Narayan Meghaji Lokhande

Narayan Meghaji Lokhande quit his clerk’s job at a Bombay cotton mill to fight for the men working the looms around him. In 1890, that fight produced India’s first labour association. Historians now call him the father of India’s trade union movement.

Clerk to Labour Leader

ModHist0300

c. 1848

Born, Mali Family

Kanhersar, Pune district

1874

Joins Satyashodhak Samaj

Under Jyotirao Phule

1880

Manages Deenbandhu

Phule and Bhalekar’s paper

24 Apr 1890

Founds Mill Hands Assn.

India’s first labour body

1895

Rao Bahadur Title

For riot-relief work

9 Feb 1897

Dies in Mumbai

Stamp issued in 2005

Two causes, one man: Phule’s social-reform movement and Bombay’s mill-worker movement grew together through Lokhande’s own life.

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A Clerk Who Organised 10,000 Workers Need to Know

• Narayan Meghaji Lokhande (c. 1848–1897) is called the father of the trade union movement in India. He was born into a Mali family from Kanhersar, in Pune district.
• On 24 April 1890, he organised a public meeting of over 10,000 workers at Bombay’s Race Course Ground. There, he founded the Bombay Mill Hands Association, generally considered India’s first labour association.
• Through it, he won major reforms for mill workers. These included a weekly Sunday holiday and a half-hour afternoon recess. Hours ran from 6:30 AM to sunset, with salary paid by the 15th of each month.
• Before his labour work, he was a close associate of Jyotirao Phule, joining Phule’s Satyashodhak Samaj reform movement in 1874, its second year.
• From 1880, he managed the Deenbandhu, a Marathi newspaper Phule had founded in 1877 with fellow reformer Krishnarao Bhalekar, for Bombay’s working people.

A Memorandum That Changed the Law Good to Know

• Lokhande’s early career was outside the mills entirely. He worked first with the railways and the postal department, before joining Mandavi Textile Mills as Store Keeper in 1870.
• He quit his job as a mill clerk to found the Mill Hands Association full-time, choosing organising work over paid employment.
• When the Government of India appointed a Factory (Labour) Commission in 1890, Lokhande presented it with a memorandum signed by roughly 5,300 mill workers. Working with fellow reformer Sorabji Shapurji Bengallee, he helped draft the amendments that became the Factories Act of 1891.
• In 1895, the British Indian government awarded him the title Rao Bahadur. This was specifically for his personal role in easing tensions during riots between Hindus and Muslims. He was also made a Justice of the Peace.
• He died on 9 February 1897 in Mumbai. The Government of India remembered him decades later, issuing a commemorative postage stamp in his honour in 2005.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. Narayan Meghaji Lokhande managed the Marathi newspaper Deenbandhu from 1880. Who had actually founded it in 1877?

Jyotirao Phule alone

Jyotirao Phule, jointly with fellow reformer Krishnarao Bhalekar

Lokhande himself, before he later handed it to Phule

The British colonial government

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Two Reform Currents, One Life Great to Know

• An earlier Factories Act already existed from 1881, but it left major gaps. Lokhande’s petition and organising work are credited with directly shaping the stronger Factories Act of 1891. It added rules on working hours, sanitation, and child labour.
• His path, from mill clerk to reform-movement organiser to labour leader, shows how closely caste-reform and labour-reform networks overlapped in 19th-century Bombay.
• Lokhande’s career links two major 19th-century Maharashtra reform currents: Phule’s Satyashodhak social-reform movement, and Bombay’s early industrial labour movement.