Social realism and labour strikes in interwar Bombay: what has socialism got to do with it?
The 1920s and 30s were a period of frequent, industry-wide labour strikes in the cotton mills of Bombay city. Labour upheaval inspired literary production in Marathi, the primary language of many workers in the city. In the early 1930s, the prolific and beloved Marathi writer Bhargavram (Mama) Varek...
| Publicado en: | South Asian History & Culture Vol. 16; no. 4; pp. 355 - 373 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Oct2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=188477793&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 188477793 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 19472498 B7KP jtl: South Asian History & Culture issn: 19472498 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct2025 vid: 16 iid: 4 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 188477793 10.1080/19472498.2024.2418174 ppf: 355 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T db: hlh ui: 188477793 – @attributes: type: P db: hlh ui: 188477793 tig: atl: Social realism and labour strikes in interwar Bombay: what has socialism got to do with it? aug: au: Shaikh, Juned affil: Department of History, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA su: Mumbai (India) Social realism Strikes & lockouts sug: subj: Social realism Strikes & lockouts Mumbai (India) keyword: Bombay social realism social reform socialism strikes Varerkar working class Bombay social realism social reform socialism strikes Varerkar working class ab: The 1920s and 30s were a period of frequent, industry-wide labour strikes in the cotton mills of Bombay city. Labour upheaval inspired literary production in Marathi, the primary language of many workers in the city. In the early 1930s, the prolific and beloved Marathi writer Bhargavram (Mama) Varekar published a play and a novel set in the mill district of the city (Mumbai in Marathi); social realism was the mode of depiction in these works. The setting, storyline, and many characters in the play and the novel were the same, but the resolution of the central conflict in these works – the tussle between millowners and millworkers – was different. At around the same time, a textile worker from the city, P. S. Sawant, wrote a play when he was on strike; it was performed in the mill district of the city. Both the plays by Varerkar and Sawant proposed co-operation between millowners and workers as a solution to the strike. The novel, though, left the conflict unresolved. Does genre itself account for a different ending? What was the politics of depiction of the working class in these works? What role did the literary history of the region and the politics of the conjuncture play in influencing them? The paper argues that political economic categories deployed by the city's Marxists at the time inform the play and the novel. But the authors take great pains to skirt a socialist horizon. In its absence, the works reflect the perspective of social reformers who had an important presence in working-class neighbourhoods and imagined the mill district as an insular space where socialists and socialism were intrusions from outside. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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