Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India: Historical Trajectories of Public Protest and Political Mobilisation (Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements) 303094039X, 9783030940393

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Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India Historical Trajectories of Public Protest and Political Mobilisation Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha Manas Dutta Tirthankar Ghosh

Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements

Series Editors Stefan Berger, Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany Holger Nehring, Contemporary European History, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested, actors in local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajectories of their development. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually-informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early modernity to the present. We conceive of ‘social movements’ in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organisations and mere protest events. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in which social movements can emerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. This new series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements, while also helping to historicise the concept of ‘social movement’. It hopes to revitalise the conversation between historians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the ‘dynamics of contention’. Editorial Board John Chalcraft (London School of Economics, UK) Andreas Eckert (Humboldt-University, Germany) Susan Eckstein (Boston University, USA) Felicia Kornbluh (University of Vermont, USA) Jie-Hyun Lim (Research Institute for Comparative History, Hanyang University Seoul, South Korea) Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands) Rochona Majumdar (University of Chicago, USA) Sean Raymond Scalmer (University of Melbourne, Australia) Alexander Sedlmaier (Bangor University, UK)

Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha · Manas Dutta · Tirthankar Ghosh

Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India Historical Trajectories of Public Protest and Political Mobilisation

Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha Department of English Center for Critical Social Inquiry Kazi Nazrul University Asansol, West Bengal, India

Manas Dutta Department of History Aliah University Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Tirthankar Ghosh Department of History Kazi Nazrul University Asansol, West Bengal, India

ISSN 2634-6559 ISSN 2634-6567 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ISBN 978-3-030-94039-3 ISBN 978-3-030-94040-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94040-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: © Jayesh/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Manika Purakayastha Smriti Rekha Dutta Manika Ghosh

Series Editors’ Preface

Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested, actors in local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajectories of their development. Our series reacts to what can be described as a recent boom in the history of social movements. We can observe a development from the crisis of labour history in the 1980s to the boom in research on social movements in the 2000s. The rise of historical interests in the development of civil society and the role of strong civil societies as well as non-governmental organizations in stabilizing democratically constituted polities has strengthened the interest in social movements as a constituent element of civil societies. In different parts of the world, social movements continue to have a strong influence on contemporary politics. In Latin America, trade unions, labour parties and various left-of-centre civil society organizations have succeeded in supporting left-of-centre governments. In Europe, peace movements, ecological movements and alliances intent on campaigning against poverty and racial discrimination and discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation have been able to set important political agendas for decades. In other parts of the world, including Africa, India and South East Asia, social movements have played a significant role in various forms of community building and community politics. The contemporary political relevance of social movements has undoubtedly contributed to a growing historical interest in the topic.

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Contemporary historians are not only beginning to historicize these relatively recent political developments; they are also trying to relate them to a longer history of social movements, including traditional labour organizations, such as working-class parties and trade unions. In the longue durée, we recognize that social movements are by no means a recent phenomenon and are not even an exclusively modern phenomenon, although we realize that the onset of modernity emanating from Europe and North America across the wider world from the eighteenth century onwards marks an important departure point for the development of civil societies and social movements. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the dominance of national history over all other forms of history writing led to a thorough nationalization of the historical sciences. Hence social movements have been examined traditionally within the framework of the nation state. Only during the last two decades have historians begun to question the validity of such methodological nationalism and to explore the development of social movements in comparative, connective and transnational perspective taking into account processes of transfer, reception and adaptation. Whilst our book series does not preclude work that is still being carried out within national frameworks (for, clearly, there is a place for such studies, given the historical importance of the nation state in history), it hopes to encourage comparative and transnational histories on social movements. At the same time as historians have begun to research the history of those movements, a range of social theorists, from Jürgen Habermas to Pierre Bourdieu and from Slavoj Žižek to Alain Badiou as well as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to Miguel Abensour, to name but a few, have attempted to provide philosophical-cum-theoretical frameworks in which to place and contextualize the development of social movements. History has arguably been the most empirical of all the social and human sciences, but it will be necessary for historians to explore further to what extent these social theories can be helpful in guiding and framing the empirical work of the historian in making sense of the historical development of social movements. Hence the current series is also hoping to make a contribution to the ongoing dialogue between social theory and the history of social movements. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early

SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

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modernity to the present. With this series, we seek to revive, within the context of historiographical developments since the 1970s, a conversation between historians on the one hand and sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists on the other. Unlike most of the concepts and theories developed by social scientists, we do not see social movements as directly linked, a priori, to processes of social and cultural change and therefore do not adhere to a view that distinguishes between old (labour) and new (middle-class) social movements. Instead, we want to establish the concept ‘social movement’ as a heuristic device that allows historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to investigate social and political protests in novel settings. Our aim is to historicize notions of social and political activism in order to highlight different notions of political and social protest on both left and right. Hence, we conceive of ‘social movements’ in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organizations and mere protest events. But we also include processes of social and cultural change more generally in our understanding of social movements: this goes back to nineteenth-century understandings of ‘social movement’ as processes of social and cultural change more generally. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in which social movements can emerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. In short, this series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements, while also helping to historicize the concept of ‘social movement’. It also hopes to revitalize the conversation between historians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the ‘dynamics of contention’. Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha, Manas Dutta and Tirthankar Ghosh’s Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India— Historical Trajectories of Public Protest and Political Mobilisation adopts what the authors call a ‘historicist hermeneutics’. They explore how contemporary Indian protest movements are both linked to historical ‘repertoires of contention’ (Charles Tilly), but also represent new imaginaries of democratic mobilization that are framed in the context of digital social media. In short, this book is an attempt to connect long-term structural histories with the eventfulness of contemporary protests.

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The protests the authors analyse unfold in the context of a broadly neoliberal political economy that has taken shape in India since the late 1990s and that has led to a growing chasm between the subsistence economy of a growing group of very poor people and an increasingly affluent urban middle class. This constellation has influenced the Maoist insurgencies as well as recent mobilizations linked more directly to mainstream labour movement mobilizations. This neoliberal constellation has also grounded the new waves of protests against state infrastructure projects such as dams. Here, rural populations campaign not only against the growing influence of foreign companies in such infrastructure projects. They are fundamentally directed against the ‘developmentalist’ conception on which such projects are founded. In that sense, these are also protests for the internal decolonization of Indian politics and society. These movements led to the opening-up of new protest spaces that form the backdrop of contemporary mobilizations: the medialization of these protests meant that politicians could no longer simply ignore these protests. This study shows a key dialectic underlying these processes of medialization: the protests have relied on digital social media whose growth was itself part of the neoliberal agenda in order to oppose that agenda. So, while social media platforms, SMS or WhatsApp as well as the constant discussion of Bollywood culture in and through those media were initially grounded in a purely commercial agenda, they also gave rise to the media culture that enabled contemporary protests to thrive. The protests against the sexual assault and murder of a college student in New Delhi in 2012 constituted the key turning point in that history. This book follows the protests since then and highlights the interaction between mobilization, digital media and public awareness against the backdrop of a longer history of protests in India. This book’s main contribution lies in two key aspects. First, the book provides a fascinating example of a theoretically informed way of writing the history of the present, one that highlights both the importance of specific mobilizations and protest events but that is nonetheless open to exploring long-term structural factors. Second, this volume invites us to see the Indian protest landscape over the last decades or so in the context of the growth of medialized movements after the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street within the neoliberal constellation. Stefan Berger (Ruhr University Bochum) and Holger Nehring (University of Stirling)

Acknowledgements

The gestation of this book can be traced to our leisured but enthusiastic spells of conversation way back in 2015 on various dimensions of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Arab Spring uprising. Numerous brainstorming over many cups of coffee at the university canteen at Asansol allowed this assemblage of historicist analysis, media study and a sociology of protest. The fact that India was going through unprecedented socio-political changes at that time prompted us to respond to those changes through our academic interventions. Subsequently, the idea of this book evolved further through our prolonged discussion with Stephan Berger, Director of Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr University Bochum during the summer school on ‘social protest and social movements in historical and contemporary perspectives’, held in September 2016, in which one of us was invited to speak on new social movements unfolding in India during that period. Our dialogue with Stefan, Sabrina Zajak and many other participants in that summer school at Bochum helped us to give more time to determine the exact scope and direction of this book. Stefan has been so kind in guiding us on the initial draft proposal, helping us to work further to improve the proposal and we also thank Holger Nehring for their patient reading of the proposal. Subsequently, this book owes its life to countless discussions that we had together during the course of our major research project on ‘New Social movement, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India’ (2016–2019), funded by the Indian Council for Social Science

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Research (ICSSR) and we profusely thank Revathy Viswanathan, Deputy Director, Research project section of ICSSR for her constant guidance, kind benevolence and patient support. This ICSSR-funded major research project was conducted at Kazi Nazrul University, West Bengal, India and we also thank all our colleagues associated with the Centre for Critical Social Inquiry (CCSI) at Kazi Nazrul University for providing the required research ambience. We also thank our Vice Chancellor, Professor Sadhan Chakrabarty, who supported us in a big way to complete this project. Richa Biswas, Mustakim Ansary and Arindam Saha, our research associates provided incredible support in forming this research team, gathering data, and doing ethnographic surveys. We also fondly remember their roles during regular debates and discussions on this project. We also thank Souvik Bhattacharya for his technical support and office assistance. In addition, during the last three years, we had the opportunity to learn from many leading scholars working in this field and we thank Ajay Gudavarthy, Aditya Nigam, Ian Buchanan, Dwaipayan Bhattacharya, Nathan Widder, Nandini Sundar, Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak, Nicholas Tampio, Paranjay Guhathakurta, Anup Dhar, Anjan Chakrabarti, Urvashi Bhutalia, Rajarshi Chakrabarty, Gopal Guru, Rajsekhar Basu, Subhendra Bhowmick, Mosarrap Hossain Khan, Mursed Alam and many others who helped us through discussion on various aspects of this book. We carried out empirical surveys at Jadavpur University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi to understand recent trends in Indian campus movements. We thank people from the media and frequent interactions with them shaped our ideas on the role of media in forming new civil society initiatives. Our visit to the British Library, and libraries and archives at Ruhr University Bochum, University of Bonn, and W. E. B. Du Bois Library, Amherst helped us immensely in collecting study materials. At Palgrave, Lucy Kidwell and Redhu Ruthroyoni have been wonderful with their consistent editorial support and flexibility. Finally, thanks to the anonymous readers for their suggestions to improve the manuscript. Asansol, October 2021

Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha Manas Dutta Tirthankar Ghosh

Contents

1 2 3 4 5

Introduction: Past Dissidence and Contemporary Cyber-Publics—Popular Protests in India

1

Historicizing Social Conflicts, Its Major Strands: Ancient, Colonial and Early Postcolonial India

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Second Democratic Upsurge, Liberalization and New India: Post-1970s Socio-Political Mobilizations

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Semiology and Simulacrum: Post-1990s and Virtual Transformation of Popular Dissent

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New Grammar of Protests in Contemporary India: Few Case Studies

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Bibliography

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Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Past Dissidence and Contemporary Cyber-Publics—Popular Protests in India

This book examines different grounds of transformative dissent, turning points or shifts in popular mobilization patterns in India in the current conjuncture. In doing that, it also adopts a historical analysis of previously existing trends or traditional ‘elementary aspects’ (Guha, 1999) of public dissidence, practised in India since long. History of social and political unrest and insurrectionary trends in Indian society in precolonial, colonial and early postcolonial era are quite well documented, are already comprehensively examined and therefore do not warrant further recounting at length. We, therefore, forge a telescoped view of that long history, only to curve out major strands and core areas of popular dissent in India. This historical trajectory equips us to understand the current disjunctions and transformations impacting popular mobilization trends in India. We collate all the major historical threads in this domain before entering into the contemporary, locating in that way, different continuities and discontinuities in mobilizing patterns, dissident agency, emerging areas of dissidence and new organizing tools integrating with new temporalities. We adopt a historicist hermeneutics to decode changing patterns and shifting ideologies and inter-connected imaginaries. Needless to say, that different historical periods in India witnessed heterogenous insurrectional patterns of social mobilizations but in general, social churning in India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. S. Purakayastha et al., Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94040-9_1

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largely pivoted around issues of caste, class, religion, community identity, land-related rights, taxation and territorial control. The scenario got further compounded during the long colonial rule as years of British colonialism complicated the cultural, demographic and political economic systems of India through their policy of ‘divide and rule’ reinforced through their methodology of Orientalist coercion. The genesis and prolonged evolution of anti-colonial movements during the colonial rule built the foundation of Indian nationalism, culminating in India’s freedom in 1947. Early postcolonial India throws up different historical moments of simmering discontents on democratic governmentality or on the failures of constitutional democracy as promised by the postcolonial state. Till the 1980s, social mobilizations in India generally deployed conventional methods of organized protests and by and large, the major issues that galvanized people together were issues of identity, labour rights, jobs, hunger and food rights, linguistic rights and land reform. Post-1990s, in the aftermath of liberalization, those traditional methods of organized labour movements continued with much vigour but newer templates of mobilization and fresh trends began to surface as with growing marketization and technological advancement, unprecedented changes in social relation, economic opportunities and cultural transfusion were witnessed. India’s advocacy for market economy fuelled the need for an unbridled march towards techno-capitalism, allowing consumer culture to thrive along with massive technologization of the public sphere. Cable Television, multiple news channels, phenomenal rise in mobile telephone use and comprehensive spread of Internet connections formed a ‘Brand New Nation’ of digital power and economic aspirations (Kaur, 2020). This was a New India that however retained its abysmal record in poverty, malnutrition and political corruption, and yet looked for possible economic ascension through laissez faire—an aspiring prosperous India, globally connected and sustained by the rising middle class, a big market, entrepreneurship drive run by technocracy. This was the early phase of the Info-nation in the making, a public space shared by more than one hundred billion people, flooded with the allurements of free market economy, gadgetry and concomitant civil society activities. In a way, this was the beginning of a Networked-India, run by multiple ICT (Information and Communication Technology)-driven networks and cyber cafes, call centres and software boom. It was no longer the India that was content with its slow or ‘Hindu rate of growth’ in economic performance,

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or what economists or political scientists described as India’s initial image of a poor, developing country located in the Third World. The post-1999 New India aspired to be a global player and newer sectors were opened further for economic deregulation or direct foreign investment, resulting in relative economic advancement as well as fierce outburst of dissidence from the disenfranchised section or the underdogs who were unable to utilize the fruits of economic liberalization (Kohli, 2012; Kukreja, 2008; Shrivastava & Kothari, 2012; Stiglitz, 2012). The clash between unbridled market-driven pursuits of accumulation economy and the ‘need economy’ or subsistence economy of the poor continued to afflict the political spectrum of India in the form of Maoist insurgency and class-based or labour-oriented mobilizations (Chakrabarti et al., 2015; Sanyal, 2007). Another major fallout of neoliberal policies were the unprecedented mobilizations against ‘developmentalism’, against government policy of sanctioning foreign companies to build big dams in India, evicting large indigenous populations in the process and plundering forests and rich natural resources (Werner, 2015). All these emergent dissident optics capitalized the newly formed civil society space, spearheaded by NGOs, civic activists and incredible media coverage. The early 2000 mediatized political campaign for face lift, described as ‘India Shining’ generated a lot of media hype and international marketizing advertisement. As this slogan of ‘India Shining’ reflects, this was an official policy of heightened simulacrum, an exercise in image manoeuvring and media hype to draw global attention for foreign investment. This had twofold effects, the middle class, the corporate lobby and the bourgeoisie were euphoric and excited about new possibilities, while the dispossessed bottom of Indian population were apprehensive of the inevitable outcome of liberalization—people were gripped by the fear of the rich becoming richer, the poor becoming poorer as a fall out of marketization. The neoliberal formula of the trickle-down effect of profits and capital benefits flowing down to the bottom was therefore, initially viewed through scepticism and anger, creating a rift between, what scholars describe, India and Bharat, or between anglicized upper middle class aspiring India, consisting of the moneyed section of the population and the vastly poor, uneducated rural population of India/Bharat who make most of the work force of India’s informal and unorganized sector and the highly debt ridden agrarian economy. With the demise of the welfare state and the retreat of governmental subsidy, large number of farmers committed suicide in India because of their hardship and ignominy arising out of their

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failure to pay back their agrarian loans. Booker winning author Arundhati Roy has perfectly captured this devastating outcome of market economy for Indian farmers in her book Capitalism: A Ghost Story (2014), subsequently this catastrophic impact on farmer’s lives became a big political issue, motivating various stakeholders to mobilize the poor and others on this issue of peasant suffering and death.

Info-Publics and Public Sphere Debates, New Mobilizations Another field of contention in liberalized India was the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) under various World Bank and International Monitory Fund (IMF) inspired policies of deregulation and foreign direct investment. Forest lands and mountainous regions rich with minerals and populated by indigenous tribes were opened up in the 1990s as SEZs, leading to fierce mobilization and conflicts between the Indian government and dissenting constellations, formed by civil society actors, tribal groups and some mainstream political organizations. These anti-SEZ mobilizations received significant media coverages and public opinion across the nation was mobilized on the question of accumulation economy supplanting traditional need economy of India. A famous example of this conflict between market forces and peasant rights, manifested through the change of power in the Indian state of West Bengal where the main opposition party the Trinamul Congress defeated the then Left Front Government in 2011 for their pro-SEZ policy of setting up car factories in fertile agricultural lands, lands almost forcefully snatched away from the peasants of Singur, a village in West Bengal. The AntiPOSCO movement in the Indian state of Odisha also comes within this rubric of Anti-SEZ movement during 2005 and 2011. These debates over deregulated economy continue even today and constitute a significant part of political mobilization in India even in the current conjuncture. However, with the passage of time, because of the significant rise in media coverage and massive reporting on the plight of tribals and farmers, a new Info-publics was born. People began debating on these issues in greater numbers, public opinion varied and the government of the day had to take on board these dissenting public sentiments and popular opposition. This was no longer the India of the 1980s or early 90s, a new public sphere based on media debates and opinion exchanges emerged and it was no longer possible for any government to ignore this new

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phenomenon called ‘public perception’ spawned by media coverage. Other new terminologies—‘citizen journalist’, ‘Tele-public’ and ‘breaking news’ also gained popularity during this time signifying how ordinary people were given the chance to articulate their grievances and opinions. Popular TV shows like Indian Idol , Hero Honda Sare Ga Ma Pa, Big Boss, Kaun Banega Crorepati, MTV Glamour shows and Channel V music, regular telecast of highly commercialized popular cricket matches like IPL (Indian Premiere League) along with regular colourful doses of televised One Day Cricket matches, and newly energized Bollywood movies, modelled on American showbiz and popular programmes created a nation of tele-citizens in India and all these programmes unified the entire nation on questions of glamour, entertainment, visual image, show biz and popular emotion (cricket generated national feelings of pride and Indian identity). These glitzy media events also catered to the image of a shining, resurgent, entertainment and fun-loving upwardly mobile nation enjoying the fruits of rapid urbanization and global capital flow. This was the gestation of ‘aspirational India’, fetishizing on opulence and social status, notwithstanding the glaring gap between urban glitter and rural squalor. Various Television shows asked for nation-wide spectator votes through mobile sms-es to elect champions for these reality show competitions and these marketizing voting strategies too created a surge in tele-consumption and reality show participation. This was a phenomenal shift as rural India too was affected by this tele-glamour fever. These popular programmes significantly changed India as a unifiedmedia-publics sustained by daily doses of fun, and celebrity craze came into being. The indirect fall out of this nation-wide media and commercial entertainment-consumption interface forged unique national sentiments of unity and viewer-community bonding. Interestingly, contemporary political mobilizations since then have relied a lot on these social media platforms and on SMS or WhatsApp message circulation in India. So, what initially began as a purely commercial exercise has now become familiar templates and tools for political and social mobilization. Bollywood, the prime source of Indian entertainment also witnessed rapid transformation during this phase, reflecting similar trends of new stories, new sentiments and new ‘boldness’. Taboos were shown to be broken, social mores were loosened and cine-ideologies of colour and social boldness percolated into the larger public domain too. Global terrorism and local terror activities also figured in a big way in 24 × 7 media coverages. Round-the-clock circulation of images of terror

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attacks also unified the nation through media projection of victims, a sense of collective insecurity and outrage and through the arousal of nationalist sentiment. This was a unique moment of nationalism combined with capitalist dream, packaged through media, forging a public sphere abuzz with media gossip, celebrity culture, consumer ideologies, nationalist sentiments and individual rights. Unless we understand this sociology of techno-capitalism and its appropriation by ethno-nationalist forces, we cannot decode the transformative changes in public protest in New India. Scholars have written on this transformation of the Indian public sphere in the aftermath of television and mobile phone but to understand this New India that we are theorizing here these details are to be collated to understand its cumulative after-effect on subsequent patterns of popular mobilizations. This became evident when we witnessed the 2012 nation-wide outrage against the brutal gender assault and murder of a college girl in the Indian national capital, New Delhi. Never in the history of India did we come across such a pan-Indian outcry against sexual violence. The whole nation was unified in its reaction against this barbaric act and new forms of civil society mobilizations such as candle light marches and civic gatherings were witnessed. All these happened because of wide media coverage and media spawned debates on gender security and citizen’s rights in a democracy. One must understand that this was also the time of the post-Occupy Wall Street and post-Arab Spring world, in which we watched ordinary people gathering on the city streets, collectively protesting against something that afflicts their life. The Occupy movement and the Arab Spring also inspired new experimentations in leadership roles and in the methods of protests. The conventional modes of top-down leadership, in which a political leader will inspire the party cadres for protest movements was abandoned for new axioms of leaderless-leadership or horizontal leadership models in which all the stakeholders were collectively rising for a civil society initiative. Post-2012, gender emerged for the first time in India as an important electoral issue and all prospective political parties were forced to make their position clear on issues of gender security and gender protection. India, post-2010 also experienced sustained and unique mobilizations across the country against issues of political corruption and that caught the imagination of the entire nation. Armed with new legislative measures such as the Right to Information Act (RTI), the innovative mobilizing skills of the ‘India Against Corruption Movement’ led by a quasi-Gandhian figure called

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Anna Hazare, initiated an unprecedented new shift in popular mobilization techniques, dissenting vocabularies and ideologies of dissent. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter began playing crucial roles in forming public opinion and in circulation of insurrectional narratives. Newer domains of protest also emerged, areas which were previously considered taboo such as rights for Homosexuals and Trans-gendered persons came out in the open. There was an invigorated spirit of new agency and public empowerment, a new public sphere, an Info-publics who dared the establishment and rallied around to garner public support and popular opinion for a worthy cause were visible. This is not to claim that the entire country and all its people changed overnight and India became a nation of protesting citizens, all we are suggesting is, there was a clear shift in public outrage patterns and compared to earlier eras, people could be mobilized more quickly through the techno-sphere of media and social networking sites. All these happened in the aftermath of global events like the Occupy Wall Street movements and close in the heels of the Arab Spring. Another outcome of this newly earned liberation energy was the emergence of new constellations of student mobilization on a vast range of issues like caste, secularism, gender security, governance efficiency, communal harmony, free education and economic liberalization. All these new mobilizations departed from erstwhile templates and operating principles.

Changing Dynamics and Digital Activism These changing dynamics of protest and popular mobilization in New India demand closer analysis to understand its transformative vectors and to do that we have to situate our analytical frame to decode this new aspirational India. The NITI Ayog, the highest official planning body of the Government of India in its new policy statement in 2018 made the following observation and this might provide us some idea of the ‘New India’ that we are talking about: The 2018 “Strategy for New India @ 75” a policy document of the Government of India published by the Niti Aayog, the Constitutional body set up for policy formation clearly envisages a “New India” on its seventy fifth year of independence. The collective effort of 1.25 billion Indians is transforming the country. People’s quest for building a New India by 2022. Build an ecosystem which will help all Indians to reach their own

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potential. Policy architecture will be built. “The ‘strategy for New India @ 75’ put together by NITI Aayog is an attempt to bring innovation, technology, enterprise and efficient management … we believe that economic transformation cannot happen without public participation. Development must become a Jan Andolan.” (available at https://www.niti.gov.in/thestrategy-for-new-india)

This governmental policy statement on New India@75 interestingly talks of new policy architecture, technology, enterprise and public participation or public mobilization (Jan Andolan). All these are important categories when it comes to democratic mobilization or transformations in newer formats, in fact the policy statement at the very end mentions how it envisages development culminating into a ‘Jan Andolan’ or public mobilization, or what one might describe as citizen’s participation or citizen activism. A 2014 study report on ‘New Citizens’ Activism In India: Moments, Movements, and Mobilisation—An Exploratory Study’, conducted by Richa Singh of the Centre for Democracy and Social Action, Delhi has focused a lot on changing India, however this study only focuses on some major strands of recent mobilizing patterns such as anticorruption movements, popular mobilizations on gender, but the report does not account for new imaginaries like Twitterati, WhatsApp-publics and new campus or student mobilizations in India. This book attempts a focus on these newer and relatively unexplored domains of recent popular mobilizations in India, something that analyses new constellations of dissenting voices, made possible through the interface of media, public awareness and greater agonism in various digital public platforms. Recent scholarly studies on the widening interface between media, public awareness and an agonistic public sphere in India have engaged with interesting insights on the changing role of media and the Indian public sphere. Saima Saeed in her Screening the Public Sphere: Media and Democracy in India (2013) has analysed this new intersection of democratic practices and new media in contemporary India. Democracy, Saeed argues, without free media is a contradiction and recent changes in news media platforms and exchange of information technologies have deepened democratic practices in India. The power and significance of contemporary media in determining public opinion in India has been highlighted by many commentators and one needs to deconstruct conventional ideas of news and news-making on Indian television. With the recent boom in digital news platforms and resurgent numbers of news channels,

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new concepts of ‘sense-making’ and ‘meaning-generation’ as produced through media are emerging, generating new dynamics of popular democratic reality in India. This entails the need to examine how news and the dissemination of information and opinion influence the public sphere, structures of participatory democracy, citizenship roles and civil society practices. Media scholarship and social analysis today also focus on new interpretations of the paradigmatic shifts in news content and newsroom practices, on changing ownership patterns, and on increasing ‘entertainmentalization’ of news and on the resultant ‘developmental reportage deficit’ or on possible distortion of news—all these having far-reaching consequences on public opinion and democratic behaviour in contemporary India. At the same time, these new trends also throw up some cautionary signs about possible negative fall outs of commercialization and manipulative sensationalism in news media. In recent times, Indian media and political groups have also been accused of what is known as ‘fake news’ or ‘paid news’ in which certain items are sensationalized and telecast not through neutral journalistic spirit but with specific ulterior or malignant motives to allegedly cater to the needs of a particular political group. This brings to our collective notice issues of the role of Public Service Broadcasting, journalistic ethics, objectivity and the politics of language and ideology in the domain of media today. Social mobilization and democratic functioning are sustained by both the amazing diversity of content in news media on the one hand and an emphasis on public interest in media policy-making, on the other. Any critical analysis today on democracy and social mobilization must take on board the comprehensive empirical data on the democracy– media–development relationship as reflected through the critical analyses of media’s coverage of recent news events. Any empirical data on content examination of news programmes on all major news channels of India and interviews with the audience will help to evaluate the impact of media content on their understanding of social, political and economic issues. The negative aspects of media hijack by the comprador class for political expediency notwithstanding, the empowering impact of media on the average masses and also on the lower caste population of India, in recent years cannot be denied. Media and digital platforms have emerged as weapons in the hands of the dispossessed in India, it has reshaped caste mobilization of the subaltern castes, helping them to use it to generate discourses, ideas and also enabling them to connect with each other, and also with the world. The arrival of social media sites ushered in a new era

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in public discourse-making. Very well-known social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have helped in the formation of new networks among affinity-based citizen groups. It has also transformed the entire dynamics of public discourse and argumentation style, impacting different methods of socio-political outrage. While all these have been taken note of by many of us, what is often missed out is how social media platforms have also influenced and transformed caste-related discourses and mobilization patterns in India. Since caste hierarchy is endemic and pervasive in India, it is expected that it will affect the world of social media too. This produces a curious situation in the Indian media space. Over the years, the marginalized castes have been underrepresented in media. Being denied a space to articulate their voices in the mainstream media space, the subaltern caste groups created an alternative mechanism for information dissemination for themselves. Even different political parties advocating the cause of Dalit and OBC communities seldom paid any attention to carve out a space for the disenfranchised groups in the media, but social media has changed this discrimination. While social media is often accused of being casteist and discriminatory, it is the only media space that has provided the subaltern castes with the most free and least-discriminatory platform to create their discourse and ideate. It has led to the organic growth of subaltern media, and explosion of a Dalit-Bahujan discourse, including that of the Pasmandas (the subaltern lower caste Muslims). Social media is replacing pamphlets in the political rallies of parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as the preferred medium of dissemination of counterculture. The social media channels of Dalit-Bahujan groups have thousands of subscribers now, and their posts and videos are shared widely, even though they may be invisible in mainstream discourse. This has enabled caste-based mobilisation on a far larger scale. According to a recent Lokniti-CSDS study, the spread of social media has largely been among the upper-castes in urban centres, followed by the Muslims. But there is an increasing presence of those belonging to the SC/ST and OBC communities in recent years. (Singh, 2019)

Apart from the growing presence of the lower caste people in the burgeoning social media space in India, these big changes caused by globalization and media have largely been possible through the rise of the new transnational middle class in present-day India. Any study on neoliberal globalization on the ground, leading to media boom, transformation of culture, class and gender in India will establish this fact of social change

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(Derné, 2008). The question remains whether this liberation energy facilitated by new media has helped in the consolidation of democratic public participation. While one cannot overdo or exaggerate the positive impact of media in the lives of the marginalized, one cannot ignore the visible changes happening because of media either. While the inherent structures of social relations have largely remained the same, there are gradual shifts in different areas of post-liberalization Indian life.

New Public Arena: WhatsApp University, Troll Army Noted South Asian scholar, Sandria B. Freitag (2015) has argued about the unique nature of the Indian public space, calling it the ‘public arena’— a category that is distinguished from the Habermasian concept of the bourgeoisie public sphere. The category of the public arena hints at fierce conflicts among community or group patrons, leading to bitter rivalry in demonstrating group might and group presence in the public space. According to Freitag, India is yet to surpass this stage of the public arena, signifying the continued state of bitter antagonism, resisting all attempts to transform into the public agon. While largely agreeing with Freitag, we will argue that recent mediatized changes in India show early trends of a public sphere, emerging through social media and televisual media debates—something that augur well for the future of public activism and participatory democracy. Any passing view of the Indian public sphere today will demonstrate how neologisms like ‘WhatsApp University’, ‘Twitterati’, ‘Troll Army’, ‘Info-Nation’ and ‘Cyber-Publics’ are doing the rounds over the last five to seven years. The burgeoning rise of India’s digital space in recent years impacted its social- and politicalculture unprecedentedly. It can be safely argued that currently, India is perhaps one of the most mediatized societies in the world. By some accounts, four hundred million Indians actively use digital platforms like WhatsApp regularly and India is the second highest user of the mobile phone and the highest user of Facebook in the world. This digital boom has not just forged a veritable techno-sphere and cyberecology in India but has resulted in corresponding virtual transformation of the public sphere (Rajagopal, 2009). In a recent analysis published in the Economic and Political Weekly on the role of social media in the electoral win of the Bharatiya Janta Party, the ruling regime in 2019, the following observation was made:

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In line with the global trend, social media has been increasingly used by Indian politicians for routine political communication to directly connect with their supporters … Social media played a prominent role during the 2019 Indian general elections as political parties, … used it extensively for political campaigning and communication. Following the global trend, social media has been increasingly used by Indian political actors for routine political communication between elections to provide unmediated and direct communication to connect leaders and citizenry, and to re-energise the political landscape in the country. While the recent general election has provided the most visible manifestations of this shift, social media platforms have been integrated into routinised political communication since the 2014 general elections, which swept the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power. This shift builds on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP’s extensive use of social media in the run-up to the 2014 elections and during his first term in office. It was Modi’s phenomenal success in the 2014 general election that made other political actors in India to sit up and take notice of the game-changing nature of social media. With other political parties jumping on the social media bandwagon, the landscape of political communication in India has never been so heterogeneous, inclusive, fragmented, energetic, chaotic, creative, and equally polarising at the same time. Within a month after becoming prime minister in 2014, Modi emerged as the world’s second most popular head of a state on Facebook … and in 2019, he has been the most liked leader on Facebook, with more than 43.5 million likes on his personal page and 13.7 million likes on his institutional Prime Minister of India page ... Similarly, through a skilful mastery of social media tactics on Twitter, including strategically crafted and inclusive messaging, use of … celebrity involvement, and the “community action” … of his large numbers of followers to propagate his messages, Modi continues to remain a formidable force on the microblogging platform. In 2018, Modi was the third-most followed leader in the world on Twitter with 42 million followers on his personal account (@NarendraModi) and 26 million followers on his institutional account (@PMOIndia), which has the fourth-largest following globally … In October 2019, Modi became the most-followed elected leader in the world on Instagram, with 30 million followers (NDTV 2019). (Rao, 2019)

Given this ‘game changing role of social media’ in Indian politics, it is not surprising that the sophisticated information and technology (IT) cells of all the major political parties in India today are more active than their cadres on the ground, the IT cells are the new game changers and they are always busy in forging public opinion, on building popular public images of their leaders and are manipulating public sentiment all the time

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to win what in India is being described as the ‘battle of perception’ in the popular domain. All these changes open up important areas of inquiry as social media emerged as a key battleground to mould public opinion and to set new political or social agenda. India, being one of the biggest users of various digital platforms in the world, it is interesting to analyse India’s political behaviour or electoral culture through the phenomenon of this newly formed media-publics or Info-publics. Recent studies on the changing dynamics of Indian democratic politics sustained by the phenomenal changes of media industry indicate how new democratic politics and popular social mobilization in India is unthinkable today without taking into consideration the powerful role played by media. For some observers the years between 2011 and 2015 are crucial in the political history of India as the shifting terrain of Indian media assumed maddening pace during these five years during which the way the Indian nation communicates changed completely (Philipose, 2019). Recent media-driven mobilizations have transformed India’s public culture during these five years. 2011 witnessed the massive India Against Corruption (IAC) protests, and without any doubt, that was one of the largest civil society mobilizations in post-independence Indian history largely driven by media. Subsequently in December 2012, there were unprecedented nationwide demonstrations of public outrage over the gang rape of a young woman student in the Indian capital, New Delhi. This movement later known as the ‘Nirbhaya’ movement, the term ‘Nirbhaya’ signifying, the fearless one was coined by the leading members of the emergent Indian civil society themselves. The fact that this mediatized consolidation of the public space in India helped in the formation of a new citizen consciousness or in the construction of a new pro-people political democratic imaginary became more than evident when in 2013, we saw the remarkable political arrival of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which assumed power in Delhi through a coalition government. The meteoric rise of AAP as a political and civil society-led force has been described as ‘multitude, living labour and mediatized labour’ (Purakayastha et al., 2014). AAP is unique as a political experiment in the current Indian political history. It materialized the long-standing demand for a people’s party or for the people’s democracy. It unleashed a new grammar in Indian politics and the new media-driven public sphere in India were instrumental in generating the AAP phenomenon. Subsequently, riding the waves of this growing media power, the winner in the General Election of 2014, the

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Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), emerged with an electoral majority which no party has achieved in the thirty years of India’s electoral history. The 2014 election has been described as the election that ‘changed India’ (Sardesai, 2014). Again, in 2015, the AAP swept the Delhi assembly polls against all odds and returned to power and both the BJP and the AAP supporters or media managers galvanized mass mobilizations that made effective use of multiple media platforms to mobilize public opinion and popular narratives that went in their favour. This surely constituted a turning point in the mediatization of the country, its society and politics. The rising growth of this mediatized space transformed the conventional language and techniques of Indian political and social mobilizations, unleashing new energies of ‘digital politics and culture’ in contemporary India that went into the ‘making of an Info-Nation’ (Sen, 2016). Nation states generally do not encourage the free and uncensored flow of information as state power is known for its repressive apparatuses of control and knowledge surveillance. One can cite many examples in recent years to establish this embattled relationship between the state and media, such as the conflictual relationship between different actors—Twitter and the Arab Spring, Google and China, WikiLeaks and the U.S. State Department. Opposed to these instances, there are many cases where states have welcomed information flows and its diffusion as productive of modernity and globalization and in most of those cases, this information flow has been utilized for electoral benefit and governmentality drives. The Indian case in recent years perfectly fits in with this latter instance. Nation states, especially in the global South, are far from hostile to the current informational milieu and in fact they make crucial use of it in order to develop adequate modes of governance, propaganda, civic control, communication and sociality in a networked world. India figures prominently in this category which has recently witnessed a ‘software miracle’ that helped in actualizing the critical role of informatics in building the national imagination and in encouraging the state, private capital and civic society to utilize the new precepts and protocols of the information age to fashion an ‘info-nation’ (Sen, 2016). One can safely argue that any scripting of post-1990s’ postcolonial history in India will remain incomplete without including the role of computers and without recognizing the rise of the Informational State. India since 2011, we have already demonstrated throws up a space of Info-Activism and

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Civil Society, an entity which is sustained by Reality Television and Informational Culture and all these have resounding impacts in forming a new culture of popular social mobilization.

Twitter Space, Social Media and New Political Activism The impact of social media on Indian politics (Khan, 2019; Monteiro & Jayasankar, 2020; Padhiyar, 2019) is being recognized regularly and the politics of digital India, its local compulsions and global or transnational demands (Fominaya, 2014; Thomas, 2019; Van De Donk, 2004) argue about changing media dynamics not just in India but in South Asia as a whole. This opens up multifaceted accounts of new Digital India, chronicling its past, present and possible futures, providing fascinating graphs of the micros and macros of Digital India. Given this digital surge, how do we envision the relation between Visual Media and Politics? Or how does democratic election play out in the Digital Era? (Khan, 2019; Swain, 2010). The emergence of fake news impacting election outcomes in India and across the world has also been identified by many observers as a new phenomenon but in spite of its corrupting and negative aspects, the larger and constructive dimensions of media’s contribution in forming public protests and public awareness has been unparalleled in recent years. Political parties in India are gradually shifting their strategies and techniques of operation, from the old methods of campaigning. They are nowadays moving towards hiring top-notch advertising agencies who use media platforms to weave social and political narratives, perceptions and issues to fight for. Never has media played such overwhelmingly dominant role as the key player in deciding what the nation would think, act and will vote for and that explains the story of how the ruling BJP won the election in 2014 and repeated an exceptional performance in 2019. In tune with the digital media boom that was discussed in the earlier section, another new and latest addition to this digitized info-zone is the growing emergence of the political Twitter space in India. Every now and then we see political leaders and social actors like activists, film stars and media celebrities, making their Twitter posts to articulate their views on various things and subsequently those Twitter posts become the news of the day that are debated, fought for and ultimately implemented or rejected as a narrative, affecting social and political narratives

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and perceptions. Recent findings of critical media studies are needed to investigate political tweets that reveal the nature and patterns of politics that led to the digital political revolution in India. The tweets are made by Indian politicians at various capacities in order to communicate to their followers, which shape and determine the political discourse in the form of response, activism and technology (Shekh, 2019). The growing appeal and charm of Twitter as a political platform and as a domain of social change necessitates interdisciplinary approaches to understand the interface between politics, culture, economy and social media studies. It is imperative now for social scientists to inquire why social activists and politicians use Twitter and other social networking sites or when do our politicians use Twitter? This unfolds a completely new area for social movement studies, namely about the politics of gadgets that helps us to map the ‘Digital Political Revolution in India’ (Shekh, 2019). Political communication and mobilization, therefore are directly connected and multiplicities of communication and information technologies are providing sophisticated platforms to perform the act of communication that triggers social mobilization and in doing this, English speaking mediums like Twitter and Facebook and other elite platforms are being vernacularized. This is an encouraging sign as it reflects rising participation and use of media by the peripheral sections of the social space. Hindi media and other vernacular media channels and platforms in India too are immensely impacting people’s opinion and public sentiment (Neyazi, 2018). The importance of Hindi media or of the rising number of vernacular media in India’s political, social and economic transformation can be gauged from empirical evidence obtained from the countryside and the smaller cities. As the vernacular media is consumed by more than forty per cent of the public, it continues to play an important role in building political awareness and mobilizing public opinion. Hence instead of viewing the media as a singular entity, we have to keep in mind its diversity and complexity to understand the changing dynamics of political communication that is shaped by the interactions between news media, political parties and the public. This offers new insights to understand how print, television and digital media work together with, rather than in isolation from, each other to grasp the complexities of the emerging hybrid media environment and the future of new social mobilizations.

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Transformation in Social Movements All the new social mobilizations (NSMs), being organized in the recent years are opposed to classical or conventional mobilizations around labour movements. NSMs have been classified as authentic representatives of post-industrial social forces … the historical role of labour movements is beginning to fade away; that the NSMs are the natural and self-evident successors of the labour movements’ and ‘hold up the promise of relevancy for the post-industrial age’ … however, many NSMs were ‘remakes of the old ones’ (CLMs) and the social basis of NSM is ‘students, intellectuals, white-collar employees within social work, education, health services … and professionals especially those in public employment’ … NSMs, are both to be viewed as an empirical phenomena and a conceptual claim. Old Social Movements (OSMs) were seen as primarily class-based … , which usually functioned within the frame of political parties. NSMs in contrast were not about changing distribution of power in society but often about quality-of-life issues — such as a clean environment, personal choices such as alternate sexualities, expressions of cultural identities — and were non-party based. Central to the distinction was the retreat of ‘class’-based movements empirically and a decline of class analysis theoretically. (Chaudhuri, 2014, 159–160)

Even though NSMs do not rely too much on conventional class-based mobilizing principles, ‘class’ does remain as an important analytical category and can be productively used to understand the ‘new’ social movements too. However, greater prominence is being accorded today to caste- or gender-based or new middle-class-led ‘civil society’-oriented new social movements. Arjun Appadurai’s (2008) views on new social movements as unfolding in contemporary years provide a better analytical tool. Such movements are, in their aspirations, democratic both in form and telos. And increasingly they are constructing the global not through the general language of universal problems, rights, or norms but by tackling one issue, one alliance, one victory at a time. The great progressive movements of the past few centuries, notably the working class movements which have characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with universalist principles of solidarity, identity and interest, for aims and against opponents, … conceived in universalist and generic terms. The new transnational activisms … have more room for building solidarity

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from smaller convergences of interest, and though they may also invoke big categories, such as “the urban poor,” to build their politics, they build their actual solidarities in a more ad hoc, inductive, and contextsensitive manner. They are thus developing a new dynamics in which global networking is put at the service of local imaginings of power. (Appadurai, 2008, 305)

This involvement of global networking in the service of local imaginings of power has been actualized in South Asia as a whole in recent years as both India, Bangladesh and Nepal or even countries like Sri Lanka have witnessed the rise of identity-based politics or political mobilizations on specific local grievances. All these have resulted in the spontaneous and organized formation of what scholars have called the ‘protest publics’ in South Asia in recent years (Roy Chowdhury & Abid, 2019, 50– 51). Protest Publics are South Asian versions of the NSMs, even though Indian or Bangladesh’s example of protest publics differs from copybook definition of NSMs.

