Social Movements In Modern India

Social Movements In Modern India

Introduction
When we talk about social change two things should be taken into consideration,firstly should
government produce change and secondly should people introduce change themself on their own terms and
conditions. Social desires and demand for change is different from personal desire and demands. Hence both
stands opposite to each other ,for example if the state is glorifying one particular form of religion and
people want to go for change or another religion this will lead to struggle between power of the state and
power of the people. This struggle between the part of state and power of the people can be termed as
social movement.
With the growing consciousness , people are coming forward in large numbers and it has
become difficult for the state to ignore the demand of the people and introduce its own wishes. There is a
dialectical relationship between state and people. Gandhiji introduced different kinds of protest and
encouraged mass movement both in the nature of social and political.
During different points of time in Indian history identity movement have also taken place so
that everyone has a space in society, every individual is free and that they do not to hide their actual
identity in front of others e.g. homosexuals, transgenders.
A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies
or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations.
Protesters may organize a protest as a way of publicly making their opinions heard in an attempt to
influence public opinion or government policy, or they may undertake direct action in an attempt to
directly enact desired changes themselves. When protests are part of a systematic and peaceful campaign to
achieve a particular objective, and involve the use of pressure as well as persuasion, they go beyond mere
protest and may be better described as cases of civil resistance or nonviolent resistance
Wherever marginalization, exploitation is caused in extreme form it leads to protest which
subsequently transforms itself into a movement through ideological injection e.g. civil rights movement in
America under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln where blacks were united to fight against hunger and
discrimination by the state and people alike.
During the colonial rule, the tribal areas were least interfered with as it was thought that it
is difficult, costly and cumbersome to administer these areas. Hence it was missionaries who landed in those
places to work. But some tribal areas were highly resourceful and so they were highly exploited. Since
independence hardly any major steps are taken for the development people belonging to these areas. Till
today the actual number of tribals existing in India is is not known.Protestant movements in case of India can be divided into three distinctive stages i.e.:
 Social religious movement which got momentum before freedom struggle.
 Economic and political movement during the freedom struggle.
 Identity and issue-based movement in contemporary India.
Protest is not overreaction of a group of people to the action of others. One goes for
protest because the action of others are not acceptable by them. Protest is always a registration against
the voice of dominance. Protest is reminder to the state that it has limited power. Protest movement will
be maximum in a democratic setup.
The term "collective action" describes the situation in which multiple individuals would all
benefit from a certain action, which, however, has an associated cost making it implausible that anyone
individually can or will undertake and solve it alone. The rational choice is then to undertake this as a
collective action the cost of which is shared.
Collective action can be the foundation to social movement but it is not necessary that
always collective action will be leading to social movement. For instance new social movements are mostly
issue-based like environmental movements, anti-war movements, civil rights movement etc that involve
people from different sections of society asking them to form different kinds of mobilisation. Collective
action is not just the foundation to social movement, it may be having a larger appeal as well. Amartya
Sen says that collective action should be engineered for collective well-being. Participation in many
educational programs, awareness campaigns, electoral policies are examples of collective action for collective
well-being which is instrumental for the rise of an inclusive society.
Sustainable development approach forwarded by Vandana Shiva indicate that joint forest
management scheme, wasteland management, watershed management involve the contesting communities
accelerating collective action for common well-being. In macroscopic plane one finds out collective action is
initiated by all countries of the world in areas of environmental protection, abuse of nuclear power,
humanitarian aids, and political peace. Thus collective action should not only be studied from a single
standpoint which consider it as a tool for class conflict, revolution and social change.
Previously social movements were highly organised, ideologically charged which were asking for
big changes to emancipate the exploited in the hands of the class or state. But social movements today are
more reflexive, reactionary, issue-based and temporal. Thus there is a distinction between social movement
and collective action. Social movement can sustain itself if there are many free riders (people who
participate for their vested selfish interest), however collective action will not be able to arrive at its goal
if there are too many free riders. Therefore participation is very important for the success of
contemporary movements.

Social movements can be distinguished from protest and collective action on the ground that social

movement is programmed but Protest and collective action are not necessarily programmed. The social

movement for its success has to fulfil a number of preconditions like:

 Issues Identification.

 Identification and expansion of support base.

 Creation of structural conduciveness.

 Crystallisation of ideology.

 Evolution of leadership.

 Growth of organisational characteristics.

 Allocation of responsibility.

Social movement passes through different stages which includes excitement stage

(identification of issues), consolidation stage (propaganda and search for mass support), crystallisation stage

(rise of leadership, publication of literature), maturity stage (injection of ideology and allocation of

responsibility), resolution stage (accomplishment of goals and decline of social movement).

When a social movement dies out, it may give rise to a political party or the residues of

social movement will operate as a reminder of past. Social movements can be classified into different types

on the basis of their appeal and capabilities to introduce change like:

 Transformative Movement – that makes some attempt to produce absolute change.

 Radical movement – that makes some attempt to use violent measures to make some changes.

