SOCIAL MOVEMENT IN INDIA

Subject: Sociology

Submitted To: Dr Priyanka Sharma khanduja

Submitted by: Shubham saini

Semester -iii
Roll No: R154216103
Submitted on: 24/11/2017
Introduction
The term new social movement refers to those movements which have come up since mid-
1960s. The new social movements look into various collective actions, their identity and on their
relations for culture ideology and politics. These differ in from the old that, (a) they are
concerned with non-material phenomena; (b) they work for quality of life, rather for merely life;
(c) they are cooperative and non-conflictive; (d) they are followers-oriented rather than leader
oriented; (e) they are decentralized, rather than centralized ones. The new social movements
include the women‟s movement, the ecology movement, gay rights movements and various
peace movements among others. Thinkers have related these movements with post materialism
hypothesis as put forth by Ronald Inglehart. Important contributors in the field include
sociologists such as Alian Touraine, Claus Offe and Habermas. Many of the movements tend to
emphasize social change in lifestyle and culture, rather than pushing specific changes in public
policy or for economy change. Some theorists argue that the key actors in these movements are
the members of “new middle class” or “service sector professionals”, such as academics. They
are informal loosely organize network of “supporters” rather than members. Paul Byrne
described new social movements as “relatively disorganized”.

Chapter 1- Types of Social Movements Reform Movements:

Reform movements: Reform movements are organized to carry out reforms in some specific
areas. The reformers endeavor to change elements of the system for better. For example: Civil
Rights Movement, Women's Liberation Movement, Arya Samaj Movement, Brahmo Samaj
Movement etc.

Revolutionary Movements: The revolutionary movements deny that the system will even
work. These movements are deeply dissatisfied with the social order and work for radical
change. They advocate replacing the entire existing structure. Their objective is the
reorganization of society in accordance with their own ideological blueprint. Revolutionary
movements generally become violent as they progress. Example: The Protestant Reformation
Movement, the Socialist Movement, the Communist Revolution of China. Reactionary or

Revivalist Movement: Some movements are known as reactionary or regressive movements.

These aims to reverse the social change .They highlight the importance and greatness of
traditional values, ideologies and institutional arrangements. They strongly criticize the fast
moving changes of the present.

Resistance Movement: These movements are formed to resist a change that is already taking
place in society. These can be directed against social and cultural changes which are already
1
happening in the country. Utopian Movement: These are attempts to take the society or a section
of it towards a state of perfection. These are loosely structured collectivities that envision a
radically changed and blissful state, either on a large scale at some time in the future or on a
smaller scale in the present. The Utopian ideal and the means of it are often vague, but many
utopian movements have quite specific programmes for social change. The Hare Krishna
Movement of the seventies, the movement towards the establishment of Ram Rajya and the
Sangh Parivar, the Communists and Socialists pronouncement of a movement towards the
classless, casteless society free from all kinds of exploitation etc.

Peasant Movement: Peasant movement is defined by Kathleen Gough as an attempt of a

group to effect change in the face of resistance and the peasant are people who are engaged in an
agricultural or related production with primitive means who surrender part of their or its
equivalent to landlords or to agents of change. The history of peasant movements can be traced
to colonial period when repressive economic policies, the new land revenue system, the colonial
administrative and judicial system and the ruin of handicrafts leading to the overcrowding of
land transformed the agrarian structure and impoverished the peasantry. In the zamindari system
peasants were left to the mercies of the Zamindars who exploited them in form of illegal dues.
The British government levied heavy land revenue in the Ryotwari areas. Peasants were forced
to borrow money from the moneylenders and they were reduced to the status of tenants at will,
share croppers and landless laborers while their lands, crops and cattle passed into the hands to
landlords, trader moneylenders and such peasants.(1)

Some of the important peasant uprising:

