Pressure to limit working hours in India’s textile factories came from a variety of sources, as Suramya Thekke Kalathil explains.

I received a grant from the Society for the Study of Labour History to attend the European Social Science History Conference at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The conference was jointly organized by the International Institute of Social History and University of Gothenburg and took place from 12 to 15 April 2023.

There were more than 300 sessions on various disciplines from the social sciences, of which I attended twelve on labour, law, trade unions, philanthropy, migration, women, development, and inequality. My session entitled ‘the travels of labour law’ was organized by the labour network group and there were two papers in this session on the legal rights of women and workers.

My paper captured the history of Indian Factories Act and working-class movement. The paper argued that the passage of the Indian Factories Act of 1881 was a turning point in the history of workers’ rights in India, as for the first time the focus of labour laws shifted towards the improvement of working conditions in factories. In subsequent amendments, the Factories Act progressively covered child, female, and male workers, and the length of their working hours became a matter of concern for the colonial state.

The Factories Act of 1881 was a result of the pressure exerted by British textile capitalists in Lancashire and Manchester on the Indian colonial state to pass the legislation. This was done to limit the working hours in Indian factories and thereby eliminate the threat of cheap clothes produced in India. However, legal initiatives after the 1920s were largely the result of the bargaining power of Indian trade unions. This study investigates how the dialectics among, the state, workers, and capitalists played a key role in the implementation of the Factories Act in the Madras Presidency and the prominent factors that limited the working hours at each historical juncture.

My paper was well received and there was a fruitful discussion on methodology, approach and possibility of expanding its content by looking at developments in England at that point in time. Attending various sessions and interacting with the participants across the world helped me to understand new trends in social science research. The conference was productive and enriching for an aspiring social scientist such as me.

Dr Suramya Thekke Kalathil is an independent researcher.

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