Chapter 13

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Civil society in India
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neera Chandhoke
To suggest that concepts can neither be neutral nor trans-cultural, or that they bear the
imprint of the historical context in which they first emerged, is to reiterate the obvious if
not the banal. Of more profound interest is the way the concept is reshaped in different
social and political contexts. This essay seeks to explore the specific features of civil
society in India, and see what implications this historical experience holds for the generic
concept. of civil society. The essay is organised in four sections. In the first section I
outline the discovery of civil society, and in the second render a brief account of the
emergence and consolidation of civil society in India. In the third section, four issues
related to the internal constitution of civil society are dealt with. And in the last section
are drawn out the inferences of this case study.

I The Discovery of Civil Society

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Much like Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentleman Jourdain who recognised with some surprise
that he had been speaking prose all his life, for long scholars have documented, analysed,
and conceptualised associations, political movements, social engagements,
confrontations, and the politics of contestation and affirmation in India, without realising
that they were theorising, describing, and filling in a space that came to be known in the
1970s, but more particularly in the 1980s as civil society. The reasons why this concept
was catapulted onto the forefront of political imaginations and political vocabularies are
well known. One, civil society had waged successful struggles against authoritarian state
power in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in Brazil. Two, profound disenchantment
with the developmental state, the welfare state, and the socialist state, motivated activists
and scholars to look elsewhere for a resolution to their political predicaments. This
‘elsewhere’, they found in associational life and social movements in civil society. Three,
across the world the English speaking public was introduced to two significant works
Antonio Gramsci’s Selections from the Prison Notebooks, and Jurgen Habermas’s The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (translated into English in 1971 and 1989
respectively), both of which fore-grounded the concept of civil society/public sphere.
Finally, developments in the socialist world sharply illustrated the problems that class
projects and revolutionary transformations brought in their wake. The lesson was well
learnt. The future belonged to loose coalitions of issue and identity based movements,
campaigns, and civic associations, to projects that sought to monitor the state rather than
take it over, and to self limiting political agendas. This realisation signified the arrival of
civil society.

Notably the concept of civil society does not only abstract from, describe or
conceptualise particular sorts of phenomenon such as civic activism and collective action.
The concept is normative insofar as it specifies that associational life in a metaphorical
space between the household, the market, and the state is valuable for a number of
reasons. For one, associational life neutralises the individualism, the atomism, and the
anomie that modernity brings in its wake. Social associations make possible multiple
projects, and thus engender solidarity. The projects themselves might range from
developing popular consciousness about climate change, to discussing and dissecting
popular culture, to supporting needy children, to organising neighbourhood activities. Or
projects might simply intend to enhance sociability and dissipate alienation. Whatever be
the specific reason why people get together; for a determinate purpose or for mere
sociability, associational life is an intrinsic good.

Associational life is a good in another sense inasmuch as networks of associations

facilitate collective action. And participation in collective action enables the realisation of
human agency insofar as citizens recognise and appreciate that they possess the right to
take part in decision making, and that they possess the competence to do so. In other
words, collective action brings to fruition the basic presumption of democracy: popular
sovereignty. It follows that unless people are willing to come together across all manners
of economic, social, and cultural divides, civil society cannot even begin to engage with
the state (Chandhoke 2009). Conversely, though associational life is of value in its own
right, if we de-link this aspect of civil society from the struggle for citizenship rights, the
state might be, as Gupta puts it, ‘let off the hook’ (Gupta 1997).

