained that if Samant had accepted their advice and help and given the strike a broader political base, the pathetic situation at the end of two years could have been avoided. The very 
obvious and crushing cost of the strike to the workers became a rallying point for critics of Samant towards the end of the two years. And Samant's political failure was truly staggering. This was a result of his diffused political identity and narrow geographical base. 

Somnath Dube of the HMKP liked, to say with confidence that if the strike had been led by the CPM the government may have taken it more seriously for then it would have had wider political dimensions. The CPM would almost certainly have got different treatment from the government, than a renegads like Samant. But, if it remained faithful to its ideological tenents, the CPM would never have conducted a strike of this nature for so long. And Samant, with all his inherent limitations  and failings, was grossly ill-equipped to rise to the challenge placed before him. George Fernandes, for all his other mistakes during the textile strike, was right in saying that a struggle for scrapping or amendment of the BIR Act required a fight on several different levels. A strike, however impressive in strength and longitude, was not enough to compel the ruling party to change the law. However, this was not merely the failure of Samant, the individual, but a stark illustration of the limitation and negative implications of the 'Samant tendency'. Since the rise of the Samant phenomenon was, itself, the result of failings of the left trade unions they, in some sense, shared responsibility for the disastrous course of events. But not all the lummaries of the left were willing to accept this reasoning. George Fernandes insisted that the textile strike was not a reaction against the established left trade unions. 

Surendra Mohan, Janata MP and veteran socialist Similarly refused to accept the view that the strike was a product of certain fundamental failures of the left trade unions. The failures of the left according to Mohan, was limited to its inability to dislodge the RMMS despite great struggles. "A large majority of people, even at great cost, cannot change the status quo," said Mohan. "This was too big an area (textiles) for Samant's methods. He got a ready response because of the situation. But you cannot say, from this, that the kind of radicalisation wanted from the established trade unions is not coming out. The left trade unions are doing well everywhere and would have done well in Bombay also if not for the BIR Act and the adamance of the government. If the (government) restores to Bombay some elasticity in collective bargaining and democratic industrial relations then the Samant phenomenon should not occur" 

Mohan acknowledged the failure of the left trade unions to place issues in a proper perspective vis-a-vis the strike but again added: "They didn't believe Samant could succeed and they didn't want to encourage his tactics..." But the response of the left trade unions was not determined by their aversion to Samant's tactics alone. They simply did not view the textile strike as a do or die struggle. It was another matter for the national leadership of the central trade unions to use the strike in their propaganda and project it as the decisive battle in the 'total confrontation' with state and capital.* Yet the left leadership could not share the emotional fervour and conviction that imbued the fighting workers with unmatched valour. It has been argued that the failure of Samant's unwieldy style was inevitable and the fate of this struggle was thus sealed from the very outset. Militancy of Samant's kind which gives shape to discontent with the traditional trade unions and the larger political situation but does not provide any clear methodology, let alone ideology is bound to fail. But, more significantly, much of the older trade union leadership in the country seemed to think that such militancy deserves to fall. Where did this leave the lakhs of workers' who, in their despair and frustration, could find hope only in such forms of unbridled militancy? For those who went by the book such spontaneous, emotional upsurges were not cause for optimism about the imminence of revolution and, instead, fleeded to be discouraged. 

In the words of Lenin: "The 'spontaneous element' in essence, represents nothing more or less than consciousness in an embryonic form. All worship if the spontaneity of the working class movement, all belittling of the role of 'the conscious element' and of the role of social-democracy means a strengthening of the influence of bourgeois ideology upon workers. (Because) bourgeois ideology is much older in origin and more fully developed and has immeasurable means of dissemination... All those who talk about. 'overrating the importance of ideology' about exaggerating the role of the conscious element, etc., imagine that the labour movement pure and simple can elaborate, an independent ideology for itself if only the workers wrest their fate from the hands of the leaders. 
But this is a profound mistake."2 
________________________ 
* The non-INTUC trade unions had decided at the national convention in 1981 that the series of draconian ordinances and laws introduced by Mrs. Gandhi's government had forced labour into a position of 'total confrontation' with state and capital. 