Protest Publics, Counterpublics: Anti-Corruption and Shahbag Protests How do we define then the ‘protest publics’ concept as it has emerged in South Asia in recent years? NSMs have been theorized in the context of Europe and America, but recent public protests in South Asia such as in India (Nation-wide anti-corruption movement) and in Bangladesh (Shahbag Movement) cannot be fully explained by NSMs theories as there are unique zones of distinctions between these movements and the new social mobilizations happening in Europe. Scholars have used new terminologies or new conceptual frameworks called the ‘protest publics’ (Belyaeva et al., 2019) to characterize the recent mass mobilizations in South Asian countries such as Bangladesh and in India. Social movement theory and civil society theory (Anufriev & Zaytsev, 2016, 36) have both been approached to analyse these protest publics who are at the same time the info-publics, something that we have explained and theorized in the previous sections. Social movements are characterized by specific methods of organization and are premised on issues of common identity, claims, programmes, and goals. New social movements or NSMs are assured of a target audience or spectators and they define clearly the authorities or

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bodies against whom their strategy and other mechanisms of the movement are framed (Della Porta, 2014; Savyasaachi & Kumar, 2016; Welty et al., 2013). Given that, existing templates of social movement theory do not fully explain new forms of popular protests happening in India and Bangladesh in recent years. The protest publics in South Asia clearly lack proper organization or proper galvanizing strategies. Most of the times they are products of media effects, or media-driven campaigns and hence sometimes fail to get sustained in the long run. These protest events according to some scholars show a clear absence of coherent goals and programmes of mass action. Participants also lack, most of the time, constant interaction with authorities or a target audience. Civil society theory too, therefore, fails to completely explain these protests either, as the idea of civil society-based mobilizations too posits a clear organizational structure and long-lasting organizational activities before any action takes place. One may recall here Partha Chatterjee’s (2006) idea of ‘political society’ as a more appropriate category to explain popular protests in South Asia. We argue that the idea of the ‘protest publics’ or ‘info-publics’ come within the rubric of ‘political society’ which looks beyond the classical or normative civil society framework. The pervasive impact of ‘audio-visual texts’ or mediatized influence determines public behaviour in South Asia in a different way, and that makes the concept of the public or the protesting publics an interesting case study to understand public mobilization in digitized India. Roy Chowdhury and Abid (2019) argue the theory of publics can explain these protests with clarity … a public as a self-organized entity formed by being “addressed” or “summoned.” It is constituted through messages delivered through speeches, shows, books, pamphlets, discussion, and debates. These messages are an aggregate of audio-visual “texts” that create and circulate the discourse and amplify its effect. A public assembles in response to this “text,” but not merely as an audience in response to a summons; it emerges in a self-organized, self-motivated fashion—outside the purview of the state … and other preorganized structures [such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the church] … It is not as if a rational public “waits” to be persuaded through rational discourse; rather the theatrical politics of spectacle often attracts the public to participate and take to the streets … [responding to] the … “troubling message,” as it covers both texts and events that disseminate a problematic or troublesome message to that public, which

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then leads to a protest. Warner also talks about a unique characteristic of public discourse—the public holds a poetic view of creative world-making or the possibility of an alternative world—which can be termed as the “public mystique” … We refer to the importance of these typologies to the South Asian cases in the discussion. In a similar vein, … publics are always mediated and emergent “rather than being pre-existing, readily identifiable and available to be mobilized”; they are called into existence or summoned … The “agentic public” is imagined to be autonomous, reflexive, creative, and self-organized; have the capacity to exercise choices; and transcend any kind of imposition or mediation. (Roy Chowdhury & Abid, 2019, 50–51)

Michael Warner (2005) has suggested that the idea of publics and counterpublics might be a more useful concept for current times than that of community, and he has theorized the ways in which publics are called forth through writing, drama and media. Popular public protests and mobilization in India in recent years has to be seen through this idea of the publics and counterpublics as that provide a better theoretic frame to decipher different dimensions of public protest in countries like India. Publics might go through transitional phases of increasing ‘actorness’, or agency, and transform in the life cycle of a protest. Our case studies in this book based on specific recent popular mobilizations in India demonstrate a progressive transformation in the actorness of a public, something that has captured the imagination of all sections of the Indian population. Increasing access to the Internet in India has led to an explosion of public use of networked platforms and digital media sites, there is also an unprecedented growth of direct public involvement and content production across various platforms and media. This digital turn is also affecting implementation of political and policy level decisions, as seen in the imposition of digital AADHAAR card (national identification card) and Demonetization (2016) in India. The digital space also includes the entire urban and rural geography of India, popular cinematic texts, issues of gender and sexuality, labour, censorship and the burgeoning presence of the digital archives. The categorical entity called the protest publics or the counterpublics are highly determined by these newly formed media ecologies.

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The Darker Side: New India as the Malevolent Republic One caveat sounded by many scholars has been that in spite of the unprecedented mushrooming of media platforms and its concomitant provision of information flow and scope for free articulation of opinions, the digital media space also throws up some reasons for alarms and concerns as well. Mediatized info-publics are also subjected to corporate control and the control of vicious ideologies of hatred and ethnic identity. Any discussion on New India, and the info-publics must also keep in mind this darker side of media. According to some scholarly opinion, notwithstanding various popular mobilizations and public protests for human rights and democratic strength, India is also fast becoming a ‘Malevolent Republic’ (Komireddy, 2019). The foundational ethos of a secular sovereign republic has yielded place nowadays to strident calls for ideologies of ethno-nationalism or Hindu nationalism to be precise. India is perhaps collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Since 2014, the ruling political dispensation had allegedly unleashed forces which are irreversibly transforming the country. Indian democracy, some argue, is being appropriated now by Hindu extremists and other forms of religious bigotry thriving in the name of nationalist identity and cultural politics. Bigotry and violence are being disseminated as legitimate democratic practice and this dissemination is also being done through media. One may recall here the strategic spread of viral videos of public lynching to unify identity-oriented support for hate-mongering and ultranationalist claims. Sahana Udupa in her new study on ‘Global India: Media, Publics, Politics’ (2015) has focused on the decades following India’s decision to open the economy for liberalization, encouraging its major cities to open up for direct foreign capital. Udupa’s case study looks into the city of Bangalore that emerged, quite unexpectedly, as the outsourcing hub for the global technology industry and the aspirational global city of liberalizing India. Udupa undertakes an ethnography of English and Kannada print news media in Bangalore, this study reveals how the expanding private news culture played a critical role in shaping urban transformation in India. Udupa argues that our assumptions about publicity and privacy, vernacular and standard, local and global needs are to be rethought in order to fully understand the operations of news media in India’s ‘worldclass’ cities. The most important player that drastically changed the way

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Indians look at their social and political reality is television and satellite television’s potential for identity formation and political mobilization in a land divided across various registers of caste, ethnicity, language and sharp income divides was revealed and demonstrated in early 2000. The rise of private satellite television, after decades of state monopoly over the medium, has engendered a transformation in India’s political and public culture, the nature of the state and expressions of Indian nationhood. Much like India’s ‘newspaper revolution’ … that started in the 1970s, and the ‘cassette culture’ … of the 1980s, the availability of privately produced satellite television has meant that ‘people discovered new ways to think about themselves and to participate in politics that would have been unthinkable a generation before’ … Operating at the junction of public culture, capitalism and globalisation, satellite networks are a new factor in the social and cultural matrix of India, with profound implications for the state, politics, culture and identity formation. (Mehta, 2008, 3)

In India, the state monopolized the audio-visual media, for the first four and a half decades of independence, and therefore, the eruption and booming of privately owned satellite television from the mid-1990s brought in new influences in the societal matrix, that had far-reaching consequences. Along with satellite television news, online communication and corporatization of media also gestated cyber-publics who are instigated by the growing use of the Internet and yet is shadowed by covert control by the corporates. So cyber-publics are not fully empowered as it is viewed, they do not have that critical autonomy required for fruitful civil society-based activism (Dahlberg, 2004). The Internet though apparently proving to be empowering for many individuals and groups to articulate and contest positions on various issues has however raised areas of concern on questions of manipulation, fake news and corporate manoeuvrings of news. So even though the Internet and digital media platforms proliferate their scopes and access for general use, facilitating public debates, this critical communication or spirit of agonistic opinion exchange has also been hijacked or jeopardized by the vicious fall outs of increasing corporate ownership and control of cyberspace.

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Tele-Publics and ‘Presstitutes’ Previously, when television and computers arrived in India in the mid-80s and early 90s, both the tools were largely appropriated by the political class for its electoral use. Sate sponsored television was used as a propaganda machinery and it was also deployed for cultural or mythological inscriptions of the Indian nation. The 1990s saw the emergence of the Tele-Publics and the Cyber-Publics, domains in which epics, cultural values and mythologies of India’s past and national glory were successfully disseminated to elicit electoral success by the political class. To historicize, one encounters the phenomenal growth of cable television in the post-1990s. Neoliberal India marched ahead since the year 2000 as new market forces were given a free hand and one witnessed the birth of a new republic, or a new aspirational public glued to the colourful world of tinsel trivia or the glitzy glamourous world of private television channels. The underlying tensions between neoliberal values and traditional cultural appeals continued to simmer within and with growing marketization of the economy, the role of the welfare state came under the scanner as liberalization of the economy pushed the traditional agrarian economy and the vast unorganized economic sector of India to the margin. Two things unfolded in this scenario, fierce political struggles spearheaded by the ultra-Left groups, the Maoists were launched in central as well as in other parts of India. This simultaneous existence of a pro-poor movement for a state-controlled welfare economy, that abjures all claims for privatization versus the open call for foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship drives, generated a moment of bitter conflict. There was an element of buoyancy, and surging expectations in the Indian mood at that time as economic opportunities facilitated the new middle class to rise, a group who will subsequently play a leading role in forming the digital boom in the current conjuncture. Indian computer industry and IT engineers offered to the world a formidable work force and technical knowhow. In other words, India was in the news and was in the reckoning, the world over. Mainstream media in India, however has recently been targeted by certain political parties as being ‘liberal’, ‘sickular’ (rebuking distortion of the word and concept ‘secular’ as government policy in India) or the ‘presstitute’, hinting at media’s ideological inefficacy and elite social disconnect in a changing scenario in which news is ideologically manufactured, systematically organized and disseminated

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across the public space for mass consumption and political manipulation. Everyone in this changed scenario perform as digital actors, riding on the WhatsApp or Twitter bubble. If India of the past was shackled in bureaucratic strangleholds in which people had no access to information, this New India has too much of an information flow, all are well connected through circulation of messages and narratives even though fake news is a mushrooming political phenomenon in this new phase of Indian democratic politics. How will scholars of new social movement grapple with the changing dynamics of digital politics in India?

Million Mutinies, Participatory Democracy: History and the Current Conjuncture Nobel winning author V. S. Naipaul (1964) once described India as ‘an area of darkness’, while focusing on its post-independent aftermath of squalor, violence and overall abjection. His subsequent analysis of Indian society and its multiple political discontents during the early years of independence, impelled him to discern India as a land of ‘million mutinies now’ (Naipaul, 2010). Naipaul, evidently had in his mind the historic landmark of the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny in colonial India when he thought of ‘million mutinies’ in India at the current conjuncture, hinting how the illustrious legacy of the Sepoy rebellion continues to haunt the Indian mind even today. The paradox of a newly born nation, liberated from centuries of colonial stranglehold, erupting in chaotic forms of mutinies or in myriad dissonant voices, disintegrating the unified fabric of India posed a disheartening scenario for all. However, for Naipaul, notwithstanding the turbulence and spiralling violence, these socio-political upheavals in postcolonial India helped in deepening its democratic fabric. The homogenous narrative of a unified singular nation stood challenged as various disenfranchised voices began articulating their demands for due representation in the 1970s. The first two decades after India’s independence adopted the Nehruvian model of planned economy and state welfarism but in its execution these well intended objectives of economic development failed to reach all sections of Indian society. Scholars have argued that post-independence, India did not go for total restructuring of its social and economic order, rather it decided to go for the model of ‘passive revolution’ (Kaviraj, 1988), in which instead of complete overhauling of the existing social and economic relations, the model of slow and gradual ‘reform’ was adopted.

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The Gramscian notion of the ‘integral state’ enfolded India’s elite civil society within its ambit to earn their consent in this model of gradual reform. The alleged collusion between the newly established ‘integral’ Indian state and the civil society members was made possible because of converging class and caste interests. The Indian intelligentsia who spearheaded the anti-colonial national movement were mostly upper caste bourgeoisie and even though there were fissures from different suppressed voices during the freedom struggle in the form of different grievances from caste, class and religious groups, most of these dissenting urges were effectively managed through the pedagogies of a unified nation fighting the British colonizer. One never knows what would have happened had Gandhi been alive for another decade after India’s independence, even though his control and command over the Indian National Congress was weakening much before India attained its freedom. Post-1947, this hegemonic bourgeoisie sway over the masses lingered for some time but such strategic retention of class-caste interests was bound to be challenged as the spirit of freedom began percolating in different directions in free India. Post Nehru, the legitimacy of the postcolonial Indian state began to be questioned as it failed to fulfil its promises and during the 1970s, agrarian movements, trade union demands, regional and ethnic differences cropped up in virulent forms. The utopian dream of a fledgling nation unitedly gliding through in its quest for collective progress encountered severe challenges in the form of secessionism, ethnic uprisings, farmers’ struggles, industrial lockouts and land reform demands and all these movements helped in the consolidation of people’s voice and people’s aspirations. The Emergency, declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 was an attempt to scuttle these dissident articulations and that was a big blow to Indian democracy, culminating in the surfeit of multiple other opponent political forces. The famous JP movement, led by the popular social activist Jayprakash Narayan (JP) called for ‘sampurna Kranti’ (complete revolution), hinting at the unfulfilled dreams envisaged during the freedom struggle and during the formation of constitutional democracy in India. Different regional political parties came to the forefront at that time and a coalition of opposition political parties emerged as a possible alternative to the ruling Indian National Congress. So, the political and social spectrum of India got widely opened for different stakeholders to play their part, it was definitely a defining moment for Indian democracy and a big

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turning point in terms of democratic representation and greater enfranchisement of long suppressed voices. For Naipaul, this was the time of ‘million mutinies’, tearing India apart in many directions. According to some political commentators, this was a sad juncture for the Indian nation state as its normative claim over people stood challenged and the hoary idea of national unity or harmony was thrown away, asking for balkanization, provincialism and prioritizing caste affiliations over national allegiance. For others, however, this was the moment of democratic deepening as various dispossessed and underrepresented sections of Indian population felt the need to assert their presence politically. So, postcolonial India’s ‘million mutinies’ were seen as inevitable outcomes of its democratic empowerment of all section of the masses who began focusing more on their immediate materialist needs, identitybased needs and their concerns for larger discriminations in the domain of production and distribution of wealth. The Naxalite Movement in the 1970s was one such watershed moment in India’s political history, a movement which was brutally suppressed by the Indian nation state, posing serious questions on its role to become a people-nation. The class interest of the Indian nation state was quite evident and since then the Maoist insurgency and various other mobilizations have continued to act as the discordant note or ‘the gravel in the shoe’ of the developmentalist nation (Chakrabarti & Dhar, 2012), haunting it again and again for its alleged bias towards the privileged, and failing to cater to the needs of the dispossessed. The 1990s saw a paradigm shift in Indian economy, the domestic economy was liberalized under global economic pressures and the 1990s marked the beginning of neoliberal India, allowing foreign direct investment, opening up of the local market for foreign companies and the inflow of global capital. This was the beginning of New India. Desivad, the idea of Swadesi or nativism was abjured and India preferred to jump on to the global economic bandwagon of laissez faire, causing a lot of debate on the efficacy and ethical legitimacy of this economic pragmatism. The inflow of capital did bring in some form of financial boom or what they call the growth story and a special class of ‘aspirational India’ was born—these were the upwardly mobile middle-class aspirants who capitalized this new momentum of free trade and technologization of India. New job sectors opened up, such as computer and IT farms. Myriad entrepreneurship drives were initiated and India was hailed as a new emerging global economic force with a large market and a huge middle-class consumer intake. Post-90s, India was an

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incredible transformation in terms of economic change, attitudinal transformations, concomitant cultural shifts and political adjustments. The inflow of foreign capital and direct foreign investment in India widened existing economic disparities and as Guy Standing has argued, liberalization created a new ‘dangerous class’, or the ‘precariats’ (Standing, 2011) who suffered the bitter after-effects of marketization. This caused social tensions and schisms across class and caste lines. If New India was offering alluring promises and dreams and a significant section of its middle class scaled up their social and economic positions, the dispossessed subaltern classes were beguiled into believing that all is going to be well for them too because of the theory of ‘trickle down’ flow of wealth. This burgeoning dream of wealth and splurge generated the idea of ‘India Shining’ in the early 2000—a brand that projected India as a developed country in the making, an emerging economic power which the world must recognize. Growing corporatization of all sectors began and there was a corresponding cultural change in India which had significant social and political ramifications. With the arrival of mobile phones, computers and an oversized entertainment industry, there was a ‘virtual transformation of the Indian public sphere’ (Rajagopal, 2009). This virtual public space will basically factor in our analysis of new popular mobilization in contemporary India or what we call new India. To historicize, the 1980s saw a new upsurge of caste-based politics in the aftermath of the Mandal Commission report on caste representations in Indian jobs and social sectors. This new caste politics and the rise of the Dalit-Bahujans (the lower castes and Other Backward Classes) in mainstream Indian politics was described as the ‘second democratic upsurge’ (Yadav, 2002) in India but this new and promising social mobilization was soon countered by the rise of Brahminical Hindu nationalist politics or what can be called Hindu majoritarian nationalist identity politics of the 1990s. The demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992 marked the beginning of the ethnicization of Indian democracy in terms of majoritarian nationalism. What is to be noticed here is the simultaneous presence of archaic orders of caste and religion, that emerged as key players in Indian politics. At the same time, the forces of economic liberalization functioned parallelly to usher in new energies of national growth. The inherent tension between this old India of ethnic affiliation versus the new India of economic flourish and secularization of the public space continued to haunt the India story and it is yet to be settled even today in this climate

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of the return of far-right nationalist forces across the globe. However, our concern here is not to elaborate on these different or major strands of social forces at loggerhead with each other, rather, our focus here is to capture the new methodologies and new conditions of innovative protests or public mobilizations created in this new highly charged climate of technological or virtual transformation of the Indian public space. This changed India demanded altered modes of public language and innovative forms of protest articulations. Because of growing technologization, and because of the spate of the entertainment industry, even politics in this new India got more culturalized. Political actors became largely aware of the power of the 24 × 7 news channels and Indian politics entered into its simulacral phase. This book intends to capture this momentary climate of cultural and political transformation in New India which we believe has changed Indian political behaviour and existing studies in this field have seldom focused on this new dimension of cultural and virtual change of public sphere. We must also mention that in the last two years India has witnessed cataclysmic rise of protests on the question of the implementation of the highly controversial National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Bill Act (CAA, 2019). This series of nationwide protests demand separate and close scholarly attention and due to paucity of space and time, we restricted our studies up to 2018. Pressing this issue further, it was seen that growingly, the idea and practice of ‘participatory democracy’ appeared to be taking shape in India as people in large numbers took part in media and civil society debates, and greater political awareness began developing and political parties capitalized on this. All these new constellations were marked by one common feature— innovation and norm-deviant ways of functioning. New mobilizations, new grammar of popular protest and new templates of public involvement were witnessed. People felt more emboldened, more empowered through media and through the Internet as they got greater access to information flows. This book will therefore concentrate on this newer aspect of changing India, this new virtual transformation of Indian society and Indian public space and its repercussions on Indian politics. In doing this it will initially conduct a quick historical analysis of social divisions, social conflicts and mobilizations in ancient, early colonial, late colonial and early postcolonial India. This historical trajectory will provide us a picture of historical pathways that enshrined myriad social conflicts, the colonial intervention and

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early postcolonial attempt for solutions. This historical analysis will help us to see how all these pre-existing social rifts and incoherence entered into the political spectrum of independent India and how all these factors complicated further as India moved forward. This historical frame will help us to understand the newness of popular mobilizations going on in contemporary India. We shall offer our analytical insights on new transformation in civil society or political society protests, their new mechanisms of functioning, new negotiating patterns, new slogans and new modus operandi. No history of these changing dynamics of public protests in India has been scripted as yet and this will help us to understand how these new mobilizations are unleashing new energies of empowerment in contemporary India.

References Anufriev, A., & Zaytsev, D. (2016). “Protest publics” in Egypt and Turkey from 2011 till present days: Assessment of impact on political changes. https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/protest-publics-in-egypt-andturkey-from-2011-till-present-daysassessment-of-impact-on-political-changes Appadurai, A. (2008). Grassroots globalisation. In V. Ruggiero & N. Montagna (Eds.), Social movements: A reader. Routledge. Belyaeva, N., Albert, V., & Zaytsev, D. (Eds.). (2019). Protest publics: Toward a new concept of mass civic action. Springer. Chakrabarti, A., & Dhar, A. (2012). Gravel in the shoe: Nationalism and world of the third. Rethinking Marxism, 24(1), 106–123. Chakrabarti, A., Dhar, A., & Dasgupta, B. (2015). The Indian economy in transition: Globalization, capitalism and development. Cambridge University Press. Chatterjee, P. (2006). The politics of the governed: Reflections on popular politics in most of the world. Columbia University Press. Chaudhuri, M. (2014). What is ‘new’ in the new social movements? Rethinking some old categories. Routledge. Dahlberg, L. (2004). Cyber-publics and the corporate control of online communication. Javnost—The Public, 11(3), 77–92. Della Porta, D. (Ed.). (2014). Methodological practices in social movement research. Oxford University Press. Derné, S. D. (2008). Globalization on the ground: New media and the transformation of culture, class, and gender in India. Sage. Fominaya, C. F. (2014). Social movements & globalization: How protests, occupations & uprisings are changing the world. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Freitag, S. (Ed.). (2015). The visual turn: South Asia across the disciplines. Routledge. Guha, R. (1999). Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India. Duke University Press. Kaur, R. (2020). Brand new nation: Capitalist dreams and nationalist designs in twenty-first-century India. Stanford University Press. Kaviraj, S. (1988, November). A critique of passive revolution. Economic and Political Weekly, 23(45/47), 2429–2444. Khan, F. B. (2019). The game of votes: Visual media politics and elections in the digital era. Sage. Kohli, A. (2012). Poverty amid plenty in the new India. Cambridge University Press. Komireddy, K. S. (2019). Malevolent republic: A short history of the new India. Hurst Publishers. Kukreja, V. (Ed.). (2008). Democracy, development and discontent in South Asia. Sage. Mehta, N. (2008). India on television: How satellite news channels have changed the way we think and act. HarperCollins. Monteiro, A., & Jayasankar, K. P. (2020). Diginaka: Subaltern politics and digital media in post-capitalist India. Orient Blackswan. Naipaul, V. S. (2010). India: A million mutinities now. Picador. Neyazi, T. A. (2018). Political communication and mobilisation: The Hindi media in India. Cambridge University Press. Padhiyar, R. (2019). Social media and politics in India. Educreation Publishing. Philipose, P. (2019). Media’s shifting terrain: Five years that transformed the way India communicates. Orient Longman. Purakayastha, A. S., Chakrabarty, D., & Das, S. S. (2014, September). Multitude, living labour and dead labour: Mediatised labour and AAP. Economic and Political Weekly, 49(38), 73–77. Rajagopal, A. (2009). The Indian public sphere: Readings in media history. Oxford University Press. Rao, A. (2019, December 28). How did social media impact India’s 2019 general election? Economic and Political Weekly, 54(51). Roy Chowdhury, A., & Abid, A. (2019). Emergent protest publics in India and Bangladesh: A comparative study of anti-corruption and Shahbag protests. In N. Belyaeva, V. Albert, & D. G. Zaytsev (Eds.), Protest publics. Springer. Saeed, S. (2013). Screening the public sphere: Media and democracy in India. Routledge. Sanyal, K. (2007). Rethinking capitalist development: Primitive accumulation, governmentality and post-colonial capitalism. Routledge. Sardesai, R. (2014). The election that changed India. Viking.

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Savyasaachi & Kumar, R. (Ed.). (2016). Social movements: Transformative shifts and turning points. Routledge. Sen, B. (2016). Digital politics and culture in contemporary India: The making of an info-nation. Routledge. Shekh, M. (2019). The political Twittersphere in India. Springer. Shrivastava, A., & Kothari, A. (2012). Churning the earth: The making of global India. Penguin. Singh, A. P. (2019, November 18). Social media has reshaped caste mobilisation. Hindustan Times. Standing, G. (2011). Precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury. Stiglitz, J. E. (2012). The price of inequality—How today’s divided society endangers our future. Norton. Swain, A. (2010). Struggle against the state: Social network and protest mobilization in India. Routledge. Thomas, P. N. (2019). The politics of digital India: Between local compulsions and transnational pressures. Oxford University Press. Udupa, S. (2015). Making news in global India: Media, publics, politics. Cambridge University Press. Van De Donk, W., et al. (2004). Cyberprotest: New media, citizens and social movements. Routledge. Warner, M. (2005). Publics and counterpublics. Princeton University Press. Welty, E., et al. (Eds.). (2013). Occupying political science: The Occupy Wall Street Movement from New York to the world. Palgrave Macmillan. Werner, H. (2015). The politics of dams: Developmental perspectives and social critique in Modern India. Oxford University Press. Yadav, Y., et al. (2002). Understanding the second democratic upsurge. In F. Frankel (Ed.), Transforming India: Social and political dynamics of democracy (pp. 120–145). Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 2

Historicizing Social Conflicts, Its Major Strands: Ancient, Colonial and Early Postcolonial India

Social Mobilizations in Ancient India The history of social movements in India can be traced back from the ancient times. In fact, it is this ‘history’ which makes the ‘present’ scenario of social movements in India more relevant to historians and social scientists. The historical interpretation of social movements which were driven by the problems of caste, class and religion had been instrumental for the evolving culture of dissent, protest and mobilizations in the Indian subcontinent through the centuries. Hence, any study of ‘new’ social movements will be an incomplete study if there is no element of historicity of social movements. History itself is a ‘force’ for the dynamism and upheaval of social protests. However, there is a vast corpus of existing literature which deals with the history of social movements in India. This present study intends to link ‘history’ as the ‘pre-requisite’ for contemporary ‘new’ social movements which were influenced and shaped by the emergence of ‘new’ civil and political society, mass consciousness and cultures of dissent and protest. The historical time frame for social movements in India can be broadly divided into four phases—(a) the precolonial phase, (b) the colonial phase, (c) the postcolonial phase and (d) the post-liberalization phase or the contemporary phase. Each phase is marked with distinctive patterns of social movements that emerged out of varied socio-political order. The caste-ridden Indian society had produced © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. S. Purakayastha et al., Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94040-9_2

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a series of social protests that challenged persisting forms of inequality and exploitation. The central trajectories in Indian social history have been largely dominated by so-called caste and community questions which had over the years produced a narrative of ‘difference’ and ‘hierarchy’. Social protests in ancient India were the outcome of this climate of conflict and tension which were inherent in the Indian social order. Indian society had remained a site of social confrontation against the caste oppression since the time of the Buddha. Since those early days to the recent times of the implementation of the recommendation of Mandal Commission in the 1990s for caste-related justice, Indian society has witnessed massive ruptures and turmoil in terms of social identity, recognition and affiliation. In fact, the process of Sanskritization (Srinivas, 1952, 34– 76), a means of social mobilization of the lower caste groups towards the higher strata of the caste-ridden Indian society, had resulted in the emergence of a hybrid socio-culture order. This hybridity had manifested through several ritualistic and cultural performances and practices. The anti-caste movements which were aimed at altering the caste-based social order, however, could not achieve complete success to overthrow the Brahmanical social hegemony. However, it will be wrong to think that subaltern protests and insurgencies in different forms did not bring any change to the Indian society. Social unrests in ancient India, be it anticaste or anti-gender hierarchy, have contributed to the changing pattern of social control and hegemony which had redefined the very notion of social ‘exclusion’ and ‘marginality’. In what follows we shall discuss chronologically major trends of social mobilizations in ancient India.

Historicizing Social Movements in India Any research study of new social movements in India must undertake a comprehensive understanding of social mobilizations since historical times. This is necessary to understand pre-existing social structures and systems of social relations which explain current forms of social mobilizations. A society known to have a long history of docility or social churning can explain in a better way its recent trends of social unrest. If a country or society is generally known to have a history of recurrent social upheavals then it is easier to locate contemporary trends of social agitation within the pre-existing structures of social mobilization. After chronicling and narrating those trends, this chapter also conducts the necessary theoretic analysis of the history of social mobilization in ancient times and

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also during relatively new colonial and postcolonial times. Initially we shall look into and summarize earlier trajectories of social unrests and then subsequently we will study various forms of colonial and postcolonial social mobilizations in India. This gives us a clear idea of the nature of Indian society that helped us to understand recent trends in this domain. The history of social protest and movements in Indian subcontinent can be traced back from the beginning of the sixth century-B.C. when Buddhism and Jainism had emerged as a symbol of protest against Brahmanical dominance and oppression. Brahminism is the progenitor of the notorious caste system in India that legitimizes the idea of social stratification on the basis of birth (Ambedkar, 2014). A person under the Brahminical caste order is identified only through his or her location within the four-tier caste structure of Indian society or what is known as the ‘Chaturvarna System’ that advocates the idea of ‘Homo Hiererchicus’ (Dumount, 1980) This caste-ridden rise of Brahminism led to the counterforce of Jainism and Buddhism in ancient India. In that way these two new counter-currents can be viewed as the first example of social mobilization or resistance in ancient India. (Thapar, 1978) Historian Romila Thapar has analysed the rise of Buddhism in the following way: The middle of the first millennium introduces a new ideological perspective, which, although touched upon marginally in Vedic literature, is more fully developed in the teachings of what came to be called “the heterodox sects.” To the extent that Buddhism subsumes this new perspective, it is convenient to juxtapose the polarity of Vedic thought with that of Buddhism. The primary concern of the new attitude is with the perception of change, the recognition that the context during this period was different from any that had existed before. The outcome of this recognition was the growth of ideologies that were at the same time innovative and germinal to the social and religious philosophy and ethical thought of subsequent periods. This carried within it the elements both of pessimism at the passing of the old order and of optimism in having discovered a way to deal with the changed situation. The “way” as perceived by the Buddha was arrived at through an innovation in ideology? the notion of causation. Causation in turn highlighted other aspects of innovative thinking, some entirely new, others resulting from the extension of existing ideas …. (Thapar, 1978, 41–42)

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The emergence of the Buddhist and Jainist sects had been categorized into two distinctive religions, their socio-economic trajectories however, were more important than their religious counterpart. The rise of Buddhism and Jainism can be placed into the history of social movements in India due to their plea for establishing social justice and equality in social relations. However, there is no doubt that despite offering an alternative to the Brahmanical social order, these two religions, in course of time, eventually succumbed to many criticisms and limitations. The emergence of major and minor socio-religious sects (Buddhism, Jainism, Ajivikas) in ancient India had been analysed from multiple perspectives which include both material and ideological interpretations. R. S. Sharma (2014, reprint) and D. N. Jha (1997) have focused on the materialist aspects of the emergence of socio-religious sects as a ‘protest’ against the Brahmanical hierarchy and social oppression whereas Romila Thapar (2010) delineates the intellectual and ideological basis of this movement. The shift from tribalism to a territorial settlement in ancient India had provided a new opportunity for social and economic redistribution where existing social order and religious hegemony would be challenged and redefined in a new tone and settings. Buddhism should not be seen ‘merely as the teaching of a single individual’ but it can be considered as a ‘wider response to a particular doctrine and as a reaction to the changing milieu with which it was associated’ (Thapar, 2010, 36). Thus, Buddhism had offered a socio-religious alternative to a caste-ridden and hierarchical society where the extent of tyranny had created an atmosphere of social protest and religious upheaval. The rise of ‘heterodox sects’ in ancient India had been perceived through the trajectories of intellectual and ideological transformations which were, according to Romila Thapar, ‘innovative and germinal to the social and religious philosophy and ethical thought of subsequent periods’ (ibid., 36–37). This change has denoted a parallel continuation of both ‘pessimism’ and optimism’; where pessimism underlines the ‘passing of old order’ and optimism marks the beginning of ‘innovation in ideology’ which was further strengthened by ‘the notion of causation’ (ibid., 37). The emergence of Buddhism and Jainism as social force had produced an alternative dialectics of ‘non-violence’ which brought forward the much-needed transformation of ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ character of the individual. Although, it is argued, that the focus of Buddhism, in comparison

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with Jainism was ‘moderate’ on the issue of non-violence, there was no doubt that non-violence, hereafter, had been translated into a medium of socio-political movements and emerged out as one of the essential components of social protest. While advocating his ‘theory of satyagraha’ later in colonial India, Gandhi had unequivocally established the utility of the idea and practice of non-violence as the method of political protest against the mighty colonial ruler. Although Buddhism and Jainism had evolved as a symbol of ‘protest’ against the Brahmanical social order, they were not fully successful in eradicating the caste system and untouchability (Jha, 2008, 76). Along with religious mobilization for equality and justice in the social terrain, ancient and medieval India also witnessed some forms of peasant insurgencies and in the subsequent section we look into those peasant unrests.

Popular/Peasant Revolts in Ancient and Early Medieval India Popular revolts against tyrannical rulers in ancient India have been traced back since 300–200 B.C. and, more interestingly, for several years, these movements or revolts were led by the Brahmins against the kshatriya rulers (the warrior castes) (Sharma, 2014, 214). One probable cause behind the leadership of the Brahmanas might be the equalization of status of Brahmanas and Shudras (lower castes) due to their occupational similarity, i.e. both had become agriculturists after the land grants made by different dynasties time to time in ancient India. However, the practice of land grants, in any way, did not undermine Brahmanical superiority in the social order, instead they reinforced and consolidated the Brahmanical-hierarchy in the existing socio-economic system (ibid., 214–215). Peasant resistance as well as overall trends of social mobilizations took different forms in different times according to the intensity of their problem. While on the one hand the peasants complained of the grievances against the landlords to the higher authority, on the other hand they self-immolated themselves, particularly in Southern India, in public to assert their rights during the thirteenth century (ibid., 215). This practice in Southern India had inspired the Jains to attain salvation by ending their lives which was considered by Sharma as the ‘repeat performances of the actual methods adopted by the peasants of south India…’ (ibid., 216). Violent and armed protests were organized by the peasants against the

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Brahmanical landlords in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh from eleventh to thirteenth centuries (ibid.). However, these forms of peasant protest had initiated a new culture of ‘hero worship’ and accordingly hero stones (vi¯agallu or v¯irakallu) were established in Karnataka and many other parts of southern India (ibid.).

Kalabhra & Kaivarta Revolts Tribal uprisings such as Kalabhra revolt were an important sign of subaltern protest in ancient India. The Kalabhras revolted during the sixth century in South India against the brahmadeya land grants and their revolt however, sometimes, has been, negatively characterized by some of the historians (Sastri, 1955, 74). The Kaivarta revolt which took place in the eleventh century can be seen as a landmark in the history of peasant movement in ancient India. The Kaivartas had revolted against the Pala king Rampala who imposed huge burden of taxes upon the peasants of the Varendri, the modern Rajshahi district and erstwhile North Bengal (Sharma, 221). The Kaivarta’s had been considered as the ‘offspring of a kshatriya father and vaishya mother’. However, the Kaivartas of eastern Bengal were peasants by occupation (ibid.). Sandhyakar Nandi, the author of the ancient mythical text Ramcharita, had ‘criticized the Kaivartas to wage a revolt against the Pala rulers (Rampala and Mahipala). However, the main objective of this peasant revolt was to get rid of the oppressive taxation system of the Pala rulers and the revolt was subsequently suppressed by Rampala, the king, as informed by Sandhyakar Nandi (ibid.). The above-mentioned peasant movements in early medieval India had ushered in a new dialect of organized protest and dissent against the oppressive social and economic system. Political and social hegemony was challenged by the ‘subalterns’ who belonged to marginalized castes and occupations. The language and forms of protest, as demonstrated by the Kalabhras and Kaivartas , had a close bearing on subsequent historical struggles to be waged by the peasants, outcastes and tribals in the future. The peasant protests in ancient and early medieval India had shown certain distinctiveness in terms of political consciousness and organizational capacity of the peasants and marginalized communities who had translated their subjection and suffering into overt protest.

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Bhakti as Social Protestantism in Medieval India The Bhakti (devotion) movement which originated initially as a religious force in the southern Tamil region of India during the beginning of the sixth century A.D. and continued for three and half centuries, i.e. up to the middle of sixth century A.D. had introduced a new dimension of social equality and mobilization in medieval India. While the bhakti movement in south India had been connected to its relation with the special branch of Sangam literatures, according to Narayanan and Kesavan, it produced a new Tamil consciousness towards the formation of Tamil heritage (Narayanan & Veluthat, 1978, 37). Despite having a strong social focus in southern India, this movement concentrated primarily on religio-cultural establishments and practices. On the other hand, when the movement reached to the northern part of India, with different form and character, after several centuries, it projected a new language of dissent, and protest consciousness. Studies on bhakti for long time have been confined on the general assumption that the movement was exclusively for the Shudras and women (Lele, 1980, 2). There is a transformation in this limited perception of the Bhakti movement, historians have now started to look at it more holistically as a mode of protest against social domination in various forms. From southern India, the Bhakti movement had expanded to the northern, eastern and western parts of India in the subsequent centuries, especially during the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. During the Sultanate and Mughal period, bhakti movement had remained as one of the chief syncretistic phenomena which provided a space for religious, social and cultural coexistence among several castes, religions, beliefs and practices. The ‘interaction’ between the Islamic world and Hindu society was marked by initial hostility which had been overshadowed by subsequent ‘mutual understanding, tolerance and cooperation’ between them and this environment of coexistence, as argued by Satish Chandra, had been endorsed by the spread of Sufi and Bhakti ideas of syncretism and social cohesion that resisted Brahminical orthodoxies of social exclusion and oppression. (Chandra, 2011, 148). Kabir was one of the foremost protagonists of the Bhakti movement in North India whose ideas were further carried forwarded by his famous disciple Ramananda. In similar vein, Guru Nanak’s spiritual teachings also introduced a new religion called Sikhism in India at that time. In western India, figures like Tukaram and Mira Bai had advocated the importance of

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non-institutional bhakti or devotion to attain salvation. In eastern India, a religious and social leader called Chaitanya had formed a new religious school called Vaishnavism which while remaining as a sub-sect of mainstream Hinduism challenged or deviated from some of its strictures. There were several differences of opinion shared by several schools regarding the notion of bhakti. Each and every school and sect which emerged out of an expression of protest, devotion and dissent needs careful and detailed historical analysis to identify their impact on the society and culture of India in the past as well as the current time. Although the Bhakti movement started in south India, it reached to the northern, western and eastern parts of India and preached the gospel of mutual tolerance and social harmony in a system of Brahmanical social hierarchy. Kabir, one of the leading Bhakti saints of his times had propagated the idea of social equality irrespective of caste, race or religion. This idea of social equality had ushered in the dynamics of mutual social cooperation and conversation which ultimately had contributed to the broadening of the public sphere in medieval India. The concept and practice of popular religion like bhakti, according to Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, had worked ‘in an oppositional relationship’ against the hegemonic religion and customs of the elite (Bandyopadhyay, 2004, 77). The Bhakti movement had produced a number of minor religious sects which were adhered to by majority of lower caste people. Bhakti movement had created a space for social protest through religion, rituals and customs which created an environment of dissent in several parts of India against the Brahminical domination. The overwhelming participation of lower castes in the bhakti movement has been manifested into an organizational protest against the dominant caste hierarchy which was challenged by the idea of equality and unity. Partha Chatterjee has identified this expression of movements as an autonomous space for the dominated which was independent from the hegemonic control of dominant culture and social groups (Chatterjee, 1989, 185). Bhakti movement had two distinct forms of expression, one was devotional or religious, and the other was social, and the former had always complemented the latter. However, for this section we would briefly look into the social dimensions of bhakti where ‘bhakti’ had been characterized as means to establish social equality and brotherhood. As far as the language of protest in the bhakti movement is concerned; it can be observed that bhakti had led to the introduction of socio-religious Protestantism during medieval India. In fact, bhakti movement can be treated

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as the third in the list of history of socio-religious protest movements in India which had considerably challenged the existing socio-religious order as it was done by Buddhism and Jainism in ancient India. Although the bhakti movement was not successful enough to provide any religious alternative to Brahmanism, but it had an immense impact in shaping the ideology and vocabulary of social protest movement. Bhakti movement can be well adjusted in the realm of social protest where a concept of new type of leadership was introduced and exercised to establish a society free from hierarchy and oppression. Nanak, Kabir, Tukaram and Chaitanya had successfully organized a band of followers who worked to propagate the ideology of their ‘guru’ beyond any territorial limits. The followers or disciples were incorporated from different castes and religions which demonstrated cohabitation of multiple social strata under a single umbrella. In fact, through the mode of protest and bhakti, the movement actually facilitated trust, adherence and organizational capability among the different sections of society. There is no doubt that the process was not without any initial hesitation and rivalry, but the politics of recognition of the mainstream religion and majoritarian society minimized the chance of long-lasting animosity. The movement had foregrounded the reality that spirituality or devotion can be a medium of mutual bonding and social coexistence. This a-political tool had produced a new language of non-violence or ahimsa in the dialectics of social movement. Bhakti movement was continued by several minor or sub-sects even during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and till date many of these sects have survived. Despite having anti-Brahmanical orientations, these minor sects had been trying to accommodate themselves within mainstream Hinduism by adopting many Brahminical rituals and practices. This helped the lower castes to find a place into the mainstream Hindu society. But the question of hierarchy and domination was not dissolved due to the pre-eminence and further continuation of class and hierarchy in the ‘popular religion’. Partha Chatterjee argues that ‘[t]he question of identity or difference, one dharma or many, then becomes not so much a matter of judging the inherent strength of the synthetic unification proclaimed by a dominant religion’ (Chatterjee, 1993b, 186). Bandyopadhyay mentions that the ‘subversive potential of bhakti movement and later of the deviant orders very obviously led to a violent reaction from the forces of orthodoxy’ (Bandyopadhyay, 2004, 98). But there is no doubt that popular and mass-based religions which were the

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offshoots of the medieval bhakti movement had provided an opportunity for the lower castes or antaja to sanskritize themselves through spirituality, rituals and protests. However, Ranajit Guha on a critical note opines that ‘Bhakti…[had] continued the political theories enunciated and elaborated over the centuries by the Dharmasastras and adapted them to the conditions of later feudalism’ (Guha, 1997, 50). He further argues that bhakti had ‘…spiritualized the effort, fatigue and frustration involved in the [labour] and services offered by peasants, craftsmen, and subaltern specialists to local elites…’ (ibid.). Guha refers to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the celebrated and popular Bengali author for explaining the disappearance of bhakti ‘from the community of those who [were] educated or only half-educated’ during the colonial period and according to Bankim Chandra, Guha further mentions, the decline of bhakti had turned the ‘family life into hell, creat[ed] discord in politics…perpetuate[ed] stagnation and disorder in society and fill[ed] the individual’s soul with impurity and conceit’ (ibid., 51). While tracing the long-run implications of the ‘decline of bhakti’, Guha further comments that ‘…the legalism, constitutionalism and the many shades of compromise between collaboration and dissent … were so characteristic of elite nationalism’ (ibid., 47).

