This is a story of pure idealism that took priority over social background, education and career prospects; idealism for equality in society and the workplace, gender parity, equal rights and secularism. In 1975 Brinda was a Delhi Communist workeras Rita, a pseudonym necessitated by the oppression of leftists during the emergency. A decade later she resumed her name.
Brinda’s father worked at the Calcutta Port organization. Her mother died early, in 1952. A Loretto alumna, she worked at Air India in London from 1967 to 1970,where she claimed and won the right to prefer a sari to a skirt. She was introduced to radical thinking through Vietnam and drawn to Marxism, to her father’sdisapproval. Returning to Calcutta in 1970 aged 22 where ‘my class origin was the greatest disadvantage’, she joined the party after working among students until1975. It was the ‘steepest learning curve’ and remained a life of learning, especially of Marxist doctrine. Transferred to Delhi to work among textile workers as the emergency was declared, she lived in working-class conditions in five mills, these workers being about half the total of industrial workers.
Her party activity involved struggle, solidarity, courage, betrayal by strike breakers, physical violence from police, and prison, but she drew inspiration from working-class females. When apart from men, these women would let their hair down.
The party effort was to unionise the workers, ‘sharpen the class struggle against capitalist exploitation’ while addressing workers’ demands. She shared bedrooms and food with females in families that did ‘unpaid, unrecognized, uncounted work’. She describes the year–long Party entry requirement of classes and probation and admits that while working class solidarity and identity existed, this did not extend to disavowal of caste.
She describes the terrible conditions that prevailed for handloom workers. Their wives spun cotton; the wheels symbolized poverty and exploitation. And Sanjay Gandhi’s sterilization and bulldozer relocation were the outcome of savage capitalist exploitation and produced an overall atmosphere of fear.
During the emergency, trade union activity was banned, and meetings occurredclandestinely. The main grievances were workload, wages and health issues, but Brinda discovered qualities of mind, such as memory, open discussion and ownership of decisions among unlettered workers. After the emergency, party work switched from secret meetings to gatherings at factory gates, when Brinda often found herself the lone female trade unionist. The restoration of civil liberties after the emergency did not change the government’s economic or labour policies andmany unions started aligning with management.
She attended her first Communist Party Congress in 1978 as observer, struck by its democratic procedures. After a mill strike in 1979, Brinda notes, ‘workers hate the strikes more than anyone’ because it leads to debt and women are most affected adversely. She was jailed for 3 weeks after a demonstration when the police accused her of attempted murder. The 4-month strike ended with partial victory and the 1980 election showed a considerable increase in communist representation.
After 200 attended a party convention for women, many speaking for the first timedespite misogyny in the judiciary and police, Brinda progressed from grassroot level to party secretary for North Delhi to build a female organization in Delhi drawn from students and mill workers.
With her husband, she lived for the next 37 years until 2014 in a one–room flat. For 35 years she had no passport. She had to subsume individual likes and dislikes to the ‘larger interest of the collective’, though the gap between the struggles of workers and results in terms of parliamentary seats was gigantic; ‘We could never translate our support into votes’. There was no political constituency among workers and no support from the middle-class where the communist reach was limited.
After the emergency, multiple female organisations to work against oppression, patriarchy, and for female emancipation began, some with an unfortunate female versus male paradigm, and concluded in the All–India Democratic Women’sAssociation. Women attended overcoming family opposition in cases. By 1980,500 women demonstrated under the JMS, a Dalit female left banner, with issues asscarce water and public transport, obtaining ration cards, domestic violence, dowry and rape.
To understand class exploitation, the lives of working women and workers’ wiveswere exemplary. Many were conservative and could not escape physical abuse because of the culture of male privilege. The caste dimension of sexual crimes against Dalits was rarely invoked in courts. Curiously, Brinda found that the men were more open to discussion; middle class women spoke out less and in Party circles, there was debate whether the emphasis should be against the governmentrather than family matters.
Some of the most badly treated women became firm supporters of the party whose emphasis had to be on class and caste inequality and needs of the oppressed. Joining other activist bodies, the objective was for parliament to effect dowry and rape reform. Collaboration with other groups introduced a political and social message to these inequalities. The young women in the media also played a part; eventually political parties could not ignore female issues.
In local government elections in Delhi in 1983, the communists fared reasonably despite lack of resources, alcohol and money, and where ‘their only asset is hard work’. The bargaining power of workers could be felt only when ‘they move as a class against exploitation’, with bourgeois politics and Hindutva pro-corporate trade unions against them.
In 1984 the party protected the Sikhs against communal antagonists, in which workers and Dalits played a notable role. Comrades were outnumbered badly, and while they did their best in relief, the impunity of the powerful was notable. Under the CPI–M government in W. Bengal, communal hatred was curbed, but in Indiaseparatist and communal forces had been released.
In the decade that Brinda describes, there were about 1000 party members in Delhi. Although her husband was a senior member of the party, ‘being part of a communist family means sacrifice and deprivation,’ and she never succumbed to pressure, innuendo or deviated from an independent path. In 1985 she stepped down as Rita, secretary of the north Delhi committee. The narrative is noteworthy for quotable passages. ‘Traditional working-class politics have been weakened…this has helped the rise of divisive, sectarian identity-based politics…the resilience of the caste system underlined the importance of ideological struggle…The worker leaders had to work twice as hard as a literate middle-class worker, which brought out the cruel inequalities of the capitalist society…It is true that as a woman, to get one’s work recognized does take more effort.