When their dreams Lay shattered and their spirits were battered the textile workers appeared to have proved Len in right. They had come a long way from being the vanguard of the communist trade union movement in the 1920s. After finding unions of all ideological hues Jacking, and suffering decades of oppression by the recognised union, the textile workers were determined to blaze a new trail. It was this almost superhuman determination which made the strike a do or die struggle for most 'textile workers. And this attitude was entirely unacceptable to the leadership of the left trade unions. Even the otherwise cautious Surendra Mohan admitted that this was due to a 'failure of analysis. The government's whole approach and attitude may have been wrong Mohan said, but this did not explain the failure and inability of the left to adequately understand and deal with the situation. Yashwant Chavan described this as 'the worst example of the darkest hour of the Indian left'. Referring to the contributions, monetary and material, made by various major internally controlled unions like that of the Life Insurance Corporation employees) Chavan said the left trade unions could have done the, same " but they did not, the leadership responded sectarianly -they were afraid of Dr. Samant's ghost. The AITUC and CITU sat back and waited for the strike to fizzle out." 

Indrajit Gupta, M.P and President of the AITUC, was among the few to acknowledge this failure:  " There were many sectarian elements among us and they didn't see beyond Samant and his anti-communism."  Gupta also took note of the fact that while the deteriorating conditions in the socio-political structure were pushing young people towards the left, the traditional left parties were not able to draw them: "The revival of the Naxalities shows that conventional movements of protest are not adequate.  In some areas of Bihar the Naxalites are gaining ground over the CPI on the basis of the party's failure to halt landlord atrocities-so a shift towards violence.  Parlimentary democracy is the ruin of all revolutionary forces." 

The same point was made even more forcefully by Gail Omvedt:  :"The fact that in their break from the bourgeoisie the workers have turned not to the traditional left, but to Samant, an independent 'bourgeise reformist' unionist, also shows the stagnation of Parliamentary leftism in India.  It has become no longer capable of leading the most militant struggles, and communist alternatives are only now beginning to emerge.  A churching is going on in the working class and a major aspect of the new workers' movements developing in India is their 'independent' orientation - a rejection of the fast pattern of relationships of political parties to mass organisations, in which parties through trade unions, etc., could have a revolutionary direction and a 'correct line' only if they were totally underparty control.... and to subordinating these organisations and their struggles to the political alliances of the parties."3 
 

In contrast, Samant was answerable to no party, ideology or even hierarchy. He flowed with the wind, using the mood of the workers as his only guide. And this was the essence of the challenge to the old left, one that its oldest hero failed to acknowledge as being a challenge at all. Thus Dange comtemptuously dismissed the burgeoning opposition to the traditional left parties and the phenomenon of independent grass roots non-party groups among the younger members of the left. Discussing the hierarchy of the old 'revolutionary' parties Dange said in an interview in December 1983: "Parties must be hierarchical for them to be disciplined and when discipline is imposed they call it hierarchy." A party with neither ideology nor authority ceases to be a party and becomes like a panth, Dange insisted. "Without authority there is no movement or progress. The revolutionary army needs obedience -(a soldier in this army) cannot have the democratic right not to fight." 

But Dange, like most of his juniors who were actually in the fray of the textile strike, overlooked the responsibility cast upon them by the tenets of the ideology they espoused. For Lenin also wrote: "Spontaneity of the masses demands a high degree of consciousness from us social democrats. The greater the spontaneous upsurge of the masses and the more widespread the movement, the more rapid, incomparably so, the demand for greater consciousness in the theoretical, political and organisational work of social democracy."4 The leadership which ought to have performed this function was instead absorbed in petty politics. Dange, of course, was retired and too old to participate on an active basis. But perhaps it was his responsibility more than any other leader's to fill the 'theoretical 
and political' lacunae, if not the organisational ones. The failure to do this further compounded Samant's organisational failures. 
 

