The Hindu : Activism sans ideology

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 06, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Activism sans ideology

By Supriya RoyChowdhury

Such activities are unable to address themselves to the correction of basic structural imbalances and state callousness which generate the need for such activism in the first place.

THE DEATH of radical activism in India is well documented, its demise brought about both by the state's baton, and the middle class leadership's quiet drifting into individual careers and material pursuits. It is not unusual to find former Naxalites now holding senior positions in the IAS, or even in corporate firms.

Interestingly, though, middle class penchant for activism continues. In point of fact, activism in the present times can actually be categorised as elite rather than middle class. In the 1960s and 1970s radical youth emerged from middle and lower middle class backgrounds. They were inspired to leftist ideology not only by Marxism but also by a sense of their own uncertain futures in a depressed economy that provided few opportunities. In contrast, the middle and upper class youth of the 1980s and 1990s were really the children of liberalisation. Many went abroad for an undergraduate or post-graduate education. Many made it early in life in the corporate world by way of the astronomical salaries that liberalisation brought to IIT and IIM graduates during the golden decades of the 1980s and 1990s. And then of course there was the IT revolution which pushed the horizons of individual and organisational careers to unimagined limits.

It was but natural that this elite should turn to what are now known as social issues. Unlike earlier radicals, who saw themselves as outside the establishment, or, were at least ambiguous in their relationship to the establishment, the new genre of activists are completely comfortable in their entrenched position within the establishment. By establishment, then, we mean the world of large corporate firms, of government or semi-government agencies, of scientific or technical research institutions, journalists, writers and artists, and of course NRIs or former NRIs.

This amorphous group is engaged currently with a wide array of issues: from riots in Gujarat to the impending war in Iraq, domestic violence to rural women's access to water, and to broader issues such as anti-nuclearisation. But if the range of issues are broad, the quality of engagement is not of proportionate depth. Or, precisely because a wide range of issues is unanchored in any particular perspective, the quality of engagement is transient and passing.

Bangalore, for example, the city of India's future, is also the city of activism par excellence. It is a city of old wealth and new IT professionals, a floating artistic and intellectual glitterati, and a hard core of scientific personnel. By their very nature they are closely linked to an international world of ideas, resources and networks. There are hardly any links, though, between this elite and the city's innards, where the precarious existence of large numbers churns itself out in a futureless space.

The carnage in Gujarat saw a large number of individuals, from the elite crust, actively engaged in mobilising public opinion against communal killings. There were meetings, statements, speeches, a white ribbon campaign culminating in a human chain at the city centre, supposedly symbolising the city's repugnance for illiberal politics. A large part of these activities are now coordinated through email.

This activist furore, however, soon gave way to other issues, and the flood in one's email over Gujarat was quickly replaced by issues such as the threatened killing by stoning of an African woman accused of promiscuity, the gender dimensions of the possible war in Iraq, vehicular pollution control and so on. Many of these campaigns remain confined to selected e-mail readers, others are more visible physically.

Change-related activism would entail the gathering of a broad base of public support, and, relatedly, using this to pressure relevant agencies for change in action, policies, behaviour. Activism of the sort described above appears singularly unwilling to handle the sharp edges of this dual engagement. As such, much of it is confined to converting the converts, that is, appealing for support to like minded people for putting forth public statements and other related activities which may have a broadly positive impact but lack entirely in the kind of teeth which can force change.

A large part of this kind of activism, of course, does not bear serious consideration. Well-to-do women, whose children have already left for the U.S., and husbands are busy at the peak of their corporate or academic careers, turn to activism as a pastime. They are the free-floating activists, floating mainly on email. On a more serious plane, there are trusts or funds committed to social causes such as education, literacy, and so on. There may be a returning NRI enthused by concepts of neighbourhood improvement and citizen activism. There can be little doubt that the resources extended by such activism contribute to areas of great social need: education, health, neighbourhood development and so on.

But there are two fundamental weaknesses to these endeavours. First, there is no comprehensive vision that defines such activities. As such, resources are employed on project basis, which create some difference to those targeted, but in terms of their cumulative effect, such activities are unable to address themselves to the correction of basic structural imbalances and state callousness which generate the need for such activism in the first place.

The second factor relates to the ways in which such activism defines itself. Upper class social activism of the present times is very different from the social work orientation of a large number of middle class persons, in the early part of the last century, who stepped out to commit their time and their meagre means, to set up orphanages, schools, vocational institutions, hospitals for the poor. In that early history of social work, aligned as it was to the emerging nationalist movement, the twin objectives of political freedom and socio-economic welfare led many middle and lower middle class men and women to combine political movement with social activities in a lifestyle that frequently spelt considerable sacrifice of individual ambitions and material comforts. In contrast, the social activism of the upper class today is both completely distanced from the concept of any kind of giving of oneself, and is entirely apolitical. Ensconced in an affluent lifestyle, activism implies occasional organised voicing of liberal views, or at best using a part of one's fortune to support welfare activities. It does not, at any time, entail even the slightest rocking of the apple cart that balances one's good fortune with a pleasing relationship to structures of power that underlie, after all, the malaise of poverty, corruption and injustice.

This is given in the nature of our insertion as intellectual-activists into the system. The critique of state actions remains limited when the critic is also, perhaps in a professional capacity, dependent upon the state's resources and good will. The U.S. war against Afghanistan following 9/11 brought forth many agonised responses from Indian intellectuals/activists. But the agony was both short lived and ineffective, dependent as we are upon the U.S. for our professional standing, our research, our sabbaticals, and, of course, our children's education.

Why is this at all important? Surely a liberal democracy should have space for upper class activism, whatever its effectiveness? Unfortunately, as the middle and lower middle classes are enveloped into a structure of aspirations emulating upper class consumerism, there are now fewer and fewer sources of thinking on alternative activism. That is the danger of a situation where the elite begins to define not only opulent life styles, but also the boundaries of activism.

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