When workers in one industry stop work to support the struggles of workers in another, they engage in what’s known as a sympathetic strike. While such strikes demonstrate solidarity across labor sectors, Mahatma Gandhi viewed them through a distinctly different lens than conventional labor movements. For Gandhi, these strikes weren’t simply tactical weapons against employers or political tools for broader movements. Instead, he saw them as profound moral acts requiring careful consideration, self-discipline, and an understanding that went far beyond immediate economic gains.
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Two types of sympathetic strikes
Gandhi distinguished between humanitarian and political sympathetic strikes, both aimed at expressing solidarity with others facing injustice. The 1921 Assam-Bengal Railway workers’ strike stands as a powerful example of a humanitarian sympathetic strike. When tea plantation workers in Assam faced brutal conditions and were shot at while trying to escape, railway workers and steamer service employees struck work in solidarity. This wasn’t about their own wages or working conditions. It was about standing with fellow workers who were being treated inhumanely.
Similarly, when the steamer service workers joined the railway strike, they demonstrated the kind of cross-sector solidarity that characterized sympathetic strikes. These workers understood that the exploitation of plantation laborers was connected to their own struggles within the broader colonial economic system.
The question of readiness
Gandhi’s support for sympathetic strikes came with a significant caveat. He believed that for such strikes to succeed as genuine acts of resistance rather than mere political manipulation, workers needed what he called national consciousness. This wasn’t simply awareness of political issues, but a deeper understanding of their rights, duties, and their role in the larger struggle for freedom and justice.
Writing about Indian laborers in his time, Gandhi expressed concern that many lacked this necessary consciousness. He worried that workers were being exploited for political ends before being taught self-help, their duties, and their rights. For Gandhi, this put the cart before the horse. How could workers make informed decisions about solidarity strikes if they didn’t first understand their own position and power?
This perspective stemmed from Gandhi’s broader philosophy that true freedom required internal transformation as much as external political change. He argued that workers needed education and organization around their immediate concerns before they could effectively engage in strikes for others. The goal wasn’t to delay solidarity, but to ensure it came from a place of strength and understanding rather than manipulation by political leaders.
Self-purification as the true purpose
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Gandhi’s view on sympathetic strikes was his insistence that their true purpose was self-purification. This concept, central to his philosophy of satyagraha or truth-force, transformed the strike from a coercive tactic into a moral act.
Gandhi wrote that sympathetic strikes should be undertaken to enable the wrongdoer to see their folly. Rather than seeking to defeat or destroy the opponent, the strikers aimed to transform the relationship through their own suffering. Gandhi explained that such strikes were about ceasing to participate in wrong and leaving the wrongdoer to their own resources, thereby helping them recognize the injustice of their actions.
The merit of a sympathetic strike, according to Gandhi, lay precisely in the inconvenience and loss voluntarily suffered by the sympathizers. This wasn’t masochism or weakness. It was a demonstration of moral strength. When railway workers struck in support of plantation laborers, they weren’t trying to harm the railway companies or the government. They were saying, through their willingness to sacrifice their own wages and comfort, that they refused to be complicit in a system that brutalized their fellow workers.
Voluntary suffering and patriotic duty
Gandhi insisted that sympathetic strikes must continue despite threats and be driven by genuine patriotism and fellow feeling, not by opportunism or political calculation. The workers had to be willing to bear the consequences of their actions, whether that meant loss of wages, imprisonment, or other hardships.
This requirement separated Gandhi’s vision of sympathetic strikes from what he called goondaism-organized violence or intimidation. He stated clearly that in peaceful strikes there would be no room for rowdyism or looting, and that strikers should take up productive work to sustain themselves rather than relying solely on union funds.
The voluntariness of the suffering was crucial. Gandhi believed that self-purification couldn’t be imposed from outside but had to come from within each individual. Workers participating in a sympathetic strike had to choose to sacrifice, understanding why they were doing so and what they hoped to achieve beyond immediate tactical gains.
The limits of sympathetic action
Gandhi wasn’t absolutist about sympathetic strikes. He recognized situations where they were inappropriate or premature. He cautioned against mixing economic strikes with political ends, warning that such confusion generally brought trouble upon strikers and failed to advance the political cause.
Interestingly, Gandhi also noted that sympathetic strikes could fail even when the cause was just if there were enough workers available to replace the strikers. In such cases, he suggested that resignation might be a more appropriate response than a strike. This practical consideration didn’t diminish the moral value of the action, but it did require workers to think strategically about when and how to express their solidarity.
He was particularly concerned about what he called premature sympathetic strikes-actions taken without sufficient preparation or understanding. Such strikes, Gandhi warned, could result in infinite harm to the cause because they might be motivated more by a desire to embarrass the government than by genuine commitment to self-purification and transformation.
A different kind of power
What makes Gandhi’s approach to sympathetic strikes so distinctive is that he reframed them entirely. Where conventional labor movements saw strikes as expressions of workers’ economic power-their ability to withhold labor and thereby hurt employers-Gandhi saw them as expressions of moral power.
The power came not from the economic damage inflicted but from the willingness to suffer. It came from demonstrating that the strikers cared more about justice than about their own comfort. This aligned with his broader philosophy that real strength lay in soul-force rather than body-force, in the ability to transform relationships rather than simply win battles.
The Assam-Bengal Railway strike of 1921, despite ultimately failing in its immediate objectives, demonstrated this moral power. The strike showed that workers across different sectors could unite around humanitarian concerns rather than narrow self-interest. It attracted national attention to labor issues and helped build the solidarity that would eventually contribute to India’s independence movement.
What do you think? Can sympathetic strikes maintain their moral power in today’s economic environment where workers often face immediate financial pressures? How might Gandhi’s emphasis on self-purification and national consciousness apply to contemporary labor solidarity movements across different countries and industries?
References
- https://indianculture.gov.in/node/2827787
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/satyagraha-philosophy
- https://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap42.php
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha
- https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/uprising1313/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-satyagraha/
- https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/uprising1313/5-13/
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