In his memoirs, Nadakkal Parameswaran Pillai, Indian Coffee House worker at the Trichur location, writes that the Indian Coffee House found its place in history through its “martyrdom” at the hands of Sanjay Gandhi, son of India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Sanjay Gandhi did not hold a government post yet was actively involved in setting policy and implementing new programs during The Emergency (1975–1977), when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended India’s Constitution and ushered in a period of authoritarian rule.Footnote 1 Pillai writes that the Connaught Place, New Delhi location of Indian Coffee House was the biggest source of the Indian Coffee House workers’ “confidence” in themselves and their abilities having started by selling coffee on the street and still beating local competition, to collectively owning a building in the heart of Delhi that was a central meeting place for ministers, bureaucrats, intellectuals, artists, and political activists.
That the Indian Coffee House became a hotbed of resistance during the Emergency is on the surface a puzzle if one considers its historical origins as a colonial firm. However, its transformation into a workers’ cooperative attracted regular customers who were politically and artistically engaged, thereby paving the way for it to become, by the 1970s, a space of resistance against the Emergency.Footnote 2 That Indian Coffee House workers adopted the cooperative as their legal organizational form was unexpected, more so because the Communist Party of India (CPI)Footnote 3 organized this workers’ movement. In the decades leading up to 1957, the year the Indian Coffee House officially became a workers’ cooperative, there was a consensus among Communist Party leadership on pursuing a strategy of nationalization of industry as the road to national development and Communism in India. There were debates among party leadership on how to achieve nationalization, but not whether nationalized industry was the appropriate strategy. And yet the CPI organized the newly unemployed coffee board workers into a workers’ cooperative, not a state-owned enterprise. This article analyzes why, in the heat of India’s Freedom Movement, the Coffee House workers occupied and appropriated a colonial institution, and then, once occupied, why, after a decade of petitioning to become a state-owned firm, they compromised with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the Coffee Board to become a cooperative. The unexpected trajectory of this firm reveals that, especially in the postcolonial context when the legal status of a firm is blurred, it can lead to creative potentialities for labor. But more profoundly, the conflict around the legal status of the coffee houses shows that the workers’ struggle was not only about providing for their material needs in the wake of major political upheaval but was a conflict with the state over competing visions for postcolonial economic development demonstrating that development is not a neutral policy but a form of class politics.
Coffee house: A colonial firm
The story of Indian Coffee House begins with Ivor Bull, Chairman of Consolidated Coffee Estates, President of the United Planters’ Association of Southern India, founder and Chairman of the Coffee Board of India. Ivor Bull, as an employee of the Edinburgh-based management firm Matheson and Co., was appointed Chairman of Consolidated Coffee Estates in 1936. He was then sent by Matheson from Edinburgh to Coorg to manage Consolidated Coffee Estates’ plantation. Consolidated Coffee was founded in 1922 when M/S Coorg Co. Ltd, London, and M/S Pollibetta Coffee Estates Co. Ltd, London, were purchased by Matheson and then merged into one single plantation; the largest coffee plantation in India, both then and today.Footnote 4 In 1943, after having managed and lived on the Coorg plantation for 7 years, Bull purchased it from Matheson and soon registered as an Indian company based in Pollibetta, Coorg. Bull owned and managed the plantation until it went public in 1966. He then retired to a farm in Suffolk, England, where he died in 1971.
While the coffee business in India thrived, it was not without competition. In the mid-1930s, British East Africa emerged as India’s main intra-empire coffee rival. Kenyan coffee production, furthermore, was similar Indian coffee production in that planters were well organized into regional associations that frequently petitioned the Home Office for Imperial support. In order to stave off the competition, in 1932, Indian growers petitioned the Home Department in London that all coffee consumed in the United Kingdom (UK) originate from India.Footnote 5 At the time, the largest coffee-producing colonies across the empire (in order of largest producer) were Kenya, Tanganyika, and India. Production in the West Indies was relatively negligible, and 90 percent of that was consumed by the United States (US) and Canada, making the British market relatively irrelevant for West Indian growers.Footnote 6 A monopoly in the UK could greatly benefit India or East Africa, as the imperial center was the top export destination for East African and Indian grown coffee. Once the Kenyan Coffee Board learned of Indian growers’ petition to the Home Department for monopoly access, they offered a counter-petition that all coffee consumed within the UK come from the colonies, as throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a little less than 50 percent of coffee consumed in the UK originated from the colonies.Footnote 7 While publicly, Indian officials supported the Kenyan Coffee Board’s petition to share the UK market, behind closed doors, they sent letters to the Home Minister asking that India’s previous petition still be considered and that India be given exclusive monopoly rights to sell coffee in the UK, as India was the crown jewel among the British colonies, and Indian growers were worried about competition from the seemingly more organized (and definitely better advertised) East African coffee growers.
In response to the perceived Kenyan attack on Indian coffee’s consumer market, Sir Muhammed Zafarullah Khan, Indian Department of Commerce, founded the Indian Coffee Cess Act Committee in 1935.Footnote 8 The committee sought to reduce tariffs and create a marketing scheme for Indian coffee across the British Empire and within India.Footnote 9 M. J. Simon Avergal, from Travancore, was appointed Secretary of the Indian Coffee Cess Act Committee’s marketing wing. As part of his approach to domestic marketing, he created a chain of cafés called, “Coffee House” in order to increase domestic consumption, advertise Indian coffee, and engender a taste for coffee among the Indian public.Footnote 10 The first location of Coffee House was opened in Bombay in 1936, quickly followed by locations in Hyderabad and then Lahore, both in 1937.Footnote 11 By 1939, Coffee House had fourteen locationsFootnote 12—Simla, Lahore, New Delhi, Old Delhi, Calicut, Cochin, four locations in Bombay, two locations in Hyderabad, and two locations in Secunderabad—all overseen by the Indian Coffee Cess Act Committee and all entirely staffed by laborers from Simon’s home state of Travancore. Simon made an agreement with Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, the Maharaja of Travancore, that all coffee and coffee husk served at all locations of Coffee House would originate from coffee estates in Travancore.Footnote 13
But the threat to Indian coffee did not solely emanate from intra-empire competition. By 1939, Indian coffee plantation owners grew concerned that World War 2 would jeopardize their export market. These concerns were shared by agricultural producers across the British Empire. An agricultural commodity surplus crisis was imminent, as British and European consumption levels were destabilized during the war. It was in the context of this colonial export-commodities surplus crisis in 1939, that Ivor Bull, then president of the Coffee Section of UPASI, established the Coffee Market Expansion Board to create a monopsony for coffee in India in response to the destabilization of coffee consumer markets in Europe and North America during the Second World War.Footnote 14 The Coffee Market Expansion Board, of which Ivor Bull was soon appointed Chairman, subsumed the Indian Coffee Cess Act Committee of 1935.Footnote 15 Further expansion of Coffee House through the Coffee Market Expansion Board was a local solution implemented by colonial plantation owners to weather the Empire-wide commodity surplus crisis, especially in the absence of help from the colonial center, or from the US, from whom Britain unsuccessfully sought relief. London’s rationale for the lack of intervention was that the unusually well-organized South Indian coffee plantation owners and the institutions they created were better suited than many other colonial agricultural producers to weather the surplus crisis, and, in the end, London proved to be right in their assessment of the Indian coffee sector. These institutions—UPASI, the Coffee Cess Act Committee, and the Coffee Market Expansion Board—ensured that Indian coffee growers would survive the colonial export surplus crisis, even in the absence of support from the imperial center.
By the 1940s, the Coffee Market Expansion Board became the Coffee Board of India. M. J. Simon, Secretary of the Indian Coffee Cess Act Committee’s marketing wing, was appointed Secretary of the Coffee Board and set with the task of further expanding Coffee House across India.Footnote 16 While the Lahore location of Coffee House was a great success from the start, the locations in Bombay and Hyderabad floundered in their infant years. In 1941, new Coffee Houses were opened in Trivandrum, Cochin, and Malabar as those locations were, in Simon’s view, more likely to succeed. In 1942, new Coffee House locations opened in Benares, Lucknow, and Calcutta, and in the Calcutta location “particularly good progress has been recorded.”Footnote 17 In 1943, the Coffee Board reported that “appreciative reports have been received on the Coffee House locations in New Delhi, Lucknow, Benares, Calcutta, Hyderabad, etc.”Footnote 18 By 1944, Coffee House was a success, as “good progress has been made from all centres.”Footnote 19 The coffee sold at Coffee House locations continued to be sourced from Travancore, which was deemed by one board member as a “very good market for Robusta,” despite some complaints lodged by Coffee Board members that there was some illicit coffee trading in Travancore that affected the price and reliability of supply.Footnote 20 Subsidies for Coffee House by the Maharaja of Travancore continued, as the Maharaja saw to it that electricity was supplied to the Alwaye, Kottayam, Alleppey, Quilon, Trivandrum, and Nagercoil locations of Coffee House. These locations were also furnished with electric coffee grinders courtesy of the Maharaja to ensure high quality and freshly ground coffee.Footnote 21
Bulldozing the coffee house
On June 12, 1975, The Allahabad High Court found Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi guilty of corrupt election practices and barred her from holding office for 6 years. Instead of conceding, however, Gandhi declared a state of emergency, thereby installing a dictatorship in India. During the Emergency, political meetings, rallies, and agitations were banned, state agents arrested and detained people without trial, both academic freedom and the free press were eliminated. Students, intellectuals, and journalists were subject to surveillance (and condemned without trial) for dissenting views. Police shot and killed protesters without repercussion. Peasants were rounded up and taken to “family planning camps” where they were forcibly sterilized, while in cities, entire slums were bulldozed, leaving the most vulnerable urbanites without food, sanitation, water, shelter, or access to health care. These measures that disproportionately targeted Muslims and Dalits were carried out under the explicit rubrics of “development” and “progress.” How and why the Emergency happened remains an open question. Some historians contend that the Emergency was as a necessary step to quell the Bihar Movement along with the other political movements that had been gaining ground in the early 1970s.Footnote 22 Others have argued that the Bihar Movement was not a threat to the state, but that Gandhi was a willing authoritarian who refused to step down when found guilty of corruption.Footnote 23 The narrative that the violence of the Bihar Movement and other social movements of the early 1970s necessitated the temporary suspension of the constitution was a narrative Indira Gandhi herself initially proposed, claiming that the violence of the Bihar Movement posed an extreme threat to the state. But Gandhi’s official rationale for imposing Emergency was to better implement her economic development policies. Gandhi argued that the Bihar Movement prevented her from effectively implementing economic development policies and therefore needed to be stopped for the good of India.Footnote 24 In Brewing Resistance (2020), I argue that during Indira Gandhi’s first term, the development policies she implemented (which marked a significant break from her father, Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision) caused a period of rapid inflation which then contributed to causing the social unrest of the early 1970s.Footnote 25 The Bihar Movement, then, I interpret as a reaction against the economic policies of Indira Gandhi. Gandhi was India’s first Prime Minister to make a deal with the World Bank; a 1967 agreement that Gandhi agonized over, and later felt remorse for, as expressed in her private correspondence.Footnote 26 Her policies disproportionately impacted Muslims and Dalits, a concern that her most trusted advisor, PN Haksar, relayed to her in detail,Footnote 27 while Gandhi’s urban development policies led to increased privatization, the removal of working class and poor neighborhoods from the centers of major cities, especially Delhi, and urban land appropriation that led to the personal enrichment of her and her family.Footnote 28
In 1976, exactly 40 years after Coffee House had been founded by the Indian Coffee Cess Act Committee under the British Raj (and partially subsidized by the Maharaja of Travancore), the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), at the behest of Sanjay Gandhi, ordered the Indian Coffee House location in Connaught Place, New Delhi razed to the ground. A year later, in 1977, an inquiry commission was established by the incoming Janata Party government to investigate forced bulldozing, particularly, the Turkman Gate Massacre during the Emergency. Seven pages of the almost 450-page report are devoted to the bulldozing of the Indian Coffee House in Connaught Place. The inquiry commission reported:
Without any prior notice, and contrary to their assurance, the officials of the NDMC along with the demolition squad had come at about 10 a.m. on 15th May, 1976 and asked the workers of the society to vacate the premises forthwith. The building was vacated and by 12 noon it was completely demolished.Footnote 29
When Sanjay Gandhi and the NDMC demolished the Indian Coffee House, I was told by several journalists, it was not covered by the newspapers. The papers that reported this event in Connaught PlaceFootnote 30 simply praised Sanjay Gandhi for his urban development policies, neglecting to mention that Indian Coffee House had been their victim.
