Why is BJP and Haryana Govt afraid of May Day?

Vested interests in India want us to forget the real significance of International Women’s Day (March 8) or May Day (May 1). Women’s Day is meant to commemorate women’s historic struggle against patriarchal and capitalist oppression; but we hear politicians and corporations use this day as an occasion to glorify the same oppression in the name of praising women’s ‘sacrifice’ and ‘service’. It’s the same on May Day: on this day we hear leaders praise ‘workers’ power’ (shram shakti) rather than recalling the movements against capitalist exploitation of workers’ power!

This year is no different. The Indian PM Narendra Modi has tweeted ‘Shrameva Jayate’ – the RSS slogan that is designed to mystify and glorify workers’ submission to capital. Meanwhile the BJP Government in Haryana – remember Haryana is the state where Maruti workers and other workers in the Manesar industrial belt are branded as criminals for forming unions – has declared that it will not observe May Day but will only observe Vishwakarma Puja day.

Last year, the RSS too had declared that May Day is not in keeping with India’s own culture. Shrameva Jayate means ‘Victory to labour’, but the Modi Government is working for the defeat of workers and the victory for capitalist corporations.

Vishwakarma Puja is a Hindu religious festival observed especially in eastern India, where artisans worship their tools. Those who observe it, need no directive from the RSS or BJP to do so. So why are RSS and BJP trying to appropriate this festival and remake the Vishwakarma puja tradition as a counter to May Day? Is it because they hope to rally Hindu workers around a Hindu tradition, while discouraging workers from uniting across communities and faiths to observe May Day? Is it because they know that May Day is not a festival or a ritual but an international assertion of workers’ mutual unity and solidarity in the struggle against capitalism?

If those who rule India want us to forget May Day’s history and its message, it’s all the more important to remember.

In 1884, the Federation of Organised Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution in favour of a legally-mandated eight-hour working day from May 1, 1886 onwards. A poster from that period explains the rationale behind this demand: ‘8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest and 8 hours for what we will’.

The bosses however wanted to squeeze as many hours of labour as possible from the workers for the least possible wage, and, along with governments that backed them, were fiercely opposed to the struggle for the 8-hour day. That is why, on May 3, 1886, Chicago police fired into a gathering of striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works Factory, killing four workers and wounding many more. On 4 May 1886, thousands of workers gathered for a mass meeting at Haymarket Square to protest against the police firing. As the meeting neared the end, someone threw a bomb, killing one policeman. The police fired on the workers again, killing one worker and injuring others.

The bomb was very likely thrown by an agent provocateur. But the bombing was used as a pretext for charging Chicago’s leading labour organisers with conspiracy to murder. The trial was a mockery, a kangaroo court, which sentenced the Haymarket 8 to death despite the fact that there was no evidence whatsoever.

But, rather like Bhagat Singh and his comrades, the Haymarket 8 used the trial as a platform to highlight their ideas. Their speeches at the trial ring as true today for workers in India and all over the world as they did then.

August Spies, one of the Haymarket 8, said: “… if you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labour movement – the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery – the wage slaves – expect salvation – if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground upon which you stand is on fire...”

We should remember, then, that the 8-hour day and other laws to protect workers from unfettered exploitation by capital, were won at the cost of workers’ blood. 2017 is the centenary year of the 1917 Russian Revolution; it should also be remembered that Russia in 1917 was the first country to legalise the 8-hour working day.

How anti-labour is the Union Government?

Today, the ruling classes of developing countries compete to offer a cowed, docile force of workers to attract global capital. The Modi Government, likewise, invites global and Indian capitalists to ‘Make in India’, and erodes workers’ rights and labour laws to do so.

The Modi Government is preparing to remove labour law coverage for 90% of India’s workers. Contractualisation has become the norm now, even in violation of laws, with contract workers paid far below permanent workers for the same work. Minimum wages are inadequate – and even the minimum wage law is routinely violated. Safety laws are violated, resulting in deaths and injuries of workers. The right to form unions is still a legally mandated right – but workers who form unions are more often than not penalised and victimised. The union leaders of Maruti or Pricol are framed on fake murder charges and jailed in spite of no evidence against them – just as the Haymarket 8 were similarly framed and punished in 1886.

Nor is any of this surprising, when political parties are in the pockets of corporations.

• Mukesh Ambani in the Radia tapes declared that ‘Congress is our shop.’ Now, the Finance Bill passed recently has ensured that corporations can have any political party as their ‘shop’. The Bill enacted recently allows companies to donate any amount to political parties – without having to declare such donations anywhere, even in their own account books!
• The 2017 Union Budget declared that during 2016-17, exemptions in corporate tax amounted to ₹83,492 crore. “India Ratings” estimated that stressed loans (non-performing assets + restructured loans + written-off assets) with domestic banks amount to over ₹13 lakh crore. (DNA, 13 May 2016).
• PSU banks wrote off ₹1.54 lakh crore bad loans during 2013-2016 June (PTI, December 7, 2016). More shockingly, The Economic Times (December 20, 2016) alerted us that debts worth ₹7.4 lakh crore debt are likely to be written off. A government that grudges minimum wages to workers or food rations to workers’ families is generous with tax waivers and loan waivers to the richest capitalists.

The BJP is afraid of May Day because May Day’s message is a resounding call for workers’ unity and solidarity across the boundaries not only of community and faith but even nations. Its divisive ‘cow/beef’ and lynch mob politics appeals to the lowest and basest feelings; May Day appeals to the best feelings of human beings. That’s why, this May Day has been a good time for India’s workers to resolve to resist the hate-mongering and divisiveness, and unite to assert themselves against the bosses and governments.