Workers’ Association (Estd. 1927,Bombay): The First Cine-workers’ Association in India

Abstract

It will certainly come as a surprise to many that it is almost a century since the first cine-workers’ association, called the ‘Workers’ Association’, came into being in India, in the Bombay film industry in particular, that too in the late silent cinema period, in 1927. Unfortunately, there is no institutional memory of this workers’ formation, nor is there any mention in the contemporary records except in the evidence accompanying the Indian Cinematograph Committee (ICC) report (1928). In this article, analysing and mobilising this extant evidence, I delve into the reasons which led to its formation and speculate why it vanished without a trace. I argue that despite its ephemeral existence, it made Bombay’s film workers imagine the possibilities of having trade unions of their own, which fructified later.