Peasants, Religion and Regional Revolts: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Along with Bhakti, several regional protests and revolts took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in northern India—Jat Rebellion, Satnami Revolt, Sikh and Maratha Revolt against the Mughal emperors, etc. These revolts had mostly received their energy from the weakening of the Mughal rule after the death of Aurangzeb. However, Sikhs and Marathas started to revolt during the lifetime of Aurangzeb. These revolts had many characters in their fold. They were frequently viewed as peasant revolts, sometimes they were characterized with religious flavour and sometimes even, they were treated as revolts to establish independent political power/regime. Revolts and lineages of protest mobilizations in ancient India can be mapped through the above-mentioned movements which had their far-reaching and permanent residual effects that continued and even continue till date in Indian society. Caste discrimination and atrocities against and oppressions of the landless labourers continue to happen even today and those mobilizing the peasants and

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lower caste citizens of India continue to draw inspiration from these ancient icons and figures. After ancient India, in what follows, focus will be given on the next historical phase, that is, India after colonial rule, a time chunk during which a new category of social imagination and social mobilization emerged, namely, anti-colonial nationalism. Indian nationalism galvanized through a collective response of all sections of people, unified the entire population to a certain extent for some time through a collective orientation of their anguish against colonial rule, even though this history of anti-colonial nationalism is also fraught with complex negotiations and conflicts between different social divisions and groups.

Colonial Legacies and Social Unrest in India: Genealogical Segments Trajectories of Social Movements in Colonial India Neither politics nor war provides a key to the meaning of Indian history; instead in society and culture are to be found the processes which give significance to India’s past and it’s present. (Heimsath, 1964, 3) The Indian social movement produced a multifaceted intellectual expression of the social and cultural transformations which took place under the impact of British rule. No other coherent body of thought so sensitively and profoundly exposed the mental processes of Indians as they formulated the ideas underlying the structure of their modern society as did the literature on social reform. (ibid.)

Social movements in colonial India had mobilized both a wide range of middle-class and subaltern groups, such as indigenous peoples, women, peasants, retrenched workers and shanty town dwellers. The genealogies of these movements could be a response to, and a rejection of, the extreme forms of dispossession, poverty and inequality as well as overall discrimination of the contemporary rule. These movements, however, have not only rejected established opinions, but have in many cases also proceeded to envision and construct alternative forms of argumentative strands and politics of protest. This section tries to explore and elucidate the characteristics, dynamics and significance of the social movements in colonial India and tries to project diverse practices and imaginaries they

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have articulated against the age-old mechanism of domination and colonial hegemony. This section also explores how these social movements can be said to be reinventing the direction and meaning of existence in the socio-political fields. Thus, this section also develops various trajectories of analyses that move across the theoretical, conceptual and epistemological issues thrown up by such social movements and seeks to do so in a manner which is politically enabling and has the potential to contribute to the movements’ strategic praxis (Motta & Nilsen, 2011, 1–31). Insurgency, according to Ranajit Guha, the doyen of Subaltern Studies historiography, was an ‘antithesis of colonialism during the entire phase between its incipience and coming of the age’, and it can be regarded as the preparatory phase of later mass mobilizations of contemporary India (Guha, 1986, 2). The discourse on peasant insurgency which was regarded as ‘discourse of power’ by Guha had unfolded the hidden agenda of ‘effective’ state control over the popular perceptions on issues of deprivation, grievances and exploitation. Guha further argued that ‘insurgency affirmed its political character precisely by its negative and inversive procedures’ (ibid., 9). On the whole, Guha’s categorization of peasant insurgencies in colonial India into six elements proves to be a valuable source of interpretation for not only the peasant insurgencies in colonial India, but for many of its subsequent replications in the postcolonial era. Those elementary aspects of insurgency remain persistent and pertinent even today for examining contemporary social movements in India. The elements of ‘negation’ and ‘ambiguity’ as theorized by Guha in his analysis of peasant insurgency in the colonial era have remained consistent even in present-day forms of social mobilizations. The ideas of ‘solidarity’ and ‘transmission’ have also been adapted in a more widespread and popular way where the politics of mobilization and participation of an ‘informed society’ has been measured through the evolving culture of digital protest and social networking activities. The involvement of the middle-class educated groups in the peasant struggle like the indigo revolt, according to Guha, was somewhat inspired by their respective class interests (Guha, 2009, 129) While emphasizing the features of ‘transmission’ Guha argued that ‘human communication operates eclectically by a mixture of signs’ and the insurgencies which were spread through ‘verbal’ and ‘non-verbal’ means, i.e. ‘aural’ and ‘visual’ means happened to be a cluster of new definitions of popular protest (Guha, 1986, 227). It must be noted here that in today’s era of mass use of digital communication

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portals like WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, transmission of information has been transformed in a revolutionary manner and Guha’s theory of signs, graphics, visuals and other semiotic mediums have a close resemblance with the recent day trends of popular mobilizations. The ‘semiotic’ organization of popular protest includes another important element, i.e. rumour which has been considered as ‘universal and necessary carrier of insurgency in any pre-industrial and pre-literate society’ (ibid., 251). Rumour was not only an important component of transmission in the peasant insurgencies in colonial India but it had also played an important role in Gandhi’s emergence as ‘Mahatma’ (Amin, 1989, 288–342). In 1992, a large number of crowds had demolished the Babri mosque in the temple town of Ayodhya in India after getting inspired through strategic transmission of rumours and speculations. Thus in an industrial and literate society too, elements of tribalism can remain and rumours could be very instrumental in mobilizing the general masses. Partha Chatterjee argues that the nationalistic demonstration of protest during the first half of the twentieth century was directed towards the assertion of ‘the feasibility of new political possibilities’ (Chatterjee, 1993a, 40). Chatterjee elsewhere argues that the first half of the twentieth century had witnessed a peculiar and complex development in the field of mass mobilization. This time the peasant and working class had been mobilized under the dominant ideology of ‘nationalism’ scripted by the Indian bourgeoisie, and the ‘organization, ideology and programmes of the formally constituted political domain underwent considerable transformation with the entry of a mass peasant element…’ (Chatterjee, 1993b, 159–160). The socio-religious, nationalist forms of social movement and various facets of social movement activism had its genesis since the early days of colonial rule in India. Thus, in what follows, this survey attempts to engage with these different historiographical debates by considering these different forms of activism as a long history of social movements, emphasizing the contextual conditions under which the movements emerged and the roles played by their leaders at different points of time. This history of social movements, then, is as much a story of the elites initiating debates and changes as much as it is about the people paving their own path through these struggles (Giugni et al., 1999, 11–19). Therefore, one has to move beyond the Marxist/non-Marxist dialectic in comprehending the historical trajectories of social movements in India (Elangovan, 2017).

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Colonial Intrusions and Native Reactions By the middle of the nineteenth century, through a series of victories in political battles and diplomacy, the English East India Company (EIC), which had hitherto been only a commercial enterprise, morphed into a political sovereign by acquiring several territories in India and relentlessly tried to build a pre-eminent political and military power for it (Dalrymple, 2019, 2–6; Roy, 2012, 8–19). Out of this, the Battle of Plassey in Bengal, fought and won by the EIC in 1757, inaugurated successive waves of conquest by the EIC over the next few decades in the history of Bengal and beyond (Chakravarti, 2019, 12). Its final acquisition, the princely province of Awadh in northern India in 1856, provided the impetus for a revolt by discontented Indian soldiers and affected Indian royalty. Though the EIC successfully quelled the revolt, its credibility was damaged enough to prompt the British Crown to take over direct control of India in 1858. The argument, which generated out of this discussion that led to deal with the issue of the East India Company’s rule over the subcontinent, which lasted about a hundred years, though relatively brief, nevertheless became an integral part of the changing socio-cultural landscape of India (Roy, 2012, 3–9). They did prove insignificant to its subjects in terms of any concrete change. Indeed, Calcutta, the then capital of the EIC in India, soon emerged as one of the crucial centres of social reform movements in the region. Naturally, the emergence of socio-religious reform movements in Bengal proved to be the focal arena of meeting point between a Western culture infused with ideas of liberalism and an equally historically rich Eastern culture that included age-old traditions and religious practices of both Hinduism and Islam, among other religious sensibilities in vogue during this time. This trajectory of cultural– colonial interaction would fervently lead to immense social and political changes in India in the future decades and in the following century (Jones, 1989, 12–24).

Introduction of English and Social Reactions However, it is important to remember that this interaction did not occur in a vacuum, but rather was influenced by the politics of conquest, not only of territory but also culturally and epistemologically or in the diverse trajectories of knowledge. After initially following a policy of patronizing

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India’s native languages such as Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic, the EIC changed its policy in 1835, English being adopted as the language of administration after suppressing the ongoing protest demonstrations. This helped the company to start promoting English language essentially at the school level. Recent proliferation of researches shows that this shift in language policy, combined with a keen interest displayed by some of the elite sections of the native society, not only resulted in the establishment of several educational institutions but also served to provoke criticism of existing social customs and practices. Thus, for instance, in 1817 a collaborative initiative between Indians and Europeans led to the inauguration of Hindu College in Calcutta, India’s first English-language educational institution. It is argued that several thousand Indians were studying English in that city alone in the 1830s (Metcalf & Metcalf, 2002, 6–14). Notably, these institutions became the centres of rejection of traditional Hindu customs. Moreover, Indians developed an attraction towards the alien language and culture, moving to a state of accepting the alluring charms and prestige of English education for making their lives more meaningful and socially elevated. They also hoped that being English educated will help them to cope with the ongoing social and economic problems that prevailed in India at that time.

‘Reactions’ and ‘Progress’: Reform Movements According to recent research findings, it has been argued that nineteenthand twentieth-century India had witnessed a conflict between the ‘forces of reaction and those of progress’ (Chatterjee, 1993a, 5). The spread of western education and especially the introduction of English during the first half of the nineteenth century among the middle-class Indians had contributed to the generation of the necessity to expand the public sphere among educated Indians and the introduction of English education and the proliferation of English throughout the Indian subcontinent was one of the important factors in the overall emergence of socioreligious reform movements in the Indian subcontinent (Rao, 2014, 76). For many young, educated individuals certain practices of Hinduism went directly against their own sense of justice as well as against the ideals of liberalism that they now encountered through the medium of the English language (Viswanathan, 2015, 1–3). In this context, social reform movements emerged all over India to purge all Indian religions of some of their obscurantist practices in a quest to redefine them in

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the new colonial context. Similarly, various revivalist tendencies were seen too in the form of social mobilizations. Among these revivalist and reformist movements in the north were the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah, a movement to establish Islamic supremacy, and the Deobandis , who were concerned with re-establishing the role of the Ulama as ‘natural leaders of the Muslims’. Earlier the Arya Samaj also emerged as a revivalist move within the Hindu fold. In the southern part of the subcontinent especially in Deccan, movements such as Satnamis , the Manav Dharma Sabha, the Satya Mahima Dharma and others were constantly being attempted to engage with an increasingly prominent colonial presence of Christianity. These movements systematically critiqued the practices of orthodox Hinduism, and sought to fight against the prevailing caste system. In southern India, because of the presence of a majority of Hindus and a minority of Christians, the conflict and movement occurred mostly along caste lines of Brahmins and non-Brahmins. Significantly, the Theosophical movement took its roots in the south, inspired, as remarked by Kenneth Jones, by ‘centuries of socio-religious dissent and protest within western civilization’ (Jones, 1989, 6–8). Interestingly, however, the theosophist movement led to the strengthening of orthodoxy and the status quo, thereby undermining efforts of other movements to uplift the status of the members of the ‘lower’ castes (Rao, 2009, 4–9).

Various Phases In most of the existing literatures in this field, various phases of social reform movements or better to say social movements, which were mostly nineteenth century but also partly twentieth-century phenomena, are usually characterized as a period of renaissance during which, through cultural transformation, native societies were able to reclaim a unique identity of their own against the colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent. The recognition of such an identity, it is argued, was crucial for the later development of nationalism in India, a narrative most commonly found in the nationalist discourse of Indian history (Sarkar & Sarkar, 2007, 1–7). However, historians like Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar have questioned this uncritical acceptance of social movements as harbingers of modernity. Furthermore, they also argued that the absence of a rigorous socio-economic analysis of the central figures and events involved in these social movements makes us ill-equipped to know the culture of social movements in colonial India (Shah, 2004, 16). They, for instance, suggest

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that delving into the regional, class and caste basis of social reformers could have opened an alternative way to understand regional variation and the nature of the public sphere (including the question about what constituted the public sphere). Moreover, they point out how little discussion there is of the legislative and judicial aspects of social reform legislation, which could significantly enhance an understanding of these reform movements (Sarkar, 1975, 1–21). Historically, British rule in India had originated in Bengal and it was inevitable that Bengali society would be the first to feel the all-pervasive impact of the West and undergo changes which would later spread to other parts of India. These changes had manifested themselves in the early decades of the nineteenth century. One aspect of the transformation was social mobility particularly among certain sections of the people, despite the inhibitive influence of caste, religious customs and traditions. The process had started in the eighteenth century, with the breakdown of the old political order. This mobility was in fact facilitated by the peculiar nature of British rule. The social position of an individual or of a particular community was therefore largely determined by their relations with the new Government and everything associated with it (Ahmed, 1965, 6–26, 169–172). Bengal, as one of the important presidencies in British India, had witnessed reform movements among its Muslim population, especially in rural areas during this time (Jones, 1989; Sarkar, 1975). Faraizis was one such significant movement that generated religious veneration among the Muslims and consequently got momentum. Concerned with religious purification, its founder, Shari’at’Ullah, called for a return to the obligatory duties of Islam such as profession of faith, attending daily prayers, fasting in Ramadan, paying the poor tax and pilgrimage to Mecca (Jones, 1989, 19 cited in Berger & Nehring, 2017). This movement, along with other allied movements, created a sense of communal identity, which was particularly fostered by the spread of the Islamic message through the vernacular language of Bengali. Significantly, unlike the Hindu reform movements, the Muslim revival movement in Bengal was not affected by the colonial environment, but instead derived inspiration from places such as Saudi Arabia. Most famously, however, Bengal was also the home of the Bramho Samaj movement and its founder, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, was instrumental in many of the social reform initiatives undertaken at that time (Sen, 2003, 12).

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Battling with Orthodoxy: Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Brahmo Samaj In the whole trajectories of socio-religious reform movements in colonial India, Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) has arguably proved to be one of those successful pioneers whose efforts built the ground to outlaw the notorious Hindu social practice of Sati, or widow burning on the deceased husband’s funeral pyre. His sustained search for a Unitarian religion based on man’s innate ability to reason and harmony, led him to found what would become an influential organization in Bengal and other parts of India, the Brahmo Samaj (Assembly of God). As we have seen, the social activism of Ram Mohan took many forms, including writing books, publishing pamphlets and forming organizations in an effort to purge Hinduism of its idolatry, superstition and conflictual polytheistic nature and to fight against the practice of Sati (which was eventually outlawed in 1829). In 1830, he along with the help of other radicals yet like-minded people founded the Brahmo Samaj. Its purpose was to worship and adore a single, ‘Eternal, Unsearchable, and Immutable Being’, for the strengthening of relations between men of all religions and creeds (Robertson, 1999, 5–21; Sen, 2012, 2–18). The significance of the contributions of Ram Mohan and the Brahmo Samaj lies in their profound influence over generations of social and political critics in Bengal and other parts of the subcontinent. Their dual performances generated liberal ideas among them at a large scale, which sought to provoke transition in contemporary society for better humanitarian sensation. After the sudden and untimely demise of Ram Mohan, under the leadership of Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905), Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–1884) and Rabindranath Tagore (1861– 1941), the Brahmo Samaj continued to impact the minds of young Bengalis and Indians collectively. It has been viewed that the instincts of Ram Mohan tried to engage with wider transnational reformist debates by examining India’s historical and religious past, forging a possible future of cosmopolitanism and liberal social values. This legacy of reformist zeal was continued in the public lives and work of later intellectuals and leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and even later generations of political leaders of India. The Brahmo Samaj encouraged an independent critical streak among intellectuals who refused to bow to orthodoxy, thus becoming a platform, from which they could launch a critique of existing social norms, an exercise that was largely conducted independently of the

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state (Heimsath, 1964, 45). Ram Mohan’s advocacy for liberal values and constitutional reform was aimed at the consolidation of an enlightened public sphere among the Indians, and at the ‘broadest level’, Bayly argues, Ram Mohan attempted to build an Indian ‘public’ or ‘civil’ society which would ‘begin to share in power and legislative assembly’ (Bayly, 2010, 18–34). This was a remarkable move and today when we talk about contemporary civil society in India, we cannot forget the roles played by public sphere debates or civil society debates carried out by the Attio Sabhas or Tattabodhini Sabhas (civic-intellectual debate groups and associations in nineteenth-century Calcutta) formed through the initiatives of Ram Mohan and later Brahmo leaders.

Indian National Congress and Social Mobilization The assumption of power by the British Crown from the East India Company witnessed far-reaching consequences in Indian society. Administratively, the colonial relationship now pivoted around the gradual introduction of constitutional reforms, designed to incorporate Indians into higher levels of administration and eventually into the legislative and executive bodies at the provincial and the federal levels. However, this did not pave the ground ready for the liberal regime of colonial governance in the later nineteenth century. On the contrary, these constitutional reforms helped the mechanism of the colonial government to restore order with visceral force whenever there were incidents or threats of mass disturbance experienced by the colonial rule. The fleeting rise of the colonial government’s ambiguity was primarily in response to the vibrant and rapid growth of what can generically be loosely termed as ‘Indian nationalism’. Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, aided by the press and the formation of a series of revolutionary, often short lived yet profound, organizations and associations that provided a common ground for the coming together of sectional interests (among which the Indian National Congress [INC] was one), there emerged a steady growth of a public sphere that actively debated issues of national interest and the effect of colonial rule (Kanungo, 2015, 12; Sanyal, 2014, 22–31). By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the INC had grown to be a prominent organization with influential provincial leaders who were able to clearly envision the merits and demerits of British colonialism and sharply disagreed with one another on the way forward. The Congress soon came to stand in for

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ideas of Indian nationalism and in the beginning aimed to speak for all sections of the society, namely the peasants, the members of the working class, religious and linguistic minorities, women and Dalits (those are placed lowest in the caste hierarchy). However, the increased inability of the Congress to speak for all sections of the population soon gave way to different groups forming their own associations in the hope of protecting their interests. The second half of the nineteenth century had witnessed the birth of several regional political associations and these political associations, Anil Seal argues, had led the Indians to the ‘threshold of modern politics’ because the majority of the associations ‘were brought into being by groups of men united by secular interests’ (Seal, 1971, 194). Thus, a whole new atmosphere of social and political awakening was due to the consistent broadening of the sphere of public criticism and political participation. The spawning up of new organizations and political bodies had incorporated the voices of ‘civil society’ which was gradually disillusioned from the colonial rule and became critical to the imperial government and its machinery. Despite several limitations of these organizations, there was no doubt that these organizations had immensely contributed to the surfacing of political consciousness and dissent among Indians. The initial years of the first decade of the twentieth century (1905–1908) had seen the rise of popular protests of a different kind against the decision of Partition of Bengal in 1905. The colonial design of partitioning Bengal in 1905 was countered with several forms and modalities, like—Swadeshi movement, i.e. promotion of the use of indigenous goods; Boycott movement, i.e. boycotting to use any imported goods and refusing to work in any government institutions. These initiatives were materialized by the middle-class Bengalis who had introduced a genre of ‘new’ type of popular or social movements which were to be followed later by Gandhi himself. The large-scale participation of middle-class youth and professionals in the rallies and processions against the partition had ushered in a new definition of public protest and popular upsurge, though mixed with communal tensions in certain rural areas, when the ‘nationalist bhadralok intelligentsia’ had been trying to ‘attain identity with the masses and mobilize them around a programme of “passive resistance”’ (Sarkar, 1973).

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Constitutional Reforms, Public Awakenings The introduction of British constitutional reforms in India in the context of an increasingly intense and competitive collection of Indian political groups had an interesting consequence. Though the constitutional reforms appeared as concessions granted by the imperial power to satisfy the demands of the nationalists, the reforms effectively succeeded in entrenching Britain’s power more firmly than before, the reason being that the political groups that emerged in opposition to the Congress had diminished faith in the ability of the Congress to act in the interests of all sections of society; instead they placed their trust in the governmental structure established by the British (Banerjee, 1977, 41–53). As a result, the final question of decolonization in the 1940s was not whether Britain would quit India, (which was considered inevitable in the context of the Second World War), but whether there would be protection for minorities in an independent India. Most prominently, the Indian Muslim League, formed in 1906, despite initially working with Congress on the question of constitutional reforms, eventually demanded partition of India and the creation of Pakistan for its Muslim inhabitants; meanwhile, members of the ‘lower’ castes, under the leadership of Bhim Rao Ambedkar, demanded the enshrining of affirmative action in India’s newly drafted Constitution. Though these demands were met, the end of colonialism in India did not lead to the beginning of a nation that had resolved its tensions among various groups. If anything, postcolonial India had to contend with multiple and overlapping layers of demands in the form of social movements drawn from and representing groups that felt that their demands were not met at the moment of independence. The nationalist movement then became a movement not only to evict Britain from India but also to protect the interests of fragmented minorities in a democratic nation state that would be governed by majority rule in Britain’s absence. It was in this sense that social movements that emerged during this nationalist phase increasingly became driven to attempt to resolve social questions politically, for, in the popular imagination, securing political representation effectively guaranteed the rectification of social injustice and conflict. In the decades following the founding of the INC in 1885, several movements arose that could be broadly described as nationalist, although all the movements were not necessarily against the British colonial government. One might argue that this period proved to be volatile for Indians

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as they were organizing agitational movements without having proper leadership that could motivate them in a spirited manner. Under such a situation, the coming of Gandhi in India and his leadership organized socio-political movements against the colonial government and Bhim Rao Ambedkar’s movement for caste equality were the most popular events of social resistance. There were several other social and political movements at the provincial and national level too. It has also been seen that between 1903 and 1908, the Swadeshi (indigeneity) movement emerged in Bengal in response to the British decision to partition the province of Bengal, arguably to weaken the growing sense of nationalism among the Bengalees around that time as it had been in a fragmented stage. The actions of this movement ranged from various forms of agitations like organizing protest meetings (about 500 were held in East Bengal alone in 1903) to submitting petitions against partition (numbering between 50,000 and 70,000 signatories in 1905), boycotting foreign goods and boycotting government schools and colleges and government titles (Heehs, 2004, 4–23; Sanyal, 2014). Significantly, the Swadeshi movement also led to the production of a number of literary works that celebrated India’s rich cultural heritage and enhanced its sensibilities among its people, who in turn would determine the language of this movement. The foremost cultural exponents of this movement were the leaders of the Brahmo Samaj and Rabindranath Tagore. Later, the Swadeshi movement became the forerunner for similar and more vigorous nationalist movements, particularly those led by Mahatma Gandhi since 1915 in the subcontinent (Sarkar, 1973, 12–14). Additionally, Swadeshi movement and many of the working-class movements, which were directly against the British rule of this period also witnessed the emergence of movements for the amelioration of socially, economically and politically marginalized groups, such as the Dalits and the untouchables. Here, mention may also be made of the anti-Brahmin movement led by Jyotirao Phule (1827–1890). Historians like Rosalind O’Hanlon perfectly illustrate the role played by Phule, who argued that Brahmanism could be fought through education, organization and a return to pre-Brahmanic traditions, in order to skirt Brahminical superiority in the caste hierarchy of the then Indian society (O’ Hanlon, 1985, 34). As we have seen, there were several other social movements during this ‘nationalist’ phase, consequently, the emerging public sphere in India exerted pressures for constitutional reforms to gain Indian political interests, also for the conflating peasant interest and industrial problems with

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the national question. The struggle to obtain equality among castes, and such other issues around which the diverse curves of social movements arose led to simultaneous manifestation of an attempt to address social questions in a political way among its subject population across the country. Therefore, the tumultuous distinction between state and society, which was crucial to the early colonial state, was impossible to maintain in the later colonial period in the face of the gradual rise of nationalist interests (Kumar, 2015, 57). However, it is argued that the two iconic individuals, Mahatma Gandhi and Bhim Rao Ambedkar, had been successful in articulating two different responses to this question of state and society through their socio-political movements in colonial India (Roy, 2019, 12–45). At the same time, it is also noticed that the erroneous dichotomy of the state and society paradigm sometimes dictated the momentum of the social movements under this age (Guha, 2019, 4–9).

Gandhian Phase and Social Mobilizations Mahatma Gandhi’s entry into the Indian politics had offered a new tool of protest not only for the common people or the ‘general’ masses, but it had a deeper implication on the fashioning of anti-colonial protest modalities. Gandhi’s idea and practice of Satyagraha (civil disobedience) and nonviolence had strengthened the ideological base of mass-social participation towards a more secure, organized and effective galvanization of popular energy and protest. Gandhi, inspired by Budhha and others, in his practice of non-violence has redirected the popular energy through the ‘art’ of ‘refusal and resistance and disobedience’ (Bilgrami, 2010, 253–254). However, non-violence and ‘democratic’ form of protest appears to be the chief feature of today’s civil society politics and protest. The frequent reference of Gandhi’s form of struggle as actualized by contemporary civil society activists has been the most important technology of demonstrating grievances of a large section of society. The Quit India movement of 1942, unlike other Gandhian movements, from its inception, had suffered from the absence of any centralized apex political leadership and had been carried out by local organizers according to their respective local conditions. This movement had, perhaps for the first time in an all-India scale, demonstrated the popular mobilization in a larger scenario where popular participation for a common cause could bring the materialization of their objective without being regulated or controlled by any so-called political

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ideology. On the other side, Subhas Chandra Bose, another nationalist leader of prominence had emphasized the necessity of an Indian ‘Revolution’ when the popular perceptions would be strong enough to defeat the mighty colonial power through an armed insurrection with the help of external military force of Germany, Italy and Japan. Bose referred to the state of Indian public opinion which was suffering then from ‘fear’ and ‘lack of courage’ against any possible armed attack against the British rule in India (Bose, 1964). Despite Bose’s failure towards freeing India through the armed struggle by the Indian National Army (INA), it can be argued that Bose and INA had established a tradition of armed struggle and sown the seeds of an alternative form of protest which varied from the so-called democratic passive resistance. However, Bose’s connection and approach to Nazi Germany to secure an anti-British nationalist base has been very controversial within India and has also been questioned and critiqued by many scholars (Framke, 2014; Zachariah, 2012).

Bhim Rao Ambedkar and Annihilation of Caste Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, popularly known as a Babasaheb, was a great Indian political thinker and social reformer. He was the chief architect of the modern Indian constitution. He was born into an ‘untouchable’ community called the Mahars near Indore in the present Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. During his own childhood, he witnessed the heinous practices of the Indian caste system, was himself a victim of the discriminatory practices against the ‘untouchables’ castes, including the denial of entry into Hindu temples, the denial of access to public wells and tanks, prohibition of inter-caste dining and marriage and other such institutional practices. Furthermore, members of these ‘lower caste’ communities were not allowed to drink water from the same vessel as others in a public place such as a school or office, nor were they allowed to use certain roads in the villages. In many instances, even the clothes they wore and the ingredients in their food were restricted by tradition. Ambedkar, being highly educated through his continuous struggles rose against these practices of social stratification. There was a distinct intellectual and practical-activist aspect in the social movements that Ambedkar led from the front. Intellectually, Ambedkar was deeply influenced by the continental idealism of liberty, equality and fraternity as well as by the Marxist imperative to bring about profound social revolutionary changes in society. But Ambedkar

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also recognized the limits of Marxism in a caste-ridden society. Gail Omvedt argues that though Ambedkar recognized that class struggle was necessary for a just society, to fight against caste discrimination, a separate struggle against Brahmanism was necessary. As Ambedkar noted: There are in my view two enemies which the workers of this country have to deal with. The two enemies are Brahminism and Capitalism … By Brahminism I do not mean the power, privileges and interests of the Brahmins as a community. By Brahminism I mean the negation of the spirit of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In that sense it is rampant in all classes and is not confined to the Brahmins alone though they have been the originators of it. (Omvedt, 2002)

According to Omvedt, Ambedkar attempted to develop a total theory that could address the peculiar problem of caste on the one hand and the burden of economy on the other. He had been constantly advocating for the annihilation of diverse forms of social exploitations and for him the goals of liberty, equality and fraternity remained central to his project of social reform. This project, he believed, could be achieved by working towards the economic growth of everyone, through a fight against the social and religious practices of denial that had become the defining features of Hindu social structure. Most significantly, the zenith of Ambedkar’s contribution in eradicating caste-based inequalities came when, as the chairman of the drafting committee of the Indian Constitution, he ensured that a policy of affirmative action (reservation of certain seats in government educational institutions and government employment) for the Dalits are to be enshrined in the text of the Constitution. Ambedkar had to face stiff resistance from within and had many arguments with the leaders of the Indian National Congress including Gandhi. Ambedkar realized that the segregationally structured Hindu society is so deeply ideologized in the narratives of caste that it is difficult to reform this social stratification by remaining within this religious fold. Subsequently therefore, in his final act, Ambedkar led several thousands of his followers to convert to Buddhism, a religion that did not recognize the hierarchy of the caste system. His efforts at affirmative action and his conversion to Buddhism still remain as powerful instruments for the anti-caste agitations in the postcolonial period in India (Omvedt, 1993, 90–97). This conversion to Buddhism also connects Ambedkar to the

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ancient reformist root of Buddhism which tried to deviate from Brahminical social order as discussed in the early part of this chapter. We can notice therefore a continuation of earlier trends in Indian social struggles. Thus, it is argued by Elangovan that in postcolonial India, Gandhi and Ambedkar were at the forefront of social activism, and they left behind two diverse ways of approaching the question of society and the state and several other issues related to the caste question, untouchability, revolution and constitutional reforms. Gandhi viewed freedom as an intrinsic characteristic of the ethical protestor in the face of an oppressive colonial regime. Ultimately, for Gandhi, the meaning of agitation and protest stemmed from the righteous cause for discontent, for which he argued a righteous path of action is to be followed. For Ambedkar, on the other hand, the discourse of rights associated with the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity was critical for the Dalits to emerge from the clutches of caste oppression. In this sense, Ambedkar actively sought representation and protection in the debates of British constitutional reforms, a path that, for Gandhi, was inconsequential. Hence, if Ambedkar saw in the state, a potential panacea for the wrongs perpetrated by the caste system, Gandhi viewed the state as representing ‘violence in a concentrated and organized form’. These two contrasting views leave behind two different legacies for understanding social movements in India. On the one hand, Gandhi’s critique of the state and his methods of protesting (peaceful, non-violent protests) are followed by contemporary social activists to create an alternative idea of public autonomy in the minds of the people. On the other hand, there is a firm recognition, an almost common-sensical one, realizing that progress, reform and even the act of reform, have to happen within a language defined by the state and the constitution. This intersection between the legacies of Gandhi and Ambedkar in postcolonial India had far-reaching consequences for the reform of existing structural conditions as well as in determining social movements in independent India.

Communal and Subaltern Class Mobilizations Communal mobilizations along the lines of religions were another dimension of popular protest or movement during the colonial times. Since its official inception from the Government of India Act of 1909 which extended a separate electorate for the Hindus and Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly to the partition of India, communal tension had

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gripped popular perceptions over the question of identity, politics and well-being in the Indian subcontinent. The growth of communalism as ‘a constitutionalist activity’, Guha argues, ‘split the arena of politics into rival segments from top to bottom, so that at each level the unitary notion of nationalism…had to confront and eventually compromise with the dualistic two-nation concept…’ (Guha, 1986, 131). Both Hindu and Muslim communalism suggested alternative political ideologies to the masses which were distinct from the hegemonic influence of the Indian National Congress (INC) as a dominant political party. The propping up of separatism and communal issues in Punjab or in Bengal based on the activities of regional or local bodies had demonstrated the effort to assert their counter-ideologies against the INC. Communalism during the pre-partition days has been debated within its ideological background, inquiring whether local communal riots and demonstrations were the spontaneous outburst of popular demand or whether these were the product of organized mayhem instigated by the political parties. The issues of communalism which was more political than religious had dominated Indian history as a narrative of force and counter-force, a battle between good and evil. There is no dearth of literature on the rise and growth of communalism in colonial India. In fact, Indian historiography had considered the problem of partition within the binary of nationalism and communalism, inquring whether the former not only dominated, colluded and also negated the latter. Communalism which involves a considerable number of populations has been termed as an ‘anti-thesis’ of nationalism, and has been regarded as an ‘obstacle to be overcome in the evolution of a just, progressive and modern society in the subcontinent’ (Pandey, 2003, 53). However, the partition or independence of India did not resolve the emotive issue of communalism even in post-independent India where series of communal riots had continued unabated from 1958 to the 1970s despite the poor performance of the communal parties in 1952, 1957 and 1962 elections (Chandra et al., 2000, 434–435). Communal tensions and communal polarization continue to plague Indian polity even today in the current political context. Scholars like Partha Chatterjee argue that the nationalistic demonstration of protest during the first half of the twentieth century was directed towards the assertion of ‘the feasibility of new political possibilities’ (Chatterjee, 1993a, 40). He elsewhere argues that the first half

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of the twentieth century had witnessed a peculiar and complex development in the field of mass mobilization. This time the peasant and working classes had been mobilized under the dominant ideology of ‘nationalism’, scripted by the Indian bourgeoisie, and the ‘organization, ideology and programmes of the formally constituted political domain underwent considerable transformation with the entry of a mass peasant element…’ (Chatterjee, 1993b, 159–160). However, the issues of ‘discipline’, ‘authority’, ‘protest’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘organization’, according to Dipesh Chakrabarty, have to be considered keeping in mind the context of a ‘pre-capitalist’ society like India where ‘culture’ remains central to the formation of any political identity (Chakrabarty, 1989, 3–13). However, the concept of ‘organization’ between the nationalist or middle-class political bodies and subaltern or especially labour class trade unions had greatly varied in terms of validity and duration because, Chakrabarty argues, there was a sheer absence of any ‘strong and enduring trade unions’ among the jute mill workers of colonial Calcutta (ibid., 116). Thus the historical context of popular and subaltern movements during the colonial period appears to be a significant rejoinder to understand the ‘history from below’. A very significant contribution in this direction has come from Sumit Sarkar who has ‘generalized’ the trends of ‘local or regional developments’ through a ‘comparative study’ and cautions us that we have ‘to try to grasp the complex and varying interrelations between diverse elements in a hybrid “collective mentality” of a group, class, or region’ (Sarkar, 1985, 1–2, 4). Ranajit Guha argues that the mobilizations for the subaltern, ‘was another name for popular consent, for hegemony, for an overwhelming vote of the disenfranchised against an autocracy … a vote for self-determination’ (Guha, 1997, 102). While delineating the problems of ‘dominance’ and ‘hegemony’ in analysing the character of the Indian nationalist movement, Guha emphatically asserts that: ...if hegemony as we understand it is a condition of dominance in which the moment of persuasion outweighs that of coercion, it is self-evident that in striving towards it the leading block within Indian nationalism must have met with the resistance of a political-culture in which force has been privileged over consent by virtue of an age old and nearly sacrosanct tradition. (ibid., 103)

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Thus, according to Guha, the nationalist mobilization was the ‘history of a struggle for hegemony’ (ibid.). The movement against caste oppression had gained a new currency since the second half of the nineteenth century and it continued till the partition of India. Jyotiba Phule of Maharashtra and Narayan Guru of Kerala had registered a significant voice against caste discrimination in Indian society. The Dalit movements led by Ambedkar had initiated a new trend of social protest against the centuries-old system of caste hierarchy and domination. In fact, Ambedkar’s tussle through the historic Poona Pact during which he was demanding a separate electorate for different social groups, provided a ground for constitutional win for the Dalits who were provided with separate reserved seats from among the Hindu general category. This has marked the beginning of the politicization of Dalit agenda in a justified and constitutional way. The Dalit movement in southern India during the colonial period had also unleashed a narrative of protest and defiance. The formation of the Scheduled Caste Federation and later the DMK party in South India was an expression of the culmination of Dalit solidarity which had over the next successive years introduced new kinds of political tools to deal with the problem of social injustice and exclusion. For Ambedkar, political empowerment through social transformation had appeared as a major way out from social humiliation and his conversion to Buddhism as a ‘Dalit leader’ was a ‘secular’ one rather a religious turn (Skaria, 2015). However, the emergence of groups like Ad-Dharms in Punjab and Namasudras in Bengal (Bandyopadhyay, 2011, 67–71; Basu, 2003, 5–17) and their successive allegiance to pro-British regional political organizations, like the Unionist Party and Krishak Praja Party respectively, showed a counter move in that existing political context in which instead of joining with the National Congress or Muslim League, they decided to form an organization of their own. That proved the presence and power of regional solidarity, premised on cultural or group allegiance overriding any sense of national identity. In Bihar, Jagjivan Ram had formed two different organizations, viz. Khetmajoor Sabha and the Depressed Classes League (Chandra, 2017, 56–61, 78–83). All these initiatives, as it is argued, opened up new avenues for Dalit and Backward class socio-political mobilizations against the backdrop of the colonial rule.

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Women and Social Mobilization The nineteenth-century social reforms introduced education for Hindu women, who were deprived of that right for a very long time. Scholars have argued that though men such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (Hatcher, 2014, 54–78) took the initiative in this arena, the emerging middle-class males urged them not to make women equal partners in the family or public life (Raman, 2009, 14). The purpose was to make women better equipped to fulfil their conventional roles as wives and mothers in the colonial setting. According to this analysis, in order to counter the critique of Indian civilization by the colonial rulers, the educated Hindu middle class on the one hand introduced some reforms, including the education of women, and on the other hand, built the narrative of a ‘glorious’ Indian past that prescribed hoary role-models for women (Dietrich, 2005, 594–598). This model of women worship was moulded on upper caste, upper class image of Aryan women, eliding the case of numerous women of the lower caste/class, indicating a sharp class/caste divide on the ‘woman question’. Mrinalini Sinha remarks, ‘The re-articulation of middle-class Indian womanhood had been necessary for the emergence of a new middle-class public/private sphere in colonial India’ (Sinha, 1995, 2). The beginning of the women’s movement or their involvement of women in the socio-cultural and political movements in India added an additional dimension to the ongoing socio-political reform movement. That phase may be traced from the 1920s, when women started actively protesting against the inequities of the colonial Indian state. Raka Ray in her rich and important study, Fields of Protest (1998), asserts that women’s movement ‘existed in highly decentralized form with hundreds of organizations in both urban and rural areas throughout the country, including the women’s fronts of socialist and communist parties, independent tradeunions, women’s wings of mass organizations…and smaller autonomous counselling centres and agitational groups’ (Ray, 1999, 46). Together and singly, these various groups have agitated for women’s rights on, a life of dignity for Dalit women, Muslim women’s maintenance after divorce, equal inheritance for Christian women, equal pay for equal work, maternity leaves and so on. At the same time, they have organized protests against domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, sati, widow remarriage,

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forced prostitution of women and girl children, the negative portrayal of women in the media and so on. Not all these phases have been equally visible across the board, and yet their prolonged struggle achieved greater momentum in the second half of the twentieth century in India.

