Peasants, dalits and women: Democracy and India's new social movements

Omvedt, Gail

doi:10.1080/00472339480000031

Cited by 23 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…158 Gail Omvedt, too, has claimed that land given to Dalits by the Nizam's government in the years preceding the Police Action was "a major source of conflict in Marathwada after the Congress takeover." 159 She further argues that the Police Action "included direct army atrocities against many of the poor," as well as "direct Hindu reprisals in many areas against Muslims and Dalits who were presumed to be 'pro-Razakar.'" 160 Since our concern here is the role of the violence in Hyderabad in the making of the sovereignty of the Indian state, I want to interpret the violence in terms of incorporation, not only in the sense of territory but also that of the wider transformation of India's Muslims from a national political community into a religious minority.…”

Section: I O L E N C E a N D T H E S T At E A F T E R T H E P O L Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Internal Violence: The “Police Action” in Hyderabad

Purushotham

2015

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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A more or less stable territorial order in Europe emerged out of the unprecedented violence, mobility, and ethnic cleansing that characterized the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. 1 Similar transformations unfolded in the colonial territories of the European empires, and the 1947 advent of the nation-states of India and Pakistan was mediated through great violence, displacement, and victimization. The event known as partition was both a fratricidal civil war and a refugee crisis, which heralded novel political projects that were in many ways the vanguard of a trend of decolonization that defined global history in the decades after 1945. This article argues that the mid-century ruptures in the subcontinent were not incidental to or undermining of the nascent Indian nation-state project, but were instead constitutive events through which a new state and regime of sovereignty emerged. I will explore how the conversion and cooption of subaltern violence were central to generating consent for the nascent nation-state project, and suggest that the transformative potential of crisis and violence has been overlooked in our understanding of how new formations of political power developed in the subcontinent.The province of Punjab, divided between India and Pakistan, was the principal and most visible site of violence and dislocation in 1947. Through efforts to absorb violence, namely the processes of refugee relief and rehabilitation, expectations of the nation-state burgeoned and it was radically empowered to intervene in Indian society. 2 Violence was not confined to Punjab, and over the past two decades scholars have brought into partition narratives the Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Shruti Kapila for helping me develop the arguments presented here. Faisal Devji, Sunil Khilnani, Chris Bayly, Simon Layton, and Nasreen Rehman have all contributed valuable comments on earlier drafts. I also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for CSSH, and editors Andrew Shryock and David Akin, for their many helpful suggestions.

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Section: I O L E N C E a N D T H E S T At E A F T E R T H E P O L Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Internal Violence: The “Police Action” in Hyderabad

Purushotham

2015

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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“…India is especially acclaimed for its rich history of civil society movements and for action against environmental wrongs. A vibrant civil society can be traced to the country's colonial past, where both individuals and institutions worked to hold the colonial state accountable, challenged its undemocratic processes and effected social and political change (Berglund, 2009;Omvedt, 1994). Post independence, people's struggles against the state have been particularly prominent around big dams and displacement.…”

Section: The Politics Of Climate Change: Consensual Environmental Govmentioning

confidence: 99%

Watered down? Civil society organizations and hydropower development in the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions, Eastern Himalaya: A comparative study

et al. 2018

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Mitigating climate change is often framed as the ultimate collective action problem of this era and great emphasis is made on the need for approaches that foster 'cooperation' and 'consensus'. This paper argues that the irony of this rhetoric could not be more stark; climate policy framing is an exclusionary process, and climate mitigating interventions that are engineered essentially to address neoliberal economic concerns rather than environmental challenges are often the source of multiple new conflicts. In this regard, this paper shows how the response of local non governmental organisations (NGOs) to hydropower development in the Darjeeling region of West Bengal in the Eastern Himalayas bears evidence to Gramscian analyses of 'the manufacture of consent' between elite bourgeois actorsthe state, formal civil society, political parties and the private sector. Such 'associational' unions are only occasionally interrupted, as in the case of the people's movement, Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT) in North Sikkim. Finding a balance between resistance and enabling political space to think and act differently, the movement led to the cancellation of several hydropower projects put forward in the name of climate mitigation, and in the process, drew attention to political processes involved in the manufacture of consent. Using case studies from the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions, this paper distinguishes between Gramsci's vision of the political space of disruption vis-à-vis the covert agenda of climate consensus. Key policy insights. A politics of consensus in relation to climate change is an outcome of, and in turn reiterates, a narrowing of distance between the state and civil society.. Including civil society in climate policy decision making and implementation is considered positive and inclusive, however, it is important to note that civil society is not always and everywhere inclusive and transformative.. Both at global and national levels, it is claimed that climate change interventions happen in an overall framework of participatory, inclusive environmental governance; in relation to hydropower development, we note that this is hardly the practice on the ground.

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“…National liberation and anti-colonial struggles were taking place throughout the Third World, as it was then known, many of which involved attempting to redefine women's rights and status. Gail Omvedt (1998) argues that a range of social movements that emerged in the 1970s in India, including dalit and anti-caste movements, women's movements, environmental movements, and farmers movements, should also be seen as NSMs. These movements are just as important to the history of the GJM as predominantly western NSMs, if not more so.…”

Section: The Emergence Of the Global Justice Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By necessity, opponents of GM crops in India have spent much of their energy debating these concerns with yields and high seed and other input costs. As Omvedt (1998) Similarly, arguments that GM crops make farmers dependent on foreign agrochemical companies apply equally to hybrids, or indeed to any seeds and other inputs purchased from MNCs. Gail Omvedt (1998) has argued that use of Bt cotton is compatible with swadeshi farming, as farmers already rely on hybrid seeds, and Mahyco is an Indian company with a long and reputable history.…”

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confidence: 99%

The global justice movement and struggles over knowledge

2014

Global Justice and the Politics of Information

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First and foremost, thanks go to my primary supervisor, Dr. Chen Jie. He has continually challenged my ideas and helped me to think more deeply about the issues addressed in this dissertation. I am tremendously grateful for his unflagging support, encouragement, and humour throughout my candidature, and couldn't have wished for a better supervisor. Thanks also go to the staff of UWA's Discipline of Political Science and International Relations for their help and support over the years, particularly to my secondary supervisor, Roderic Pitty, for his helpful suggestions and to Linley Hill for her encouragement and her almost-magical ability to find the right forms. Participation in conferences and fieldwork has enriched this project and allowed me to gain valuable experience and feedback on my work. The Dean's Postgraduate Travel Award facilitated my attendance at the 2005 International Society for Third Sector Research conference in Bangkok. The Patrick O'Brien Political Science Graduate Internship Award allowed me to spend several weeks working with the GREEN Foundation and Janastu in Bangalore in 2007. Thanks go to the sponsors of these awards, as well as to the organisations that hosted me. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers and conference audiences who provided me with feedback on papers presented at the 2005 ISTR conference, the 2008 and 2009 Australian Political Studies Association conferences, and on my article in the 2007 edition of Agenda. My research would have been much poorer had I not had the opportunity to talk to activists in India and Sweden, and at the Karachi and Nairobi World Social Forums. I can't begin to thank everyone who helped me by discussing their work, their lives, and their ideas. Special thanks, however, must go to Akshay

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Peasants, dalits and women: Democracy and India's new social movements

Cited by 23 publications

References 1 publication

Internal Violence: The “Police Action” in Hyderabad

Internal Violence: The “Police Action” in Hyderabad

Watered down? Civil society organizations and hydropower development in the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions, Eastern Himalaya: A comparative study

The global justice movement and struggles over knowledge

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