Civil/political society, protest and fasting

This chapter examines the August 2011 New Delhi fast against corruption conducted by Anna Hazare. The fast was the largest political mobilisation in India for many years, and attracted widespread coverage. It is argued that approaching this fast as a protest camp has the potential to create a more contextually grounded and nuanced understanding of the events surrounding the fast. The chapter does this by examining the conceptual debate about civil society that structured many commentaries on the fast. These were often based on Partha Chatterjee’s concept of ‘political society’, in which ‘civil’ society is seen as an élite zone which excludes marginal communities who instead occupy ‘political’ society. Whilst conceptually useful, the chapter argues that a protest camps-based approach helps to interrogate the divide between civil/political society, and that such an approach to the Anna Hazare fast would create space for more ethnographic, grounded accounts of political practise

Art · Civil society · Language change · Literature · Political corruption · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Indian Economic and Social Development · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts