- What makes a social movement different from an ordinary protest, and what a “counter movement” is
- Why sociology itself, from Durkheim to E.P. Thompson, has always studied social movements
- The three types of social movements, and how “old” and “new” social movements differ
- The Chipko Movement as the chapter’s own worked example of an ecological movement
- Peasant, workers’, Dalit, backward-class, tribal and women’s movements, with the book’s own named events and dates
- How to answer “distinguish between” and “discuss” questions on this chapter using the book’s own examples, not outside ones
| Board | Marks | Status |
|---|---|---|
| CBSE | 10 (of the 80-mark theory paper) | Examinable, 2026-27 curriculum (Unit 15, Social Movements) |
The CBSE 2026-27 curriculum lists for this unit: the concept, theories and classification of social movements; environmental movements; class-based movements (workers, peasants); caste-based movements (Dalit movement, backward classes/castes, trends in upper caste responses); tribal movements; and women’s movements in independent India. Students of other boards should check their own board’s current syllabus.
1What Is a Social Movement?
A great many students and office-workers around the world go to work only for five or six days and rest on the weekends. Very few people who relax on their day off realise that this holiday is the outcome of a long struggle by workers. The eight-hour work-day, equal pay for men and women doing the same work, and workers’ rights to social security and pension were all won through social movements. Social movements have shaped the world we live in, and continue to do so.
Universal adult franchise is one of the Indian Constitution’s foremost rights. Even in Britain, voting was once limited to property-owning men. Chartism, a social movement for parliamentary representation in England, won the signatures of more than 1.25 million people on the People’s Charter in 1839, asking for universal male suffrage, and collected 3.25 million signatures in 1842. Only after World War I, in 1918, did all men over 21, and married women, women owning houses and women university graduates over the age of 30, finally get the right to vote. When suffragettes took up the cause of all adult women’s right to vote, their movement was bitterly opposed and violently crushed.
You already know the 19th-century social reform movements, the struggles against caste and gender discrimination, and India’s own nationalist movement that won independence in 1947. Many nationalist movements across Asia, Africa and the Americas also put an end to colonial rule. Socialist movements, the American civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s, and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa all changed the world fundamentally. Social movements do not only change societies; they also inspire other social movements: the Indian national movement shaped the making of the Indian Constitution, and the Constitution in turn played a major role in bringing about social change.
A social movement requires sustained collective action over time, often directed against the state, demanding a change in state policy or practice. Spontaneous, disorganised protest is not a social movement; collective action must show some degree of organisation, with a leadership and a structure defining how members relate, decide and act. Participants share objectives and ideologies, and the movement has a general orientation towards bringing about (or preventing) change. These features are not fixed; they can change over a movement’s life.
Social movements often arise to change something on a public issue; for example, the right of tribal people to use forests, or the right of displaced people to settlement and compensation. While social movements seek social change, counter movements sometimes arise to defend the status quo.
Sati
Raja Rammohun Roy campaigned against sati and formed the Brahmo Samaj; sati’s defenders formed the Dharma Sabha and petitioned the British not to legislate against it.
Girls’ education
When reformers demanded education for girls, many protested it would be “disastrous for society”.
Widow remarriage
Reformers who campaigned for widow remarriage were socially boycotted.
Caste and schools
When “lower caste” children enrolled in schools, some “upper caste” families withdrew their own children.
Peasants and Dalits
Peasant movements were often brutally suppressed; Dalit social movements have often invoked retaliatory action.
Reservation
Proposals to extend reservation in educational institutions have led to counter movements opposing them.
Social movements cannot change society easily; since they go against both entrenched interests and entrenched values, opposition and resistance are natural. But change does happen, over time.
Protest is the most visible form of collective action, but a social movement works in other, equally important ways too. Activists hold meetings to mobilise people and build a shared understanding or consensus about how to pursue the collective agenda. Movements also chart out campaigns that lobby the government, the media and other opinion-makers, and they develop distinct modes of protest; candle and torch-light processions, the use of black cloth, street theatre, songs and poetry.
