The emotionally charged and agitated folding department workers, led by Salaskar, marched to the finishing department where more workers enthusiastically joined what soon became a morcha through the mill compound. Wending its way through all the departments, gradually gathering strength, the entire work force of the morning shift, gathered out side the manager's office and sat there in a dharna. The seriousness of the workers' intention was reflected in the way they shut down their respective departments. The machines were not simply abandoned. The workers, under strict instructions from Salaskar and others not to damage machines, carefully covered them with cloth and left with a determination not to return empty handed. 

At the back of these workers' mind was an agreement recently made between the management and workers of 'Empire Dyeing', a textile processing unit. Dr. Samant had won handsome gains of Rs.200 per month for the workers of the unit and hopes had soared in the chawls and kholis of textile workers allover the city. Salaskar had sensed the arrival of the Samant wave in the mills. The rank and file, for whom Samant was a giant with messianic and magical qualities, were convinced that only Doctor could do anything for them. But they were curious to know the reaction of a Lal Bauvta man, like Salaskar, to the possible entry of Samant into the textile mills. Salaskar, whose opinion carried weight, chose his words carefully and said to any worker who asked him: "Doctor is a big leader who never retreats without getting demands met. We most think well about this nd be prepared 
(to strike) for over six months. So you must decide if you can survive and tolerate this. But if you want it I will be at the forefront of calling Samant." 

When the manager of Standard Mills refused to even acknowledge the dharna outside his office, and did not talk to the workers all day, their determination was further strengthened. But the leaders of different unions inside the mill, which included the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sabha affiliate and the Shiv Sena union, decided by consensus that pending the adoption of an agitational strategy, workers should return to work the next day. The next morning the manager finally addressed the workers and said the matter of bonus was out of his control and the owner, who could answer their questions, was out of town. Salaskar was taking his weekly off that day and had spent the ,morning on some personal errands. When he returned home at about 10.30 a.m. some of his fellow workers were waiting there to inform him that work at the mill had not been resumed, as decided by the union leaders at the mill and that some workers were on their way to Dr. Samant's office in Ghatkopar. 

Salaskar rushed to the mill to find that the manager had agreed to meet a delegation of union leaders. Since the manager's basic position on the bonus remained unchanged, Salaskar came to the point and told him that workers were already headed for Samant in a morcha. The Manager's response to what he perceived as a threat, was predictable. Let them go to Doctor or anyone else, the manager said, there will be no increase in the bonus. By the time the delegation came out of its futile meeting with the manager, the workers had returned from Ghatkopar to tell their comrades that the Doctor had been out but Vanita bhabhi, Samant's wife who was then a Congress(I) Municipal Corporator, had asked them to return at night. So a second party made ready to set out for Ghatkopar, and this time they were' insistent on taking Salaskar along. They may not have been certain of his ideological position on Samant but they trusted and relied on his long experience as a local leader. Salaskar's credibility as a fierce agitator was unquestioned and he felt obliged to explain the full implications of their move. To the gathering of eager young faces, most of them badli workers, Salaskar had this to say: "You must fight for a year, or even two, so think deeply about it. I'll be there with you all the way. But let it not be as in the past when I stood at the mill gate with a red flag and you pushed me aside to go in". 

With promises to unitedly face the agni pareeksha (trial by fire), the workers arrived at the cottage like structure at Pant Nagar in Ghatkopar. What was once Dr. Samant's dispensary, had been converted to serve as both his home and union office. A tiny room was set aside, from the small house, as Samant's office. Over the years the room had been endowed with an air-conditioner and a glass spring door, both contributed by workers. The door opened on to a covered patio where workers gathered while waiting to meet Doctor. Just outside the door sat Samant's steno-typist. At the inner end of the patio, next to P.N.Samant's desk, stood busts of Gandhi and Kasturba. On the wall behind the statues were pictures of  Nehru and Indira Gandhi, remnants of Samant's INTUC days. When asked why he had continued to let the portrait of Indira hang there Samant would laugh and reply, "She is the country's Prime Minister, isn't she?" 

