Assignment Code: MPSE-007/ASST/TMA/2022-23

Course Code: MPSE-007

Assignment Name: Social Movements and Politics in India

Year: 2022-2023

Verification Status: Verified by Professor

SECTION –I

1. Examine the features of the Gandhian approach to the study of social movements.

Ans) Mahatma Gandhi, the founder of the Indian freedom movement, had a significant impact on both the pre-independence and post-independence social movements in India. Gandhi was a critic of "modernity" as it was formed in the West during the Industrial Revolution, despite the fact that he did not present a comprehensive study of the social order, its functioning, or the reasons of conflict. He opposed the market-based economic system. And he cared deeply for the poor, especially the poorest of the poor. He holds that social strife is not the result of competing communities' or classes' economic and social objectives. It is due to varying "understandings" of interests and society, varying moral and ethical standards of right and wrong, or prejudices against one another. During his lifetime, he led campaigns against not only British rule but also South Africa's system of untouchability and "discrimination" against women.

Gandhian ideology is primarily concerned with "purity of means" in social battles and conflict resolution. Gandhi believed that in resolving conflict, the means were just as essential as the result. He fervently promoted ahinsa, or nonviolence, in response. He considered violence to be both wrong and a mistake. Because it fuelled the prejudice and fear that fuelled oppression, it could never truly put a stop to injustice. Gandhi believed that unfair methods could never result in a fair result. He stated in 1909 that "the means may be compared to a seed, the end to a tree, and there is just the same inviolable relationship between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree." As we sow, so shall we also reap.

Gandhians support the idea that those who suffer and are victims of injustice must resist. Satyagraha, or the use of truth and agraha, was the strategy of resistance. This strategy is referred to as the "Gandhian dialectic" by Bondurant. Through a dialectical process known as satyagraha, nonviolent action engaged existing power structures in a truth-seeking conflict that resulted in a more equitable and sincere relationship.

In this method, the victims fight against oppressive laws as well as the actions of foreign rulers, landowners, upper castes, and oppressors. They even violate the "unjust" law, which results in the government punishing them. Gandhi believed that this kind of nonviolent protest would force oppressors to see the injustice they were committing and weaken the hatred driving the repression; rather than being forced into submission, the opponents would be forced to see what was right, which would force them to alter their beliefs and behaviour. However, satyagraha rapidly acquired a more significant component, one that was less a result of its spiritual origins than of economic viability. Gandhi understood the limits of the example value of self-sacrifice: even the most ardent resisters could only withstand so much pain, and the pride and biases typical of established regimes were slow to change. Gandhi saw that in order for satyagraha to be a useful political tool, it needed to exert pressure on its adversaries. He emphasised the moral force of the opponents by saying, "I do not believe in making appeals."

According to Gandhi, the ability of satyagraha to influence an adversary's viewpoint stems from the fact that authorities are dependent on the cooperation of individuals who have the option to submit or rebel. While he persisted in arguing that satyagraha might persuade opponents of the truth, he frequently spoke of it in military terms and prepared acts that were meant less to persuade opponents of the truth than to put their interests in danger if they did not yield.

2. What are the issues and concerns of environmental movements in India?

Ans) The term "environmental movement" is broad and commonly used to define and explain various local disputes and struggles involving questions of ecological security and livelihood within the broader context of the development debate. In fact, since colonial times, the Indian state and its authorities have been pursuing an idea of development and conservation ecology. The Chipko movement in the Garhwal region of the newly created state of Uttaranchal is credited with being the origin of the environmental movement in India. In fact, there were a number of conflicts over water and forest rights in India between the 1970s and 1980s that sparked broader ecological issues like community rights to forest resources, the sustainability of large-scale environmental projects like dams, problems with eviction and rehabilitation, etc.

