Sociology | Class 12 | Social Movements
Introduction
We often assume that the rights we enjoy today simply came about by chance. It is important to remember the long historical struggles that made these rights possible in the first place.
The global socialist movements, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s have all profoundly altered the course of history.
Social movements do not only change societies. They also inspire other social movements that come after them.
This chapter is part of our Class 12 Sociology notes. If you want to revise other subjects as well, you can browse all of our study notes in one place.
Characteristics of social movements
- A social movement needs ongoing, sustained collective effort. This action often calls for changes in the law or in state practice, and is frequently directed against the state.
- There must be some organisation behind the collective action. Its leadership and structure can decide how members interact, how decisions are made, and how they are carried out.
- The people in a social movement share common goals and a common ideology. A movement has a broad focus and an accepted method of action for bringing about change, or for preventing it.
- These features are not fixed. They can change over the life of a movement.
- Social movements rarely change society quickly. Because they run against established interests and values, there is bound to be opposition and resistance. Even so, change does take place over time.
Social movements versus social change
The social world is always changing. Social change is the broad, long term outcome of countless individual and collective actions gathered over a great span of time and space. A social movement, by contrast, aims at a few specific goals and needs long term, sustained action and effort to reach them.
Counter movements
Sometimes opposing movements arise to defend the existing order. Such counter movements are quite common.
- When Raja Rammohun Roy campaigned against sati and founded the Brahmo Samaj, supporters of sati set up the Dharma Sabha and petitioned the British not to pass a law banning it.
- When reformers asked that girls be allowed to go to school, many objected, claiming it would be disastrous for society.
- Reformers who argued for widow remarriage faced a social backlash. Some so-called upper caste families withdrew their children from schools when so-called lower caste children began to attend.
- Proposals to expand reservation in educational institutions have also met with a backlash.
Forms of collective action
Demonstrations are the most visible form of collective action, but social movements also act in other, equally important ways.
- Activists hold meetings to mobilise the public around the issues that matter to them. These gatherings build mutual understanding and help create a sense of agreement about how to take the movement forward.
- Movements run campaigns that try to influence the government, the media, and other important shapers of public opinion.
- They also develop different forms of protest, such as candle and torch processions, the use of black cloth, street theatre, music, and poetry.
- In the freedom struggle, Gandhi used new methods of his own, including ahimsa, satyagraha, and the spinning of the charkha.
Social movements and sociology
- Social movements aim to change some aspect of society. The French Revolution grew out of a time of hardship and a deep desire for liberty and equality. The early industrial revolts in Britain were the cry of the underpaid and mistreated common worker.
- Emile Durkheim studied social facts, religion, suicide, and the division of labour. He argued that rapid change can lead to a breakdown of social order, and that society matters more than any single individual.
- Sociology is the study of society, and social movements often try to improve the conditions of the poorer and weaker sections.
- For poor and oppressed groups who have few other options, protest is often the only way to make their voices heard.
Theories of social movements
Theory of relative deprivation
Everyone experiences some form of deprivation, but not every deprivation leads to a social movement. According to this theory, a movement is triggered when a particular group is denied its basic needs. It assumes that the person feels resentful, that is unhappy with the situation, and carries a psychological sense of being deprived compared with others.
Limitations
- Not every deprivation should or will lead to a social movement.
- A movement cannot be built on deprivation alone.
- Many other factors are also at work.
Theory of collective action
- In his book The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur Olson argues that a social movement is simply a group of self interested, rational individuals acting together.
- A person will join a movement only if they expect to gain something from it.
- The theory rests on a simple rational question: why should I join a movement if I do not gain anything?
Resource mobilisation theory
- This theory was given by Zald and McCarthy.
- They argued that not everyone in a movement needs to act out of self interest.
- A movement can succeed if it is able to mobilise resources such as people, effective leaders, funds, and political support. Anna Hazare, during his 2011 campaign, did not act in his own self interest.
Limitations
- Some sociologists reply that people can create resources rather than only mobilise ones that already exist. A movement can generate new identities, resources, and forms of support of its own.
- For example, the freedom struggle had few financial or political resources, yet it had strong leadership.
Types of social movements
Social movements are often placed in three broad categories.
- A reformist movement tries to change how people think about a particular issue and to reform existing arrangements.
- A revolutionary movement seeks to transform society through extreme, sometimes violent methods, and may even take up arms. Examples include Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose, and the Indian National Army.
- A redemptive movement aims to undo earlier practices and to change people's inner outlook. For example, Shree Narayana Guru led a movement against caste discrimination.
Another way of classifying: old and new movements
Old movements
Earlier social movements worked within the framework of the political party system. The Indian national movement was led by the Indian National Congress, and the Chinese Revolution was steered by the Communist Party of China. Some now argue that the older, class based politics led by trade unions and workers' parties is on the decline. Others reply that class based inequality was never really solved, even in the wealthy West with its welfare state.
New movements
The political scientist Rajni Kothari argues that people's growing dissatisfaction with parliamentary democracy led to a burst of social movements in India in the 1970s. He suggests that elites had captured the institutions of the state, so people turned to movements instead. Many of these newer movements focus on the quality of life, such as a clean environment, rather than only on the distribution of power. Several of them also have an international outlook, and old and new movements now cooperate in coalitions such as the World Social Forum, which has drawn attention to the risks of globalisation.