This was not merely a failure, of analysis. The responses and actions of, the established left trade unions were a product of the historical process through which the Indian trade unions had passed. The compulsive splitting of the central trade unions and the resultant competition for control of units had not only demoralised workers but also made a mockery of the professed aims of militancy. Most trade unions had concentrated on strengthening their pockets of influence and building infrastructure for the benefit of workers and the union. George Fernandes who, only a decade and a half earlier had set Bombay ablaze with his own brand of militancy, now headed a union with substantial resources and institutionalised structures. The achievements also altered the character of the union, defusing its once struggle-oriented nature. George Fernandes own colleagues talked about his difficulties in 'reviving the old spirit of militancy'. Fernandes himself wondered aloud whether it had been a mistake to build the institutional structure at the cost of militancy. He attempted to give an agitational colour to his union activities by launching protest actions but with only limited success. In late 1983 he organised a 10-day national agitation of industrial and agricultural labourers on a vast variety of issues ranging from unemployment to the general anti-Iabour thrust of the Congress(1) government. As Fernandes criss-crossed through the country in preparation of this andolan he talked with reporters about the need for the rural and urban workers to combine and for the need to reach out to the unorganised sector. But even as he exhorted people everywhere to rise and battle the anti-labour government, Fernandes felt no visible sense of regret or guilt about his own role in dissipating the textile strike. 

This was a basic contradiction afflicting the trade union movement at that juncture. At a time of total confrontation with the state and capital, individual trade union leaders could contribute by acts of omission and commission to undermining the most hard-pitched anti-government anti-capital 
struggle and then attempt to single-handedly launch national andolans to unite the working class. In this context many of the gains in the otherwise lost battle of the textile workers were also ignored. Those who vigorously criticised Samant for sending the workers back to the villages had failed to note the subsequent strengthening of links between the urban factory workers and rural agricultural workers. The absence of such links and the Congress party's ability to use this to its electoral benefit had long been bemoaned but 'never successfully challenged. Bharat Patankar of the Lal Nishan, who was active in the process of organising textile workers in rural areas, recalled the CPI and CPM's subtle opposition to Samant as a product of their 'opportunism, they were afraid of losing their base because they can't visualise any struggle or union without the party'. In the villages, where the textile workers returned to their kith and, kin, they initiated debates on not just the strike Jut also on the general political reality, the propaganda of the ruling party and emerging methods of response to these forces. These links were a crucial factor in allowing the workers to hold out as they did. 

The rural proletariat was not only able to support the thousands who returned there for the duration 
of the strike but also contributed directly to the struggle in the City and later helped rehabilitate those who could not of would not return to the mills. Even the main-stream media, which had grossly under-reported the strike, took note of this phenomenon. The Times of India, Pune correspondent reported on a Pani Panchayat in Purandhar Taluka helping textile workers to rehabilitate their farms. Out of the 15,000 textile workers from this taluka at least 1,000 were reportedly not willing to return to the city.5 The 'inter-connected' nature of the working class, and possible unity were on display here in a practical and noteworthy form. It has been argued that these were isolated cases and the support provided by such efforts to the striking workers was insubstantial. But to those who work in the field this was more than the traditional left trade unions and parties had achieved after years of preaching about the need for such links. Like much else in the strike, the emerging rural-urban links were indications of the potential for radical forms of political organisation of the type revolutionary parties should have nurtured but failed to. But, unfortunately, most of the lessons learnt from the strike were negative and such positive achievements were limited in scale and significance. 

Veteran socialist leader, Ashok Mehta, had no take in the battle being waged in the mills of Bombay in 1982 and was living in retirement at a rose farm on the outskirts of Delhi. Mehta observed quite dispassionately that: "The lesson of this strike was that a major strike should never be launched if you don't know how to end it or compromise. Some fall-back position should be there.." An equally detached Bagaram Tulpule wrote: "Ability to lead workers in strikes is only one, albeit an important, test of a trade unionist. The real test, however, is the ability to solve the problems involved in disputes, and a really Competent trade unionist is able to secure acceptable solutions of problems with- out the need to resort to an extremely long strike so frequently."6 