 When the Standard Mill workers arrived Samant was not in. He came 'five hours later and repeated to the workers more or less what Salaskar had told them all day and went an unexpected step further. He reached for the phone on his narrow semicircular desk and called Vasant Hoshing and Bhai Bhosle, the RMMS leaders. Samant planned to tell the men, who were once fellow INTUC associates, that they should talk to these workers and provide for their needs. But neither Hoshing nor Bhosale was at home and Doctor left messages that they should call him. Samant would have then sent the workers away with the prediction that they would starve and loose their jobs if they stuck with him, when Salaskar intervened. "Doctor, these people love you," Salaskar said, "we've come the second time in one day. It is the desire of the mazdoor bhai that you come and save us from the atrocities of  the RMMS." Though accustomed to being treated as a hero and hearing such pleas from local leaders of workers in a vast variety of industrial units, Samant now looked more closely at the man leading this unprecedented delegation from the nerve centre of Bombay industry. 

"Haven't we met before?" Samant asked Salaskar. Salaskar smiled and reminded Samant that they were lathi-charged together ten years ago. This brought back memories to Salaskar of a time when Samant was a minor leader, not a hero yet, and they had been comrades in arms for a brief period. Those were the days when Samant was still more of a doctor than a union leader-an organiser more than an agitator. How far this burly, smiling, young man from a small village in Ratnagiri, had travelled. How did the son of a low income farmer in the coastal village of Deobagh near the town of Malwan, who came to Bombay only to be a doctor, wind up with. the image of a workers messiah and trade union 'goon'? Why were over 2 lakh textile workers, for decades regarded as the vanguard of the Indian working class, willing and eager to place their hopes and aspirations in his hands? As a young man just out of school, Datta Samant had been described by, his own family as a "negligent fellow with no alms". He came to Bombay In defiance of his father and managed to put himself through medical college, with some financial assistance from a charitable institution of his community. Samant's description of his early days in the metropolis was interestingly similar to the stories an equally fiery George Fernandes had told journalists a decade earlier.  For in 1979 Samant told a reporter from Sunday magazine: "Those were difficult .days for me. I used to go without food on many days. I saw people living on footpaths. People, many with ill-gotten wealth, were living in great luxury and hard working and innocent workers were leading an animal existence. Till now I have not been able to get reconciled to these gross disparities. 

While the same experience led George Fernandes into the fold of socialist trade unions and eventually party politics, Samant continued down the conventional path for a longer while and remained a physician. But Samant was never just a physician. Long before he began organising the quarry workers, who were almost bonded labourers, Samant was fighting for slum dwellers and residents of the Housing Board around his dispensary in Ghatkopar in: the early 1960s. From here Samant would walk two miles in the hot sun to the Asalpha slum village where he attended to sick people and organised residents against the slum lords. He went from chawl to chawl organising committees of residents and helping them to find out the standard rent which he then arranged to deposit in court. This naturally earned him enemies. P.N.Samant recalls that Dr. Samant's popularity first began to grow when a local Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee official filed a false criminal case against him alleging that Samant had thrown the Congressman's Gandhi cap from his head and tried to assault him. The grounds for an image of violent goondaism which was later to gather monstrous proportions, thus began to be prepared. The seeds of a reputation as an irreverent disrupter of the status quo had been sowed. During the 1961 war with China Vadilal Gandhi, a veteran Congress MLA, had called a meeting of citizens in the Ghatkopar area to collect funds for the war effort. Though no representative of the Housing Board tenants was invited, Samant turned up at the meeting determined to represent the tenants. Having managed to get himself on stage Samant launched a frontal attack on Vadilal telling the gathering how the Congressman had made lakhs in the last one week alone, as the biggest hoarder of kerosene, and was now donating Rs. 25,000. of his black money to the war effort. The infuriated. Vadilal who was also a member of the Housing Board then issued a show cause notice to Samant demanding to know why his tenancy the dispensary should not be revoked. Acharya Atre promptly published this sequence of events in his Sangh Maratha and laid apart of the foundations on which the edifice of popular strength would later be built. 
 

