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UNIT 2 (Paper II)

Debate on Tradition and Modernity in India!
Yogendra Singh has defined Indian society and its traditions with reference to
hierarchy, holism, transmigration or continuity and transcendence. He argues that
the Indian society also contains traditions of Islam and tribals. Prior to Yogendra
Singh, the preceding sociologists such as D.P. Mukerji, D.N. Majumdar, M.N.
Srinivas, G.S. Ghurye, A.R. Desai, Milton Singer and others have also made
efforts to provide an explanation to the meaning of tradition in Indian society.

In the study of modernization in India, tradition has always been an obsession.

During the 1950s, there was a hot debate in India on tradition and modernity. In the
west also, when modernization began after enlightenment, there was a serious
debate on religion, science, state and fundamentalism.

Feudalism was challenged by rationality, capitalism and science. In India,

modernity needs to be analyzed in the context of liberalism, democracy and
capitalism. The Britishers had colonial power to exploit the Indian masses, but in
their effort they also wanted not to interfere in the traditional structure of Indian
society.

The princely rulers were highly antagonistic to modernity. Their survival depended
on the continuity and strengthening of tradition. And, therefore, in Indian situation
also, it is quite meaningful to discuss modernity in terms of India’s traditions and
hence the obsession.

1. D.P. Mukerji’s analysis of tradition:

Dhurjati Prasad Mukerji (1894-1961), popularly called as D.P., was one of the
founding fathers of sociology in India. He was born in West Bengal but worked all
through his life in Lucknow. He took his degrees in history and economics from
Calcutta University. He was a Marxist but preferred to call himself a Marxiologist,
i.e., a social scientist of Marxism.

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He analyzed Indian society from the Marxian perspective of dialectical

materialism. He argued that there is dialectical relation between India’s tradition
and modernity, British colonialism and nationalism and individualism and
collectivity, i.e., sangha. His concept of dialectics was anchored in liberal
humanism.

He argued all through his works that traditions are central to the understanding of
Indian society. The relations between modernization which came to India during
the British period and traditions is dialectical. It is from this perspective of
dialectics that, D.P. argued, we shall have to define traditions.

The encounter of tradition with modernization created certain cultural

contradictions, adaptations and in some cases situations of conflict also. Describing
the consequences of the tradition-modernity encounter, Yogendra Singh writes:

In D.P. Mukerji’s writing we find some systematic concern with the analysis of
Indian social processes from a dialectical frame of reference. He mainly focuses
upon the encounter of the tradition with that of the west which, on the one hand,
unleashed many forces of cultural contradiction and, on the other, gave rise to a
new middle class. The rise of these forces, according to him, generates a dialectical
process of conflict and synthesis which must be given a push by bringing into play
the conserved energies of the class structure of Indian society.

The encounter between tradition and modernity, therefore, ends up in two

consequences:

(1) Conflict, and

(2) Synthesis.

Indian society as D.P. envisages is the result of the interaction between tradition
and modernity. It is this dialectics which helps us to analyze the Indian society.
D.P.’s concept of tradition appeared for the first time in the year 1942 when his
book Modern Indian Culture: A Sociological Study was published. His
characterization of tradition in the context of Indian culture runs as below:

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As a social and historical process … Indian culture represents certain common

traditions that have given rise to a number of general attitudes. The major
influences in their shaping have been Buddhism, Islam, and western commerce and
culture. It was through the assimilation and conflict of such varying forces that
Indian culture became what it is today, neither Hindu nor Islamic, neither a replica
of the western mode of living and thought nor a purely Asiatic product.

Composition of tradition:
Indian traditions are the resultants of certain historical processes. They actually
construct the structure of Indian culture. These traditions belong to several
ideologies such as Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, tribals and western modernity.
The process of synthesis has, therefore, constructed these traditions.

In this respect, it would be mistaken to believe that India’s traditions are Hindu
only. In fact, they combine traditions of various ethnic groups of the country. How
the principles of various religious ideologies shaped the Indian traditions has been
interpreted by T.N. Madan as below:

In this historical process, synthesis had been the dominant organizing principle of
the Hindu, the Buddhist and the Muslim who had together shaped a worldview in
which, according to D.P., ‘the fact of being was of lasting significance’.

His favorite quotation from the Upanishads was charaivati, keep moving forward.
This meant that there had developed an indifference to the transient and the sensate
and a preoccupation with the subordination of the ‘little self to and ultimately its
dissolution in the ‘supreme reality’.

D.P. tried to provide a classification of Indian traditions under three heads, viz.,
primary, secondary and tertiary. The primary traditions have been primordial and
authentic to Indian society. The secondary traditions were given second ranking
when the Muslims arrived in the country.

