Book Talk: Becoming Allies: Civil Liberties Activism in India, Ankita Pandey

Becoming Allies engages with the question: how do people become politically invested in struggles that are not immediately their own? While much political and social theory has focused on movements, parties, institutions, and identities, considerably less attention has been paid to the intermediary actors who connect local grievances to wider publics. This book addresses that gap through a historical and conceptual study of civil liberties activism in India. Drawing on extensive archival research and more than seventy oral history interviews, Pandey develops the concepts of ally activism and the politics of amplification to explain how activists, lawyers, journalists, academics, and other concerned citizens transformed local experiences of injustice into publicly visible and politically consequential claims. Overall, the book demonstrates that democratic politics depends not only on direct participation by affected groups but also on intermediary actors who mobilise credibility, circulate information, and create solidarities across social and geographical distance.