 Through his involvement with the Housing Board residents of Ghatkopar, Samant came into contact with the quarry workers of Powai and Chandivili who worked for 12 hours a day and earned only about Rs.2 or Rs.3 daily. Samant formed the Maharashtra Khan Kamgar Union and despite brutal attacks from goondas, organised the workers and led them through a 40-day lock-out in about 50 quarries. Eventually the quarry workers' wages went up 10. an average of Rs.30 per day. It was the support of these workers and the Housing Board residents, of whose association he had become president as early as 1961, that Samant was elected to the Maharashtra Assembly in 1967. 

In 1966 George Fernandes approached Samant with the offer of a Socialist Party ticket in the assembly elections. Samant, who by then was also a well-to-do car-owning physician accepted the offer of support but stood for elections as an independent. 

He fought the election with his own money and contributions from Housing Board residents, according to P.N.Samant. A decade and a half later Fernandes would deny that he played any significant role in the creation of Samant who in late 1981 seemed like a giant and near-mythical hero. Fernandes would only recall Samant's good work among the quarry workers where his (Fernandes') own Bombay Labour Union was active and of the long dialogue it took to persuade Samant to join the socialists. 'Samant went into the election expecting defeat but emerged victorious with a margin of 14,000 votes. Acharya Atre's publicity had gone a long way to building his popularity. Now the Congressmen were sitting up and taking a closer look at this  young leader from Ghatkopar . 

Rising with this popular base Samant won the support of workers in the Godrej factory at Vikhroli. By 1971 the workers elected Samant their leader in place of Prabhakar Kunte and Tooshar Pawar of INTUC. Just as he began to get caught in this whirlwind of activity in 1971, he wrote to his dada in Gwalior telling him about the growing trade union work. P.N.Samant wrote back with the advise that Datta should abandon trade unions while he could or he would have to give up his medical practise, and have little time left to himself. "Trade unions," P.N. wrote, "are worse than politics and you can serve the nation in many other ways." But Samant had already come too far to revert to being just a physician.  By 1971 Y .B. Chavan himself was wooing Samant towards the Congress with the offer of an election ticket. Having taken over the INTUC affiliated Association of Engineering Workers, Samant accepted the offer and joined the Congress at a large public meeting in the presence of Chavari. With the support of the ruling party at the state and centre behind him, together with an ace legal brain and political tactician like Rajni Patel to fight for him, Samant was all set to rise as a promising trade union leader of the INTUC fold. But a ,different role was in store for him. Notoriety first came with the violent riot at the Godrej plant in Vikhroli in 1972, which left several dead. 

In September that year Samant's Association of Engineering Workers was in conflict with the Shiv Sena at that Godrej plant. Gadegaonkar, a Shiv Sena worker, had allegedly been attacked by Samant's men and so Shiv Sena leader, Manohar Joshi came to see him on the company ground where the workers lived. At the same time workers were coming out of the factory after the day's work, and on hearing of Joshi's presence many gathered outside the house he was visiting. Despite police efforts to disperse the crowd it continued to grow. At this point, according to P.N.Samant, one of Samant's supporters was beaten up by the police in full view of the workers. This incensed Samant's supporters and soon violence erupted between workers and police, and among the workers themselves. The situation was further aggravated by a sub inspector who charged into the crowd with a gun in , his hand. When it was allover this police officer, along with a police wireless operator and several others lay dead. The police officer who died was a nephew of Shalinitai Patil, even then an ambitious Congress woman and wife of Vasantdada Patil.  Exactly a decade later the same Shalinitai was a major political personality in her own right and her husband was the Chief Minister who adopted a hard line against Samant that, helped to finally break a textile strike of unprecedented length. 

Amid the public outcry which followed the Vikhroli riot, Samant was arrested and denied bail. Though the incident identified him, among Bombay's middle class, as dangerous' and 'menacing', it also went a long way to further boost his rising popularity among the workers. Sandeep Pendse noted in his analysis of the Samant phenomenon: "The responsibility for the violence (at the Vikhroli riot) was sought to be pinned on Samant and his followers. In a great show of unity, the workers of north east Bombay launched an agitation against the government's policies of intimidation and terrorism. The communist-led unions were the leading sponsors of this action. The Shiv Sena had been opposed before, but this was an incident of great significance in which its terror had been fought back vehemently and it (Shiv Sena) had been at the receiving end." 