Undoubtedly, many of Samant's struggles, as pointed out earlier, ended in defeat for the workers and often a crushing financial loss. Many small units, where Samant led prolonged strikes, were forced to close down -often in an attempt by the owners to move out of Maharashtra and Samant's reach. Samant's continuing popularity in the face of such failures had long baffled his opponents. But many of them felt that the disastrous outcome of the strike would surely signal the end of the 'Samant menace'. But this assessment was based on erroneous assumptions and perceptions. Whether Samant was "finished" or not was immaterial. To harp too long on the number of factories won or lost by him was' to confuse Samant the individual trade unionist with Samant the phenomenon. Even B.G.Deshmukh was of the view that anyone who had challenged the law in the same manner would have earned the same response, as Samant did from the workers. Is one millowner stated with a note of helplessness. "The question is not whether Samant is good for the workers but he just is powerful." This was an unalterable fact of life. Even C. V .Chitnis, whose assessment of Samant's holding of the textile strike was scathingly critical, acknowledged that the most phenomenal aspect of it all was his continuing popularity in the face of dismal defeat. Despite all the bad blood created during the textile strike, Chitnis said: "We still want him to be with us but with a clearer view of politics, some introspection and clearer conclusions. He's a force to reckon with." 

Samant the phenomenon was an expression of the irrepressible urge to seek alternatives and reflected a wider trend in the changing politIcal equation in the country. As Rajni Kothari wrote in the E.P.W: "It is a context in which revolutionary parties too have been contained and in part co-opted (as have most of the unions) in which hence the traditional fronts of radical action the working class movement and the milItant peasantry led by left parties are in deep crisis, in which there appears to be a growing hiatus between these parties and the lower classes, especially the very poor and the destitute, which are not amenable to the received wisdom of left politics and in which on the other hand there is taking place a massive back-lash from' established interests in the form of legislative measures aimed against the toiling classes and a steep rise in repression and terror perpetrated both by the state and by private vested interests."7 

Certainly 'Samantism' cannot be regarded as a form of new trade unionism which shows signs of developing as a positive alternative to the existing forms which have proved unsatisfactory. But the response to these repressive elements is taking different forms, many of them apparently 'negative' and unacceptable to conventional wisdom of any ideological hue. Organisations such as the Shramik Shakti Sanghatana in Belgaum, are more actively and directly concerned with opening new avenues and approaching trade union work in a different manner. In view of the narrow perspective of traditional trade unions, the activists of the Sanghatana have attempted to work in a wider frame-work. Dilip Kamath of the Sanghatana has  stated that the workers should be allowed to realise the limitations -cultural, social and economic -within the present system: "We realise that there is in this social system a limitation to our growth itself. But let the people themselves realise this. We have not brought out all these aspects into the workers arena as yet. And this is what I consider the real task of 'politicisation'. Indira Gandhi comes and says everyone has one vote, so it's a democracy, and naturally the people believe it is so, and society continues to remain as it was."8 

In this context, both the traditional left unions and Samant fall short of the mark. "What are the achievements of the so-called revolutionaries and theorists? Take the Bombay textile strike. It's the best/worst example. Where have all the revolutionary theories led you to: you did not consider the health problems, the man-woman problems, all this was dismissed as reformist and now where are all the trade unions in Bombay? The workers are all going behind Datta Samant. What does that mean? It's no headway there either." -Dilip Kamath. 9 

But the Samant style, however inadequate a form of organisation, cannot be allowed to distract attention from its causes. The samant phenomenon is a product of the effort to evolve new concepts and 
modes of expressing discontent with the status quo. The highly individualistic, often charismatic, trade union leader with a mass following is not an answer to the problem itself -merely a channel through which the grassroot frustrations are being vented. 

Such one-man trade unions have taken multifarious forms. The spectrum extends from a giant Samant and competing R.J.Mehta to ruling party supported labour leaders like the late lalit Maken of Delhi and the more clearly leftist (but distinctly unconnected with CPI/CPM) trade unionists like A.K.Roy of the Dhanbad area, shankar Guha Neogi of Chhatisgarh in Madhya Pradesh and the experimental organisations of powerloom workers in Belgaum, among many others. The samant and Mehta variety of leaders lack any distinct ideology and under their often populist rhetoric have a broad bourgeois tilt. But Neogi, Roy and others like them are ideologically more definable and probably closer to a conscious search for alternatives. Since their area of activity is limited they have not attracted the attention a samant commands though they are equally, if not more, militant. 
 

