ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 investigates the role of the law in Indian mobilisation, beginning with an analysis of legal mobilisation that was already taking place from the 1990s onwards even before the 2007 Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) rally. While the period of gestation (1957–1989) saw an accumulation of Indian problems, these issues were confined to the rural plantation sector. The 1990s saw the problems of the rural Indian Tamils enter the urban sector as industrial development intensified in the country. Chapter 5 traces the rise of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), community-based campaigns and pro bono lawyers that began to form into a strong civil society seeking political and legal remedies for the problems of the Indian underclass. This chapter traces the framing of Indian grievances and its mobilisation by Indian activist lawyers. One of the key differences of this phase of legal mobilisation (1990–2013) in comparison to the acquiescent phase (1957–1989) is the emergence in the former of Indian middle-class professionals who were activist lawyers, NGO activists, and opposition politicians. While religious grievances were significant in sparking the mass mobilisation of an aggrieved Indian underclass, their sentiments were finally shared beyond this class, among the urban Indian middle class, reflected in the decimation of the Malaysian Indian Congress that was part of the ruling coalition government during the 2008 General Election. Thus, electoral mobilisation also took place as part of contentious politics by Indian activists. Nevertheless, Chapter 5 reveals political tensions between Indian activists who preferred to adopt an ethno-cultural approach to Indian issues and activists/leaders who preferred a class-centric approach, a divide that continues to undermine a unified Indian polity in partisan politics and in civil society.
