state of the wrestlers’ protests also points to the changed state of ‘citizen activism’ that India once saw a decade ago
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Over the past four months, a few nationally acclaimed wrestlers have been protesting against their federation chief, a strongman politician, who they accuse of both misusing his authority and of sexual harassment.
citizen activism
1 The apparent impotency of the wrestler protests exhibits the narrow moral universe of middle-class rooted ‘citizen activism’.
2 This brand of activism was what steadily gained attention post-liberalisation, particularly through the spread of television and social media.
3 Historically, the high point of middle-class activism has lain in the colonial period.
और कहां कहां — In the book, Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship (2005), the historian, Carey Anthony Watt, described “a vibrant ‘associational culture”’ in early 20th century India.
किस बात पर फोकस — Although this associational culture was hardly free of social conservatism and caste/community-based fractures, it also contained a pluralistic and egalitarian समानाधिकारवादी dimension.
An evolution from the Nehruvian era
1 However, the middle classes retreated पीछे हट from active civil society participation from the Nehruvian era onwards, as they assumed control of the power networks within the state-centred political economy.
2 . While some scholars have taken the preponderance of caste/community-based organisations to claim that the country effectively lacks a modern civil society, others have appreciated the role of these organisations in aiding democratisation and exemplifying the “modernity of tradition”.
3 “In India, religion, caste, ethnicity and language have been effectively mobilised in articulating and representing group identities and interests,” as Sarbeshwar Sahoo wrote in Civil Society and Democratization in India (2013).
4 It was only in the decade of rule under the United Progressive Alliance
that we saw a marked resurgence of urban, middle-class activism, particularly around issues of political corruption.
In her book, India’s New Middle Class (2006), the sociologist, Leela Fernandes, captured the rising discontent of the middle classes with the “corrupting influences of mass-based politics and vote banks”, combined with latent “suspicions” towards “unions, subordinate castes and Muslims”.
5 ignored the concerns of the urban poor
John Harriss (2007) demonstrated, through research in the city of Chennai, that the “new politics of empowerment” ignored the concerns of the urban poor, viewing them to be “denizens” who need to be ‘disciplined’ and ‘patronized’ rather than “citizens” to be centred in the discourse and practice of development.
A ‘changing Indian sensibility’
मोदी के कार्यकाल में
1 Post-2014, the ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have effectively captured this middle-class space.
2 Thus, the middle classes now represent a kind of a civil society base of the BJP, which perhaps explains a weakening attachment towards independent social actors, as the wrestlers discovered.
3 “The consolidation of Hindu nationalism in India is being authored not only by parties or the state, but also by societal actors, specifically, ordinary middle-class Indians,” as Ms. Sinha and Ms. Priyam wrote.
Anna Andolan have become clearer in hindsight.
The same could be said about a similar brand of Leftist or neo-Gandhian activism, such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in Gujarat, centred around Medha Patkar.
failure और कुछ संगठनों की बात
Championed by celebrities as diverse as Arundhati Roy and Aamir Khan, the anti-dam movement ultimately ended in failure.
However, we have not quite entered into a post-civil society era, and there still exists a (albeit circumscribed) space for popular mobilisation.
In Tamil Nadu, labour rights organisations, led by the Communist-leaning Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) compelled मजबूर the M.K. Stalin government to stall the implementation of a new labour law.
किसान आंदोलन वाली बात और खिलाड़ियों को सपोर्ट
And, of course, the long-drawn farmers agitation succeeded in forcing the otherwise dour hand of the Modi government, demonstrating the continuing heft of these organisations in parts of northern India. Some of these groups have now given their support in favour of the protesting wrestlers.
इन आंदोलनों की की कुछ लिमिटेशन
. Even as the farmers’ movement sought to cultivate “new solidarities across class, caste, gender, religion and regions” (Kumar 2022), many of them continue to be associated with the interests of landed “Jat” caste.
. The lower castes in Haryana, for example, might remember the experience of recurring anti-special economic zone protests, where farmer organisations have been critiqued for privileging the material interests of the Jat farmers and ignoring those of the landless workers.
militant labour activism
Similarly, while certain forms of militant labour activism can succeed in getting significant concessions रियायतें in Tamil Nadu, they are likely to be firmly suppressed in States such as Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
This is because labour activism, particularly of left-wing organisations, often requires the political umbrella of communist parties.
These communist parties, which have largely been a part of government coalitions since the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-CPI(M) alliance of 1965.
In Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, left-wing labour activism has been ruthlessly निर्दयतापूर्वक put down not just by the Congress but also by their erstwhile socialist/farmer allies.
This regime continuity was immediately apparent प्रत्यक्ष in the Charan Singh government’s fierce suppression of the 1970 Communist-led agitation of landless agricultural workers, perhaps the last such large-scale mobilisation of workers in Uttar Pradesh.
The state of the wrestlers’ protests clarifies the need to look beyond the superficial, celebrity-dependent model of civil society activism. It is also a reminder that only a democratic process of building durable, programmatic solidarities can become truly capable of transcending the social ceiling of “segmental loyalties”.
source the hindu
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