Mahatma Gandhi adopted novel methods in the freedom movement: ahimsa, satyagraha, and the use of the charkha. He wore khadi, hand-spun and hand-woven cloth, to support Indian cotton-growers, spinners and weavers whose livelihoods had been destroyed by the government’s policy of favouring mill-made cloth. The legendary Dandi March, made to produce salt in defiance of the colonial ban, protested British taxation policies that placed a heavy burden on ordinary consumers to benefit the empire. Gandhi took everyday items of mass consumption, cloth and salt, and turned them into symbols of resistance, along with picketing.
2Social Change and Social Movements
It is important to distinguish social change in general from social movements. Social change is continuous and ongoing; the broad historical processes of social change are the sum total of countless individual and collective actions gathered across time and space. Social movements are directed towards specific goals; they involve long, continuous social effort and action by people.
Sanskritisation and westernisation are social changes; the 19th-century social reformers’ own efforts to change society are social movements.
The book’s own example of the distinction.
3Why Sociology Studies Social Movements
From its very beginning, sociology has been interested in social movements. The French Revolution was the violent culmination of several movements aimed at overthrowing the monarchy and establishing “liberty, equality and fraternity”. In Britain, the industrial revolution was marked by great social upheaval; poor labourers and artisans who had left the countryside to find work in cities protested the inhuman living conditions forced on them, and food riots in England were often suppressed by the government. Elites perceived these protests as a major threat to the established social order.
Émile Durkheim’s view
- Concerned with maintaining social order
- His writings on the division of labour, forms of religious life, and even suicide mirror this concern for how social structures enable social integration
- Social movements were seen as forces leading to disorder
Scholars influenced by Karl Marx
- Historian E. P. Thompson showed the “crowd” and the “mob” were not anarchic hooligans out to destroy society
- They had their own “moral economy”; a shared understanding of right and wrong informing their actions
- Poor urban people had good reasons to protest; often their only way to express anger against deprivation
4Types of Social Movements
Social movements can be classified into three types.
Most movements actually mix redemptive, reformist and revolutionary elements, and a movement’s orientation can shift over time, starting off revolutionary and becoming reformist, for instance. A movement can move from mass mobilisation and collective protest towards becoming more institutionalised; sociologists call this a move towards “social movement organisations”.
How a social movement is perceived is always a matter of interpretation, and it differs by section. What was a “mutiny” or “rebellion” for the British colonial rulers in 1857 was “the first war of Independence” for Indian nationalists. A mutiny defies supposedly legitimate authority; a struggle for independence challenges the very legitimacy of that authority.
5Old and New Social Movements
Working-class movements in the capitalist West wrested better wages, living conditions, social security, free schooling and health security from the state; this was also a period when socialist movements were building new kinds of states and societies. The old social movements saw the reorganisation of power relations as a central goal, and functioned within the frame of political parties: the Indian National Congress led the Indian National Movement, and the Communist Party of China led the Chinese Revolution.
Some believe “old” class-based political action, led by trade unions and workers’ parties, is declining. Others argue that in the affluent West with its welfare state, class-based exploitation and inequality are no longer central concerns; so the “new” social movements were not about redistributing power, but about quality-of-life issues such as a clean environment.
Political scientist Rajni Kothari attributes the surge of social movements in India in the 1970s to people’s growing dissatisfaction with parliamentary democracy. He argues that state institutions have been captured by elites, so electoral representation by political parties is no longer an effective way for the poor to be heard. People left out of the formal political system join social movements, or non-party political formations, to pressure the state from outside.
Today, the broader term civil society covers both the old social movements represented by political parties and trade unions, and the new non-governmental organisations, women’s groups, environmental groups and tribal activists.
Globalisation is re-shaping people’s lives in industry, agriculture, culture and media. Firms are often transnational, and binding legal arrangements are often international, such as World Trade Organisation (WTO) regulations. Environmental and health risks, and fears of nuclear warfare, are global in nature. Not surprisingly, many new social movements are international in scope, and, significantly, old and new movements are working together in new alliances such as the World Social Forum, which raises awareness of the hazards of globalisation.