For anti-Emergency movement leaders who had been meeting in the Indian Coffee House, using it as a resource for their clandestine movement against the Emergency, this loss was a great tragedy. They told me that the loss of Indian Coffee House “made me feel lonely,” “I felt I lost everything,” “I was unhappy but was scared to do anything,” “I still miss it. All those who were fixtures to this coffee house felt personally offended by this move by the government, they felt they had lost something very personal,” “It was so horrible and we couldn’t oppose,” “I felt empty,” and it was “as if a person had died. It was a very sad affair and we were shocked.”
Friends and comrades who had ignited their friendship at the coffee house, Socialist, Bhagwan Singh, and CPI member, K. P. Singh, told me that they stood together and watched as the coffee house was demolished. Bhagwan Singh told me, “In Palika Bazaar, that’s where the coffee house used to be, we watched it get destroyed. We couldn’t say anything.”
Socialist political prisoner, Rajkumar Jain recounted how he was being transferred from Tihar Jail to the courthouse for trial when he first saw that the Indian Coffee House had been demolished. He told me how he wept in the back of the police jeep upon seeing the rubble. He told me, his voice full of emotion,
Because that was the only centre where we used to like to go, to meet our people. That was such a shocking thing for me! All those who used to go to the coffee house, they found it shocking. The demolition of the coffee house was like the demolition of our own house. It is a very hurting thing for me. Not only for me, for everyone.
All the leftists with whom I spoke, whether CPI, CPI(M), Socialists, or Naxalites, were personally affected by the loss of this space to which they felt so attached.
There is no direct evidence, however, as to why the Indian Coffee House at Connaught Place was demolished. The inquiry commission interviewed the Lt Governor of Delhi, A. N. Jha, who claimed that the NDMC had relayed to him that the building in which the Indian Coffee House was located was dilapidated beyond repair, unfit for habitation, a health and safety risk to occupants and, therefore, needed to be demolished immediately.Footnote 31 But after examining the structure, he decided that there was no major threat and that if the NDMC required renovations, they could give the workers’ cooperative a year to do renovations.Footnote 32 The inquiry commission found that the building was not hazardous or unsafe by NDMC standards, as they were up to date on all inspections of the building and there had never been a previous concern, and that the eviction of the Indian Coffee House workers was illegal as no notice was given before the demolition.Footnote 33 Furthermore, the committee found that the plans to turn the land into an underground market consisting of 310 shops 12 feet below ground level (Palika Bazaar) was something Sanjay Gandhi and the NDMC had been planning for some time, even though this plan was in violation of Master Plan land use.Footnote 34
When I asked why the Indian Coffee House was demolished, Socialists, Communists, and Naxals alike relayed to me that it was common knowledge among the left that Sanjay Gandhi bulldozed the Indian Coffee House because he and his mother were threatened by the resistance therein. For example, D. P. Tripathi told me, “Of course, everybody knows, Sanjay Gandhi got really angry with all these people meeting in the coffee house so he ordered it demolished.” But any primary source that might confirm this supposition is either long destroyed or remains inaccessible to historians. The only secondary sources that mention the bulldozing of the Indian Coffee House simply claim, “conversation was sought to be banished …. For several days after the Coffee House was mowed down one saw the regulars gazing at the rubble. In normal times they would have protested wildly. But during the Emergency all voices of dissent and protest were stilled,”Footnote 35 and, “Not surprisingly, the coffee house would soon be demolished on the orders of Sanjay Gandhi. He felt this den of inequity was the centre of anti-Emergency propaganda/gossip and must be pulled down.”Footnote 36 While the story I was told through the oral histories I conducted, that Indira Gandhi’s administration was threatened by the political deliberation in the Indian Coffee House, may well be the “true” reason behind the demolition of the Indian Coffee House, equally plausible is the explanation given by the censored newspapers: that Sanjay Gandhi wanted to repurpose the land on which the Indian Coffee House was constructed for urban development projects.
The two accounts are not mutually exclusive. During the Emergency, there was no procedure in place for determining what structures to demolish, and many top officials of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD)—B. R. Tanta, Commissioner, Navin Chawla, Secretary, Krishan Chand, Lt Governor—stated that the MCD was ordered “to function under the supervision and control of Sanjay Gandhi.”Footnote 37 The Report of the Fact Finding Committee on Slum Clearances, Demolitions, Etc., and Firing in Turkman Gate during the Emergency concluded that Sanjay Gandhi targeted certain neighborhoods where clearing out poor and working class residents could personally enrich him.Footnote 38 In the oral histories I conducted, several narrators told me that they too had heard rumors that the Gandhi family profited from these demolitions, appropriating some of the more valuable land and developing it into luxury apartments, office buildings, and upscale shopping malls. If both accounts are credible, ultimately, the Gandhis were able to both silence oppositional voices while also profiting from land appropriation and redevelopment.
Coffee house workers’ anti-colonial labor movement
Why was this British Raj era chain of cafés, established by colonial plantation owners to weather intra-empire competition and the export-commodities surplus crisis of the 1930s, seen as such a threat to the state in 1976 that Sanjay Gandhi had it bulldozed in the heat of the Emergency? The answer can be found in how this chain of cafés was transformed by its CPI affiliated workers and transformed from a colonial firm to a workers’ cooperative.
The workers who played a crucial role in India’s Freedom Movement, striking, demonstrating, occupying colonial institutions, and transforming them from within, then faced a tenuous situation after independence with pressure to decrease labor standards. Many urban workers gravitated toward the cooperative movement as a solution to the decline in labor conditions. For example, grain workers in Bombay formed buyers’ cooperatives rather than face unemployment, but in the Punjab, where the labor movement before independence was arguably strongest, the labor movement, along with the radical left, was decimated. Istiaq Ahmed contends that the demobilization of soldiers contributed to creating a more violent partition in Punjab, as unemployed soldiers stoked by communal tension (and many suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from their participation in both World Wars) took it upon themselves to rid their towns and villages of religious minorities.Footnote 39 The violence was not only communal in nature but also inflicted against the left. The genocide that took place in Punjab debilitated Punjab’s labor movement, trade union movement, and the Communist Party. Because Hindu and Sikh Punjabis who survived partition fled to refugee camps in New Delhi and then eventually settled there, it makes it all the more surprising given the trauma of partition and the violence inflicted upon the left. Before independence, Lahore was the most vibrant political and intellectual space among all Coffee House locations,Footnote 40 but given the destruction of Partition in Punjab it’s surprising that the New Delhi location of Coffee House would eventually become one of, if not the, vanguard location of Indian Coffee House.
Coffee House workers’ labor unrest started in 1946 with the publication of the pamphlet “Coffee House Labourers Are Also Human Beings” written in Malayalam by three Coffee House workers and Communist Party members—M. Chathukutty, K. N. Narayanan, and T. P. Raghavan—at the Coffee House location in Calicut.Footnote 41 This pamphlet was circulated to Coffee House employees across British India, and it was accessible to all, since at all locations, Malayalam was the mother tongue of Coffee House workers as a result of M. J. Simon’s staffing policies, and education through grade 4 was required. Soon after the circulation of this pamphlet, locations of Coffee House were occupied and renamed Indian Coffee House. This renaming of the firm by its workers was a symbolic assertion that they were appropriating a British colonial firm and its assets, thereby reclaiming it for Indian workers.
On November 9, 1947, Indian Coffee House workers formed a union and held their first annual meeting in Bangalore.Footnote 42 After India’s independence, the Indian Coffee House workers’ labor union became a legally recognized trade union affiliated with the CPI (undivided). The union’s first order of business was to resist the termination of Indian Coffee House workers, which was threatened after independence, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the Coffee Board of India sought to close the coffee houses that workers had occupied in the heat of India’s Freedom Struggle. In Calcutta, Indian Coffee House workers went on strike in 1948 in response to these forced closures.Footnote 43 In 1952, the Indian Coffee House workers formally affiliated with the AITUC and changed their union headquarters from Bangalore to Delhi.Footnote 44 They also, at this time, allowed coffee plantation workers and the Coffee Board of India marketing section employees to join the union. By 1955, the Indian Coffee House workers’ union had 1200 members. In 1957, the Coffee Board of India officially recognized the Indian Coffee House workers’ union and provided workers with medical care on par with civil service employees.Footnote 45 Additionally, a minimum salary for Coffee House workers was instated at 300 rupees. Before that, between 1947 and 1957, Coffee House workers were living on the leftover food that was not sold at the end of the day.Footnote 46 But still, the Coffee Board told the workers that the coffee houses would soon be closed, and they would be left unemployed.
A. K. Gopalan, Coffee House Workers Union vice-president and Lok Sabha MP affiliated with the CPI, and then later the CPI(M), created a group on May 25, 1957 to stop the closure of all Indian Coffee House locations and to reinstate them as an official state-owned firm as they were under the British Raj. The Coffee Board countered with a formalized scheme to sell off the coffee houses to private owners on June 18, 1957.Footnote 47 On June 27, Indian Coffee House workers started a hunger strike,Footnote 48 because in the words of one worker, “All the freedom the union achieved in 12 years was ending. We were at a stage worse than the old stage of being the slaves of the [British Coffee] Board [of India]. We were going to become coolie slaves of some hotel capitalists.”Footnote 49 They wore black badges and held public demonstrations in every city in which there was an Indian Coffee House. The Coffee Board proceeded with continued dismissals of the workers and closing of Indian Coffee House locations. At that point, with the workers’ morale low and sinking, A. K. Gopalan intervened and told the workers in a rallying public speech, “You are the workers. Those who have to rule the world. This is very simple for you. Dear comrades, you can take hold of the Coffee House, rule it, and run it without the capitalists.”Footnote 50 The union took a vote and decided that on the 10-year anniversary of Indian independence, August 15, 1957, Indian Coffee House workers would appropriate the coffee houses and run them as a cooperative under the slogan “The Coffee Houses we work in belong to us!.”Footnote 51
In word, Jawaharlal Nehru supported the Indian Coffee House workers’ action, but indeed, he created obstacles to official ownership of the coffee houses by the workers. As one worker described, Nehru in effect told the coffee house workers, “we will not run Coffee House and we will not let you run it.”Footnote 52 Nehru stipulated that if they wanted to become an official workers’ cooperative, Indian Coffee House workers had to pay one half of the cost of the firm upfront, and then the worker-owned coffee houses would only have legal rights for 1 year, after which the Indian Coffee Board could decide whether to close the firm or sell it off to private ownership.Footnote 53 Additionally, the Coffee Board of India would be given rights to inspect every location and close those that were not up to code.Footnote 54 The Indian Coffee House workers and their union did not believe that Nehru and the Coffee Board would act in good faith in their assessments of the Coffee House and would use these preconditions as a pretense to close or sell the firm. To oppose Nehru’s unsuitable proposal, in Indian Coffee Houses across the country, workers staged a sit-in strike on August 15, 1957,Footnote 55 and by August 30, just as the workers were preparing to begin a hunger strike, the union and the Coffee Board agreed that the coffee houses would become official cooperatives registered under the Indian Cooperative Societies Act.Footnote 56
Why did Indian Coffee House become a workers’ cooperative when the Indian Coffee House Workers Union wanted the firm to be state-owned in line with their Communist praxis? The history of conflict and collaboration between the Congress Party and Congress Socialists that resulted from the historical trajectory of the anti-colonial labor movement is essential for making sense of how Indian Coffee House workers compromised with Nehru on transforming this firm into a worker-owned cooperative. But to understand how Socialist ideas influenced the policies of the Congress Party in the immediate period after independence, it is crucial to first understand Jawaharlal Nehru’s perspective on economic development policy in newly independent India. Nehru believed that to “progress” India’s economy and society, industrial production was paramount. To do so, Nehru contended, India needed a more amicable relationship between labor and capital, and to that end, strikes should be eradicated. But to support an urban class of workers and managers, agricultural production had to increase as well. For agricultural growth, Nehru believed that cooperatives were best and wanted to improve upon the agricultural cooperative societies left by the British. Nehru’s oft misunderstood development strategy reveals not only why he was initially opposed to allowing Indian Coffee House workers to form a cooperative but also why he eventually capitulated.
Unlikely developmentalist affinities: Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarvodaya economics and the CPI
In Nehru’s view, agricultural cooperatives were the most effective path to rural development in independent India. In a 1956 speech inaugurating the National Cooperative Development and Warehousing Board, he acknowledged that the British had introduced cooperative methods but criticized their bureaucracy as inefficient, “though the methods we have learnt from the British have their good points, they are too time consuming …. It is very frustrating to work at a slow pace.”Footnote 57 Excessive bureaucracy, he claimed, stifled the movement. Despite these flaws, Nehru saw cooperatives as essential, “agrarian cooperatives are absolutely urgent and imperative … the entire structure of government and society stands to benefit by the system of cooperation …. The only alternative is collectives which are even more drastic.”Footnote 58 In a 1957 Lok Sabha statement, he emphasized that progress on food security hinged on local efforts: “The future progress of India on the food front depends … on the development of cooperatives.”Footnote 59 Nehru argued that India’s small landholdings and limited technology made cooperatives necessary,
We have come to the conclusion that it is not possible to separate the two issues—ceiling and cooperatives … it cannot be done by an individual with a land holding of one or two or three acres … small farms compromise more than ninety-five per cent of the cultivable land. So, the only solution is to have cooperatives.Footnote 60
Nehru wanted cooperatives to be village-run with minimal state interference, “there should be a cooperative in each village, and it should be run by the village itself.”Footnote 61 Writing to Bram Perkash, he added, “I do not particularly fancy large-scale cooperatives … I believe in village cooperatives … being non-official so that a spirit of initiative and self-reliance may grow.”Footnote 62 For Nehru, cooperatives were not just economic instruments but a means to foster rural self-sufficiency. In a 1959 speech in Maduri, he said, “the cooperative will represent the economic side of village life …. By forming cooperatives the peasants can pool their resources …. The cooperative removes the money-lender and the middle man.”Footnote 63 In Parliament in 1958, he warned that official control undermined the spirit of self-reliance. Supporting efforts like the Gramdan Movement, Nehru said in 1957, “I do fundamentally and absolutely approve of it … because principally it relies on self-help and cooperation between the villagers.”Footnote 64
Given Nehru’s general support for the cooperative movement, it is not surprising that a Congress-controlled state would back the collectivization of the Indian Coffee House. While Nehru’s vision of cooperatives was largely rural and developmentalist, many Congress Socialists Nehru appointed to key planning and labor roles advocated a broader cooperative agenda rooted in Sarvodaya economics. Sarvodaya, derived from the Sanskrit, sarva (all) and udaya (uplift), emphasized universal moral and spiritual development alongside economic equity.Footnote 65 Its adherents, drawing on Gandhian thought, believed that excessive material wants corrupted society, and that true development required self-restraint, economic simplicity, and non-violent class reconciliation through cooperative ownership.
This moral economy, however, was not without internal contradictions and external critique. In 1961, P. D. Patwari outlined several major criticisms of Sarvodaya in a memorandum sent to Jayaprakash Narayan.Footnote 66 Among them were Sarvodaya’s casteism and implicit Hindu majoritarianism, its impractical opposition to industrialization and science, its alienation of linguistic and regional minorities, and its puritanical social codes—particularly those that oppressed women under the guise of moral reform. Patwari highlighted abuses such as forced abortions, the murder or desertion of infants, and the disfigurement of women accused of moral transgressions, all justified in the name of Sarvodaya purity. Despite its limitations, Sarvodaya economics aligned with the legacy of cooperative societies inherited from British colonial rule, notably the Cooperative Credit Societies Act of 1904. Proponents of Sarvodaya in the Nehru Administration emphasized this continuity,Footnote 67 and the Second Five Year Plan (1956–1961) placed cooperatives at the center of India’s developmental strategy, particularly in small-scale and cottage industries.Footnote 68 Though Jayaprakash Narayan lamented Nehru’s limited commitment to Sarvodaya ideals,Footnote 69 Nehru was later celebrated as a champion of cooperatives by the National Cooperative Union of India.Footnote 70
Nevertheless, the cooperative initiative pursued by Indian Coffee House workers in 1957 reflected a different ideological orientation. Rooted in trade unionism and Communist Party politics, Indian Coffee House workers sought material security, collective ownership, and class empowerment. Their assertion that “the coffee houses we work in belong to us” stood in stark contrast to the Sarvodaya ideal of trusteeship, which rejected ownership altogether. The convergence of Nehruvian planning, Congress Socialist ideals, Gandhian economics, and Communist trade unionism in the making of Indian Coffee House illustrates how cooperativism became a pragmatic site of overlap, an outcome of political expedience rather than ideological harmony.
While it is not surprising that Nehru and the Coffee Board agreed to forming cooperatives given their affinity for Sarvodaya economics, it is more surprising that A. K. Gopalan of the CPI proposed this compromise. From its founding in 1920 through 1957, the CPI promoted Soviet-style Communism with a focus on state-owned heavy industry, nationalization, and labor protections. They believed nationalization would provide workers with living wages and prevent capital flight, which they saw as a primary barrier to India’s development after independence.
Though skeptical of the cooperative model, the CPI had studied cooperative movements in Eastern Europe and accepted them as a secondary option.
At its first conference in 1925, the CPI set goals for empowering workers and peasants by eliminating exploitative landlords and promoting worker-led unions.Footnote 71 They aimed to establish minimum wages, limit working hours, and spread Marxist ideas through vernacular media.Footnote 72 By the 1930s and 1940s, CPI literature increasingly differentiated their vision of freedom from Gandhian swaraj, claiming that bourgeois-led nationalism would leave economic power in the hands of Indian elites.Footnote 73 During and after WWII, the CPI argued that imperialist capitalism intensified worker exploitation, and they called for international solidarity among colonial labor movements.Footnote 74 By 1948, the CPI asserted that India’s political independence was compromised by collaboration between the national bourgeoisie and Anglo-American capital.Footnote 75 CPI leaders like P. C. Joshi and S. A. Dange stressed nationalization and industrial self-reliance to build an economy for domestic consumption.Footnote 76 Dange’s 1957 pamphlet outlined how postcolonial economic development required breaking free from foreign capital and pushing for nationalized industries.Footnote 77 However, postcolonial regimes often used nationalism to demand sacrifices from labor, undermining unions. Dange urged trade unions to resist and offer an alternative development model rooted in labor rights and international solidarity.
While Gopalan’s support for a cooperative Indian Coffee House diverged from CPI orthodoxy, it reflected his pragmatic politics in Kerala. He prioritized democratic participation and grassroots mobilization, seeing these as crucial for reeducating postcolonial officials.Footnote 78 His early involvement in the Congress Socialist Party and khadi movement shaped his openness to the cooperative model,Footnote 79 even after joining the CPI. For Gopalan, the struggle for justice transcended party lines, and he saw continuity in his lifelong commitment to the working classes.Footnote 80
The Indian Coffee House workers union after 1957
After the compromise with the Coffee Board in 1957, A. K. Gopalan and union leadership were content with the newly collectivized Indian Coffee House, but the rank and file saw this compromise as a defeat for the workers.Footnote 81 The New Delhi branch of Indian Coffee House was the only location to formally form a cooperative after the agreement between A. K. Gopalan and the Coffee Board of India.Footnote 82 Most other locations’ workers were disheartened by the decision to collectivize rather than be nationalized, especially those workers who were true believers in the development strategy of the CPI.Footnote 83 They felt as though their beloved union leader, A. K. Gopalan, had betrayed them.
After a decision was reached between the Coffee Board and the Indian Coffee House Workers Union, A. K. Gopalan resigned from his post as Union Vice-President much to the chagrin of the rank and file. Though workers felt betrayed by his compromise with Nehru and the Coffee Board, he remained a beloved leader and workers hoped he would continue to lead the fight to become a state-owned firm. To many, Gopalan’s resignation felt as though he had given up on this decades-long struggle with the postcolonial state and they wanted Gopalan to see things through to an eventual victory. Workers considered organizing a strike against the decision to collectivize and against A. K. Gopalan’s resignation, but instead, called for a meeting of rank and file union members in Bangalore on December 9–12, 1957.Footnote 84 Before the meeting, only the Pondicherry and Thrissur locations had joined New Delhi in becoming cooperatives. At the conference, a vote was taken, and the workers voted both in favor of becoming cooperatives but also voted to see this as a temporary fix and continue the movement to eventually become a state-owned firm.
Workers decided that cooperatives were an inevitable temporary compromise, but in the long-run, Indian Coffee Houses should eventually be state-owned and managed by the Coffee Board of India.Footnote 85 They also formed three committees manned by rank and file union members—one committee to continue petitioning the Coffee Board, a second to organize the transition to cooperative societies, and a third to organize protest actions, including a possible hunger strike until death.
After the Bangalore meeting, the Indian Coffee House Workers Cooperative Society took over all locations of Indian Coffee House and offered formal employment to all those who were dismissed at the start of the workers’ movement in 1946. Ten locations—Delhi, Lucknow, Calcutta, Jabalpur, Nagpur, Bombay, Pune, Bangalore, Pondicherry, and Thrissur—were the first to form cooperatives led by a committee of rank-and-file workers who, at the Bangalore conference, had ascended to new leadership positions within their location of the firm and within the newly restructured union. All the cities that had the first cooperative Indian Coffee Houses were important colonial towns for the British, French, Dutch, or Portuguese—none of these cities were part of princely states. The workers who assumed leadership positions within these branch-specific leadership committees were comprised of mostly high-caste Hindus, along with a few Syrian Christians, and Muslims.Footnote 86 Women were barred from joining the cooperative until 2019, though Nadakkal Parameswaran Pillai’s wife, Lalithamma served as a board member before women were permitted to join the cooperative. In 2019 when Indian Coffee House ended its policies discriminating against women, the board expressed plans to open new all-women locations, but this has yet to materialize.
These locations were the vanguard of the Indian Coffee House workers movement, and they led Indian Coffee House workers’ drive to collectivize after A. K. Gopalan resigned. Indian Coffee House workers made many sacrifices to make the cooperative societies a success in the wake of Gopalan’s resignation. By one worker’s account, Indian Coffee House workers in Kerala worked from early morning until midnight without taking breaks and wouldn’t even help themselves to a cup of coffee without paying.Footnote 87 Nadakkal Parameswaran Pillai, who was one of the workers in the Trichur location of Indian Coffee House, recalls that when the Indian Coffee House became a cooperative, the Trichur location managed to assemble only 2100 Rs. as startup capital. 100 Rs. were borrowed from the Kottayam location, 500 Rs. were raised by workers’ wives selling their wedding jewelry, and 1500 Rs. were levied from donations from the workers themselves.Footnote 88 Funds from the central organizing committee of Indian Coffee House didn’t make it to the Trichur location until June 1958.
The Central Organising Committee of the Indian Coffee House had set workers’ salary at 70 Rs. in 1957.Footnote 89 Workers soon agreed upon a system of paying 11 months’ salary to each worker-owner and requiring 1 month unpaid leave each year. Some workers, for the welfare of the firm, decided to work during their unpaid leave.Footnote 90 The Central Organising Committee of the Indian Coffee House suggested that the Secretary, General Manager, and Chief Accountant of each location should be given an additional 15 Rs., while Managers receive an additional 10 Rs., and the counter clerk and clerk an additional 5 Rs.Footnote 91 Pillai recounts that the workers’ decision to give different wages for different tasks was meant to remunerate workers for taking on additional responsibilities, but that the Indian Coffee House workers generally reject what they called, “wage culture”—that a firm give higher salaries to managers at the expense of the laborers.Footnote 92 Generally Indian Coffee House locations also give wage increases to those who take on more risk on the job. Workers in the pantry and coffee making section were, in 1957, given an additional 5 Rs. because the open wood-burning fires in the kitchen used to cook the food and boil water for the coffee often result in burns and other safety hazards. Because of the relative safety risks associated with working with fire, the workers unanimously decided that the working conditions associated with open wood-burning fires warranted higher wages.Footnote 93
Over time, additional benefits were agreed upon. In 1965, workers in Kerala instituted a 20 Rs. medical allowance and a provident fund along with paid overtime, 36 days vacation each year, 60 days of medical leave, and an educational allowance.Footnote 94 Furthermore, any tips given by customers are, to this day, donated to the Indian Coffee House Workers’ Old Age Pension Scheme.Footnote 95 And any earnings beyond the operating expenses of each location are distributed among a location’s workers as a bonus. Later, some locations implemented policies that children and other dependents of Indian Coffee House worker-owners would receive preference when the firm is appointing new worker-owners.Footnote 96
In his memoirs, Pillai defends the many benefits given to Indian Coffee House workers through the cooperative. Pillai expresses concern that some members of the public might criticize the workers for taking too much for themselves in terms of wages and benefits, but because they were able to run the coffee houses profitably and still give better wages and benefits compared to comparable firms, it proves that business can still be profitable while giving workers living wages, benefits, and other incentives.Footnote 97 He also celebrates the fact that workers who begin as a coffee maker, waiter, or cleaner can eventually become secretary of that location even become part of the committees who administer the nationwide network of coffee houses.Footnote 98
Pillai claims that, in retrospect, until A. K. Gopalan and Nehru compromised on a cooperative form for Indian Coffee House, he and his fellow worker-owners had never felt like true owners of the coffee houses that they worked in, contrary to the popular slogan they used when they had occupied the firm; “The coffee houses we work in belong to us!.” But the struggles worker-owners faced as a collective in reviving the profitability of the firm through democratic decision-making generated feelings of true ownership of the firm for all involved.Footnote 99 Pillai added that this democratic spirit compelled workers at his location to bring in more worker-owners the more successful the café became rather than divide an increasingly greater surplus among a few workers. Their goal, claims Pillai, was not to make “laborers into landlords” but instead to provide more employment opportunities in independent India.Footnote 100
The coffee houses that the workers’ movement has created had an exciting atmosphere in the 1960s and 1970s. The Connaught Place location in Delhi, eventually bulldozed by Sanjay Gandhi, was described to me as “Democracy in action,” that the place itself had “positive vibrations,” it was “glamorous” and filled with the sounds of loud, heated, passionate, discussions; it was an intellectual hub—and not simply for the Left. The Indian Coffee House at Connaught Place, I was told, was a regular hangout for poets, filmmakers, music composers, and creative people of all types. Each political group had their regular table—the Communists, the Socialists, Naxalites, Congress, and the right-wing Hindu nationalist party, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). There would also be a table for poets, writers, filmmakers, and musicians who did not necessarily identify as right or left. In the 1980s, when identity politics became increasingly influential, I was told that there was a regular table at the rebuilt Indian Coffee House for LGBTQIA+ activists, where people of all sexual orientations discussed sexuality and politics. If there was a protest in Delhi, many of the narrators I conducted oral histories with told me that the protesters would end up at the Indian Coffee House afterward.