1770- Sanyasi rebellion

1831- Wahabi uprising

1855- Santhal uprising

1859- Indigo revolt

1890-1900- Punjab Kisan struggle

1917-18- Champaran satyagraha

1921- Moplah rebellion

1928- Bardoli satyagarya

1946- Telangana movement

1957- Naxalbari movemen

1
C.J. Baker, The Politics of South India, 1920-1937, New Delhi, Macmillan, 1976, pp. 140-70.
Women's Movement: The women's movement in India is a rich and vibrant movement
which has taken different forms in different parts of the country. Fifty years ago when India
became independent, it was widely acknowledged that the battle for freedom had been fought as
much by women as by men. One of the methods M K Gandhi chose to undermine the authority
of the British was for Indians to defy the law which made it illegal for them to make salt. At the
time, salt making was a monopoly and earned considerable revenues for the British. Gandhi
began his campaign by going on a march - the salt march - through many villages, leading finally
to the sea, where he and others broke the law by making salt. No woman had been included by
Gandhi in his chosen number of marchers. But nationalist women protested, and they forced him
to allow them to participate. The first to join was Sarojini Naidu, who went on to become the
first woman President of the Indian National Congress in 1925. Her presence was a signal for
hundreds of other women to join, and eventually the salt protest was made successful by the
many women who not only made salt, but also sat openly in marketplaces selling, and indeed,
buying it. The trajectory of this movement is usually traced from the social reform movements of
the 19th century when campaigns for the betterment of the conditions of women's lives were
taken up, initially by men. By the end of the century women had begun to organize themselves
and gradually they took up a number of causes such as education, the conditions of women's
work and so on. It was in the early part of the 20th century that women's organizations were set
up, and many of the women who were active in these later became involved in the freedom
movement. Independence brought many promises and dreams for women in India - the dream of
an egalitarian, just, democratic society in which both men and women would have a voice.

Backward Caste Movement: The Backward castes have been deprived of many social,
economic, political and religious privileges. These people provided manual labor and the
untouchables occupied the lowest position among the caste hierarchy. They were subjected to
extreme form of exploitation. The colonial power accentuated the disparities in the distribution
important backward caste movement which came up was Satyashodak Samaj and Nadar
Movement which consolidated the masses along the castelines.E.V Ramaswamy started Self-
Respect movement against the Brahmins in South India. The SNDP movement in Kerala was
more of a reformist movement. In 1950s there was a widespread desire among the non-Brahmin
castes to be categorized as Backward .Subsequently Backward Class commission was set up to
look into the conditions and requirements of these classes. Mandal Commission submitted its
report in 1980 recommending reservations for backward castes in educational institutions and
government offices. However this move resulted in anti- Mandal Commission movement which
resulted in large scale violence and many students lost their lives.(2)2

2
Annie Besant, The Birth of New India, Theosophical Publishing House, 1917, pp.270-89
Dalit moment: Dalits are the suppressed people at the lost rung of the cast-based hierarchy.
Their inferior occupations and low levels of ascriptive status make them vulnerable for attacks at
the hands of upper-caste people. The organizational efforts made by Dalit leadership for uplifting
their status are known as Dalit movement. It is a protest against untouchability ,casteism and
discrimination faced by the dalits.Dalit movement indicates some trends of protest ideologies
which entail the following -withdrawal and self organization, high varna status and extolling of
non-Aryan culture's virtues, abandoning of Hinduism and embracing other religions like
Buddhism and Islam. Mahatma Gandhi in 1923 founded the All India Harijan Sevak Sangh to
start education and schools for the dalits.Another most important dalit leader Dr.Ambedkar
struggled to secure the basic human dignity to the dalits.The Mahad Satyagarh for the right of
water led by him was one of the outstanding movements of the dalits to win equal social rights.
The role of All India Depressed Classes Association and All India Depressed Classes Federation
were the principal organizations which initiated a movement to improve the conditions of the
dalits.These organizations aimed at improving their miserable conditions and to spread education
among them. They worked to secure rights of admission to school, drawing water from the
public wells, entering the temples and to use the roads.

