This article proposes a new approach to the forms of mobilization and politicization of the working classes, through a study of the tenants’ movements in Bombay, from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. It seeks to question certain assumptions of the Subaltern Studies group. This group dissociates élite mobilization, by nature more legalistic, from subaltern mobilization, relatively more spontaneous and violent. It considers that the political consciousness of the subordinate groups is in essence resistant to the ascendancy of the dominant strata. A study of the archives of the two colonial agencies responsible for the housing of Bombay workers leads to a reconsideration of these assertions. Documenting the everyday relations of domination between the tenants and their landlord, they show that the inhabitants of the colonial buildings resorted mainly to legalistic modes of action and most especially to petitions. The existence of a paternalistic official discourse of the colonial state encouraged the emergence of claims and provided a convenient battleground for its tenants. Finally, this article analyses how these accumulated experiences of collective struggles were used in the 1930s by the labor parties to organize a movement of the tenants of the working classes, able to impress their claims upon the authorities.