May Day with a Difference

The workers of Bombay first observed May Day in 1927 (the first May Day to be observed in India) by going on strike and launching a movement for working class solidarity that proved to be a prelude to the formation of the first well-organised militant trade union in the country, the Girni Kamgar Union, and to the agitation against the Simon Commission in 1928. It also, in a sense, inaugurated the political movement of workers in the country. Things have changed a great deal in Bombay since then.