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Anasuya Sarabhai

Anasuya Sarabhai (1885–1972) was an Indian labour activist and a pioneer of the women's labour movement in India. She is best known for her work among textile mill workers in Ahmedabad and for founding one of the country's earliest organised trade unions in the textile industry.

Key facts

Name Anasuya Sarabhai
Born 1885
Died 1972
Nationality Indian
Known for Labour activism; organising textile workers in Ahmedabad
Associated city Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Background

Anasuya Sarabhai belonged to the prominent Sarabhai family of Ahmedabad, a household closely associated with the city's textile industry and later with public life in Gujarat. She pursued studies abroad, an experience that shaped her engagement with social questions and the conditions of working people on her return to India.

Labour activism

On returning to Ahmedabad, Sarabhai turned her attention to the welfare of textile mill workers, a workforce that included a large number of women and that laboured under demanding conditions in the city's mills. She involved herself in efforts to improve their wages, hours of work, and welfare.

Her work brought her into close association with Mahatma Gandhi, whose methods of negotiation and arbitration influenced the resolution of disputes between workers and mill owners in Ahmedabad. Sarabhai is closely identified with the founding and early leadership of the Majoor Mahajan Sangh (the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association), an organisation that became one of the most significant trade unions in the Indian textile sector.

Significance

Anasuya Sarabhai is remembered as one of the earliest women to take a leading role in the Indian trade union movement. Her organising work among mill workers in Ahmedabad helped establish a tradition of negotiated industrial relations rooted in Gandhian principles, and contributed to the broader recognition of labour rights in pre-independence India.

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