Diverse Trajectories of Protests in Postcolonial India After its independence from British rule in 1947, Postcolonial India had to go through a wide range of odds and difficulties in terms of political consolidation, linguistic state formation and democratic validation of a nascent independent nation. The democratic structure which is the basis of any civil society demonstration had to pass through tumultuous times during the immediate years after independence. During the Nehruvian era (1947–1964) the persistence of acute poverty, integration of princely states, the ongoing communal holocaust and the rehabilitation of the refugees had appeared as a serious threat to the democratic fabric of a newly independent nation. Scholars have argued that the consolidation of newly independent India should be accomplished with ‘gradual revolution’ by combining the political stability ‘with growth, social transformation and deepening of the political process’ (Chandra, 2000, 3). The process of linguistic reorganization of the states had initiated a comprehensive public participation and demonstration over the formation of new provinces on the ground of majoritarian language. Regionalism or local patriotism which was derived from regional imbalances or inequality appeared as a major threat for Indian federal structure and democracy (ibid., 119–131). These regional differences had contributed to the growth of regional political parties. As far as the economics of regionalism is concerned, scholars have argued that regional disparities had stemmed from the uneven ‘distribution of central resources’ as allocated by the Planning Commission, and the union policies ‘on resource transfers and industrial planning’ had increased the gap between ‘rich and poor states’ which did not find any corroboration with the national objective of planned development (Brass, 2001, 285–286). Brass argues that ‘diversities and social fragmentation of Indian society have produced a proliferation of regional and other political parties which were substantially different ‘in the types of interests, their organizational form and their manner of operation’ (Brass, 2001, 67–68). Nonetheless, these regional political parties which were often formed on religious, caste or ethnic

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lines, contributed to the broadening of Indian democratic structure where the underprivileged could at least express their voices and could compete with the mutual contradiction of ‘competition’ and ‘collaboration’.

Movements on Food and Land Rights in the 1960s However, new social unrests in independent India cropped up with new issues during the entire span of the 1960s and 70s. University and college students emerged as the forerunner of change in the existing sociopolitical set-up. From the Young Bengal Movement under the leadership of Derozio during the nineteenth century through the days of Swadeshi Movement in 1905 and afterwards during the Naxalbari Movement in the late 1960s, Indian students had been able to transform the very notion of ‘protest’ and unleashed an unending dynamism towards the formation of a new critical society that had witnessed the decline of traditional forms of protest and the coming of new definitions of popular mobilizations. Food movement (Tebhaga Movement) and Naxalbari movement in the 60s and 70s, were among them which drew a large number of social participations from different strata of society, especially from the students. The food movement which began in West Bengal in 1959 initially under the leadership of the Communist Party of India was gradually transformed into a spontaneous mass movement that surpassed any political control or affiliation (Basu, 2012, 2). The food movement of 1959, according to Basu, can be regarded as a ‘continuum’ and a ‘legacy’ of the ‘post-1943 famine related Left movements’, the Tebhaga movement and ‘the movements over the corrupt and inadequate Public Distribution system between 1956 and 1958’ (ibid., 3). The Naxalbari Movement which commenced in 1967 in a small village of northern Bengal named Naxalbari, had shaken the whole nation on the issues of peasant’s rights and it established a template for future generation students‘ involvement for the cause of economic deprivation and state oppression. D’Mellow argues that ‘various social movements and the Naxalite insurgency drew their inspiration from the democratic and anti-imperialist proclivities of the many peasant uprisings before and after 1885…’ (D’Mellow, 2018, 8–23). The Naxalbari movement had gradually attracted a band of middle-class educated urban students who extended the frontier of revolution to the college and university campuses. Thus, today’s student movements in India largely owe to the 1960s ‘Spring Thunder’ when there was a phenomenal growth of student politics and uprisings in the international level too. The May

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1968 Campus uprising in Paris is a case in point. In the 1960s, students of different parts of the country had participated in a variety of movements focusing on socio-economic issues and also on the problems of newly emerged nation state. College and university campuses had become the hotbed of student politics which was either based on any particular political ideologies or were attached to any of the political parties that represented mainstream political mobilizations (Mazumdar, 2019, 16–29). Post-independent Bihar had also witnessed a series of student protests in the 1950s and 60s concerning the issues of good public transport, reduction of fees, organization of the students’ union and a judicial inquiry into police excesses (Shah, 1977, 75). During the 1960s, the most striking feature of the student movements in Patna University was the clash of two different caste-based groups centring on the issues of ‘casteism and material deprivation—inadequate hostel and transport facilities’ (ibid.). The students who did not have faith in ‘democratic ways’ had preferred the method of ‘demonstrations, strikes and gheraos’ to resolve their issues. The caste question in the Indian educational sector had a historical root since the colonial days as only the upper castes could afford to have higher education. Nonetheless, students of Bhagalpur city in Bihar in the 1970s had formed Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti which launched a direct protest against the Government which had failed to ‘ensure one full meal every day to every citizen, uninterrupted supply of diesel, coal, and vegetable oil and reduction in bus fare’ (ibid., 88). This sort of youth mobilizations showed a greater connection of students with the problems of larger society that drove them to go beyond the issues of examination or institutional fees. The early years of the decade of 1970s are important for several reasons, especially for the mass movements that emerged in Bihar and Gujarat and which subsequently swept across the country on the issues concerning food shortages and rising prices (Brass, 2001, 441). The emergence of Jayprakash Narayan (JP) during these eventful years of Indian politics had introduced a series of public demonstration and popular unrest which eventually threatened Indira Gandhi’s political career. The imposition of Emergency on June 26, 1975 was directed to curb any dissensions against Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s rule. The nation-wide arrest of political leaders as suspected by her police made it difficult to launch any large-scale public demonstrations. However, JP’s movement against the corruption of Mrs. Gandhi’s government had a considerable resemblance in terms of objectives and organization of the anti-corruption

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movement against the UPA II government and the introduction of Lokpal Bill as led by Anna Hazare and his team in post-2000 India. However, the JP movement, Salter argues, ‘was a coalition of organizations and individuals with very diverse beliefs, preoccupations, life circumstances and objectives’ and was aimed at the deepening of democracy’ (Salter, 2000, 1). The JP movement, was according to Salter ‘the largest and widely supported movement’ after independence and it also served the interests of Indian society in general ‘by asserting a general critique of government’ (ibid., 18). JP’s movement did not follow any linear pattern in its political course since it allowed alleged communal outfits like RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu communal organization), Jan Sangh and Jamaat-e-Islami to become the ‘backbone’ of his movement of ‘Total Revolution’ (Chandra et al., 2000, 1). Although the movement was accomplished through the formation of the Janata Party Government (1977–1979), the movement, despite its failure had set the trend towards establishing the popular voices of a new civil society and other marginalized classes which were affected by the then economic policies and administrative maltreatment.

Ecology and Resistance Movements Along with mobilizations on conventional and familiar political and social issues, postcolonial India had also witnessed a series of non-conventional movements such as environmental movements on the issues of forest rights, and protection of dams and rivers. These environmental movements involved the common masses, large section of the indigenous tribes who lived in the natural world, environmental activists and intellectuals across the country. These movements were constructed on the lines of democratic forms of protests involving methods of non-violence, satyagraha and passive resistance. One of the most famous ecology-related movements in independent India was the Chipko movement which was organized on the basis of Gandhian philosophy of satyagraha and nonviolence (Shiva & Bandyopadhyay, 1986). In fact, according to Vandana Shiva, the forest satyagraha in India which started in 1970–1972 by the Uttar Pradesh hill people against the exploitation of forests by the external forest contractors in order to achieve raw materials for local industries gradually got transformed into the Chipko movement in which people celebratedly hugged the trees for rescuing them from being cut by forest officials or by contractors. Moved by the intensity and strength of the

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movement, Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India issued an order in 1980 to ban ‘commercial green felling’ in the UP Himalayan region for 15 years (ibid., 140). From 1981 to 1983 Sunderlal Bahuguna, the celebrated leader of this movement organized a 5000 kms long march across the Himalayas in order to protect a vast area of the Himalayan forests from clear-cutting. Sunderlal Bahuguna was also involved as a leader in the movement to oppose the construction of the Tehri dam project and in defending India’s rivers (data available in the India Environment Portal). Later the movement spread to the other states of India. The influence of intellectuals and poets on this movement through the involvement of poets namely Dhoom Singh Negi and Ghanshyam Raturi provided new dimensions of civil society participation in the movement. The movement produced a distinctive genre of poems and slogans which had contributed to the popularization of the movement in different parts of India (ibid., 139). Postcolonial India had also witnessed a series of popular protests against the construction of large river dams in different states. The construction of large dams on the rivers was at its ‘peak’ from 1970 to 1975, after which the construction rate slowly declined due to ‘technical, financial, economic and political’ reasons (Nayak, 2010). However, the construction of dams had been countered with public protest and ‘political opposition’. Nayak argues that the ‘spread of big dam movements, growing united struggles and campaigns waged by various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), movements by indigenous peoples and growing human rights activism’ had successfully checked the growth of large dam construction in the 1970s (Nayak, 2013). These antidam movements, like protests against the construction of Hirakud dam, received the involvement of ‘the displaced, economists, social science experts, human rights activists and national media and international media’ (ibid., 71). Bent G. Karlsson in his essay entitled ‘Into the Grid: Hydropower and Subaltern Politics in Northeast India’ has empathized a complex set of modalities of subaltern protests in the hills of Northeast India against the construction of Mapithel dam in the Ukhrul district of Manipur state (Karlsson, 2016). The Thoubal Multipurpose Hydroelectric Project which had been in continuous process of construction since the 1980s was turned into a site of constant conflict between the people and the State, against the impending misery and sufferings of the poor in the form of being drowned and dislocated by the dam.

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Despite recurrent protests of the villagers who since the outset were critical to the construction of the dam, the State (both the Central and State Government) was adamant to continue its ‘developmental project’ where people had little to contribute, but much to suffer. Karlsson has talked about three distinct, though interrelated, modalities of protest, namely—passive/silent, violent/active and legal, of which the ‘passive’ form of protests includes in it the ‘social practice of waiting’ that incorporates an attitude of ‘physical inaction’, and manifests itself through ‘petty, unorganized, everyday acts of deviance’ instead of any ‘cultural resistance’ and ‘ethnic mobilization’ (ibid., 68–71). The prolonged clash and continuous dissent between the State and the victims of development developed a complex pattern of ‘endurance’ which enabled the poor to survive in ‘an almost non-existing civil space’. The repressive measures against these movements conducted by the State were followed by high degree of coercion in a more organized and systematic design, e.g. enactment of inhuman laws, namely—the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) which has inflicted a vicious assault on various sections of the Indian population including the Naga tribes of the state of Manipur who were blamed for transgressing the line of development dictated by the State; and thus the anti-dam movement had been tagged with acts of terrorism and sedition. However, the expansion of resource frontiers in the natural world of Northeast India paradoxically includes the politics of ‘nationalization’ of the Governmental and non-governmental claims which penetrates through the ‘gridding’ of the region for the purpose of defence, and more importantly to build hydro-power projects which have aggravated persistent poverty and displacement for the local people. Issues related to Dams in India are always fought between the notion of ‘development’ and ‘displacement’ of the local population. While dams have affected the riverine ecology of a larger region that goes beyond its jurisdiction, that resulted in the displacement of indigenous people from their traditional habitat and livelihood (Nayak, 2013, 398–402). The displacement and deprivation of the tribals and their protests which were often treated as moves against the notion of development or as virtual seditious acts against the state had produced a narrative of rural protests in postcolonial India. Alf Gunvald Nilsen in his essay titled ‘Democratic Struggles in the Bhil Heartland: Historical Trajectories and Contemporary Scenarios’ (Nilsen, 2016) focuses on the struggles of the Bhil tribes for their everyday existence. He draws an account of the sufferings of the Bhil tribes of western Madhya Pradesh, India in terms of

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their disenfranchisement ‘by the everyday tyranny of local state officials who imposed an extortionate regime of corrupt exaction on communities who were in effect rightless subjects rather than rights-bearing citizens’ (ibid., 31). The ‘trajectories’ of deprivation and torture inflicted by the local officers and forest guards on the Bhils have been formulated by Nilsen through the spectre of violent attacks and atrocities perpetrated by the State agencies on the poor tribals who had nothing but to depend on the forest for their day to day existence and are frequently deprived of any protection for basic constitutional and human rights. Increasing impoverishment coupled with ‘absence of any substantial awareness of civil liberties, democratic rights and constitutional provisions’ had endangered their vulnerability towards the ‘predatory and coercive regime of corruption and violence’ performed by the forest guards, police constables and officers and revenue officials (ibid., 32). Tribal dependency on the forest lands and products can be traced to the earliest days of their settlement in these natural places, and both had to undergo a complex process of transformation during the colonial period which checked the tribal use of forest and unleashed a plunder of the forest resources for the imperial interests under the name of ‘protective forest laws’ and ‘conservation’. The study of Bhil protests in the postcolonial India refers to the protest movements organized in various districts of the region under several Adivasi protest organizations from the period between 1970 and 1990s. Among these movements, a detailed analysis on the Adivasi Mukti Sangathan (AMS) has unfolded, especially, the accounts of the protests of the Bhils in the Khargone district under the aegis of two ‘outside’, ‘middle-class activists’ of Communist Party of India, namely—Bijoybhai and Govindbhai who had started to organize meetings with the Adivasi villagers and proposed for a ‘direct action’ against the local authorities on the issues of ‘neglect of schools and the lack of drinking water in the district’ (ibid., 46–47). This movement accompanied with other protest struggles (against the liquor and timber mafias) were directed to bringing out ‘a fundamental transformation’ where the prevailing Adivasi perception towards the State as ‘an entity … to be feared and obeyed’ had been transformed into ‘an institution … to defy, to challenge and to make claims on’. The ‘nationalized’ party machinery of the ‘recognized’ political party in the name of Shanti Sena (Peace-Army), accompanying the Police and Forest forces had unleashed brutal suppressive measures against this so-called Naxalite organization which, as it was believed and

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justified, was deterring the developmental programmes of the government, where two villagers were killed and six were injured. Although Nilsen comments on the ‘incapability’ of the movements in opposing the hierarchical and dominated concept of mainstream political control and violence, through the ‘democratization of local state–society relations’, the Adivasis had created a space for their own ‘vernacular rights culture’ from where they could claim for their ‘self-rule’ (ibid., 51–59). Matthew Shutzer in his essay, ‘Everyday Forest Rights: Property, Community, and the State in Kalahandi District’ has critically examined the introduction and implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act which was also called Forest Rights Act of 2006 (hereafter FRA) in Kalahandi district of Odisha. The impact of the FRA on the forest dwellers of Kalahandi had attracted considerable attention of several national and multinational companies viz. Vedanta Group and POSCO for extraction of natural resources for mining and industrial exploitation at the cost of the constant impoverishment of the lives and livelihoods of the poor tribals who had inhabited the land for centuries. While on the one hand, the FRA has empowered the tribals through decentralization and broadening of the use of nontimber forest products (NTFP) and subsequent expansion of forest rights, on the other hand the implementation of the Act in the provincial or local levels which involved critical engagement of the State government or their Forest Department was followed by ambiguous recognition and treatment of the tribals who were even negated to proclaim any rights over their ‘stake’. The execution of the act invites a critical investigation of the ‘political struggles between state institutions acting on behalf of private firms and local communities claiming specific rights to resources, places of worship and historical patterns of livelihood’ (Shutzer, 2016, 86). Although the act has recognized the human presence in the forest areas for the first time in the history of forest legislation in India, the politics of recognition and inclusion at the local level has involved ‘forensic cartography’ of the rights which has questioned the fundamental principles of the act itself. The issues of use of forest land for agricultural purposes remain vague since agriculture in forest land includes the process of shifting cultivation and secondly, the denial of the claims of the ‘other traditional forest dwellers’ by the state Forest Departments and NGOs on the very basis of their identity and rights over the forest products (ibid., 105–106). Despite the ‘ineffective implementation of the Act by government agencies’, Shutzer argues, the FRA has proved itself as ‘a successful

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tool in popular struggles against dispossession by industrial projects across Odisha’ (ibid., 115–116). Kenneth Bo Nielsen in his essay ‘Managing Communities of Resistance: Negotiating Caste and Class in an Anti-land Acquisition Movement in West Bengal’ describes the multiple layers of loss and victimhood of the khet majur (i.e. agricultural labour who mostly belong to the Bauri caste, i.e., the scheduled caste), chasi (i.e. ‘clean’ cultivators who belonged to the Mahishya caste) and land-owners who protested against landacquisition of the Left-front Government, which had begun in Singur (West Bengal) during the summer of 2006. Although there was a provision of compensation for the land-owners, the presence of khet majur in the discourse of reparation was missing and they were ‘left jobless and empty handed’ (166). The movement from its very inception was struggling against the inner—‘discontent’ of itself where the interests of khet majur had differed ‘with the local chasi movement leadership on several occasions’ that ‘constantly made the platform shaky, and at times threatened to submerge it completely’ (ibid., 167). The variability of caste presence in a ‘class movement’ although had put in ‘silence’ but the ‘silence’, however, did not always represent conflicts, rather demonstrate ‘rhetoric of rural unity’ which was based on ‘alternative solidarities’ that acted as ‘strategic essentialism’ in order to hide the disparity prevailed along the lines of caste and class, and thereby to strengthen their ‘political claims’. On the other hand, during his eight months-long field study, Nilsen had noticed that despite overt manifestations of ‘rigorous community solidarity’, the rural world of Singur was internally fragmented on the issues of ‘stakes, interests and motivation’ which displayed remarkable heterogeneity between the Bauri khet majur group and Mahishya chasi group based on their varied ‘virtues of education, morality and restraint’ that further expanded into the organization of ‘party politics’ and movements (ibid., 176–179). The patron–client relationship in the anti-land acquisition movement in Singur had displayed a complex political distinction between the core and periphery where [t]he chasi-Mahisya led the movement, liaised with the extra-local leadership and supporting organizations, defined the agenda, chalked out the strategies, formulated the slogans, and produced the posters. The khet majur-Bauri, in contrast, made up the number, marched in rallies, and sat in attendance (but rarely on stage) during meetings and demonstrations. (ibid., 180)

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In the discourse of political expression of ‘reward’ or ‘compensation’ for remaining and for being a part in the movements despite capitalist invitations and promises to the participants, the khet majur group was considered as clients while the chasi leadership thought itself as patrons. This had led to the establishment of a ‘semi-autonomous’ wing of khet majur association within the existing fold of the Singur protest movements, of which the dominant party leadership had denounced the khet majur activities as extremist ‘Maoist’ activities and acted towards the dismantling of this association which, they apprehended, would ‘ultimately break the unity of the movement’ (ibid., 190). Thus, this study by Nilsen has been able to shed light on the complex dynamics of the rural protest movements which had definite class character but had ultimately fraught with tensions of social hegemony and caste hierarchies that subsequently affected the mobilization of the rural poor to attain their desired goal. All these movements discussed so far typify various dimensions of social conflicts and mobilizations that began and evolved in ancient India—the legacy of these elementary aspects of popular unrest lingered on in the post-1947 scenario and continued in the 1990s that saw the opening up of the internal markets to foreign direct investment under the part of neoliberal economic policies of India. India post-1990s changed as a country and as an economy which had far-reaching consequences as far as social movements are concerned. New and unprecedented marketoriented economic changes brought multi-national capital and massive technologization of the social space and that had tremendous cultural ramifications too. The urban space, the family sector, the educational sector, the sphere of labour reform, audio-visual reform, communicational technological boom and last but not the least the culture of capitalist consumption and governmental withdrawal from all areas of welfarism created a sense of crisis and turbulence in Indian society, a situation that once again led to ‘million mutinies’. New social movements or civil society-based mobilizations increased in the post-1990s due to the increase in communicational technology and Internet connections and also because of the rise of the middle class who were targeted by the market as the educated aspirational class of Indian society. In the next section, we will discuss prominent cases of anti-neoliberal mobilizations, movements against corruption and gender crimes, farmer’s suicide, caste atrocities and also on issues of marginality and governance.

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CHAPTER 3

Second Democratic Upsurge, Liberalization and New India: Post-1970s Socio-Political Mobilizations

Introduction Pursuing our chronological analysis, this section looks closely into the 1970s which saw the rising tides of anti-caste political mobilizations and also the subsequent rise of Hindutva politics or the consolidation of rightwing ethno-nationalism which led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in India during the 1990s (Mustafa, 1990, 117; Gopal, 1991, 22). These incidents have been briefly touched upon in the previous chapter but this chapter will do a thick description or a closer analysis of this turbulent period in India’s political history. In every sense this was a time for political transformation as new political configurations in the form of Bahujan Samaj Party or what was viewed as the coalition among all backward castes and classes in India was consolidated, a move that had huge political and social implications in terms of electoral politics and formation electoral social blocks. Such bigger configuration of Dalit consolidation as a social force perhaps took place for the first time in India since independence. This upsurge of lower caste mobilization under the leadership of Kansi Ram and Mayabati has been described as the ‘second democratic upsurge in India’ (Yadav, 2005, 120), the first being during the 70s. Earlier the Mandal Commission was set up to prepare a report on caste-based discriminations in India suggested for a large quantity of job reservation as a step towards affirmative action and positive discrimination © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. S. Purakayastha et al., Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94040-9_3

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to achieve the larger goal of social justice. The Mandal report, however elicited sharp reactions from the upper castes and that pitted both the social groups of Dalits and the upper castes against each other, leading to the politics of Dalit mobilization and upper caste Hindu mobilization as a counter-force. The Mandal Commission Report was implemented through job reservation provision for the lower caste sections who had faced centuries of atrocities under the notorious caste system in India. This was the time when the narrative and pressing issue of social justice was the dominant agenda for social and political mobilization. Subsequently, the post-1990s adoption of neoliberal economic policies in India changed the narratives once again, bringing in new ideas of aspirations and merit-based recruitments, privatization of economy and capital inflow. Neoliberalism began side-lining the social justice issue to a large extent, but the tidal waves of democratic aspirations and sense of empowerment among the Dalits have crept in and continue to simmer even today. This chapter will look closely into all these issues to understand the history of social mobilization in India which will continue in the early 2000 as well as in the post-2000 era.

Diverse Trajectories of Socio-Politico Mobilizations in Postcolonial India After its independence from British rule in 1947, Postcolonial India had to encounter wide range of challenges and difficulties in terms of political consolidation, linguistic state formation and democratic validation of a nascent independent nation. The democratic institutions of India which is the basis of any civil society functioning had to pass through tumultuous times during the immediate years after independence. During the Nehruvian era (1947–1964) challenges like the persistence of acute poverty, unwilling integration of princely stats, ongoing communal pogroms and the rehabilitation of the refugees, posed a serious threat to the democratic fabric of a newly independent nation. Scholars have argued that the consolidation of the newly formed Indian nation had to be accomplished through a process of ‘gradual revolution’, combining political stability with issues of ‘growth, social transformation and deepening of the political process’ (Chandra, 2000, 434–435). The process of linguistic reorganization of the regional states kick started comprehensive public involvement, emotive participation and dissident demonstrations over the formation of new provinces on the basis of majoritarian languages used in different regions of India. Regionalism

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or local patriotism, premised on local culture, ethnicity and linguistic identity generated some forms of regional imbalances or inequality, posing major threats to the Indian federal structure and democratic functioning (Chandra, 2000, 119–131). The staggering cultural, linguistic and religious diversity of India has always been a challenge for the newly formed state and many of India’s recent problems stemmed from inept handling of these diversity-related issues. These regional differences had contributed to the growth of various regional political parties in India. As far as the economics of regionalism is concerned, scholars have argued that regional disparities also stemmed from the uneven ‘distribution of central resources’ as allocated by the Planning Commission, and the union policies ‘on resource transfers and industrial planning’, widening the gap between the ‘rich and poor states’, something that did not find any corroboration with the national objective of planned development (Brass, 2001, 285–286). Brass argues that ‘diversities and social fragmentation of Indian society have produced a proliferation of regional and other separatist political parties’ which were substantially different ‘in their demands, interests, their organizational form and in their manner of operation’ (Brass, 2001, 287). Nonetheless, these regional political parties which were often formed with religious, language, caste or ethnic orientations also contributed to the broadening of India’s democratic fabric where the underprivileged, the deviant and the marginalized ‘Other’ voices could at least express their differential perspectives and claims. The Indian state had to accommodate these polyphonous narratives and voices, adopting the mutually contradictory policy of ‘competition’ and ‘collaboration’.

The Formative Periods Since 1947, India had been encountering what we described, borrowing V. S. Naipaul, in our introductory section, as ‘million mutinies’ in the form of social conflicts, emerging out of abysmal inequalities on grounds, overlapping with each other (Guha, 2007, 8–9; Jayal, 2019, 2; Khilnani, 2016, 90). Indeed, one might also add the issues of environment, rights and demands of the tribal populations and other minority groups, anticorruption, decriminalizing homosexuality (and the LGBT movement broadly), gender violence and many others as new grounds of agitation, unfolding in contemporary India. The intensity of these disgruntlements deepened further and got articulated in the form of utter dissatisfaction with the newly formed postcolonial state. All these discordant notes,

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while generating collective anxieties and deep-rooted dissatisfaction also facilitated the formation of public debates and political conflicts catering ultimately to the needs of several interest groups. On the question of caste atrocities, for instance, the Dalit Panthers movement in India (inspired by the Black Panthers of the United States) emerged in the 1970s, unleashing fierce debates on the caste system and on the question of social equity, a legacy which was initiated by B. R. Ambedkar, the doyen of anticaste movement in India. Ambedkar’s larger project of the ‘annihilation of caste’ was therefore carried forward by these radical Dalit groups like the Dalit Panthers and they demanded cultural and epistemic transformations along with constitutional reform to eradicate caste in India. These casterelated struggles bearing the legacies of Ambedkar, Periyar and other leaders fighting for caste equality helped in the formation of new political parties like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu in the later 40s who continued fighting for social justice throughout the 60s and the 70s. Radical groups like the Dalit Panthers also helped in the rise of what is known today as Dalit Sahitya or Dalit Literature, a separate branch of Life Writing based on the lived-experiences of Dalits entirely devoted to promoting and exhibiting the utmost cause of Dalit liberation by producing radical literary texts and social activism, crafting an identity unique to the Dalits. Overall, this had long-term effects on the Indian society and polity in the following years (Elangovan, 2017, 285). In addition to the Panthers movement, the burning issue of backwardness and hardships of other non-Brahmin groups, especially the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) also emerged as an important platform and base for socio-political mobilization to protect the interests of those who were not the so-called ‘untouchable’ castes or Dalits but who still did not enjoy the same categories of privileges as designated for the Brahmanism under India’s system of caste-based social engineering. These groups began connecting with each other in different parts of the country, demanding a greater share of political representation as well as asking for the benefits of affirmative action in educational institutions and government jobs across the country. During this time, India also witnessed several tribal movements, chiefly seeking access to resources and, in some cases, asking for identity formation and sometimes demanding autonomy and secession from mainland India. One of the most famous tribal struggles, for instance has been the struggle of the Nagas in northeastern

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India. Asserting their cultural and traditional uniqueness, the Nagas struggled for long in projecting their distinct identity as opposed to mainland India’s culture of shared values and heritage (Shah, 2004, 20). The significance of these social movements in post-independence India was the rise of a complex body of conflicting ideologies, at odds with each other. They also throw some light on the larger political and economic conditions which prompted these movements to emerge. Arguably one can broadly categorize postcolonial Indian history into three phases, namely the socialist-oriented Nehruvian period, the garnishing state during Indira Gandhi’s regime and finally the current post-liberalization regime initiated since 1990s (Kaviraj, 2010, 104). Concomitantly, vocabularies and methods of public outrage and social mobilization patterns in India also underwent significant shifts with the rise and progress of these new forms of movements unfolding during these three phases. Nehruvian socialism emphasized agrarian land reform and state-promoted industrialization, which gradually gave way to complete state control under Indira Gandhi. By the end of the decade of the 1980s, the inability of the state to propel the economy or to correct the inequities of society led to a crisis, resulting in a financial restructuring of the economy that finally opened up the Indian markets to foreign capital. The period dating from the 1990s to the present has been marked by the infusion of foreign capital, private investment and reforms mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These structural reforms were adopted, in order to reduce the burden of the foundational concept of the welfare state and minimizing state subsidies to farmers. While delving into all these issues, experts have argued that these reform attempts resulted in perpetuating inequalities along already existing lines of social and economic divisions with sharper implications. Significantly, it has also been identified that the discursive hegemony of liberalization also tried to minimize or erase issues of political economy or of poverty from the staple narratives of social movements (Ray & Katzenstein, 2005, 6). Since the markets were opened, the theories of laissez faire and competitive survival steeped into the Indian mindset, elbowing out pre-existing demands or narratives of state support for poverty alleviation. Moves like this also fuelled possibilities of dissent from different disenfranchised groups.

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Congress Hegemony: 1950s–1960s Any historical account of postcolonial Indian social change has to begin with the long Congress rule after 1947. Since the Indian National Congress enjoyed its legitimacy and hallowed legacy of fighting for India’s freedom, it continued ruling India since 1947 as the supreme political force, committed to India’s liberation in the past and steadfast in its avowed mission of developing the nation in the aftermath of its independence. There were dissenting voices within Congress and as stated before, the Congress had to deal with various cultural and economic problems which were unfolding in the early days of independence. Be that as it may, the Congress party enjoyed its position as the final arbiter and guardian of Indian politics and nation building. This self-arrogation led to political crisis and forms of coterie culture within Congress. Kaviraj and Chatterjee have argued about the flawed policy of ‘passive revolution’ (Chatterjee, 1993a, 1993b, 212; Kaviraj, 1986, 2429) adopted by the Congress instead of going for a complete structural reform fomented a condition of status quo. The existing power structure and economic distribution remained unchallenged, a condition that was sowing the seeds of future trouble and insurgency. The Congress system encouraged the policy of mediation and lobbying, in which instead of eradicating the root of the problem, the leaders will mediate to superficially solve people’s problems, demanding credit and allegiance in return of that help. While contextualizing the waves of social mobilization after the partition of the Indian subcontinent, one needs to explain the political situation prevailing around that time. This period is generally viewed as the formative phase of postcolonial Indian political-culture (Bose, 2017). Throughout its four decades of initial existence as the hegemon and pivot of Indian politics, the Congress party never succeeded in gaining an absolute majority of popular support. The Congress system adopted what political scientist Rajani Kothari described ‘the patron–client’ (Kothari, 1970a, 1970b) relationship in Indian political system. Parliamentary democracy in India was initially groomed through the Congress system but this approach of the patron benefitting the citizen client in return of his/her unconditional allegiance and electoral support was challenged at a later stage as this patron–client model bred nepotism, social hierarchy and many other forms of corruption. During the founding election of Indian democracy held in 1951–1952, 55% of Indians voted for non-Congress parties, but Congress won 364 of the 489 seats in the first national Parliament and

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that bolstered its electoral position, providing it a strong political base (Butler et al., 1995, 45). While electoral support is an important issue in parliamentary democracy, the ruling party in any democratic system should have not just electoral numbers but a strong general mass base to acquire hegemonic legitimacy of its political ideology and throughout the four decades of Congress rule in Indian parliamentary democracy the Congress party’s unique organizational presence and its connection with the people across the country, inherited from its leading role in the freedom during 1890 and 1947 was also visible. This means that the dominance of Congress was not undermined until the party’s base was severely weakened in some populous states of the Indian Union. This erosion of social base of the Congress began in the 70s and continued in full force during the 1990s, challenging the monopoly of the Congress system, opening floodgates for new forms of political and social dissent (Akbar, 2003, 23). Political theorists specialized in South Asian studies however sometimes argue that this one-party dominance perhaps in some ways created a favourable ground for India in its nascent stage of freedom (Guha, 2007, 4; Khilnani, 2016, 98; Kothari, 1970a, 1970b, 5). A country, yet to recuperate from the deadly partition violence and inhabited by staggering ethnic and linguistic diversity, religious difference and castebased complexities perhaps needed in its embryonic stage as a nation in the making, a sense of secured stability and unified control and the Congress monolith perhaps provided that sense of hope for the masses. It was viewed as the deliverer or the vanguard who will fulfil people’s ambition, solving the miseries around them during the years of 1950s. One must not forget that ‘young India’ during the 1950s and 1960s witnessed uncertainties and aspects of darkness across the nation with multiple anxieties (Akbar, 2003, 67). During the course of the three national parliamentary elections supervised by Jawaharlal Nehru’s long tenure in office as the Prime Minister, Young India somehow tried to ground herself firmly in the domain of democratic development with socialist leanings. While setting the democratic dream in motion, the challenges to materialize that dream and aspiration in reality raised their ugly head even in the early years of 1952. Even, the process of organizing India as a union of relatively autonomous ethno-linguistic states, keeping the principle of language groups as a means of state formation, was resisted and got further complicated during the period from the 1960s to 1970s (Butler et al., 1995, 93).

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At that time, India witnessed significant surges in social and political mobilization across the states. Nehru and Congress party as a whole, while being the guarantor of stability and democratic development, noticed this rising tide of dissidence and looked for an answer. It has been argued that Nehru’s ruling regime was primarily based on a coalition of urban and rural interests where the voices of the margins were simply being missed since the beginning. India’s ruling classes, comprising powerful administrative, managerial and professional agents mostly consisted of urban middle classes and private-sector industrialists along with rural notables, mostly large land-owners. These groups were representing only the privileged sections, mainly from Hindu upper castes and they formed the political class under Nehru’s regime who could scarcely represent the vast underprivileged class in Indian society (Chatterjee, 1993a, 1993b, 65). Here, one must understand that the leaders of the ‘Congress system’ (as coined by Kothari) were initially biased towards the traditional dominants and preferred maintaining social status quo under the official rhetoric of a vague socialist model of state-led industrial growth. The state thus occupied the commanding control over its economy with a monopoly over much of the heavy industry and other strategic sectors. This over-regulation and bureaucratic control, over the decades fomented a system of corrupt favouritism or what in India came to be known as the ‘license-permit Raj’—a malicious reference to British imperial rule in colonial India (Gould, 2016, 260). This led to social unrest and deep social divide, as the disenfranchised section could never be benefited by this system of nepotism. Ethnic social schism and class-caste disparities also had its impact on electoral arithmetic and voting patterns. This was reflected in the parliamentary elections conducted during that time. Arguably, in the predominantly Hindi-speaking states of northern India, it was seen that the upper or ‘forward’ castes mainly Brahmins, Rajputs, Bhumihars, Baniyas/Vaishyas and Kayasths comprised less than a fifth of the population but represented 65% of Congress MPs elected to the Lok Sabha in 1952, 60% in 1957, 57% in 1962 and 52% in 1967 according to vote share data available. In Utter Pradesh, one of the crucial states in North India, upper castes accounted for 59% of Congress MPs elected in 1952, and 55% in 1957 and 1962. These data proved that the Other Backward

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Classes (OBCs) mainly Yadavs, Kurmis and Jats were mostly underrepresented as the Congress MPs in these years in Indian democracy (Jaffrelot, 2010, 469; Michelutti, 2008, 167). Surprisingly, the scheduled castes (SC), who belonged to the lowest position in the caste hierarchy, were strongly represented among Congress MPs elected in the 1950s and 1960s from Hindi-speaking north India, including UP. However most of these wins were from ‘reserved’ constituencies allocated for the SC only. Indeed, the strong voting base of the Congress until the late 1980s in UP as well as the huge neighbouring state of Bihar highlighted the presence of the upper castes, especially Brahmins, the SCs and the Muslims (Jaffrelot, 2003, 86). While north India has been witnessing the predominance of the upper caste existence in the Congress party, the Southern part of India on the other hand has been experiencing the rise of the lower caste/Scheduled castes’ participation in the parliamentary system, namely the rise of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Dravidian Progress Federation) since the 1965s. This has been taking place as a consequence of the popular waves of resentment among the Tamil people against the imposition of Hindi as a mother tongue for the whole country. Due to this Hindi–Tamil controversy, the Congress party lost its electoral majority in the South, especially in Tamil Nadu. Subsequently, the rise of regionalism in Indian politics was noticed and the dominance of the backward classes diminished the supremacy of the Congress in the southern region. Similarly, in Bengal, the Congress party started losing its monopoly despite being dominated by the privileged and elite groups like large landlords and rich peasants. In 1967, the Congress could hardly keep its promise alive and only its electoral alliances like the communists, and socialist groups helped Congress to maintain its majority in some ways. Yet, the regional manifestation in Bengal politics got further intensified and local political forces began challenging the hegemon of the Congress party (Nandy, 1970, 65). This way, the centrist idea of the strong imposition of the ‘Rule of the Centre’ was challenged. Since the birth of India in 1947, it has been seen that democratic stability in India was largely based on its federal structure, i.e., the centre–state relation—a structure that denies the supremacy of the central government, balances its power with distribution of many crucial powers to the state government. The ideal centre–state relationship based on symmetrical balance of power and fidelity was however jeopardized very soon as multiple asymmetries of violent insurgencies and state-sponsored counter-insurgency drives cropped up from Kashmir to

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Punjab to northeastern states. In all these uproar and chaos, the collective anguish of the common people emerging out of their shared experiences of disgruntled living, which was not properly addressed or mitigated by the centre was more than evident (Froystad, 2005, 247). Given this rising tide of dismay and disgust with the functioning of the postcolonial state, various movements on food and land rights emerged in the 1960s. This has already been discussed in the second chapter of this book and to avoid repetition, only this much can be said that when anguish and disappointment over basic and fundamental issues like settlement, land for agricultural survival and square meal for living were raised by people, it was really a time for proper political and democratic churning on fundamental rights for an emerging democracy. The Food movement (Tebhaga Movement) and the Naxalbari movement in the 60s and 70s (D’Mellow, 2018, 8–23), raised political-economic questions on the distribution of wealth, basic human rights, exploitation of workers and peasants by the moneyed class. These uprisings also motivated a large number of social participations from different sections of society, especially from the students (Mazumdar, 2019, 16–29). The food movement which unfolded in West Bengal in 1959 gradually transformed into a spontaneous mass movement that enfolded people of all political hues and affiliations (Basu, 2012, 2).

Transition Phase: The 1970s to 1980s Jawaharlal Nehru died in mid-1964 when India was in a precarious position mostly because of the 1962 war with China and 1965 war with Pakistan. Those unwarranted wars proved to be detrimental to the economic revitalization of India and the war with Pakistan raised the issue of the Kashmir dispute. Under such economic and political disruptions, Nehru’s only daughter Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India bearing the long legacy of his father. Indira faced the biggest challenge, since independence, to the Congress party’s dominance of India (Ramesh, 2018, 14). In national and state elections held in 1967, one year after her Prime Ministership the Congress could not do well. The result of the 1967 polls highlighted the fact that there was an overwhelming demand for change, the popular appeal for Congress was evidently declining (Butler et al., 1995, 123).

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First Democratic Upsurge The Congress party was defeated and ousted from power in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Orissa and even the national capital, Delhi also saw the defeat of the Congress. Even it could not attain proper majority in five other states namely Utter Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Punjab and West Bengal for the first time since 1947. This historic and agenda setting electoral result enabled the Opposition parties to form coalition governments in states like Utter Pradesh, West Bengal and Punjab (Guha, 2007, 334). The 1967 polls also showed that prominent Congress leaders in several states including Chaudhary Charan Singh in Utter Pradesh, Ajoy Mukherjee in West Bengal and Harekrishna Mahatab in Orissa had left Congress and started floating alternative ‘regional’ parties (Frankel, 1978, 42). This could be argued as the ‘first democratic upsurge’ keeping the importance of region in mind in India. Issues like ‘Green Revolution’ (GR) also proved to be significant in this strenuous time as this kind of climate of dissidence provided the ground for larger social as well as political mobilizations as people associated with GR were intermediate-caste (Jats) farmers, who were beginning to gain rising productivity in agriculture especially in Northern India (Frankel, 1971, 89; Shiva, 2016, 176; Karlsson, 2016, 64–83). Given this mood for anti-incumbency, in the post-Nehru era, it was really challenging for the Congress to regain its lost ground across the country. Tamil Nadu saw the mobilizations in the name of Tamil ethnolinguistic pride and middle and lower caste aspirations. On the other hand, Communist and Socialist parties proved their presence felt in the very different socio-cultural settings of West Bengal and Kerala, whereas Hindu nationalists, Socialists and emerging intermediate-caste political formations emerged in Uttar Pradesh (Graham, 1990, 254; 2006, 155– 172). In the same fashion Bihar too was transformed, saw the rise of the Socialists, Hindu nationalists and Communists. This is perhaps what Partha Chatterjee had in mind while theorizing his idea of the ‘nation and its fragments’ (Chatterjee, 1993a, 1993b) and this fragmented presence of many opposition voices, heralding the absence of a coherent national party was in one sense a blessing in disguise for Indian democracy as multiple voices of public aspirations and distress were cropping up. The Congress realized that such conditions might restrict any threat to its power at the Centre at initial level and it was also argued that the Congress started conjuring up strategies to restore its strong base both in the Centre as well as in the states (Kaviraj, 2010, 80).

