Soma Chaudhuri & Sarah Fitzgerald. Social Movement Studies. Volume 14, Issue 5. September 2015.
Introduction
The focus of our paper is twofold. First, the paper seeks to document an important new development among Indian social movements that signifies the birth of a new repertoire, and second, to outline the case of 2012 rape protests in India that are representative of this new development. The core arguments of the paper are derived from a larger project on the rape protests in India, consisting of 748 newspaper articles on the demonstrations between December 2012 and April 2013, the most active period of the protests. The articles were derived from three large databases (Lexus Nexus, Proquest and the Gender Studies Database) and electronic archives of six newspapers (New York Times; Wall Street Journal; Times of India; The Hindu; The Telegraph Kolkata; NDTV). Articles that covered the rape, updates on the couple’s ordeal and health, and fate of the rapists were not included in the dataset. It is our contention that the novelty of the rape protests lay in the diversity of participation in action, the leaderless and horizontal nature of the organization of actions, and most importantly, the spontaneity with which a wide range of tactics were used. It is, therefore, data relating to those elements of the case that we report below.
Through this paper, we will showcase that these characteristics are sufficient to describe this as the development of a new repertoire of contention in the Indian context.
The Background to the Rape Protests and Women’s Movement
In the decades (1950s–1960s) following India’s independence, the women’s movement went through what John describes as a silent period, when the role of women’s organizations as a pressure group declined (2005, p. 109). However, frustrations with the state resulted in the re-emergence of the women’s movement in the 1970s with many demands: inclusion of women in welfare programs; ending poverty and protests against custodial rapes of Aruna Shanbaug and Mathura. In the 1980s and 1990s, despite strong protests by a number of women’s groups against dowries, rape, and other forms of violence against women (VAW), the discourse was dominated by concerns against poverty in the face of growing globalization and neo-liberalization (John, 2005, pp. 112–121). The 1990s through 2000s saw the continued dismissal of the focus on VAW in national politics, as the issue was viewed as one that affected second-class citizens. Two very important developments took place during the rape protests that differed from previous women’s movements. First, the rape of the physiotherapy student was reported in the media within a few hours, and protest demonstrations started taking place within a day of the incident. Second, the topic of rape was no longer confined to women’s groups, but became a national concern. These two developments are different from the Mathura rape protests in the 1980s that took place almost a decade after the rape took place, and remained confined to women’s groups.
The following is a brief account of the December 2012 incident: In the late evening hours of December 16th, a young woman was brutally gang raped by six men (one of them a juvenile at the time) for 90 min on a moving bus in New Delhi, the capital city of India. The woman and her male companion were initially tricked into boarding the bus. What followed was a nightmare of events for the couple: the victim was gang raped with such extreme brutality that her intestines came out of her body; sexually assaulted numerous times including with an iron rod; her male companion was so severely beaten that he became unconscious; and after the assailants were ‘done’, the woman and her companion were thrown out of the bus onto a secluded street almost naked on a freezing Delhi night. The pair was found later that night by a police patrol. Despite specialized medical care in New Delhi and later in Singapore, the young woman succumbed to her injuries on 29 December 2012.
The rape was first reported in the media on the evening news on December 17th, and within days candlelight vigils began, followed by relatively small demonstrations in the capital, mainly in front of the Chief Minister’s residence. These were initially led by students, concerned citizens, and by some women’s organizations. By December 21st, the demonstrations were joined by political parties, other groups, and by ordinary citizens. As the scale of the demonstrations grew in the city, the government employed special police to manage the crowds. Reports of clashes between demonstrators and police emerged over the next few days, resulting in injuries for hundreds and the death of one policeman. In the days that followed large-scale protests and demonstrations condemning the rape and general government apathy to VAW broke out in other parts of India. In an unprecedented chapter of gender equality in India, ‘women’s issues’ were no longer limited and sidelined to women’s organizations, and instead gained national prominence.
The spontaneous nature of the protests and strong pressure tactics employed by the protests yielded some encouraging results, one that draws attention to why the rape protests signify the birth of a new repertoire. First, due to the widespread nature of the protests and the constant media reporting, the government was unable to dismiss the protests despite initially employing severely forceful tactics against the protestors. In addition, public support and the outpouring of rage against rapes initiated an awareness of women’s rights and a change in attitude toward rape victims. For instance in Delhi alone, 359 cases of rape (more than double the number reported in 2012) were reported in the first 3 months in 2013. Perhaps one of the bigger outcomes of the protests was the promptness in passing the new rape law in 2013 that for the first time criminalized many acts of VAW such as stalking, voyeurism, and acid attacks.