In the information age, social movements join together in huge regional and international networks: non-governmental organisations, religious and humanitarian groups, human rights associations, consumer protection advocates and environmental activists all take part. The enormous protests against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle were organised in part through internet-based networks.
New social movements are not just about “old” issues of economic inequality, nor are they organised along class lines alone. Identity politics, cultural anxieties and aspirations are essential elements that are difficult to trace to class-based inequality; often, these movements unite participants across class boundaries. The women’s movement, for instance, includes urban middle-class feminists as well as poor peasant women; regional movements for separate statehood bring together groups who do not share a homogeneous class identity. Questions of social inequality can occur alongside other, equally important issues in the same movement, as the Chipko Movement shows next.
In India the line between “old” and “new” social movements is hard to draw. The book’s own examples show why: the women’s movement unites middle-class feminists and poor peasant women; Chipko joins a subsistence (economic) issue to an ecological one; and tribal movements combine identity, inequality and forest (ecological) issues. The end-of-chapter exercise asks you to discuss exactly this point.
6Ecological Movements: The Chipko Movement
Modern development has placed the greatest emphasis on growth, with growing concern over the unchecked use of natural resources and a model that assumes all sections of people benefit. Big dams displace people from their homes and livelihood; industries displace agriculturalists from theirs; industrial pollution is yet another story.
The Chipko Movement, in the Himalayan foothills, is the chapter’s own worked example of an ecological movement, and of how economic and ecological interests intermingle. According to Ramachandra Guha, in his book Unquiet Woods, villagers rallied together to save the oak and rhododendron forests near their villages. When government forest contractors came to fell the trees, villagers, including large numbers of women, stepped forward and hugged the trees to stop the felling.
The “red” issue: subsistence
- Villagers relied on the forest for firewood, fodder and daily necessities
- Their subsistence economy stood against the government’s profit economy; it wanted to sell timber and generate revenue
The “green” issue: ecology
- Cutting the natural forests caused devastating floods and landslides in the region
- Villagers valued the forest both for survival and for its own sake, as ecological wealth benefiting everyone
Chipko also expressed the hill villagers’ resentment of a distant government headquartered in the plains, which seemed indifferent and hostile to their concerns. Trees are necessary for the conservation of the environment, and clean water is necessary for a healthy environment. In the light of this, the Government of India since 2014 has initiated the “Integrated Ganga Conservation Mission” (Namami Gange) and the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan”.
The unusually heavy monsoon of 1970 precipitated the most devastating flood in living memory. In the Alaknanda valley, water inundated 100 square kilometres of land, washed away 6 metal bridges and 10 kilometres of motor roads, 24 buses and several other vehicles; 366 houses collapsed and 500 acres of standing paddy were destroyed, with considerable human and bovine life lost. Villagers began to perceive the links between deforestation, landslides and floods; some of the villages most affected by landslides lay directly below forests where felling operations had taken place.
The villagers’ cause was taken up by the Dashauli Gram Swaraja Sangh (DGSS), a cooperative organisation in Chamoli district. Despite early protests, the government went ahead with its yearly forest auction in November; one plot due for felling was the Reni forest. Contractors’ men travelling from Joshimath towards Reni were spotted by a small girl, who ran to alert Gaura Devi, head of the village’s Mahila Mandal (Women’s Club). Gaura Devi mobilised the other housewives and went to the forest. Their pleas were first met with abuse and threats, but when the women refused to budge, the men were eventually forced to retire.
7Class-Based Movements: Peasants and Workers
7.1 Peasant Movements
Peasant movements, or agrarian struggles, go back to pre-colonial days. Movements between 1858 and 1914 tended to stay localised, disjointed and confined to particular grievances; well-known examples are the Bengal revolt of 1859-62 against the indigo plantation system, and the “Deccan riots” of 1875 against moneylenders. Some of these issues continued into the following period and, under Gandhi’s leadership, became partially linked to the Independence movement. In the 1920s, protest movements against the forest policies of the British government and local rulers arose in certain regions.
