Early Indian communism rejected caste equality as a workers’ demand

Evidence

In the Bombay Presidency, the trade union leader S.A. Dange, a Maharashtrian Brahmin, organised a large section of the Bombay textile workers into a breakaway union—India’s first communist trade union—the Girni Kamgar Union, with seventy thousand members. At the time a large section of the workforce in the mills were Untouchables, many of them Mahars, who were employed only in the much lower paid spinning department, because in the weaving department workers had to hold thread in their mouths, and the Untouchables’ saliva was believed to be polluting to the product. In 1928, Dange led the Girni Kamgar Union’s first major strike. Ambedkar suggested that one of the issues that ought to be raised was equality and equal entitlement within the ranks of workers. Dange did not agree, and this led to a long and bitter falling out. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 336

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to caste stratified labor theory and why Indian left historically sidestepped caste as class solidarity did not include Untouchables.