The lockout (1/6)

February 21, 2024

One of the things I enjoy about this blog is the opportunity is to tell long-form stories of Gandhi in little bite-sized pieces. Today is the first of six parts, sprinkled over the next month, leading up to what biographer Erik Erikson called the Event: the origin of militant nonviolence. Our story begins on February 21, 1918...

Ahmedabad, India was a city of a quarter million people, and nearly half of the families were involved in the textile industry. Mohandas Gandhi had chosen to settle there in 1915 after returning to India, establishing an ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati River with a few dozen followers. It was named for the tactic of nonviolent persuasion he had developed: the Satyagaha Ashram.

During the winter of 1917-18, a virulent plague ravaged the city—something we can relate to, post-Covid—claiming 500 lives a day at its peak. The Great War was still raging, and the mills produced cloth that might end up as soldier’s uniforms. To ensure their essential workers would show up, owners of the mills paid “plague bonuses” of 70% over regular wages. When the contagion subsided, the owners of the mills announced these bonuses would end, replaced with a 20% raise. Since the plague’s disruption had raised the cost of living, this would leave tens of thousands working for starvation wages.

The plague had also wounded the relationship between the mill workers and mill owners, so Gandhi was called in to treat the injury. He had friends on both sides of the conflict; Anasuya Sarabhai was the unofficial leader of the workers. She had fought for women’s rights inside the factories, getting special access since her younger brother, Ambalal, was one of the leading mill owners. Gandhi had known the family for years; Ambalal Sarabhai was a socially progressive Hindu. A few years earlier, when Gandhi’s nearby ashram accepted a so-called-untouchable family, his financial backers withdrew their funding. Only a generous donation from Ambalal saved it from collapse.

Anticipating the end of the bonuses, the workers discussed their options. At the first whispers of a strike, the owners declared there would be a “temporary shutdown.” The workers finished their shifts on February 21, 1918, said goodbye to their machines, and promised to return.

Gandhi offered himself as an impartial arbitrator. “I am not particularly disposed to favor workers as workers,” he wrote. “I am on the side of justice and often this is found to be on their side.” After gathering information about wages in other cities, he persuaded the workers a 35% increase would be fair and they should demand that. But the mill owners refused to budge from 20%.

The owner’s lockout is the first chapter of the story that leads to Gandhi’s first public fast on March 15. The Event, as Erik Erikson named it in Gandhi’s Truth: On The Origins of Militant Nonviolence, shaped his use of fasting as a satyagraha weapon.

(Part two)

Have you ever left a job over working conditions?