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Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes the role of digital mobilization in the glocal precursors of the South Asian Spring. Digital activism reconfigures the Habermasian public sphere into a heterogenous protest-public where youth-led participation enables developmental politics.

Paper long abstract

The social-media discourse that surrounded the 2014 Jadavpur University student protest against on-campus sexual violence constituted a nodal point in the emergence of a new model of digitally mediated political agitation. The #hokkolorob campaign mobilized nearly 100,000 people to march in solidarity with the student protestors, as reported by the Telegraph, demonstrating the efficacy of digital mobilization.

This phenomenon subsequently recurred in movements like the #justiceforRGKar agitations and the Nepalese GenZ protests, each of which achieved varying degrees of mobilizational success through digital activism.

This paper argues that digital activism is an indispensable part of contemporary organized agitation. Social media equips the youth to undertake a constant decolonization of institutional and political spaces. It enables engagement in newer forms of resource mobilization which leads to the creation of a digitally bolstered transnational space of collective action where political mobilization of the youth reaches a multiplicity of intersectional demographics, giving rise to heterogenous ‘protest-publics’.

The paper moves beyond the structural functionalist reading of movements and critically analyzes how youth-led digital agitations revise the Habermasian public sphere through practices aligned with Nancy Fraser’s conception of counter-publics. By examining the glocal precursors of what may be understood as a South Asian Spring, the paper highlights how social media reconfigures protest-space into a site of political experimentation, where youth's political agency facilitates the reimagination of developmental politics in protest spaces.