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P M AUDIKESAVALU NAICKER

ONE OF THE LABOUR LEADER AND PIONEERING LEGISLATOR

P M Audikesavalu Naicker’s has played an important and leading role as a labour leader in Madras Presidency.He joined the labour movement in 1916, leading three or four trade unions at the time, and leading strikes in 1917.

Intial years

He joined the labour movement in 1916 and that year became the President of the Madras & South Mahratta Railway Young Men’s Trade Union that he founded. It is also learned from few references that he organised and headed the Massey & Company Employees’ Union and the Madras Kerosene Oil Workers’ Union. It is further stated that in 1917 he led a strike by the North Madras Workers’ Union. This is described as the first strike in Madras. A biographical paper on Naicker states that he played a part in the WIMCO factory workers’, the B & C Mills’ and the Massey & Co strikes.


P M Audikesavalu Naicker was the head of an M & SM Union and of the Massey & Co Employees’ Union in 1916. later, some years after the Madras & South Mahratta Employees’ Union was founded that he became President of it. Similarly, his association with the Massey & Co strike is dated to 1927. From Historical records it is read that Selvapathy Chetty, Ramanujulu Naidu and T V Kalayanasundara Mudaliar, encouraged by Annie Besant and B P Wadia, were the parents of a formal labour movement and that Audiakesavalu Naicker was an active fellow-traveller and a union leader in the 1920s.

Involvement in Labour Union

The Madras Labour Union, which came into existence in March 1918, has always been considered the first trade union in the country. Apart from the MLU, other major trade unions in Madras in the early days were the Madras Tramway’ Men’s Union started in 1919 and the M&S.M. Railway Employees Union also established in 1919. Naicker is stated to have been involved with them as well as with the PWD Employees’ Union (1927) and the Kerosene Oil Workers’ Union (1927).

Freedom Struggle

Not only that P M Audikesavalu Naicker played activist role in the labour movement,but he was equally drawn to Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation movement.

He was Secretary of the Madras District Congress Committee from 1920 to 1925 and did much work in increasing the Congress membership in the Madras and Chingleput Districts. In February 1928, he was in the vanguard of a procession protesting against the Simon Commission and his head bore a bit of the brunt of the lathi charge resorted to by the Police to disperse the procession. He was again victim of Police action after a Salt Satyagraha meeting organised at the Triplicane Beach on April 27, 1930.

SARDAR TITLE

From the M.Phil thesis to Madras Universoty we could understand that , “On account of his extraordinary courage exhibited during this tense situation, he earned the title ‘Sardar’ – a rare honour which was shared only by two persons, namely Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Sardar Vedaratnam Pillai of Vedaranyam.”

Gandhiji is said to have addressed Naicker by this title on later occasions.

During World War

Audikesavalu Naicker was again a victim of Police lathis in China Bazaar on January 26, 1932, when leading a procession demanding the boycott of foreign cloth. This time he also had to serve a year’s RI. He went to jail again in 1940 for leading a procession against India being made to participate in World War II. It was jail again in 1942 for organising Quit India meetings.He was in due course to become the President of the Tamil Nadu Political Sufferers’ Association! Whether that anguishedly named association got him any compensation is a moot point.

Legislator

Not only he played an important role as a labour leader but his role in Policy making is also very much known at that time. Audikesavalu Naicker was as a Municipal Councillor representing Korukkupet from 1936 to 1939 and again from 1940 to 1949. He was Deputy Mayor during 1939-40. He was also an active member of the Madras Legislative Assembly from 1937 to 1939, representing North Madras.

He was an advocate of total Prohibition as well as of relieving farmers of their debts — two subjects still being headlined.

As a rare honour and appreciation Naicker later served on the Drafting Committee of the Constitution and was nominated to Parliament from 1950 to 1952. As early as then he was demanding broad gauge train services for Tamil Nadu.

Unsung Hero

Once very much in the limelight, Audikesavalu Naicker is a forgotten figure today and he breathed his last on 9 sep 1964 obituary references were made on the death of P M Audikesavalu Naicker by the Hon. Speaker of Madras Legislative Assembly on 16 oct 1964.

It’s quite a record, but how is it he is not mentioned in the same breath as G Selvapathy Chettiar, Thiru Vi Kalyanasundaram Mudaliar, M Singaravelu Chettiar and G Chakkarai Chetty?

Keywords: Sardar,Labour leader from Chennai,deputy mayor of Chennai,Audikesavalu Naicker,

Notes and External Links:

  1. http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/society/detailing-two-pathbreakers/article8690919.ece
  2. http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/another-early-labour-leader/article8117437.ece
  3. http://huntnews.in/p/detail/2570595849096997?uc_param_str=dnfrpfbivesscpgimibtbmntnijblauputoggdnw&pos=1465041840000&channel=lifestyle&chncat=category_english
  4. http://www.garvigujarat.co.in/paper/06-06-2016%20ED.pdf
  5. https://www.facebook.com/indianlabournews/posts/464585097082722
  6. http://www.assembly.tn.gov.in/archive/3rd_1962/Review%203_62-67.pdf