“Dancing in the Streets”: Protest, Celebration, and Modes of Self-Expression

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As the title of this chapter indicates, I address the issues of personality development, identity formation, and self-learning that accompanied the struggle for justice in Bhopal. This brings me to the concluding analysis of oral history, which focuses on the much less documented aspect of historical experience, the subjective domain and individual growth that brings in the cultural facets of the social movement. At the same time, we are analyzing a people’s movement in the context of an industrial disaster. The personal plays a functional role in the understanding of larger social/economic/political forces that are operative in society. How was the knowledge base created? More importantly, how did survivor groups use the knowledge? Organizations came up with their own mechanisms for sharing information. Since most of the women survivors lacked education and were barely literate, they had to come up with innovative tools to understand their own role and identity as activists in relation to campaign issues. Activism brought in major changes in the way of looking and doing things. As we listen to the testimonials, we see how women moved away from reliving the experience of suffering to the cognitive understanding of larger issues, particularly the role of government as both protector of its people and ally of corporations, and the question of who ultimately has to take responsibility for rehabilitation. An important question that gets raised again and again is whether grassroots organizations should take the path of confrontation or work in alignment with the state. The testimonials do not offer simple answers, for a great deal of this knowledge is generated within the particular context of the need for mobilization and alliances, and it is specific to the struggle.