The colonial paradigm of development that the post-colonial state is pursuing is criticised by the Indian environmental movement. The post-independent state continued to promote the modern capitalist agenda, which resulted in environmental degradation, poverty, and the marginalisation of rural populations, instead of developing a development agenda based on the needs of the people. India's establishment of national parks, sanctuaries, and protected zones really exemplifies the traditional environmentalism that the Indian state promoted with the intention of preserving wildlife and biodiversity by evicting people from these regions.

The environmental movement in India promoted the philosophy of "environmentalism of the poor" in opposition to this traditional environmentalism, which saw the Indian state as the protector of natural resources. It aggressively supported the resurgence of the traditional "self-sufficient village economy" in addition to criticising contemporary developmentalism. Communities now occupy a central position in Indian environmental debate. According to the environmentalist, local communities are best qualified to protect natural resources since they depend on their sustainable use for survival. They stated that traditional institutions should be recognised along with the customary rights that were taken away from the people by the State in order to ensure the resource's sustainable usage. In a nutshell, the Indian environmental movement focuses on the problem of justice in terms of the use and access to natural resources.

The fact that environmental movements in India have mostly included the poor, underprivileged, and women who have been directly impacted by or are victims of environmental degradation is an important distinction from environmental movements in the West. Therefore, these movements are largely political manifestations of the fight of local communities and people who are suffering from resource abuse or environmental deterioration.

Based on vision, ideology, and tactics, Gadgil and Guha divide the Indian environmental movements into four major strands. The first sorts are those that place a moral emphasis on the need to limit excessive usage and ensure justice for the underprivileged and marginalised. This strand primarily consists of Gandhians. The second strand emphasises the necessity of battling to overthrow the unfair socioeconomic system. Most Marxists adhere to this school. The third and fourth strands promote reconstruction, or using tools that are suited for the period and place in question. Scientists' worries or impromptu village-level community movements to defend local community trees or the right to engage in environmentally friendly agriculture techniques are reflected in them.

SECTION –II

Write notes on each part of the question in about 250 words each.

3. a) Movements for statehood

Ans) The current states frequently resemble imagined ones that have made vain attempts to unite the inhabitants of the many regions of the state under a single linguistic, administrative, and political identity. Even though the imagined state was successful in forging a new pan-state identity, people have not shunned their inherited ethnic-regional ties in favour of living with this new identity. In actuality, Indians have multiple identities, but this in no way implies that one identity is being replaced by another or that multiple identities are being assimilated into one. The only way multiple identities can coexist is if they are interconnected. However, the issue of legitimacy arises when this interconnectedness is either absent or when an attempt is made to replace the pre-given ethnic regional identity with a made-up official (state) identity. This is just one facet of India's regional movements. Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tripura, and Himachal Pradesh are among the nine interesting states. There is no disconnect between a state's administrative and cultural boundaries in Haryana, Punjab, Goa, Tamil Nadu, or Kerala. Therefore, there isn't a big statehood movement going on.

There are 16 significant requests for statehood in just the six large and important states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh. Furthermore, there are as many as eleven demands or movements for a separate statehood among the three legally recognised Hindi-states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. The simple fact that these demands even exist casts doubt on the legality of these states' status as Hindi-States and their artificial construction. State and region are incompatible, to put it another way. To elaborate, the culturally formed "We" permeates the many geographical divisions of the state in the ethnically homogeneous states like Punjab, Tamil Nadu, etc. Since "ethnie" and "territory" are synonymous in these types of states, there is little—if any—movement toward the creation of separate states. The biologically unique states like Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Jharkhand, and other hill states have ecologically moulded, created, and regionally embedded identities, in contrast to the ethnic states that cultivate on the basis of pre-given identity.

b) Relative Deprivation Theory

Ans) The relative deprivation theory created by American scholars has also affected research on agitation and mass movements. Actors are said to be experiencing relative deprivation when they see a discrepancy between their expectations of value and the apparent value capabilities of their surroundings. The items and situations in life to which people believe they have a right are called value expectations. The major reference point for value capacity is the social and physical environment, which impacts how probable people believe they are to acquire or preserve the values they genuinely aspire to acquire.