The ecological movement
Over the years there has been growing concern about the unchecked use of natural resources and about a model of development that keeps creating new wants, which in turn demand even more exploitation of already shrinking resources.
This model has also been criticised for assuming that every group benefits equally from development. In practice, large dams uproot people from their homes and livelihoods, and industries displace farmers from their land.
The Chipko movement, in the foothills of the Himalayas, is a well known example of these tangled interests and ideologies. As Ramachandra Guha describes in his book The Unquiet Woods, villagers, including a large number of women, stepped forward to hug the oak and rhododendron trees when government forest contractors arrived to cut them down, and so saved the forests near their villages.
Class based movements
The peasant movement
- In the pre-colonial period there were peasant revolts, but they were scattered and local, and often went unrecorded. Poverty and fear made it hard for peasants to organise on a large scale.
- In the colonial nineteenth century, a few uprisings did win wide support.
- After returning from South Africa, Gandhi led struggles across India, including the Champaran movement, where indigo cultivators were badly treated. Between roughly 1917 and 1920, important movements such as Champaran and Bardoli took shape.
- Organisations were set up, including the All India Kisan Sabha and the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha. Sharecroppers who had to hand over a large share of their produce to landlords demanded the right to keep more of it, a struggle supported by the Communist Party of India and the Kisan Sabha.
- Naxalbari in West Bengal saw a militant peasant uprising, and later decades saw a New Farmers Movement.
- Tired of unkept promises by politicians, farmers pooled their own funds and built roads and other basic facilities themselves, and at times blocked government vehicles from passing.
- Much of the new farmers movement was about the market: farmers pressed for higher support prices, lower taxes, subsidies, easier loans, and an end to exploitation.
- Their methods included bandhs and the blocking of roads and railway lines. Over time these movements also began to take up women's issues and environmental concerns.
The workers movement
Industrial workers faced their own hardships, especially during the colonial era.
The colonial cities: Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras
- The first issues were low pay and poor working conditions.
- Trade unions, which are associations of workers, were formed to press these demands.
- At first protest was local, but as the national movement grew stronger, so did the workers movement.
- The early twentieth century saw textile strikes and other workers' strikes.
- Gandhi helped set up the Textile Labour Association, and B. P. Wadia was linked to the All India Trade Union Congress. The colonial government grew very cautious after the AITUC was formed.
- The British passed laws such as the Trade Union Act to regulate these bodies. The AITUC gradually gained strength and drew support from communists, which later led to the founding of the Indian National Trade Union Congress when Congress members left. The union movement grew at the local, regional, and national levels.
The 1960s
- During the economic slowdown many workers lost their jobs.
- There were protests, and prices kept rising.
The 1970s
- Several railway strikes disrupted urban transport.
- Workers demanded higher pay and better conditions.
- During the Emergency, protests were not allowed.
Caste based movements
The Dalit movement
- What set this movement apart was that it fought above all for dignity and self respect.
- Dalits, along with Gandhi, some Brahmins, and others, struggled against the practice of untouchability.
- The aim was to combat discrimination and to abandon the very idea of untouchability, which had long been tied to notions of fate and of purity and pollution.
- Alongside specific demands such as wages or employment, every Dalit movement in India fought for dignity and self respect.
The Dalit Panthers
- Before the spread of the media, the Dalit movement could easily be ignored.
- Dalit literature, including poems, plays, songs, and stories about Dalit lives and hardships, quickly gained a wide readership.
- This shifted public attitudes and highlighted the Dalit struggle for self respect and for change in every sphere of life.
The OBC movement
- The Other Backward Classes are groups with socially and economically weaker backgrounds.
- They may face economic hardship even though they are not treated as untouchable.
- The term OBC was first used for economically disadvantaged groups in the Madras and Bombay regions.
- Bodies such as the All India Backward Classes League and Federation were formed to represent their interests.
Why it still matters: India's farmers' movement today
This chapter describes a new farmers movement that uses bandhs and the blocking of roads and railway lines to press its demands. You do not have to look far to see exactly this playing out. In September 2020 the Indian Parliament passed three farm laws. Farmers, led by a coalition of farm unions, blocked highways and railway tracks and camped on the borders of Delhi for more than a year. On 19 November 2021 the Prime Minister announced that the three laws would be repealed, and Parliament repealed them soon after. It is one of the clearest recent examples of a sustained social movement forcing a government to change course.
The movement did not stop there. Farmers returned to the streets in 2024 and 2025, this time asking for a legal guarantee of the Minimum Support Price, or MSP, the floor price the government promises for certain crops. On 26 August 2025 the Samyukt Kisan Morcha held a large Kisan Mahapanchayat at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, where the leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal argued that a legal MSP is a demand of farmers across the whole country, not only in Punjab and Haryana.
Now look back at the characteristics you learned at the start of this chapter: sustained collective action, an organisation with recognised leaders, a shared goal, and opposition from powerful interests. The farmers movement shows every one of them. To see how a single classroom topic connects to live national debates, explore the wider world on our learning hub.