Ali Amjad was once a recognized name in India's labor movement. Because of his deep involvement with India's freedom movement and workers' rights movement, he was often incarcerated for long periods of time. After migrating to Pakistan, he formally chose the field of labor law for the defense of workers' rights as a senior lawyer of Pakistan's supreme court. His Urdu novel Kali Mati ('Black Soil') is based on the historic labor strike of 1958 at the Tata Steel plant in Jamshedpur, and is partly autobiographical, as detailed in his Urdu memoir Shakh-e-Nehal-e-Gham ('A Branch of the Sapling of Sorrow'). The novel also quite brilliantly unpacks the conspiratorial plot leading to the communal violence of Jamshedpur in 1964.