Clearly maverick leaders of this ilk, with a strong bourgeois tilt, are not the solution. The militancy and cry for change has been loudly articulated through Samant but he has not offered any Solutions or given any discernible direction to the struggle. Devoid of ideology and any internal hierarchy, Samant's free-wheeling style was his principle asset. But these very factors took their toll as workers in unit after unit were trapped in bitter confrontations with the management from which there was no escape. The lack of methodology and dependence on a few key people (like his brother P.N.Samant) within the union, also took its toll and accelerated the pace of workers' disillusionment with Samant who, in turn, was aware of these problems but unable, or even unwilling, to find solutions. As P.N.Samant admitted: "If we work systematically then we are dead." Both P.N.Samant and Dr. Samant seemed to realise that the popularity of the union could not survive its institutionalisation. Thus, it remained as it began -a one-man show aided by a small group of confidants and supported by an army of zealous karyakartas (activists). 

Even two years after the strike ended, in 1985, when Samant still controlled 4.3% of the registered trade unions in Maharashtra, he still had the same approach: "I do not run my unions like a professional... I am for new dimensions of the working class movement. Economic gain for them is my first aim. This does not suit some of my colleagues. People who left me feel that it should be run on 'professional' lines. This means that one should adjust to political necessities".10  While the leaders of left parties and trade unions deprecated Samant's lack of ideology, he accused them of placing ideology and politics before the immediate economic benefits of workers. 

It was in this context that Samant justified his decision to fight the textile workers battle to the end. The Congress party had always broken struggles of textile workers, Samant argued, and consequently the workers had been struggling in vain for over five decades. Thus, for Samant and his most active supporters, the time had come to win all or die fighting. By any standard of conventional wisdom this was a romanticised and irrational stand, for one must live today to fight again tomorrow. Yet, Samant's stand, however counter productive, was the result of forces he could not control or even clearly understand, and channelise. 

As Rajni Kothari has observed: "Today's oppressed will need to wage their struggle from 'outside' the existing structure, not just dethroning the ruling class and 'smashing' the State and taking it over but to redefine the whole concept and structure of politics with a view to empowering the masses for a transformation at and from the very bottom of society -the grass roots."11 

As this grass roots impulse seeks new channels of expression and assertion of the people's rights it can only do so with new modes of struggles. In the absence of an accompanying development of theory which meets the demands of the new conditions, the most haphazard and primitive forms of struggle are inevitable. In its own way, the textile workers' headlong charge, with a do or die determination, was a new form of struggle. Previously, strikes had always been led by big political leaders and called off on promises from the government or after achieving minor monetary gains. The determination not to allow this pattern of history to repeat itself and fight to the end was if not a new mode at least the expression of a desperate need for new modes to storm the seemingly unbreachable citadel of the millowners-government combine. 

From this arose the virtually unquestioning following that Samant acquired and retained in spite of unforgivable organisational failures and grave political tactical errors. Towards the end, when the strikers faced total defeat but Samant still refused to compromise or call off the strike, his critics accused him of prolonging the strike for the" sake of his ego and 'prestige'. Some even accused. Samant of deliberately prolonging the strike only to set a new record and find a place in the Guinness Book of Records.* 
_______________________________ 
* If the Guinness Book of Records was his target, Samant had a long way to go. The world's longest recorded strike, mentioned in the Guinness book, lasted for 33 years. It involved barbers assistants in Copenhagen, Denmark, and ended in 1961. The book records the longest major strike as one at a plumbing fixtures factory in Wisconsin, U.S.A. -it had lasted for eight years. But the book does not mention how many workers were involved in these strikes. And the enormity of  the Bombay textile strike is derived from the vast number of workers involved and their collectively successful effort to stay out of the mills for a year and a half. 
 

