How courage and political clarity can sustain struggles in contexts of repression

Below is the contribution of Martin Macwan, Navsarjan (India) to the online session “Building the New: Reimagining Civil Society Resourcing in Times of Global Transformation”, held on 30 October 2025. Martin’s reflections remind us that resistance is sustained not by money, but by the courage and agency of ordinary people. In a context where the State seeks to silence dissent, Martin shares how community-rooted organizing is proving both more resilient and more transformative than donor-driven systems.

You can read the full report / transcript of the session here, or the individual contributions from the other three speakers: Nour Nusseibeh, Dalia Association (Palestine); Marko Aksentijević, Ministry of Space (Serbia); and, Kamala Chandrakirana, Indonesia for Humanity (Indonesia).

Jenny Hodgson, GFCF (JH): Martin describes himself as a “student” which speaks to Martin and who he is — a very humble but incredibly inspirational Dalit leader who’s been involved in many different aspects of organizing against the caste system and particularly within Dalit communities. Martin, would you share a little bit about yourself and how are you coming into this conversation today, because it’s a conversation that has been dear to your heart for many years.

Martin Macwan (MM): Thank you, Jenny, and hello to everyone. Yes, I’ve been doing this now for 45 years, and I can see that I have gone through four stages of life. For about 20% of my time, I was working within an institution where I was groomed. For another 7%, I was establishing my own initiative. This was a very difficult time when there was no money. Then there was a period, which would be about 50% of my life, where we had money and no problems with resources. And, lastly, the period I am in now over the last nine years which would be about 20% of my time, when once again we have no resources.

In these last nine years, the problem has not been that no one wanted to fund us. Basically, the State of India didn’t want us to work, so they prohibited our activities. People were sure that we were going to close down in the face of this political pressure. But we asked ourselves: “Why did we set up this organization?” We created it because the community was going through immense hardship, and not because there were resources available that we “needed” to spend. So, whether there are resources or no resources, we have to continue our work.

In these last nine years, despite the legal problems caused by the political situation, we have carried out 40 major programmes. We have raised about 19 million Indian Rupees (about US $212,000) from the community, that is from poor people. They have given to us. So, with less money and poorer people, we have been able to do maybe three times more work than what we were doing earlier, and much more intensely.

Why? You know, this is the question I find myself asking again and again. As Buddha said, “Forget the world. If you are okay, then the world is going to be okay.” So, we asked ourselves the question: why, 75 years after Indian independence, does the practice of “untouchability” continue to exist in India? Why, when there has been so much “development work” and so much money, is poverty increasing, and the gap between the rich and the poor widening? These are the basic questions that we must confront. And the learning that comes back to me each time is that it is less about the money, and more about the empowered citizen who will make the difference. Therefore, the role of political education becomes central. If the community is strong, then there are definitely going to be fewer problems, right?

“So, we asked ourselves the question: why, 75 years after Indian independence, does the practice of ‘untouchability’ continue to exist in India? Why, when there has been so much ‘development work’ and so much money, is poverty increasing, and the gap between the rich and the poor widening?”

Just last month, we organized one of the first programmes in India to protest what is happening in Palestine. Many people in India had tried, but they were not given permission by the government. In fact, someone had even gone to the High Court to get permission and were dismissed with nasty remarks.

We said: “We are going to do it anyway.” We organized the programme and invited the Ambassador of Palestine to our campus. We had about 200 people registered for the programme, but 330 people actually turned up. We raised about half a million rupees (approximately US $6,000) for Palestine in maybe 20 days. We refused to ask the State for permission for the programme. I said, “Why do I need permission from anyone to light a lamp?” The rights given to us by nature predates the judicial systems. In short, we have to raise these kinds of fundamental questions.

Right now, we are involved in another programme. I don’t know how many people outside of India know this, but the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India is a Dalit, and somebody threw a shoe at him mainly because of his caste. Of course, he didn’t file a complaint because he was sitting as a judge there. I thought it was the right thing for him to do, to not to file a complaint. It is the duty of the State to file the complaint, not his. But then many people began organizing programmes to abuse the man who threw the shoe, putting up his photograph in public and beating it up with a shoe. I couldn’t see any sense in that. So we said: shoes are very important. Dalits were only allowed to wear shoes after 2,000 years of struggle for a life of dignity, we are not going to throw away the shoes now. What we should do is give more shoes to our children. We started to appeal to Dalit teachers and government employees, telling them that whatever they are today is because of the Constitution of India which gave them rights. We asked them to contribute, not as charity, not as pity, but because it is your social obligation. We started with a very small, modest aim, but I think we are going to collect about 5,000 pair of shoes for 5,000 children across many villages.