Gurr also links dissonance, anomie, and conflict to relative deprivation, stating that "the underlying driving link between relative deprivation and the ability for collective violence is provided by frustration aggression and the concomitant threat-aggression systems." The second of these, anomie, has a substantial impact on how opportunities are valued. Three models are available to describe how the disparities between value expectations and capabilities impact relative deprivation. The gradual deprivation model depicts a scenario in which expectations are stable, but skills are deteriorating. Under an aspirational model, the capabilities are the same, but the expectations are higher. The final model, also referred to as the J-curve or progressive deprivation model, is relevant when skills first increase along with expectations but later plateau or deteriorate as expectations increase.

When a person feels deprived and frustrated as a result, aggressive behaviour develops. They feel "jealous" for those who have more. They raise hell or revolt against the wealthy. The root causes of poverty are not addressed. Gurr dismisses the socioeconomic structure that contributes to deprivation since he sees "deprivation" as mostly psychological. When this absence of anything is directed at one person against another, crime ensues. When everyone is aware of a region, community, or caste's deprivation, collective action is formed. It does not, however, come with a philosophy for the social structure; rather, it resembles a protest or a rebellion more than a social movement.

4. a) Fisher folks organizations

Ans) The 1960s and 1970s saw the first attempts to establish organisations for fishermen at the local, state, and national levels in India. In the Keralan district of Quilon, the first union was established in 1963. The unions were established in the Alleppey, Cochin, Trivendram, and Malabar districts by the 1980s. The leadership of these organisations and the Roman Catholic church had close ties in Kerala. But these organisations didn't organise fishermen into a movement until the 1980s and 1990s. Other coastal states including West Bengal, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu have unions of fishermen. However, they were most outspoken and intelligent in Kerala.

Kerala Swatantra Malsaya Thozhilali Federation (KSMTF), also known as Kerala Independent Fisher Workers' Federation, was the largest union for fishermen in Kerala. Being unaffiliated with any political party, it was an apolitical organisation. The Kerala Latheen Catholica Malsia Thozhilalee Federation (KLCFF) was established in 1977 as the result of the merger of many district level organisations. Although there were non-cleric officials as well, its state-level leadership was predominately a cleric leadership. It changed its name to Akhil Kerala Swathantra Malsia Thozhilalee Federation (AKSMTF), the "All-Kerala Independent Fishermen's Federation," in order to gain support from the Muslim and Hindu fishermen.

The fisherpeople's unions from Goa, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and other states founded the National Fishermens Forum in 1978. In May–July 1999, the fishermen at Chilika Lake's Fisher Folks' Movement started a protest against shrimp cultivation. Chilika Matsyajib Mahasangh, the National Fisherworkers Forum (India), and the World Forum for Fish-harvesters and Fishworkers were the organisations that took the lead (WFF).

b) Communal and religious movements and their impact

Ans) All-India Muslim Conference, which both served as the foundational organisations from which the Muslim League's leaders and Pakistan's political philosophy originated. The opposition to assimilation and submersion in Hindu society was a common thread among all Muslim revival groups. Following the introduction of distinct electorates, which eventually led to an ideological split between the Muslims and the Hindus in the future, the concept of the separateness of Muslims in India was incorporated into the electoral system of India. By the late 19th century, there were also communal disputes and movements in India that were centred on religious communities rather than class or area, despite the country's strong emotions of nationalism against the British.

Hindu communal feelings were stoked alongside Muslim communal feelings over concerns about "cow slaughter" and Christian and Muslim conversion. Hindu revivalists like the Arya Samaj and other Hindu orthodox organisations started the Shuddhi Movement to convert Hindus who had converted to Islam or Christianity. Hindus intended to switch the official alphabet from the Persian to the Hindu Devanagri script, essentially making Hindi rather than Urdu the dominant option for the national language. This caused a rift between the two communities.

In response to the creation of the Muslim League, right-wing Hindu political movements also began to organise themselves along partisan lines in the first quarter of the 20th century, culminating in the formation of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which advocated for a unified Hindu-Rashtra.