The activist cadre which kept the strike alive did not seriously and consistently begin to talk about a compromise till the end of the second quarter of 1983, at the time of the meeting with V .P.Singh in Delhi. But the meeting, as discussed earlier, was not the opening it seemed to the workers. Yet, if Samant had somehow used this or any other opportunity to make a face-saving compromise, the 
situation would not have been much better. By mid-1983 the millowners' strategy of large-scale retrenchment and modernisation had fully crystallised and was already in operation. Ramanuj Upadhya, a Vice-President of MGKU offered this as a rationale for refusing to compromise. Referring to the millowners'. flagrant disregard for government directives and the ineffectiveness ot the RMMS, Upadhya said: "It was right not to compromise. This would have happened even if we had made a settlement." ' Thus, the material effects of any compromise would not have been different from those of complete "defeat. This way there was, for the activists, an element of the heroic in continuing the struggle regardless, of the impossible odds. It is more than likely that had Samant settled for a compromise, not substantially different in material terms from the eventual defeat, the workers would have accused him of betrayal in the same way that Dange was accused in 1974, for procuring a wage increase of only Rs.4.* 
 

Samant's unyielding stand was probably most directly responsible for the fact that even after a crippling defeat he still enjoyed the loyalty of the workers. At the same time, even among the rank and file, there was a clear perception of the combined strength of the millowners and government as being responsible for their defeat. 

A study later done by the Sri Ram Centre for industrial Relations and Human Resources showed that the workers held the millowners, the RMMS and the State and Central Governments responsible for their plight, while the MGKU and Samant were still looked upon as a friend in need. The study, covering 1,100 workers, also found how dismal a view the textile workers have of their own lives and opportunities. Most workers, the study noted, accepted their fate because the strike was part of the long on-going struggle of sheer existence. 

The workers did not, as some critics of the strike believed, confuse the strike with the struggle for state power. But they did believe that even within its narrow confines the strike was a test case of national importance. This made the eventual failure of the strike all the more painful. And that the strike was a wasted opportunity was evident to anyone who believed in the workers' cause; Yet any effort to determine just how this historic moment in the working class movement could have been used to optimum advantage was doomed to fail in the face of unanswerable 'ifs' and 'buts'. When they first plunged into battle, the textile workers believed that they could change the course of history. Perhaps this exaggerated optimism was an inevitable by-product of the emotional fervour which gripped workers at the time. But even those who "did not share the euphorIa acknowledged that a partial victory would strengthen the textile workers' position against the MOA and the RMMS- as never before in the history of the industry. 
__________________________________ 

* Of course, Samant refused to acknowledge that the strike had failed. Even in 1985 he said in an interview (Probe magazine, March 1985): "It has become a fashion to say that the strike failed. Just see what the working class, at least in Maharashtra, learnt from it. Problems of the workers cannot be solved unless workers have political power... Just because mills have been taken over doesn't mean the strike failed... There is no Dr. Samant in Gujarat or U.P., but the mills have closed in Ahmedabad and Kanpur..." 
  
 
The established trade unions had, of course, found a major rallying point for their propaganda through the textile strike. Even if one ignored the rhetoric and dispassionately assessed the limitations of a single-city, single-industry strike of this nature, its importance could not be underestimated. Victory could have given textile workers allover the country a rallying point for demanding higher wages and encouraged militancy among workers in other industries. Correspondingly, failure was expected to suppress militant forces. Whether the eventual failure actually had this effect is difficult to determine. But certainly, it firmly discouraged head-on clashes with the' state and managements. And if the strike was a story of missed opportunities, the failure to make the new militancy workable, was the biggest missed chance. 

The workers' area committees, which sought to function with a non-hierarcical structure and with the unity of all segments of the working class, were an expression of the new militancy. The committees worked successfully for over a year and did wonders to the morale of activists and through them to the rank and file. But when the Central Committee (a loosely organised federation of the area committees) differed with Samant and sought to assert its views, primarily on the need for a compromise solution to end the strike, it was slapped down by Samant. (This process of disillusionment with Samant has been described earlier.) Within two years of the strike there was no discernible trace of the Central Committee or area committees. Sceptics took this as a sign of inherent weakness and a limited purpose existence. if a more perceptive and visionary leadership had been at hand the stirrings encompassed in those area committees could have been moulded and boosted to greater purpose. But the very nature of Samant's leadership reduced such hopes to futile fantasies. 

