Representing Labour in Old Mysore-Kolar Gold Fields Strike of 1930

Kolar Gold Fields Strike of 1930 Janaki Nair The historiography of the Indian working class has been exercised by question of indigenous elites 'represen- ting' stibaltern classes in colonial and post-colonial India. The 21-day general strike in princely Mysore's Kolar Gold Fields in 1930 reveals an incomplete hegemony process of outside organisations and ideology and constitutes a historical moment when the forces contesting each other to represent workers achieved a degree of unanimity on the question of who should speak for the working class. This study of the strike seeks to show why the dialectic of leaders and the led' need not be the dialectic that the historian of the working class should accept.