“Highlight prerequisites of social movement. Bring out the difference between social movement and revolution.” (2011)
A social movement is a sustained, collective and organised effort to promote or resist change (Ralph H. Turner and Lewis M. Killian). A revolution, in Theda Skocpol‘s words, is a rapid, basic transformation of a society’s state and class structures, carried out partly through revolts from below (States and Social Revolutions, 1979). The two lie on a continuum, but they differ in kind as well as degree.
Prerequisites of a social movement
M. S. A. Rao names collective mobilisation, ideology and organisation as the core elements. Together with later theory, the prerequisites are:
- A shared grievance and relative deprivation. Discontent is felt in comparison with a reference group or with expectations (Rao; Ted Robert Gurr).
- Consciousness. People must see the problem as unjust and remediable, not as fate (Ghanshyam Shah).
- Ideology or a generalised belief that names the cause, the adversary and the remedy (Neil Smelser).
- Leadership to articulate goals and hold members together, often charismatic at first and later routinised (T. K. Oommen).
- Organisation and resources: money, networks, communication and legitimacy (John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, 1977).
- Collective identity, a sense of “we” (Alberto Melucci).
- Political opportunity: a system open enough for action to seem possible but closed enough for it to seem necessary (Charles Tilly).
- Sustained action, beyond a one-off outburst.
Illustration: B. R. Ambedkar‘s Mahad Satyagraha (1927) had all of these: untouchability as grievance, an egalitarian ideology, his leadership, organisation through the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha, a Dalit identity, and colonial legal openings.
Social movement and revolution compared
| Criterion | Social movement | Revolution |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Partial change or resistance to change in a specific sphere | Total transformation of political and social order |
| Target | Pressure on the state or society | Seizure of state power |
| Tempo | Gradual, often long-drawn | Rapid, compressed |
| Means | Largely lawful or non-violent: petitions, satyagraha, litigation | Often armed or violent confrontation |
| Situation | Works within a legitimate polity | Arises under “multiple sovereignty” (Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, 1978) |
| Outcome | Reform, new laws, cultural change | New regime, class structure and ideology |
| Examples | Chipko, Samyukt Kisan Morcha (2020–21) | France 1789, Russia 1917, China 1949 |
What the comparison reveals
- Continuum, not a wall. Rao’s typology includes revolutionary movements, such as the Telangana armed struggle (1946–51) and Naxalbari (1967), that aim at revolution but may never achieve it.
- Not every revolution is made by a movement. Skocpol, borrowing Wendell Phillips’s line that revolutions “are not made; they come”, traces them to state breakdown, war and peasant revolts rather than a movement’s plan.
- A movement can transfer power without social revolution. A. R. Desai read the Indian national movement as a bourgeois-led transfer of power that left class structure largely intact.
- Democracy favours movements over revolutions, as elections, courts and federal bargaining absorb pressure.
Conclusion
A movement needs grievance, consciousness, ideology, leadership, organisation, identity and opportunity. A revolution needs, in addition, a crisis of the state and a seizure of power. In democracies like India, most movements win change through reform. Revolution remains the rare outcome of a movement meeting a collapsing state.