Oral history narrators had many reasons for gathering at the Indian Coffee House: for political meetings, to hear the latest news, to see friends, to discuss politics, to talk about art, and to interact with foreigners. When newspapers began to be censored during the Emergency, several narrators said, journalists and activists would spread the latest news in the coffee house, which had long been a regular hangout for journalists as most major newspaper offices were located nearby. Pamphlets and poems against the Emergency were penned in the coffee house and circulated among the regulars.Footnote 101 The Indian Coffee House was a cool place to be, many of the narrators I spoke to described it as the most interesting and most “happening” place in Delhi. They told me that many people used the coffee house as their address since they were there all day and every day, and that hippies and leftists from Europe would go there when they were travelling through India. It was cheap, it was centrally located, and it had some of the most “unconventional crowds” of any place in the world. Because it was a cooperative, nobody was told to get up and leave after finishing a cup of coffee. Some people would arrive at 9 am and leave at 9 pm or later. The workers knew most of the regulars and would serve you even if you did not have enough money pay your check that day.
Indian Coffee House today
While the Indian Coffee House as a firm continues, in his memoirs Pillai laments that the new generation of workers (along with the general public) have forgotten the history, tradition, and original mission of the Indian Coffee House.Footnote 102 The history and legacy of the firm, according to Pillai, is that it gives a voice to the poor and working class.Footnote 103 Indian Coffee House workers were criticized, writes Pillai, for proclaiming “we too want to live” when they protested, first, the closing of the Coffee Houses, then, their eviction, and finally, when they organized to start a workers cooperative. But Pillai contends that no one else was going to fight for the right of coffee house workers to earn their livelihood, so they had to fight for it themselves.Footnote 104 Pillai concludes that as long as there are trade unions led by Communist principles, the poor will manage to find a way to survive despite the inherent exploitation embodied in the capitalist labor relation.Footnote 105
Since the 1990s, privatization has been an increasingly important concern for left and workers’ movements, but privatization, claims Pillai, is not a new phenomenon. Indian Coffee House workers in 1947 were victims themselves of privatization.Footnote 106 The story of Indian Coffee House workers, Pillai contends, shows that “Exploitation and oppression are not needed for the successful running of a business. … We don’t need owners or landlords, we only need labourers.”Footnote 107 The Indian Coffee House, Pillai argues, is a living testament to these principles. “They are not mere hotels,” he claims, “they are war memorials which are filled with memories. It is the remnant of a legend created by the labourers’ movement. It is the memorial of thousands of labourers who worked there. It is the realisation of a big dream of AKG, another legend and mentor of the poor working class.”Footnote 108
Conclusions
With the weakening of the left in the immediate aftermath of the Emergency, the Indian Coffee House as an institution also grew weaker. As CPI member and journalist, K. P. Singh, said to me in 2014:
The Indian Coffee House was very important during the Emergency. People were working for the masses; it was very important. After the Emergency, the coffee house is still there, as are the workers. There’s more contract labor today, but it’s still a cooperative. The union is still there but weakened. The Indian Coffee House workers helped in all aspects. Now, the Party doesn’t care so much. The Communist Party at one point, thought to close the coffee house, but the workers resisted their union and kept it alive. The workers have always been the champion of the coffee house. A.K. Gopalan helped, but when he died [in 1977] the Party MPs weakened it. The coffee houses should be run by the workers, not the co-operative societies. The cooperative movement is bad for the coffee house.
This view shows how the few Communists who remember how the Indian Coffee House became a legal firm continue to see its cooperative form as a historic loss taken by the Communist trade union movement. Singh furthermore decries the Communist parties’ lack of continued support for the Indian Coffee House workers as historical memory of their role in India’s Communist history wanes. For K. P. Singh, personally, the importance of the Indian Coffee House was its role during the Emergency in fostering resistance against the state, something that would have been impossible without the struggle of the Indian Coffee House workers in 1946–1957 along with A. K. Gopalan’s efforts to forge a creative solution to conflict over the organizational form of the firm. As K. P. Singh put it, “We [anti-Emergency Communists] said we would bring revolution from the coffee house. We tried. But our politics began from the coffee house.” Not only was the Indian Coffee House an important intervention against capitalism and colonialism in 1946, but during the Emergency, the Indian Coffee House became important in the struggle against post-colonial dictatorship under Indira Gandhi.
Despite the feelings of defeat that the Indian Coffee House workers’ union and its allies continue to feel regarding A. K. Gopalan’s compromise to form a cooperative instead of obtaining legal status as a state-owned firm, the Indian Coffee House nonetheless is a living testament to the anti-colonial and anti-capitalist Communist workers’ movement. As such, it is a symbol for the enduring hope that one day Communism will win (whatever that means in the current context). This enduring hope is reflected in Nadakkal Parameswaran Pillai’s plea to the public to think of the Indian Coffee House primarily as a site of Communist workers’ struggle. He closes his memoir by writing:
When you see Indian Coffee House do remember this story. Remember the thousands of labourers characterised in it. Remember the hardships they experienced. Remember the toils and sacrifices of their families. Remember those who supported the labourers and do not forget those who exploited them …. Dear new generation employees in coffee houses, this history is meant for you. This will guide you. Dear young Communists in Kerala, this history is for you. This will make you stronger. Dear labourers, this is for you. This will remind you that history never ends, and poor labourers cannot be easily defeated. Lal Salaam Footnote 109
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Vijay Prashad, Subin Dennis, Jayaseelan Raj, Priyansh, for helpful conversations at various stages of the research and writing process.
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