And by the time of the British arrival, Hindus and Muslims had yet not achieved a
full synthesis of traditions at all levels of social existence. There was a greater
measure of agreement between them regarding the utilization and appropriation of
natural resources and to a lesser extent in respect of aesthetic and religious

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traditions. In the tertiary traditions of conceptual thought, however, differences

survived prominently.

Sources of tradition:
Admittedly, traditions occupy a central place in any analysis of India’s traditions
and modernization. But D.P. has not given the contents of these traditions. The
major sources of traditions are Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and western culture,
but what traditions, for instance, of Hinduism or Islam constitute the broader
Indian tradition has not been made specific by D.P.

His weakness in this respect has been identified by T.N. Madan who says that the
general make up of Indian tradition according to D.P. could be a synthesis of
Vedanta, western liberation and Marxism. But, what about the synthesis of Islam
and Buddhism? D.P. fails to provide any such synthesis of other major traditions.
T.N. Madan comments on this failure of D.P. as under:

An equally important and difficult undertaking would be the elaboration and

specification of his conception of the content of tradition. Whereas he establishes,
convincingly I think, the relevance of tradition to modernity at the level of
principle, he does not spell out its empirical content except in terms of general
categories. One uncomfortable feeling that he himself operated more in terms of
institution and general knowledge than a deep study of the texts. A confrontation
with tradition through field work in the manner of the anthropologist was, of
course, ruled out by him, at least for himself.

Indian sociologists have talked enough about tradition but little effort has been
made to identify the sources and content of tradition. And, this goes very well
when we talk about D.P. Mukerji. Let us see other sociologists who have also
written about tradition.

2. D.N. Majumdar:
Dhirendra Nath Majumdar (1903-1960) began his career as an anthropologist at
Calcutta University, where he received his Master’s Degree in 1924. He joined
Lucknow University in 1928 and stayed there for the rest of his life. His initial
interest at Lucknow was in ethnographic tradition. He studied the customs and
beliefs of tribes and castes.

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His understanding of Indian traditions, therefore, came through his study of tribals.
Close to his interest in tribal groups, he also conducted studies of Indian villages.
As a social anthropologist, Majumdar’s area of interest was culture. He tried to
construct development of local cultures out of his study of tribal groups and
villages. In this effort of his study, he was drawn to the central role of traditions in
the development of culture. The content of his culture, naturally, was tradition.

His statement in terms of the relationship between tradition and culture is

given below:
The past must be understood in the context of the present, and the present will
stabilize the future if it can find its fulfillment in the moorings of the past. There
was no golden age; there can be none in the future. Life is a process of adjustment
and in its unfolding, it has thrown out individuals who are misfit and the latter have
both helped and hindered cultural progress; the misfits are misfits in the context of
a dynamic setting, and if only, the misfits could be fitted into the structure of life,
the process that is life will continue to unfold itself, adjust and march as to man’s
destiny through an integration and synthesis that constitute the core of the
dynamics of culture change and culture crises.

Though the ideological perspectives of D.P. Mukerji and D.N. Majumdar are
different – the former being a Marxist and the latter a functionalist, both agree to a
synthesis of tradition and modernity. D.P. talks about adaptive changes to
modernity whereas Majumdar argues that those who are misfits to modernity will
be obliged to fit themselves with the modernizing system.

However, it must be noted that D.P. was much oriented to philosophy and
economics and Majumdar was essentially a field worker. Because of his field
experience, he referred to modernity in terms of ethnographic tradition belonging
to customs and traditions of tribes, castes and villages.

3. G.S. Ghurye:
Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1893-1983) is considered to be one of the pioneers of
sociology in India. He joined Bombay University’s Sociology Department in the
year 1924 and retired from there in 1959. He was born in a conservative
Maharashtrian Brahmin family. This family conservatism remained with him all
through his life. He was a voracious writer and had authored 32 books on a variety

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of themes. Ideologically, he was a doctrinaire Hindu and considered Hindu

scriptures as the major source of his Indian society’s analysis.

During his creative period of writing Indian sociology was engaged in the debate
on tradition and modernity. But Ghurye did not enter into this controversy. Nor he
took up the issue of the role of traditions in Indian society. As an orientalist,
however, he stressed the importance of Indian traditions, especially the Hindu
ethnography.

Ghurye analyzed Hindu society as a part of wider Indian civilization. For him,
tradition was a heuristic method for sociological analysis. Indian traditions are
actually Hindu traditions and to understand Indian society one must know the
Hindu traditions. His wider Hindu society consists of tribals and other non-Hindu
groups.

Traditions, he insists, are essentially Hindu traditions. Whatever group we may

discuss in India, it has its origin in Hindu civilization. In his work, Social Tensions
in India (1968), he argues that Hindus and Muslims are two separate and cultural
distinct groups that can hardly have any chances of integration.

