Introduction

The weekend, an eight-hour working day, equal pay for equal work, social security, a pension in old age — none of these were handed down by a benevolent state. Workers and activists won them through sustained struggle, and social movements of this kind have been the real engine behind most of the fundamental changes the modern world has seen.

Take something as basic as the right to vote. Universal adult suffrage feels self-evident to us now, yet it marks a sharp break from colonial rule, when ordinary Indians simply had to accept the authority of officials representing the British Crown — and even in Britain itself, voting was long restricted to property-owning men.

It is easy to assume the rights we now take for granted simply always existed. They did not — and this chapter is a reminder of the struggles that produced them. Several are already familiar from earlier chapters: India's 19th-century social reform movements, the fight against caste and gender discrimination, the nationalist movement that won independence in 1947, the anti-colonial movements across Asia, Africa and the Americas, socialist movements more broadly, the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Each reshaped the world in a lasting way — and, just as importantly, each tended to inspire further movements. The Indian national movement, for instance, shaped how the Constitution itself was written, and the Constitution went on to become an engine of social change in its own right, as Chapter 3 discussed.