Malnutrition starvation In di a’s, wage. plight is no serious than less By KULDEEP SINGH BAINS NDIA today is passing through the biggest strike wave in her history as the grow- ing protest against inflated living costs seizes thousands of industrial and white collar workers, including bank clerks, military clerks, teachers, postal and telegraph workers. ith semi-skilled workers earning around $15 a month and living costs climbing month by month—milk alone has gone up 27 cents a quart—they have been forced to strike. The Canadian people have very little knowledge about the Indian situation, for the Commercial press Ndian workers are so terroriz- ing their helpless employers that in one instance they forced '@ factory owner to stand bare- headed in the sun until he 88reed” to concede. their de Mands, ~~ Yet the fact is that avaricious. “mployers have embarked on a mpaign of terror in an effort © smash the labor movement. Refusing to grant a_ living Wage, they are utilizing every one at their disposal to Teak legal strikes. ees practically every major ie 1 Police have been used oat and terrorize the h ers. Hundreds of workers ave been arrested and jailed. "Yorkers! wives have been beat- “ONC ACa utc emmnuRna Feature Section en| mercilessly, even forced to beg their husbands to go back — to work. The only restraint upon police atrocities—and there have been scores of authenticated oases ranging from rape to mur- der—is the workers’ own organ- ized strength. e@ T Amalner (Bombay) nine men, including the secretary and the vice-president of the Textile Workers’ Union, were shot dead and another 69 were critically wounded by the pol » Ice, There are 3,200 textile work- ers at Amalner. For six months they tried td negotiate their grievances, but the employers refused to. make any conces- Page FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1947 is deliberately distorting the facts. According to Time (January 27), the sions. Finally, convinced that it was futile to continue the ne- gotiations any further, the wor kers struck. On the twentieth day of the strike they decided to appeal to the citizens for support, A procession of 5,000, led by 1,200 women, marched through the city, the demonstration ending with a huge mass rally attend- ea by people from all walks of life, Hindus and Muslims alike. Immediately the people assem- bled and sat down, armed pol- ice blocked all exits. A union leader began to address the gathering, but he had hardly spoken for four minutes when he was pulled down by the pol- ice. A murmur of anger ran through the crowd. Then Shrip- at Patil, the union’s secretary, got up to address the workers. A police officer attacked him. The workers rushed to. save their leader, but, to quote the account given by eye-witnesses later, “immediately two con- stables pounced upon Patil and firmly held him by the hands while their cowardly officer took aim and fired two shots at Patil’s breast at point blank range.” Patil fell dead. Deliberately the police officer looked over the crowd for other leading figures. He aimed his gun at Mrs. Vijaya Bhagawat. A worker saw this and hurried- ly “pushe@™ her aside. He man- aged to save her but he paid dearly. for it. The police offi- cer’s bullet claimed his life in- stead. Then the police opened fire on the crowd, stopping only when they had transformed the meeting place into a shambles. Even then they prevented the people from tending the wound- ed for twenty minutes and con- sequently many of the wounded bled to death on the spot. e IS is the way big busincss . in India is answering the just demands of the workers. These _#re the bargaining tactics of the employers, who made _ tremen- dous profits in the war years— super profits six and a_ half times greater than their total raid up capital. : Yet during the same _ period, 1940-44, ‘the real wages of the worker fell by 30 percent of pre- war wages. Is it any wonder that the Indian workers are demanding a few pennies crease in’ their daily wages. Obviously, the. present strikes in- in India are provoked by the employers refusal to _ tolerate any curtailment of their prof- its, even though they are ex- empted from the excess profit tax, - It is amazing that the interim government, headed by Nehru, has made no condemnation of the terrorism. Despite repeated demands, no inquiry has been held. It seems as if the gov- ernment is silently condoning the employers. But violent repression of the working people provides big business with no way out of its difficulties. Bullets and _ police terrorism cannot kill the spirit of the people. On the contrary it strengthens their determina- tion to win their struggle. The words of one woman worker, defying the police when they threatened to fire—“Shoot, shoot if you dare, you have already shot enough. Drink more of the workers’ blood. But we will nev- er submit to you alive” are find- ing an echo on thousands of. tongues. 5 Nothing can prevent the wor- kers, Hindus and Muslims, strug- gling side. by side, from achiev- ing their legitimate demands, for starvation and misery face ‘them’ as the alternative. : Negro veterans lead African strike ~—MOMBASSA, KENYA. dBA new determination for ' freedom that the second world war stirred among colonial peo- ples is being expressed in this British East African colony in the first major strike of native workers. ES The strike, which started among dock workers, has spread to 10,000 domestic servants, rail- _ way and postal workers, and has brought the port of Mom- bassa to a complete standstill. The strike took local British officials by surprise because they thought the Africans were too backward to organize a large- ing led by 16 ex-servicemen, among them veterans of ‘the’ battles at El Alamein and Sidi Barani who refuse to return to. prewar slave conditions. _ The strikers are demanding a 3-fold increase in their present wage of 50 shillings ($10) a month but British officials re- _8cale walkout. The strike is be- fuse to negotiate until the men return to work. Scabs from the British com- munity, protected by aimed - troops, are maintaining essen- tial services. ee ee