His views on the integration of tribal groups are very clear. The Aborigines: So-
called and their Future is his controversial book wherein he establishes that the
scheduled tribes are backward caste Hindus and their future rests with the Hindu
society.

It would not be wrong to suggest that Ghurye created a special kind of Hindu
sociology and the traditions which we have in India are Hindu traditions only.
Despite Ghurye’s prolific writings on issues pertaining to Indian society, he has not
defined traditions. Nor has he discussed the impact of modernity.

His sole concern has keen to establish that the core of Hindu society and, in this
sense, the Indian society, is tradition and this tradition has its roots in its scriptures.
Religious beliefs, karma kand, rituals and practices of this kind constitute the
structure of traditions. Polity and economy hardly get any scope in Ghurye’s
discussion.

4. M.N. Srinivas:

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M.N. Srinivas considers village as the microcosm of Indian society and

civilization. It is the village, which retains the traditional components of India’s
tradition. Srinivas (1916-1999) occupies an eminent place among the first-
generation sociologists of India.

He belongs to the galaxy of sociologists such as G, S. Ghurye, R.K. Mukherjee,

N.K. Bose and D.P. Mukerji. He conducted fieldwork among the Coorgs and came
out with his publication. Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India
(1952). Dumont and Pocock consider the book as a classic in India’s sociology. It
is in this work that Srinivas provides a basic structure of India’s traditions. T.N.
Madan hails the publication in these words:

The strength of the Coorg lies in its being firmly grounded in a clearly defined
theoretical framework which happened to be essentially the one developed by
Radcliffe-Brown who suggested the theme of the dissertation to Srinivas. Religion
and society is a very lucid exposition of the complex interrelationship between
ritual and social order in Coorg society. It also deals at length and insightfully with
crucial notions of purity and pollution as also with the process of incorporation of
non-Hindu communities and cults in the Hindu social order and way of life.

In Religion and Society, Srinivas was concerned with the spread of Hinduism. He
talked about ‘Sanskritic’ Hinduism and its values. Related to this was the notion of
‘Sanskritization’ which Srinivas employed “to describe the hoary process of the
penetration of Sanskritic values into the remotest parts of India. Imitation of the
way of life of the topmost, twice-born castes was said to be the principle
mechanism by which lower castes sought to raise their own social status”.

Curiously, Srinivas did not take up for consideration the phenomenon of the
persistence of the masses of Hindus of low or no status within the caste system.
For him, the most significant aspect of the history of the Coorgs, worthy of being
recorded and discussed, was the history of this incorporation into the Hindu social
order.

Srinivas thinks that the only meaningful social change is that which takes place
among the weaker sections for attaining higher status by imitating values of twice-
born. And those of the lower castes and tribal groups who fail in this race of
imitation are doomed to remain backward.
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Srinivas spells the doom as below:

Splinter groups like Amma Coorgs are decades, if not centuries, in advance of their
parent groups; the former have solved this problem by sanskritizing their customs
entirely while the latter are more conservative. What Srinivas spells out about the
imitating lower castes seems to be the announcement of a new age. If we attempt
to identify traditions of Indian society, according to Srinivas, these are found
among the high castes – the twice-born. In other words, the traditions, rituals and
beliefs which are held and shared by the Brahmins, the Baniyas and the Rajputs
constitute Indian traditions.

And, the beliefs of the lower sections of society, the untouchables and the tribals
do not have any status as tradition. For him, Indian traditions are high-caste Hindu
traditions, lower caste traditions are no Indian traditions. Obviously, Srinivas
anchors tradition into sanskritization. Srinivas was actually interested in caste.

He considered it to be the ‘structural basis’ of Hinduism. He was not fascinated by

Hinduism in its holistic form. He looked for it in the caste system. Thus, his thesis
of Indian traditions runs something like this: “Indian traditions are Hindu
traditions, and Hindu traditions are found in caste system. Holistic Hinduism is
beyond his scope of discourse.”

Besides caste, Srinivas looks for yet another source or manifestation of tradition.
He found it in the notion of ‘dominant caste’. He first proposed it in his early
papers on the village Rampura. The concept has been discussed and applied to a
great deal of work on social and political organization in India.

Srinivas was criticized for this concept with the charge that it was smuggled from
the notion of ‘dominance’ which emerged from African sociology. Repudiating the
critique Srinivas asserted that the idea of dominant caste given by him had its
origin in the fieldwork of Coorgs of South India.

His fieldwork had impressed upon him that communities, such as the Coorgs and
the Okkaligas, wielded considerable power at the local level and shared such social
attributes as numerical preponderance, economic strength and clean ritual status.

