A great many students and office-workers around the world go to work only for five or six days and rest on the weekends. Yet, very few people who relax on their day off realise that this holiday is the outcome of a long struggle by workers. That the work-day should not exceed eight hours, that men and women should be paid equally for doing the same work, that workers are entitled to social security and pension — these and many other rights were gained through social movements. Social movements have shaped the world we live in and continue to do so.
We often assume that the rights we enjoy just happened to exist. It is important to recall the struggles of the past, which made these rights possible. You have read about the th century social reform movements, of the struggles against caste and gender discrimination and of the nationalist movement in India that brought us independence from colonial rule in . You are familiar also with the many nationalist movements around the world in Asia, Africa and Americas that put an end to colonial rule.
The socialist movements world over, the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s that fought for equal rights for Blacks, the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa have all changed the world in fundamental ways. Social movements not The Right to Vote Universal adult franchise, or the right of every adult to vote, is one of the foremost rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. It means that we cannot be governed by anyone other than the people we have ourselves elected to represent us. This right is a radical departure from the days of colonial rule when ordinary people were forced to submit to the authority of colonial officers who represented the interests of the British Crown.
However, even in Britain, not everyone was allowed to vote. Voting rights were limited to property-owning men. Chartism was a social movement for parliamentary representation in England. In , more than .
million people signed the People’s Charter asking for universal male suffrage, voting by ballot, and the right to stand for elections without owning property. In , the movement managed to collect . million signatures, a huge number for a tiny country. Yet, it was only after World War I, in that all men over , married women, women owning houses, and women university graduates over the age of , got the right to vote.
When the suffragettes (women activists) took up the cause of all adult women’s right to vote, they were bitterly opposed and their movement violently crushed.