“I’m happy because creativity emerges most when you’re in trouble, not when everything is comfortable.”

My organization does not have a penny. I personally have not earned a penny in the last year, and many of my colleagues haven’t either. But when I go to the villages, poor people say: “No, this is something we must do.” That is why they are giving money. When I faced pressure from the government, friends from the NGO sector abandoned me, including funding organizations, because they didn’t want to be seen as “anti-State.” Many prestigious organizations said: “We wanted to support you.” But they did not. I asked them: “You came to exist because there was problem, so how can you run away when the problem hasn’t been addressed?” Otherwise, you lose the reason for your existence. We are not working for money. We are working because there is injustice, because there is indignity.

But I am not worried at all. I’m smiling as I was before. I’m happy because creativity emerges most when you’re in trouble, not when everything is comfortable. Only when things crack open do you become more creative. I tell my colleagues: “Only when a sword is hanging on your head do you start thinking proactively.” There is no space for despair. I think there is lot of ground we still need to cover. We must keep our eyes open and look for new allies. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we must ask: “Who will stand by you?” It is the poor people who are going to stand by you.

JH: Thank you, Martin. I want to restate what you just said: we did this work because it was the right thing to do, not because we had the money, and we needed to spend it. That resonates wherever you are in the world. Of course, it’s getting increasingly difficult to get external money into India. We are seeing foreign agent laws or laws on “transparency” emerging globally, which are designed to limit the flows of international funding into a country and, at the same time, many of the sources of international funding are drying up. So the moment for radical reimagining is exactly what you have described in your examples, that creativity is what we need right now. Many parts of the system are still in a state of fear and despair, waiting hopefully for the old ways to return. Your words actually turn this on its head: think differently, build the thing we want first, and then think about how to resource it.

“Many parts of the system are still in a state of fear and despair, waiting hopefully for the old ways to return. Your words actually turn this on its head: think differently, build the thing we want first, and then think about how to resource it.”

When we spoke the other day, you also talked about the role of the State and why social reform must be led and driven by communities. I’d love to hear a bit more on that front — what is the role of the State and what it has become?

MM: We believe, ultimately, that the State is subservient to the people, and not the other way around. I don’t get my rights from the State, I get them from the Constitution of India. So, in fact, it is the people who have the supreme right, as they are the ones who make the State. And that is why, for me, the role of political education is very important.

The biggest problem I see right now is a fear of the State. For example, there are many people who come to us and say: “We want to donate money to you, but please make sure that our names don’t appear anywhere.” And we are saying: “Sorry, we can’t take any money from you, because we need people whose money is fearless.” Our job is to break the fear.

These walls of fear are rising taller and taller, not only in India but around the world. People who have been elected behave as if no law applies to them. We sometimes think that human rights work is very innocent and naïve. This is a misconception. It is essentially the work of political education. But when you are doing that, you are not against the state per se, you are against the practices that are undemocratic or exploitative, whether they come from the judiciary or the State. At times, we have had to fight the judiciary as well. I write openly about it, I speak openly about it, but always with a smile. I never abuse anyone.

JH: Thank you. All three perspectives so far have emphasized the importance of political education, questioning the idea that development can be done in a kind of a political vacuum focused only on the delivery of services. Instead, we need to go back to the fundamentals: what is it to be human? How do we organize in ways where we can build trust, connection, and cohesion?

What we are also seeing in data on attitudes towards governments around the world, is that many people no longer have faith in the system of democracy and what was promised. This is leading to a tilt in public opinion in many contexts towards authoritarianism, a preference for a strong leader, rather than these elites who are perceived as serving only themselves. Both Martin and Marko have pointed out powerfully that we are in a critical moment of crisis.

Navsarjan is a a voluntary organization working in India, particularly Gujarat, since 1989 to address the issue of caste based violence and discrimination towards Dalits and the practice of Untouchability in particular. Concretely, it has mobilized masses around acts of violence, non payment of statutory farm wages, land alienation, leadership of women, political education, and primary education – among multiple other thematic issues.

Read the full report / transcript of the session, or the individual contributions from the other three speakers:

• Nour Nusseibeh, Dalia Association (Palestine)
• Marko Aksentijević, Ministry of Space (Serbia)
• Kamala Chandrakirana, Indonesia for Humanity (Indonesia)