The book calls Tebhaga and Telangana “the two most classical cases of peasant movements” at the time of Independence.
According to Kanu Sanyal’s later claims, from March to April 1967, all the villagers were organised; 15,000 to 20,000 peasants enrolled as wholetime activists. Peasants’ committees were formed in every village and transformed into armed guards. They occupied land in the committees’ name, burnt land records, cancelled all hypothecary debts, passed death sentences on oppressive landlords, formed armed bands by looting guns from landlords, armed themselves with bows, arrows and spears, and set up a parallel administration. Source: Sumanta Banerjee, “Naxalbari and the Left Movement,” in Ghanshyam Shah (ed.), Social Movements and the State (Sage, Delhi, 2002), pp.125-192.
New Farmers’ Movements began in the 1970s in Punjab and Tamil Nadu. Unlike the peasant movements above, these were regionally organised, non-party, and involved “farmers” (people who are both commodity producers and purchasers, market-involved on both sides) rather than “peasants”. Their ideology was strongly anti-state and anti-urban, and their demands centred on “price and related issues”: procurement prices, remunerative prices, prices for agricultural inputs, taxation, and non-repayment of loans. They used novel methods of agitation: blocking roads and railways, and refusing politicians and bureaucrats entry to villages. Over time, farmers’ movements broadened their agenda to include environment and women’s issues too, so they can be seen as part of the worldwide “new social movements”.
The guerrilla movement was heralded by the forcible cutting of crops from a rich landlord’s land at Garudabhadra, near Boddapadu, on 24 November 1968. More significant was the action the next day in Pedagottili village, Parvatipuram Agency area, where about 250 Girijans (a term for local tribal people) from several villages, armed with bows, arrows and spears, raided a landlord-cum-moneylender’s house and took possession of his hoarded paddy, rice, other food grains and property worth about Rs. 20,000, and seized his documents.
7.2 Workers’ Movements
Factory production began in India in the early 1860s, under the colonial trade pattern where raw materials were procured from India and goods manufactured in the United Kingdom were sold back in the colony. Factories were therefore set up in the port towns of Calcutta (Kolkata) and Bombay (Mumbai), and later Madras (Chennai); tea plantations in Assam were established as early as 1839. In early colonialism, labour was very cheap, since the colonial government did not regulate wages or working conditions.
Trade unions emerged only later, though workers did protest earlier; these actions were more spontaneous than sustained. Nationalist leaders also drew workers into the anti-colonial movement. The (First World) War expanded industries but brought food shortages and sharp price rises, leading to waves of strikes.
1917 strike wave
Sept-Oct 1917: about 30 recorded strikes in Bombay’s textile mills; Calcutta jute workers struck; workers of Buckingham and Carnatic Mills (Binny’s), Madras, struck for higher wages; Ahmedabad textile workers struck for a 50% wage increase (Bhowmick 2004).
First trade union, 1918
Established in April 1918 in Madras by B.P. Wadia, a social worker and Theosophical Society member. The same year, Mahatma Gandhi founded the Textile Labour Association (TLA).
AITUC, 1920
The All India Trade Union Congress formed in Bombay; a broad-based organisation of diverse ideologies: communists (S.A. Dange, M.N. Roy), moderates (M. Joshi, V.V. Giri), and nationalists (Lala Lajpat Rai, Jawaharlal Nehru).
INTUC, 1947
In British rule’s last years, communists gained considerable control over the AITUC. The Indian National Congress formed the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) in May 1947, after which the AITUC split further along political-party lines; regional parties formed their own unions from the late 1960s.
The economy suffered a major recession in 1966-67, decreasing production and employment and causing general unrest. In 1974, there was a major railway workers’ strike. The confrontation between the state and trade unions became acute; the workers’ movement was very much part of the wider struggle for civil liberties.