Why is not letting the state off the hook important? The one idea that arguably lies at the
heart of the civil society argument is that even democratic states are likely to be
imperfect?. Democracy is a project that has to be realised through collective action as
well as sustained engagement with the state. Citizen activism, public vigilance, informed
public opinion, a free media, and a multiplicity of social associations are necessary
preconditions for this task. But precisely at this point of the argument a number of
questions arise to bedevil the civil society argument. Do all organisations of civil society
bear the same sort of relationship with the state? Do all organisations follow the
democratic script in terms of their constitution, decision making, perspectives,
commitments, and the tasks they set for themselves? Or can we assume that all
organisations in civil society are agents of democratisation (Mahajan 1999: 1194)?
II The Historical Trajectory of Civil Society in India
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notably civil society organisations in India cannot be seen as a distinct corollary of
bourgeois society or what Hegel had termed Burgerliche Gesellschaft. These
organisations were neither born out of experiences with an ‘autonomous’ market, nor
were they a product of a juridical order, of property relations, of individuation, and of the
language of abstract rights. They emerged out of the twin processes of resistance to
colonialism, and the development of a self reflective attitude to traditional practices that
were increasingly found unacceptable in the light of modern systems of education, and
liberal ideologies. From its very inception, civil society in India was a plural space, where
at least seven categories of organisations and associations pursued different but not
necessarily incompatible ends (on this see Beher 2004: 196-197, Jayal 2007: 144-145).
One, in the nineteenth century social and religious reform movements (e.g., the Brahmo
Samaj and the Arya Samaj) that worked for women’s education and widow remarriage,
and that opposed the caste order, ritualism, and idolatry, tried to rationalise and
restructure a hierarchical and discriminatory Hinduism. Two, in the early decades of the
twentieth century Gandhian organisations engaged in what was euphemistically termed
the ‘social uplift’ of the doubly disadvantaged castes and the poor (e.g., the Harijan
Sevak Sangh). Three, a number of self help organisations grew up around trade unions in
industrialised cities such as Bombay and Ahmedabad (e.g., Swadeshi Mitra Mandal,
Friends of Labourers Society). Four, movements against social oppression, particularly
the anti caste movement, sought to overturn the hierarchical social order and establish the
moral status of the so called lower castes (the Self Respect Movement in Tamil Nadu).
Five, professional English speaking Indians formed a number of associations to petition
the colonial government to extend English education and employment opportunities to
the educated middle classes (the Bombay Presidency Association). Six, the Congress
party that led the freedom movement established a number of affiliated groups such as
women and youth organisations in civil society. And seven, social and cultural
organisations committed to the project of establishing a Hindu nation, (the Hindu
Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh) formed the nucleus of what can be
called uncivil organisations in civil society.

After independence as the leaders of the freedom struggle took over the reins of state
power, organisations in civil society more or less retreated from engaging with the state.
Since the leadership was widely seen as legitimate, civil society organisations simply did
not feel the need to politicise the people, make them conscious of their rights as citizens,
or create a civic community in which the newly independent citizens of India could
engage with each other, and with the state. The situation was dramatically transformed
barely two and a half decades after independence. The decline of the Congress party
heralded the demise of representative and responsive politics. This naturally bred extreme
discontent and anger. By the early 1970s the socialist leader J.P Narayan succeeded in
tapping this simmering discontent, and in launching a massive political movement against
the authoritarianism of the central government headed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The movement provided one of the reasons for P.M. Indira Gandhi’s government to
impose an internal emergency from June 1975-January 1977. The emergency, which
suspended normal democratic politics, and in particular constitutional protections of civil
liberties, was marked by a high levels of repression. Paradoxically however, it also
animated an entire range of social struggles outside the sphere of party politics. If there is
one lesson that we have learnt from India, as well as from other parts of the world, it is
that authoritarian states trigger off the development and assertion of civil societies.
Arguably civil society has won its most spectacular victories when confronted by
dictatorships. For nothing arouses disaffection and political rage more than the denial of
political and civil rights. Not unexpectedly, civil society organisations in India took root
to confront violations of democratic rights, as well as to fill in the development deficit of
the state. Social activism at the grassroots, prompted some scholars to acclaim the ‘non-
party political process’, and see it as an alternative to the state (Sheth 1983, Kothari
1989). By the late 1980s, one of India’s most respected scholars Rajni Kothari, was to
hail these new arenas of counteraction, countervailing tendencies, and counter-cultural
movements (Kothari 1988).
Undeniably from the late 1970s, the struggle for gender justice, the anti-caste movement,
the movement for protection of civil liberties (Peoples Union for Civil Liberties and
Peoples Union for Democratic Rights) the movement for a sound environment (the
Chipko movement), the struggle against mega development projects that have displaced
thousands of poor tribals and hill dwellers (the Narmada Bachao Andolan), the
campaigns for the right to food, to work, to information, for shelter, for primary
education, and for health have mobilised in civil society (Shah 2004; Parajuli 2001,
Katzenstein, Mary, Smitu Kothari, and Uday Mehta, 2001). These movements have, on
the one hand, brought people together across social and class divides, and on the other
confronted state policies. By the year 2000, it was estimated that grass roots groups,
social movements, non-party political formations, and social action groups numbered
almost 20-30,000 (Sheth 2004: 45).

