Rereading a Tale of Workers’ Insurgency

Indian labour history writing mostly covers the period up to 1947, the year in which India got freedom from British colonial rule and emerged as a postcolonial state. In recent years, activist scholars have started documenting and analysing labour protests and counter-insurgency operations of the state in postcolonial India. Ranabir Samaddar’s book on the 1974 railway strike in India is a valuable contribution in the domain of research with an activist orientation. The book draws our attention to the making and unmaking of workers’ struggle in the Indian Railways. It should be mentioned in this connection that the railway workers’ strike occurred at a time when labour militancy was at its peak in India.

The Crisis of 1974