After his release from jail Samant rapidly increased his trade union base as workers who sought to challenge established unions flocked to him. For the next one decade Samant consolidated this image of militant heroism among the workers and along with the support, or at times just acquiescence, of the government he soared to heights unknown to any individual trade unionist anywhere in India. By the mid-70's Samant claimed to have the support of over 3 lakh workers .This made him an anethema to the industrialists and a 'problem' of gigantic proportions for the authorities. Inspite of being a Congress MLA, Samant was jailed under MISA during the Emergency along with other trade unionists and opposition leaders. At a, time when labour unrest was being dealt with by rough and ready means the INTUC concentrated on legal procedures and negotiations. In this context Samant was an embarrassment that could be conveniently handled during the Emergency when no questions could be asked publicly. In 1977, when the Emergency ended, Samant was released from jail and INTUC policy was dramatically reversed following the defeat of the Congress(I) in the Lok Sabha general elections. INTUC leaders no 'longer resisted the workers' militant mood and struggles. Pendse suggests that the Congress was perhaps at this stage "in favour of destabilizing the economic and political balance."2 Thus Samant was allowed to come back into full form with a vengence. Writes Pendse; "For the INTUC, Samant was a very useful second string to the bow. In numerous ways, including probably control of industrialists, he was vital in a phase when worker militancy was threatening to become generalised and political power was not stabilized" 
 
But a force like Samant could not be contained at will, or by command. By 1979 any utility Samant may have had for INTUC was lost when he became a liability for the central trade union's relations with industrialists. Early in January 1979 N.P.Godrej, his daughter-in-Law and her mother were stabbed by a worker, in their home, within hours of a Godrej workers meeting where samant had made an allegedly inflammatory speech exhorting the workers" to violence Samant was arrested and accused of attempted murder  (He was eventually acquitted by the Bombay High Court in this case.) Industrialists went in delegations to the Chief Minister demanding immediate action to improve the industrial relations situation in the state and curb elements like samant. Thus the INTUC and Congress party policy towards samant underwent a dramatic reversal. This was obvious when later that year the Congress(I) refused samant a ticket for the Lok sabha election, despite intensive efforts by him, due to direct pressure from industrialists. January 1980 the Congress(I) came to power with an overwhelming majority in the Lok sabha. soon after that, in April, samant's Association of Engineering Workers was disaffiliated by the INTUC. Though there had been constant criticism of samant's militant style the actual reason given for disaffiliation was non-payment of subscription by samant to the central body. This did not alter samant's course and by mid-1980, when the Congress(I) also won the State Assembly elections in Maharashtra, he was identified as the single most potent threat to the industrial peace of Maharashtra and possibly even Gujarat. In anticipation of samant's arrival on their territory the Gujarat government issued instructions preventing his entry into the state. 

The mounting tension culminated in samant's arrest under the National Security Act in June 1981. He was picked up, on orders from the Police Commissioner of Thane, as he approached Shivaji Park to address a workers' rally. Rajni, Patel, the eminent lawyer and one-time Congress power lord., defended Samant. Patel had fallen out with Mrs. Gandhi after 1977 and stayed out of the Congress(I). after it returned to power in 1980. He was in London undergoing medical treatment at the time of Samant's arrest and flew back just to handle the case. 

Patel made a convincing case before the Bombay High Court to show that the Government had no evidence to back up the allegations, against Samant, of involvement in several violent incidents between 1979 and 1981. The Court ruled on July 28, 1981 that no nexus between those incidents and Samant had been established and ordered the trade union leader to be released immediately. But just as Samant emerged from the prison gate he was rearrested, this time under the orders of the Commissioner of Police for Bombay. In a petition filed to challenge. his rearrest, Samant's wife Vanita, stressed that there were no specific grounds given for her husband's arrest. When Samant asked for the grounds of his second arrest, he was told that the grounds were not yet ready. In other words, Samant was re-arrested with a blank charge sheet. The grounds for arrest, when finally furnished proved just as untenable as before. The second detention was also declared invalid by the Bombay High Court and Samant emerged from jail triumphant and more formidable than ever before. 

The more Samant thrived under the protective legal and political support of  Patel, the more dangerous and threatening he seemed to the establishment.  Another protege of Patel's, the then leader of the opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly Sharad Pawar -also contributed to this fear by allying himself with, Samant. This association gave Samant's agitational tactics a political dimension and provided Pawar with issues and events through which to make his presence felt as a major opposition political force in Maharashtra. 

By mid-1981 Samant's popularity could be gauged not only from the defensive attitude of the government and industrialists but also from the reactions of older established trade unionists on whose domain the Doctor was habitually and frequently conducting assualts. On June 30, 1981 the Times of India reported the dilemma of union chiefs on whether to make a major issue of Samant's arrest under NSA or to let it go with token press statements of protest against the "repressive, anitilabour policies of the Congress(I) government". The fat began crackling in the fire when Chief Minister A.R.Antulay publicly claimed that he had been asked by the other trade unionists to control Samant's violent activities The then Labour Minister N.M.Tidke had just announced that in 1980-81 Samant had been involved in 11 cases of murder, 65 cases of rioting, 40 of assault and 203 of intimidation and obstruction.3 Apart from hotly denying that they asked for Samant's arrest, the Trade Union Joint Action Committee (TUJAC) finally got its act together and called for a rally on 18th July to protest against  Samant's arrest. But these were face-saving devices that fooled no one, least of all the workers. 

Wherever there was already discontent and disillusionment among the rank and file, with other trade unions, this increased further and the tidal, wave of 'Samantism' began to swell. At a morcha to the Assembly Hall, organised by TUJAC following his release from jail in 1981, Samant arrived late, after attending the Assembly session. The morcha had, as usual, been halted at Kala Ghoda where it was converted into a rally. The other trade unionists had begun addressing the crowd of over 25,000 workers when Samant arrived from the rear and began to walk through the squatting crowd towards the truck which served as a platform for the speakers. As soon as Samant's presence was felt workers at the rear rose to their feet and began cheering. When the entire gathering became aware of his arrival the loud and emotional chanting lifted the mood of the occasion to an almost. hysterical pitch. On the truck, where the other trade unionists were forced to wait for this mass celebration to subside before continuing their speeches, all faces were grim. 

In his speech that evening Samant ridiculed government and industrialists alike, with special reference to Sharayu Daftary who as president of the Indian Merchant's Chamber had led a highly publicized move to counter Samant's power and bring about 'industrial peace' in Bombay. Neither Samant's tone nor the workers' response was lost on the government. Whether the workers perceived it or not, Samant himself was very conscious of the battle lines being drawn. 

At the time when Samant was frequently moved in and out of jail, his activities and personality became the objects of press attention and public curiosity on an unprecedented scale. In the finely furnished homes of Bombay's elite, who lived along the sea-facing west side of the city, 'the Samant menace' had become a compulsive conversation ,topic over evening cocktails and at other social gatherings. The small scale industrialist would relate his tale of horror about how Samant was threatening to drive him out of business. Others would join in with sympathies and the affirmation that Samant was one of the many destructive forces let loose in this 'useless' country where nothing ever worked. The more knowledgeable and shrewd at such gatherings would hold forth on how the 'menace' was a creation of the Congress party, and question the wisdom of jailing him. Once Samant's involvement in the Indian Express employees union became public knowledge, these sessions of the industrial-intellectual elite acquired an even more impassioned, angry and vigorous tone. The. Frankenstein was now even endangering freedom of the press by directly attacking its bastion  The Indian Express The underlying premise during all such conversations. and discussions was that a sub-intelligent proletariat with a herd mentality, was being swayed by a bully with false promises of petty gains. 

