IN some circles Gandhi is also credited to be the founding father of Indian trade union movement. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Gandhi did have an early encounter with the Ahmedabad working class in 1918, but it was not from the point of view of organising workers into trade unions. At the behest of his friend and noted textile magnate Ambalal Sarabhai and other mill-owners of Ahmedabad, he intervened in a conflict over “plague bonus” and mediated for a 35% wage increase with the owners offering 20% and workers demanding 50%. At a time when in the late 20s, textile workers all over the country would fight for a hike in wages, Gandhi would urge Ahmedabad workers not to embarrass their employers during a period of depression. “Faithful servants serve their masters even without pay”, he would advise.

He advocated the concept of trusteeship, asking workers to look at mill-owners as trustees and resolve all disputes through arbitration. The Textile Labour Association that he built up was accordingly named Majoor Mahajan. He got the Ahmedabad mill-owners to donate generously for his Sabarmati Ashram while striking workers were mobilised to carry out much of the construction work.

In fact, Ahmedabad workers did not really figure effectively in Gandhi's own campaign plans nor did he try to mobilise them in support of the peasants. Yet Ahmedabad workers would raise Rs. 1,300 through one-anna collection for the agitating peasants of Bardoli in Surat. And a few days before the heinous Jallianwallahbagh massacre, when the British rulers issued orders preventing Gandhi from entering Delhi or Punjab, Ahmedabad exploded in violent protests. For two days, 11 and 12 April, 1919 Ahmedabad was virtually captured by the city's textile workers. 51 government buildings were burnt down and railway and police stations were set on fire also in the nearby town of Viramgam. The British administration clamped down martial law and official estimates speak of 28 persons being killed and 123 injured in army action. Highly disturbed by this eruption of mass violence on his home ground of Ahmedabad, Gandhi confessed to a “Himalayan blunder” and quickly catted off the satyagraha.

Gandhi did at times speak of organising workers in other industrial centres too on the lines of his Ahmedabad model of trusteeship and 'amicable arbitration'. But perhaps anticipating the impossibility of such a mission he never really embarked on such an exercise. In fact, he showed absolutely no interest in the foundation of AITUC or in directing its affairs at any point of time. He was perhaps the only exception among front-ranking Congress leaders to have kept aloof from the AITUC even in those early years when the communists had not yet become a major force in the trade union movement. Perhaps this alarmist apathy stemmed from his apprehension that a working class organised on an all-India scale would only militate against the typical Gandhian equilibrium in the Congress-led coalition of socio-political forces and ideological currents.