The divided family

Long before India ripens for convulsive class struggles, it is ripening for an inter-generational conflict. The Government is too myopic to see it. Social scientists tend to shy away from it. But the phantom is already there, in a "questionable shape".

The longest civil strife in the history of Independent India-the anti-foreigners movement in Assam - has been conceived, led and sustained by the younger generation. A large number of young farmers' movements were on recently in half a dozen states. Much of the violence that sears rural India these days is caused by the refusal of Harijan and tribal youth to submit to injustices and indignities like their fathers did.

In 1974-75 the youth of Bihar and Gujarat gave the JP movement whatever momentum it was able to gather. At any given time at least a dozen universities in the country are paralysed by student unrest.

The younger generation has already thrust itself forward into the arena of active political and social struggles. What is today a high wind may well swell into a tempest in the years to come.

Political revolutions, Aristotle said long ago, are caused not only by the conflict of the rich and the poor but also by struggle between fathers and sons. Before him, Plato found in generational struggle the basic mechanism for political change. For well over a hundred years historians and socio-political analysts in Europe have recognised generational conflict as an engine of upheaval and change. The concept took roots in France in the third decade of the 19th century.

Student revolutionary leaders made their debut in world literature in Victor Hugo'sLes Miserables. In our own time, important pages of the history of the last two decades have been written by the activism of angry youth cohorts in several major countries-France, Germany, the United States and China.

My parents hare never been able to understand me. Most of the time we just don't vibe with each other. Manju Ganapathy, 20, college student There is a lack of communication between us. I do not approve of midnight parties and free mingling of sexes. I do not like my daughter going out with any Tom, Dick and Harry. Today's girls do not realise that we are doing everything for their good. Col. Ganapathy, (father)