Chapter 2- Social Movements in India:

At the risk of sounding repetitive, one needs to reassert that the methodological problem of
identifying and defining a social movement is fairly difficult. The problem becomes particularly
complex when we focus on the Asian region. Given its multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-
political reality, the bewildering multiplicity and diversity of social movements in the region
should not come as a great surprise. After all, social movements necessarily must, and firmly are
embedded in the social, cultural and political realities of a nation. Whereas a description of the
movements is a matter of information collection and a systematic presentation of such
information, an analysis of the embedded ness and linkages of the movements with wider socio-
political processes is a very difficult and long-term task, particularly for the Asian region. Apart
from being complex, the region is also so vast that to capture its variety in a single article is quite
impossible. Accordingly this paper shall try to convey an essence of such complexities by
focusing on social movements in India, assuming of course that much of the general aspects of
the analysis are extendable to other areas of the Asian region too. Nevertheless, it would seem to
be necessary to have some kind of a guideline, if not an exact definition, of a social movement in
order to explore further its complexities. Accordingly, we shall use the following as such a
guideline: A Social Movement is any explicit or implicit persuasion by no institutionalized
groups seeking public gain by attempting to change some part of "the system"(3). Accordingly:
i) Social movements are an attempt to bring about institutional change, mainly from
without the social structure.3
Change may be limited to reform. It may alter some practices or policies of an
institution, but leaves the institution itself intact.
ii) Change advocated may also be radical or revolutionary; demanding fundamental change
in the existing social/institutional structures and relationships. Quite obviously, a variety
of social movements in Asia would fall in at least one of the above categories; and many
may overlap between the three. In general one may state that the scope and concerns of
the social movements in the Asian region are not very different from that of other
continents of the World. The more historical movements involving industrial workers,
peasants and adivasis (indigenous people) have, since the independence of many
countries in the region from colonial rule, been supplemented by the women’s,
environmental, human rights, and peace movements. A particular characteristic of the
South Asian part of the region would be the dalit, the religious reform, and religious
fundamentalist movements. The religious fundamentalist movements pose a particular
problem in any inventory that attempts to list the movements in the region should one
include them or exclude them? In terms of involvement of people, these are large
movements; but as far as their objectives go, they exhibit the inadequacy of the guideline
or definition of a social movement presented above. Many of them are quite radical,
since they even demand a structural change in the system itself from a secular state to a
state based on a particular religion. But in the process, they have also to be seen as
movements that promote enmity, hostility and violence amongst people of different
religions, which raises the question about the legitimacy of including them in any list. If
’public gain’ is to be interpreted as ’common good for the majority of the oppressed and
of those facing injustice’ in the definition offered above, religious fundamentalist
movements would be difficult to accommodate since they would seem to be promoting
’public gain’ of a particular identity only, that is if their work is at all characterizable as
promoting ’public gain’. But their reality, extent of penetration within the society and
linkages with state politics cannot be simply dismissed, particularly in the present day
India.

Chapter 3 - The National Movement for Independence in India:

An aspect of Asia that must always be seen as a historical backdrop while discussing its social
movements are a variety of national liberation movements against colonial occupation in many
countries of the region. Contemporary social movements cannot really be well understood
without identifying the elements of continuity and change from such liberation movements. And
nowhere else is that as important as in India. The Indian national independence movement, as is
well known, was greatly influenced by the leadership provided by Mahatma Gandhi. The sheer

