Catalyst not commander

The figure of A K Roy, miners’ leader and Marxist MP,

is surrounded by myths. Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay

went to meet him in Dhanbad. 

‘Comrade Roy has come back,’ said one of the miners.

I looked out of the window, expecting to see an impressive person alighting from a car. Instead I saw an ordinary looking man with a scraggy beard getting out of a rickshaw. He was tallish, lean, wore spectacles and was dressed in white pyjama-type trousers and a long kurta shirt, like the coal miners waiting in his office. Was this really the famous A K Roy, Member of Parliament and President of the Bihar Colliery Kamgar (Workers’) Union?

‘Yes,’ I was assured, ‘that is Comrade Roy,’ He had just returned from inaugurating anew college building, one of his duties as the local MP. I had already been waiting two hours in the union’s office in one of the poorer localities of Dhanbad. Huge portraits of Marx, Lenin and Mao adorned the walls and a red flag hung conspicuously outside the entrance. Inside, miners were sitting around on mats spread on the floor.

It was another hour before I finally met Roy in his office, a poky, drab room furnished with a table, two chairs and a telephone (the latter, I supposed, one of his privileges as an MP). He peered at me through his spectacles and came straight to the point - what was the purpose of my visit? I explained and gave him some copies of New Internationalist to establish my credentials. He looked briefly at the magazines and, apparently satisfied, began talking in a shy, reticent way. I had to ask him to speak louder because my tape recorder was not picking up his soft voice but gradually he lost his reticence as we talked, frequently interrupted when miners came in to discuss their problems.

‘The union was the outcome,’ Roy explained, ‘of a movement of workers to gain self-respect and some control over their own lives by breaking the power of the local mafia.’ The workers campaigned for the democratic right to choose and control their own trade union. The mine managers responded by sacking 600 workers and suspending many others and the mafia launched a campaign of terror. Two union organisers were murdered and workers began coming to meetings armed with staves (lathis) and axes for self-protection.

But the movement survived the onslaught and the union was registered in 1974. Today it is the largest union in the Dhanbad coal belt. Because it grew spontaneously out of a people’s movement the union has never had a rigid organisational structure.

‘The cardinal principle,’ said Roy, ‘is decentralisation. So that even in the absence of the central leadership the union still functions.’

Later I spoke with Jumra Timiya, President of the Union Committee in Dubai colliery, who confirmed what Roy had said:

‘When we take decisions we call a meeting of the workers and ask for their opinions. It is only on very important matters that we approach Comrade Roy.’

Ten years after the establishment of the union, the mineworkers now have better wages and greater job security. But Roy is not satisfied. He deplores the growth of ‘economism’ among workers, and sees his role as giving political leadership rather than concentrating on purely industrial issues. ‘In the trade union movement today,’ he said. ‘there is more trade and less union. The working class is losing its role as an instrument of change in society and is becoming a junior partner of the employer.’

As far as his own role is concerned, however, Roy describes himself as a ‘catalyst and promoter, rather than a commander’. Why then, I asked, was the figure of A K Roy projected by the Indian media rather than the movement itself?

‘It is a feature of capitalism,’ he said after pausing for a moment, ‘to project and extol individuals rather than the movement ... On the other hand, I suppose that leaders like myself do have a role as symbols of the movement. Myths grow up around us.’

What does a leader such as A K Roy symbolise? Why do the union members respect him?

‘Comrade Roy,’ said Jumra Timiya, ‘taught us about our rights and our own leadership abilities. He gave us self-respect. Roy’s leadership has helped us raise our voices. Other unions do not allow the workers a voice.’

‘Roy is respected,’ said another miner, ‘because he is fearless and prepared to confront the workers’ enemies. He is also honest and selfless. He has given up everything for the union.’

Other mineworkers made similar comments, depicting Roy’s leadership qualities in terms very close to those of the traditional Indian concept of sainthood.

Like Mahatma Gandhi, the supreme example of the 20th century Indian saint, A K Roy embodies the qualities of krichata sadhan - or self-sacrifice and austerity - in his personal life. He was born in a middle-class family in Calcutta, is well educated and has the prestige of being a Member of Parliament. Yet he shares with his comrades a hut without running water or electricity in Dhanbad’s poorest locality. Apart from his books, he has no personal belongings to speak of. He has never married and has very little contact even with his own mother and other family members. He has also suffered for his political commitment, having been imprisoned during the Emergency of the mid-1970s.

But Roy’s krichata sadhan is not political expediency: he believes that any working class leader should live in the way he does. He consciously shuns the cult of the charismatic personality, not simply because of his innate shyness but because he thinks this is unfitting for a people’s leader. I wanted to photograph him before leaving his office but he refused.

It may seem a strange paradox that in India a Marxist leader such as A K Roy has to have saint-like qualities to fulfil the expectations of the people he leads. Yet that is the reality.

This is an edited version of a longer interview

by Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay, who is a

development consultant based in Calcutta.

- Source: http://newint.org/features/1984/11/05/lead/#sthash.mbkLy0nG.dpufCatalyst