Answer : The feminist thought and feminist movement in the west have had some influence on the woman’s movement in the developing country like India. The turning point came in 1970s, when several events— some within and some outside India— gave a radical turn to the women’s movement. The “new feminism” in developed Western countries led in 1971 to the international year and then decade of women. The focus was on development.

The mid-1970s were also a watershed ....

Answer : Some women are drawn into feminism by environmental activism. These women are the catalysts of eco-feminism, a newer branch of feminism. Eco-feminism connects the degradation and oppression of women with the degradation of the ecosystem.

The Chipko Movement in India became one of the most successful environmental activism struggles in the world. Local women physically put their bodies between the machinery and the forest that provided their livelihood–literally hugging the trees. Though many men were involved ....

Answer : Gail Omvelt advocates that post-independence period women movements were more focused on equality based movement. The second wave of women movements in the last few decades were based on right oriented. Jane Evarett distinguished between corporate women’s movement from liberal feminist movement in India. She considers that corporate feminist movement speaks about the visibility of women in every sphere of social life, they speak of women reservation in political sphere, women entry into army, speak ....

Answer : Education is becoming an internationally traded commodity in the present day of globalisation. No longer is it seen primarily as a set of skills, attitudes and values required for citizenship and effective participation in modern society- a key contribution to the common good of any society or the externalities.

Rather, it is increasingly seen as a commodity to be purchased by a consumer in order to build a ?set of skills? to be used in the ....

Answer : There are several distinctive conceptual formulations of Indian nationalism both by Indian and foreign scholars. A dominant view is that of historians and sociologists who see the rise of nationalism in the context of British colonialism and the distortions it created in social structure and ideology of our society. These distortions refer to class character of nationalist leadership and its social, cultural and economic policies. It is said these colonial distortions contributed to the rise ....

Answer : The contemporary movement for the social emancipation of dalits can be traced back to the later part of the 19th century, when Jyotirao Phule established Satya Shodhak Samaj to attain equal rights for lower castes. The main issue around which these movements have been revolving are abolishment of untouchability. These movements project the indignities, agonies, humiliation, and overall sufferings of the sudras, and particularly the untouchables.

Dalits being deprived of education and freedom of occupation and ....

Answer : Dalits are generally referred to as people belonging to scheduled castes. These castes were placed outside the varna system and were considered as impure and untouchables. They were not allowed to enter the temples, had no access to power and were landless. It was this cumulative inequality which gave rise to dalit movements in India.

Dalit movement refers to the sustained and organized action by the members of dalit community to demand their rights.

They were inspired ....

Answer : In sociological terms, a movement is defined as an organized collective action sustained over a period of time. There is organization, leadership and ideology of a movement which motivates the followers of the movement for their cause. In India, we have witnessed mainly three kinds of movements for separate states. These are linguistic based, ethnicity based and development based states.

In the linguistic based ....

Answer : Farmers’ movement in India started after Independence. It was led by the middle level peasantry which initially got benefitted by the land reforms and further consolidated their gain by green revolution. Once they became economically strong, they asserted themselves politically and demanded reservations.

The farmers’ movement was led by the upper shudra group which was a dominant force with respect to the lower shudras. After getting their land rights, they obstructed the benefits to reach to ....

Answer : Satya Sodhak Samaj was started by Mahatma Jyotiba Phule in Pune in 1873. In 19th century it was essentially a socio-religious reform movement that was transformed by Shahu Chhatrapati into a powerful Non-Brahmin movement, which sought to bring a change into a power structure. Thus, it started as reform movement but got converted into the political movement.

The Sathya Sodhak movement attacked the Brahmin priests who insisted on acting as ....

Answer : In the form of differentiated society, Indian society is made up of so many small and large communities, in which a vast diversity is found in its tradition, religious beliefs, rites and ideology. In reality every society has its own separate little or local tradition due to which they have maintained continuity of their culture.

Robert Redfield has given important place to the concept of little and large tradition to understand the complexity and diversity of ....

Answer : Women’s movement in India is not of recent origin. The organised Women‘s movement may be traced back to the freedom struggle and the period immediately after freedom.

The social reform movements of the 19th century calling for widow remarriage, ban on Sati, and child marriage and promotion of women’s education may be taken as the first wave of Women‘s movement. The active participation of women in the freedom movement and the emergence of serveral national level ....

Answer : Since the times of 19th century socio-reform movement through India’s freedom struggle, into the 21st century with constitutional and legal provisions, welfare schemes and activism of voluntary sector, women surely can be said to have come of age.

Tenacious efforts on the part of social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, D.K. Karve, etc. laid a strong foundation in ushering gender equality and women empowerment in the form of abolition of sati, promotion ....

Answer : Some recent figures from Nasscom revealed that female technicians are steadily narrowing the gap on their male counterparts and their numbers are steadily increasing in the IT sector. Jawaharlal Nehru famously remarked-”You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women”. Increasing visibility of women in the IT sector speaks about that women have indeed come a long way in their journey towards emancipation and empowerment.

It also reflects how, ....

Answer : The term Dalit Movement has been used for all those kinds of movements which are primarily based on issues concerning dalits.

Broadly speaking untouchables of the Hindu caste system are called dalits. Officially, they are also known as the Schedule Castes. The same category of castes is also called Harijana. This Dalit Movements include anticaste movement, non- Brahmin movements and social movements against untouch ability led by Mahatma Gandhi.

This dalit movements emerged during the preindependence period ....

Answer : An ethnic group is defined as a cultural group whose members either share some or all the following features-common language, region, religion, race, endogamy, customs, belief, descent etc. Thus ethnic identity reflects both ‘like men’ and ‘uniqueness’.

