Abstract
This edited volume interrogates three sets of interconnected issues: (a) how to understand the conceptual difference between various notions of civil society and the multiple research experiences of those groups and organisations, which claim to represent ‘civil’ society in the popular sense of the term?; (b) how to look at the complex relationship between the formal sphere of politics and/or the state and various, and quite often conflicting, forms of activisms in South Asia?; and (c) how to make sense of the idea of social transformation, particularly in the context of transnational as well as global flows of ideas, practices and interventions? Instead of placing these questions in rather enduring theoretical debates on state, civil society relationship and/or NGO–social movement dichotomy, the contributors make serious attempts to unpack the multiplicity of the empirical to emphasise the usability and limits of available methodological tools and conceptual categories.
This entire exercise is intentionally improvised—at least in terms of the empirical focus of the selected case studies—to provide a persuasive, though implicit, critique to the dominant India-centric scholarship on South Asia. David Gellner, in his introduction to the volume, clarifies that the objective of the book is to ‘overcome South Asia’s partitioned academy by including diverse examples mostly from what are often considered marginal South Asia states, but which, in their own way, are just exemplary of important contemporary processes’ (p. 9). As a result, Nepal emerges as an important case study (along with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India).
Two broad themes—politics and development—are identified as markers to separate these essays. Although this thematic division is not satisfactorily elucidated in the Introduction, the reader is somehow encouraged to go through these essays to draw his/her own meanings. Nevertheless, the overtly expressed dissatisfaction of the contributors with the given meanings of politics/development and, for that matter, a shared enthusiasm to find out a conceptual vocabulary to deal with the messiness of the everyday world of activist experiences, could be the possible reasons why this thematic division is not entirely spelt out.
‘Civil society’ emerges as one of the most contested concerns for most of the contributors. On the one hand, civil society as a concept is explored by unpacking the frequently used terms, such as, the Third Sector, NGO sector and/or the voluntary sector. At the same time, the discursive constitution of what is called ‘civil society’ is marked by offering concrete case studies. For instance, David Lewis’s essay on various trajectories of activism in Bangladesh highlights the actualities of the three sector model—government, market and civil society in the specific context of the early years of 2000s. Lewis argues: ‘analysis of these events helps to illustrate the ways in which the liberal definition of civil society favoured by donors tend to obscure tension and conflict among non-state actors’ (p. 176). William Fisher’s essay elucidates this complex dimension. Fisher suggests that we need to focus on the process of activism rather than the survival of particular social, political groups simply to ‘examine the ways organisations so designated operate within and across local, regional and transnational contexts’ (p. 256). Discussing the globalised/transnational initiatives to create a wider social network such as the World Social Forum and the arguments of those who opposed these networks (for example, the Mumbai Resistance of 2004), Fisher suggests: ‘many of the civil society networks in South Asia are unbounded and fluid, and thus differ in significant ways from the imagined communities of nationalism: the values, allegiances, and global flows among translocal activist networks crosscut national, regional and local collectivities’ (p. 263).
The politics–civil society relationship, especially in relation to various forms of activism, is another important theme of the book. David Gellner and Mrigendra Bahadur Karki’s essay offers a quantitative analysis of activists in Nepal. They ask a few very interesting questions to map out the possible reasons that encourage people (respondents) to join social and political organisations. For instance, ‘opposition to existing social conditions’ emerges as one of the main inspiring reasons for most of the respondents. This finding shows that apart from ‘ideology’, the social inequalities play a major role in the process of actual politicisation of activists in Nepal. Stefanie Strulik’s essay takes us to the actualities of women’s political participation in India in the wake of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments. Drawing upon her extensive fieldwork and rich ethnographic details, Strulik problematises the ways in which various stakeholders participate actively in local political structures. She concludes that the given slogan of political empowerment of women needs to be seen in specific cultural–political settings.
Finally, the changing meaning of social transformation is addressed in many essays. One may find two types of responses to this issue. There are essays that try to offer biographies of individuals, groups and even movements to underline stark differences between the promises made by political ideologies and actual political experiences. Anne de Sales’s analytical treatment of a Magar communists and Sara Shneiderman’s sketch of the communist movement in rural Nepal can broadly be taken as examples in this regard. The engagement with the idea of development in various political contexts is another response that encapsulates the question of social change. Siripala Hettige’s study of Sri Lankan youth’s engagement with politics, Celayne Heaton Shrestha’s analysis of activism in relation to development and Arjun Guneratne’s essay on changing contours of environmental activism in Sri Lanka show the ways in which the ideas of social transformation were formed, interpreted and translated into activist agendas.
Two critical points need to be underlined. These remarkably nuanced studies do not engage with the discussions on ‘political society’—an empirically imbedded conceptual exploration which has given a new direction to the debate on social transformation not merely in India but also in, what Partha Chatterjee calls, ‘most of the world’. It is understandable that the contributors approach the notion of South Asia from very different and rather unconventional vantage points. However, this convincing claim should not be taken as a plea to pay no attention to an equally persuasive debate on the very domain where ‘civil–political’ overlap, contradict and constitute each other in a wider South Asian context. After all, the political society debate cannot be understood merely as an ‘India-specific’ conversation!
The intellectual–activists dialogue is another important aspect of the South Asian activist experiences. A considerable amount of intellectual energies have been devoted to thinking about intellectual praxis—the possible roles of intellectuals in relation to social and political movements. This tradition has sustained quite well in India. Many a time, taking firm positions on political/public issues is considered to be a part of intellectual commitment. This is also true about Nepal and Bangladesh, which represent a politically charged intellectual environment. The essays in the book somehow do not pay adequate attention to this aspect. As a result, a South Asia-specific political flavour of intellectual exercise seems to evaporate.
These critical points should not be seen as a limitation of the arguments presented in the book; rather, these aspects could be recognised as conceptual spaces through which more nuanced, empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated studies on South Asian experiences could be produced.