Exploring New Sites of Social Transformation

Pluralism Working Paper no. 7

Conversations with the founder members of the Patna Collective in India. By Elise van Alphen and Hilde van 't Klooster.

This paper offers critical insights into contemporary social transformation processes and ways in which Civil Society Organisations are currently challenged to rethink their engagement with sites of social change. The paper is based on conversations with Shahrukh Alam and Khalid Anis Ansari, who are the founding members of the Patna Collective. Their organisation is a research-activist collective, which is based in India, where they form part of the India Pluralism Program network. Their primary focus is to rethink the complex relationship between religion, faith and social action.

The first part of this paper is based on an interview which was conducted by Elise van Alphen, a PhD candidate at the University for Humanistic Studies, whose own research focuses on social movements in the Netherlands. In the interview, Shahrukh Alam explains the basic premises of the Patna Collective research approach. According to Alam, change begins with a conscious recognition that a given situation could be different. To understand and rethink both the given situations as well as the possibilities for change, the Patna Collective believes that Civil Society Organisations should conduct research by beginning to identify social spaces where movement exists among otherwise stagnant religious, gender and caste relationships. The Patna Collective conducts critical ethnographic research to analyse conflicts between Muslim factions and the state and to identify alternative political spaces. Alam argues: “Our interventions focus on the recognition and acknowledgement of spaces for dialogue between the Muslim community and the state, but also for dialogue between men and women, as well as between higher and lower castes within the Islamic community”. One of the interesting claims of the Patna Collective is that these spaces for dialogue and reform cannot always be found within the classical political arena, the law, or in public debate, but are often entangled in the everyday life of people who live under marginalized circumstances and for whom it may be difficult to fight for their rights on a parliamentary, legal or civic levels. The Patna Collective studies and analyses how people in such positions exercise power and instigate reform in their own ways.

The second part of the paper is based on a dialogue between Hilde van ‘t Klooster who is a researcher at the Kosmopolis Institute and Khalid Anis Ansari. The interview gives us a remarkable insight into Ansari’s personal journey that led to his engagement with the Patna Collective. His personal background simply and powerfully contextualises his motivation to establish the collective. Ansari narrates about small and major incidents of social injustices, violence and stereotyping he experienced or observed, which confronted him with his religious and caste identity in the Indian context. These were all incidents which made him aware of the complex and persisting challenges of pluralism and social justice in India. Ansari is committed to connect his strong personal knowledge base with an intellectual curiosity that feeds into the research-activist objectives of the Patna Collective and into his own research as a PhD candidate.

Together, these two parts of the paper give the readers a remarkable picture of the innovative work of the Patna Collective, as they explore new ways of engaging with social transformation and the ways in which this impacts on Indian politics of identity. One of the movements which is studied by the Collective is the Pasmanda Movement. This is a lower caste movement within the Muslim community in India, which aspires to forge new caste solidarities, by exceeding traditional religious identities, and by challenging the hegemony of the upper-caste Muslim elite. According to Ansari, the Pasmanda Movement claims that the monolithisation of religious identities and consequent instances of communal violence in India, are related to internal caste conflicts.

Throughout the paper, Ansari and Alam elaborate on their search for new ways to engage with sites of transformation. I believe that the work of the Patna Collective may offer an interesting example of the ways in which the Pluralism Knowledge Program focuses on rethinking Civil Society Organisations strategies for change. I hope that researchers and activists within the international knowledge program and beyond will be inspired by this example.

Caroline Suransky

Chief editor of the Pluralism Working Paper series for the Pluralism Knowledge Programme.