You are not Sikkimese enough’: Understanding collective action tendencies of old settlers in Sikkim using SIMCA. 

This paper investigates the motivators and inhibitors of collective action tendencies using the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA), among the old settlers in Sikkim, India. This community settled in Sikkim prior to the state’s merger with India in 1975, and faces discrimination on account of its racial and ethnic distinctiveness from the majority northeasterners in Sikkim. Semi-structured interviews with 11 old settlers were taken to determine SIMCA variables – moral conviction, identity, injustice, and efficacy – within the context of northeast India. Collective action was motivated through moral conviction via principles of equality and unequal treatment and outsider status, identity via politicisation of identity, creation of social movement organisations, injustice via anger and fraternal resentment and efficacy via marches and legal recourses. Collective action was inhibited through moral conviction via denial of violation, identity via acculturation, injustice via fear and efficacy via learned helplessness. These findings indicate that collective action tendencies must be understood from a context-specific lens. Read Here…