During 1960's Banshi and his fellow peasant workers organised committees to fight back against the atrocities and oppressions of their landlords. This social movement strived to change the existing social and political arrangement. What is this kind of movement called?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Revolutionary
Option (1) Redemptive — Incorrect. A redemptive movement aims to change the personal consciousness and actions of its own members, as when Narayana Guru led the Ezhavas of Kerala to change their social practices. Banshi’s peasants were fighting the landlords, not reforming themselves.
Option (2) Reformist — Incorrect. Reformist movements change the existing arrangements through gradual, incremental steps, as the movement for linguistic states and the Right to Information campaign did. Peasants organising committees to fight back against the landlords’ oppression are not taking small steps within the system; they are challenging the landlords’ power itself.
Option (3) Revolutionary — Correct. Revolutionary movements attempt to radically transform social relations, often by capturing state power. The Naxalite movement, which seeks to remove oppressive landlords and state officials, is the standard example. Its beginning in 1967 looks like Banshi’s case: peasants’ committees were formed in every village, occupied land in their own name and took action against oppressive landlords.
Option (4) Radical — Incorrect. Social movements are classified as redemptive, reformist and revolutionary; ‘radical’ is not one of the types. The word only says how deep a change goes, which is part of what makes a movement revolutionary.
Note: The question says the movement ‘strived to change the existing social and political arrangement’, which is close to the book’s words for a reformist movement (‘strive to change the existing social and political arrangements through gradual, incremental steps’). The question leaves out the gradual, incremental steps, and the case it describes, peasant committees of the 1960s fighting oppressive landlords, follows the Naxalbari movement, which the book calls revolutionary. Read as a whole, the case describes a revolutionary movement, and the answer is marked as per the NTA answer key.
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.…”
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