Movement breeds movement: Interlinks of issues, organizations and ideologies

This paper attempts to explore the impending continuities in people’s mobilization by identifying the inter-linkages in three contemporary movements in a northern province (Uttara Khand) of India. In an empirical study of the three movements; the movement against felling trees (Chipko i.e. hugging trees), the movement against alcoholism (Sharab-bandi), and the movement for a separate hill state, it has been found that these movements are interlinked in terms of issues, leadership, organizations and ideologies. The present paper highlights the nature, continuity and dynamics of issues, organizations and ideologies in the three movements. Firstly, it analyzes as to how the issue/demand for the protection of a customary right of the local populace evolves into a demand for political autonomy and the right to self-development of a regional community. Secondly, the paper focuses on pathways of the growth of specialized (in people’s mobilization) organizations from a spontaneous surfacing of people’s groupings. Lastly, the paper explains the course of eruption and dissemination of partial and total ideologies and debates which provoke the conditions of mass awakening and thereby enlarging the public sphere and motivating people to react and agitate. The assiduous mass mobilizations by way of intensifying issues/demands, strengthening organized efforts and upgrading ideological inputs have produced conditions for civil society to collectively engage with state in one type of struggle to another type.This has resulted in the deepening of democracy and the enlargement of people’s space. It is argued that interconnections among movements/mobilizations can provide insight to the potential relationship between civil society and the state.