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Until 1969, Indira Gandhi was underestimated by many especially the old party leaders because of both her gender and her relative lack of political stature made people downplay her real talents. Very soon however, by identifying the insider opponents within her own party, she established her credentials, took total control and proved her leadership. Even the bold initiatives launched by her provided a strategic ground to address the Congress party’s decline in popular support and restored its faltering hegemony. Slogan like Garibi Hatao! (Abolish Poverty!) coined by her proved instantly popular among masses as it appealed directly to the poor majority of the country and particularly to key socially backward groups such as the SCs (the former ‘untouchables’ of the caste hierarchy, known today as Dalits: the downtrodden), scheduled tribes (STs: India’s impoverished and marginalized tribal communities, known as the Adivasis or the original inhabitants), and Muslims with their 11–12% share in the national population. This electorally catchy slogan was used in the national and state elections in early 1971. Furthermore, led by its relatively youthful woman leader, having a charismatic persona, the Congress party started the processes of proselytization across the country in the name of democratic participation and social justice. So, the 1971 election again proved to be vital from the perspective of social mobilization across the nation (Malik, 1988, 20; Roy, 1973, 42; Sahgal, 1982, 56). The result of the 1971 election exhilarated Indira Gandhi as under her leadership, the Congress won with nearly two-thirds parliamentary majority, winning 342 of the 518 seats in the Lok Sabha. The popular slogan, Garibi Hatao, it appeared successfully resonated throughout the length and breadth of the country and subsequently attracted large numbers of new voters to the Congress party that had redefined itself as a progressive force for social and political change without hampering too much its erstwhile hoary image of a grand old party of India. Post this landslide win, Indira Gandhi emerged as a mass leader in her own right in the early 1970s. She was referred to as ‘Indira Amma’ (Mother Indira) among women of poverty-stricken communities in Andhra Pradesh, while in West Bengal University students enunciated Indira as ‘Long live Indira Gandhi, the new sun of New Delhi, the new fortress of a new Asia’ (Bose, 2017, 26). After dexterously handling the international crisis of East Pakistan in March 1971, Indira Gandhi’s power and prestige went up further. India under the leadership of Indira played a crucial and determining role in what was globally known as the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war against the brutal force of Pakistan. The international community

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highly appreciated the role played by Indira and her leadership credential was recognized worldwide (Raghavan, 2013, 14; Ramesh, 2018, 78). After this victory Indira Gandhi was hailed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a Hindu nationalist opposition politician who would himself serve as prime minister from 1998 to 2004. He identified Indira as an incarnation of Durga, a notable goddess in the Hindu pantheon of deities, known as the mythic symbol of valour and prowess (Ullekh, 2018, 117). This over-eulogization and mass support fuelled the fetish for absolute power leading to authoritarian tendencies. The political-culture in India after 1973 took an autocratic turn leading to full-throated dictatorship of Indira Gandhi (Salter, 2000, 149). By 1974 the euphoria of 1971–1972 was fading out, and the high hopes and aspirations aroused by the promise to abolish poverty were giving birth to a growing sense of disillusionment among the middle and labouring classes, because of poor economic conditions and the lack of a purposive development agenda. Initially, students started rioting in urban centres of Gujarat, and then hundreds of thousands of railway workers went on a national strike as a mark of people’s protest. Even the resurgence of the Leftist regime under the United Front and later through various means of the Naxalite insurgency provided strong opposition to the Congress regime once again (Banerjee, 1980, 34; 2017, 85; Bhardwaj, 2020, 128; Haragopal, 2017, 130). This momentum for consistent change in Indian political moods and opinions began taking shape after the demise of Nehru and by 1974 the upsurge against political status quo was really a force to reckon with. The Left parties, the non-Left and right-wing coalition got a boost and felt more strengthened, gaining newer grounds and began offering leadership to political mobilizations underway at that time in the name of people’s will (Chandra, 2017, 16; Devasahayam, 2012, 16–21). The JP Movement (movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan, asking for ‘sampurna Kranti’ or total revolution) unfolding at that time evinced vocabularies of a new politics, which had been simmering since the early years of 1970s (Prasad & Prasad, 2021, 122; Nagy, 1978, 74).

Period of Uncertainty: Emergency Rule and Its Implications Besieged with this growing cacophony of concerted protest against her absolutist powers and her failure to bring structural change, Indira Gandhi failed to deal with the situation democratically and declared the ‘Emergency’ in 1975 and the Emergency came as a dark chapter in the long and

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eventful history of India’s democracy. It lasted for twenty-one months and was formally lifted only in March 1977, although it was relaxed in January 1977. During this period India’s framework of parliamentary democracy at the national level and in the states (the opposition-run governments in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat were summarily dismissed) was replaced by the rule of a motley group of henchmen around Indira Gandhi and her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi. Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties came under severe assault. Mass arrests of targeted groups were carried out throughout the country: Tens of thousands of opposition leaders and activists and thousands of newspaper journalists and editors were picked up and cast into jail during the Emergency, and all these were done under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, which was enacted by the Congress-dominated Parliament in New Delhi. A photograph of George Fernandes—a socialist opposition leader and trade unionist who helped organize the 1974 railway workers’ strike—raising his manacled hands in defiance became an iconic image of the Emergency. A small number of Congress politicians who dared to dissent were also imprisoned. The total number of arrests during the Emergency topped 100,000 persons, and the arrests’ selective and targeted nature was indicative of a plan, which largely worked, to prevent the organizing of mass protests and to control public opinion by muzzling the press (Jaffrelot & Pratinav, 2021, 267; Prakash, 2019, 45). Subsequently, a suffocating climate of fear spreaded across the country. Popular Akali Dal leader Harcharan Singh Longowal had argued that the question was not whether Indira Gandhi should continue to be the prime minister or not. Rather the point was whether democracy in India had to be survived or not. According to him, the democratic structure based on the three pillars, namely a strong opposition, independent judiciary and free press (Singh, 1991, 39), was destroyed. In the national election of March 1977 Congress under Indira Gandhi was decisively defeated and ousted from power. The ruling party won just 154 of the 542 parliamentary constituencies (Brass, 1990, 289). The performance of Congress in the southern states kept its promise alive as 92 of the 129 parliamentary constituencies in the four southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala voted Congress candidates. In Andhra Pradesh, the most populous state of the south, Congress took 57% of the popular vote and 41 of the 42 parliamentary constituencies and made a similar sweep in Karnataka (whose capital, Bangalore, now known as Bengaluru, is India’s information technology

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hub in the early twenty-first century), winning 26 of the 28 parliamentary constituencies and 57% of the popular vote. In Kerala the party bagged 11 of the 20 parliamentary constituencies and in Tamil Nadu 14 out of 39. The contrast between north and south was due to a mix of factors (Butler et al., 1995, 128). In western India, Congress’ dominance was eroded, but the party performed better there than in the north. A rainbow social base known as KHAM—Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim—bringing together the Kshatriyas, an upper-caste community, the Harijans, the deeply disadvantaged ‘untouchable’ community, the Adivasis, the poor and marginalized tribals and the Muslim minority of nearly 10% was formed in Gujarat during the 1970s. This social base survived the onslaughts of the Emergency. Despite its southern comfort, Congress had lost its control over northern India. Even, Indira Gandhi suffered the personal humiliation of being defeated in her own parliamentary constituency in UP, and her son Sanjay lost badly in another UP constituency. The newly built Janata Party (People’s Party; not to be confused with the aforementioned Janata Dal of the late 1980s), a loosely formed alliance of socialist groups, the rightwing Hindu nationalist party, middle-peasant formations based among intermediate-castes, Congress conservatives who had been side-lined by Indira Gandhi’s ascendancy in 1969–1971 or had left the party even earlier to form a right-wing opposition, and Congress politicians who had quit the party in protest against the Emergency, provided the ground against Indira and her sons. This opponent combination won an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha—winning 295 of 542 seats. It was also seen that out of 295 MPs, 215 were elected from the states of northern India. Thus the Janata Party was a largely North Indian phenomenon, supplemented by Gujarat in the west, where Congress conservatives pushed aside by Indira Gandhi’s rise had retained a base, and Orissa in the east, where Biju Patnaik, a charismatic regional figure and former Congress leader, joined the Janata Party. Morarji Desai, an octogenarian conservative from Gujarat who had been Indira Gandhi’s main rival in the Congress leadership during the 1966–1969 period, became independent India’s first non-Congress prime minister after 30 years of its existence (Gould, 1993, 85; Limaye, 1992, 40). This delineates the major political mobilization against the Congress System that ruled postcolonial India for more than three decades. The Janata Party (first non-Congress coalition) government proved to be an unhappy and unstable experience. Within two years the Janata Party

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disintegrated amidst factional feuds and ugly confrontations between overly ambitious and power-hungry leaders, the government lost its parliamentary majority and midterm elections had to be called and finally in the midterm national election held in January 1980, Indira Gandhi returned to power with a big win, winning 353 out of 529 parliamentary constituencies, bagging popular sympathy by her side. During this election, the party’s slogan was ‘Elect a Government that works! Vote Congress (I)’. By doing such sloganeering and campaigns, Indira Gandhi established the political narrative, which still have popular purchase even today, that a stable government in the centre could only provide stability and prosperity across the country (Chakrabarty, 2008, 12). Despite having the phoenix-like revival of Indira Gandhi, the Congress party did not necessarily signal a lasting revival of Congress hegemony in India’s politics. Nor was the victory of 1980 a ringing endorsement of Indira Gandhi and her party as the cumulative outcome of three factors were instrumental in the return of the Congress and the three factors were: the failure of the Janata Party coalition to provide a responsible government to the country, the disunity of the opposition parties in the 1980 election, and the fact that Congress was still the party with the single largest base of support in most of the states respectively (Bidwai, 2015, 67; Desai, 2013, 290). Talking about political deviance and differentiality, during 1982, Andhra Pradesh saw the emergence of the sixty years old popular Telugu cinema actor Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao known as N. T. Rama Rao or simply NTR, who floated a regional party called the Telugu Desam Party (Telugu Homeland Party) flaunting his son of the soil phenomenon in public. Later, he undertook a strenuous public relations campaign, travelling throughout the sprawling state in a van called Chaitanya Ratham (Chariot of Awakening), attracting huge crowds wherever he went. His main plank was Telugu pride and self-respect: Aarukotla andhrula atma gauravam (Self-respect of sixty million Andhra people). With his alternative regional party and an emotive appeal to offended Telugu sentiments, NTR also appropriated the ‘social justice’ platform of the Congress and promised to implement a group of anti-poverty and welfare measures targeted at women and the poor if voted into power (Kohli, 1994, 48; Suri, 2006, 230). The emergence of the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh as a regional party headed by a popular and charismatic figure from within the state was an early milestone in the regionalization of India’s polity, which

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accelerated and deepened in the 1990s and increasingly dominated its democratic fabric ever since. The rise of a powerful regional challenge in Andhra was not an isolated event. Karnataka also went to the polls to elect its government in January 1983. In Karnataka, a state largely populated by speakers of the Kannada language, a regional version of the disintegrated Janata Party emerged in 1983 as the single largest party in the state legislature by winning 95 of the 224 constituencies, while Congress was demoted to second position with 82 members in the legislative assembly losing its traditional and popular vote bank. This trend of political reversal in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka and the steady rise of the regional parties proved to be a big challenge for the Indira-led Congress. Along with this, the entire northern part of India was in turmoil, there was insurgency in Punjab, led by the so-called Khalistanis. The ruling party’s prospects were also bleak in some other populous states like West Bengal where the communist-led Left Front had won a second five-year term in state elections in May 1982, and Congress could not see any promising result of parliamentary constituencies in the next national election. On the other hand, Tamil Nadu had destabilized the Congress base and limited its power to stand on its own legs, and it was dependent on its alliance with one of the two large regional parties in the state—the ruling party, led by M. G. Ramachandran (MGR), another movie actor turned successful regional politician (Pandian, 2015, 87). So far, we discussed in great detail about the political trajectory of postcolonial India upto the late 70s or early 80s, the four crucial decades during which India experienced its ‘first democratic upsurge’ in the form of deviance and departure from the Congress Leviathan. These fragmenting trends led to the formation of so many regional forces and also in the formation of dissenting voices demanding fundamental rights like food, and lands for all. The loud dissonance in the form of marginal voices and anti-centrist voices strengthened Indian democracy, a process that prepared the grounds for new social movements in the 90s and in the new millennium. It is also to be noted that along with conventional electoral fights and oppositions, so crucial in any parliamentary democracy, India also witnessed movements on non-electoral issues like Ecology and Environment related issues, held from the 1970s to 1990s (Shiva & Bandyopadhyay, 1986, 133–142). The Chipko movement and the anti-Dam or anti-Development movements happening during this period is very well known and contributed in the formation of crucial civil society debates related to economic development, urbanization and

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corporate culture which played havoc with the environment and also ousted the tribals and other indigenous population groups who lived amidst mountains and jungles which were encroached for modern development (Nayak, 2010, 69–73; 2013, 379–419). In chapter two this part of environmental movements had already been discussed in detail and therefore in this section we reiterate this only to remind the reader that protests and mobilizations also pivoted around issues which were not a staple diet in Indian political agenda during the 70s. We now move on to the next part which relates to the ‘second democratic upsurge’ in India in the late 80s and early 90s.

Second Democratic Upsurge The changing nature of political participation in India since the 1970s heralded new political imaginaries for several reasons. This has also provided a ground for transformation, which has been categorized as new political configurations in the form of Bahujan Samaj Party or what was viewed as the coalition among all backward castes and classes in India—a consolidation or a move that had huge political and social implications in terms of electoral politics and social block formation. Such gigantic forms of Dalit consolidation as a social force perhaps took place for the first time since independence. This upsurge of lower caste mobilization under the leadership of Kansi Ram and Mayawati in the late 80s, has been described as the ‘second democratic upsurge in India’ (Yadav, 2005, 120), the first being during the late 1960s and the 70s. This new decade of the 80s is better known as a time of governmental instability, rise of coalition politics, decline of the Congress, the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and most importantly the politics around economic liberalization. It was also noticed that the behaviour, approaches and social compositions of voters and those who took part in political activities during this time also changed drastically during this time (Yadav, 2005, 120–121). According to Yogendra Yadav, the first democratic upsurge took place in the 1960s, when Indian democracy was transformed radically with the expansion of its social participation base. The voters became aware of their responsibilities and political competition became serious as the alternative to one-party system (dominance of the Congress party) looked very much a possibility. This period also facilitated the rise of lower caste participation in Indian politics which never happened in such vigorous manner earlier. This caused a marked transformation in the political-culture of India as well. The lower or backward classes’ participation has further intensified the social upheaval and subsequent mobilizations keeping alive

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contemporary political hopes and aspirations in mind. The use of the term ‘Bahujan’ to explain the participation of diverse social groups like Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs and all the minorities offers a fresh understanding of these people and their political mobilization to achieve particular targets. Mainly, socially and culturally deprived communities came to be united to raise their dissent in the form of voice against the dominance of the majoritarian regime prevalent around that time. Now, it has been argued that the emergence of the Bahujan and their politics had immense symbolic value for Indian society at large as it reflected the aspiratory zeal and populist participation of the marginalized people in Indian democracy. It also marked a decisive collective step against elite upper-caste political domination. One may cite here the example of Dalit leader Babu Jagjivan Ram, who in spite of his crusading role for the upliftment of the Dalits was denied prominence or eminence due to upper-caste vindictive backlash towards him and his politics (Shah, 1977, 119). Later, during the high tide of the Bahujan Samaj movement during the late 80s, the same mission of Dalit political aspirations was aptly and confidently actualized by Kanshi Ram, Mayawati and Lalu Prasad Yadav, whose political goals have historically challenged the established notion of upper caste consensus in the Indian politics and subsequently they succeeded in mobilizing the Dalits and other sections of the common population against all forms of caste and social oppression (Gundimeda, 2017, 11; Rao, 2009, 118). The word Bahujan, etymologically signifies the majority and it has Buddhist roots as Buddhist scriptures have often used the word, meaning the collective or all the people. The founder of Bahujan Party, Kansi Ram argued that the Dalits, the Adivasis and other minorities in India constitute the majority or the Bahujan of the entire Indian population and yet in spite of their big numbers, they are divided and sub-divided in so many caste groups by the notorious caste system in India which has complete social hegemony. Thus, being inspired by Ambedkar, the Bahujan Movement wanted to unite all disenfranchised sections of Indian society and created a big political impact as it energized the Dalits and Other Backward Castes (OBC) and minorities. One needs to recall the Mandal Commission Report (1980) in this context, it was the report submitted by Indian Parliamentarian Mr. B. P. Mandal, the head of the Mandal Commission on how to identify and help the other backward classes based on their caste-based and socio-economic discrimination indexes. The Mandal Commission report suggested the provision for twenty seven per cent reservation for the OBCs in jobs and educational facilities and

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that raised the total number of reservation higher than the existing percentage. This generated a lot of controversies as it caused large-scale backlashes from the upper castes. The Bahujan Samaj movement is to be situated within this fierce social contestation in Indian life and polity. Many upper-caste students committed suicide while protesting against the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendation which was proposed to be implemented in 1990 by the then Prime Minister Mr. V. P. Singh. ‘Mandalization’ of Indian life and politics as it was called, fomented the rise of upper-caste Hindu identity politics which ultimately led to the rise of the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement premised on the call for Hindu Unity, bringing all sections of Hindu Society under the singular umbrella of Hindutva or Hindu Rashtra. This conflict between that was called, ‘Mandal (Caste politics tool) versus Kamandal’ (Hindu politics related tool) (Bhaskar, 2018) produced a split public in India, the public sphere was sharply divided in 1992 during the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement led by BJP Leader Lal Krishna Advani which led to the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in India (Mustafa, 1990, 117–127). This schism and polarization of Indian society changed the political vocabulary completely. From the question of development, political economy, equality and enfranchisement, the entire political attention in Indian society shifted towards religious identity and fanaticism. Religion became an easy means of public mobilization for electoral gains and in the fourth chapter we have shown how this ethno-religious identity movement was aided by new technologies of mass communication such as satellite television and digital technology which could circulate religious symbols, images and affective messages within minutes across the country, constituting an ‘imagined community’ of Hindu Nationalism. The Bahujan Samaj attempt to foreground caste atrocities and discrimination was hijacked and glossed over by emotive and orthodox issues of religious bigotry and fanatic demands. Indian polity and Indian civil society are yet to fully negotiate with this problem of religious identity politics. Post-Ram Janmabhoomi Movement the overwhelming rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the tutelage of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani in 1989–1990 formed the Hindutva environment by targeting the religious orientation of the people of India. Ram, the mythic Hindu figure was iconized politically to project the idea of Ram Rajya, or a mythic utopian world in which all Hindus will have their fulfilment and glory. Both the issue of Hindutva and Ram mandir acted

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as a catalyst for the BJP party to attain their meteoric rise as a political party with strong Hindu majoritarian support (Palshikar, 2019, 102). The social fabric of India, known for its diverse cultural plurality was politicized, India was politically projected as a Hindu country and Hindu majoritarianism was asserted through a staunch critique of the constitutional idea of ‘secularism’ and ‘cultural pluralism’. India had a long history of communal riots since the time of colonialism and once again due to ugly religious polarization, ethnic strife, communal riots became an everyday norm in the early 1990s and during the beginning of the new millennium (Jaffrelot, 2005, 354).

Mandal-Kamandal: Social Justice and Mass Mobilization The most important political debate in India around the 1980s–1990s was the Mandal debate and the debate concerning arguments for and against the extension of the Indian state’s policy of quotas in government employment to the large new group, the so-called Other Backward Classes (OBCs), mainly comprising intermediate lower castes in the larger backdrop of social justice. The Janata Dal government tried to refresh and subsequently redefine the older ideal of equality by linking it closely to the forms of democracy. This strengthened the case for job or educational quotas—the expansion of the quota policy was thus accompanied by a discursive shift to empower the OBCs. At the same time, this discursive shift did not represent as a radical break with the constitutional vision as commentators have suggested. The Janata Dal’s, led by Prime Minister V. P. Singh, discourse of social justice involved a creative reinterpretation of the ‘high ideological spectrum’, rather than the triumph of indigenous, vernacular, subaltern values (Yadav, 1999, 2393). It also represented a political watershed: lower caste-based political parties would henceforth be a significant force in Indian politics, signalling the end of Congress party’s majoritarian attitudes and hegemony. The Nehruvian model apparently tried to eliminate the caste–religion duo from the public discourse in independent India but it has later returned with vengeance onto the political centre-stage (Menon & Nigam, 2007, 4). Now, it can be said that the advocacy of quotas in terms of parity and equality of presence of different marked social groups heralded a radical break from the constitutional basis of preferential treatment (Mahajan, 2010, 4). The Mandal debate in 1990 most significantly signalled the ascendance of

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social justice as a legitimating norm in its own right. This marked an important shift in the justifications of affirmative action in India. Rather than floating the triumph of identity, this debate exhibited social equality with strong economic advantages for the OBCs (Bajpai, 2011, 226–235). The government’s decision to implement the recommendations of the Mandal Commission report opened a new era in Indian politics by bringing in the issues of social justice and the question of equality for the backward caste people at large during the 1990s, when the processes of economic liberalization were just to take off in India. In all respect, this was an epoch-making event in Indian history after independence. Social inequalities as well as economic inequalities proved to be fatal for the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy and this characterized both economic and social disadvantages for them entirely. Arguably, it was the momentous decision of social justice in India. Therefore, the Mandal debate has brought the issues associated with the OBCs from periphery to the centreground of policymaking, which was absent during the Congress regime. This Report has diligently argued in favour of the caste-based discriminations in India and the suggestion for a large quantity of job reservations as steps towards affirmative action and positive discrimination elicited sharp reactions from the upper castes and that pitted both the social groups of Dalits and the upper castes against each other, leading to the politics of Dalit mobilization and upper caste Hindu mobilization as a counter-force. It was implemented through job reservations from the lower castes who had faced centuries of atrocities under the notorious caste system in India (Hasan, 2009, 159; Maheshwari, 1995, 45). All these movements typify various dimensions of social mobilizations that unfolded in India in the post-1947 scenario and continued in the 1990s that saw the opening up of the internal markets to foreign direct investment under the neoliberal economic policies of India. India post-1990s changed as a country and as an economy which had farreaching consequences as far as social movements are concerned. New and unprecedented economic changes ushered in multi-national capital and massive technologization of the social space and that had tremendous cultural ramifications too. The urban space, the family sector, the educational sector, the sphere of labour reform, audio-visual reform, communicational technological boom, and last but not the least the culture of capitalist consumption and governmental withdrawal from all areas of welfarism created a sense of crisis and turbulence in Indian society, a situation that once again led to ‘million mutinies’ (Naipaul, 1990, 4–5)

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in India. The next chapter will elaborate on this digital or virtual transformation for the Indian public sphere which changed the modus operandi and ideology of social mobilizations in a significant way.

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CHAPTER 4

Semiology and Simulacrum: Post-1990s and Virtual Transformation of Popular Dissent

Pressing further on what we discussed at the end of the previous section, this chapter theoretically relates to the market-driven new India or the ‘brand new nation’ (Kaur, 2020) after the satellite television boom and after the arrival of the Internet, the cyber cafes, the massive inflow of mobile phones and the emerging domain of early social networking devices and sites such as Pagers, Orkut, Facebook, a domain which subsequently spilled over into other formats like WhatsApp or Twitter in contemporary India. It shows how India from the early 90s and post-2000 looks a different country altogether as it witnessed a virtual transformation of the public sphere and the cultural space that had direct and overwhelming impact on India’s social behaviour and politicalculture. This was the time when government-controlled television, Doordarshan was replaced by the cable television explosion, a phenomenal shift that marked the rise of multiple corporate players and privately owned television channels watched by consumption-oriented aspirational India. This was therefore, the India of pot-liberalized market economy which allowed different private companies to enter into the Indian market for business. The monopoly of public sector units and governmental control was lifted, heralding metaphorically the end of the ‘licence permit Raj’, a system that spawned the climate of governmental regulation, corrupt bureaucratic hegemony and austerity in all spheres of Indian life. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. S. Purakayastha et al., Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94040-9_4

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Under the new deregulated economy in the 1990s, multiple regimes of consumer advertisement and aggressive marketizing entered into Indian life and the impact of marketizing glitz, the seductive protocols of mass public communication and televisual dissemination of information and entertainment percolated into the political and the social spectrum of India. Politics began becoming more professional, managerially trained and technologically sophisticated as leaders and political organizations mastered the art of sound bites and also learned how to politically capitalize the power of visual media. This was the time of the beginning of what today we call ‘perception politics’, or political image making through televised dramaturgy, party-speak, TRP rating, Breaking News, visual propaganda and splurge of emotive appeals. Semiology and simulacrum became the rule of the game as political parties and organizations became more tech-savvy and screen conscious, deputed their spokespersons to brief the media about electoral manifestos and political promises. This was also the time of unprecedented information flow as cable networks and the Internet could immediately disseminate global news and local news across the country. Another parallel and significant development was the rise of big and popular reality shows in television which had nation-wide popularity and that new art of showbiz and glamour effect spilled over into the domain of personal or social lives and also into the political lives of India. Political players started operating their activities and campaigns more showbiz like and glamour oriented as the television camera or the Internet sites were constantly looking at them. As political leaders and their strategies became more camera-centric, similarly, dissident voices, or opponent views also became equally aware about the power of television or televised modes of mobilizing public anger and popular support for a particular socio-political cause. If mainstream political parties jumped onto the television bandwagon, the pervasive spread of television also constituted an informed public base, in which people started knowing through electronic media about what was happening around the world and within the country. This caused the virtual transformation of the Indian public sphere, a phenomenon that helped in galvanizing public consciousness and popular protest through televisual campaigns. Unless we understand this decade (2000–2010) that saw the Internet, the cable network boom and the marketization of life, we cannot understand the changing dynamics and paradigms of new social movements that unfolded in India since that time. This was the time of the making of the new Info-public, the new virtual public sphere that thrived through constant

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flow of easily accessible information, promoting a mass culture of popular opinion making through television debates, mega shows and televised rallies. Public protest in India since then has become more electronically articulative and participatory. Whether it has actually deepened democratic platforms like the civil society can be debated but it definitely has empowered the ordinary masses as they can have quick access to information and can also immediately express their personal opinion on them. Deeply emotive images and visuals, such as glorious moments of Indian cricket team victory, the demolition of the Babri Mosque by Hindu ultranationalist groups, political Rath Yatra (chariot rallies) and glamourous celebrities dominated Indian public debates during this period, forging public attention and public opinion on various issues. This is how a tele-public, beholden to seductive visuals, alluring advertisements, images of nationalist myths, traditions and collective historical memory was slowly emerging. Scholars like Christopher Pinney (2009) have argued about this visual historiography of the Indian public mind. Pinney’s seminal work on ‘the Politics of Popular Images’ (2009) in India helps in understanding the predominant position of visuals and images of deities and mythic role models in the Indian public space. Later when television or the Internet arrived on the scene, they capitalized on these pre-existing mythic structures of visual appeal in Indian culture for political gains. With the arrival of television and the Internet one witnessed a complex ensemble of technology-myth-semiologizedpolitics. Even recent research on ‘Image-Making-India: Visual Culture, Technology, Politics’ (Harald Favero, 2021); ‘Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television’ (Munshi, 2020); ‘India and Its Visual Cultures: Community, Class And Gender in A Symbolic Landscape’ (Skoda & Lettmann, 2017); ‘Understanding India: Cultural Influences On Indian Television Commercials’ (Chattopadhyay, 2014); ‘Indian Public Sphere: Readings in Media History’ (Rajagopal, 2009); ‘India on Television’, (Mehta, 2008); and ‘Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India’ (Mazzarella, 2003) substantiate the same argument of socio-political transformation in the aftermath of television and the power of visuals and technology in Indian popular mindscape. Talking about this affective universe of visual culture that percolated into the socio-political space, Pinney has identified the role of ‘allegory’ and the ‘figure’ in both colonial and postcolonial Indian politics

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… it is clear that the nation was invoked primarily through allegory. This was an allegory open to ‘linguistic’ decoding and was highly susceptible to colonial control. Within a few decades, however, it was superseded by what we might term ‘figure’ or the affective. In part, this history was determined by a dialectical constraint: figural affective intensities required the semiotic infrastructure of allegory … use of ‘figure’ here loosely follows the philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard’s use of it to connote a domain where ‘meaning is not produced and communicated, but intensities are felt’. Lyotard invoked ‘figure’ as the opposite of ‘discourse’, a domain of the knowable characterized by ‘linguistic philosophical closure’ … the same ontological independence that … densely compressed performative and the affectively and libidinally charged domain that escapes conventional signification. (Pinney, 2009, 66–68)

This ‘affective’ and ‘libidinally charged domain’ of audio-visual communication transformed the way the public will relate to events unfolding in front of them. The Indian public sphere in the mid-1990s operated through this complex process of technologized image circulation and public opinion making, something that relied on pre-existing models of ‘figuration’, ‘allegory’ and ‘libidinal exchange’. … images that spill over, or open out with an excess of splendour, have a transfigurative appeal of cosmetic bliss. In other words, they entice and invite us to participate in a glorious spree of make-believe. This is what constitutes, in our contemporary nationalist politics, what pundits call “the battle of perceptions”. It is possible that the hyperreal has surpassed the real today, because the former delusionally invests the perceiver with a surplus of pomp. We fetishize the image, gluttonise on decked-up spectacles and participate in splurges of colour and gloss. Quite naturally, therefore, we tend to demolish any sign-system that overdoses on the elegiac. To push the frame a bit further—the poor do not make good images when dead; their corpses fail to evoke nationalist fervour. To eviscerate this deficiency the poor have to at least be draped in a soldier’s uniform, if not the national flag. That way, the bodies of the poor can be glossed over in a surfeit of nationalist symbols. What makes a nation then: men, women, children? Or signs and symbols? (Purakayastha & Ahmed, 2020)

This fetishization of signs and symbols began happening through capitalist consumption, televised image making and digital dissemination. The contingencies of postcolonial Indian public sphere offer fresh understanding of this fetishized interactive dialogue between deregulated

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market economy, consumption capital, digital media and our rush for the simulacral or the visually signified. Any understanding of Indian politics therefore, post-satellite television, has to consider all these factors. In his pathbreaking work on the nineteenth-century bourgeoise public sphere, Jurgen Habermas argued how letter writing, popular fiction readership and critical public discussion forged the base for popular democratic participation and debates. Even though the Habermasian public sphere has been critiqued for its exclusive Eurocentric orientations, the core argument of Habermas still appears highly pertinent. It is the questions Habermas posed that have been most influential, not his answers. Rather than assume that modern communication technologies help create enlightened democratic conditions, Habermas asks: what is the relation between a communicational form such as print and its sociopolitical context? What kind of popular participation are made possible in a given context of publicity, and whose interest are best represented in a particular public sphere? Habermas’s sociological account of political formation through communicative practices is important in its effort to locate the possibility of democratization outside the realm of the state, and potentially independent of it. However, in most parts of the world, it is not through individuals as such but through groups and national communities that political identities have been shaped and expressed. (Rajagopal, 2009, 2–3)

If industrial global capital generated ‘print capitalism’ and its concomitant ‘linguistic community’ premised on reading and circulation of those print materials as theorized by Benedict Anderson, similarly, satellite television forged the planks for a televisual or digital community, an imagined national tele-public that marks the possibility for national mobilization on certain issues. Anderson connects ‘nationalist imagination’ to ‘print capitalism’ but such an argument while hinged on strong facticity tends to ‘homogenize’ the nature of media in a particular closure of national public sphere. This calls for contingencies and case-specific features, unique to particular contexts. In the Indian context for example, while the role of print media and digital media in the contemporary scenario cannot be overlooked, older modes of native communication also co-existed and remained equally important. ‘Rumour’ was one such primitive mode of popular communication and public mobilization and it has lingered on in

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the Indian context since precolonial times. The advent of print and audiovisual media has only augmented and digitized the potent force of rumour as a political weapon or as a formidable mode of public mobilization or popular opinion making.

Indian Ecumene Subaltern Studies historian Ranajit Guha has elaborated on this subject in his essay, ‘Transmission’ (2009). Guha’s study of peasant revolt and other modes of subaltern insurgency in precolonial and colonial India shed light on pre-existing grammars of public mobilization which though undergoing significant transformations in the current use of modern instruments and technological vision, continue to adopt similar methods of primitive mobilizations as applied in the contemporary context. Guha argues that peasants in colonial India regarded rebellion as a ‘form of collective enterprise’ (Guha, 2009, 31) and interestingly the colonial administration or the landed gentry who were the targets of peasant outrage viewed rebellion as ‘a contagion’ (Guha, 31). Guha’s archival research demonstrates how the colonial administration interpreted even the Sepoy Mutiny as a form of ‘contagion’, emphasizing on its ‘spontaneity and speed’, its ‘simultaneity’ and ‘phenomenal spread’ (Guha, 33). Guha also notes how the ‘drum, the flute, and the horn’ were the instruments which were used for the ‘aural transmission of insurgency’. These were some of the ‘elementary’ and ‘rustic means of transmission’ premised on the principle of ‘transmutation’ (33) in which verbal signs are interpreted in terms of non-verbal sign systems, something that acted as a precursor of today’s simulacral use of visual signs by tele-media and digital media. The colonial administration, quite understandably, banned the use of these popular and highly effective indigenous methods of communication. These systems of aural signs came to symbolize at once an epistemological and political opposition between the rulers and the ruled. When such opposition matured to the point of provoking mass peasant violence, as it often did under the Raj, even the most innocuous means of aural transmission among the people could assume, in the eyes of the regime, the status of instruments of rebellion and were treated as such … the drum and the buffalo horn especially the latter, came to be an object of official hostility during the Pabna bidroho … local administration resorted to the Indian Penal Code forbidding the

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use of musical instruments for the purpose of invoking assemblies, intimidating union or causing terror… another class of non-verbal transmitters … of visual signs: iconic and symbolic … was the arrow of war … its role as a means of rebel mobilisation was made widely known … an arrow passed from village to village is the summons to arm … an open declaration of war … the spirit of insurrection. (Guha, 34–35)

Remnants of these pre-existing templates of native communication for public uprising continue to haunt our socio-psychic space and new technologies of communication like television and Internet social media, while expanding and innovating the space of communication have tapped into these pre-existing popular formats. A brief note on the genealogy and evolution of the Indian public sphere and its latest technologized turn is in order here. According to official data quoted by Arvind Rajagopal in his The Indian Public Sphere: Readings in Media History (2009), three decades after the independence of India less than ‘3 percent’ of the Indian population was under ‘instruction’ and ‘less than 6 percent of the population’ was literate. In spite of that, there existed ‘dense communication networks’ and information flows could move through ‘native runners or Daks, traders, pilgrims, wedding parties, soldiers and wandering ascetics and artists among others’ (Rajagopal, 2009, 5). In precolonial India, rulers discouraged the use of print, as they were anxious of its effective popular use against monarchy. Interestingly, though, even in the absence of print culture and print medium, ‘vigorous public discussion could occur’ (Rajagopal, 2009, 5). Scholars have cited the case of the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny during which the British administration underestimated the power and efficacy of the ‘indigenous mediatic habitus’ or what C. A. Bayly calls the ‘Indian ecumene’ consisting of heterogenous stakeholders acting within informal setups, giving more importance and reliance on verbal or oral transmission of words or information (Rajagopal, 2009, 5). Apart from the Mutiny, even during the Cow Protection Agitation in the late nineteenth century these effective models of native circulation of visual symbols and imageries were fully utilized, substantiating the argument that in India visual symbols and images, were always politically potent as means of emotive appeal—something today’s televisual strategists fully capitalize upon. The British colonizers too utilized these native networks of information transmission by forming their own system of ‘native informers’ who replaced the indigenous ‘harkaras’ and ‘kasids’,

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‘intelligence gatherers or runners’—actors who helped in running the Mughal empire. Post-independence, the situation in India changed, the legal political structure of the colonial state was largely retained, while English language dominance actually expanded in importance. As a result, the public continued to be positioned as a deficient entity to be contained, improved and transcended, rather than one to be meaningfully engaged by the state. Following independence, the Indian Government sought to establish the identity of the public sphere with the national popular, albeit with uneven success. A restrictive colonial legacy and an underlying fear of the public undoubtedly accounted for much of the reserve mass communication, to these can be added a residual Gandhian suspicion towards modern media. In terms of national media, it was in the cinema that popular attachment was most manifest. The film industry was obliged to conceive of a national audience … in this way it was one of the few institutions that stitched together ideas about culture, politics and economy for mass consumption turning the prose of national developmentalism into song as it were. (Rajagopal, 2009, 8–9)

Traditionally, in India the purpose of the growth of the public sphere was predicated on the ‘propagation of nationalist mobilization and therefore post-independence, the trajectory of the Indian public sphere nosedived as the nationalist public goal was already achieved through the independence’ (Rajagopal, 9). However, with the recent rise of mediatized public sphere in India, very often the issue of the quality of public debate and public discourse has been raised. The most important question for scholarly analysis therefore arises on understanding the ‘forms of consensus and confrontation’ that determine and define a given public sphere which in India is supposed to be reflecting the entire nation-space. Rajagopal has used the idea of the reproduction of the ‘split public’ in postcolonial India, a public which is characterized by inherent social division as well as an ‘ideological division that justifies the divide’ while claiming to overcome that division (Rajagopal, 2009, 10). In the Habermasian public sphere, rational–critical discourse is held to precipitate political decisions, in an idealized quest for realizing a greater or more valid truth. By contrast politics is internal rather than external to the split public, and works within a structure of perception arising from colonial intervention, one that is reproduced willy-nilly in nationalist and postcolonial movements. In the colonial era, organized coercion

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presents the possibility of a closure to the political process … by virtue of British intervention into a tautological dynamic … after independence the claim of national development legitimated the state’s authority to foreclose debate and assert what it defined as the national interest, sometimes violently … with the crisis of the inherited form of secular nationalism, and the growing agnosticism about the legitimacy of the state’s monopoly on violence… in the post-independence period, with a fortified nation state on the one hand and mass franchise on the other, as well as the expansion of a mediatic infrastructure, each side of the split public appears strengthened. (Rajagopal, 2009, 10)

Most scholars of media studies vis a vis the Indian case agree that older media templates and behaviours are enmeshed and subsumed within the structures of new and emerging technologies of communication such as television and the Internet. For example, rumour as an anonymous mode of communication that has a contagious appeal and spread, popularly followed since the time of the Sepoy Mutiny continues to coexist along with latest digital and televisual mediums of communication in India. ‘Fake news’, alleged WhatsApp fabrications, and other forms of alleged ‘paid news’, ‘supari journalism’ (Sardesai, 2014) or misleading information and trolls in television or social media is an extension of that old habit in most cases and public opinion sometimes operates within this complex terrain of split public and contentious antagonism premised on misinformation, distortion and selective or manipulative news-making. One prominent aspect of Nehruvian ideology that dominated India since independence emphasized on the productive strength of the nation as envisaged by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India. Heavy public sector industries were set up to meet this target of maximizing national production. This emphasis on production however, weakened our national attention on the question of consumption and distribution of wealth and products. Along with this, the Gandhian austerity principles prevalent in the Indian public mindset in the 1950s and 60s also projected the act of consumption as evil and grossly fetishizing. Self-indulgence was in fact viewed as taboo and sinful in the Indian cultural context. This espousal of frugality and self-restrain was attuned to the regulated and planned mode of government-controlled economy which India adopted as a policy since 1947. Neoliberal market economy and the proliferation of the media industry in the subsequent years, encouraging commercial ideologies of consumerism, consolidated the identity of the Indian middle class who emerged as key advocates of

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capitalist consumerism. Because of its alignment with middle-class aspirations and consumerist desires, new audio-visual and digital media began representing the aspirations and ideologies of the middle class. Satellite and Internet media and the middle class began perceiving them as consubstantial. The growth of television which was viewed as a luxury item in the late 1970s emerged in popular public perception as an essential item of daily living in India in the 1990s. Significantly, the growth of television occurred along with the corresponding rise in literacy, economic growth, consumption power and technological sophistication in India. This led to audio-visual info-tainment and advertisement-led lifestyles. Live telecast of programmes like international cricket tournaments in exotic foreign venues, beauty pageants like Miss World and Miss Universe competitions and Indian women winning those beauty crowns generated ripples within the conservative social space and Indians began warming up to their newly embraced image of being ‘bold and beautiful’ and assertive. Self-projection, glamourous styles, designer fashions and sexual liberation marked a new socius which grew more vocal and participatory. The rising number of articulative television spectatorship therefore, also matched the rise of the info-publics in India since the 1990s and this spectatorconsumer-nation conglomerate ceased to be satisfied with conventional media platforms. With the change of media use, consumer behaviours also underwent significant shifts. As Rajagopal rightly observes, for the first time since independence, a plausible claim could be made that—‘with the advent of television the nation existed as one cultural entity despite its heterogeneity’ (Rajagopal, 2009, 16). Television soap operas like the telecast of Hindu epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata and other popular tele-serials, Bollywood films and mega cricket tournaments constituted a pan-Indian singular spectator-public and with the broadcast of the Hindu epics, it was a Hindu unity that this televisual public came to be celebrated… the growth of a visual medium received in the privacy of the home posed an interesting challenge to a communication agenda that was both national and developmentalist. The growth of advertisement helped to create a more globally oriented consumption culture … and a new way in which the developmental agenda itself was conceived, as about consumer pleasure rather than as an onerous duty … a Hindu public in which the symbols of the majority religion became included as sanctioned and even proud indicators of national sensibility. If

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in the Nehruvian era, popular participation was theoretically included but in practical terms considered an interference, then in the era of market liberalization, private consumption not only defined but legitimated the sanctity of the new dispensation. (Rajagopal, 2009, 16)

According to official data quoted by Rajagopal, during the early 90s the total circulation of newspapers in India was roughly around 22 million and the total extent of households having television coverage was 11 million which amounted to 55 million people across the nation. However, with the advent of the new millennium, television coverage jumped from eleven million to forty million households and the media industry became the fastest growing area of Indian business as news and entertainment media channels mushroomed and their popularity and vast reach widened across the country. By all official accounts, nearly a fifth of the Indian population lived with daily television exposures and experiences in the late 90s (Rajagopal, 2009, 17). In what follows, we will elaborate this unprecedented growth of television viewership which changed public mindset and political reactions in India.

