Indra and Social Movements

There is in the myth of Indra something that resonates with particular force in our era of collective mobilisations, Arab springs, climate movements, social revolts that surge everywhere on the planet with a suddenness and intensity that surprise even their actors: the thunderbolt. The Vajra of Indra does not strike slowly, does not negotiate, does not announce itself long in advance. It strikes when the conditions are right, when the obstruction of Vritra has become unbearable, when the energy accumulated in the community reaches the point where it must be released or it will corrupt. And when it strikes, the waters rush forward, the rivers overflow, the world transforms in a few instants in ways that years of patience had not managed to produce.

This rhythm of social change, made of long periods of silent accumulation followed by sudden and transformative explosions, is precisely what contemporary social sciences struggle to theorise and what social movements themselves struggle to understand from the inside. Why now? Why not before? Why this spark and not another? These questions, which sociologists pose after every great social movement, find in the myth of Indra a response that is not a causal explanation in the scientific sense of the word, but an accurate image of the logic that presides over these ruptures: Vritra has held back the waters too long, the pressure has become unsustainable, and Indra has struck.

But before developing this parallel, it is necessary to understand what Indra truly is in the hymns, beyond the simplistic image of the warrior god who breaks things. Indra is the force that frees what was retained. He is the collective energy of a community that has decided that the obstruction can no longer continue. He does not fight alone: the Maruts accompany him, the rishis support him through their hymns, the entire community gives him its strength by drinking soma and participating in the sacrifice. The victory of Indra over Vritra is always a collective victory, even if it expresses itself through a gesture that seems individual or punctual. And this is precisely what the great social movements have in common: a collective energy accumulated over years or decades, that crystallises in a moment of rupture that seems sudden but is in reality the result of a long invisible maturation.

Contemporary social movements most resemble Indra in this: they have no single centre, no charismatic leader who concentrates all the movement’s energy in themselves, no rigid ideological programme that would define in advance the contours of the sought transformation. The Gilets Jaunes movement in France, the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, the climate mobilisations of Fridays for Future, the Arab Spring revolutions: all these movements emerged in a rhizomatic, distributed, decentralised way, carried by millions of individuals who shared the same indignation at the same obstruction without needing a hierarchical structure to coordinate their action. This form of spontaneous and distributed organisation is structurally Indra-like: it corresponds to the way Indra fights, surrounded by the Maruts who are his allies without being his subordinates, supported by a community that gives him its strength without dissolving into him.

There is however in the myth of Indra a nuance that contemporary social movements often struggle to integrate: the distinction between striking down Vritra and building what comes after. Indra is extraordinarily effective at freeing the retained waters. He is considerably less so at organising what the liberated waters will irrigate. In the hymns, Indra’s victory over Vritra is followed by an explosive abundance, an overflow of what was compressed, but the work of constructing what comes next is not Indra’s work. It is the work of the other gods, of Varuna who maintains order, of Mitra who weaves bonds, of Sarasvati who irrigates knowledge, of an entire divine ecology that takes charge of life after the rupture.

This distinction is crucial for understanding the limits and strengths of contemporary social movements. A social movement is Indra-like in its rupture phase: it knows how to mobilise collective energy to strike down the obstruction, to say no to what is no longer bearable, to open the space that Vritra was closing. It is often much less effective in its constructive phase: once the obstruction is lifted, once the space is opened, something must be built in that space, and this is work that requires different qualities from those that make the power of a social movement. The patience of Varuna, the faithfulness of Mitra, the wisdom of Sarasvati: qualities that are not naturally present in Indra’s thunderbolt.

What the myth of Indra tells us about the conditions for the success of social movements is particularly instructive. In the hymns, Indra is not simply angry. He is sustained by soma, that is to say by an experience of the Truth that gives his struggle a direction and a meaning. His thunderbolt does not strike at random. It strikes Vritra, precisely, because Vritra is identified as the specific obstruction that the community needs to lift so that the waters can flow again. This precision in the target is what distinguishes the liberating force of Indra from blind violence: he knows what he is fighting and why, because the community has a clear vision of what the liberated waters will need to nourish.

Social movements that succeed in durably transforming societies share this characteristic: they are not only against something. They are for something, and this something is sufficiently precise and sufficiently shared to give a direction to the collective energy. The civil rights movement in the United States knew what the liberation of the waters was meant to nourish: the civil and political equality of African Americans. The labour movement of the early twentieth century knew what it wanted to build in the space opened by its struggles: labour rights, social protections, a redistribution of wealth. These movements had their Varuna and their Mitra, not only their Indra.

The question that the myth of Indra poses to contemporary social movements is therefore this: do you have a sufficiently clear vision of what you want to build in the space you are opening? Do you have, beyond the energy of rupture, the wisdom of what comes after? Do you have, alongside your Indra, your Varuna and your Mitra? This is not a criticism of social movements. It is an invitation to recognise that the thunderbolt that strikes down Vritra and the wisdom that builds what follows are two different forms of energy, both necessary, and that the movements that succeed in combining them are those that durably change the world.

There is finally in the myth of Indra a dimension we have not yet mentioned and that is perhaps the most important for thinking about contemporary social movements: the question of soma. Indra drinks soma before fighting. This detail is not anecdotal. It says that the force that strikes down Vritra is not simply anger or indignation, however legitimate these may be. It is a force sustained by the experience of the Truth, by a direct vision of what is and what should be. Soma dissolves the egotistic constructions that cause one to fight for one’s own interests rather than for the common good, that cause one to seek to take Vritra’s place rather than to free the waters for all.

Social movements that lose this dimension, that allow themselves to be captured by the egos of their leaders, by internal power logics, by the temptation to reproduce the structures of domination they were fighting against, lose something essential to their transformative capacity. They become Indras without soma: powerful, but striking in all directions, incapable of distinguishing what deserves to be freed from what deserves to be preserved. The soma of a social movement is its capacity to remain in contact with the fundamental Truth that set it in motion, with the clear vision of what is unjust and what would be just, despite the pressures, the compromises and the temptations that inevitably accompany every movement that gains in scale.