ABSTRACT
Gujarat is an important case to examine, as both in India and abroad it is a flashpoint around two issues, both attributed to its charismatic then chief minister, now prime minister, Narendra Modi. Social movements demonstrate the ways in which gender remains a challenge for the state and subaltern movements, social theory, and call into question the extent of democratic deepening. Earlier subaltern politics, specifically the Nav Nirman movement and Narmada Bachao Andolan in Gujarat, also contributed to what the author call a translocal field of protest, composed of ongoing relationships among multiple local fields of protest. The three struggles, state, social movements, and democracy, in Gujarat demonstrate a multi-tiered legal plurality. Each has used legalism as a weapon of the weak to challenge the state and corporations as rightful resistance, but each has also gone beyond that to engage in participatory, democratic processes in their cooperatives and producer companies, gram panchayat trainings, and formulation of alternative legal practices.
