Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

118 I Ramnath
The next leg ofMukerji's political-intellectual journey
intersected with the world ofGhadar through contact
with Indian fieldworkers, both Sikh and Muslim, and with
Hindu nationalist students.
Wo rking in the fields during his Berkeley summer vacation,
Mukerji's first impression of these Indians of such a
different class and regional background from his own was
that they labored so hard fo r incomparably long hours, yet
lived on so little that native-born white workers were "agitating
against Hindu immigration on the ground that my
countrymen were pulling down the wages and getting all
the jobs."
He described the physical ordeal of picking asparagus
and celery from predawn to dusk, at ten cents a full box.
He also noted the rampant alcoholism and occasionally
homicidal jealousy over women induced, he believed, by
the harshness of the working and living conditions (rather
than by moral contamination of Western decadence, as
the religious bodies claimed). Gradually Mukerji learned
the tricks of the trade, picking apples and hops: how to
pace oneself, slowing down whenever the fo reman wasn't
nearby, and posting a lookout in the apple trees; how to use
"misunderstandings" through details deliberately lost in
translation; and how to fudge the number of workers in the
record book to more than were actually present on the crew
in order to inflate the wage.
He also put his English-language education to use as
interpreter fo r groups of his fellow workers. One humorous
scene describes his wry rendition of a Salvation Army delegation's
attempts to reach the heathen farm laborers, who