In the 1990s the striking shift from the vocabulary of social service and reform, to that of
empowerment, rights, development, governance, and accountability heralded the advent
of new forms of civil society organisations and activism. Political democracy had been
institutionalised in the country, and yet large numbers of people continued to exist on the
margins of bare survival. Consequently, a large number of civil society organisations
became involved in the delivery of social goods to the people, and in development.
Experiments in alternative models of development had been initiated in the 1970s by
educationists, scientists, engineers, environmentalists, and social activists, (e.g the Social
Work and Research Centre in Rajasthan, and Kishore Bharti in Madhya Pradesh).
Increasingly however, the field of development came to be dominated by
professionalized non governmental organisations, often sponsored and funded by donor
agencies in the West, and more than willing to partner the state in the delivery of social
goods. The shift gained official recognition in the Seventh Five-Year plan [1985-1990],
and the Government has since then sanctioned considerable funds for service delivery.
A 2004 study calculated that the total number of non-profit organisations in India is more
than 1.2 million and that 20 million people work for these organisations either in a
voluntary capacity or for a salary (PRIA 2003: 5,11).
 III The Specificities of Civil Society in India
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
III.1 The Professionalisation of Civil Society
In Democracy in America De Tocqueville’s had suggested that ‘[i]n democratic countries
the science of association is the mother science, the progress of all others depends on the
progress of that one” (De Tocqueville 2000, 492). For highly individualistic modern
societies this observation was more than prescient. Social associations are of value
because they make possible collective life, because they encourage citizens to participate
in a critical political and public discourse, and because they enable collective action that
seeks to engage with the state. In the process, the basic presupposition of democracy; that
is participation is realised through citizen activism and modes of civic engagement and
protest.

Necessarily therefore, civil societies are plural and oft divided spaces, where a number of
organisations articulate different shades of opinion on what the problems of collective life
are, and how they should be resolved. Increasingly however, civil societies across the
world have come to be dominated by highly professional non governmental
organisations. Some analysts might well wonder what the place of these organisations in
civil society is. NGOS neither belong to the category of social movements, nor to that of
citizen groups. Further, , tThe entry of professionalised non governmental organisations
into civil society has brought a qualitatively different way of doing things: campaigns
rather than social movements, lobbying government officials rather than politicising the
people, reliance on networks rather than civic activism, and a high degree of reliance on
the media and the judiciary rather than direct action. This has been the exact nature of,
four campaigns in the country that since the advent of the twenty first century have
focussed on the right to food, the right to employment, the right to information, and the
right to education. Their efforts have borne notable results in the form of specific
policies, and the grant of social rights. Interestingly, these campaigns have been
successful only when the Supreme Court has intervened on the issue (Chandhoke 2007).
The problem is that whereas the Court has adopted a pro-active stance on social rights, it
has dismissed the demands of movements that demand a radical restructuring of power
relations in the country. For instance, in the 1980s the Narmada Bachao Andolan fore-
grounded the plight of the thousands of people who had been displaced by the building of
the gigantic Sardar Sarovar Project on the river Narmada in Western India. The
movement had approached the Supreme Court, and requested stoppage on work on the
dam. However, in October 2000, the Court by a majority of one permitted the raising of
the height of the dam to 90 metres. The ruling not only resulted in the displacement of
thousands of more families, it mounted a serious setback to critiques of big development
projects as environmentally unsound and as socially hazardous. This is not to suggest that
judicial activism is not important, it is to propose that too much reliance on judicial
interventions can tame the agenda of civil society and force it to conform to what is
politically permissible.

The increasing visibility of the voluntary sector has not gone unchallenged. For one, the
NGO sector concentrates mainly on service delivery. Therefore, it is hardly in the
business of acting, as one insider puts it as ‘a catalyst for social, economic, and political
changes favouring the poor, marginalized, and disadvantaged’(Beher 2004: 199). Further,
c Can we seriously expect the NGO sector to mount a critique of the state, when this
sector is funded by the state? FurtherMoreover,, despite the tremendous contribution of
the NGO sector to development, we have to acknowledge with some regret that
concentration on specific issues leaves the big picture untouched-the huge inequalities of
resources in the country for instance. NGOS would rather ensure that the state delivers
what it has promised in the constitution, that policy be implemented effectively, that local
authorities be made accountable, that the functioning of the government be made public
and transparent, that midday meals be provided to children in primary schools, that the
poor get jobs for at least 100 days a year, and that children are brought into school. The
quality of life for the ordinary Indian just may improve somewhat, but in the process
participation, accountability, and popular sovereignty might well fall by the wayside.