Much of this anger was fueled by the fact that in 1981 alone 26,175 workers had united under Samant's leadership and entered into confrontations with managements which led to either strikes or lock-outs. The State. of Maharashtra had recorded a loss of 13,47,331 man-days on account of these workers in 115 units. That only 38 of these disputes ended successfully for the workers merely baffled the elite but produced no genuine urge in its ranks to seek answers to the riddle. Thus the vast majority settled for the most convenient conclusion that Samant's vast following and involvement in numerous strikes. and lock-outs was due to his effective use of violent tactics and the efficient maintenance of goondas. lt would have been futile to state at such gatherings, that there was no trade union mafia in Bombay to conduct terror operations on an organised scale comparable to Dhanbad in Bihar. Since the state government statements, on the floor of the assembly, concentrated on Samant's violence and not that of the managements, his image as a dangerous violater of the law was further strengthened. 

But Samant's rise to power was neither the result of worker's gullibility nor a series of violent events. The 'fiery trade unionist', as the press had by then labelled him, was the product of prevalent conditions of the trade union scene in Bombay symptomatic of some basic ailments. The tactics which managements considered outrageous and irresponsible were a source of strength for Samant since this attracted workers to his fold. As Pendse has noted: "In an atmosphere of total distrust of and disgust with capitalist norms and modes, variously imposed on the legal and trade union machinery, a flouting of bourgeois respectability and responsibility held great attraction for the workers... The working class had to become and to experience becoming unencumbered" of fetters acquired in a different period. The emergency had tellingly brought. this awareness. Samant rose to play this historical role, however inadequately, however distortedly. His outrageous irresponsibility was a reflection bf the aspirations and feelings of the workers themselves. That is why he was appreciated! and followed by the workers and not ridiculed."4 

This mood was the product of not just happenings on the trade union scene in isolation but of the political upheaval which had shaken the country in the last half decade. The electorate had voted the Janata Party into power in 1977 and congratulated themselves on a victory over the authoritarian, three-decade hold of the Congress Party. The inability of the Janata to run a government, or even hold themselves together, produced a wave of resentment and disillusionment which not only put Indira Gandhi back in office but, also rendered damage to the people's faith in the electoral process as a possible means of redressing their grievances. 

This deep-rooted and widespread feeling found release in many local and non-party political forms of organisation in several spheres and in many varied ways. In the trade union sphere it found its manifestation in the disregard for and flouting of established legal procedures of industrial relations and the search for independent 'heroes.  Samant was one of the answers. Pendse wrote: "Datta Samant became the genuine spearhead, representative spokesman and natural expression of this stage, with the working class in a militant, assertive mood but without any cohesive apparatus and operating in a context of political uncertainty and instability. In his style and methodology, he was the representative of an interregnum."5 

Thus by 1977 Samant had become the principal foe of unrepresentative and unpopular unions and was perceived by the workers as anew hope. His position as a challenger of these unpopular , though recognized, unions was strengthened by his willingness to use counter-violence against those who terrorised the workers on behalf of non-militant and pro-management unions. Radha Iyer, labour lawyer and columnist, noted in mid-1980 that "the Samant phenomenon is to be attributed directly to the failure of the established trade unionists and employers to solve problem quickly and expeditiously and the failure of the legal system. 

Together these factors have blocked all outlets for the workers to ventilate their grievances and sort out issues in a meaningful way. This strangulation of the workers from all sides created the crisis of trade unionism and 
Dr. Samant became the rallying point for retaliation against it."6 

Even the left trade unions, considered by managements to be 'responsible' because they followed the rules and norms of the legal machinery, failed to articulate and explain these emerging tendencies. The vacuum thus created, by the failure of the left trade unions, was filled by Samant. A total disenchantment with the legal machinery was perhaps the single most important factor for heightening the militant mood. In 1980, over one lakh cases lay pending before the industrial tribunals and labour courts with no possibility of the backlog being cleared in the near future. In its September 7th issue that year, Sunday magazine quoted an activist from Samants unions as saying: "We don't need more labour courts. They are traps for workers. Let them burn them down the existing ones also." The man who violated most legal norms, ignored court injunctions and signed agreements, and tore up balance sheets proclaiming them to be "management's lies" was tailor-made for this situation. Laws, Samant found, could be bypassed with impunity if sufficient strength could be mustered on the shop floor and at the factory gates. The workers were painfully conscious of the manner in which managements used the industrial relations machinery to deny or delay justice. Brewing disputes were usually referred to conciliation and no strike could legally take place before the conciliation procedure was exhausted. 

