Research seminar: ‘I shall do as Ambedkar wants me to’: Ambedkar, Congress and the Industrial Dispute Bill of 1938

This paper explores the role of B. R. Ambedkar’s involvement in the one-day strike against the Bombay Industrial Dispute Bill (IDB) that occurred on 7 November 1938. The IDB attempted to curtail the rights of mill workers by criminalising strike action with up to six months in jail. An examination of these events sheds light on an often-overlooked aspect of Ambedkar’s life, his role as grassroots leader of a political party and as a labour activist working closely with Bombay’s communist organisations. In addition, the article also demonstrates the violent practices used by Congress to crush Dalit resistance in the first half of the twentieth century. An analysis of the strike and the protests associated with the IDB also uncovers Congress’s inclination to prioritise the interests of the mill-owners over the rights of the workers.  While this event is seldom remembered, it sets the basis for the future political mobilisation of Dalits in Maharashtra and elsewhere.  

Dr. Jesús F. Cháirez-Garza is Senior Lecturer in the History of Race and Ethnicity at University of Manchester. He studies the intellectual and political connections of the global South, specifically in India and Mexico during the twentieth century. He is particularly interested in the history of caste, mestizaje (racial mixing) and modern anthropology. Dr Cháirez was a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Leeds from 2015 to 2018 and has recently published Rethinking Untouchability: The Political Thought of B R Ambedkar (Manchester University Press, 2024)