In short, the increasing domination of civil society by professional organisations has

thrown a question mark over the nature of civil society. Yet these questions anxieties are
not irresolvable. for one main reason. N No one group or set of strategies can tackle the
sheer scale of problems in India, such as poverty, illiteracy, and health. The only
alternative is to build networks between social movements, citizen groups and
professionalized NGOs and thereby pool in strategies and methods. This is a politically
sagacious option for another reason. If social movements mobilise people and articulate
their needs, the voluntary sector provides the expertise, the publicity, and strategies to
meet these needs. Professional organisations might never engage in politicising the
people, but when they partner social movements and citizen groups, they do come into
contact with citizens, albeit indirectly.

There is yet another dimension to civil society activism that needs to be taken note of. In
a globalised world it is no longer possible insulate political struggles within a country
from developments in other parts of the world. The very term globalisation implies that
the lives of people wherever they might live and work, are affected by decisions taken
elsewhere, in the closed discussion rooms of the WTO for instance. Moreover, the
intractable problems that confront humanity, climate change for instance, can only be
negotiated through an amalgamation of ideas, energies, and proposed resolutions. In
recent years a space has been created for the emergence of global coalitions that speak for
the poor and the oppressed the world over. What is important is that these coalitions have
succeeded in putting onto domestic political agenda, issues that have been neglected by
national governments. For instance, in the 1980s, global networks such as WIEGO
(Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising) began to advocate the
right of unorganised workers to social protection. In India this sector constitutes almost
94 percent of the labour market. This strategy has been remarkably successful. For in
December 2008 the Government of India, which has sidestepped the problems that beset
this section of the work force for long, finally passed the Unorganised Sector Workers
Social Security Bill. The Bill will provide social security and job protection to at least
375 million workers in the unorganised sector.
To sum up the argument in this section, the experience of India’s civil society has
modified classical theories of civil society in at least three ways. One, if they wish their
particular cause to achieve success; civil society organisations will have to link up with
like minded groups across borders in loosely structured coalitions. Two, we are likely to
see increasing professionalisation of civil society organisations. Three, mobilisation in
civil society will most probably take the route of campaigns that want to deepen
democracy rather than politicise constituencies or realise popular sovereignty through
citizen engagement. Arguably these campaigns will achieve success only if the judiciary
and the media are on their side. Deepening of democracy might be achieved at the
expense of realisation of political status, as well as that of representation and
accountability. But this is perhaps the natural outcome of the professionalisation of civil
society, not only in India but elsewhere as well. Therefore, counter trends in civil society,
such as workers’ resistance, might no longer be able to stand by themselves.
III.2 Involuntary Organisations
Let us look at another dimension of social associations. The notion of social association
presumes a high degree of voluntariness, that is individuals either form associations, or
join and exit associations out of their free will. And it is precisely here that we locate the
problem of the civil society argument in countries like India, which are neither
completely individuated nor wholly communitarian. Here people experience life as
individuals in certain sorts of professions, relationships, vocations, and social
commitments. But when they lay claim upon the state for benefits such as affirmative
action policies, people tend to act as members of a caste, or a religious group. That is,
whereas membership in some associations is based on the principle of voluntary entry
and exit, in other associations it is involuntary. The question then is: is the latter sort of
group of, or not of civil society?

Some scholars would say an outright no. If an association wants to qualify as a civil
society organisation its membership must be based on the principle of non-
discrimination. Two, the organisation itself must be open and secular. Therefore, the
greatest threat to civil society comes from the intrusion of collective identities (Beteille
1999: 2589). I think two issues are at stake here. One, involuntary associations are
necessarily exclusionary. Two, this association is likely to put forth claims that are group
specific. If, for example, a group X demands affirmative action policies for its members
alone, then not only are the many Y’s excluded, the demand can only be satisfied at the
latter’s expense. This breeds some anxiety, because exclusions and partisan claims inhibit
the capacity of civil society to launch collective action for the general good.