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He further noted that the dominant caste could be a local source of sanskritization,
or a barrier to its spread. Sanskritization and dominant caste are therefore
representating of Indian tradition. And, in this conceptual framework, the traditions
of the lower castes and Dalits have no place, nowhere in village India; the
subaltern groups occupy the status of dominant caste.

Besides religion and caste, the third tradition component of Srinivas study is
village. Srinivas got the seed idea of studying India’s villages from his mentor
Radcliffe-Brown in 1945-46. When settled in India after his return from Oxford, he
conducted the study of Rampur – a Mysore village – which gave him the concept
of dominant caste. The study has been contained in the Remembered Village
(1976). It is here only that Srinivas takes some time to discuss social and economic
changes which have taken place in Rampura. He informs:

Technological change occupied a prominent place in the life of the people of

Rampura soon after independence. Technological change, of course, went hand in
hand with economic, political and cultural changes.

Here, in this part of the article, we are concerned about the meaning and definition
of tradition in Indian context. The life mission of Srinivas has been to understand
Indian society. And, for him, Indian society is essentially a caste society. He has
studied religion, family, caste and village in India. He was a functionalist and was
influenced by Radcliffe-Brown, Robert Redfield and partly Evans-Pritchard.
These anthropologists were functionalists of high stature. Ideologically, they
believed in status quo: let the Dalits survive as Dalits and let the high castes enjoy
their hegemony over subaltern. Srinivas’ search for the identity of traditions makes
him infer that the Indian traditions are found in caste, village and religion. For him,
it appears that Indian social structure is on par with the advocates of Hindutva say,
the cultural nationalism.

Srinivas though talks about economic and technological development, all through
his works he pleads for change in caste, religion and family. Even in the study of
these areas he sidetracks lower segments of society. They are like ‘untouchables’
for him. Srinivas has extensively talked about the social evils of caste society; he
pleads for change in caste system and discusses westernization and modernization
as viable paradigms of changes.

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But his perspective of change is Brahmanical Hinduism or traditionalism. In his

zeal for promoting sanskritization, he has marginalized and alienated religious
minorities. For him, Indian traditions are those, which are manifested in caste and
village. His traditions are Hinduized traditions, and in no sense secular ones.

Srinivas in a straightforward way rejects secularism and stands in favour of Hindu

traditions. In his critique of Indian secularism which appeared in a short article in
the Times of India in 1993, he finds secularism wanting because he believes that
India needs a new philosophy to solve the cultural and spiritual crisis facing the
country and that philosophy cannot be secular humanism.

It has to be firmly rooted in God as creator and protector. Srinivas’ construction of

sanskritization and dominant caste put him closer to Hindutva ideology of cultural
nationalism. At this stage of our discussion on India’s traditions it can be said that
any tradition emanating from caste system cannot be nation’s tradition as the
constitution has rejected caste.

5. A.R. Desai:
A.R. Desai is a doctrinaire Marxist. He rejects any interpretation of tradition with
reference to religion, rituals and festivities. It is essentially a secular phenomenon.
Its nature is economic and it originates and develops in economics. He finds it in
family, village and other social institutions.

He also does not find the origin of tradition in western culture. Quite like other
Marxists, he employs production relations for the explanation of traditional social
background of Indian nationalism is his classical work. The book is an excellent
effort to trace the emergence of Indian nationalism from dialectical perspective.

According to him, India’s nationalism is the result of the material conditions

created by the British colonialism. The Britishers developed new economic
relations by introducing industrialization and modernization. The economic
relationship is predominantly a stabilizing factor in the continuity of traditional
institutions in India, which would undergo changes as these relations change.

Desai thinks that when traditions are linked with economic relations, the change in
the latter would eventually change the traditions. It is in this context that he thinks

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that caste will disintegrate with the creation of new social and material conditions,
such as industries, economic freedom, education, etc.

A.R. Desai’s definition of tradition is a watershed. He does not trace it from caste,
religion and ritual. The dialectal history of India that he presents very clearly
shows that traditions have their roots in India’s economy and production relations.
Despite merit of the dialectical approach applied by A.R. Desai in the definition of
tradition, Yogendra Singh argues that the merits are not without their weaknesses.

What is wrong with A.R. Desai is that he is very profound when he applies
principles of Marxism in analyzing Indian situations, but fails at the level of
empirical support. In other words, his theoretical framework can be challenged by
the strength of substantial data. The critique of Yogendra Singh runs as under:

The important limitation of the dialectical approach for studies of social change in
India is the lack of substantial empirical data in support of its major assertions,
which are often historiographic and can easily be challenged.

In theoretical terms, however, this approach can be most viable for analysis of the
processes of change and conflict in India provided it is founded upon a sound
tradition of scientific research. Despite this limitation, some studies conducted on
this model offer useful hypotheses, which can be further tested in course of the
studies on social change.

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