(a) Underline the role of social media in contemporary social movements and describe its challenges. (20 marks) (b) How does a…

(a) Social Media and Contemporary Social Movements

Role of social media in contemporary social movements:

• Mobilisation at low cost: hashtags, WhatsApp groups and livestreams let dispersed people coordinate quickly without formal organisations. Bennett and Segerberg (2012) call this "connective action", based on personalised sharing rather than membership;
• Bypassing gatekeepers: movements can reach the public without depending on mainstream media, and frame their own issues. Manuel Castells (Networks of Outrage and Hope, 2012) describes a shift of power towards networked publics;
• Agenda-setting and visibility: viral images and testimonies push issues onto the national agenda;
• Voice for the marginalised: Dalit, Adivasi, queer and women's groups build counter-publics online;
• Resource mobilisation: crowdfunding, legal aid and logistical support;
• Transnational solidarity: diasporas and global networks amplify local causes (Arab Spring, #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo).

Indian examples:

• the India Against Corruption movement (2011) and the Nirbhaya protests (2012);
• #MeToo India (2018), where testimonies online led to public accountability;
• protests over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (2019–20) and the farmers' protest (2020–21), which used YouTube, WhatsApp and livestreams to sustain long sit-ins and counter unfavourable coverage;
• Dalit student mobilisation after Rohith Vemula's death (2016).

Challenges:

• Slacktivism (Morozov): likes and shares substitute for sustained commitment, and Gladwell (2010) argued that weak ties cannot support high-risk activism;
• Fragility: Zeynep Tufekci (Twitter and Tear Gas, 2017) shows that fast digital mobilisation skips the slow building of organisation, leaving movements unable to negotiate or survive setbacks;
• Misinformation and polarisation: echo chambers and algorithms reward outrage, and fake news can trigger violence (for example, WhatsApp-rumour lynchings in 2018);
• Surveillance and repression: activists are tracked and doxxed, and India has been among the countries with the most internet shutdowns (Access Now). The Supreme Court held in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020) that indefinite suspension is impermissible and restrictions must be proportionate;
• Online harassment, especially of women and minority activists;
• Platform power: opaque content moderation and algorithms decide visibility, and platforms comply with takedown orders under the IT Rules, 2021;
• Digital divide: rural, poor, older and many women users are excluded, making online movements look more urban and middle-class.
• Conclusion: social media is a powerful amplifier and organiser, but lasting change still needs offline organisation, leadership and institutions.

(b) Accommodating Diversity in a Multicultural Society

• Multicultural society: one that recognises and accommodates many cultural groups rather than forcing assimilation (the "melting pot"). Its theorists include Charles Taylor (the "politics of recognition", 1992), Will Kymlicka (Multicultural Citizenship, 1995) and Bhikhu Parekh (Rethinking Multiculturalism, 2000).

How diversity is accommodated:

• Group-differentiated rights (Kymlicka): polyethnic rights (cultural and religious practice), self-government rights (territorial autonomy) and special representation rights;
• Religious diversity (India):
• freedom of religion (Articles 25–28);
• minorities' right to conserve culture and run educational institutions (Articles 29–30);
• personal laws;
• a secularism of "principled distance" (Rajeev Bhargava), not strict separation;
• Linguistic diversity:
• 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule; Census 2011 recorded 121 languages with 10,000 or more speakers each;
• linguistic reorganisation of states (1956);
• mother-tongue instruction at the primary stage (Article 350A) and a Special Officer for linguistic minorities (Article 350B);
• the three-language formula;
• Ethnic and tribal diversity:
• Fifth and Sixth Schedules, with autonomous district councils in the North-East;
• special provisions under Article 371;
• reservations for Scheduled Tribes;
• Federalism and decentralisation give groups a stake in governance;
• Syncretic traditions (Bhakti and Sufi, shared shrines and festivals) create overlapping identities from below.

Major challenges:

• Majoritarianism vs minority insecurity: fear that one culture will define the nation, and communal violence;
• Language disputes: debates over Hindi and the three-language formula, and "sons of the soil" nativism against migrants (Myron Weiner);
• Ethnic conflict: competing claims over land and identity, as in the Meitei–Kuki violence in Manipur (2023);
• Balancing group rights and equality: debates over a Uniform Civil Code versus personal laws;
• Internal minorities: group rights can entrench patriarchal or caste control within communities (Susan Okin, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?", 1999);
• Essentialism: treating cultures as fixed and homogeneous, and fears of "parallel lives" (European debates on the "failure of multiculturalism");
• Inequality: recognition without redistribution leaves economic exclusion untouched (Nancy Fraser).
• Conclusion: a multicultural society rests on recognition, representation and redistribution, within a shared civic identity and common constitutional values.

(c) Animism and Naturism

Animism: E.B. Tylor (Primitive Culture, 1871) defined religion minimally as "belief in spiritual beings":

• from dreams, trances and death, early humans inferred a soul separable from the body;
• this idea was extended to animals, plants and objects, which were thought to have spirits;
• spirits of ancestors and nature developed into gods;
• it is an intellectualist theory: religion as an early attempt to explain experience.
• Naturism: Max Müller argued that religion began with awe before great natural phenomena (sky, sun, dawn, fire, storm), which were then personified as deities through language (his "disease of language"), as in Vedic Dyaus, Surya and Agni.
• Differences:
• Source: animism derives from dreams, death and the idea of the soul; naturism from the sensory experience of powerful nature;
• Object of worship: spirits and souls that may reside in anything (animism) versus natural forces personified as gods (naturism);
• Process: intellectual inference (animism) versus emotional awe and linguistic personification (naturism);
• Which came first: Tylor treats animism as the earliest form of religion, whereas Max Müller gives that place to naturism.

Critical note:

• Durkheim (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912) rejected both, since they reduce religion to illusion. He traced religion instead to society itself, through totemism;
• R.R. Marett's animatism (belief in an impersonal force such as mana) is a separate idea from animism;
• in India, spirit beliefs such as the bongas of Munda and Santhal peoples, and the worship of sacred groves (sarna), are living examples.