Susanne Rudolph points out that most associations are ‘intentional’ associations, insofar
as ascribed ethnic identities are the product of intention and cultural construction as much
as birth (Rudolph 2000: 1767). Therefore, these associations cannot be excluded from
civil society. It is true that associational life is constitutive of these identities, but this
does not cancel out the fact that both the membership and the agenda of these groups are
restricted. The problem that such groups pose for the idea that civil society consists only
of voluntary associations is, however, not intractable. Consider for instance that in a
plural society no one agenda can possibly be independent of other agendas. At some
point associations of, say, the so-called lower castes will have to intersect with
organisations of informal labour, simply because these two identities dovetail into each
other. Women who work in the informal sector have to make common cause with women
in other social locations, because they share certain problems in common; say sexual
harassment or domestic violence. And all these groups have to link up at some time with
environmental groups because climate change affects everyone’s lives. The forging of
networks in civil society is of tremendous significance for strategic reasons, as well as for
reasons of overlapping identities. But more importantly in the process of creating
networks and common agendas, partisan projects are modified and brought into line with
other agendas that strive for democratisation of the social and the economic order.

More important than the internal constitution of groups, is, therefore, the process by
which these groups and their platforms articulate with, and modify each other in the
space of civil society. Of such intricate processes is a critical public discourse forged, and
exclusive interests mediated. In other words, the processes by which civil society brings
together different interest groups, and the manner in which groups are persuaded to
collapse discrete individual interest into a critical public discourse, is as significant as the
initial appearance of exclusive demands. This does not imply that organisations that
represent discrete interests are compelled to water down their own demands when they
enter into transactions with other civil society agents. It is rather to suggest that these
demands acquire added political weight when other agents recognise that these are an
indispensable component of democratic agendas (T,K Oomen, 2204 128-143). The
processes of what Putnam has called ‘bridging’ social capital, are, in other words, as
politically significant as those of ‘bonding’ social capital. If the former category of social
capital facilitates the emergence of democratic coalitions, the latter lends political weight
to the demand itself.

III.3 Uncivil Organisations

Despite the confidence that in plural civil societies, discrete individual agendas can be
and will be mediated by other platforms, there is one set of organisations that defy the
process. These are closed organisations that single-mindedly pursue a particular interest
at the expense of other interests. Take the cadre based root organisation of the religious
right in India, the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) or the National Self Service
Alliance. The professed objective of this organisation is not only the creation of a self
confident and proud Hindu identity, but also the construction of a Hindu nation. Even as
the RSS and other affiliate organisations of the religious right have relentlessly pursued
this objective since the early decades of the twentieth century, minorities have been at
risk.

The problem is that such organisations not only resist mediations of their own
commitments; they also either prevent the coming together of other associations. Taking
his cue from Robert Putnam’s thesis of social capital, Varshney suggests that prior and
sustained contact between members of different communities moderates tensions and pre-
empts violence when such tensions arise owing to exogenous shocks. Conversely
communal violence has occurred in precisely those cities in which these networks were
either not present or had broken down (2002 46-48). Varshney however seems to
underplay the contribution of the religious right to the breakdown of inter-communal
relations, and to the build up of a climate of hatred, suspicion, and aggression. Research
in one of the cities that has been marked by repeated communal riots, Ahmedabad, shows
that the RSS and its affiliate organisations have since the 1960s, systematically worked to
instil in the majority community a profound hatred for the Muslim minority. This
systemic mobilisation shattered an already fragile associational life between
communities. When in 2002 cadres of the Hindu right, backed by mobs carried out a near
pogrom of the Muslim minority in the city, civil society that is expected to keep watch on
excesses of power just kept quiet (Oommen, 2008: 74-75; Chandhoke 2009).

The problem is that we cannot suggest that the RSS is not a civil society organisation,
simply because it represents itself as a cultural and a social service organisation. It has
established a network of educational institutions and social service organisations, and in
moments of crisis such as natural disasters, RSS cadres are among the first volunteers to
begin work in the affected area, and rescue and rehabilitate people. For these reasons the
organisation has built up a high degree of trust among the people. From such and related
examples, we are compelled to conclude that civil society organisations need not be
democratic at all, and need not subscribe to the values of the sphere at all. Consequently,
the only way in which uncivil organisations and their undemocratic agendas can be
neutralised is through contestation in the domain of civil society. This means that
democratic organisations in civil society have to be Janus faced, with one face turned
towards the state, and the other turned inwards. In the final instance, as Gramsci had
theorised, civil society is a site of contestation.
III.4 Relevance of Civil Society
Finally is civil society relevant for countries like India that are marked by social
exclusion, inequality, and poverty? In Europe the emergence of civil society was in
tandem with the consolidation of bourgeois society. The unit of this society is the rights
bearing individual who is protected by the rule of law. The problem is that in India, large
numbers of citizens are relegated to the margins of society, and do not possess any kind
of status. Nor are they protected by the law. Partha Chatterjee has accordingly argued that
in India civil society as a bourgeois sphere is restricted to a fairly small section of
citizens, notably the middle classes who speak the language of rights [2001 172). The
poor, who negotiate the travails of everyday existence through the adoption of illegal
means, and clear violations of the law, occupy the space of political society. Though
Chatterjee does not explicitly reject civil society, he sees it as irrelevant for a vast
majority of Indians. And though he does not valorise political society, he seems to
indicate that this space and these mediations are more authentic than those of civil
society.