A.P. Patro, “The Justice Movement in India”, The Asiatic Review, Vol. 28, No. 93, 1932, pp. 28-31.
number of people who participated in this movement, particularly from about 1910 to the time
of independence in 1947 is staggering. Apart from gaining political independence for India, the
movement influenced a nation of 300 million people in 1947 and over a billion today in nearly
all aspects of politics and life. Apart from its main characteristics of non-violence and struggle
based on truth satyagraha Gandhian thought penetrated areas like governance, decentralization,
ethics and morality of politics, education, rural and national development, self-reliance,
volunteerism, caste and untouchability and much more. After gaining independence, and even
after Gandhi’s assassination by a Hindu religious fanatic in 1948, his thought spurred a wide
variety of Gandhian movements and civil society formations that continue till today. The
persistence and resilience of his thoughts can also be discerned today in movements that may
not be direct descendents of Gandhian movements, like the environmental, adivasi and local
governance movements. The more direct Gandhian movements would include the Sarvodaya
movement that concentrated on the redistribution of land in the fifties and sixties but is fairly
dormant now, the movement for bringing in Panchayati Raj (local governance), and a plethora
of Gandhian institutions all over the country, of which the Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi,
Sewagram Ashram in Wardha, Gandhigram in Tamil Nadu, Gandhi University and Sabarmati
Ashram in Gujarat would be prominent. His notion of self reliance, symbolized by the hand-
spun local cloth, khadi, and a variety of other locally produced products is promoted by the state
through a vast organization called the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, with an
extensive network of still popular retail outlets

Dominant Political Trends: In order to arrive at a somewhat deeper understanding of

the continued impact of the independence movement, as also to situate better the other
contemporary movements in India, a brief outline of the trends that dominate the Indian polity
might be appropriate here. The main organisation that channelised the masses of people towards
India’s independence was the Congress Party. It was through this that Gandhi was able to reach
out and consolidate the movement for independence. It was also clear that by the time India was
close to its independence, the Congress Party had little faith in the Gandhian notions of power,
governance and development. The modernist Nehru, with undiminished respect for his master,
Gandhi, nevertheless violently differed with his ideology. His, and the preference of the
’progressive’ elements within the Congress Party was for a Soviet-style industrial modernization
process, combined with a secular, socialistic approach. In a sense therefore, Gandhi’ vision was
seen to be utopian by even those within his own organization. This is coupled with the fact that
in spite of Gandhi’s efforts to bring in reconciliation between the Hindu nationalists and Muslim
elements demanding a separate nation, the country0 was finally divided on religious lines, and
instead of one, two countries, India and the mainly Muslim Pakistan emerged in 1947, stamping
for future a pronounced politics based on religious fundamentalism and intolerance. But Gandhi
and his thought has faced, and continues to face, violent criticism and opposition from another
section of the society, namely the dalits, who see in B.R.Ambedkar as their true leader. They
believe that Gandhi’s concern for the untouchables (’harijans’, the people of God as he called
them) was based on upper caste ’compassion’, and hence false, rather than a recognition of their
social, political and economic rights as equal citizen’s of India. The Left was mostly cold and
critical of Gandhi since he did not explicitly talk of ’class’, and worse, his preferred form of
resistance, satyagraha, is fairly different from the notion of class. struggle. What becomes
apparent therefore is that Gandhian thought is seen to differ from that of Dalits and the Left. The
Left has been, and continues to be, a persuasive political force within the country, without
perhaps ever being dominant. Quite clearly, the national independence movement was
dominated by the Congress Party. After independence, and perhaps not uncommon compared
with other multi-party democracies, the single Communist Party of India began to split, and has
three main strands today the CPI, the CPI(marxist) and the CPI(marxistleninist), the last being
recognizable as the ’Maoist’ party in other countries; which itself has many factions. Formed in
1967 and coinciding with the campus revolts of the late sixties, with an explicit agenda
justifying the use violence as a method for capturing state power, the CPI(ml) caught the
imagination of a large mass of academics, intellectuals and students during that time, who
enrolled in it to work alongside peasants in remote areas of the country. The CPI and CPI(M) on
the other hand have participated in the electoral process, with the CPI(m) having had more
success in the states and the centre; it continues to rule the state of West Bengal for the last
twenty five years continuously, and has a see-saw with the Congress party in ruling Kerala.
Apart from the three left parties, there also exist a large number of left and left oriented non-
party groups and organizations all over India, active in a wide variety of issues. State power
however continued to remain largely with the Congress Party, who paid the usual lip service to
Gandhi, but moved the country in directions far distant from his ideals. The most prominent
one-off exception to this occurred during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister, when in
1994 the country’s constitution was amended to pave way for the Local Governments, the
Panchayati Raj, most favoured by Mahatma Gandhi. The Congress Party leadership also
remained mostly and firmly upper-caste, with a centrist approach which sometimes had a mildly
left leaning, as in the case of nationalization of banks. In contradiction however, it is the
Congress Party that ushered in the era of neoliberal globalization in India beginning 1990. Two
departures to this trend of Congress domination that can be discerned in recent years has been
the rise of the lower-castes and the Hindu nationalist forces in electoral politics, which has
completely changed the scenario of Indian politics. The Hindu nationalists had little presence in
state politics, but had a strong presence in the society through civil-society type of work, mainly
through their ’social movement’, the RSS. The lower castes and the dalits, gradually distanced
themselves from the ’benevolence’ of the Congress Party by organizing their own parties, like
the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajvadi Party, and elements of Janta Dal. They tasted electoral
success in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana and began influencing the national
politics. The Hindu nationalists, through a series of acts that heightened communal tensions,
including that of the demolition of the Babri Masjid (a historical mosque) by Hindu fanatics, and
by using the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the continued hostility with the Muslim
Pakistan as a constant marker, paved the way for the linked political party, the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) to grab power at the centre, as also in other states of India. Gradually therefore, the
political polarization instead of being based on class, poverty and development has moved
increasingly to issues based on identities; of religion, caste and ethnicity. And it is within this
mind-boggling complex system of politics, religion, caste, poverty and cultural diversity that the
social movements operate in, attempting social transformation!(4)

