Paper short abstract:

Spreading through mass media, a recent social movement of students and women in India has gained considerable attention. This study offers a sympathetic critique of this movement through an analysis of online political behavior.

Paper long abstract:

The 'Pinjra Tod' movement in India has evolved through several stages of women's making claims on their right to occupy public spaces and students' protesting for their right to exercise political participation. With faster communication through internet posts, the question remains on how much we understand the perception and reaction of the general public throughout the life-course of an event. One way to approach the phenomenon is 'what' actually spreads as information. Any random observer has an equal access to counter-campaigning by campus political-party activists (allegedly state-affiliated) and the different versions of facts available in the traditional news and the social media. In light of this background, this study aims to analyze political discourse by examining several manifestations of the movement, including the 'presentation' of facts online, street performances, etc., demanding the government's attention.

The authors focus especially on women, who are resisting narrow state definitions of their 'rights'. Their message is a vision of establishing what they call 'equal rights' for students and self-dependent youth of India. The fact that these campaigns merged with several other on-campus 'flaming' issues raise questions about the role of homophily in face of exogenous effects (such as the state and its representatives) or a possible conflict between other underlying oppositions of values and sanctions of society. In this context, we attempt to understand the role of online networks in instigating political participation and polarization as opposed to cultural homogeneity.