LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 26:7 July 2026
ISSN 1930-2940

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Rise of Cultural Protest Performance in Cyberspace in India

Srijita Kar Chowdhury

Abstract

Performance in protest movements have always been the instrument that produces the cultural material of an era with its alternative meanings, values and identities; and strengthening as well as aligning the movement with the society. Resistance as an antidote to submissive forces are injected in the society through the cultural images and practices that challenges power and tries to subvert the meanings and values imposed by it. So, social movements have now and then offered themselves as a platform for different type of performances, asserting the essence of resistance. From the Woodstock festival to Gandhi's Non-Cooperation Movement, either the emergence of a genre or a huge addition to literature and art is made during and post the movements. With the advent of internet activism, protest movements have found a new channel to host as well as archive cultural material of resistance. Other than the 'hashtag' and 'Tiktok' activism, revival of indigenous and regional literature also takes place with the help of cyber performances. Therefore, a rise in protest performances over the cyberspace can be determined in the last two decades. Thus, the objective of this paper is to investigate the new online platforms that help foster the cultural resistance with a copious number of cyber performances, especially in the 2019-2020 Shaheen Bagh protest movement, which acts as a specimen of digital practice of the arts as well.

Keywords:protest, performance, cultural resistance, cyberspace

Introduction

The word protest etymologically stems from the Latin word protestari which means declare publicly, testify or protest and the equivalent Middle English and French terms mean 'solemn declaration'. But the first meaning “statement of disapproval” as known in the present times was first recorded in 1751. In spite of the delayed lexicological development of the word, the idea and concept of protest was almost omnipresent and like second nature to man. The universal binary of 'absence-presence' has been a constant since the genesis of universe. The universe itself has been a representative of opposite forces, of negatives and positives. For every motion, there has been a grain rolling against the motion. In words of Sir Isaac Newton, presenting his third law of motion in Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis (1687), “For every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, if object A exerts a force on object B, then object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A”, he means that opposing forces are co-dependent. Thus, it can be said that protest as an idea germinated as a twin of power. Whenever power escalated towards gaining the prefix 'over', protest got activated and took charge. The history of mankind has never been frictionless and a continuous struggle between power and protest has resulted into apexes of change and has redefined survival. Evolution was born and with it an embrace towards “Change is a constant” became an accepted quote to live by.

Protest as an act of resistance in different revolutions through different mediums of expression was born at the onset of the idea of resistance or as mentioned earlier “disapproval”. The fundamental concept of disapproval can be traced back in various streams of history, one being the event where the different opinion of one of the angels (Lucifer) occurred and he disapproved God’s sole authority. A rebellion commenced and with it, the idea of disapproval was sown. As pages of history flipped through, protest became mainstream and it started crawling into other categories. Protest as a concept became ambiguous in its usage with the arrival of social movements, revolutions etc. The uniting idea of 'disapproval' or say 'disagreement' branched out into various active arenas where people acted out objectively as well as subjectively and protest was liquified as a political dissent of an idea or action by the target. And one of the major areas was of culture. Protest mutually co-exists with culture, becoming an active-receptive zone of cultural production and interpretation of texts. It further advanced the development of “cultural field”, a term coined by Pierre Bourdieu which means the 'social space where cultural texts exist in relation to each other and in relation to texts in other social, political and economic fields'. (Reed, 2005) Protest itself arises as a counter-culture, piercing through the existing culture and policies of government or other organisations that bring dissatisfaction to those affected and when they cannot voice their opinions through a regular channel, they protest. And the very first thing that initiates the act of protest is a slogan. A slogan is a short, attracting phrase that represents the cause of protest in rallies. Be it the motto “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” that functioned as a slogan during the French Revolution or the very recent “Black Lives Matter”, slogans have been weaponised against the arms of the target representing the fundamental belief, “A pen is mightier than a sword”. Thus, it has always been literature that paved way for culture to enter the rallies in protest movements. At times, these slogans influence the formation of an era, creating a repository of literary works and at times, the already existing works lend a hand to the protestors to gain volume in their expression and this continuous sharing enhances the cultural field, multiplying its effect thoroughly. All in all, protest functions as a driving force of change. A change that causes development in culture and society; a change that might not always be politically successful but a social and cultural change nevertheless. The range of the change varies from small to large. Small being removal of an authority on account of protest by the labour union and large being formation of nations for example, India. So, the seed of protest germinates change that pushes 'the whole system towards a position which it really ought to be in anyway'. (Boulding, 1967, p. 50) And culture irrigates the whole process. Thus, culture can be seen as a cumulative essence of the society at a particular time in history of a particular region. The power of language churns the vehicle of literature to produce various works that define a protest or a movement and with it launches songs, plays, performances dedicated to protests at sit-ins, marches and parades. The site of a protest or movement gains momentum with the incoming of such dramatic action. Charles Tilly, a scholar of social movements argues that “repeated public displays” of different political and cultural values by a group of people together outside an institution or structure creates the essence of a movement. (Reed, 2005, p. xiv) Thus sloganeering, singing, performing street plays, dancing became vital for a protest and its aim.

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Parisha Dutta
Ph.D. Scholar
Jain Deemed-to-be University
parishaofficial00@gmail.com
&
Dr. Mekhala Venkatesh
Associate Professor and Research Guide
Jain Deemed-to-be University
v.mekhala@jainuniversity.ac.in
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