 Restorative movement – which gives importance to the restoration of some values and ideals for the

common well-being of people.

 Reformative movement – which makes an attempt to eliminate non-progressive stereotype ideas and

values from the life of people and searches for progress and happiness.

 Redemptive movement – which makes people to change their opinion about the existential condition

instead of changing the condition.

Peasants And Farmers Movement

Peasant refers to small producers who are controlling a small piece of family land, using simple

technologies, family labour to gratify their consumption needs. Between man and land there is emotional

relationship in peasants society. To its contrast farmers produce for market and so they view their land

also from economic perspective and so land is a source of profit for them. If land fails to make profit

farmers go for other forms of occupation abandoning agriculture which is not so in case of peasant.

Therefore conceptualising agrarian movement as peasant movements or farmers movement is a great

sociological challenge.

In India there is present multiple modes of production. In some pockets of the country there

are peasants, medium farmers, small and marginalised farmers who do not make a huge margin of profit

from land and landless peasants. In some areas of the country capitalist agriculture has developed which has

led to migration of agricultural workers from the poor regions to these flourishing regions in search of

employment, therefore the conflict between land and agriculture class and landless labourers is potentially

absent in green revolution belt. In some other areas middle farmers have been organised, they have received

support from state and organised cooperatives to improve their economic conditions and so in this case also

the conflict between them and agricultural labourers is mostly unfound. In certain pockets of the country

traditional form of landlordism is present where labourers, marginal farmers are thoroughly exploited and

their control over their own land is becoming fragile and therefore in these areas small, marginalised

,farmers and landless labourers are getting unionised and manifest in protest and armed rebellion.

Therefore multiple modes of agrarian production provides no space for sociologists to explain

agrarian movement in India either as peasant movements or as, movements. Gail Omvedt writes that in

case of India the participants of agrarian movement are tribes, lower caste, ethnic minority who is more or

less were landless since historic times therefore peasant farmer movement cannot be disassociated from

Dalit movement and tribal movements.

Feudal mode of agriculture is still in practice in case of Bihar, MP, Eastern Uttar Pradesh and

certain pockets of Orissa. There is also semifeudal mode of agriculture practised in Rajasthan, Andhra

Pradesh. Semi-capitalist mode of agriculture production can be found in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu,

Karnataka and pockets of Andhra Pradesh. And lastly capitalist agriculture mode of production can be found

in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh.

She considers that in capitalist zone farmers movement get a momentum whereas in feudal

areas peasant movements are accelerated but in semifeudal and semi-capitalist both farmers and peasant

movements are present. Some sociologists consider that movements initiated during India's freedom struggle

should be considered as peasant movement whereas after India's independence the agrarian movement should

be considered as farmers movement. Even A R Desai makes a distinction between two timeframes i.e.

protest during colonial period and protest during postcolonial period. While some sociologist believe that it

is conceptually difficult to distinguish not only peasant movements from farmers but also agrarian

movement form social and religious movements.

In India peasants and farmers movements were initiated as economic organisation highlighting

the questions like landlessness, indebtedness, tenancy rights but subsequently people got unionised forging

their class identity on the basis of culture and religion. Moplah movement, Eka movement and Peasant

Rebellion in case of Bengal vertically divided the people on the basis of culture and religion. This is

contradictory to Marx's understanding of class-action when he says that classes is a source people’s

unification because in case of India peasants belonging to Hindu community supported Hindu landlords in

Bengal rather than joining hands with Muslim peasants.

Peasant Movement During British Period

British introduced the exploitative Land Tenure System with Ryotwari system in western and

southern India and Zamindari system in eastern and northern India. These two distinctive Systems of Land

Tenure System gave way to the rise of feudal Lords, sub feudal Lords, sub sub feudal Lords thereby giving

rise to the evolution of large body of leisure class living on the exportation of peasants in India. British

systematically destroyed indigenous class, cottage industries, transforming artisans into landless peasantry.

Moneylenders, absentee landlords gave rise to capitalist interest in agricultural land leading to massive

exportation of indigenous peasants.

Introduction of exploitative taxation system expose peasantry to exploitative market and

introduction of cash crops completely paralysed subsistence production – forcibly exposing presented to

market without any purchasing power in hand. Therefore peasant in India during colonial period was standing

in between devil and the deep sea i.e. being exploited by the landlords on one hand and by the expandable

market introduced by the colonial leaders on the other. As a result peasant movement got omentum in

different parts of the country in the form of Sanyasi Vidroh, Indigo Movement, Champaran Movement,

Bardoli Movement, Eka Movement, Moplah Rebellion, Birsa Munda Movement.

The above-mentioned movements had two major consequences; firstly forgetting the linguistic

and regional differences ,driven by common interest the entire country got unified together and started

protesting against the British and secondly peasant movement offered platform for the rise of localised

leadership in various parts of the country which became the precursor to the national movement in India

later on. AR Desai considers that peasant movement in India is the mother of India's nationalist movement.