“Your Highness! Some so-called leaders employed in my various factories have led the workers. They are now staying in the quarters within the mills’ compounds. They have organised large worker processions and invited leaders and agitators from socialist unions in British India.”
March 10, 1947. The sixth day of Nepal’s first organised labour movement. A desperate letter from General Manager R. K. Sihaniya of the Biratnagar Jute Mills made its way through the corridors of Rana power. Among the five agitators accused of disturbing the ‘peace’, two names would later shape the country’s political future: Man Mohan Adhikari and Girija Prasad Koirala.
The Jute Mill strike of that year wasn’t just a demand for better wages. It was a spark that would eventually challenge a century-old autocracy. Yet, for all the ways we celebrate our milestones—through rallies, public holidays, or commemorative statues—we often forget that the path to workers’ rights in Nepal was not granted; it was seized.
A strike that stirred a nation
The strike started when around 700 workers at the Biratnagar Jute Mill walked off, demanding fair pay, an eight-hour workday, and the right to unionise. At the time, there were no trade unions, legal protections, or a constitution that recognised labourers as citizens.
In addition to the factory management, they were, knowingly or unknowingly, rebelling against the entire Rana regime. The Rana oligarchy thrived on the silence of the subjects trained not to question or demand. The strike shattered that illusion and disrupted the foundations of political power in Nepal. Although the regime responded with force by arresting leaders and deploying troops to crush the movement, it had already sparked a fire that would burn far beyond the industrial compounds of Biratnagar.
This single act of defiance marked Nepal’s first major political movement led by workers, an unprecedented link between economic struggle and political transformation. Within weeks, the movement merged with the rising wave of anti-Rana resistance and laid the ideological foundation for the country’s democratic awakening.
Labour-fuelled democracy
The overthrow of the Rana regime in 1951 cleared a path for the political parties to gain momentum. The state also formally recognised labour unions. The Factories and Factory Workers Act of 1959 was hailed as a landmark since it was the first real attempt to regulate wages, working hours, and safety.
But that sense of progress was short-lived. In December 1960, King Mahendra staged a royal coup, dissolved Nepal’s nascent democratic government, and installed the Panchayat system.
With it came a fresh wave of repression. The government banned political parties and revoked the hard-won right to unionise. Workers had no choice but to adhere to silence. The government-controlled “class organisations” were there to ensure further control rather than representation. And yet, even in this darkness, workers continued to resist.
Underground unions and uprisings
If the 1947 strike was the beginning of the labour movement, then the strikes of the 1970s were its second awakening. In 1975, jute workers in Biratnagar once again took the lead, launching a 37-day go-slow protest. Police fired on the protestors, killing union leader Khagendra Rai and dismissing over 50 workers.
Rai became a martyr for the labour movement, and his memory reignited resistance in 1980. In that year, a national strike swept across industrial areas, Biratnagar, Hetauda, and Janakpur, paralysing traffic along the East-West Highway. Workers demanded wages, dignity, and representation. What emerged out of this chaos was the Nepal Independent Workers’ Union (NIWU), one of the earliest signs that union organising could endure, even under state suppression.
The courage of these workers wasn’t just about workplace conditions, but to claim space in the national imagination. They proved that the “common man” would no longer remain a silent cog in a feudal machine.
Democracy, finally, and its disappointments
Then came 1990. The People’s Movement of that year toppled the Panchayat system and restored multiparty democracy. For the first time, workers and unionists saw their demands enshrined in law.
The new constitution guaranteed workers the right to unionise, speak, and strike. Trade unions—such as the General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GEFONT) and the Nepal Trade Union Congress (NTUC)—proliferated. GEFONT’s founders, many of whom were communists, even found their way into Parliament.
A new Labour Act in 1992 consolidated rights into a single legal framework covering everything from minimum wages and working hours to collective bargaining. It was imperfect, but for many, it felt like a turning point.
Still, democracy didn’t guarantee justice. Strikes continued. Workers remained underpaid, overworked, and underrepresented. The very system they had fought for often left them behind.
The modern face of labour
In the present, the nation’s labour movement looks different, but the core issues remain hauntingly familiar. The 2006 People’s Movement, which ended the monarchy, had labour unions at its backbone. Thousands of union-affiliated workers had flooded the streets, once again proving that political transformation in Nepal cannot happen without the force of collective labour.
The Constitution of 2015 enshrined the right to work and form unions as fundamental. The Labour Act of 2017 modernised many protections, especially for informal workers. It brought Nepal closer to international standards, at least on paper.
But implementation is a different story. Too many factories still operate in exploitative conditions. Too many workers still lack contracts. Migrant labourers practically are carrying the nation’s economy, yet they remain excluded from many of these rights altogether. Unions, once forces of radical change, are increasingly fractured by political affiliations. The spirit of 1947 feels distant.
Why is it imperative to remember 1947? Because the sweat and struggle of those workers gave us more than labour laws. They gave us the courage to confront injustice and showed us what solidarity can achieve when silence is no longer an option.
Seventy-eight years later, the quarters of Biratnagar Jute Mill still stand, some crumbling under rust and rain. Most who pass by don’t know what began there. But in every strike, in every wage dispute, and in every voice raised against exploitation, history breathes still.
It began with a march, a shout, a refusal, a demand. And somehow, in that refusal, rights were shaped. The ripple changed the lives of generations to come.