The Movements: The most easily identifiable movements in India are the ones
connected/related to the political parties. Thus the three Communist Parties each have a trade
union, a student/youth union and a women’s movement allied to them. But this trend is common
for other parties too, including those whose presence may be more dominant in state rather than
central politics. Thus the Congress and the right wing BJP too have allied to them a trade union,
a student union and a women’s movement. These are further supplemented by unions of
professional workers affiliated to political parties, like that of school, college and university
teachers etc. Having deep loyalties to their parties, with a high degree of control, these
movements tend to mimic the traditional tensions and competition that exists between their
parent parties. Though the student, labour and women’s and other issues articulated by each
might be the same or similar, yet there would be a tendency to compete with each other. This
does not imply that there are no common agendas or collaborations from time to time. But the
need for unity is a common refrain, particularly from those elements who are bothered by
fragmentation and the subsequent loss of political strength. The contradictions however appear
when the parent party is in power. The allied movements, vociferous when their parent parties
are in opposition, have to muzzle their views to support their party in power negating the
definition offered in the beginning that a social movement is the one that is ’outside the system’.
Party allied movements are therefore not seen as independent. Set apart from such ’traditional’
movements are the ’new’ and ’independent’ movements that tend to distance themselves from
the traditional party linkages, in order to innovate in terms of organizational structures,
leadership roles and proximity with the most oppressed in remote areas. The Environment
movement comes easily to mind as one such example.
4

4
A.P. Patro, “The Justice Movement in India”, The Asiatic Review, Vol. 28, No. 93, 1932, pp. 28-31.
Conclusion:
Social movements can be aimed at change on an individual level (e.g., AA) or change on a
broader, group or even societal level (e.g., anti-globalization). Social movements can also
advocate for minor changes or radical changes. The new social movements include the women‟s
movement, the ecology movement, gay rights movements and various peace movements among
others. From the early 1970s new forms of social mobilisation began in India. They gained a
variety of names such as social movement, people's movement, popular movements etc.[1]These
movements emerged and highlighted some of the major issues as gender and environment. One
of the leading analyst and participant in social movements in India, Sanjay Sangvi, identified the
major agendas of them as "Movements of landless, unorganised labour in rural and urban areas,
adivasis, dalits, displaced people, peasants, urban poor, small entrepreneurs and unemployed
youth took up the issues of livelihood, opportunities, dignity and development.(5)

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Reference:
1. http://www.alternatives.ca/

2. http://www.britannica.com/

3. http://www4.lehigh.edu/

5
D.A. Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics