The last connection to the old communist and working class movement, Roza Deshpande passed away on September 19 after a long illness. She was 91. Deshpande, a former MP, was the daughter of Sripad Dange, a stalwart of the movement and a founder of the Communist Party of India, but had built up her own reputation as an activist and labour leader. She leaves behind a son, daughter and granddaughter.
Deshpande was born in 1929. She was named after Rosa Luxembourg, the anti-fascist women’s rights activist and the founder of the German Communist Party. Those were the years when labour history was being made – in the year 1928, no less than 200 strikes were held by workers from the coal, jute, postal services and railways agitated not only for economic issues but also against British Rule. At the forefront were the textile workers of Mumbai. The six-month strike in 1928 by mill workers, led by the Mumbai Girni Kamgar Union and Dange, was unparalleled.
Roza was in the cradle when in March 1929, Dange was arrested along with 13 other activists from Mumbai and 19 more from around the country and charged with planning to ‘overthrow the British government’ in what came to be known as the Meerut Conspiracy Case.
A few days after the arrest, Bhagat Singh threw a bomb in an empty place in parliament and denounced the arrest of labour and communist leaders and opposed the Strike Ban Ordinance. Dange was in and out of jail when Roza was growing up.
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The agitations of Mumbai’s workers did not stop even after this repressive action by the British. Her mother Ushatai, also an activist, used to go to the mills and address the workers outside the gates and she took Roza along with her. Deshpande grew up in this charged atmosphere, seeing workers’ struggles in close proximity. She grew up to join the freedom movement and played an active role in the Sanyukt Maharashtra Andolan, an agitation to form a linguistic state and make Mumbai be a part of Maharashtra.
Deshpande became a trade union activist and treasurer of the All India Trade Union Committee; she was a representative of India on the World Federation of Trade Unions Committee. She organised pharmaceutical workers under the banner of All India Pharmaceutical Employees Union, which represented 64 companies, many of them multinationals.
The pharmaceutical industries employed a large number of women but they often were asked to leave when they got pregnant. Deshpande led an agitation and for the first time, companies agreed to give them pregnancy leave.
The management of one of the companies, Industrial and Research Institute Private Limited, with about 100 workers, wanted to shut down the firm. They claimed the company was making losses; the union, led by Deshpande, took the battle to the courts and finally won in the Supreme Court, taking over the company by appointing worker directors – the company was run by the workers from 1973 to 1991.
Roza Despande fought and won a by-election in 1974 from south central Mumbai as a Communist Party of India candidate, defeating Ramrao Adik of the Congress, who had the support of of the Shiv Sena. The election was held after a 42 -day strike by textile workers. She got huge support from the workers. Her fiery speeches, laced with Marxist ideology, made her very popular with union members.
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In the 1970s, Dange supported Indira Gandhi in her fight with Jayaprakash Narayan and others. In 1978-79, he was questioned by his own CPI colleagues and then had to quit the very party he had formed. Deshpande, along with her husband and Mohit Sen of the CPI, formed the All India Communist Party, which failed to get much support.
She was later on a committee to identify those who had been jailed in the Sanyukt Maharashtra Movement. At a function held in Mumbai, many of them were honoured by her. But she had retired from public life. She always used to address her father as ‘ D’ and wrote a book on him. Her husband Bani Despande was a scholar and had written very well-known books. In her senior years, many scholars used to visit her for guidance on the history of the Mumbai working class.
Roza Deshpande’s life was a journey of idealism and activism for much of the 20th century, reflecting the Indian working class movements. She fought for independence, and after 1947, for the rights of workers and women in particular.
Prakash Reddy is a National Council Member of the CPI based in Mumbai and worked closely with Roza Deshpande in many labour struggles and agitations.