Television and the Changing Civil-Political Matrix in India When Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi proposed the new telecom policy of India, advocating the influx of computer technology in the mid-80s, there were large-scale political protests in India opposing the move of computerization. Mainstream Left parties in India even projected this rush for computers as national surrender to the IMF, the World Bank and other forces of capitalist globalization, which they claimed, will lead to neo-imperial invasion and massive job losses. This initial hesitancy and resistance notwithstanding, computers were introduced along with the telecom policy of nation-wide telephone and Internet services. Government controlled Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) was given the task of running the Internet services in India but very soon private agencies were allowed to act as service-providers. The new government led by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao opened the Indian economy to liberalized models and the entire communication system began to be privatized with multiplicities of service providers jostling in the Indian market to stake their claims. Private television channels like Sony, ZEE, ATN, Ten Sports, MTV, Channel V, Star Sports, NDTV, BBC, CNN

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and Aaj Tak vied for a competitive edge, providing lucrative offers to consumers. Number of glamorous shows and attractive events surged in television and with the confidence and audacity of laissez faire, Bollywood movies too began to produce ‘bolder’ movies, breaking prevailing sexual taboos and traditional mindsets. India claimed to be ‘shining’ during that time and began the process of shedding its image of a poor Third World developing country, content with its low-income rate. This economic buoyancy and aspiration generated nation-wide confidence as well as resentment. There were political groups and social bodies who opposed this no holds barred advocacy for market economy through the demise of the benevolent welfare state. Massive dams and luxury Housing construction projects were commissioned to be built by private multinational companies to generate hydraulic power and revenues, leading to evictions of local tribal people and destruction of forests and wetlands. This resulted in large-scale protests which were also televised through news channel coverages. By and large, however, privatization and liberalization instilled an element of confidence and new strivings which were made possible through mediatized communication and new consumer opportunities. National sentiments and aspirations were glued together through television and digital communication portals. This was a time of value transition and ideological shifts and various entertainment shows and television serials focused on so-called Indian values which were pitted against a new world determined and guided by the ideologies of capitalist consumption and individual aspirations. Nalin Mehta in his Television in India: Satellites, Politics and Cultural Change (2008) has perfectly captured this momentous shift in Indian political-culture in the aftermath of television in India. It was a stunning demonstration of satellite television’s potential for identity formation and political mobilisation in a land divided across various registers: caste, ethnicity, religion, language and sharp income divides. The rise of private satellite television, after decades of state monopoly over the medium, has engendered a transformation in India’s political and public culture, the nature of the state and expressions of Indian nationhood. Much like India’s ‘newspaper revolution’ … that started in the 1970s, and the ‘cassette culture’ … of the 1980s, the availability of privately produced satellite television has meant that ‘people discovered new ways to think about themselves and to participate in politics that would have been unthinkable a generation before’ … Operating at the junction of public

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culture, capitalism and globalisation, satellite networks are a new factor in the social and cultural matrix of India, with profound implications for the state, politics, culture and identity formation. (Mehta, 2008, 2)

One can safely argue, therefore, that this satellite revolution or television revolution transformed India politically which had far-reaching repercussions on civil society formations and on how people will behave and respond to socio-political issues. With the popular screening of televised programmes like Indian Idol , the wide and intense extent of mobilization that occurred in the northeastern states of India through the high-pitched popularity of the Indian Idol programme was indeed unprecedented. The northeastern part of India has witnessed separatist movements and therefore befriending the people of the states of Assam and Meghalaya through popular television serials, reality shows and cricket match telecast was indeed something unprecedented. As Mehta has rightly argued, the Indian government’s initial idea of unifying the Indian nation through cultural homogeneity to be actualized through government-controlled television programmes was first initiated through the establishment of a national television network in the 1980s. Since its inception the Indian establishment realized that radio and television broadcasting can be utilized as ‘a powerful tool of political and cultural control’ (ibid., 5), as television and electronic platforms offer a unique matrix of panoptical flow which can access almost every household, flooding the citizens regularly with captivating audio-visual narratives of specific ideologies of Indian nationalism and public loyalty. If circulation of governmental ideologies were facilitated through television streaming, resistance and counter-currents were also flocking in through the same portal of audio-visual media. Civic opinion making on different issues were made possible through televised discussion and affective bonding. Popular national programmes telecast through Doordarshan, reflecting governmental ambition to garner pan-Indian public support was resisted in many parts of India. National Programmes were mostly in Hindi and through their televised circulation at a particular national time, the entire country could watch the same image of certain programmes at the same time. Mehta rightly points out that the 1982 Asian Games became for the first time a popular national watch, becoming for the first time a national event to be watched collectively on a daily schedule. The system at that time was, between 8.30 p.m. and 11 p.m. daily, all regional language television studios had to facilitate the live streaming of various

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‘National Programmes’ from Delhi, but this imposed monopoly of Hindi programming elicited initial resistance from non-Hindi speaking states of India. However, within a decade, the situation changed completely as with the spread and attraction of popular Hindi programmes like Indian Idol , even the non-Hindi speaking regions of India developed a liking of Hindi popular programmes, chat shows, Bollywood movies and mega shows. The swarming of privately owned Hindi and regional language satellite television channels in Hindi played a crucial role in this regard. Numbers don’t always tell the story but in order to understand what satellite television is doing to India they provide perspective. As late as 1991—and in legal terms, until as late as 1995—Indian viewers could only watch one television channel, Doordarshan. Between 1995 and 2007, however, India experienced the rise of more than 300 satellite networks. More than 50 of these were 24-hour satellite news channels, broadcasting news in 11 different languages—the equivalent of more than 50 Indian CNNs. Their emergence marked a sharp break with the past and shattered the barriers of state control. These upheavals in the nature of Indian television have been accompanied by a simultaneous expansion in its reach and penetration. In 1992, if you divided India’s population of 846,388,000 (Office of the Registrar General, 2001) by the total number of television sets in the country, the number of people clustering around a set would have been a little over 26. By 2006, that ratio had come down substantially to just over 10 people per television set, despite a substantial increase in the population. In a little over a decade, the total number of Indian television households tripled to reach an estimated 112 million (National Readership Studies Council, 2006, 4). It made India the world’s third largest television market, just behind China and the United States (Pricewaterhouse Coopers FICCI, 2005,36) and more than 60 per cent of these television sets are estimated to be connected to satellite dishes. It is numbers like these that have attracted global media corporations, with both India and China gradually turning into new focal points of the global communication industry. (Mehta, 2008, 6)

Needless to say, that Satellite television arrived in India as a significant cultural and economic manifestation of neoliberal global capitalism and, therefore, complex implications of market economy determined Indian television’s steady rise and evolution. Indian producers, during the initial years, mostly adhered to Western television norms and patterns, but as things moved and competition intensified, new trends developed and

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news channels evolved into ‘mediators of what they understood to be an “Indian” identity’ (Mehta, 6). Indian oral traditions and traditional patterns of social communication that we discussed in the earlier part of this chapter made their entry into television.

Democracy, Argumentative Tradition, Audio-Visual Public Sphere News programming systems adopted popular and native modes of communication, acrimonious debates, sensationalism and dramaturgy in news production on screen. Over the years, Indian producers nativized and ‘Indianized television in a way that has profound implications for society’ (Mehta, 6). A proper public sphere however requires ‘public use of critical reason’ because it refers to certain institutions that make the public use of critical reason possible. It harks to the Kantian characterization of enlightenment in terms of the public use of reason and to the earlier parallel in Greece distinguishing between the polis and the oikos (roughly city and home). In the Greek context, especially in the early forms of democracy, the ability and right to speak in public gatherings was fundamental to the concept of a citizen. Indeed the democratization of civic space accompanied the reorganization of public institutions from Solon to Demosthenes. But such freedom was a short-lived phenomenon, as the equality of man was tempered by the notion of reason. The political man, for Aristotle, was a rational agent. With the European Enlightenment, this idea moved to centre stage where it became universal. Later, liberal philosophy developed the idea of public sphere as an arena where a reasoning and debating public constitutes itself as the bearer of public opinion. Though the eighteenthcentury public sphere was meant to be inclusive, the right of admission depended on education and the ownership of property. The civil society formed the private realm and included the economy and other social institutions like family. In classical liberal political thought, the public sphere was characterized by egalitarian practices of sociability, free discussion and decision by majority. (Dwivedi & Sanil, 2015, 1)

With the proliferation of news portals and channels, public debates and discussions in television became a standard practice, facilitating the emergence of free speech and democratic deliberations. While all these had some positive impacts, different forms of frictions and hurdles continued

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to haunt the populace. The public sphere according to Habermas relies on the public use of reason and rational choice but in many cases, different areas of unreason posed stiff challenges to the rational functioning of the public sphere. One may argue that digital and satellite media marked the beginning of a deliberative public sphere even though countless legacies of inequalities and undemocratic behaviour lingered in Indian society. The modern Indian public sphere or to be more precise the postcolonial Indian public sphere owes a lot therefore to satellite television and the making of a television public has significant impact on the democratic process of public participation and opinion making through civil society deliberation and public mobilizations. Any close reading of television and its wide appeal in India will substantiate the fact that television news networks have significantly helped and strengthened the process of participatory and deliberative Indian democracy. It is also pertinent in this context to remember that the idea of the public sphere as conceived by Habermas has a Eurocentric ring, and critics have argued about the incongruence and inapplicability of the western concept of bourgeoise public sphere in the Indian context, a point that has significant repercussion when we relate public sphere debates and functioning with social mobilization patterns. It became important in the debate on the public sphere to consider how far this idea could be abstracted from its eighteenth-century European bourgeois origins and which trajectories, outside this context, its historical developments traced. Post-Kantian transformations of the idea of critique, the crisis in the self-understanding of social sciences, radically new conceptions of democracy proposed by feminists and new social movements, decline of the social democratic nation state, irruption of religion into insurrectionary politics and structural demands of economic and administrative systems have all challenged the viability and significance of the very idea of the public sphere … It has been implied that the public sphere, in its historical specificity and normative ideality, is merely concomitant with a certain image whose title is ‘the West’: the name for a selective, retroactive construct of a way of life which supremacistically arrogates to itself universality, critique and, thereby, world government. (Dwivedi & Sanil, 2015, 2)

Notwithstanding this Eurocentric proclivity, contemporary public sphere in India within its own specificity did emerge through the unique operating process of the satellite media and Internet portals or other digital

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platforms. Even a cursory look at different news channels will substantiate how India’s national political parties have learned the art of media debates and they also learned how to do political mobilization through the use of 24 × 7 audio-visual media. The traditional agonistic or argumentative modes of Indian public culture was adopted by the news channels to encourage public debates on political issues and as a result. News networks gave a new publicness to older cultures of debate and dissent, mediating them to a larger audience. The spectacle of television adds newer influences and technologies—SMS messages, audience polls, live public debatesand mutates the form to suit its own demands but in the process strengthens these traditions. (Mehta, 7)

This whole discussion, therefore, comes within the larger ambit of popular visual culture in India, to be more precise, it takes as its empirical archive, the burgeoning presence and surging clout of everyday 24 × 7 television news channels and their convivial inter-textuality with numerous social media networks in the past as well as in contemporary India. South Asian scholars have earlier engaged with popular forms of Indian visual culture such as photographs of deities, freedom fighters or of family frames, calendars, Bollywood films or even popular Television shows such as Indian Idol , Ramayana or Mahabharat, but of late, multiple private news channels (both vernacular and English), online news portals, News Clips, News-Images and WhatsApp News, Twitter News have unprecedentedly widened the field. This chapter locates the birth of this new Info-Nation fed with and fanned by this constant inflow of news stories. This is what can be called, a state of Info-perennis , a perennial supply of information on all things and their uninterrupted everyday influx into Indian drawing rooms, producing a new category called the Tele-Publics or the Cyber-Publics who are always informed through headline stories, and are armed with readily available info-clips to be forwarded through WhatsApp, Twitter or Facebook. All these have radically transformed the Indian public space, offering fresh insights on popular cultural studies. This journey from the state-owned Doordarshan to privately run popular channels in India provides a staggering trajectory, an incredible shift in terms of cultural semiology and hermeneutics, rendering new interpretations of popular culture. One seldom comes across serious new studies on this emerging visual space which though modelled on existing templates of Western news channels—dress codes and stylistics of news anchors,

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optics, studio décor, news room debates, breaking news style, glossy semiotics of the bold headlines and the beaming simulacrum of reinforced reportages—and yet, in spite of these Euro-American inflexions, Indian TV news channels are unique sites of popular culture, distinct in their elementary aspects and functioning mechanisms. Our argument here will be to see whether the mushrooming of television news channels in India in the last two decades and its convivial symbiosis with social media platforms are largely democratizing the Indian public sphere, enfranchising the dispossessed populace to articulate their voices or enabling people to have access to news and information, reinforcing greater public participation and agency. Recent scholarship in global media theory has unanimously agreed on the democratizing role of media. Even though we confront negative terminologies like ‘fake news’ and ‘paid media’, by and large, digital media today has opened up new frontiers of public discourse-making and new possibilities for democratic deliberations. Some specimens of recent work on media and democracy, such as The Free Voice: On Democracy, Culture and the Nation (Kumar, 2018); Media and Politics in New Democracies: Europe in Comparative Perspective (Jan Zielonka, 2015); The Rise of 24-hour News Television: Global Perspectives (Stephen Cushion and Justin Lewis, 2010); New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age (Natalie Fenton, 2009); Democracy and the News (Herbert J. Gans, 2004), testify to the growing contribution of digital media and news channels in forging democratic public opinion. Notwithstanding some of the abysmal track records of Indian audiovisual news media when it comes to authenticity of news and its political neutrality, Television news channels are fast becoming a great source of popular mobilization and engaging everyday culture in India. One caveat can be that too much of trust on media and public sphere deliberations might prove to be delusory and counterproductive because globalization and its technological march, while claiming to provide people’s power are actually not promoting public use of critical reasoning which is the precondition of successful public sphere reasoning in a democratic society. Globalization is redefining the place and significance of the nation state and the idea of citizenship. It is increasingly felt that democratic decisionmaking reduces the efficacy of a market-driven economy. Policy decisions

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are better left to technological or management expertise. Political parties are taking the form of corporations that lobby for vested interests. Media, while extending its reach, has become a manipulator of public opinion instead of being a facilitator of critical debates. Some cultural critics argue that the public has become a mere consumer of information and that the public has transformed itself into the masses. The masses who enjoy their public image in the rise and fall of public opinion ratings are dangerously reflective and are capable of being the localized and contingent subjects of unpredictable political events. It’s a juncture at which it would be worth asking if there is a ‘way out’ of the public sphere. (Dwivedi & Sanil, 2015, 6)

In spite of the fact that the media has acted as the ‘manipulator of public opinion” instead of being a facilitator of critical debates, and notwithstanding the reality of the public transforming themselves as mere ‘consumers of information’, mediatized debates and opinion making have at least inaugurated even a nascent foundation of digital public sphere in India. In spite of the loud and chaotic nature of Indian media debates, the future of an ‘argumentative Indian’ or the possibility of an agonistic Indian civil society is perhaps being slowly cradled into a reality. Although we focus on the flip sides of tele-news in India but subsequently our argumentative schema also underscores the limitations of traditional theories of popular culture that deny it any claims for people’s power. One may argue that the cacophony of Indian news debates, though scandalous and intimidating, are sites of future possibilities for civic democratic interactions. Borrowing the ideas of South Asian scholar Sandra Freitag, we classify the existing raucous phase of Indian news channel debates as the virtual ‘Public Arena’ (Freitag, 1989, 1991), where primitive habits of fierce antagonism survive, and yet are being slowly challenged, yielding place to saner debates. The hegemonic presence of digital and audiovisual news media platforms in India in recent years has turned it into a powerful site of public opinion building and a quasi-sacred space of popular consciousness. In the subsequent section, we will see whether this digitized and audio-visual space is being fully utilized by all sections of the Indian population or whether the subaltern fringe is unable to utilize it properly.

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Media, Dalit-Minority and Majoritarian Politics in India Given the fact that television and digital media has empowered public democratic voices in India, how is it that minorities and Dalits (the socalled lower caste people) continue to languish and have to encounter different forms of atrocities and disenfranchisement? With the expansion of Television and the Internet, the space for political articulation of the weaker or subaltern section of Indian society should have expanded for political action too. But has it really happened? Scholars have analysed it in detail and according to some observers, ‘satellite television has largely left Dalit politics outside of its purview and in most cases actually reinforced stereotypes’ (Maxine Loynd as quoted by Mehta, 2009, 8). While this might be true to a certain extent, our findings will argue that Dalit politics in India today has gathered strength and the media has surely made various Dalit and minority leaders popular and publicly familiar. Their political agenda, their identity-oriented images, symbolic battles and everyday struggles have also come to the forefront and incidents of atrocities against Dalits and minorities have also drawn large public outrage through mediatized reports and debates. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) explicitly built its politics outside mainstream media and has developed alternative modes of political mobilisation that have proved spectacularly successful. So much so that in 2007, it became the first political party in nearly two decades to win power on its own steam in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. The BSP’s success in building a Dalit counter-public is a powerful illustration of the fact that television cannot be seen in isolation. (Mehta, 8)

Religious minorities, especially the Muslims too have embraced and utilized satellite news networks and their issues are being represented in news rooms. But their representation and presence in different programmes continue to be quite low when compared with the extent of projection of majority culture. As it happened with the Dalits, satellite television and popular digital media have reinforced stereotypes about Muslims. Bollywood too has been accused of stereotyping feelings of Islamophobia. Muslims have been allegedly targeted for hate speech and trolling on digital platforms. The rise of a ‘Hindu public’ through the mediation of televised coverage of Hindu epics and predominant Hindu

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imageries and the rise of Hindu nationalist politics and corresponding violence against minorities have alienated the Muslims and yet both satellite media and digital platforms have facilitated the articulation of minority dissent and representation of minority views … ‘coverage of Muslims is victim to the system of media production where news is the product of a set of shared suppositions and adheres to certain rules about what is acceptable’. Yet, the high proportional representation of Muslims in the industry and the absence of bias in employment contrasts strongly with in-built biases in other sectors of the economy, particularly in the state sector. The emergence of so many Muslims in public positions on television is not an insignificant development. (Mehta, 2008, 8–9)

Another important aspect of satellite television and democratic representation has been the growth and impact of regional language television. Along with the rise of Hindi as the strongest medium of audio-visual media communication, regional language news channels and programmes also played crucial roles in strengthening marginal voices. Detailed studies of the manifestations of satellite television in India’s many regional languages have been rare … [in] two regions: Bengal and Tamil Nadu … television became such a cultural force that its rise fundamentally changed the nature of Bengali cinema itself, by changing the social profile of those who came to cinema theatres. Bengali cinema, which has a long lineage of defining itself as a highbrow medium in direct contrast to the popular entertainment of Bollywood, changed form to suit the lower economic classes in the 1980s as state television lured middleclass audiences away from cinemas. Ironically Bengali language satellite television, with its middle-class audiences and its focus on films, has once again begun another churning in the nature of the Bengali film. In no other state is private television so politicised as in Tamil Nadu. Both the main political parties have powerful television organs: the AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) with Jaya TV and the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), first with Sun TV and now with Kalaignar TV … television had become so central to Tamil Nadu’s political discourse by the 2006 assembly election, not only did the DMK offer free television sets as an election promise, the medium also significantly influenced poll alliances. (Mehta, 2008, 9)

Along with the larger national public space and regional language spectators, satellite television also transformed our response to popular culture

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and entertainment. Cricket and Bollywood films changed forever with the arrival of television and digital platforms. Cricket mania and cricketing craze across India reached a feverish pitch as live telecast of glamourous cricket matches generated nation-wide fan following and big events like the World Cup and other international cricket tournaments unleashed incredible economic profits for the Indian cricket board and also for sports agencies, sports channels and companies. Circulation of Bollywood film rights through telecasting also changed the entertainment industry and viewership patterns. All these however directly or indirectly impacted the formation of a globalized audience and involved spectatorship, nourished by the alluring claims of consumerism, and nationalist spectacles, something that reinforced the idea of national identity, Indianness and newer modes of public action or publicness. The Board of Control for Cricket in India began franchising international cricket tournaments solely for the Indian television market and that testifies how cricket, Indian cricket fans, the advertisement agencies and other business tycoons emerged as formidable stakeholders of what has come to be called globalization. Satellite television is certainly one of the biggest tools of globalization and Indian satellite television drastically transformed existing culture and nature of international cricket tournaments as the lucrative alliance between television and cricket turned the gentleman’s game into a ‘national spectacle with deep implications for notions of Indian-ness and identity’ (Mehta, 9). Market forces who promoted the move towards private satellite broadcasting in India did it purely from commercial interests, but very soon, this profitable business resulted in the formation of newer fashions of public action and ‘publicness’. While hunting for a consumer market for advertisers, Indian tele-managers and investors looked for the consumers or the publics and, with the continued hegemony of television existing demands for social identity and communication were significantly altered. This transformation did not always have a very ‘rational’ or ‘positive’ impact, but it fundamentally changed earlier trends in which television was perceived as just a mere governmental tool. Television has opened up avenues that previously did not exist and brought many more people into the public arena. This is why Rajdeep Sardesai (2006) has argued: The television picture and sound-bite has been one of the most dramatic political developments in the last sixteen years ... mutually competitive 24 hour news networks are almost direct participants in public processes: not only do they amplify the news, they also influence it.

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Sardesai goes as far as to argue that had the Ramjanmabhoomi movement unfolded in the age of 24-hour television, the Babri Masjid would never have been demolished in 1992. (Mehta, 9)

The constant presence of a vast number of television cameras and journalists making 24 × 7 breaking news does exert enormous pressure on our political leaders, officials and the general public and we are forced to act on many occasions because of media pressures. One may not be able to make an exact measurement of the socio-political impact of television in India but it can safely be argued that satellite television and subsequent digitization of Indian life have ‘inserted a new factor into the political and social matrix of India and thereby altered it’ (Mehta, 8). No one is claiming that the arrival and presence of new media explain all forms of socio-political transformations in contemporary India, but neither is it possible to understand and explain contemporary India without paying enough attention to the incredible shifts and transformations brought forward by new media and digitization of the Indian public space.

Television and Hindu Nationalism If one aspect of Indian politics and popular mobilization got real and tangible boost through satellite television and other forms of digital media it is without doubt ‘the work and influence of the media on the career of Hindu nationalist mobilization in India during the late eighties and early nineties’ unfolding in the form of the Ram Janmabhoomi, or Birthplace of Ram movement, which brought the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, or Indian People’s Party) into political prominence (Rajagopal, 2004, 1). The sustained and strategic mediatized publicity given to the movement’s key symbols through the national broadcast of the Ramayana, a serialized Hindu epic and the subsequent hysteria around Rama, the mythical and epical protagonist, the progenitor of the so-called ‘Ram Rajya’, or the utopia by Hindu nationalist groups through massive publicity campaigns in which televisual images succeeded in drawing popular sentiment and political participation. In arguing that Hindu nationalism’s recent salience depended on and worked itself out through the media, I neither uncover nor confirm any simple causal mechanisms of media effect. Instead, I argue that the media

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re-shape the context in which politics is conceived, enacted, and understood. Hindu nationalism represented an attempt to fashion a Hindu public within the nexus of market reforms and the expansion of communications, rather than religious reaction as such. Focusing on the moment of its emergence clarifies the historical conditions for the transition to a new visual regime, as it were, and at the same time shows the extent to which this emergence cannot be explained with reference to purely material circumstances. That is, it illuminates the power of a given cultural form, and the ways in which this rests on a series of contingent events … I suggest that Hindu nationalists in recent times represented an attempt to create a populist language of politics, appealing to authoritarian rather than democratic values. It attempted to restructure the forms of public affiliation through a logic of commodification to expand admittance beyond elite groups. (Rajagopal, 2004, 2)

Different stakeholders of Hindu nationalism began adopting novel techniques outside the usual political methods, fashioning a ‘homology between forms of consumption and voting behaviour, and between cultural identification and the requirements of electoral affiliation’ (ibid., 2). All these clearly draw our attention to the new techno-cultural and political-economic context within which Hindutva nationalism consolidated its political and popular base. As digital and televisual communication systems widened their reach across the country, political dissemination widened too. This new climate and grammar of political communication require novelty of approaches to interpret this shift in Indian politics and popular mobilization beyond conventional ideas of ideological rigidity and old-fashioned analytical tools. So far, our readings have shown the slow and tentative rise of a digitized public matrix of communication, something that augmented the rise and strengthening of civil society activities. India since the new millennium with its software and digital boom has attained twofold success, one in the domain of IT sector, Indian software companies doing great in terms of technological production and expertise, the other being the massive growth of digital media platforms, something which were appropriated both by corporate cultural industry as well as by the political class. Public communication or mobilizations in India post-2000 offers a completely different terrain. All modes of social media including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, 24 × 7 news channels and other Internet news blogs transformed the way Indians will listen and respond politically and culturally. This was the time of the rise of new political experiments like new civil

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society gatherings, candle lights marches, solidarity marches on questions of gender violence, corruption, the AAP phenomenon (the Aam Admi Party) in Delhi, new Dalit politics of Bhim Army, the JNU student movement, Jadavpur University Hok Kalarav movement and the Rohit Vemula Death-related movements in the Central University of Hyderabad. None of these movements could have attained their impacts had they relied only on conventional modes of mobilization. The all-important question emerging out of this changed scenario relates to the proliferation of civil society in India. All the new mobilizations mentioned above were leaderless in the conventional sense and they also involved civil society actors who spearheaded the acts of mobilizing different stakeholders. On top of it all, all major players participating in these civic-political protests were conscious about the power of media in disseminating their voices across the board, turning their actions into national and international topics, ensuring maximization of civic participation through media projection and wider electronic circulation. Therefore, the question arises, did satellite media and digitization of Indian life help in the deepening of civil society and public sphere activism in India or all these claims are mere hoaxes and media bubbles? The subsequent section addresses this question of the efficacy and actual power of civil society in India, dwelling on how newly formed Indian civil society and the digital public sphere are different from the Habermasian templates and how any critical analysis of civil society and public sphere in India must take on board different limitations and specifications contingent to Indian reality.

Postcolonial Public Sphere and New social Movements While the idea of civil society and public sphere is key in the actualization of democracy, sceptics will argue about their Eurocentric and over-idealist foundations that fail to address contingencies of the Global South. The concept of the ‘Phantom Public Sphere’ (Robbins, 1993) or of ‘counterpublics’ (Fraser, 1990; Kampourakis, 2016) problematizes the normative concept of the public sphere operating as part of the civil society deliberation, debates and opinion making. For Bruce Robbins, the normative idea of Enlightened citizens operating through rational public discussion is a ‘phantom’ notion, lacking real or ‘material substance’ at any stage of history. Interestingly though, in spite of its ‘phantom’ existence it

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nonetheless continues to haunt today’s mass-mediated consumer society. Neither dead nor alive, present nor absent, the phantom public bears a contradictory relation to the theory and politics of democracy… it is “a concept that must remain both unacceptable and necessary.... this contradiction in the project of making our increasingly stratified, commodified, and mass-mediated postmodern world more democratic. To some, this project might indeed appear as a horror story, complete not only with a phantom but a dramatic and devastating betrayal. From the perspective of any “enlightened” politics, ranging from classical liberalism to neomarxism, giving up the ghost of rational public discourse as the structural foundation of democratic society appears like an affirmation of power as such, and thus a legitimation of the status quo, its inequities, and its terror. This is generally Jurgen Habermas’s perspective both in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, which was originally published in the early sixties, and in recent debates accompanying its reissue and its first English translation. (McHugh, 1995, 235)

Left to Habermas, he shall concede that the bourgeois public sphere remained an incomplete project, was never fully materialized, as equal participation of marginalized sections within the public sphere could not be actualized, and it remained utopian in its basic concept on the application of critical reasoning by individual members. Notwithstanding these limitations, for Habermas the public sphere remains the key ingredient of democratic functioning, forming a concrete historical instance of a social structure for rational public discourse. However, in the last part of the nineteenth century, during the transition from “liberal” to “organized” capitalism in western societies, when masses of people were formally enfranchised in the democratic process, rational public discourse declined into private interests negotiating power. This degeneration accelerated precipitously with the emergence of the mass media, when reason as the principle governing public discourse increasingly lost ground to the principle of exchange governing the institutions of the mass media. In the short version of Habermas’s account, then, the public sphere, which once held forth the possibility of rational democracy, is now increasingly held to the demands of power and profit. (McHugh, 1995, 236)

Another important post-Habermasian critique of the public sphere (Crossley & Roberts, 2004) points out its ignorance of ‘the extent to which its institutions were founded on sectionalism, exclusiveness and

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repression’ (Eley, 1992, 321). Modern digital and audio-visual media, while laudable in their communicational effect, are also ‘a potential source for power, domination and oppression’ (Fraser, 1992 as quoted by Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts, 2004, 11; Holub, 1991; McLaughlin, 1993; Negt & Kluge, 1993). Similar views on state-powerconsumerism inscription of the civil society or public sphere (Asen & Brouwer, 2001) examine the relation of counterpublics who are “critical oppositional forces that seek to disrupt the homogenizing and universalizing processes of a global mass communication culture that promotes an uncritical consumerism” and the state. … The questions posed by studying counterpublics are, … a dominant public, often unfortunately coexistent with the state, marginalizes large segments of the population, how do we generate spaces in which dialogue may flourish? How can counterpublics develop discourses counter to the state, while not severing all potential for dialogue with it?” (, 128)

This observation on the idea of the counterpublics resonates with Subalternist historian Partha Chatterjee’s critique of ‘civil society’, showing how it is distinct from his notion of ‘political society’. The former according to Chatterjee comes within the normative logic of bourgeoise public sphere, whereas the latter resorts to norm-deviant and paralegal means to survive in postcolonial or Global South regions. Political society actors as argued by Chatterjee operate not through Habermasian rationality critique of civic-legal means but negotiate and bargain with the state through different norm-violating ways. Gross inequalities in class, caste and religious status and inherent systemic failures in equal distribution of wealth in South Asian or African countries result in the formation of political society. In the Indian context, scholars have argued how communities in India demand total absorption of the individuals within the community laws and boundaries and seek uncritical affiliation to community rules. This is why communities in India are, ‘continuous communities’ (Alam, 2009), they allow the pre-modern moorings to continue and enfold members within that structure. So, within this space of shrinking individual autonomy in which the community overrides the individual and act like ‘collective personalities’, what happens to the public sphere as an important component of civil society? Concepts of privacy or autonomy of the individual self are alien to Indian social norms and fail to resonate with Indian culture. The Enlightenment concept of the bourgeoise private

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self, anchored within the structures of civilized life is alien to traditional Indian views and under the strictures of communitarian customs, there is a deep hiatus between the idea of the private and the public but the freedom of the private self is crucial to any argument of civil society because the public sphere is supposed to provide a life of choice for all of us. In communitarian systems of India, the individual rights having no space, the individual has no right to exist, and if we want a well-entrenched regimes of rights then our discussion of the public sphere becomes very crucial here. Recently large communities have become prime mobilizational force that underpins electoral democracy and they regulate social rules, so there is a dichotomy between social non-democracy as ordained by communities and the promise of political democracy as a terrain of civil liberty. (Alam, 2009, 6)

The postcolonial public space has large significance for actualization of democracy, decoloniality and ultimate liberty. During the colonial rule, anti-colonial mobilizations were all galvanized within the public space through a massive and intelligent use of public deliberation, nationalist pedagogy and a liberation imaginary that aroused mass response among the disenfranchised population writing under foreign rule. In the Indian context the clever use of nationalist or mythological symbols, public narratives, public addresses and public debates streamlined a nearly uniform opinion for united battle against the colonizer. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress or the Nationalist Elite, to borrow Partha Chatterjee, used the public space or the public sphere for their national political mobilization. During the nineteenth century, under the impact of western education, there emerged in Bengal and subsequently in other cities of India a strong rationalist or intellectual climate that fuelled the trends of rationalist thinking and critique of traditionalist sects or community structures. One may recall Sandria Freitag’s argument about India not yet having a public sphere, nourishing instead a public arena or arenas, dominated by various communities and there is a long history of the evolution of these public arenas. With the rise of social media and countless news channels and blogs a distinct Indian public sphere perhaps has been on the rise that tried to shape public opinion. Of late this same public sphere has been rife with heated discussions on various issues and prominent among them are issues of nation, Hindutva, secularism, majoritarianism

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and religion. Some may argue that there has been a steady religious transformation of the public sphere (Purakayastha, 2018) in India in recent years, leading to the rise of religious violence aimed at minorities. The cacophony of the digitised Indian public sphere is leading to shriller raucous debates in television studios and hate posts and trolling in the social media, but the much needed critical opinion-building and dissident counter-narratives are still largely missing as this digital and religious transformation of the public sphere has perhaps helped in the formation of right wing populism that thrives on symbolic capital and is an affect-centric image making exercise. (Purakayastha, 2018, 14)

However, there are areas of hopes as well, mobilization of people’s anger and consciousness through social media during the so-called ‘anticorruption movement’ in India in 2011 showed how platforms like Twitter and Facebook could galvanize civil -society-led support for Anna Hazare. It also however proved the exclusive urban and middle-class centric limit of these protests, something that once again establishes Chatterjee’s critique of elite civil society that ignores the problems and powers of the rural and urban poor (Harindranath & Khorana, 2014, 65). The 2011 movement on India Against Corruption led by Anna Hazare, the 2012 Nirbhaya movement on the question of gender violence and the role of the state in India, the 2014 Hok Kolorov movement in Jadavpur University, the JNU campus movement and new Dalit movement after the death of Dalit student Rohit Vemula at Central University Hyderabad in 2016 and subsequent nation-wide repercussions recognized the multiple shifts in mobilizing patterns, protest language, leadership roles and the role played by media. All these new movements proved the formation of a public sphere which is urban and civil society-led but which has also slowly begun taking note of rural India. These are early days for this public sphere and there are enormous limitations and deficits within these public spheres functioning, but still, it exists. Both new media and the new digitized public sphere in India appear to fulfil Habermas’ normative conditions of the public sphere. They evince voluntary or relatively spontaneous emergence of different associations who engage with social, economic and cultural problems and compel the state to intervene. However, while the ‘mobilisation of mass protests, engendered by both mainstream news as well as social media, correspond to a certain extent to his [Habermas’] prescription of the “discursive

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designs” that brought forth such movements’ (Harendranath & Khorana, 2013), the challenge remains on combining or uniting the urban middleclass and the urban and rural poor, in other words, the challenge for both the media and the civil society in India continues to be to address both the civil society and the demands of the political society together. Perhaps recent new social movements in India, some of which will be discussed in the next penultimate chapter, are slowly doing that, they are identifying common interests of the poor and the rich, the elite and the rural—providing a glimmer of hope on the formation of the public sphere or an enlightened civic space in India.

References Alam, J. (2009 July). Democracy in India and the quest for equality. Community Development Journal, 44(3), 291–304. Chattopadhyay, R. (2014). Understanding India: Cultural influences on Indian television commercials. Sage. Crossley, N., & Roberts, J. M. (2004). After Habermas: New perspectives on the public sphere. Wiley Blackwell. Cushion, S., & Lewis, J. (2010). The Rise of 24-hour news television: Global perspectives. Peter Lang. Dwivedi, D., & Sanil, V. (Ed.). (2015). The public sphere from: Outside the west. Bloomsbury. Eley, G. (1992). Nations, publics, and political cultures: Placing Habermas in the nineteenth century (pp. 289–339). In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere. MIT Press. Favero, P. S. H. (2021). Image-making-India: Visual culture, technology, politics. Routledge. Fenton, N. (2009). New media, Old news: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age. Sage. Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, (25/26), 56–80. Gans, H. J. (2004). Democracy and the news. Oxford University Press. Guha, R. (2009). Transmission. In A. Rajagopal (Ed.), The Indian public sphere: Readings in media history. Oxford University Press. Harindranath, R., & Khorana, S. (2013). The Indian public sphere. Media International Australia. Harindranath, R., & Khorana, S. (2014). Civil society movements and the ‘Twittering Classes’ in the Postcolony: An Indian case study. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 37 (1), 60–71. Holub, R. C. (1991). Jurgen Habermas: Critic in the public sphere. Routledge.

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Kampourakis, I. (2016). Nancy Fraser: Subaltern counterpublics. 6 November, https://criticallegalthinking.com/2016/11/06/nancy-fraser-subalt 2016, ern-counterpublics/ Kaur, R. (2020). Brand new nation: Capitalist dreams and nationalist designs in twenty-first-century India. Stanford University Press. Kumar, R. (2018). The free voice: On democracy, culture and the nation. Speaking Tiger. Mazzarella, W. (2003), Shoveling smoke: Advertising and globalization in contemporary India. Duke University Press. McHugh, P. (1995). Democracy, cultural politics and the phantom public sphere. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 17 (2). McLaughlin, L. (1993). Feminism, the public sphere, media and democracy. Media, Culture and Society, 15, 599–620. Mehta, N. (2008). Television in India: Satellites. Routledge. Munshi, S. (2020). Prime time soap operas on Indian television. Routledge. Negt, O., & Kluge, A. (1993). Public sphere and experience: Toward an analysis of the bourgeois and proletarian public sphere. University of Minnesota Press. Pinney, C. (2009). The politics of popular images: From cow protection to M K Gandhi, 1890–1950. In A. Rajagopal (Ed.), The Indian public sphere: Readings in media history. Oxford University Press. Purakayastha, A, S. (2018). Communalisation of politics in West Bengal: Religion and the public sphere. Economic and Political Weekly, April, 21, LII (16). Purakayastha, A. S. & Alam, M. (2020) Scattered chapatis, mangled bodies: Semiology for a nation. Newsclick, 31 May, 2020, https://www.newsclick. in/author/Anindya%20Sekhar%20Purakayastha Rajagopal, A. (2004). Politics after television: Hindu nationalism and the reshaping of the public in India. Cambridge University Press. Rajagopal, A. (Ed.). (2009). The Indian public sphere: Readings in media history. Oxford University Press. Robbins, B. (1993). The phantom public sphere. University of Minnesota Press. Roberts-Miller, P. (2003a). Counterpublics and public argument. Review of Communication, 3(2), 127–130. Sardesai, R. (2014). The election that changed India. Penguin. Skoda, U., & Lettmann, B. (2017). India and its visual cultures: Community, class and gender in a symbolic landscape. Sage. Zielonka, J. (Ed.). (2015). Media and politics in new democracies: Europe in a comparative perspective. Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 5

New Grammar of Protests in Contemporary India: Few Case Studies

Having discussed in detail the changing trends of Indian civil society and the postcolonial Indian public sphere in the post-liberalized phase in the previous chapter, this penultimate section maps corresponding changes in mobilization patterns. This trajectory of political transformation is evaluated through certain case studies of movements that took place in the post-2000 Indian context which witnessed newer models and ontologies of political movements in the domain of gender rights, campus politics, civil society resurgence on corruption and other pressing national issues in India. The present chapter therefore attends to the ‘new-grammar’ of public protests which appropriates pre-existing taxonomies of dissent pointed against deep-rooted socio-political anomies that continued since the historical pasts in India. In doing so, this chapter talks about new forms, new content, new method and new character of social movements which surpassed earlier discourses, methodologies and traditions of popular protests. This was the time when more and more women, students and other ordinary civil society actors were found emerging on the streets, riding the new wave of mediatized activism and mediadriven public opinion making. Consequently, new political imaginaries coupled with new language of protests fuelled unprecedented awareness about different issues which were used to be neglected earlier by the average population. As mentioned in the introductory section of this © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. S. Purakayastha et al., Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94040-9_5

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book, postcolonial political scientists and media scholars began taking note of substantial shifts and disjuncture from older norms of social movements. This chapter identifies samples and case studies reflecting those stated moments of departure in the domain of socio-political movements. Previously, we have already elaborated on how the new forms of social protests emerged and evolved through the complex ensemble of new economic ideologies and overwhelming use of new technological tools like television and digital media, blogs, and social networking sites. This chapter, while moving ahead, concretizes these claims, undertaking close readings of some of these new instances of mobilization in new millennial India, or ‘New India’ of the info-publics. It attempts an empirical and ethnographic reading of the new energy of protest and new trends of mass civic participation through the use of audio-visual media and other burgeoning modes of social media that informed and galvanized public opinion, providing new windows for the ventilation of public anger, mass emotions, anxieties and grievances. During the post-2000 era, or more specifically since the second decade of this century, the Occupy Movements and the Arab Spring caught global imagination and public gathering, collective occupation of streets and governmental premises, candle light marches, collecting signatures through digital platforms and fomenting public angst through social media and television became new norms. While all these, as discussed in the previous chapter, may not have occasioned complete structural metamorphosis within Indian society, but one witnessed unprecedented rejigs and newer enthusiasm in the public space when it comes to express one’s opinion and activism on different issues of Indian social and political life. The simmering tensions and political contestations complicating Indian social lives for decades got a new nation-wide momentum through incredible visual circulation of information related to various civic-political issues, churning and eliciting mediatized public opinion and debates. All the case studies carried out here substantiate how these new mediums have redefined the form and character of social movements in India that eventually produced new grammar and new imaginaries of public protests through rapid transmission of ideas, ideologies, massive participation of protesters and better digitized proliferation of social organization. Consequently, this new infoIndia was increasingly determined by the information flows transmitted and manipulated by netizens and the world-wide web.