We can accept that the concept of civil society does not admit or sanction all sorts of
practices, and that excluded practices need to be studied and conceptualised as well. But
there are at least two difficulties that can be identified with Chatterjee’s distinction
between political and civil society. One, do practices in ‘political society’, such as
tapping water and electricity connections illegally, fall into the category of politics, or
that of proto-politics? As Hobsbawm puts it in his study of social banditry, certain forms
of politics are strictly speaking proto politics. And these are undetermined, conservative,
and ambiguous (1959 2). Proto politics or semi politics refers to those practices that seek
concessions for the individual or the group. But if the objective of politics is to shape and
reshape the political context in which we live, then we need a politics that has a broader
vision than merely negotiating the problems of everyday life illegally. Such politics
demands that people be brought into a relationship with each other, that collective action
be forged, that the universal be mediated by the particular, and that citizens participate in
the constitution of a public and critical discourse. State concessions to proto political
activities neither change formal institutions, nor build solidarity. In fact piece-meal
practices might even strengthen the power of the state. Though such forms of politics can
exist in modern civil societies as well, ultimately democratic agents have to take on the
responsibility of making the transition from short visioned practices into long term
engagement with modes of power.

Secondly, the suggestion that subaltern groups are untouched by bourgeois ideology
seems to overlook the fact that practices transcend boundaries of discrete spheres. In their
struggles for say land rights to squatter settlements, the poor can be motivated by
bourgeois notions of entitlements, and rights to property. Further, illegal transactions are
not only a feature of non civil society spaces, formal civil societies also engage in these
transactions (Bardhan 2009, Coelho and Venkat 2009). But more importantly, we hardly
find in any historical setting a pure civil society that has been lifted from a text book
account and transplanted into a specific context. The concept of civil society signifies a
space and a set of values, but this space and set of values are mediated by and modified
by historical contexts as the foregoing discussion has shown. In India’s civil society,
modern discourses of rights coexist with practices that re-inscribe collective identities,
individual self consciousness articulates with subordination to the dictates of the leader of
the caste or religious group, and legal practices intersect with other sorts of practices that
breach the law. In other words, the moment we think of civil society as a plural and oft
fragmented sphere, the distinction between political and civil society blurs.
IV Conclusion
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The discussion of an actually existing civil society carries at least three implications for
the generic concept of civil society. One, since states are basically condensates of power,
even states that lay claims to democracy are likely to be imperfectly democratic.
Democracy is a project that has to be realised through citizen activism in the space of
civil society. Two, civil society is plural in nature and in composition. Here we find
chambers of commerce alongside workers organisations, patriarchal groups existing
alongside groups fighting for women, caste and racist groups alongside democratic
movements fighting for dignity. Civil society possesses no one essence, or one set of
practices that dovetail into each other. Three, we cannot assume that all organisations of
civil society will always be democratic. Undemocratic organisations will, therefore, have
to be engaged with, countered, and even neutralised by groups committed to democracy.
Civil society is in the final instance a site of struggle between different sorts of groups
and commitments (Chandhoke 2001).
References
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bardhan, Pranab, 2009, ‘Notes on the Political Economy of India’s Tortuous Transition’
Economic and Political Weekly, 5 December, 31-36
Beher, Amitab and Assem Prakash, 2004, India: Expanding and Contracting Democratic
Space’ in Muthiah Alagappa, edited Civil Society and Political Change in Asia:
Expanding and Contracting Democratic Space, Stanford, California, Stanford University
Press, 191-220

