RAS question
The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), the first trade union federation in India, had as its first president in 1920:
Correct answer: (B) Lala Lajpat Rai.
Lala Lajpat Rai was the first president of the All India Trade Union Congress when it was founded in Bombay on 31 October 1920.
Explanation
AITUC links the labour movement with the nationalist phase of modern Indian history. The All India Trade Union Congress was founded in Bombay on 31 October 1920 as India's oldest trade union federation. Its founders included Lala Lajpat Rai, who became its first president, along with Joseph Baptista, N.M. Joshi and Diwan Chaman Lall. The first phase of AITUC mattered because it gave Indian workers an all-India platform: AITUC had 64 affiliated unions and 1,40,000 members at the beginning, and became the official representative of Indian workers at the International Labour Organisation from 1921 onwards. Lala Lajpat Rai was therefore the specific founding president, not merely a nationalist associated with labour politics.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) M.N. Roy was associated with communist politics, but he was not among AITUC's founders and was not its first president.
- (C) S.A. Dange was a later communist trade union figure, whereas AITUC's founding leadership included Lala Lajpat Rai as first president.
- (D) B.P. Wadia was an early labour leader, but AITUC's founding context centred on Lala Lajpat Rai, Joseph Baptista, N.M. Joshi and Diwan Chaman Lall, with Rai as first president.
Concept
Organised labour grew within the freedom movement as nationalism expanded beyond constitutional politics into workers' mobilisation. AITUC's 1920 formation is a precise institutional chronology point in modern Indian history.