This chapter examines the intersecting functions of “the unholy trinity” of the capitalists, the colonial state, and the police in suppressing working-class movements in late colonial Calcutta. The study reveals the complex and intertwined interests of the capitalist class and the British imperial state in late colonial India. It emphasises the importance of examining this meticulously orchestrated oppression towards labour radicalisation in relation to these three actors as a coalition, rather than in isolation. The chapter is divided into sub-parts that evaluate the counter-revolutionary stratagems of all three actors while providing a firsthand account of the tribulations faced by the trade union working-class movement under the auspices of this “unholy trinity.” This study looks at the legal measures taken by the British imperial state to closely keep an eye on working-class militarisation, as well as the strategies employed by capitalists to disrupt strikes and deny workers’ claims. By highlighting the repressive measures employed by these three institutions, the chapter describes how these combined forces facilitated the establishment of white or pro-state unions that utilised communalism to disrupt strikes and hinder revolutionary union movements in late colonial Calcutta.

This paper envisages how the concept of ‘Inequality’ has been perceived by the Trade Unionists in late colonial Bengal. Informed by the ideology of Communism, these activists penned down a myriad of insightful analytical tracts, primarily in vernaculars, ranging from propaganda pamphlets to articles in the party organs. Their critique of Imperialism, and how it precipitates economic and socio-political inequalities was grafted in the ethos of class struggle. Through delineating their stark ideological differences with Gandhian mass politics, and by focusing on their intellectual endeavours concerning various structural inequalities of class, religion, caste, and gender it aims at charting out the indigenous response to the global doctrine of Communism. Often overlooked as conventional intellectuals, their literature brings to fore an alternative discourse on anti-colonialism in South Asia, overwhelmed by the theme of Nationalism. This paper is a methodological probe in doing intellectual history from below, adding to the edifice of the existing scholarship on Decolonisation, Communism, and Inequality in the Global South.