The Indian Coffee House Workers Movement and Nehruvian Development Policy, 1936-1957

• In Event: 539 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Social Movements and Labor Solidarity, Beyond the United States

Abstract

In this paper, I detail the how “Coffee House” was founded, occupied by its workers, and then transformed into a workers cooperative. Coffee House was created by British coffee plantation owners and administered by the British Colonial Government of India. In the decade after Independence, India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Indian Communist Party fought for opposing visions for the fate of the occupied coffee houses which were renamed, “Indian Coffee House” by their workers. Why did Indian Coffee House workers occupy and appropriate a colonial institution instead of joining the Gandhian Nationalist Movement? And then, once occupied, why compromise with Nehru and the Coffee Board and become a cooperative after a decade of petitioning to become a state-owned firm? Eventually, AK Gopalan, the Indian Coffee House Workers Union President, proposed that the workers form an official workers cooperative rather than face extinction. While at first opposed to the idea, eventually, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the Coffee Board of India agreed to register Indian Coffee House as an official cooperative, and justified this policy as being a part of the Sarvodaya movement within the Socialist Party and left wing of the Congress Party. Subsequent state development policy incorporated the cooperative movement as part of an explicit economic development strategy, most notably in Jawaharlal Nehru’s second five year plan.

Author

• Kristin V. Plys, Yale University