Sandip Bandopadhyay writes after reading Punyabrata Gun’s monograph শংকর গুহ নিয়োগীর সঙ্গে কয়েক বছর এক সহযোদ্ধার প্রতিবেদন (My years with Shankar Guha Niyogi-account by a fellow-fighter).
In the late 1970s, Shankar Guha Niyogi emerged as a trade union leader with a difference. His area of activity included Bhilai and the adjoining mining area of Dalli Rajhara and Danitola in Chhattisgarh (then under MP). Unlike the existing TUs (including the leftist ones) he laid emphasis on the plight of the informal or casual workers and formed a TU with them in 1977. The Union entitled Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh (CMSS) later expanded its activity in the Danitola area as well.
Niyogi had begun his engagement with workers a few years earlier when the infamous emergency was still in force. He was put behind bars in 1975. In the 1960 Niyogi had got an employment in Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) as a skilled worker in the coke oven section and tried to organise the workers. Built with Soviet assistance, BSP was then hailed asone of the harbingers of post colonial industrial development. Any attempt to dent its image was considered a crime. Hence he lost his job.
But Niyogi was not to be subdued. He utilised his unemployed days by engaging more closely with the lived realities of the casual workers. In 1971, he himself got a job as a casual worker in the quartz mines in Danitola. He was trying to organise the workers against the injustice done to them. And so he was arrested
Niyogiji as he was fondly called was a principled leader. He placed workers’ dignity above the economic demands. The union forced the authorities to pay ‘idle wage’ to the workers for the days they could not be provided with work. But the management fulfilled it partially and hence the workers could not but resort to a strike. They opposed the force’s attempt to arrest their dear leader. The police lost no time in opening fire killing eleven including a woman and a boy (June 1977). This was not the only incident of police ruthlessness. Workers faced police bullets several times–the notorious being the indiscriminate firing on a massive workers assembly in Bhilai in 1992.
Niyogiji was an innovative worker leader with a strong ethical outlook. His union put up a crusade against the workers practice of wasting money one country liquor. He had a deep concern for the health and well-being of worker-families. The CMSS first started a dispensary in Dalli (1982) which was later (1983) given the shape of a hospital. Built essentially on the workers contribution with no financial help from any donor agency, it was named Shaheed Hospital in memory of those martyred in 1977.
Dr. Punyabrata Gun joined the hospital in 1986. There he found some of his fellow doctors from Kolkata (then Calcutta): Dr Saibal Jana, Dr. Ashish Kundu, Dr. Chanchala Samajdar, Dr. Pabitra Guha and Smt. Alpona Dey Sarkar and there was also the internationally acclaimed Dr. Binayak Sen. All of them did not stay there at a stretch but their service contributed richly to the development of the hospital which could finally boost of a well equipped operation theatre.
Dr. Gun gives a graphic description of the initial days when they had to work against many odds. The hospital continues to this day as an institution committed to the cause of the poor.
Dr. Gun worked there till 1994. He describes in detail the days before the 1991 assasination of Niyogi in Bhilai at the hands of the guns hired by the Bhilai ancillary industry owners. He however arguably terms the post 1991 days a period of decline. His monograph’s significance lies in the brilliant delineation of the iconic leadership of Guha Niyogi.
Niyogi practised a truly democratic culture in his union and provided space for debate, if any. He would sometimes behave rudely but at heart he was an affectionate person who took almost every worker family’s needs. He also had concern for the doctors working there.
Niyogi head a Marxist background, But the TU he envisaged, went beyond the confines of the conventional movements. His historic slogan ‘confront and construct’ is said to be inspired by the Gandhian concept of Seva as an essential part of politics. I however feel that Niyogiji also drew upon the revolutionaries, particularly Bhagat Singh, who regarded violence as a means to a noble end’. That is why he finally courted death as an inevitability, notes dr. gun.
Niyogi widened the horizons of the TU movement. his legacy continues to impact the sporadic project undertaken by some of his colleagues and admirers.