A New Repertoire: Structure, Goals, and Tactics of the Rape Protest
Organizing Structures and Diversity of Participation
When the first demonstration against rape broke out in New Delhi on December 18th, students and some women’s groups participated. Over the next few days, the demonstrations were joined by a number of political parties (many of them had taken part in the anticorruption demonstrations from the previous year), student wings of the political parties, and by thousands of ordinary citizens. In other parts of India, in metropolitan cities and in small towns, other groups too came forward to protest against the rape. Various minority groups (Bodos, Kashmiris, Dalits), who had a history of contentious politics with the government, joined demonstrations in their own cities and towns, protesting the rape and expressing solidarity with the victim’s family. Such diverse composition of the protest groups was new to Indian politics. The diverse composition of the groups resulted in an assortment of goals by the protestors, all toward a united aim to change the attitude toward rape in the country. Some of the goals were focused around specific demands for justice for the rape victim. Banners with references to punishments via castrations such as ‘Hang them on India Gate, stone them, castrate them and do it here and now, and if you cannot, hand them over to us, we will!’ expressed extreme emotions of the protestors against government incompetency (Rising Hill, 23 December 2012, The Telegraph Calcutta).
Others demanded changes in the country’s legal structure that included stringent punishment for rape, special sessions in Parliament to enact tougher laws against sexual violence, and better security for women. Examples of earlier rape cases (the custodial rape of Mathura; rape by the army in conflict zones) in other parts of the country were brought forward by the protestors to remind the public of institutional failures in addressing rape. Protestors questioned the hegemonic masculine culture’s attitudes to women’s bodies. Led mostly by women’s groups, slogans such as ‘Bekhauf Azadi’ or freedom without fear were used to push forward the need to promote safer streets for women. For example, in response to comments by some politicians who cautioned women against venturing out in the night, feminists groups retorted with statements that expressed disgust:
We will be adventurous… reckless…rash. We will do nothing to produce safety for ourselves. Don’t you dare tell us what to wear. Don’t tell us what time of the day or night we may be out or how many escorts we need. (Freedom Without Fear, 21 December 2012, The Tehelka Bureau).
The non-monolithic nature of the protests and goals led to strong pressure on the government. However, a surprise development of the protest was that it produced no major individual or organizations as leaders. For instance, while two names, Kavita Krishnan of All India Progressive Women’s Association and Arvind Kejriwal of Aam Aadmi Party, consistently appeared in the articles, they were viewed mostly as spokesperson of their party’s stance toward the protest, rather than leaders of the protests.
Spontaneity of Tactics
The activities of the rape-protests were spontaneous from the very start with groups and individuals often strategizing and developing pressure tactics on the spot. Information was delivered to fellow participants and to the general population often instantly through social media and via non-stop coverage on news channels. As one news excerpt demonstrates:
… hundreds of thousands of Indian women – and some men – poured onto the streets across the country, holding candlelight vigils and rallies, demanding that authorities take tougher action to create a safe environment for women (Indian Women Hope Brutal Rape Will Spark Change, 7 January 2013, Associated Press).
Among the ordinary protestors, unplanned non-violent pressure tactics (such as fasting or sit-ins at the site of the protests) that are common in Indian social movements took place. The following is a quote from a 40-year-old man, and a first-time protestor, who spontaneously decided to fast at the site of the protests:
When I came here five days ago, for the first time I experienced the passion of the youth. The students were raising slogans… As the day progressed I saw they were getting agitated. I thought what could I do? I wanted the protests to remain peaceful. I didn’t want the government to shut us out because of the violence (Fasting Farmers in Silent Protest, 3 January 2013, Telegraph Calcutta).
The anger and frustrations of the protestors caught both the Delhi police and the government by surprise, and the result was an aggressive response to the protests: batons, tear gas, water cannons, and deployment of a special riot police force to manage the crowd. In addition, the imposition of the Section 144 in New Delhi, that outlawed large gathering of people, further aggravated the crowds. There were many reports of how angry protestors jostled with the police as they tried to push through the cordon in front of India Gate, calling them ‘cowardly’, ‘corrupt’ and ‘inept’. ‘Why don’t you come and join us?’ one agitated protester asked a senior police officer, ‘Aren’t you angry at what happened?’ (Timmons et al., 24 December 2012, The International Herald Tribune). The aggressive responses by the government were viewed by many as a way to validate their growing frustrations with the government that had given rise to the previous anti-corruption movement in 2011.
In response to the growing pressure tactics, the government announced a three-member committee (Justice Verma Committee or JVC) to review the existing rape law and make recommendations. JVC submitted a report to the government within 29 days, providing a list of recommendations that would critically change laws against VAW in the country. The recommendations of the JVC were received wholeheartedly by the women’s groups, students, and various political groups in the country. However, doubts were raised on the government’s sincerity in implementing the recommendations of the JVC. The government responded to the JVC by passing amendments to the rape law, in March, 2013, a move that was hailed by many as a landmark for women’s rights in India. Soon after, the rape protests slowly fizzled out. While sporadic demonstrations took place during the trial months of the rapists, the movement by then had lost most of its fervor.
