But the working of these Acts revealed some defects in them, and, at the same time, industrial unrest, the influence of the labour movement, and the co-operation of India, as an original member of the League of Nations, in the International Labour Organisation at Geneva, stimulated proposals for further reforms. In the middle of the year 1929, the Government of India announced the appointment, by His Majesty the King-Emperor, of a Royal Commission on Indian Labour, with the Rt. Hon. J.H. Whitley as its Chairman, “to enquire into and report on the existing conditions of labour in industrial undertakings and plantations in British India; on the health, efficiency and standard of living of the workers; and on the relations between the employers and the employed; and to make recommendations.” The Royal Commission exhaustively reviewed the existing labour legislation and the labour conditions in India, in its report which was published in July, 1931. The most important measures of such labour legislation were the Amendment of the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1933, which further expanded the scope of the Act of 1923; the Indian Factories Act of 1934, which extended the provisions of the previous Factories Acts regarding the hours of work and sanitary and other conditions of industrial labourers; the Payment of Wages Act of 1936, which sought to regulate the payment of wages to the workers; and the C. P. Unregulated Factories Act of 1937, which regulated the labour of women and children and made provision for the welfare of labour in the factories to which the Factories Act of 1931 did not apply.
The hours of work were limited to ten a day or fifty a week in all “perennial ” factories. Each Province appointed Factory Inspectors to secure the observance of the Factories Acts. Efforts were made to improve the conditions of labourers through welfare work, organised occasionally by institutions like the Y.M.C.A., the Social Service Leagues, and the Depressed Classes Mission Society. Under the reformed Constitution, Congress Ministries attempted to improve the conditions of labour in various ways, and appointed Committees, such as the Bombay Textile Labour Inquiry Committee (appointed in October, 1937), the Cawnpore Labour Inquiry Committee (appointed in November, 1937), the Central Provinces Textile Labour Inquiry Committee (appointed in February, 1938), and the Bihar Labour Inquiry Committee (appointed in March, 1938), to inquire into the conditions of labour prevailing in the industrial centres and to make recommendations for their improvement. The question of representation of labour in the Central and Provincial Legislatures assumed a special importance and was considered by some committees. The Indian Delimitation Committee, which was set up in 1935 with Sir Lawrie Hammond as Chairman and published its report in February, 1936, proposed the formation of certain constituencies for the return of representatives of labour to the Federal Assembly and to the Provincial Legislative Assemblies on the basis of registered trade unions.
Besides State legislation and philanthropic activities for the benefit of labour, we should note the influence of the labour movement itself in Modern India. This movement owed its origin to the general awakening following the First World War, combined with the high prices of the bare necessities of life and the fixed wages which were mainly responsible for the deplorable conditions of living. The Madras Labour Union, formed by Mr B. P. Wadia in 1918, may be regarded as the first trade union in the proper sense of the term. The labourers soon realised the value of organisation and the efficacy of strikes. In 1920 Mr. Narayan Malhar Joshi created the first All-India Trade Union Congress. Trade Unions sprang up in most of the industrial centres and strikes broke out frequently. Trade Union activities were to a certain extent legalised by the Indian Trade Unions Act of 1926. The Royal Commission recommended a reconsideration of this Act, especially regarding the limitations imposed on the activities of Trade Unions and their officials. The Trade Union Movement continued to expand, though its progress was much hampered by illiteracy among workers, lack of efficient leadership, the agricultural outlook of Indian labour and its heterogeneous character. In 1929 there was a split among its leaders due to the attempts of the Communists to capture the Trade Union Congress. Moderate Trade Unionists under the leadership of Mr. N. M. Joshi seceded from the Congress and formed a new organisation called the Indian Trades Union Federation. Another split occurred in 1931. Attempts were made to bring about unity in the ranks of Indian labour by amalgamating all the bodies into one central organisation, but without success; in 1938 the combined Trade Union Congress had a total membership of about 354,500 with 191 affiliated Unions.
Social and Religious Reforms
The cultural renaissance which marked the advent of a new age in India was in full vigour during the first half of the twentieth century.
We have reviewed the activities of the Brahma Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Arya Samaj, the Deccan Education Society, the Theosophical Society and the Ramakrishna Mission during the second half of the nineteenth century. The twentieth century saw a continuation of these efforts for popular uplift.
After completing his twenty years’ service with the Deccan Education Society, Gokhale founded in 1905 the still more famous organisation known as the Servants of India Society. The object of the Society was to train “national missionaries for the service of India, and to promote, by all constitutional means, the true interests of the Indian people”. Its members should be such as were “prepared to devote their lives to the cause of the country in a religious spirit “. It was not a Society founded for any specific activity, political, educational, economic, or social, but merely a group of men who were trained and equipped for some form of service to the motherland.
“Whether such members in future were to run schools or papers or legislatures or co-operative societies or slum work or what not–that was not of prime importance, but what was to be the distinctive feature, the indispensable characteristic of any such work, was to be the fact that it was to be undertaken for its own sake, as a good work which is its own end not for the furtherance of a party or a class or a corporation or–least of all–for personal self-aggrandisement.”