8Caste-Based Movements: Dalits and Backward Classes
8.1 The Dalit Movement
Dalit social movements cannot be explained satisfactorily by economic exploitation or political oppression alone, though both matter. This is a struggle for recognition as fellow human beings, for self-confidence and self-determination, and for the abolishment of the stigma that untouchability implied; it has been called “a struggle to be touched”.
The word “Dalit” is commonly used in Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and other Indian languages to mean poor and oppressed persons. It was first used in this new (political) sense in Marathi by neo-Buddhist activists, followers of Babasaheb Ambedkar, in the early 1970s. It refers to those broken and ground down deliberately by those above them, and the word itself denies pollution, karma and any justified caste hierarchy.
There has never been a single, unified Dalit movement in the country, now or in the past; different movements have highlighted different issues around different ideologies. Yet all of them assert a Dalit identity, even where its precise meaning is not identical for everyone, in a common quest for equality, self-dignity and the eradication of untouchability (Shah 2001:194).
| Movement | Region |
|---|---|
| Satnami Movement (of the Chamars) | Chhattisgarh plains, eastern Madhya Pradesh |
| Adi Dharma Movement | Punjab |
| Mahar Movement | Maharashtra |
| Socio-political mobilisation of the Jatavas | Agra |
| Anti-Brahman Movement | South India |
In the contemporary period, the Dalit movement has unquestionably acquired a place in the public sphere that cannot be ignored, accompanied by a growing body of Dalit literature. Dalit writers insist on using their own imageries and expressions, rooted in their own experiences; many felt the “high-flown” social imageries of mainstream society would hide the truth rather than reveal it. Dalit literature gives a call for social and cultural revolt. While some emphasise the cultural struggle for dignity and identity, others bring in the structural and economic features of society too.
Sociologists’ attempts to classify Dalit movements find they belong to all three types: reformative, redemptive, revolutionary. The anti-caste movement began in the 19th century under the inspiration of Jotiba Phule, was carried forward in the 1920s by non-Brahmin movements in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, and then developed under the leadership of Dr. Ambedkar; it had characteristics of all three types: at its best, revolutionary for society and redemptive for individuals.
In partial context, the “post Ambedkar Dalit movement” has had revolutionary practice, providing alternative ways of living, ranging from giving up eating beef to religious conversion, and aiming at everything from the radical goal of abolishing caste oppression and economic exploitation to the more limited goal of social mobility for Scheduled Caste members. But on the whole, this movement has been a reformist movement: it mobilised along caste lines but made only half-hearted efforts to destroy caste itself; it achieved some real, if limited, change, with gains especially for educated Dalits, but has failed to transform society enough to lift the general mass out of what is still among the most excruciating poverty in the world.
8.2 Backward Class/Castes Movements
Backward castes/classes emerged as political entities in both colonial and post-colonial contexts. The colonial state often distributed patronage on the basis of caste, so it made social and political sense for people to stay within their caste for institutional identity; this also pushed similarly-placed caste groups to unite into what has been called a “horizontal stretch”. Caste thus began losing its ritual content and became more secularised for political mobilisation.
The term “Backward Classes” has been in use in different parts of the country since the late 19th century; more widely in Madras Presidency since 1872, in the princely state of Mysore since 1918, and in Bombay Presidency since 1925. From the 1920s, organisations built around caste issues sprang up across the country, including the United Provinces Hindu Backward Classes League, the All-India Backward Classes Federation, and the All India Backward Classes League. By 1954, 88 organisations were counted working for the Backward Classes.
Moving the constitution of the Advisory Committee on fundamental rights, minorities, etc., G.B. Pant said: “We have to take particular care of the Depressed Classes, the Scheduled Castes and the Backward Classes… The strength of the chain is measured by the weakest link of it and so until every link is fully revitalised, we will not have a healthy body politic.” In 2019, the Government of India introduced 10% reservation in education and government jobs for economically weaker sections among upper castes; the book asks students to discuss how this differs from Pant’s quote above.
