Dissent and Protest Movements in India: Revisiting Gandhi’s Ideas of Peaceful Protest

Abstract

For the last few years, dissents and protests are being seen almost everywhere in the world. Some of them were violent and occupation movements against consumerism, traditional institutions, and capitalism, with little success; while some were peaceful protests against racism, corruption, and the state’s policies. Peaceful protests are often characterized as Gandhian movement; but many of such peaceful movement turns violent or disrupted from the notion of Gandhian dissent, for instance, Black Lives Matter movement—a protest against racism—in the US. Many peaceful protests are being organized in the name Gandhian way of dissent across the world without understanding Gandhi's eternal spirit of Satyagraha, and this has led to the flood of critiques against limits of success about it. Scholars of subaltern studies criticize Gandhian Satyagraha as surrender and subordination of poor and oppressed that can never pose real challenges to India's elites. But this is not reality. Gandhi's Satyagraha is based on the purity of soul and theory of persuasion. There is a kind of social construction, not enmity in Gandhian dissents. This research paper attempts to redefine the Gandhian notion of dissent and protest in the twenty-first century. It also analyses some contemporary so-called peaceful movements in India that have been labelled as Gandhian movements—whether they were or not?