The After-life of Social Movements

Abstract

Probing the nature of social mobilization of minorities germinating from the COVID- 19 crisis is the focal point of this paper. While medico-scientific discourses to fight the Pandemic gained ground in Global North, the Global South is still grappling with pseudo- knowledge/occult science narratives. The BJP displayed spectacular political opportunism during this Pandemic by prescribing traditional health practices to gain a hegemonic sway over the masses who became objects in this pedagogical discourse, often coupled with islamophobic propaganda birthed conspiracy theories binarily structured on ‘Otherness’. The purpose of this paper is to reveal findings of a self-conducted survey of the social activities of a former squatter colony based in Kolkata to examine subaltern consciousness/agency demonstrated through gaps and fissures of negotiation with power structures. Often alternate translational spaces showed possibilities of articulation from such indeterminacy and dissent. This paper’s crux is built on such collective activities like propitiating Corona Devi through religious rituals that draw precedent from similar subaltern community movements during the British Raj to counter epidemics by the worship of ‘Sitaladevi/Salabai’. The paper traces historical contingency in subaltern resistance within the domain of conflicting relations between tradition and rationality.