Narayan Guru led the Ezhava community in Kerala to change their social practices. Identify the kind of social movement he led :
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Redemptive movement
Option (1) Old Movement — Incorrect. ‘Old’ social movements are the class-based movements that functioned within the frame of political parties, such as the Indian National Movement led by the Congress, and saw the reorganisation of power relations as their central goal. The term separates old from new movements; it is not a type based on changing the members’ own consciousness.
Option (2) Reformist movement — Incorrect. A reformist movement tries to change the existing social and political arrangements through gradual, incremental steps, like the 1960s movement for reorganising Indian states on the basis of language or the Right to Information campaign. Narayana Guru’s movement worked on the members’ own practices, not on the arrangements of the state.
Option (3) Revolutionary movement — Incorrect. A revolutionary movement tries to radically transform social relations, often by capturing state power, like the Bolshevik revolution in Russia or the Naxalite movement in India. Nothing of this kind was attempted by the Ezhavas under Narayana Guru.
Option (4) Redemptive movement — Correct. A redemptive (or transformatory) social movement aims to bring about a change in the personal consciousness and actions of its individual members. The people of the Ezhava community in Kerala were led by Narayana Guru to change their social practices.
NCERT (2025-26): “8.3 Types of Social Movements … There are different kinds of social movements. They can be classified as: (i) redemptive or transformatory; (ii) reformist; and (iii) revolutionary. A redemptive social movement aims to bring about a change in the personal consciousness and actions of its individual members. For instance, people in the Ezhava community in Kerala were led by Narayana Guru to change their social practices. Reformist social movements strive to change the existing social and political arrangements through gradual, incremental steps. The 1960s movement for the reorganisation of Indian states on the basis of language and the recent Right to Information campaign are examples of reformist movements. Revolutionary social movements attempt to radically transform social relations, often by capturing state power. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia that deposed the Tsar to create a communist state and the Naxalite movement in India that seeks to remove oppressive landlords and state officials can be described as revolutionary movements.…” |