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New Templates, Newer Instances of Protests Needless to say, the popular and wider use of Internet media have radically transformed the fundamental character of social movements in contemporary postcolonial India, turning them more popularly participatory, visually appealing, safe (as most of the times they are digitally participated or ‘liked’ and constantly happening under the camera), fashionable (in the good sense of the term), penetrating and overwhelmingly widespread compared to their earlier avatars. Internet media, Ahmed and others argue, ‘facilitate and mobilize offline protest efforts, promote participatory behaviour, instigate public discussion, disseminate information and create new connections’ (Ahmed et al., 2016, 1). It is in this new context of digitized instigation and incredibly networked dissemination of information across the board that the present chapter focuses on certain key issues which have governed public mobilization patterns in contemporary India. Recent movements to be given our specific focus here will be the Nirbhaya movement centring around gruesome gender violence in New Delhi (2012), the emergence of Aam Aadmi Party movement pivoting around the India Against Corruption movements led by Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal (and the Hok Kolorob movement) erupting to protest against systemic highhandedness and gender rights at Jadavpur University (2014), party for the commoners, ending decades of political elitism and corruption) (2012–2013), and New Dalit mobilization in the aftermath of the tragic suicidal death of Rohit Vemula, a Dalit Ph.D. student at Centre University of Hyderabad (2016). Passing references will also be made to the campus mobilization at JNU, New Delhi on the question of political violence, Kashmir and sedition issues. The recent event of country wide gathering and strategic mobilizations protesting against the NRC (National register of Citizens, 2018) and CAA (Citizen Amendment Act, 2019) that allegedly targeted the Muslim populations in India is known as the Anti-NRC and Anti-CAA movement which became famous with the images of the ‘Dadis of Shaheen Bagh’ or the ‘Grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh’ who joined the blockade or occupation for a long time demanding the withdrawal of the CAA, 2019. Although critical analysis of the Anti-NRC/CAA movements which spilled over into the Jamia Milia Islamia campus, leading to police violence against Jamia students in 2019, kickstarting country wide protests will be out of the remit of this study, we mention these movements here once again to reiterate how these mobilizations initially emerged on a particular issue

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located at a particular spot in India but subsequently attained nationwide audio-visual and digital circulation, forging public opinion, outrage, citizen-attention and political, judicial or civil society intervention. One could not have imagined all these new civic uprisings, gaining momentum within massive pan-Indian and global scale without the active role of media and its digital disseminating power. Images of these movements became so powerful that they immediately drew global attention and unprecedented public outrage. The ‘Dadis of Shaheen Bagh’ mentioned earlier made it to the front page of Time Magazine in England and world media intervened on different allegations of human rights violation during the Anti-NRC CAA movements. All these reinforce the semiological argument which was made in the previous chapter, showing how images and mediatized digital circulation of sound bite and visual clippings can agitate and galvanize global support and national outrage. The reason behind the selection of specific movements for closer analysis in this section was determined by various unique features underpinning these recent mediatized movements, generating nation-wide reactions, affirming the deepening of Indian public sphere, democratic politics and popular participation. Facets of leaderless-leadership, new sloganeering, smarter ways of organization, creative use of visuals, and experimental methods of achieving wider transmission and popular support, etc. characterized these new movements. Hence closer scrutiny of the four recent new social movements, namely, protest against the Nirbhaya rape incident at Delhi in 2012, eruption of a new political imaginary in the form of the Aam Aadmi Party (hereafter AAP), the Hokkolorob student movement in West Bengal, and the new Dalit movement around Rohit Vemula’s suicide at Hyderabad University. India stands apart among the newly formed postcolonial states of the last century, being strong in different facets of civic life. Since her independence, Indian democracy had to withstand several stages of turmoil in form of—linguistic division of states and subsequent problems emerging from this, the fierce battle around poverty, unemployment, land reform and economic disparity leading to trade union unrests, peasant uprisings and the Naxalite movement in the late 1960s and 1970s, movement against the Emergency imposed in the mid-seventies, various separatist movements in the 1980s, and the Rath Yatra campaign in Ayodhya in the 1990s—all these movements, while fulminating against the nascent postcolonial state, were not ‘spontaneous’ since these ‘were planned or influenced’ by organizations which had ‘effectively’ mobilized their constituents—students, farmers, factory workers, Hindu and Muslim

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populations. Though question of ‘spontaneity’ still remains unsolved there is no doubt that these movements shuffled the long-existed delineations of Indian socio-political and economic order. But one needs to inquire whether these movements have served the constituencies of the disenfranchised sections of Indian society, who were projected as the stakeholders of these movements over the years. Public action includes not only what is done for the public by the state, but also what is done by the public for itself. The case for protesting against the continuation of old disadvantages has been strong for a long time, but to that has to be added the further challenge of revisiting new afflictions in the form of policies that are allegedly aimed at equity but do much to undermine just that. This, however, frequently accounted for the slow pace of development. Thus, the persisting discourses of poverty mitigation and development cost appear to be crucial for both the state and its citizens. Though the beginning of public activism in India can be traced back from the ‘poverty alleviation’ programme of Nehruvian era in the fifties and sixties the continuous transformation from state to market and from ‘secularism’ to ‘religious nationalism’ during the 80s and initial years of 90s, the issue of poverty mitigation no longer remained an exigency. However, as the postcolonial Indian state failed to keep its promise to the poor and the much-vaunted emancipatory battel raged by the organized Left parties faded out over the last two decades, scholars and liberal pundits emphasized the civil society as the key player who could represent the interests of the poor. This shifting focus on the civil society as the potential agent for social, economic and political change demands a critical understanding of social movements unfolding in India in the last two decades. The role of social movements in India has already been documented in numerous individual case studies of ethnic, language, gender, environmental and other movements but as of now few detailed and comprehensive studies on the four recent movements together have been attempted. New social movements are aimed at structural transformations and they are most of the times visionary and prefigurative in nature. They are also transcendental and redemptive in promise and dare to envision the compossible, imagining the impossible to be possible within the social and political realm. In that way new social movements transcend familiar boundaries and actualize the possibility of greater mass participation into the arena of civil-political reform. These movements, accompanied by the appeals to change the very nature of the state and representative politics, are therefore futural in orientation and more specifically attuned to

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broaden the sphere of democracy through larger and direct participation of the civil society. While the old social movements had the rationality of ‘redistribution from above’ the new social movements invite the scope for ‘redistribution from below’ by having the vision of expanding social citizenship with increasing engagement and ‘recognition’ of the state. The pragmatism of this strategy incorporates within it the democratic decentralization principle grounded on the ethos of effective social participation forging new models of activism. In all these, the sophisticated repertoire of new media contributes in a significant way as new social movements and new digital media cohabit and co-build each other and in what follows we will decipher and encode closely the trajectories of the four different movements as mentioned earlier.

Gender, Civil Society and the Nirbhaya Movement in India In the decades (1950–1960) following India’s Independence, women’s movements were not very vibrant in that way. From 1970–1990s, women groups did emerge to rise against heinous practice of dowry, gender rights abuse, rape, domestic coercion and other forms of violence against women. During the 90s and the early 2000, the Jessica Lal murder case, and other forms of gender regime came to the forefront and there was furore in the mainstream print media as well as in the celluloid representations of women-related issues in Bollywood films. For the prominent political parties in India in the early nineties, gender was though never an electoral issue, they were more concerned with questions of nationalist identity, language, and caste-class affiliations. The Left parties, notwithstanding their progressive claims, also downplayed the gender question as a major political agenda, emphasising more on the political economy, a scheme in which gender hardly figured as an item of political mobilization. The onset of globalization and subsequent neo-liberalization of Indian economy also prioritized the class conflict in Indian society and issues of violence against women did not affect national politics until the 2012 Rape Protest in Delhi. There are plenty of writings, viz. newspaper reports, and academic articles on the Nirbhaya Movement which have outlined the character and significance of the movement that took Indian media and civil society by storm. The Nirbhaya movement made such a nation-wide emotive appeal and it succeeded so vigorously in circulating the major demands of this movement that it has now almost become a

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household name and made gender for the first time in Indian political history a significant electoral issue. All political parties in India vying for popular support post-December 2012 were compelled to keep gender security and protection as a prominent part of their electoral manifesto. This is a significant achievement given the fact that earlier a handful of organizations and feminist writers and activists used to shout against gender violence and the common people mostly women and their families were mute spectators of different forms of violence against women. The Nirbhaya movement changed the scenario, and even though violence against women continues to take place in Indian society but at least they immediately become issue of political mobilization and actions are taken against the perpetrators. Existing writings on the Nirbhaya movement have concentrated on various aspects of feminist theorization and gender rights, and quite rightly so but more scholarly attention is required to be given to study how the Nirbhaya incident mainstreamed the gender issue in the Indian public sphere and how media played a crucial and constructive role in making this happen. This chapter, therefore, deals with this movement from a wider perspective which investigates the scope of this movement towards bringing a substantial change in Indian politics and social perception. On a cold winter night in December 2012, a gruesome gender crime perpetrated on a public bus on the roads of Delhi shocked the entire nation. The barbaric rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey, a Physiotherapy student, on board that running public bus led to widespread public outbursts which ‘shook the nation’s collective conscience and questioned its moral order’ (Rana, 2020, 141). The barbaric crime and the travails of Jyoti Singh, who was later spontaneously named as ‘Nirbhaya’ (the fearless), and her subsequent traumatic death fuelled massive public outrage, spawned and multiplied by consistent media projection of the crime throw a direct challenge to the political class of India. People were outraged by the abysmal failure of the postcolonial Indian very state in carrying out its fundamental responsibility to protect the life and property of its citizens. The violent outbursts of the movement in many parts of the country, especially in New Delhi, had involved a larger concern of gender security and patriarchal despotism which was inherent in the traditional belief-system of Indian society. This horrific incident has produced nation-wide uproar and demonstrations which included people from different communities of Indian population. In several places of New Delhi, such as Jantar Mantar and Raisina Hills, public outbursts against

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the issue had taken an altogether different form which included clashes between the protestors and police. Jyoti, alias Nirbhaya, was also named as Damini (the invincible), who suffered the pain and fought for life in the hospital, ultimately succumbing to her terrible injuries, symbolizing even in her traumatized death her fight against gender violence and patriarchal barbarity. Students formed the majority of the protesters during the initial period of the protest. Rana’s article titled ‘Visualizing the Semiotics of Protest’ is an eye-witness account of the movement which has vividly narrated the participation of students and students’ unions in the Nirbhaya movement. The Rajpath (the sprawling avenue) of Delhi was completely occupied by the protesting students, hailing from different student unions, such as the All India Students’ Association (AISA), Students’ Federation of India (SFI), All India Students’ Federation (AISF), Revolutionary Youth Association (RYA), All India Youth Federation (AIYF), Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), All India Democratic Students Organization (AIDSO), National Students Union of India (NSUI) and Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) which showed extra-ordinary example of courage, organization and spontaneity towards galvanizing the grievances and emotions of the youths against this barbaric crime (Ibid., 143). Apart from the student organizations, several independent women organizations like the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) and All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA). also organized public protests in New Delhi (ibid.) However, the demonstration of the students received violent attack in form of lathi charge and tear gas shelling and water-canon spray when the students were trying to cross the barricades posed by the armed forces of the state which included Delhi Police, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Rapid Action Force, (RAF) (Rana, 143–145, 150) Mehta opines that the crowd was ‘offering itself as a bait’, since it was ‘actively’ instigating the cops to ‘act’ and in the reaction the cops had ‘provoked’ the crowd to spread for a ‘greater movement in all directions’ (Mehta, 2019, 175). The artworks which were generated as emotional and aesthetic responses of this movement, Kaur argues, have included posters, murals, street theatre, graphic novels, and hip-hop performances (2017, 956). The Nirbhaya movement set a complete template for larger future social movements in India. The slogans, posters and placards used during this movement demonstrated distinctive styles of new public protest which were directed against existing social orthodoxy, rallying for radical shifts

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in Indian political accountability and public responsibility. The slogans used during this protest were unique and unprecedented and deserve careful attention—‘My Body, My Right’, ‘My City, My Right’, and ‘Damini Hum Tumhare Saath Hain’ (Damini, we are with you) received 24 × 7 coverage from the media (Rana, 143, 144). There were other slogans too related to women liberation from gender discriminations and taboos— ‘mahilaein mange azadi, sadak pe chalne ki, raat mein nikalne ki, kuch bhi pehenne ki,’ (Women demand freedom, to walk on the streets, to go out at night, and to wear anything they like) (Nigam, 210). Mehta argues that ‘the main characteristic of the protest was that it was informed by an affective release noticeable in the anger and irony of protest banners’ (Mehta, 2019, 174). ‘Rope the Rapists’, ‘Castrate the rapists’, ‘hang the bastards’—were the prominent captions of the posters that were displayed by the protestors at the India Gate (Ibid., 174–75). The Nirbhaya movement, which has produced a ‘new’ type of mass-social concern and activism, has come to be known as India’s Arab Spring (Bakshi, 2017, 45). The protest was also visible in several forms of creative and digital arts. Kaur argues that ‘various elements of the Nirbhaya effect may be located along a spectrum ranging from memorialization, affirmative solidarity, ironic provocations, rescripting the master narrative, and somewhat a tangent, sensationalization’ (2017, 949). The impact of the movement crossed national boundaries, eliciting sizable global attention. The BBC screened a documentary film namely, Daughter of India, written, directed and produced by Leslee Udwin, which was based upon the rape incident of Nirbhaya. The documentary which was scheduled to be broadcasted on 8 March 2013 was banned in India due to its alleged distortion of Indian culture and the controversial interview of Mukesh Sing, one of the rapists inside the Tihar jail of New Delhi (Lapsia, 45). Adrija Dey has brilliantly underscored the Nirbhaya movement through the lens of digital activism which has given a new dimension to the movement and made it more vibrant and wide-spreading (Dey, 2018). In fact, Dey, in her book, has meticulously analysed the inter-relationship between gender violence, protest movement and the involvement of print and digital media in the context of the Nirbhaya rape case. There is no doubt that Nirbhaya has become an issue of political discourses and conflicts among several political and a-political groups. While on the one hand the brutal incident of rape has been transformed into a general matter of gender violence and safety, on the other hand the incident initiated a fresh dialogue between the ‘political society’ and ‘civil

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society’ in India. Shandilya argues that Nirbhaya’s ‘body became the site for competing discourses of Western liberal feminist modernity, Hindu nationalism and leftist critiques of capitalism’ and each of these groups has ‘used her body to legitimize their claim to politically represent the nation’ (Shandilya, 2015, 466). On the other hand, the Nirbhaya movement has opened dialogues between various social institutions and legal systems which were of crucial importance in order to bring out desirable changes in Indian society that still needs an overall re-assessment of gender violence and legal enactment against this sort of crimes. The sheer barbarity of this gruesome incident eventually brought out a new culture of protest which was unprecedented, forcing the then Governments at Delhi, both the Delhi state and the central government of India, to take note and act. It was bound to happen as this incident of brutal gender assault resulted in unprecedented spontaneous public uprising both in Delhi as well as across India. Growing pressure tactics forced the government to review the existing rape law in India and make amendments by forming a special committee, the Justice Verma Committee or JVC. The committee, while beginning its work of investigation, received more than 80,000 submissions which reflected the mass-concern over this issue (Nigam, 2014, 203). More than 80,000 suggestions from the public were considered and the committee submitted a report in which it was mentioned that the root cause behind crimes against women was the failures on the part of the Government and the police. Subsequently, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance of India, 2013 was promulgated. The new Act since then came to be known as Nirbhaya Law (Rana, 146) and therefore, consistent nation-wide civil society-led protests, something never seen before in India, resulted in the passing of the New Rape Law in 2013. The main role of the Verma commission was to fix responsibility for lapses or negligence on the part of the police or any other authority or person and to suggest measures to improve the safety and security of women in Delhi and the rest of the National Capital Region. The commission was given a time frame of three months. Provision for Special Fast track courts was approved for the speedy trial of gender crime-related cases and death penalty was given to four culprits (Nigam, 209). Certain stringent changes in laws were also made and six new fasttrack courts were set up only to deal with rape cases. The objective was to reduce the number of rapes and sexual harassment cases. The amended laws have made it clear to the average public that there is now provision for the harshest punishment for rape convicts, which include death as

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well as life term penalty. Similarly stringent punishment for other offences against women like eve-teasing, acid attacks, stalking and voyeurism was also legalized. Various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Indian Evidence Act, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act were also amended. The government immediately set up two commissions, both headed by retired judges, one to inquire into the incident and the other to look into a longstanding demand by women’s organizations, to widen the definition of sexual assault. Consistent public mobilization also had its other wider impacts, and apart from the rape-laws, Juvenile Justice Act of 2000 was also amended, by which the age of juvenile offenders was reduced from 18 to 16 years (Mehta, 2019, 159). There were media debates too related to this move. The digital Indian public sphere was deeply divided on the question of reducing the age limit, many feared that such drastic moves do not take on board serious social, economic and psychological complexities. In India, extreme poverty, urban squalor and traumatized childhood most of the times lead to psycho-sexual perversity among poor children and new laws should take all these factors on board while promulgating harsh measures. In other words, sexual offense was not just a mere law and order issue, social conditions, economic hardship and mental health issues were also to be addressed to minimize cases of sexual offense. All these debates showed signs of an emerging public sphere in which various aspects and dimensions of a particular issue are debated and discussed. The year 2020 has witnessed a dramatic development in regard to the ‘punishment’ of the rapists when on February 1, Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Kumar Singh and Pawan Gupta were hanged (Suresh, 2020). However, previously Ram Singh, the fifth offender had allegedly taken his own life in the Tihar Jail; and the sixth convict who was juvenile at the crime had to spend three years in a reform home (ibid.). The chief feature of the Nirbhaya movement, according to Al Adawy, was ‘the nation-wide as well as international attention it received in the new age of social media, compelling politicians and civil society alike to deliberate over a previously underreported issue’ (Al Adawy, 2014). The nation-wide participation of women has been one of the important features of this movement too. For the first time in India so many women came out on the street together to protest against rising cases of sexual violence and domestic repression. The ‘element of shared understanding of violence and buried feeling of resistance against the daily experiences’ of gender offence had provided a sense of ‘empathy’ which embraced

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every woman to stand by Nirbhaya’s cause (Nigam, 201). This ‘rising crescendo of public discourse’, according to Mehta, was directed towards the ‘democratization of public spaces’ (Mehta, 2019, 160). The revelation of the name of the rape victim, which is unusual in Indian cases, is another crucial aspect of this movement. Generally, in India the name of the rape victim is kept secret keeping in mind the social ignominy a rape victim faces in orthodox Indian society. The Nirbhaya event however significantly destigmatized the rape victim, in this case for the first time in India, the rape victim was nationally venerated, iconized and even deified. This caused a perceptive shift in traditional Indian attitudes when it comes to cases of sexual offence. Previously, patriarchal Indian society used to accuse women for being ‘raped’, blaming the victim most of the times for provoking the offenders, attributing the offence to the victim’s ‘scanty’ dresses, and her ‘audacity’ to go out late in the night, ‘inviting male lust’. In other words, puritanical male Indian society used to blame women for ‘inviting’ sexual misconducts, it believed in the relegation of women within the controlled regime and ‘safety’ of the household and such orthodox social attitudes could not brook seeing women independently going out in the public space, wearing western outfits of their autonomous choice and deciding to enjoy the fruits of life equally along with their male counterparts. Female liberty elicited masculine domination and sexual control and that resulted in gender offences. Such illiberal and outrageous views dominated the Indian mindset for a long time and the Nirbhaya incident was a reiteration of identical masculine hatred and control of the female body. The Nirbhaya movement however launched a big blow to such age-old patterns of patriarchal thinking, generating fierce debates in the Indian public space. In 2016, two newly directed films, Pink and Lipstick under My Burkha were brilliant outcomes of this new upsurge for assertion of women’s rights post-Nirbhaya. The courtroom debate in the film Pink introduces new and hitherto unthinkable questions in the Indian public space on female rights as far as their choices of dress, love life and lifestyle were concerned. This newly founded backlash against conservative male control and the assertion of female liberty was a clear fall out of the Nirbhaya movement. In 2009 the much publicized Pink Chaddi movement was organized by some Indian women who adopted a unique and non-violent civil society led movement against male supremacy and conservative domination, when they were manhandled and threatened with dire consequences by right-wing religious male groups in Mangalore for the participation of these ‘modern’ women in the

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Valentine’s Day celebration being carried out in a pub. Women leaders who launched this unique movement sent pink underwears (chaddis in Hindi) to the right-wing perpetrators of violence by post. The right-wing male leaders were flooded with pink underwears, sent through post from different corners of India in a move to assert female boldness and courage. However, in spite of this unique move, the Pink Chaddi movement could not acquire the nation-wide impact, the way the Nirbhaya movement did. Even the 2004 judicial execution of Dhananjay Chatterjee, the prime accused in the rape and murders of Hetal Parekh in Calcutta created a lot of furores in West Bengal as well as in India but that too could not mobilize nation-wide outrage. Perhaps, Indian satellite media and the digital public space were slowly gearing up during these relatively past events and by the time the Nirbhaya event happened the digital public sphere, forged by continuous media updates and circulation of images, was ripe enough for generating this nation-wide unrest impacting the cultural and overall political mindset of India. Rape victims since then in India have ceased to be ostracized, rather they are given adequate media attention and public sympathy so that their cause can be taken up and pressures are built on the government for immediate correctional steps. In fact, the rage and rapidity of the Nirbhaya movement justified the revelation of the details of the woman who succumbed to male brutality. It struck at the roots of the patriarchal social structure of Indian society. The word ‘Nirbhaya’ has since then become synonymous with every gender protest which centre around issues of rape and gender assault. The existing social culture of stigmatizing rape victims instead of protecting them from social banning has undergone a substantial reconsideration when the whole nation stood against the rape perpetrators by demanding even their death penalty. Nigam argues that the protestors were ‘ordinary men and women, who had no history of activism, joined hands and expressed solidarity’ for a rape victim (Nigam, 203). The ‘working class people from the aspiring middle classes’ had supported the movement by coming down to the streets and joining in the protest movement. These ‘white-collard’ male participants, perhaps for the first time, had shown their solidarity to the cause of a social movement (Nigam, 204). This large participation of the urban male, some may argue, can be attributed more to their fear related to a sense of declining security of the city space and the possible spurt in crime rates than to their larger concern for overthrowing patriarchal notions of sex and violence. Be that as it may, this dichotomy of participation, in Nigam’s words, was a ‘clash between the

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new and the old, between the modern and the traditional and a conflict between the two Indias’—a conflict emerging within new India and its ‘neoliberal agenda’ (Nigam, 205, 207). The flip side of these agitations is therefore also to be kept in mind in any scholarly analysis and the complexity of Indian society with its caste-class-religion-gender entanglements pose enough challenges for a unified gender-based mobilization. Hence Dalit women are still being assaulted with impunity in many parts of India without generating adequate amount of outrage. While critiquing the dominant agenda of making rape as a matter of challenge to the Hindu middle-class values and positions, Shandilya argues that The potential for solidarity across lines of caste, class and religion are lost when the category of ‘everywoman’ is co-opted to mean a Hindu, middle-class woman; the potential for justice is reduced when nonconsent continues to be framed in biopolitical terms – her virginity and her brutalised body… media coverage of the protest was aligned with an ideology of protecting middle-class Hindu women’s bodies…(Shandilya, 473)

Bakshi argues that ‘thousands of middle class, elite protestors that flocked to the Jantar Mantar area in Delhi and the India Gate spoke…also for themselves’ (Bakshi, 2017, 50). While critically analysing the character of the ‘crowd’ which came down to the streets for the Nirbhaya cause, Mehta categorized the ‘crowd’ into three distinct types—first, crowd consisting of the ‘members of Hindu right, calling for capital punishment of the accused, preceded by their castration and the mounting demands for resignation – of the Commissioner of Police, of the Chief Minister, the Prime Minister…’; the second group comprised of feminists and other progressive groups who countered this incident through the lens of ‘gender justice’; and the third group was represented by ‘Aam Aadmi’ party members who ‘talked of corruption, of the body politic’ (Mehta, 2019, 174). These protestors turned the Jantar Mantar area ‘a politician free zone’ (ibid.), something that had summarily rejected any political encroachment in that civic mobilization space for petty political encashment of that tragic event of rape. ‘Crowds, cops and cameras’ became the chief component of the Nirbhaya protest, a gathering which was ‘characterized by the anonymous flow of multiple discourses’ (ibid.) that reflected the crowd’s spontaneity, state’s reaction and wide media coverage.

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The movement, as stated before, drew considerable media coverage which helped the movement to move in different directions, drawing the attention of almost all sections of social space. When the movement got deepened and reached its crescendo, its ‘international coverage increased drastically’ (Bakshi, 50). Popular marches were held in London and Paris where protestors made petitions to the Indian embassies for making India ‘a safer place for women’ (ibid.). This protest was really unprecedented by all standards and India never witnessed such protests before and that led to its being described as a new social movement in India. While the trauma and struggle of Nirbhaya provided the emotional bond between various agitators, countless mass text messages circulated through mobile phones and social media platforms united them for collective candlelight marches; and when the text messages were blocked people started to use WhatsApp and Twitter for the dissemination of messages and information (Ibid., 46). Ahmed and others have shown how the increasing use of Twitter has changed the overall character of the movement. Tweeter activity, according to Ahmed and others, has reached to highest point on the second day (23 December 2012) of this major protest at the India Gate, when 15,421 tweets were posted in comparison with the 6561 posts that were recorded during the daily protest movement since 17th December (Ahmed et al., 2016). This movement was leaderless in the conventional sense of the term, no single leadership was involved, in fact it was collectively led and was truly rhizomic in nature. The phenomenal impact of media in disseminating and projecting daily updates through images of protest gatherings and uproars helped in simultaneous swarming of larger crowds. Daily televised projection of this collective outpouring of support had a cascading impact and generated hydra-headed protest marches in many other cities across India. This was surely an example of horizontality and shunned the conventional model of a top-down leadership in which a popular leader will give the call for participation and people will answer to that call. The uniqueness of the Nirbhaya movement stemmed from its adoption of the Occupy Movement or the Arab Spring movement mechanism of people’s leadership or ‘leaderless leadership’, in this movement all were leading each other in a truly people’s agitation spiralling out of bounds because of mediatized projection on a minute-by-minute basis. This was perhaps the first-time young people, schoolchildren and college students poured out into the streets on the issue of violence against women, and the media threw its entire weight behind the protests. The massive protests also

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resulted in the creation of Nirbhaya Fund in 2013 budget, where Rs. 1000 crore was assigned for the ‘safety, security and empowered of the women’ (Suresh, 2020). The success of the Verma Report led to the ‘concept of mainstreaming gender in public amenities and services’ (Al Adawy, 2014). However, the Nirbhaya movement was not able to diminish the occurrence of rape cases in India and Delhi, The Hindu reported, now came to be called the ‘Rape Capital’ of India which witnessed a considerable increase in rape cases in the post-Nirbhaya years (The Hindu: March 29, 2016; Suresh; Bakshi, 44). This problem, however, needs to be viewed from another angle and this rise in gender crimes (or greater reporting of gender crimes post-Nirbhaya?) has to be situated within the complex socio-cultural and socio-sexual taboos and attitudes in India which most often lead to perversion and violence. The Nirbhaya effect provided a major impetus towards the increase in the reporting and recording of rape cases. Gender crime cases started being increasingly reported in all parts of the country and this is a positive and recent development. This indicates the success of the movement which has transformed popular perception towards rape and also towards gender violence in general. This movement has even compelled the Union government to introduce special measures which would strengthen the general status of women in Indian society. Beti Bachao, Beti Padao (save daughter, educate daughter) is one of such governmental measures which is aimed towards the education and empowerment of women. Emotion played a crucial role in these new social movements. Ahmed and others argue that the possibility of participation or reluctance in the social movements has been identified with a complex relation between ‘anxiety, individualism’ and ‘collectivism’ (Ahmed et al., 2016). Emotions, both negative and positive, have been the guiding factors towards galvanization of protests. This movement too relied completely on mediatized whipping up of passionate pleas and emotive responses, leading to civil society activism to pressurize the perpetrators of gender crimes and also to generate public consciousness that brought the gender issue in the public domain and amidst public discussions. As discussed in detail in the preceding chapter, a public sphere emerged in India in the recent years through the wide networks of communication gadgetry, media channels and blogospheres. Hereafter, movements centring on the issues of women, according to Lapsia, have increasingly incorporated issues on sexual violence along with their demands for ‘economic and

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political equality’ (Lapsia, 2015, 43). In spite of being a predominantly civil society-led movement, the political implications of the Nirbhaya movement can also not be underestimated. The movement has introduced a culture of inclusion of non-political issues in the highly politicized arena of Indian politics. The rise of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) can be contextualized in the backdrop of this Nirbhaya movement which set a template for drawing more governmental and political concern over citizens’ basic amenities, safety and above all, the need for a ‘good governance’ to protect human rights and human needs. The momentum and visibility gained by AAP during the Nirbhaya movement emboldened them to crystalize greater support for other civic-political moves and in what follows all those details will be analysed.

New Political Imaginary: The Case of Aam Aadmi Party With the economic liberation of the 1990s, India witnessed complete overhauling of the market policy. India’s entry into contested terrains of global economic platform changed its financial, social and political vocabularies: words and expressions like ‘international retail brands, cable television channels, Internet connections, cell phones, and social media, etc. can all be traced to the 1991 period of economic liberalization’. The 1990s also emerged as a time when collective civil-political action was growing seen at the centre of the urban space, whereas before the 1990s, uprisings were usually taking place mainly in rural areas where majority of the population resided (e.g. anti-dam displacement movement, peasant movement and development-related mobilizations). The paradigm shift in contemporary social movements that India witnessed can be traced to its genesis point during the anti-corruption or India against corruption uprising in 2011. Since this agitation was a fall out of a combination of political and civil society initiatives, the Anna movement or the India Against Corruption movement could not be classified as a pure civil society uprising, although subsequently it transcended its political overtones and assumed the features of a popular civic-political movement that had far-reaching consequences in Indian politics. Corruption since then became one of the biggest political issues and the way this movement was launched also allowed it to lay its claim to be called a new social movement in India. A prolonged hunger strike, initially staged by Anna Hazare,

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a 74-year-old man and couched through Gandhian legacy of civil disobedience and mass protest kickstarted this movement. Once again, every move of Anna and every sound bite related to this movement was telecast round the clock, generating pan-Indian after-effect. Since corruption is a touchy issue, it could resonate across all class and caste barriers in the Indian population and very soon became a nation-wide agitation striking chords with everyone. Anna Hazare was not at all well known before this hunger strike but within days, through comprehensive media coverage he became almost a household name in India. With Anna’s arrest on the eve of August of that year the nature of the protest changed its pace and India saw candlelit marches across the country swelling its size and rank on every alternative day. Anna’s release could not stop this spontaneous protest and this time it was staged in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan that witnessed his ‘fast unto death’ surrounded by thousands of supporters, hordes of national flags with a big size portrait of Gandhi. One of the demands of the Anna movement was the passing of the Jan Lokpal Bill or the provision for a national ombudsman, a watchdog to prevent political corruption. When the Indian parliament passed the ‘Jan Lokpal Bill’ it was seen as the ‘victory of people’ and thousands of people poured into the streets. After this mass protest the kind of resistance initiated by Anna Hazare, however, faced critical attention of leftist and intellectual liberals because of his endorsement of conservative spiritual leaders, indicating his proximity towards Hindu Right-wing political forces. However, it is undeniable that this new kind of protest which facilitated sparks of ‘individual activism’ in India did have subsequent impacts on spontaneous civil society mobilizations, uniting people across religion, caste, class and ethnicity, who expressed their public outcry without resorting to any means of violent takeover. All these substantiate our initial claim and argument that these new mobilizations departed from traditional class or party-oriented agitations that Indians were familiar with. One may recall here, Hardt and Negri’s idea of the ‘Multitude’ introduced in their book, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004) in which affected population groups across the globe rise against injustice in decentred manner—a mode in which ordinary people hailing from different backgrounds, ideological affiliations and categories assembled without any rigid programmatic manifesto. Theoretically speaking this may also remind us of French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas of ‘Assemblage’, ‘rhizomes’ and the ‘War Machines’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). These new protest movements did not

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adhere to any pre-determined political programme or ideological strictures. Assemblages or war machines according to Deleuze and Guattari have got nothing to do with war, rather they are people’s rhizomic march of ‘deterritorialization’, a move away from conventional templates, utilizing to the fullest extent inherent micro-political energies and desires of common people to counter regimes of injustice and control. All these new social movements are instances of rhizomic upheavals, on every moment these agitations unfolded in different terrains, there was nothing predetermined about them. Given these non-conventional orientations, these new social movements demanded a radical redefinition of power and politics. The Aam Aadmi (AAP) Movement in India opened up a new space in Indian politics with their non-powered concept of power and here we attempt a theoretic understanding of their redefinition (through Deleuze) of state power and anarchism to subvert all forms of absolutist power of the state and the power junta. For Deleuze and Guattari the forceful integration of humanity in the global capitalist order is generally evaded by the resisting war machine or the anarchic subjectivity which attempts to refute all statist endeavours. Deleuze and Guattari argued that the state form did not emerge or evolved but it has existed always as an immemorial Urstaat (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, 427) which tends to capture the tamed humanity as a captive war machine or subservient subjectivity. We argue that in the Indian case this is exactly what the Aam Aadmi Party has been trying to say and their pro-people stance testifies their aversion to state power. Here Richard F Day reminds us that Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of state power converges with Foucault’s notion of the apparatus or dispositif. Deleuze’s concept of ‘becoming minor’ holds immense significance in this context. The ‘minor’ or the principle of minority appears as the dynamic or intensive principle of change in Deleuze and Guattari’s work (Day, 2005, 68), in which change is explicitly oriented to avoid becoming the major. It is in fact defined in such a way as to associate it inseparably with non-hegemonic practices. This is the space, Day says, of Guattari’s ‘molecular revolution’ and Foucault’s micro-politics, a particularly post-structuralist politics of affinity that has been picked up by theorists to explore the possibility of turning this micro-politics as a mode of community politics. We investigated to see if the AAP movement has ushered in this Deleuzian hypothesis in Indian

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democratic movements and in that way has helped in the deepening of people’s power. An umbrella group, comprising of several activists from different sociopolitical groups, which was called India Against Corruption (IAC) was formed to negotiate with the government over the issues of The Jan Lokpal bill (‘People’s Ombudsman’ bill) in 2011. The anti-corruption movement with which the AAP associated itself offered a promising agenda to fight against the then government, which was identified with big financial scams and other cases of corruption. The entire movement received close media coverage that ultimately made the movement into a national-level movement. While on one hand, the print and electronic media played a crucial role, in publicizing the intensification of the struggle between the government and IAC members, the social media, no doubt, provided a larger social space to that problem. Later, AAP’s assertion of its ideology to make a corruption-free India drew attention to a larger social group which was highly optimistic about the rise of a radical non-political political party like AAP, or the People’s party who fight for the people’s cause without getting mired in power politics and greed for personal power. AAP leaders merged themselves with the Anna movement to capitalize the momentum of public support for a cause which they projected as their field of crusade. So, the conflict began between three key players, the government on one side and Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and his group of activists were on the opposite side, spearheading the IAC movement. Ultimately, the government was forced to pass the Jan Lok Pal bill in the Lok Sabha (lower house of the Indian Parliament) in December 2011 and sent it to the Rajya Sabha (upper house of the Indian Parliament) for debate, where it got stuck for a long time (Sharma, 2014, 43). In course of time, when the India Against Corruption movement turned comparatively weaker, there was a clear possibility to take over the movement with new agenda and leadership. The growing dissensions between Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal of AAP over the issue of whether to enter into mainstream politics or not finally reached a deciding point when Kejriwal decided to form a new political party which will build new templates of political assemblage in Indian electoral history (Ibid., 43). The tussle between Hazare and Kejriwal reminds us about the fight between the pro-changer and no-changer groups of the Indian National Congress who were divided over the issues of entering into the colonial legislative system as envisaged by the Government of India Act of 1919.

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Though Anna Hazare’s movement gradually faded away in the course of time, it left a long-lasting impact upon Indian politics. Shringare opines that Anna Hazare’s movement is special in many ways. It attracted large number of supporters not only from Delhi but from different parts of India. It also saw urban middle class and youth participation in large numbers. The movement was also special because it culminated not only in brining Lokpal and Lokayukta Act but also in the emergence of a new party called AAP. (Shringare, 2014, 326)

Kurup finds an important connection between the anti-corruption movement and the subsequent emergence of the AAP: Thanks to the anti-corruption movement, the corruption issue served as a unifying theme that cut across all conventional boundaries such as caste, religion, and language. It was a nationally binding factor of the kind that the country had not seen since the days of the “Emergency” in the 70s. (Kurup, 2016)

While situating Negrian idea of ‘multitude’ in the context of the emergence of the AAP, Purakayastha and others have viewed the genesis of the AAP phenomenon as a ‘new beginning’ in Indian politics (Purakayastha et al., 2014, 74). The very term ‘Aam Aadmi’ denotes the common public, and AAPs claimed to represent the common people who were disenchanted by the long-standing ‘corruption-culture’ of the Indian politics. However, the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party was held in a unique way, for the first time a political outfit was formed through a opinion poll, using social media platforms where 76 per cent of respondents were in favour of the creation of AAP (Ibid., 48). The subsequent strategies of popular outreach and mass-engagement have also witnessed the widespread use of social media. AAP has a revolutionary impact upon the political-ecosystem of Indian democracy. Shringare further argues that The emergence of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) marked the beginning of a new chapter in Indian politics, it also marked a change in the nature of party politics. The rise of AAP in Delhi and its subsequent decision to contest for 2014 general election definitely sent a strong message to the existing political formations that they need to change. It also compelled for more participatory and democratic governance. (Ibid., 325)

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According to Tripathi and Ramakrishnan, AAP successfully achieved in capturing ‘people’s imagination’ and it has attained electoral victory ‘by conjoining idealistic political presentations with practical schemes’ (Frontline, 2014). AAP, over the years, has established itself as the ‘representative’ of the aam-aadmi (common people) and its emphasis on free bijli aur paani (free electricity and water) for all the people of Delhi has practically proved itself as a party of the commoners or the aam-aadmi. One could hardly recall similar political experiences in mainstream Indian politics before AAP and it also succeeded in addressing the problems of the youth, women and workers and incorporated several other issues like human rights, education, political and judicial reform. In so doing, though it apparently deviated from the dominant political-culture of India, it brought new dimensions of ‘doing politics’, departing from the pre-existing model of the ‘patron-client’ relationship in which the big and all-powerful political leader or Neta would patronizingly favour his/her political client, that is the common citizen. The AAP model completely transformed this existing political relationship, or the top-down model in which the political class used to boss over the commoner. The AAP hypothesis called for merging with the common citizen, becoming the citizen’s voice, shunning the hierarchy of the politician as the VIP. This new political imaginary and new language of addressing people’s problems which AAP brought into Indian politics differentiated AAP from other mainstream political parties. The persona of Arvind Kejriwal, the National Convenor of the AAP, also had a decisive impact upon the party’s popular acceptance. The Muffler Man, as Kejriwal was called during his early political days, provided a new shape and dimension to Indian politics. The casual Muffler worn by everyone represents the common man, and Kejriwal smartly popularized it in a bid to drive the narrative that he is there to demolish the elite outfit and aristocratic image of the traditional political leader. The Muffler Man Kejriwal posed a threat to the existing power equations in Indian society. While designating Kejriwal as ‘a political entrepreneur’, Wyatt underscored ‘the innovation and creativity’ that Kejriwal brought to Indian politics (Wyatt, 2015, 167). The political narrative that Kejriwal and AAP tried to introduce, Wyatt further comments, is ‘partly a retro-script’ which involved identification of problems and ‘partly prescriptive’ that included suggesting solutions of the problems (170). In order to extend its social base, AAP widely depended on the massive use of social media and Internet. In fact, the use of

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social media, since the days of its inception, made AAP more popular and accessible in comparison with the other political parties. Later this new trend and methodology were followed by other political parties, making the AAP movement a trendsetter in many ways. AAP realized quite early that in the present-day scenario social issues and emotions can be best addressed through the social media which itself has a defining impact upon the galvanization of public protests that the AAP had already spearheaded. The official website of the AAP offered very easy steps to get inducted in the AAP ‘movement’. AAP also made a clever use of symbols and other visuals, the political symbol of AAP i.e. the jhadu (the broomstick) signifies a cleanser or the harbinger of a corruption-free government. AAP also claims itself as ‘the only political party in India that runs 100% through crowdfunding and accounts for every rupee received’ (https://aamaadmiparty.org/). Shringare argues that ‘use of social media paid dividends for AAP’s overwhelming popularity…’ (Shringare, 331). The increasing dependency over tele-communication gadgetry or the Internet became more visible during the post-electoral days of Delhi in December 2013. AAP’s reluctance to form government in 2013 when none of the major parties (AAP, BJP, and Congress) had achieved any clear majority also ushered in a ‘new culture’ of political asceticism and aversion to power politics in Indian electoral tradition. AAP conducted a ‘referendum’ in order to understand public mood and public opinion by deploying ‘text-messages, web-based polling and by over 250 community level meetings’, asking from the people whether AAP should form a minority government with the support of Congress (Sharma, 54). However, ultimately, Kejriwal, as Chief Minister, formed the government on 28 December 2013, and he resigned on 14 February 2014 as he was unable to introduce the Jan Lokpal Bill in the House of the Delhi Legislative Assembly (ibid.). In the new 2015 Delhi Legislative Assembly elections, AAP got a massive victory, winning 67 seats out of 70. Though AAP has been hailed and viewed by many as a new ‘movement’, the emergence and growth of AAP had to face severe criticism and obstacles too. Purakayastha and others have argued that ‘the schism within AAP, some of its policy debacles, and serious functioning errors, and…media attacks have led, some to believe about AAP’s current credibility crisis’ (Purakayastha et al., 73). However, at the same time, scholars also opined that in order to understand the actual significance and contribution of AAP one needs to make ‘better intellectual investments.’ AAP was described by cynics as ‘anarchic’ or the ‘urban Naxal’ and a ‘media

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bubble’, a media creation which will ‘die by media’. However, all these negative readings fail to understand the real significance of the AAP movement. For Purakayastha and others: the singular irruption of AAP as a political agency demands greater theoretic support and more rigorous forms of intellectual reading into its political praxis and future Potenza … critically engaging with AAP’s transformative agential role, a role which perhaps even some AAP leaders themselves seem to begin to forget. Ours is not a biased or promotional panegyric on AAP, we simply felt the need to interpret AAP’s singularity in a new political theoretic frame, something that is sadly missing in intellectual positions on this new political immanence, AAP, we argue, is a version of the Negrian idea of the Multitude that provides a heterochronos (a time of creation/new beginning) in Indian politics. (Purakayastha et al., 2014, 73–74)

Swaraj, the book written by Kejriwal himself, made AAP’s ideology clearer to the public. According to Burakowski and Iwanek, the main idea of Kejriwal’s Swaraj ‘is to raise the civic spirit and inspire people to get involved in self-governance and influence the local governments’ (2017, 541). AAP, which emerged out of ‘social movements and the politics of activism’, was successful to provide a useful and effective political ‘alternative’ (Ibid., 545 and 546). While beginning its journey, initially through the support of urban middle classes, AAP, over the years, has gained popularity among the Muslims and backward castes and classes of India as well. This new energy and new political dynamics of popular public participation through the intelligent use of media also percolated in the domain of new campus politics in India in the post-2011 phase and the subsequent section will elaborate on recent cases of new student politics or campus politics which also changed traditional ideas about movements and politics in India.