Calico Chemicals, where Samant fought along battle in 1980, provided a good illustration of the manner in which the legal system could be used to subvert a union's efforts to wrest benefits from the management. The worker's charter of demands was first presented in 1964, at a time when the legal machinery had relatively more credibility. The award of the industrial tribunal was granted in 1971. The company appealed against this order in the Bombay High Court. Having lost the case there, the company went in further appeal to a division bench of the High Court and eventually to the Supreme Court. In the intervening period of about 17 years there was no revision of wage structure or pay scales. Samant entered the picture when the management's appeal was pending in the Supreme Court and led the workers on a strike that lasted over a year. Samant's style was to enter apparently no-win situations, demand a lumpsum packet of benefits for workers and hold out indefinitely in 'a battle to the end. 

Samant did not always win but workers nevertheless came to view him as a saviour of sorts. This was one of the reasons that Samant could persuade workers to hold out, for long-drawn-out struggles, without providing any monetary relief. That he managed to do so without the cover of any ideological identification or association was probably another indication of the extent of worker's deviation from the established trade unions with their clearly defined ideology and party affiliations. Samant rarely took a class view of society and offered simplistic solutions to the country's problems, such as making the government more efficient and dynamic. These characteristics earned him the label of  headless militant' from the leftists. But this did not bother Samant who, in 1979, admitted to a journalist that he had little interest in books and wanted only to be remembered by the people as a hero after his death. The unprecedented loyalty and support he eventually got from the textile workers came close to fulfilling this ambition. Even G. V .Chitnis, general secretary of the Maharashtra AITUC, who was sharply critical of the way Samant handled the textile strike, acknowledged that no trade union leader in Bombay over the last 50 years had enjoyed such support and popularity. 

But the very characteristics which contributed to his success also made him a lone-ranger, shunning all efforts by other trade unions to draw him into a united front. The national conference of trade unions held in Bombay in June 1981 did not find Samant in its midst because he turned down the invitation. Though he had been dissatisfied by INTUC in 1980 Samant's stand on Mrs. Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party remained ambiguous for several years. Many rival trade unions used Samant's absence at such joint front meetings as evidence of his remaining sympathetic to the Congress(I) and accused him of still harbouring ambitions of reentering the party. Samant in turn remained doubtful about the established trade unions and did not trust them. His methods and style of operation continued to be regularly attacked by these unions. And Samant's track record, viewed statistically, was indeed not commendable. 

It was characteristic of Samant to lead workers headlong into a strike or lock-out but follow it up with little action from his side. The initiative then inevitably slipped back into the management's hands often leaving the workers as passive victims. For all his messianic image Samant was also no democrat. Within his union, with its lack of systematic organisation, the decisions were made by a small group of people. Thus out of 115 work stop pages in which Samant was involved in 1981, he was successful in only 38 and unsuccessful in 77.  Of the 26,125 workers involved, only 9,621 workers returned to work with benefits and 16,504 resumed work without any gains. And in 21 cases of successful struggles, the workers made combined gains of Rs. 1,723,519 but lost Rs. 4,638,788 during the work stoppages.8 But to predict the imminent downfall of  Samant on the basis of these figures, would have been a complete misreading of the situation. The Bombay worker's militancy could not be understood from an accountant's viewpoint. All the defeats notwithstanding, one victory (as in Empire Dyeing) could trigger off an avalanche of support from workers in tens of units. 

This led Dange to dismiss Samant as an 'anarchosyndicalist', that is, one who believes that with the capture of every factory and workshop one by one, State power will eventually fall automatically into the hands of the proletariat. Others, like Pendse, argued that Samant has chained workers to the prevalent consciousness and bypassed the true issues which constitute the crisis of the trade union movement such as a rigid acceptance of official norms and channels, as insensitivity to shop-floor attitudes and aspirations and a lack of professional competence regarding monetary issues. 

