Sher Singh (1950-2025): A quiet labour rights revolutionary who touched many lives with joy
The activist and publisher of the scrappy ‘Faridabad Majdoor Samachar’ believed that workers could do things themselves – they didn’t need leaders or saviours.
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One chilly winter morning in 2005, a group of us from New Delhi’s Mass Communication Research Centre in Jamia Millia Islamia set out in the suburban train to Faridabad to try to find a locality called Autopin Jhuggi.
Scouring for topics to pitch for our master’s degree film, we had come across a pamphlet online titled A Ballad Against Work, published by Majdoor Library in Autopin Jhuggi.
The pamphlet gave us a fascinating glimpse into the changing nature of employment and how the workers contended with such changes. We were sure that this would make for a great film.
It would offer a location – a factory or workshop – where we saw ourselves shooting gritty visual sequences. There would be people – the working class, the movers of history. And there would be plenty of politics – small acts of resistance against the backdrop of the dynamics of the country’s broader labour movement.
Our search took us to the office of Faridabad Majdoor Samachar, a small workers’ newspaper. It was here that we first met Sher Sing, who died on January 25.
Sher Singh received us in the tiny two-room Majdoor Library with warmth and kindness. Seeing that we were cold, he seated us around the heater and quickly made us chai.
The space, we...
