Today on September 28 many, many people in Chattisgarh and other parts of India will be remembering Shankar Guha Niyogi on his death anniversary. It was on this day that he was assassinated at the peak of his efforts to mobilize workers for a big struggle. Niyogi, a labor leader who became a legend in his lifetime, led a very[Read More…]

“Drinking water for everyone, And water for the land we till, A job for every hand The peasant getting his due for the toils. Hospital in every village, And school for all the children, Land and home for every family, No poor, no place for the exploiters and capitalists. When will we get Chhattisgarh of our dreams? Only when the[Read More…]

One of the most prominent people in the contemporary labour movement of India, Shankar Guha Niyogi, lost his life for the cause three decades ago. From the time he began his work in Chhattisgarh in the nineteen sixties until his martyrdom in 1991, he led innumerable class struggles. He was the prime mover of a new stream in the labour[Read More…]

Before 28th September 1991, very few people outside Chhattisgarh or Madhya Pradesh knew the name of Shankar GuhaNiyogi.  On this day, along with Niyogi’s name, people also learned the phrase, “sangharsh aur nirman”, i.e. “struggle and creation”. What is ‘struggle and creation’? In the context of a fight for rights, struggle is easy to understand – it’s striving. What about[Read More…]

Asim Das, Indradeb Choudhury, Kishori Choudhury, Kumar Verma, K. N. Pradip Kutty, Keshav Prasad Gupta, Joga Jadav, Dhirpal Sinha, Puranik Pal, Prem Narayan, Madhukar Choudhury, Manoharan Verma, Ramkripal Misra, Ramajna Chauhan, Lashman Verma, Hiru Ram   “The butchers that murdered you will be judged in the tribunal of today. We will not let the killers be the arbiters of justice[Read More…]

On May 6th, 2015 Faguram Yadav, my one time fellow-warrior, breathed his last. The history of the labour movement in modern India cannot be told without the story of Chhattisgarh Mines ShramikSangh, its main organizer Shankar GuhaNiyogi, and the tales of struggle, sacrifice and victory of the brave iron mine workers of Dalli-Rajhara. An account of the movement for the[Read More…]

The large majority of the contract workers of Dalli-Rajhara were adivasi or tribal people. For adivasis, consuming alcohol is part of their cultural tradition. They collect mahua flowers from the forest and brew their own liquor at home. Alcohol is an inseparable part of any family event or social celebration. Men and women, young and old, drink together at festivals[Read More…]

Of the eleven martyrs of the agitation on June 2-3, 1977, one was a woman – Anasuya Bai. The Chhattisgarh Mines ShramikSangh (CMSS), the first union under the red-green banner, set up seventeen departments in order to bring the entirety of a mine worker’s life under its umbrella. One of these was the women’s department that later took the form[Read More…]

The anti-mechanisation campaign in Dalli-Rajhar The anti-mechanisation movement in the iron mines was one of the distinctive campaigns for which Dalli-Rajhara became known as the nerve centre of the workers’ struggle. I was there during the intense last phase of this movement. At the time these events occurred, Chhattisgarh was a part of the state of Madhya Pradesh. It was[Read More…]

Six prosperous doctors of different generations in my family inspired me to be a doctor. After I entered Medical College, the Medical College Democratic Students’ Association taught me to dream anew of being a very different kind of doctor…a doctor like Dr. Norman Bethune, like Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis. But where would I go? There was no anti-Franco resistance in Spain[Read More…]

CHAPTER ONE  – NIYOGI AND HIS MISSION[1] I used to say, somewhat in amusement and somewhat grievingly, “I belong to the B-team of Niyogi”. The A-team consisted of Binayak da (Dr Binayak Sen)  and Ashish da (Dr Ashish Kumar Kundu). Saibal da (Dr Saibal Jana), Chanchala di ( Dr Chanchala Samajdar) and I used to manage the affairs of the[Read More…]