Whatever the long term impact of the Samant phenomenon, in late 1981, he stood at the crest of a giant wave which threatened to engulf all that stood before it. At that stage it was easy for many to believe that it could overcome and conquer all. Most of the established trade unions watched his approaching wave with a mixture of apprehension and hope. They feared the implications, for  their own organisations, of Samant's solidifying his hold over a strategically vital work force like the textile workers. But most veteran trade unionists were certain that textiles would be Samant's Waterloo and hopefully mark the decline of such 'disruptive' forces in the realm of trade unions. Prabhakar More, of the Hind Mazdoor Kisan Panchayat, was among those who later proclaimed the textile strike unnecessary. Others argued, in October 83, that had Samant withdrawn the strike in the eight mills which began in October '81 he might possibly have reached a settlement with Antulay, "but then Samant would not have been Samant." 

Publicly, all the left trade unions adopted a supportive position, once the strike was called. Dange set the tone when he said at a meeting of the Mumbai Girni Kamgar Union activists, in December 1981, that he welcomed' Samant on the scene. Some of Samant's strikes are correct, Dange said, and these should be supported by the communists: "Where his strike is incorrect we must not oppose him." But Dange found it difficult to convince his own colleagues of this, though some of his rank and file later fought in the strike shoulder to shoulder with Samant. Press reports of this speech brought Samant to Dange's house for the one and only meeting between the one-time firebrand and the man who now staked claim to that 'title'. Dange later had only a sketchy recollection of the meeting and he found Samant "a normal man, nothing  special." Dange gave no advice and Samant left with the promise to return. But he never came again. Much later, while in retreat, some of the MGKU activists regarded this as a crucial juncture where the struggle went wrong and said that if Dange and Samant could have come together, history may have taken a different course. 

But at the end of '81 Samant was the only hero for the workers and Dange was remembered with contempt for his Rs.4 settlement of 1974. With his accurate reading of the textile worker's mood Samant attacked the Lal Bauvta union in one of his first big rallies and specifically ridiculed Dange's settlement of 1974. In comparison to this the National Campaign Committee's* proclamation (at the June '81 conference in Bombay) of total confrontation with the Central government and its anti-labour laws and policies, meant little to the rank and file. From the grassroots the only obvious fighter against the vested  interests at that point in time was Samant. The other unions appeared to be indulging in a purely notional 'total confrontation'. In the worker's chawls and kholis it seemed that Armageddon was at hand and Samant the only possible leader for the army of the good. He had warned them that it would be a struggle onto death and they had pledged to follow faithfully. Just how many perceived the literal and not figurative meaning of Samant's words will never be known. But follow they did and marched eventually to the accurately predicted end. 

If the reasons for defeat were already built into the structure of the textile industry, Samant realised that a struggle led by him would meet with still stronger opposition from the establishment. He was also already over-committed in numerous industrial units allover the state and reluctant to  take on a challenge of the magnitude of the 
textile industry. On October 27, 1981 Samant said in an interview: "The Standard Mill workers, however , stuck to their request and refused to leave my place till I gave my consent. I finally agreed when they told me that the workers themselves would take the responsibility of any struggle and only wanted me to be their spokesman."9 What was meant to be a gate meeting of Standard Mill workers on October 25 became a massive rally  with thousands of workers from the eight mills, which had been on strike for five days then, crowding the ,lanes around the gate. After a rousing reception from the workers Samant spoke and assured, his ardent listeners that the struggle would not stop at a demand for higher bonus but would continue to a fight for better wages, permanency for the badli workers and derecognition of the RMMS. 
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* A front of non-INTUC Central trade unions. 

Within days after this meeting, workers from one- mill after another followed in the footsteps of their Standard Mill comrades and headed for Ghatkopar. Within a week of Samant's first gate meeting at Standard Mill the Maharashtra Girni Kamgar , Union, newly formed by Samant, had applied to the Registrar of Trade Unions for recognition  with an initial membership of 15,000. 

With this the seemingly ever-growing giant rose to new heights. The workers rejoiced, for bada-kranti was at hand. The establishment eagerly looked forward to defeating Samant at what they hoped would be his Waterloo. Both were wrong.