Social movements and the scaling of memory and justice in Bhopal

Abstract

This paper examines the politics of scale in the commemorative work undertaken by the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), a coalition of social movement organisations (SMOs) seeking justice for the victims of the Bhopal Gas Disaster of 1984. The argument traces how the ICJB attempted to contest the localisation of the disaster by the Indian state and the transnational corporations involved. I outline how the disaster, which had been scaled down from an extraordinary global event to a private non-issue, was re-scaled successfully across multiple scales of meaning and regulation through ICJB’s mobilisation of the frame of ‘second/ongoing poisoning’. This contestation over the scaling of the disaster crucially involved multiple processes of memory-work. Drawing on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, this paper reveals how the remembrance of the disaster functioned as a key site of the discursive and performative re-framings required to reinstate multi-scalar accountability for the disaster. Overall, the paper establishes the utility of the politics of scale approach in mapping the dynamics of the transnational mobilisations of memory by SMOs in pursuit of justice.

Keywords:

• politics of scale
• memory-work
• transnational memory
• social movements
• Bhopal disaster

ORCID

Pawas Bisht http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3173-4501

Notes

1 In 2010, following public uproar in India over the insufficiency of the punishment in the criminal case linked to the disaster, the Government of India was forced to file a curative petition in the Supreme Court of India seeking payments from UCC for the enhancement of financial compensation to the gas survivors and for the clean-up of the contaminated site. These cases continue to languish in court; the Indian state at both the national and the local level has demonstrated no desire to pursue the overturning of the 1989 settlement. UCC and The Dow Chemical Company on their part continue to refer back to the 1989 settlement as being the ‘final determination’ of liability for the disaster and indicate that the liability for the clean-up lies with the local state (see UCC 2017f). The collusion of the state and the corporation in the judicial localisation of the disaster therefore persists despite the filing of the curative petition.

2 The Dow Chemical Company acquired UCC in 2001. UCC remains a separate company, but its stock now is fully owned by The Dow Chemical Company.

3 Other survivors group including the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan (Bhopal Gas Affected Women Workers’ Campaign) have been a part of the ICJB, but their participation has been limited and sporadic. The groups identified here have been a part of the coalition most consistently over the period of its existence and continue to operate as part of it at the time of writing. Mac Sheoin (2014) provides a comprehensive historical account of the dynamics of coalition building involving local organisations in Bhopal and transnational advocacy networks. The specific histories of local organisations working in Bhopal (including the constituents of the ICJB) can be accessed in Bhopal Survivors Speak (Bhopal Survivors Movement Study 2009).

4 Among the other groups operating actively in Bhopal, the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan (Bhopal Gas Affected Women Workers’ Campaign) has at times collaborated with other social movements on a national scale. Unlike the ICJB, however, their scalar connection making does not extend transnationally to the corporations and the Government of USA. The injuries of water victims and the issue of the second disaster also do not feature in their memory-work in a prominent and consistent manner.