The civil and democratic rights movement in India, with its very obvious influences drawn from western democracies, had rather fortuitous beginnings in India. From a largely limited activist base from the emergency period of the 1970s, it has since moved into newer areas, with newer sources of support especially among more marginalised sections. But the movement, unlike its counterpart in the west, remains constantly challenged by prevailing complexities of the political process. The emergence of newer identities and shifting quality of these identities shaped by the very nature of politics and electoral processes in India coupled with the paucity of similar experiences in western liberal democracies, ensures that civil and democratic rights movement has to often formulate its own responses, make its own theoretical and conceptual innovations to meet such challenges.
