Social movements in modern India

Deprivation, discontent, and frustration are frequently assumed to be sufficient causes for initiating or joining a social movement. The relationship is not a simple one, however. There is little evidence that the most deprived segments of a population are the most likely to participate in social movements.

A social movement is a mass movement and a collective attempt of people to bring about a change, or to resist any change. The concept central to any social movement is that people intervene in the process of social change, rather than remaining mere spectators or passive participants in the ebb and flow of life.

• Swadeshi Movement, 1905.
• Satyagraha.
• Chipko Movement, 1973.
• Namantaran Andolan, 1978.
• Narmada Bachao Andolan, 1985.
• Anti- Mandal Agitation, 1990.
• Anti- Reservation Protest, 2006.
• Jan Lokpal Bill – Anti Corruption Movement by Anna Hazare, 2011.

Social movements primarily take the form of non-institutionalised collective political action which strive for political and/or social change. While India has witnessed many such movements over the centuries, it is only recently that scholars have begun to study them in depth.

Mahatma Jotirao Phooley

The old social movements clearly saw reorganisation of power relations as a central goal. So the ‘new’ social movements were not about changing the distribution of power in society but about quality-of-life issues such as having a clean environment.

Some scholars explain the rise of social movements by citing the grievances of people who feel that they have been deprived of values to which they are entitled. Similarly, individuals engage in deviant behaviors when their means do not match their goals.

The phrase social movements refers to collective activities designed to bring about or resist primary changes in an existing society or group. Wherever they occur, social movements can dramatically shape the direction of society. Even when they prove initially unsuccessful, social movements do affect public opinion.

The sociologists John McCarthy and Mayer Zald define as a social movement as “a set of opinions and beliefs in a population which represents preferences for changing some elements of the social structure and/or reward distribution of a society.”

Old social movements are often based on a class identity like a trade union or peasant movements. New social movements are the movement where participants shared identities as students, women, blacks, or environmentalists. Yes, we can apply the distinction between old and new social movements in the Indian context.

Social protest is a form of political expression that seeks to bring about social or political change by influencing the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of the public or the policies of an organization or institution.

Social movements may promise to bring about social change and they do bring it. But it is not a one way process. Not only do social movements bring about change, but social change sometimes gives birth to movements. Social change often breeds social movements, and movements, in turn, breed additional change.