Students Protests, Social Media: Hok Kolorob Movement In previous sections, we have discussed the new civic-political enthusiasm that India experienced with its entry into the neoliberal phase, reinforced by digital technology. Any novelty in public culture is mostly welcomed by the youths of a country and the Nirbhaya movement had

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already proved how university and college students of India can utilize modern capitalist media channels for their own political benefit. With the rise of digital technology newer off beat but stronger news platforms also emerged in India. Previously only mainstream print media houses like The Times of India, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times, The Telegraph and The Hindu among the English dailies and powerful vernacular print platforms like Dainik Bhaskar, Nabvarat Times, Anandabajar Patrika, etc. ruled the media world who used to govern public opinion. With the arrival of digital media, new free news portals and magazines like The Wire, Scroll, Newsclick, Newslaundry, etc. emerged with vigorous impacts. They all proved to be the game changers as younger and lesser-known writers and activists could write and could immediately ‘share’ those pieces among millions through WhatsApp or Facebook posts. New social and campus movements in India utilized these new digital opinion platforms to articulate their observations and debating points. The monopoly and alleged political control of big media or newspaper giants could be averted in this way by the new generation of Indian students and social activists. While taking of new campus movement in India in the new millennium, the Hok kolorob movement at Jadavpur University, the JNU Azadi movement and recently the Jamia Milia Islamia University antiCAA movement come to one’s mind. For paucity of space, this discussion will be restricted within a close study of the Hok kolorob movement at Jadavpur University which unfolded in 2014. It initially began at Jadavpur University campus, Calcutta in September 2014 and gradually spread to other university campuses of the state of West Bengal and also moved to some of the other big cities in India. The movement was initially triggered by some of the student protestors of Jadavpur University who demanded legal action against the molestation of a female student that took place in the university campus on 28 August 2014. A bitter feud rose between the students and the university authority over this issue. This conflict ‘resulted in the standoff between students and university authorities and culminated in an indefinite hunger strike by a group of students…’ (Duttagupta, 2015). The Internal Complaints Committee of the University, responsible to address cases of sexual offences, constituted by the University was challenged by the students who demanded a reformation of the committee. The Executive Council of the University did not conform to the students’ demands. The Executive Committee members were subsequently gheraoed by the students and the Vice Chancellor of the University ultimately called the police to remove the

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agitated students. Students’ protests developed further uproar and fury when the police had allegedly beaten and molested the agitated students in the university campus. Several students were severely injured by the police attack in the campus. Apart from demanding justice for the female student, the movement now incorporated a new agenda—removal of the Vice Chancellor of the Jadavpur University. The movement lasted four over four and half months. The Bengali term ‘Hok Kolorob’ connotes an invitation for collective uproar and outcry and the movement which initially pivoted around a single incident of sexual misconduct ultimately assumed larger dimensions and spilled over to many other directions, asking ultimately for greater governance, critiquing the mainstream political class and demanding for the ouster of the Vice Chancellor whom the protestors projected as the representative of the traditional and corrupt political system. The movement quickly emerged as a prominent Hashtag movement in India, becoming very popular within a very short span of time and students across the state of West Bengal, especially the students of Calcutta-based universities spontaneously jumped onto the Hok Kolorob bandwagon. Student protests or campus movements in India have always built alternative political spaces outside the usual arenas of party politics and government, they defied social taboos, broke unjust norms, exposed exploitation and oppression and employed creative non-violent means, innovative spirit and experimental strategies. Their methodology of action has always been off the track, involving critical interventions, creative energies and participatory mobilization. ‘The HokKolorob Movement’ at Jadavpur University in 2014, is a perfect example of heteroglossic political mobilization which has its genesis in a specific gender-related event but soon expanded its horizon, enfolding diverse issues of governance, class, caste, gender and religious oppression. The methodology of articulating their voices through popular and newly coined music and lyrics was completely new. Innovative rhythmic slogans like: ‘Ei VC ke tule ne/OLX-e bechey de (Pick up this VC and sell him on OLX)’, ‘Alimuddin shukiye kath, shatru ekhon Kalighat (Alimuddin [erstwhile power block] is a shrivelled stick, the new enemy is Kalighat [the current ruling regime])’. Students in large numbers swarmed on Calcutta streets, defying the rain, using the umbrella, making it a unique and memorable sight in which big streets of Calcutta were lined with black umbrellas of the marching students, singing and reciting poems, lambasting the establishment. Such

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images of umbrella hoisting students marching in rainy Calcutta, poetizing the thoroughfare, with beautifully coined slogans, banners and songs got rivetted in public memory and were circulated across the globe. Immediately the Hok Kolorob movement succeeded in unleashing new dynamism and a new Kairos moment in the Indian public sphere. These young students evinced prodigious amount of infectious energy, grit and spirited vigour, scarcely available within conformist and mainstream Indian public space. In reaction to the Jadavpur outcry, there were serious follow-up protests organized at IIT Chennai, IIT Delhi, IIT Mumbai, IIT Kharagpur, Central University, Hyderabad, Pondicherry and Bangalore. Fasting also become an instrument of protest during this student movement which witnessed ‘a nation-wide fasting’ in support of the Jadavpur students who had gone onto fast since January 6, 2015. Students from Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi University began fasting in solidarity with the Jadavpur University students (Panjabi, 2015). Panjabi has, perhaps, rightly summarized the actual character of the Hok Kolorob movement This was… a real life, flesh and blood phenomenon, sustained by the euphoria of shared identification and collective action on the field; it was a movement in which activists put actual futures into some jeopardy in terms of the possible loss of an academic year and the possibility of being marked for future reprisals, and a struggle in which they risked the physical hazards of further police atrocities and put their very lives on the line in the final fast unto death. (Panjabi, 2015)

Chaudhuri argues that the Hok kolorob movement, in many ways, is different from other student movements that emerged in Jawaharlal Nehru University and Hyderabad University or in other parts of India (Chaudhuri, 2019). According to Chaudhury, Hok kolorob ‘was all about making a “noise”, whether or not that noise was recognised as a properly political discourse’ because such type of movement is often ‘dismissed as instances of indiscipline, unruliness or immaturity’ (Chaudhury). Faculties of the Jadavpur University got divided itself on whether to support the student movement or not. Though majority of the faculties did support the movement, a small section among them also severely criticized the students for their ‘misplaced’ activism. The Jadavpur students also had to encounter the ‘violence, vandalism and arson perpetrated by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, inside and outside the campus’ (Kar, 2019). Day by day,

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the student movement got more intensified and widened its supportbase to more people. However, the protesting students got their initial victory when the Vice Chancellor of the university was removed by the government which finally acknowledged the justification of the students’ demands. Social network sites played a crucial role in assembling and disseminating information related to the daily happenings of the movement among participants, irrespective of their being students, academic intellectuals or the common masses, resulting in spontaneous participation of all civil society actors in this movement. Dey has brilliantly outlined the impact of the social media in the Jadavpur University Hok kolorob movement (2020). Hashtag (#) Hok kolorob became widely popular by using Twitter. After careful analysis of the data regarding the use of Twitter between the first and last thirty days of her search period, Dey observed that there was ‘significant usage’ of Twitter ‘for discussions and debates’ (Ibid., 55). Dey argues that ‘the incident of sexual assault and the violence perpetrated on the students remained a common thread of conversation’ in the twitter-space along with the discussions that continued ‘on the possibility of how politics and education were intertwined (Ibid., 55). Prasad shows that on Twitter, #Hokkolorob speeded ‘unexpectedly at few points somewhere around 17 and 18 September, coming to its peak around 21 September, the day following the monstrous dissent walk’ (Prasad, 2015, 49). Apart from Twitter, several Facebook groups were also formed that worked as vibrant platforms for the protestors to communicate with each other. Later, the students launched a vigorous Facebook campaign with a page namely ‘Student against Campus Violence’ (Ibid., 51). Kavita Panjabi designates the Jadavpur University student protest as ‘a hashtag movement’ (2015). Social media even helped the movement to reach outside India and the # Hokkolorob inspired students to ‘take the spirit of their protest to the academic community around the world’ (Duttagupta, 2015). Thus, we may see that Twitter emerged as a ‘new medium’ for exchange of public views and transmission of ideas, emotions and solidarity in these movements.

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JNU Unrest and Anti-CAA Protests Campus radicalism as demonstrated by Jadavpur University reminds us of past legacies of radicality during the Naxalite movement in the 1970s but the new campus movements in neoliberal India are completely different in their modus operandi, ideological positions and articulative newness. JNU, the premiere Indian university, known as the centre of dissent and academic excellence organized a protest march in 2016 against the judicial killing of Afzal Guru, a parliament attacker and also in solidarity with the Kashmiri migrants. Though the entire protest event was stalled by the government, the way JNU students conducted the movement was quite unique, they ‘showcased the protest through art, music and poetry’ in a non-violent way through a spontaneous mode of participation. Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid emerged as new van guards of radical India as they were alleged by the Delhi police of perpetrating in seditious activities through their alleged support of Kashmiri insurgency. Kanhaiya Kumar’s mesmerizing oratorial capacity to give a clarion call for ‘Azadi’ (freedom) granted him an eternal appeal for his anarchotransformative energy and new vision. Even if one does not go into the details of police allegations and counter-allegations regarding the JNU event in 2016, there is hardly any doubt that the JNU event and subsequent after-effects in the form of political debates and media trial brought forth various issues like ‘sedition’, nationalism and insurgency for serious public debate. Finally, the very recent anti-CAA and anti-NRC movements in various parts of India especially at the Jamia Milia Islamia campus in New Delhi also proved that Indian youths are highly active when it comes to political protest and social causes. The Jamia event which occasioned a lot of alleged police brutality came under global media scrutiny and the government of the day was forced to retreat on the controversial citizenship amendment issue or on the National Registrar for Citizens issue. All these new student mobilizations adopted massive public participation both physically as well as through virtual involvement and the images of police personnel rounding up some Jamia students, beating them mercilessly and then students like Akhtarista Ansari and other fellow girls students of Jamia Milia Islamia, encircling the wounded classmates, warding off bravely police attempt to beat them further, have firmly got etched in public memory as instances of radical courage and nonconformity that challenged a system of corruption, thriving on complicity and subservience. Campus mobilizations in India in recent years also

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helped in raising caste-related atrocities and in the next penultimate section we will conclude by discussing the Rohit Vemula suicide-related campus movement at Central University Hyderabad.

Death of Rohith Vemula and New Dalit Mobilization Atrocities as well as discrimination against Dalits and marginalities are not new in Indian society but in recent years it has galvanized many people to protest against such caste-related or religion-related violence. In previous years, Dalits and marginalized organizations did organize resistance movements but in recent times their mobilizing patterns have changed too, as they have involved media and the civil society actors who helped them to unify on the basis of legislative demands for rights and protection. New educated and proactive leaders among the Dalits and other marginalized sections of Indian society have also emerged in large numbers, something that helped them to mobilize themselves in recent times. Drawing on recent incidents that India witnessed in this domain, this section tries to investigate and explain how social, cultural, linguistic, religious, political and economic marginality have reinforced popular participation to rise against growing cases of atrocities against Dalits and all these new voices have helped to a certain extent in deepening the democratic space within India even though violence against the marginalized and the Dalits have gone up too. Scholars have also argued how such modes of ‘descentbased subjections’, and the rise of new forms of popular politics are also strengthening right-wing political hegemony in India in recent years. Events of planned xenophobia and racial or caste-based atrocities have generated new modes of resistances in India and that provides some rays of hope. This section looks into the dynamics of these new articulations of protest so that we can analyse new trends of Dalit resistance and mobilizations. In other words, we locate and identify the shifts in recent Dalit mobilizations, trying to figure out how various Dalit Federations or Organizations are making attempts to establish solidarities among them for a renewed fight against caste atrocities. In this context one can readily refer to the tragic incident of suicide committed by a university research scholar named Rohith Vemula who killed himself in his own hostel room inside the University of Hyderabad on 17 January 2016. It was informed that Vemula and four other Dalit students at HCU were suspended from the university hostel due to their

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alleged connection with a campus fight between the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA), a Dalit organization of whom they were members and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), BJP’s student organization. They were collectively accused of beating up Nanadanam Sushil Kumar, the President of the HCU unit of the ABVP. While this accusation has not been proved by police investigation, Rohit and his friends were branded as casteist, extremist and anti-national even by the two cabinet ministers from the central government. As a coercive measure, the university authority suspended the stipend of Rohith and his associates and asked them to vacate the university hostel. Subsequently, in a tragic turn of event, Rohith feeling humiliated and discriminated hanged himself in his hostel room without blaming anybody in his suicide note for his death. His suicide letter says, ‘I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had a problem. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster’ (The Indian Express, 2016). Rohith’s pathetic death, which the protestors described as ‘systemic caste related murder’, evoked strong protest across the country and forged a sense of solidarity among Dalit organizations and Dalit youths to fight against caste oppression. This incident also foregrounded the heinous system of caste violence in India. In his now well-known suicide note, Rohith seemingly hinted at caste-related humiliation and atrocities as the cause for his self-killing and that suicide note almost became a political manifesto for various Dalit organizations who protested against his death. He referred to his being reduced to his identity as a Dalit: The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living. (The Wire, 17 January, 2019)

Before, Rohith’s tragic death, 7 more students from the HCU and the JNU had chosen the path of suicide after experiencing constant humiliation and discrimination from the university authorities on various issues and perhaps the legacy of such inhuman activism had its origin since the independence of India. Vemula’s death reminded us of the tragic suicide of Chuni Kotal (the first woman graduate student from the backward Lodha Community of West Bengal), who hanger herself while pursuing M.A. in Anthropology on 16 August 1992 after being humiliated by one

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of her teachers in the Anthropology Department at Vidyasagar University, West Bengal (Devi, 1992, 1836–37). Both the suicide of Chuni Kotal and Rohith once again remind us about the abominable system of caste animosities in Indian society. Unlike in the past when the media or civil society actors would scarcely take note of violence against Dalits, the self-killing of Rohith however had drawn huge media attention and that helped the issue of Dalit persecution to remain in public attention in a big way in contemporary India (Rupavath, 2016). It has been argued that Rohit Vemula’s death triggered new debates on caste in contemporary India. His gruelling existential struggle as a Dalit student brought to the forefront many such under-reported cases of caste violence. Following his death, various Ambedkarite organizations reiterated about systemic discrimination against the Dalits in Indian higher education institutions since decades (Banerjee, 2021). According to Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, Vemula’s death brought to public notice, one of the contentious issues of ‘collective assertion that began within educational institutions and its subsequent manifestations in state and, to some extent, central politics’. Suddenly, vote bank politics was pushed aside and caste discrimination and caste-related injustices began receiving wider attention (Chandra, 2016; Ray, 2017). Illaiah argues that a certain amount of political compulsion has been generated with the passing away of Vemula and that too triggered the rise of the new political mobilization against discrimination on campuses in India. Shepherd further argues (Shantha, 2018), Ambedkarite organisations, which had traditionally remained sceptical of the Left forces, are now willing to give them some leeway and fight the right-wing BJP together. The Left parties, which historically disregarded Ambedkar’s vision of a constitutional democracy, were suddenly seen using Phule and Ambedkar banners along with Marx.

On the other hand, Anand Teltumbde and Satchidanandan have argued that the suicide of Rohith has to be seen as systemic or ‘institutional murder’ that points to continued oppression of the Dalits (Arunima, 2017, 166; Bargi, 2021; Gatade, 2016, 70; Teltumbde, 2016). It is a fact that after the tragic death of Rohith and mass public furore after his death, Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) of whom Rohith had been a key leader at Central University Hyderabad became a formidable electoral force on the campus and exhibited a new wave of political hope

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and aspirations for the Dalits. This transformation of the ASA led to the opening of more than thirty ASA units in many other central universities and educational institutions across the country to carry forward the legacy of the Rohith’s movement for Dalit emancipation. The issue of student politics in India can be clearly divided into preand post-Mandal Commission phases. The Mandal Commission recommendation of 27% reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) was an important moment for India’s social justice movement in the larger background of political division across the nation. According to documentary filmmaker and political commentator Gurinder Azad (Shantha, 2018), Until Mandal (which led to the anti-reservation protests in 1990), a Bahujan student was not seen as someone demanding his rights assertively. As long as he was subservient, he (the Bahujan student) could continue with whatever little that was made available to him without much hassle. But post-Mandal, the situation changed. These political assertions led to open confrontations and further alienation of students from marginalised communities,

Even, Anoop Kumar’s The Death of Merit (2019) further narrates various forms of discrimination and atrocities faced by Bahujan students in the Indian university spaces. Both Azad and Kumar have opined that the Dalit mass mobilization has to be organized beyond the emotional grounds as a form of affirmative dissent against the hegemony of the Brahminical and Hindutva force. According to them, the tragic death of Vemula has opened an alternative political discourse that could galvanize new sociopolitical Dalit mobilization in the name of equality and social justice which were already sanctioned by the Constitution for all the citizens of India. Perhaps this new politics based on subaltern and Dalit mobilization is developing in contemporary India that boasts of new emerging Dalit leadership faces like Jignes Mevani and Chandrasekhar Azad of Bhim Army. Rohith’s unfortunate suicide perhaps provided a new impetus to Dalit-Bahujan politics, which could alter the paradigm of the existing political-culture of India. Governmental reaction and the responses from the University authorities characterized Rohith Vemula’s suicide as a mere act of individual depression or a simple act of self-killing. On the other hand, his suicide

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note ‘My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past…’ has transcended the notion of the lived experience of being a Dalit in India (Henry, 2016; Shankar & Gupta, 2017; The Indian Express, 2016). It has also been argued that his suicide has been able to strengthen political subalternity by merging them with the collective identity of Dalits in recent times. Further, his suicide provided a ground for resistance that visibilizes the dialectical interplay between death and life, individual and collective, the politics of hope and hopelessness in the larger background of majoritarian regime in India (JanMohamed, 2019, 237). Rohith’s tragic death may also remind us of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s argument that the Dalit or subaltern cannot speak, she or he can speak only after her/his death or through their death. It is argued that the suicide of Rohith in contemporary India has opened a paradigm shift in student mobilization across the university campuses and provided an alternative form of protest, which was somehow missing in the 1990s and 2000s. His tragic death also sparked off an uproar among the young generation irrespective of age, caste, religion and gender. His suicide note provided many instances of the issues of inequality, discrimination and prejudices against the Dalit and marginalized students on campus. One may also argue that this new rise of Dalit-Bahujan political mobilization can be seen at the backdrop of the earlier and larger case of the second democratic upsurge, which has been described in Chapter three of this monograph. Dalit-Bahujan social activists like Chandrasekhar Azad and his Bhim Army and Jignes Mevani from Gujrat have reenergized Dalit politics and have emerged as new van guards for the Dalits, asking for equality and social justice. Rohith Vemula is no more but his legacy of struggle for social justice provided that much needed boost to a drooping cause and subsequently when the Bhima Koregaon event happened in India in 2018 it did receive significant national and international media attention. The Bhima Koregaon incident showed how brutal upper caste violence can be when it comes to thwarting the Dalits to assert their social space. So many Dalit activists have been arrested after the Bhima Koregaon incident in which there were violent scuffles between the Dalits and upper caste Hindu rightwing groups, leading to death and destruction. Dalits were celebrating their moments of glory, in remembrance of their victory over upper caste rulers in the nineteenth-century battle in Bhima Koregaon, a place in the Indian state of Maharashtra. This celebration and self-assertion of the

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Dalits irked upper caste Hindu nationalists and they allegedly attacked the Dalit gathering leading to violence between the two groups. The incident of violence is still being probed and most of the leaders associated with the Bhima Koregaon celebration of Dalit glory. In spite of these arrests and in spite of Rohith’s death or in spite of continued atrocities against Dalits, Rohith’s death and the rise of new Dalit politics have done one thing, which is atrocities against Dalits in India will no longer be ignored and can no longer be kept away from media or civil society attention. New social movements spawned by digital and satellite media have at least achieved this.

Conclusion The study carried out so far cannot be claimed as a completely exhaustive one. As stated before, it also leaves out many events on its way to map social movement, media and civil society in contemporary India. This has been an interdisciplinary attempt to highlight new areas of change as far as popular voices and media is concerned in India in the current context. To connect the India of the precolonial with postcolonial and contemporary India, we historicized the entire narrative and proved that there have always been strong undercurrents of social tensions in India and at different points of times, different groups have organized discontents in different ways. The present excursus however transcends conventional historical boundaries and incorporated different strands from cultural studies and anthropological insights on social forces, ideologies and their encounter with techno-capitalism. We were highly conscious that there are tomes on histories of social protests in India and in that way, we cannot offer anything new, ours was an attempted prolegomenon to cultural history, to the history of the present that jostles with the ‘deep history’ of preceding times. Weaving the threads together, we tried our cultural historicist hermeneutics, unpacking the cacophony of the immediate present, its machinic ‘white noise’, and its phenomenology of newness. This is the age of the ‘extremes’, the age of the ‘spectacles’ and the age of the ‘selfies’, the simulacra, in which the hyperreal supplants the real and therefore the unique labenswelt of this ‘networked’ society cannot be deciphered through exclusive historicist lens. Conventional tools of history will be ill-equipped to unearth the complexities of caste, class and cultural affiliations of Indian reality unfolding itself in a technologized milieu. This necessitates a historical sociology aligning with

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semiological analysis. Having tried all these means, we can briefly summarize the following points as a precise way of summing up the key points of our findings through this study. Our takeaways are social movements in India in recent times have got transformed in ideologies, mobilizing methods, vocabularies and action ways. Older templates are inadequate to understand these new trends. These new social mobilizations (NSMs) betray the formation of a new public sphere, a public sphere which is sustained through 24 × 7 media channels and social media blogs. Hardt and Negri’s theory of the Multitude and Empire is germane to identify these new public space actors of social mobilizations. New Social Movements are spawning greater forms of participatory democracy. New idioms and new terrains of articulation of dissent are being actualized through NSMs. Youths are becoming more proactive stakeholders of NSMs and campus mobilizations have a new lease of life through NSMs. Gender, ecology and public welfare have become new domains of greater public awareness through NSMs. New alliances and new networks of various political and social groups are being formed. NSMs are also helping and deepening democracy as they can facilitate larger amount of public-government interface. Dogma-ridden forms of politics are becoming obsolete under the pervasive alliance-oriented forms of NSMs. Political parties are becoming more aware of media and public grievances. A new category called the citizen journalist has evolved through mediarun NSMs. The upshot of these findings does not generate unqualified euphoria and thoughtless optimism, as India through these NSMs is perhaps poised for a billion mutinies now, but then that is how existing power relations will break and the materialist dialectic of agonism will gather greater strength. Listening to the ‘grasshoppers’ (evil doers) in the ‘broken republic’ of India our ‘field notes on democracy’ (Roy, 2013) found hopes in the ‘small voices’ of Indian democracy, the protest publics, the info-publics, the new counterpublics.

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Index

A AADHAAR card (national identification card), 20 Aam Admi Party (AAP), 13, 14, 131, 142, 155, 157–162 absolutist power, 91, 157 accumulation economy, 3, 4 Ad-Dharms , 61 Adivasi Mukti Sangathan (AMS), 69 aesthetic, 146 affirmative solidarity, 147 agentic public, 20 agrarian, 3, 4, 23, 25, 83 agriculturists, 37 ahimsa, 41 Ajivikas, 36 Ambedkar, B.R., 35, 53–58, 61, 82, 97, 170 ancient India, 33–38, 41–43, 72 antaja, 42 anti-colonial, 2, 25, 43, 55, 134 Arabic, 47 Arab Spring, 6, 7, 14, 140, 147, 153

argumentative Indian, 125 argumentative tradition, 121 Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), 68 Arya Samaj , 48 aspirational India, 5, 7, 26, 107 Attio Sabhas , 51 audio-visual media, 22, 112, 119, 127, 133, 140 audio-visual reform, 72, 100 aural transmission of insurgency, 112 Aurangzeb, 42 Ayodhya, 45, 98 B Babri mosque/masjid, 27, 45, 79, 98, 109, 129 backward caste, 79, 96, 100, 162 Bahuguna, Sunderlal, 67 Bahujan (Collective/all the people), 97 Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), 10, 79, 96, 126

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. S. Purakayastha et al., Social Movements, Media and Civil Society in Contemporary India, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94040-9

195

196

INDEX

balkanization, 26 battle of perception, 13, 110 Battle of Plassey, 46 Bauri caste, 71 bhadralok, 52 Bhakti, 39 bhakti movement, 39–42 Bhil tribes, 68 Bhim Army, 131, 171, 172 Bollywood, 5, 118, 120, 126, 127 Bollywood films, 116, 123, 128, 144 Bose, Subhas Chandra, 56 bourgeoisie public sphere, 11 Boycott movement, 52 brahmadeya, 38 Brahmanical, 34–38, 40 Brahminism, 35, 57 Brahmins, 37, 48, 57, 86, 87 Bramho Samaj , 49 Brand New Nation, 2, 107 breaking news, 5, 108, 124, 129 Buddha, 34, 35 Buddhism, 35–37, 41, 57, 58, 61 Buddhist, 36, 97

C campus politics, 139, 162 campus radicalism, 167 candle light march, 6, 140 capitalist consumerism, 116 capitalist consumption, 72, 100, 110, 118 cassette culture, 22, 118 caste atrocity, 42, 72, 82, 98, 100, 168, 169 caste mobilization, 9, 79, 96 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), 146 Chaitanya, 40, 41 Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra, 42

Chaturvarna System, 35 Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti, 65 Chipko movement, 66, 95 Christianity, 48 cine-ideologies, 5 citizen journalist, 5 citizen’s rights, 6 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 28, 141 civic spirit, 162 civic uprisings, 142 civil-political reform, 143 civil society, 2–4, 6, 9, 13, 15, 17–19, 22, 25, 28, 29, 51, 52, 55, 63, 66, 67, 72, 80, 95, 98, 109, 119, 121, 122, 125, 130, 131, 133–136, 139, 142–144, 148–150, 154–156, 166, 168, 170, 173 civil society uprising, 155 coalition government, 13, 89 collective personalities, 133 collectivism, 154 colonial India, 24, 37, 43–45, 48, 50, 55, 59, 62, 86, 112 communal riots, 59, 99 communication networks, 113 Communist Party of India, 64, 69 communitarian system, 134 comprador class, 9 Congress Leviathan, 95 Congress system, 84–86, 93 continuous communities, 133 coterie culture, 84 counterpublics , 20, 131, 133 Cow Protection Agitation, 113 Critical media studies, 16 cultural pluralism, 99 cultural resistance, 68 culture of protest, 148 cyber-ecology, 11 cyber-publics, 11, 22, 23, 123

INDEX

D Dalit-Bahujan, 10, 172 Dalit-Minority, 126 Dalit mobilization, 80, 100 Dalit Panthers movement, 82 Dalit Sahitya, 82 decolonization, 53 Delhi Police, 146, 167 deliberative public sphere, 122 democratic governmentality, 2 Demonetization, 20 demonstration, 13, 45, 47, 59, 63, 65, 71, 80, 118, 145, 146 Deobandis , 48 Depressed Classes League, 61 deregulated economy, 4 Derozio, 64 Desivad, 26 developmentalism, 3, 114 Dharmasastras, 42 Dhoom Singh Negi, 67 digital activism, 7, 147 digital boom, 11, 23, 130 digital media, 15, 16, 20–22, 111, 112, 116, 124, 126, 129, 130, 140, 144, 147, 163 Digital Political Revolution, 16 digital politics, 14, 24 digital power, 2 digital technology, 98, 162, 163 digital transformation, 101 disenfranchised groups, 10, 83 dissenting constellations, 4 dissenting public, 4 dissenting voices, 8, 84, 95 dissident, 1, 25, 80, 108, 135 dissident optics, 3 Doordarshan, 107, 119, 120, 123 Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), 61, 82, 87, 127

197

E economic deregulation, 3 elementary aspects, 1, 44, 72, 124 Emergency, 25, 65, 91–93, 142, 159 emerging democracy, 88 emotion, 5, 140, 146, 154, 161, 166 emotive participation, 80 English East India Company (EIC), 46, 47 English language, 47, 114 entertainmentalization of news, 9 entertainment-consumption interface, 5 epistemological, 44, 46, 112 equality, 36, 37, 40, 54–58, 82, 98–100, 121, 171, 172 ethical thought, 35, 36 ethnic mobilization, 68 ethnic strife, 99 ethno-nationalism/ethno-nationalist, 6, 21, 79 exclusion, 34, 61 F Facebook, 7, 10–12, 16, 45, 107, 123, 130, 135, 163, 166 fake news, 9, 15, 22, 24, 115, 124 Faraizis, 49 female liberty, 150 fetishization, 110 feudalism, 42 Food movement, 64, 88 foreign direct investment (FDI), 4, 23, 26, 72, 100 Forest Rights Act of 2006 (FRA), 70 forest satyagraha, 66 fundamental rights, 88, 95 G Gandhian austerity, 115 Gandhian movements, 55

198

INDEX

Gandhi, Indira, 25, 65, 67, 83, 88, 90–94 Garibi Hatao (Abolish poverty), 90 gender assault, 6, 148, 151 gender crime, 72, 145, 148, 154 gender rights, 139, 141, 144, 145 gender security, 6, 7, 145 gender violence, 81, 131, 135, 141, 145–147, 154 global capital, 5, 26, 111 globalization, 22, 117, 119, 128 global networking, 18 Global South, 14, 131, 133 global terrorism, 5 Government of India Act of 1909, 58 gradual revolution, 63, 80 graphic novel, 146 Green Revolution (GR), 89 Guru, Narayan, 61

H Habermasian concept, 11 Habermasian public sphere, 111, 114 Habermas, Jurgen, 111, 122, 132, 135 Hazare, Anna, 7, 66, 135, 141, 155, 156, 158, 159 hegemony, 34, 36, 44, 60, 61, 83, 90, 94, 99, 107, 128, 168, 171 hero stones, 38 hero worship, 38 heterodox sects, 35, 36 Hindu College, 47 Hindu epics, 116, 126, 129 Hinduism, 40, 41, 46–48, 50 Hindu mobilization, 80, 100 Hindu nationalism, 21, 98, 129, 130, 148 Hindu public, 116, 126, 130 Hindu rate of growth, 2 Hindu society, 39, 41, 57, 98

Hindutva politics, 79 Hirakud dam, 67 historicist hermeneutics, 1, 173 Hok kolorob, 142, 163–166 Homo Hiererchicus, 35 Homosexuals, 7 hybrid media environment, 16 Hydropower, 67

I identity politics, 27, 98 India Against Corruption (IAC)/India Against Corruption Movement, 6, 13, 135, 141, 155, 158 Indian ecumene, 113 Indian Idol , 5, 119, 120, 123 Indian Muslim League, 53 Indian National Army (INA), 56 Indian National Congress (INC), 25, 51, 53, 57, 59, 84, 134, 158 India Shining, 3, 27 indigenous mediatic habitus, 113 Info-Activism, 14 Info-Nation, 2, 11, 14, 123 Info-perennis , 123 info-public, 4, 7, 13, 18, 19, 21, 108, 116, 140, 174 informed society, 44 info-tainment, 116 Instagram, 12, 130 insurgency, 3, 26, 44, 45, 64, 84, 87, 91, 95, 112, 167 insurrectional narratives, 7 integral state, 25 intellectual liberal, 156 intelligentsia, 25, 52 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 4, 83, 117 ironic provocation, 147 Islam, 46, 49 Islamic world, 39

INDEX

J Jainism, 35–37, 41 Jainist, 36 Jamaat-e-Islami, 66 Jan Andolan, 8 Janata Party, 93–95 Janata Party Government, 66 Jan Sangh, 66 Jat Rebellion, 42 Jayprakash Narayan (JP), 25, 65 journalistic ethics, 9 JP movement, 25, 65, 66, 91 junta, 157 juvenile offender, 149 K Kabir, 39–41 Kaivarta, 38 Kalabhra, 38 Kamandal (Hindu politics related tool), 98 Khetmajoor Sabha, 61 khet majur, 71, 72 Krishak Praja Party, 61 kshatriya, 37, 38, 93 L laissez faire, 2, 26, 118 land grants, 37, 38 landless labourers, 42 landlords, 37, 38, 87 land reforms, 2, 25, 83, 142 leaderless-leadership, 6, 142 Leftists, 91, 148, 156 liberalization, 2, 3, 7, 11, 21, 27 liberation imaginary, 134 liberty, 56–58, 134 libidinal exchange, 110 linguistic community, 111 literary text, 82 Lokpal Bill, 66, 156, 158, 161

199

M Mahabharata, 116 Mahars, 56 Mahatma, Mahatma Gandhi, 25, 37, 45, 50, 52, 54, 55, 57, 58, 156 Mahipala, 38 Mahishya caste, 71 majoritarian, 27, 41, 63, 80, 99 majoritarian nationalism, 27 majoritarian politics, 126 majoritarian regime, 97, 172 Malevolent Republic, 21 Manav Dharma Sabha, 48 Mandal Commission, 27, 34, 79, 97, 98, 100, 171 Mapithel dam, 67 Maratha Revolt, 42 Marathas, 42 marginality, 34, 72, 168 marginalized castes, 10, 38 market economy, 2, 4, 107, 111, 115, 118, 120 marketization, 2, 3, 23, 27, 108 mass culture, 109 media bubble, 131, 162 media-driven public sphere, 13 media hijack, 9 media hype, 3 media projection, 6, 131, 145 media space, 10 mediatized societies, 11 medieval India, 37–40 microblogging, 12 million mutinies, 24, 26, 72, 81, 100 minor religious sects, 40 Mira Bai, 39 Mughal emperors, 42 Mughal period, 39 Muslims, 10, 48, 49, 53, 58, 59, 62, 87, 90, 93, 126, 127, 141, 142, 162

200

INDEX

N Namasudras, 61 Nanak, Guru, 39, 41 Nationalism, 6, 42, 43, 45, 48, 54, 59, 60, 115, 130, 167 Indian nationalism, 2, 43, 51, 52, 60, 119 National Register of Citizens (NRC), 28, 141 national sentiments, 5, 118 native informers, 113 Naxalbari movement, 64, 88 need economy, 3, 4 Nehruvian era, 63, 80, 117, 143 neoliberal agenda, 152 neoliberalism, 80 neomarxism, 132 Networked-India, 2 new campus or student mobilizations, 8 new grammar of popular protest, 28 New India, 2, 3, 6, 7, 21, 24, 26–28, 107, 140, 152 new public protest, 146 news blogs, 130 News Clip, 123 News-Images, 123 news-making, 8, 115 new social mobilizations (NSMs), 17, 18, 174 new social movement, 17, 18, 24, 34, 72, 95, 108, 122, 136, 142–144, 153–155, 157, 173, 174 newspaper revolution, 22, 118 Nirbhaya movement, 135, 141, 144–151, 153–155, 162 NITI Ayog, 7 non-timber forest products (NTFP), 70 non-violence, 36, 37, 41, 55, 66

O OBC (Other Backward Class) communities, 10, 27, 82, 87, 97, 99, 100, 171 Occupy Wall Street, 7 Old Social Movements (OSMs), 17, 144 online news portals, 123 opposition parties, 4, 89, 94 organized labour, 2 Orientalist, 2 ‘Other’ voices, 81 outrage, 6, 10, 112, 142, 151, 152

P paid media, 124 paid news, 9, 115 parliamentary democracy, 84, 85, 92, 95 participatory democracy, 9, 11, 24, 28, 174 passive resistance, 52, 56, 66 passive revolution, 24, 84 Patna University, 65 peasant insurgency, 44 peasant resistance, 37 Periyar, 82 Persian, 47 Phantom Public Sphere, 131 Phule, Jyotirao, 54, 61, 170 placard, 146 Planning Commission, 63, 81 political-culture, 11, 60, 84, 91, 96, 107, 118, 171 political economy, 83, 98, 144 political entrepreneur, 160 political mobilization, 5, 22, 79, 80, 118, 126, 134 political society, 19, 29, 33, 133, 136, 147 political violence, 141

INDEX

polyphones, 81 Poona Pact, 61 popular march, 153 popular mobilization, 1, 6–8, 27, 45, 55, 64, 124, 129, 130 popular opposition, 4 popular religion, 40, 41 popular TV shows, 5 POSCO, 70 positive discrimination, 79, 100 post-Arab Spring, 6 postcolonial public sphere, 131 postcolonial state, 2, 88, 142 poster, 71, 146, 147 post-Habermasian critique, 132 post-Kantian, 122 post-Occupy Wall Street, 6 precariats, 27 presstitutes, 23 print capitalism, 111 private news channel, 123 private-sector, 86 privatization, 23, 80, 118 protest publics, 18–20, 174 public agon, 11 public culture, 13, 22, 118, 119, 123, 162 public debate, 22, 82, 109, 114, 121, 123, 134, 167 public outrage, 7, 13, 83, 126, 142, 145 public protest, 6, 15, 18, 20, 21, 29, 52, 67, 109, 139, 140, 146, 161 Public Service Broadcasting, 9 public sphere, 2, 4, 6–9, 11, 27, 28, 40, 47, 49, 51, 54, 98, 101, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 121, 122, 124, 125, 131–136, 139, 142, 145, 149, 151, 154, 165, 174

201

Q Quit India movement, 55 R radical, 50, 82, 96, 99, 122, 123, 141, 146, 157, 158, 167 Ramananda, 39 Ramayana, 116, 123, 129 Ramcharita, 38 Ram, Jagjivan, 61, 97 Ramjanmabhoomi movement, 129 Rampala, 38 Ram Rajya, 98, 129 rape victim, 150, 151 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), 66, 165 Raturi, Ghanshyam, 67 reality show, 5, 108, 119 Reality Television, 15 regionalism, 63, 80, 81, 87 religious nationalism, 143 religious philosophy, 35, 36 religious symbols, 98 reservation, 57, 79, 80, 97, 98, 100, 171 revolution, 25, 56, 58, 64, 119 Right to Information Act (RTI), 6 right-wing, 79, 91, 93, 150, 151, 170 right wing populism, 135 Roy, Raja Ram Mohan, 49, 50, 62 rumour, 45, 111, 112, 115 rustic means of transmission, 112 S Sandhyakar Nandi, 38 Sangam literatures, 39 Sanskrit, 47 Sanskritization, 34 satellite revolution, 119 satellite television, 22, 98, 107, 111, 118, 120, 122, 126–129

202

INDEX

Sati, 50, 62 Satnami Revolt, 42 Satnamis , 48 satyagraha, 55, 66 Satya Mahima Dharma, 48 Scheduled Caste Federation, 61 Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 70 second democratic upsurge, 27, 79, 96, 172 Second World War, 53 secularism, 7, 99, 134, 143 self-immolated, 37 Sen, Keshab Chandra, 50 Sepoy Mutiny (1857), 24, 112, 113, 115 sexual harassment, 148 sexual offence, 150, 163 Shahbag Protests, 18 Shanti Sena (Peace-Army), 69 show biz, 5 Shudras, 37, 39 Sikhism, 39 Sikh Revolt, 42 simulacral, 28, 111, 112, 173 simulacrum, 3, 108, 124 slogan, 3, 29, 67, 71, 90, 94, 146, 147, 164, 165 social activism, 50, 58, 82 social dissent, 85 social equality, 39, 40, 100 social exclusion, 39 social fragmentation, 63, 81 social hegemony, 34, 38, 72, 97 social justice, 36, 80, 82, 90, 94, 99, 100, 171, 172 social mobilization, 1, 13, 34, 35, 44, 51, 55, 62, 83, 84, 90, 101, 122, 174 social networking, 7, 16, 44, 107, 140

social oppression, 36, 97 social orthodoxy, 146 social reform movements, 46–48 software miracle, 14 southern India, 37–39, 48, 61 Special Economic Zone (SEZ), anti-SEZ mobilizations/movement, 4 spectator votes, 5 split public, 98, 114, 115 Srinivas, M.N., 34 strategic mobilization, 141 street theatre, 146 structural transformation, 143 student movements, 64, 65, 142, 165, 166 student politics, 64, 65, 162, 171 subaltern castes, 9, 10 subaltern media, 10 Subaltern Politics, 67 subaltern protests, 34, 38, 67 subalterns, 10, 27, 38, 42, 43, 60, 99, 112, 125, 126, 171, 172 Subaltern Studies historiography, 44 Sufi, 39 Sultanate, 39 supari journalism, 115 Swadeshi movement, 52, 54, 64 syncretism, 39

T taboos, 5, 118, 147, 154, 164 Tagore, Debendranath, 50 Tagore, Rabindranath, 50, 54 Tamil heritage, 39 Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah, 48 Tattabodhini Sabhas , 51 Tebhaga Movement, 64, 88 techno-capitalism, 2, 6, 173 techno-cultural, 130 techno-sphere, 7, 11

INDEX

tele-citizens, 5 tele-consumption, 5 tele-glamour, 5 tele-news, 125 tele-public, 5, 23, 109, 111, 123 tele-serials, 116 television, 6, 8, 16, 22, 23, 107–109, 113, 115–124, 126–129, 135, 140, 155 television soap operas, 116 television spectatorship, 116 televisual media debates, 11 Telugu Desam Party (TDP), 94 template, 2, 5, 7, 19, 28, 64, 113, 115, 123, 131, 146, 155, 157, 158, 174 Theosophical movement, 48 Thoubal Multipurpose Hydroelectric Project, 67 Total Revolution, 66, 91 transformative dissent, 1 transformative vectors, 7 trans-gendered, 7 transmission, 44, 45, 112, 113, 140, 142, 166 trauma, 153 tribalism, 36, 45 Troll Army, 11 Tukaram, 39, 41 24 hours satellite news channels, 120 24×7 audio-visual media, 123 24×7 news channels, 28, 130 Twitter, 7, 10, 12, 14–16, 24, 45, 107, 123, 130, 135, 153, 166 Twitterati, 8, 11

U unemployment, 142 unified-media-publics , 5 Unionist Party, 61

203

unrest, 1, 34, 35, 37, 64, 65, 72, 86, 142, 151 Urban Naxal, 161 urban space, 72, 100, 155 V Vaishnavism, 40 Vaishya, 38, 86 Varendri, 38 Vedanta Group, 70 Vedic, 35 Vemula, Rohit, 135, 141, 142, 168–172 vernacular media, 16 vi¯agallu or v¯irakallu, 38 Vidyasagar, Ishwar Chandra, 62 viewer-community bonding, 5 violent outbursts, 145 virtual transformation, 11, 27, 28, 101, 107, 108 W war machine, 156, 157 water-canon, 146 welfare state, 3, 23, 83, 118 welfarism, 24, 72, 100 WhatsApp, 5, 11, 45, 107, 115, 123, 153, 163 WhatsApp News, 123 WhatsApp-publics , 8 WhatsApp University, 11 WikiLeaks, 14 woman question, 62 working-class movements, 54 World Bank, 4, 83, 117 Y Young Bengal Movement, 64 Young India, 85