India has witnessed resurgence of ethnic identity movement in recent years. The factors for these are many ranging from socio-economic, cultural, and political to international factors and quite often these are inter-related. Ethnic identity movements, whatever from these may ....

Answer : Reform movements are generally considered as the movement associated with society in which reformulation in social problems would be solved by taking into consideration various ways to revaluation. The reform movements in India are mainly deal with the movement such as Arya Samaj, Satya Shodhak Samaj, SNDP movements and Ramkrishna Misson movement.

Arya Samaj: The continuity of social and religions reforms were also maintained through the Arya Samaj founded by Dayananda Saraswati (18211-1883) in 1875 at ....

Answer : In broad terms, backward segments of Indian population include the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes. In other words, it includes all castes except the upper caste. It is also described as non-Brahmin movements.

The backward classes movement was anti Brahmin movements as well as a sort of cultural revolution. Brahmans have not only enjoyed cultural supremacy but have also acquired greater power and privileges. As a result of spread of western educationthey have ....

Answer : ThetermDalit has its origin in Hindi, Sanskrit and also in Hebrew. According to Sanskrit word, it is down-trodden and its meaning in Hindi is exploited and crushed. In Hebrew it comes from the term Dal which means crushed and down-trodden. Though in generic sense it refers to all the oppressed and disadvantaged sections of Indian society i.e. scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and the backward castes. M.N. Srinivas arguesthat the term Dalit is used for poor ....

Answer : Self-respect movement was launched by E.V. Ramaswami Naicker in mid 1920s in Tamil Nadu. The genesis of the movement was in the social imbalance created by Brahmanical domination of the traditional hierarchy. Though the Brahmins constituted only 3.3 percent of the population, the traditional and modern opportunities were mono­polised by them. Besides, there occurred what is called Tamil renaissance which created consciousness among people about the Dravidian culture.

The ideology of the movement involved resistance ....

Answer : There are three important levels at which mobility takes place in caste structure: (1) mobility of one family within a caste to a higher or lower position; (2) mobility of group of families within a caste to a higher or lower position; (3) mobility of individual members within a family belonging to certain caste to higher or lower position.

Mobility therefore takes place at individual family and group levels. A fourth type of social mobility which ....

Answer : The term “Dalit” in sociological literature simply refers to the traditionally Shudra Varna or untouchable castes. It is also known as depressed castes or classes, the contact with whom entail purification on the part of high caste Hindus. A number of castes, such as Chamar, Dusadh, Musahar, Bhuiya, Dhobi, Pasi, Regar, Dom, Bhogta, Halakhor etc. are considered as Dalit in India. Traditionally, they have been facing the stigma of untouchability and social, economic and political ....

Answer : Naxalbari Movement and the Peasant revolt in north Bengal (1967-71): Ever since British advent, the feudal economy of India had undergone a varieties of change which are as follows.

1. More exploitation of labour by extracting unreasonable work for merely subsistence wages,
2. Aiming at maximum profit,
3. Conversion of Jotedari system into Jotedari-Adhiary system,
4. Marketization of agriculture and its produce.

This movement was led by three distinguished leadership - (a) the indigenous rural leadership (e.g Punjab Rao, Naresh, Aich) ....

Answer : The Satyasodhak Samaj was established by Jyotiba Phule. It proclaimed the need to save the lower castes from the hypocritical Brahmins and their opportunistic scripture. His main work was to wage the masses and lead them to an organised resistance against the unreasonable claims of the priestly class. He made no distinction between non-Brahmins and untouchables. An extract from the report of Satyasodhak Samaj makes its object clear: "For thousands of year with the help ....

Answer : Role of Arya Samaj : Mula Shanker, later known as Dayanand Saraswati, was born in 1824 in a Brahmin family, in the petty state of Morvi, in Kathiawar, Gujarat. After deeply studying the Vedas and Indian philosophy, Dayanand Saraswati came to the conclusion that the "Aryans were the chosen people, the vedas the chosen gospel and India the chosen land. Based on this belief, he found the Arya Samaj in Bombay in 1875. He considered ....

Answer : This movement (1967-71) was chiefly launched by the three distinguished leadership. Firstly, the indigenous rural leadership such as Punjab Rao and Naresh Aich. Secondly the rural leadership such as Kanu Sanyal and Panchan Sarkar and thirdly, the urban-based leadership who may have evoked awe and reverence but not the unqualified trust of simple peasants. As a matter of fact right from very beginning the movement noticed the conflict between the urban based and coopted leadership. ....

Answer : The revivalist social movement refers to those movements, which arose for the revival of some traditional or fundamental features of a community. For example, the Jharkhand movement in Bihar was organised for the preservation of tribal ecology and economy. The so-called ‘Dikku’ or outsider made interference in the tribal culture and way of life as a result of which their culture, religion and social cohesion were negatively affected. With the establishment of separate Jharkhand State, ....

Answer : Social movement is a type of millenarian movement. Sociologists and anthropologists have classified millenarian movement as a social-political movement whereas theologists assume it as a religious belief or assumption. Millenarian movement talks to its followers about total social change by charismatic power. This movement presents an opinion of establishment of future society based on pure imagination etc. A new haven, world without miseries, injustice, sin and empire of saints etc.

Although many millenarian movements are of ....

Answer : The word objectivity means unbiased, neutral or based on facts alone. It can be defined in two ways. In first case it considers an absence of bias or interpreting observations.

In second case, it is a situation in which data gathered represents true picture of reality. To achieve this kind of objectivity, we need to describe the reality from the interference from the ways in which one think about it.

But such things is not possible ....