9Tribal Movements: Jharkhand and the North East
Different tribal groups across the country share some common issues, but the distinctions between them are equally significant. Many tribal movements are located in the “tribal belt” of middle India: the Santhals, Hos, Oraons and Mundas of Chota Nagpur and the Santhal Parganas, a region that forms the main part of what is now Jharkhand.
9.1 Jharkhand
Jharkhand, carved out of south Bihar in the year 2000, is one of India’s newly formed states, but more than a century of resistance lies behind its formation. The movement had a charismatic leader in Birsa Munda, an adivasi who led a major uprising against the British; after his death, Birsa became an important icon of the movement, remembered in stories and songs across Jharkhand. Christian missionaries working in south Bihar spread literacy in the area, and literate adivasis began researching and writing about their own history, myths, customs and cultural practices, helping create a unified ethnic consciousness and a shared Jharkhandi identity.
Literate adivasis were also able to get government jobs, so a middle-class adivasi intellectual leadership emerged over time, formulating the demand for a separate state and lobbying for it in India and abroad. Adivasis in south Bihar shared a common hatred of “dikus”: migrant traders and moneylenders who had settled in the area and grabbed its wealth, impoverishing the original residents. Most benefits from mining and industrial projects in this mineral-rich region went to dikus, even as adivasi lands were being alienated. This sense of marginalisation and injustice was mobilised into a shared Jharkhandi identity that eventually led to the formation of the separate state.
Land acquisition
For large irrigation projects and firing ranges
Survey and settlement
Operations held up, camps closed down
Debt collection
Collection of loans, rent and cooperative dues, which villagers resisted
Forest nationalisation
Nationalisation of forest produce, which was boycotted
9.2 The North East
The process of state formation begun by the Indian government after independence created disquieting trends in the region’s major hill districts. Conscious of their distinct identity and traditional autonomy, tribes were unsure about being incorporated into Assam’s administrative machinery. The rise of ethnicity in the region is a response to this new situation, arising from the tribes’ contact with a powerful, unfamiliar system; long isolated from the Indian mainstream, they had kept their own worldview and social/cultural institutions with little outside influence. While the earlier phase showed a tendency towards secessionism, this has been replaced by a search for autonomy within the framework of the Indian Constitution (Nongbri 2003: 115).
One key issue binds tribal movements across the country: the alienation of tribals from forest lands. In this sense, ecological issues are central to tribal movements; just as cultural issues of identity, and economic issues such as inequality, are. This brings us back to the question of the blurring of old and new social movements in India.
10The Women’s Movement
You are already familiar with the 19th-century social reform movements that raised various issues concerning women. The early 20th century saw the growth of women’s organisations at the national and local level.
| Organisation | Founded |
|---|---|
| Women’s India Association (WIA) | 1917 |
| National Council for Women in India (NCWI) | 1925 |
| All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) | 1926 |
Many of these organisations began with a limited focus that extended over time. The AIWC, for instance, began with the idea that “women’s welfare” and “politics” were mutually exclusive; but a few years later, one of its Presidential addresses asked: “Can the Indian man or woman be free if India be a slave? How can we remain dumb about national freedom, the very basis of all great reforms?” (Chaudhuri 1993: 149)
It can be argued either way whether this period of activity was a “social movement”. It did have organisations, ideology, leadership, a shared understanding, and the aim of change on a public issue. What these efforts succeeded in doing together was create an atmosphere where the women’s question could not be ignored.
10.1 Agrarian Struggles and Revolts
It is often wrongly assumed that only middle-class educated women take part in social movements. Part of the struggle has been to remember the forgotten history of women’s participation; women fought alongside men in struggles and revolts in tribal and rural areas during the colonial period: the Tebhaga movement in Bengal, the Telangana armed struggle against the erstwhile Nizam’s rule, and the Warli tribal revolt against bondage in Maharashtra.
10.2 Post-1947
A question often raised: if there was an active women’s movement before 1947, what happened to it afterwards? One explanation is that many women activists who had been part of the nationalist movement got drawn into nation-building work instead. Others point to the trauma of Partition as the cause of the lull.
In the mid-1970s, the women’s movement in India was renewed, in what some call its “second phase”. While many of its concerns stayed the same, there were changes both in organisational strategy and in ideology. New issues came into focus, especially violence against women. School application forms now have both the father’s and the mother’s names; this was not always true. Important legal changes have followed from the women’s movement’s campaigns; issues of land rights and employment have been fought alongside rights against sexual harassment and dowry.
The book stresses that while all women are in some way disadvantaged relative to men, they do not all suffer the same level or kind of discrimination; an educated middle-class woman’s concerns differ from a peasant woman’s, just as a Dalit woman’s concerns differ from an “upper-caste” woman’s.
There is also growing recognition that both men and women are constrained by dominant gender identities. In patriarchal societies, men feel they must be strong and successful; it is seen as “not manly” to express oneself emotionally. A gender-just society would let both men and women be free, which in turn rests on the idea that true freedom needs an end to injustice of every kind. This idea rests on two factors: educated women in multiple roles, and an improved sex ratio. The Government of India’s Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana is named by the book as an important effort towards this gender-just society.
Social movements arise because individuals and social groups seek to change their conditions. In doing so, they change both themselves and society.
Conclusion: the book’s own closing thought, returning to the Class XI book’s opening theme of the dialectical relationship between the individual and society
- A social movement needs sustained, organised collective action with shared goals; spontaneous protest alone is not enough; counter movements defend the status quo (sati, girls’ education, widow remarriage, caste-in-schools, reservation)
- Social change is continuous; social movements target specific goals; sanskritisation/westernisation vs 19th-century reform movements
- Durkheim saw movements as disorder; Marx-influenced scholars (E.P. Thompson) saw a “moral economy” behind the “crowd”
- Three types: redemptive (Narayana Guru), reformist (states reorganisation, RTI), revolutionary (Bolshevik, Naxalite); most movements mix all three
- Old movements = political-party frame, power redistribution; new movements = quality-of-life/identity issues, cross-class, civil society, globalisation, World Social Forum; Rajni Kothari on the 1970s Indian surge
- Chipko Movement: Guha’s Unquiet Woods, subsistence vs profit economy, red/green issues, the 1970 flood, DGSS, Reni forest, Gaura Devi
- Peasant movements: Bengal revolt 1859-62, Deccan riots (1875), Bardoli/Champaran Satyagraha, Kisan Sabhas (1929, 1936), Tebhaga (1946-47), Telangana (1946-51), New Farmers’ Movements (1970s), Naxalbari (1967)
- Workers’ movements: 1917 strike wave, first trade union 1918 (B.P. Wadia), TLA (Gandhi), AITUC (1920), INTUC (1947), 1966-67 recession, 1974 railway strike
- Dalit movement: word from early-1970s Ambedkarite Marathi usage; Satnami, Adi Dharma, Mahar, Jatava, Anti-Brahman movements; “on the whole” reformist (Box 8.7)
- Backward Class movements: Madras 1872, Mysore 1918, Bombay 1925; 88 organisations by 1954; G.B. Pant’s speech (Box 8.8)
- Tribal movements: Jharkhand (Birsa Munda, dikus, 2000), North East (secessionism to autonomy, Nongbri 2003); ecological issues central to both
- Women’s movement: WIA (1917), NCWI (1925), AIWC (1926); agrarian struggles (Tebhaga, Telangana, Warli); post-1947 lull and the mid-1970s “second phase”
- Can I list the four defining features of a social movement, and give two examples of counter movements?
- Can I name all three types of social movement with one example each, and explain how old and new social movements differ?
- Can I narrate the Chipko Movement’s story in order, with the 1970 flood figures and the Reni forest episode?
- Can I distinguish peasant movements from New Farmers’ Movements, with named examples and dates on each side?
- Can I explain, in the book’s own words, why the Dalit movement is called “on the whole” a reformist movement?
- Can I name the issues the Jharkhand movement organised against, and explain the word “dikus”?
- Can I explain why the book argues that not all women face the same kind or level of discrimination?