This volume is a revised and enlarged edition of the author's review of literature on social movements in India, first commissioned by the ICSSR. After careful deliberation on the 'ideal' definition of a 'social movement', the author adopts for this volume the loose idea of 'non-institutionalised collective political action striving for social and political change'. On the basis of the socio-economic characteristics of participants and the issues involved, this volume makes a nine-fold classification of social movements: peasant movements, tribal movements, dalit movements, backward caste movements, women's movements, working class movements, students' movements, middle class movements and human rights and environmental movements (added in this edition).
This book is important as much for filling a scholarly lacuna in social science studies as for proposing--and executing--an orderly classification of literature on social movements in modern India. The original, shorter, monograph received an enthusiastic response from both scholars and laypersons, and this volume is likely to be welcomed similarly.