Despite strong secular nationalist feelings expressed during the freedom fight, the political philosophy founded on religious sentiments was unable to hold the people in this subcontinent together. India's independence was followed by its division along communal lines, despite the fact that India outright rejected the idea of a state being founded on religious or communal sentiments and declared itself a secular state. However, because religious attitudes and ideals were ingrained in Indian culture as a whole, they continued to reflect the sentiments of the general public in a variety of matters that were raised along religious lines.

5. a) Impact of globalization on social movements

Ans) Many developing nations used state-owned firms substantially, adopted inward-looking economic plans, and had highly protected and controlled economies up until the 1980s. The Indian economy followed this path generally. These nations began their journey toward privatisation, liberalisation, and deregulation in the 1990s. India was one of these nations as well. India's choice to adopt what became known as the New Economic Policy was impacted by a number of global and domestic influences. India's foreign exchange reserves were severely depleted. Even to cover imports for two months would have required more foreign exchange reserves than there were. To avoid the crisis, the nation was forced to turn to the World Bank and IMF for assistance.

The country had to accept a package of stabilisation and structural adjustment programmes in order to get these loans. This package gave India's economic liberalisation effort the much-needed boost. This offered the government's reform-focused bureaucracy a chance to forward their long-cherished objective. The looming financial crisis strengthened the will for governmental reform. Around this time, the ideological opposition to the reforms policy seemed to be at its weakest. Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's economic policies in the United States were examples of what became known as "rolling back the state." In a way, this seemed like the Keynesian economic model of the welfare state was losing favour. The former Soviet Union's dissolution and the successor governments' and its former satellite republics' acceptance of the capitalist route of development signalled the demise of the socialist paradigm, rendering the ideological foundations for widespread state control unworkable. The economic success of China in the years following its reforms also appears to have strengthened India's commitment to liberalisation.

According to Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, current government strategy appears to be preoccupied mostly with eliminating ineffective regulations. Positive activities have previously and still been being neglected by the state. According to Zoya Hasan, economic liberalisation may harm the material interests of the poor; as a result, creative solutions are required to bridge the gaps of poverty and injustice amongst classes, castes, groups, genders, and regions.

b) Reservation politics in India.

Ans) Reservation became a major political problem in India after the presentation of the Mandal Commission Report by the V. P. Singh government in 1990, which advocated a 27% OBC hiring preference. It not only elicited responses in favour of or against it, but it also altered the political landscape in India. The Janata Party administration in 1990 appointed the Mandal Commission as a consequence of pressure from the leadership of the underclass and their influence.

In the Constituent Assembly, Punjab Rao Deshmukh demanded reservations for the underprivileged classes, much as Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had done for the Scheduled Castes. On January 26, 1950, he established the All India Backward Classes Federation (AIBCF) to discuss the topic of reservations for the underprivileged. There were growing divisions within the AIBCF between those who were with the Congress and those who sided with the Socialist Lohiaites.

As a result, the AIBCF split, and the splinter organisation adopted the name National Backward Classes Federation (NBCF). The former was led by Congressman Punjab Rao Deshmukh, and the latter by R. L. Chandpuri. Chandpuri died, and Chaudhry Brahm Praksah took over as head. In addition, there were numerous unofficial and unregistered organisations operating at all levels of the nation and in every state.

The backward class leadership's persistent efforts to have the Kaka Kalelkar Commission's, the first backward class commission report, acknowledged led to the Mandal Commission. The leadership of the underclass demanded such a commission at the time of Independence, which led to the creation of the Kaka Kalelkar Commission. However, Kaka Kalelkar's suggestions that class be used as a criterion for class identification and the parliament's rejection of the Commission's report prompted the demand for the appointment of a new commission that would use social and educational backwardness as a criterion for class identification.

However, the reservation debate has not been resolved since the Mandal Commission's report was put into practise. Newer organisations continue to press for recognition as OBCs. A community's ability to be classified as an OBC is a political decision that is influenced by a variety of political issues.