Friends, Here are some scatterred thoughts on new social movements in India. rather coerced to jot down to "help" a friend doing some serious work.
But the issue is an important one. Would some of us like to share their own ideas linked to or regardless of this apology of a note? An exchange could be quite profitable. Sukla What is a "new social movement"?How it is new? What marks it out? That's the question that'd arise first. A tentative proposition: This is or these are movements broadly outside of the control of the "political society", led by by "civil society" groups. Again definitional problems arise. But we'll skip that. Another, and related, marker would be that these are by and large not concerned with issues taken in a "holistic manner" or these movements do not come as a part of a larger "holistic package". They focus on a "single issue" or, at the most, a limited number of closely related issues. And they stand on their own. The "political society" or parties - from the Left or the Right - tend to offer a a holistic vision of the future: "Hindu Rashtra" or "liberal democracy" or "dictatorship of the proletariat" or whatever. Sectional or segmental campaigns - "expel Bangladeshis" or "anti-price rise agitation" - come as a part of the broader package towards these. Here, we have "women's liberation" or "anti-war movements" coming on their own as discrete modules, by and large. In the US, we had the movement of the Blacks. In the West, the civil society had a significantly higher social and political weight vis-a-vis the "political" as compared to India. Maybe the trauma of the WWII, and perceived bankruptcy of the "political" as manifested in that", had a role to play. Sartre had said something like: We're like a priest performing rituals who has lost his faith. In 'Iron in the Soul'? Sartre evidently referred to the Left. The usual propeller of mass movements. The loss of faith or frustration is a critical element. So we had peace / anti-nuclear mass movements under the leadership of celebrity figures/activists. Somewhat similar is the case with the Women's Lib. In case of India, a somewhat similar phase came up with the rise followed by the fall of Naxalism. A large body of people, including students and youth, got radicalised. The the trauma of failure followed. To put it in a rather crude manner. Those coming out of the jails or "underground" had to search for means of survival. And there were also conceptual explorations in newer directions. The NGOs came up in a big way. And also human rights movements in the wake of the Emergency. Similarly women's movements. Dalit Panther had come up in the mid-sixties along with other radical currents. This lied somewhere between the "new" and the "old" - "social" and "political". A brief case study of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) would be instructive. It had been preceded by the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND). Presumably after the image of the CND in Britain.Never really took off. Then came the nuclear explosions in May 1998. Despite the hysteric euphoria, people came out on the streets, in much smaller numbers though, at the initiative of various dispersed groups in protest. Almost immediately. The moral (minuscule) minority made its voices heard amidst the high-pitched ugly warmongering cacophony all around. That acted THE trigger for forming a broader platform. Not that everybody came. But quite a few did. A platform, a coalition, is created in November 2000, beyond the control of any political party/parties. It included those directly drawing inspirations from the CND (derisively called: E P Thompson's clones); also (some) followers of the mainstream Left (with all their prejudices towards the E P Thompson's clones); Gandhians/Gandhian socialists - old and new; NGOs; ex-Maoists; and various other sundry groups. And the coalition focussed on nuclear weapons and disarmament and also, to a lesser extent, nuclear power. There are of course tensions within. Some would call for expanding the ambit to include various other human rights issues including communalism, state repression etc. depending on the mood of that specific moment. Some would ask for shoving "nuclear power" effectively aside. And, the followers of the mainstream Left would suffer from certain degree of discomfort in moving along a line not pre-decided by the Party (as is the case with "mass fronts" usually). But is the perception of the immediacy of the focal issue(s) that determines the tempo. Similarly, one could/should also go into the history of Women's Lib in India, particularly since the now all too well known Mathura Rape Case in the mid-seventies. Then, the human rights movements in the wake of the Emergency. As compared to the West, these movements had stronger, even if somewhat problematic, links with Left - mainstream and radical - one would guess. Then there was also large scale emergence of NGOs, hand in hand. Quite often facilitated by diverse forms of institutional fundings - indigenous and foreign, ranging from corporate to even radical. And, in addition to campaigns, came lobbying, (social) service providing etc. The intimate and complex relationships between social movements and NGOS on the one side and the "political" on the other call for deeper probes. One of the oldest members of this species (in India) is arguably the Bhoodan Movement. But much water has flown down the rivers since then. Sukla --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
