As thousands of agitating and agitated Europeans crowded the streets in eastern European cities in 1989, Stalinist states collapsed like the proverbial house of cards. A self-limiting social movement, which had carved out a free zone called civil society outside the sphere of the state and the household, was transformed into a political movement. Not surprisingly, the term civil society as a companion concept of democracy came readily onto the lips of policymakers, politicians, journalists, activists, and scholars. Democratic theory holds that citizens have the political competence to participate in political processes through public debates, campaigns, and non-violent direct action in civil society. To challenge this is to deny the basic right of citizens to share in the making of a public discourse and an accessible political discourse. The rider is that a democratic state is a necessary precondition for a vigilant civil society.
The rise of Jignesh Mevani
However, in recent years, the space of civil society in India has shrunk dramatically because the present government has neither patience for civil society activism nor respect for the political competence of citizens. Under the indomitable and relentless attack of the government, civil society might just wither. But a kindly fate intervened. At a time when the future of India’s democracy appeared bleak, three young men heading social movements in Gujarat catapulted core issues of well-being, rights and solidarity onto the political platform. Their combined agenda might rejuvenate civil society as the sphere of non-violent protest. Jignesh Mevani, Hardik Patel, and Alpesh Thakor might just aid in replenishing the energies of the sphere.
Of the three, Mr. Mevani stands out as forceful and motivated. He appeared onto the political scene in the wake of the stomach-turning lynchings in Una in July 2016. Armed with the slogan, “You keep the cow’s tail, just give us our land”, he radically shifted the Dalit discourse from an overwhelming preoccupation with identity politics to the political economy of land and occupation. By skilfully welding caste and class vide the twin slogans of Jai Bhim and Lal Salaam , he challenged the ‘Gujarat model of development’. He also questioned the wider notion of development that concentrates on economic growth and leaves workers and peasants on the wayside.
His ideology is cogent and hard-hitting. Targeting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government as well as neo-liberalism, he reaches out to a national audience of the most vulnerable, impoverished, and marginalised. He has taken into his ideological fold not only doubly disadvantaged Dalits, but also poor Brahmins, the beleaguered Muslim community, and tribals. Above all, Mr. Mevani has foregrounded agrarian distress compellingly and emphatically to illustrate the shortcomings of the Modi model of development. Caste discrimination, he argues, can be tackled only when Dalits have access to land and jobs, and when they attain self-respect as producers of value. As long as they are dependent on handouts, they will continue to be stripped of self-respect. Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeals to a Gujarati constituency on the basis of asmita (pride). Mr. Mevani asks whether asmita can be realised if the Dalits in Gujarat are bereft of land and income. More significantly, the Azadi Kooch, organised by the Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch, has disseminated the legacy of the Una movement across India. The movement is not only about the four victims of the lynching by cadres of the Hindutva brigade, it is about demanding and securing basic rights that accrue to every citizen. Mr. Mevani defends a form of politics that dares the legitimacy of a social, political and an economic order based on exploitation and oppression, and suggests that the only way this can be fought is by a trans-caste and trans-religious alliance of the oppressed. The phase of identity politics which capitalised caste identities to seek benefits from the state is sought to be replaced by the politics of egalitarian democracy.
Forging a coalition
The three leaders can be credited with the forging of a politically significant coalition of castes that have historically been at loggerheads: the Dalits, the Patidars, and the Thakors. Hardik Patel’s Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti was initiated soon after Mr. Modi left Gujarat for New Delhi. The Patidars demanded inclusion of their community in the list of Other Backward Classes (OBC) to avail the benefits of reservations, and Mr. Patel was soon propelled into the competitive arena of caste politics as the most visible face of the agitation. State repression and arrests followed, but Mr. Patel nevertheless managed to galvanise substantial opposition against the BJP. By the time the 2017 Assembly elections came around, the reservation issue was accompanied by a wider political economy focus on the exorbitant costs of education, lack of jobs, non-existent health facilities, and poor remuneration given to Gujarati farmers. Not every demand for reservations can be considered legitimate, but the demand itself is understandable. The agrarian economy is in dire straits, agriculture promises few rewards, and urban-based professions promise even less for young people. The demand for reservations simply epitomises the lack of opportunities — the same ones that Mr. Modi had promised when campaigning for the 2014 elections.
Alpesh Thakor, who heads the OBC, SC, ST Manch, that opposes the demand for reservations by the Patels, has also elaborated the dismal economic scene in Gujarat. He accuses the BJP government of ignoring the interests of the poor and middle classes. He points to the ready availability of liquor that has wreaked havoc on families in a prohibition State. He focusses on losses in agriculture, unemployment, the demolition of the public educational system, and corruption. And he gestures to the general malaise that clouds the lives of thousands of Gujaratis.
Together these three leaders have mobilised social movements around substantive issues of livelihood by concentrating on the hardships that rack the lives of citizens, on declining public support for education, the dismal state of health facilities, unemployment, and agrarian hardship. More significantly, they have mounted a challenge to the legitimacy of the Gujarat model of development. Fearlessly confronting a leadership that had been considered for over a decade to be above criticism, they have charted out a course of coalition politics that combines caste and class. The message is clear: the narcissism of small identities appears inconsequential in front of basic needs for all. This is preciselythe task that civil society, which appears to have retreated from confrontation with the state, has to take up with gusto. Civil society organisations have to come together and reinvent themselves as the guardian of substantive freedom in India. Social movements in Gujarat have shown us the route across stormy seas. We have to harness the tide, before it ebbs and leaves citizens stranded on the shores of an uncaring India.
Neera Chandoke is a former professor of Political Science, Delhi University
