Why the Korku in India Do Not Protest?
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The Curious Case of the Missing Social Movement: Why the Korku in India Do Not Protest? Aseem Hasnain A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Sociology. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by, Charles Kurzman Judith Blau Kenneth Andrews Karolyn Tyson Neal Caren © 2010 Aseem Hasnain ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii Abstract Aseem Hasnain: The Curious Case of the Missing Social Movement: Why the Korku in India Do Not Protest? (Under the direction of Professor Charles Kurzman) According to the leading theories in the study of social movements, the presence of persistent oppression, grievances, favorable structural conditions such as political opportunities, social networks and organizations make it reasonable to expect a social movement if one is an optimist, or collective protest(s), if one is a pessimist. The Indigenous Korku community is in such a situation and they also exhibit a robust oppositional consciousness. Yet, there is no social movement, no organized protest, and no mobilization around an existing collective identity, not even ‘hidden transcripts’ of resistance. I use ethnographic data to detail out discursive practices deployed by actors in this case and argue that the dominant logic emanating from mainstream theories of social movements does not work all the time. I show that what eventually matters, for organized protests or social movements, is a matrix of several elements, some known, some speculative, and some currently unexplained. iii Table of Contents Chapter I. INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................1 II. LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................................................4 Social movement theory..............................................................................................9 Racial oppression, resistance and movements.……………………………………10 III. CASE SELECTION................................................................................................16 The area of study......................................................................................................17 The Korku community.............................................................................................19 IV. METHODS..............................................................................................................23 Data..........................................................................................................................23 How the data was collected......................................................................................24 How the data was used ………………………………………………………….27 Constraints………………………………………………………………….…....28 V. FINDINGS................................................................................................................30 Racial stereotyping, oppression, domination, and discrimination..…………..….30 Grievances against oppression and internalization of domination...........................53 Organizational resources.………………………………………………………..86 Political opportunities….………………………………………………………...93 Outcomes: expected and the unexpected ………………………………………...98 iv Recontextualizing findings ………………………………………………………105 VI. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY……………………...110 APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………….……….117 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………………….118 v I. INTRODUCTION Scene 1:1882. Somewhere in Dartmoore, England. Silverblaze, a prized racehorse has been stolen. Detective: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Detective: “The dog did nothing in the night-time!” Holmes: “That was the curious incident” (Doyle 272). Scene 2: A hot summer day in April of 2002. Inside a dilapidated bus, on a bumpy road, between two villages in rural central India. The bus conductor pushed a group of tired passengers towards the back of the bus. With seating space for fifty five, the bus has eighty passengers. The conductor wanted to create more space for additional people. Pushed to their limits, the earlier group of people could go back no more. He kicked the ones nearest him. Some fell and got hurt. One of them protested meekly, “what are you doing?” The conductor responded, “move, mother fucker” and threw more kicks. The victims pretended to shift further back. I was sitting in the front of the bus, practically reserved for the better off (AH/March/2002/3). The curious incident in this case was neither the violence, nor the protest. My curiosity lay in the loneliness of the protestor, and more than that, in the silence of the others being kicked. Sherlock Holmes knew when to expect a dog to bark. I am trying to follow him. In this study, I explore a phenomenon that did not occur – a Korku (an indigenous community in central India) social movement, or the lack of organized protest. Just in case, I am not comparing the Korku to the dog. According to leading theories in the study of social movements, especially literature related with the political process strand, it is reasonable to expect a Korku social movement if one is an optimist, or collective protest, if one is a pessimist. The Korku suffer persistent racial oppression by settlers, formally and informally, in public and in private. There exist, grievances, clear identification of perpetrators, and a robust oppositional consciousness among the aggrieved. At the same time, the Indian political system makes available, a variety of political opportunities for excluded groups, including indigenous communities such as the Korku. In addition, the Korku have traditional organizations, and leaders, reflecting solidarity based infrastructure, that might help them to take advantage of these opportunities, if they choose to do so. Yet there is no Korku social movement against racial oppression. There is no organized protest, no mobilization around an existing collective identity, and not even ‘hidden transcripts’ of resistance (Scott 1990). Why not? I use ethnographic evidence to describe various discursive practices among settlers and the Korku community, while attempting to understand what was going on in the minds of these actors. My data from the region of study shows how negative stereotypes about the Korku are deployed in daily interactions, and how individual settlers as well as 2 representatives of the state act oppressively, consciously or subconsciously. I also detail out how Korku adults and children absorb, adsorb and deflect such interactions in everyday experience. My aim in this study is to detail out these discursive practices and counter- practices to be able to expand understanding of how racial oppression affects subordinate groups in racialized societies and how protests and social movements trigger or fail to begin. This case analysis shows that persistent oppression, presence of grievances, availability of favorable structural conditions such as political opportunities, affirmative action, as well as social networks and organizations, do not necessarily produce organized protest or emergence of a social movement. Drawing upon Kurzman’s (2004) idea that some movements succeed just because they thought they could, I imagine the reverse- some movements fail just because they thought so. However, why individuals and groups end up thinking in either of these directions is still beyond a convincing explanation. I propose that what eventually matters, for organized protests or social movements, is a matrix of innumerable elements, some known, some speculative, and some unexplainable. In other words, I argue that dominant logic emanating from mainstream theories of social movements does not work all the time. 3 I. LITERATURE REVIEW This project begins with the observation that mainstream scholarship in the study of social movements retains structural dominance despite harsh criticisms emanating from post structuralist scholars. Literature on social movements in general and racial movements in particular, point to structural inequalities that generate grievances; organizational resources that help the aggrieved come together; and political opportunities that provide an enabling environment where organized protests or social movements can evolve. In McAdam’s (1999) words, “expanding political opportunities combine with the indigenous organizations of the minority community to afford insurgents the ‘structural potential’ for successful collective action,” and that this potential transforms “into actual insurgency by means of the crucial intervening process of cognitive liberation” (p.51). In recent years, critics have emphasized the limits of these structural factors and pointed to the uncertainty involved in explaining non-routine events such as protests, revolutions and social movements. In the following sections, I review these debates. Social Movement Theory In this section I review social movement literature to trace structural dominance within mainstream theory and its critique presented by contemporary theorists. The review will show that historically, this scholarship was structural and within mainstream circles, remains so. However, we will also see that contemporary scholars, who broadly agree in taking a constructionist view, have vehemently opposed this position. Reviewing both classical and later theories of social movements, Tarrow (1998) agrees that over time, this scholarship