Conclusion
Repertoires of contention are learned, shared, and occasionally modified, and are drawn from culturally available boundaries and historical legacies (Goodwin & Jasper, 2009, p. 252). In their seminal works, Tilly (1978) and later Tarrow (1998) argued that opportunities for repertoire transitions in social movements take place when the following conditions develop simultaneously in societies: economic and political restructuring; increasing urbanization and the importance of urban centers as a space for collective action; increase in literacy among the population accompanied by an increasing media presence and the persistence of tactics adopted by various collective actions. In this paper, we argue that contemporary Indian social movements are witnessing a repertoire shift that saw its beginning with the anti-corruption protests in 2011, and took complete formulation with the emergence of the rape protests (2012–2013).
With the opening of the markets and liberalization of the economy in the early 1990s, India witnessed large-scale changes in the economy. International retail brands, cable television channels, the rise of the Internet, cell phones, and social media can all be traced to the 1991 economic liberalization. In addition today, India has a number of English, Hindi and other newspapers in local languages that have a circulation rate of 60 million (Indian Readership Survey, undated), not including magazines and online newspapers and television channels, a useful indicator of growing literacy. The 1990s also witnessed the beginning of the urban space as a key location for collective action that included protests against displacement of urban slums and rights for migrants. This was in contrast to the situation prior to 1990s when collective action in India was mainly located in rural areas (where the majority of the population resided) and focused on rural issues such as dam displacement, peasant protests, and development movements. Today nearly 40% of India’s population lives in cities, and the past 10 years has witnessed almost a 10% increase in the urban population (2011 Census India Report). Added to these developments in recent years, Congress, the largest political party for almost three decades (and one that was in power during the rape protests), has been witnessing a steady decline in its popularity, and in 2014 lost the national elections. Thus, structurally one can observe all of the first three characteristics proposed for repertoire transition in place for India.
The above development thus begs an answer to the question whether a new repertoire of protest has indeed emerged with the rape protests. Previous protests in the country were fairly concentrated around specific topics led by interest groups. For example, rape and dowry protests organized by feminist and women’s groups; anti-dam movements by peasant and tribal groups; demands for reservation quotas in government institutions by Dalit groups among others (Ray & Katzenstein, 2005). In contrast, the rape protests were not led by a specific interest group.
In addition, the rape protests brought forth trends that were previously unobserved among Indian movements. First, the rape protests in India were structurally horizontal: a leaderless movement of ordinary citizens that was viewed as being directly in opposition to the government. Previous movements in India had always had a clearly defined leader or a leadership group. Second, for the first time, there were no core interest groups that developed strategies and worked toward goals. Coalition formation between different protest groups are common in the Indian context (e.g. the Narmada Bachao Andolan, one of the largest anti-dam movements saw coalitions with environmentalists, and human rights groups with the peasant and tribal groups). Thus, this was not a protest that was formed of coalitions of various interest groups, but became a core protest group that had members from diverse groups, whose tactics and goals had a united message to fight against VAW.
There are examples of leaderless movements globally, such as Columbia Divestment Campaign (Hirsch, 1990) and Occupy Wall Street, that stressed collective decision making but their successes are limited in terms of impact. The rape protests, despite their horizontal leadership structure saw tremendous success through the passage of an antirape law, within a short period of time. This feat was only possible due to the role of technology and media, which played an important part in highlighting the protests, providing easy communication between diverse populations and enabling the presentation of demands to the government. Through its continuous coverage, the media played a crucial role in keeping the agenda of the protest movement alive for many months in the minds of the public.
From the above discussion, one can see that a new repertoire of contention emerged during the rape protests: one that was built on spontaneous networks between men and women from diverse backgrounds and interest groups, with a united pressure tactic against the government. The tactics used in the rape protest were based on previous successful movements strategies (strikes, vigils, and marches), and the novelty of this new repertoire of protest lay its spontaneous horizontal composition, a feature that was previously unobserved within Indian movements. Although the ’ground work’ for the rape-protests had taken place in the decades before, via the women’s movement, the growth of the media and the anti-corruption protests, the rape-protests brought out a protest that was unstructured, spontaneous to a large extent in its actions, and consisted of a surprise partnership of people and interest groups. Recent literature on social movements is now focusing on bringing back the focus on ‘spontaneity’ in theorizing, drawing examples from the Arab Spring and Beijing 1989 student protests (Snow & Moss, 2014). We argue that spontaneous characteristics of movements are a feature of a new global repertoire and one that has immense potential to lead successful movements in the future.