This would imply that Len in has the last word on the spontaneity of the working class. Yet even after a crisis of this magnitude the trade unions were unable to meet the challenge posed by this spontaneity or to harness them militancy. Even two years after the strike ended, Samant stood as the only leader who could provide some semblance of an alternative to the RMMS. Much of the activist cadre refused to consider the struggle futile even while acknowledging that the strike was a failure. 

Why was this so?  One reason was the manner in which the workers' outlook and understanding of the political reality had changed. As P.N.Samant put it: "Textile workers may have lost but not the working class, it had gained, become cautious and clear about the position and attitude of the government." Yeshwant Chavan noted with satisfaction that the workers would never again harbour any illusions about positive state intervention in confrontations with capital. The frequent criticism, that Samant and Chavan preferred the strike to fall, was thus not far off the mark. It was not that the leadership set out to seek failure but that it preferred, rightly or wrongly, the total annihilation to a compromise which would degrade the valiant struggle. 

For some, the struggle had become a mode of existence. Others like Salaskar, who had a C.P.I. background, marched ahead with an unshakable belief in the inevitability of revolution. Even at the lowest ebb, when Salaskar could not find words to describe the nirasha (disappointment), he continued to firmly believe that the workers must 'keep fighting till eternity". Similarly, Gajarmal clung to the belief that the working class struggle is never futile: "Sangharsh jari rahe ga (the struggle will go on). We have learnt a lot about ourselves, relations with each other as workers and' with family members." 

But not all the thousands who participated in the struggle shared this conviction and inn the end the tragedy of the textile strike was all personal. The ordinary individual who constituted the 'rank and file' was caught in the morass of impotence vis-a-vis the whole world. And the outsider felt the despair inherent to this situation more acutely than the activist or workers. From this end of the spectrum the prolonged, uncompromising struggle had all the components of a suicidal charge. 

Viewed in retrospect, it is possible to see the prolonged duration of the strike as a product of a subconcious death wish, a certain nihilistic tendency. 
 

This nihilism was a result of the ever-worsening condition of the oppressed in a political context which den led them legitimate and peaceful means of articulating and solving their problems and challenging their oppressors.* The catch phrase of this phenomenon was based on the struggling under- dog's perception of the now in situation and the belief that "I am going down any way but I'll take you 
(the oppressor) with me." The textlie industry suffered but not to the same extent as the workers. Just as the killing of one man does not end the oppression or destroy the oppressive class, the year- and-a-half long strike did not eliminate those who had tormented the workers in the mills for decades. Nor did it visibly diminish the power of the ruIing party. 

Yet, Gajarmal and Salaskar and hundreds of others were convinced that the fight could not have been futile. They believed that from the ruins of this cathartic experience would arise a force a new reality-to ensure a more explosive future. 

Thus, despite the evident despair of the present it is important to look beyond it and understand that it is one more excruciatingly painful step forward on the tortuous path towards new organisational forms and a new polity. The challenge lies in sustaining these creative impulses and giving them organised expression. This process is likely to be directly aided by the overwhelming complacency of protectors of the status quo. "Our people are used to misery, they don't revolt, they're below the poverty line any way" -Vasant Hoshing. And yet, such views are not baseless and therein lies a more insiduous threat. In the words of P.N.Samant "everyone has adjusted himself (accepted) that it is going to go on like this, and so decided to give up and make the best of it. This is killing everything. Why do we adjust when we should be fighting?" 
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* This reality was portrayed in cinema as well. In Govind Nihalani's film Ardha Satya the hero eventually overcomes his sense of impotence by killing the mafia don who is his tormentor. The hero, a low ranking police officer, then voluntarily surrenders to the law. That single spontaneous act of violence - the killing of the mafia don is a personal triumph for the disillusioned young man even as it is an irrevocable step to wards self -destruction. 

If they did nothing else the textile workers gave a living example of how it is possible to stop 'adjusting', start fighting and; at any cost, continue fighting. This could be condemned as a romanticised interpretation that promotes nihilism. But nihilism was a product of the times. If the interpretation is some-what romanticised that is because the alternative is cynicism of the type espoused by the status quo which breeds a convenient but dangerous pessimism. It is such pessimism that successfully stiffles any emerging initiative and organisational-ideological forms which threaten to challenge the status quo.