Beteille Andre, 1999 ‘Citizenship, State and Civil Society’ Economic and Political
Weekly, 4-10 September, 2588-2591

Chandhoke, Neera, 2001, ‘The “Civil” and the “Political” in Civil Society’,
Democratization, vol 8, no 2, Summer, p 1-24
2007, ‘Democracy and Well Being in India’ in Yusuf Bangura edited, Democracy
and Social Policy, Macmillan Palgrave 164-187
2009, ‘Civil Society in Conflict Cities’ Economic and Political Weekly, 31
October, 99-108
Chatterjee, Partha, 2001, ‘On civil and political society in post-colonial democracies’ in
Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani edited Civil Society: History and Possibilities,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 165-178

Coelho, K and T Venkat, 2009, ‘The Politics of Civil Society: Neighbourhood

Associationism in Chennai, Economic and Political Weekly, 27 June,53-62

De Tocqueville, Alexis, 2000, Democracy in America, translated, edited, and introduced

by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, Chicago, Chicago University Press, p
492).

Gramsci, Antonio, 1971, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, translated and edited by
Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell, New York, International Publishers

Gupta, Dipankar, 1997, ‘Civil Society in the Indian Context: Letting the State off the
Hook’ Contemporary Sociology, vol 26, no 3, May, 305-307

Habermas, Jurgen, 1989, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry
into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by Thomas Burger, assisted by Fredrick
Lawrence, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press,

Hobsbawm, E.J, 1959, Primitive Rebels, Manchester, Manchester University Press

Beher, Amitab and Assem Prakash, 2004, India: Expanding and Contracting Democratic
Space’ in Muthiah Alagappa, edited Civil Society and Political Change in Asia:
Expanding and Contracting Democratic Space, Stanford, California, Stanford University
Press, 191-220
Beher, Amitab and Assem Prakash, 2004, India: Expanding and Contracting Democratic
Space’ in Muthiah Alagappa, edited Civil Society and Political Change in Asia:
Expanding and Contracting Democratic Space, Stanford, California, Stanford University
Press, 191-220

Jayal, Niraja, 2007, The Role of Civil Society’ in Sumit Ganguly, Larry Diamond, and
Marc F. Plattner, edited The State of India’s Democracy, Baltimore, The John Hopkins
Press, 143-160

Katzenstein, Mary, Smitu Kothari, and Uday Mehta, 2001, ‘Social Movement Politics in
India: Institutions, Interests, and Identities’ in Atul Kohli edited The Success of India’s
Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 242-269
Sheth, D.L, 2004, ‘Globalisation and New Politics of Micro-Movements’ Economic and
Political Weekly, I January, 45-58
1983, ‘Grass-Roots Stirrings and the Future of Politics’ Alternatives, vol
9, no 1, 1-24;

Kothari, Rajni, 1988, ‘Decline of Parties and Rise of Grass Roots Movements’ in his
State against Democracy, In Search of Humane Governance, Delhi, Ajanta Publications,
33-54.
1989, ‘The Non-Party Political Process’ Economic and Political Weekly, 4
February, 216-224
Mahajan, Gurpreet, 1999 ‘Civil Society and Its Avatars: What Happened to Freedom and
Democracy?’ Economic and Political Weekly, 15 May, 1188-1196

Oomen, T.K, 2004, Nation, Civil Society and Social Movements, New Delhi, Sage,
2008, Reconciliation in Post-Godhra Gujarat, New Delhi, Pearson
Longman,

Parajuli, Pramod, 2001, ‘Power and Knowledge in Development Discourse: New Social
Movements and the State in India’ in Niraja G. Jayal edited Democracy in India, New
Delhi, Oxford University Press, 258-288

PRIA (Participatory Research in Asia) and John Hopkins University, 2003, Invisible yet
Widespread: The Non-Profit Sector in India, Delhi, PRIA

Rudolph Susanne, Civil Society and the Realm of Freedom, Economic and Political
Weekly 13 May 2000, pp 1762-1769

Shah Ghanshyam, 2004, Social Movements in India: Review of Literature, New Delhi,
Sage, Second edition

Sheth, D.L, 2004, ‘Globalisation and New Politics of Micro-Movements’ Economic and
Political Weekly, I January, 45-58
1983, ‘Grass-Roots Stirrings and the Future of Politics’ Alternatives, vol
9, no 1, 1-24;
Varshney, Ashutosh, 2002, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India,
New Delhi, Oxford University Press