Middle class rising

Civil society is finally acquiring dynamism in India

From Hong Kong to the US, France, the UK and New Delhi, the mobilisation of civil society has been one of the notable trends of the second decade of the 21st century. These public protests, in the form of marches and sit-ins and mostly peaceful demonstrations, will remain a heartening reminder that liberal values have not lost their currency in an increasingly authoritarian world. The year 2019 alone will be remembered for the success of the pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong, who recorded significant victories against the might of the Beijing administration. India, too, has attracted global attention for the countrywide demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the latter in abeyance as a result. The little-noticed aspect of these protests is that they reflect a trend in civil society that has been gathering momentum over the decade.

Till the noughties, public demonstrations were largely considered the province of party workers mobilising the grassroots for a cause: Farmers, adivasis, dispossessed peasants, slum dwellers, and so on. An educated, agnostic civil society of the kind that has existed in the West since the revolutions of 1848 was virtually absent (the student movement during the Naxalite riots in West Bengal was too sui generis to fit this paradigm). Middle-class Indians were either too reticent about getting involved in public issues or too self-absorbed to do so — a fact that was starkly in evidence during the Emergency (1975-77). But starting with civil society’s candle-light vigils against the blatant miscarriage of justice in the murder trial of the socialite Jessica Lal, India’s expanding middle class is experiencing an awakening of social consciousness beyond narrow concerns.

This new dynamism was starkly in evidence at the end of 2012 and the start of 2019 in states as distant as Delhi and Kerala. In 2012, the gang rape of a young paramedic caused an unprecedented turnout of women (and some men) in the heart of the national capital to protest against the lack of safety for women and girls in the city. It was a potent demonstration that reflected the growing confidence of professional, middle-class women in a male-dominated society that reflected their rising participation in the workforce. It had a salutary impact on the political class, which eventually passed more stringent (and slightly more sensitive) rape and workplace harassment laws. In this instance, it was a question of society leading politics. In the dramatic 620-km human chain formed by women in the southern state of Kerala on January 1 this year, it was a case of civil society pressuring politicians to enforce the law. This was in response to the continuing ban on women entering the iconic Sabarimala temple, though it was overturned by the Supreme Court in September 2018. This potent demand for gender equality has not, regrettably, encouraged the male priests and their chauvinist supporters to change their mind but it remains an uncomfortable reminder of the dissonance between tradition and modernity. 

Students have been at the forefront of demands for civil rights from as far back as 2015, when protests erupted over the suicide of the Dalit student Rohith Vemula and later over the hanging of Afzal Guru, which launched the career of leftist student Kanhaiya Kumar. It has, again, been students who have catalysed civil society at large to mobilise against CAA and NRC protests, provoking the prime minister to stretch the truth about his party’s policies. The notable point about the latest protests is that Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and Indians of all denominations have united to protect the rights of Muslims. They provide a bulwark against the crude communalism fanned by majoritarian politics and highlight the reassuring potential embedded in the forever argumentative Indian.