Indian Sociology
• One of the earliest pioneers of social anthropology in India, L.K. Ananthakrishna lyer
(1861-1937), began his career as a clerk, moved on to become a school teacher and later a college
teacher in Cochin state in present day Kerala.
• In 1902, he was asked by the Dewan of Cochin to assist with an ethnographic survey of
the state.
• Ananthakrishna lyer was probably the first self-taught anthropologist to receive
national and international recognition as a scholar and an academician.
• He was invited to lecture at the University of Madras, and was appointed as Reader at
the University of Calcutta, where he helped in setting up the first post-graduate anthropology
department in India.
• He remained at the University of Calcutta from 1917 to 1932. He had no formal
qualification in anthropology.
• He was elected President of the Ethnology section of the Indian Science Congress.
• He was awarded an honorary doctorate by German university during his lecture tour of
European universities.
• The lawyer Sarat Chandra Roy (1871-1942) was another 'accidental anthropologist' and
pioneer of the discipline in
India.
• Before taking his law degree in Calcutta's Ripon College, Roy had done graduate and
postgraduate degrees in English. Soon after he had begun practising law, he decided to go to Ranchi in
1898 to take up a job as an English teacher at a Christian missionary school.
• He became the leading authority on the culture and society of the tribal peoples of the
Chhotanagpur region (presently in Jharkhand).
• Roy's interest in anthropological matters began when he gave up his school job and
began practicing law at the Ranchi courts, eventually being appointed as official interpreter in the court.
• Roy became deeply interested in tribal society as a by-product of his professional need
to interpret tribal customs and laws to the court. He travelled extensively among tribal communities and
did intensive field work among them.
• Roy published more than one hundred articles in leading Indian and British academic
journals in addition to his famous monographs on the Oraon, the Mundas and the Kharias.
• He founded the journal Man in India in 1922, the earliest journal of its kind in India that
is still published.
• G.S. Ghurye can be considered the founder of institutionalized sociology in India.
• He headed India's very first post-graduate teaching department of Sociology at Bombay
University for thirty-five years.
• He founded the Indian Sociological Society as well as its journal Sociological Bulletin.
• Ghurye managed to nurture sociology as an increasingly Indian discipline. Ghurye was
first to implement successfully two of the features.
• The active combining of teaching and research within the same institution.
• The merger of social anthropology and sociology into a composite discipline.
• Ghurye wrote on caste, race and themes including tribes, kinship, family and marriage;
culture, civilization and the historic role of cities, religion and the sociology of conflict and integration.
• Ghurye worked on 'tribal', his writings on this subject, and specially his debate with
Verrier Elwin which first made him known outside sociology and the academic world.
• Many British administrator-anthropologists were specially interested in the tribes of
India and believed them to be primitive people with a distinctive culture far from the mainstream of
Hinduism.
• They also believed that the innocent and simple tribals would suffer exploitation and
cultural degradation through contact with Hindu culture and society. For this reason, they felt that the
state had a duty to protect the tribes and to help them sustain their way of life and culture, which were
facing constant pressure to assimilate with mainstream of Hindu culture.
• Ghurye became the best-known exponent of the nationalist view and insisted on
characterizing the tribes of India as 'backward Hindus' rather than distinct cultural groups.
• The 'protectionists' believed that assimilation would result in the severe exploitation
and cultural extinction of the tribals.
• Ghurye and the nationalists, on the other hand, argued that these ill-effects were not
specific to tribal cultures, but were common to all the backward and downtrodden sections of Indian
society.
Ghurye On Race & Caste
• G.S. Ghurye's academic reputation was built on the basis of his doctoral dissertation at
Cambridge, which was later published as Caste and Race in India (1932).
• Ghurye provides a detailed critique of the then dominant theories about the
relationship between race and caste.
• Herbert Risley, a British colonial official who was deeply interested in anthropological
matters, was the main proponent of the dominant view.
• This view held that human beings can be divided into distinct and separate races on the
basis of their physical characteristics such as the circumference of the skull, the length of the nose, or
the volume (size) of the cranium or the part of the skull where the brain is located.
• Risley and others believed that India was a unique 'laboratory' for studying the
evolution of racial types because caste strictly prohibits intermarriage among different groups, and had
done so for centuries.
• In general, the higher castes approximated Indo-Aryan racial traits, while the lower
castes seemed to belong to non-Aryan aboriginal, Mongoloid or other racial groups.
• Risley and others suggested that the lower castes were the aboriginal inhabitants of
India. They had been subjugated by an Aryan people who had come from elsewhere and settled in India.
• Ghurye did not disagree with the basic argument put forward by Risley but believed it
to be only partially correct.
He pointed out the problem with using averages alone without considering the variation in the
distribution of a particular measurement for a given community.
• Ghurye believed that Riley's thesis of the upper castes being Aryan and the lower
castes being non-Aryan was broadly true only for northern India. In other parts of India, the inter-group
differences in the anthropometric measurements were not very large or systematic.
• This suggested that, in most of India except the Indo-Gangetic plain, different racial
groups had been mixing with each other for a very long time.
• Thus, 'racial purity' had been preserved due to the prohibition on inter-marriage only in
'Hindustan proper' (north India). In the rest of the country, the practice of endogamy (marrying only
within a particular caste group) may have been introduced into groups that were already racially varied.
• Ghurye is also known for offering a comprehensive definition of caste. His definition
emphasises the following features :
1. Caste is an institution based on segmental division:
• This means that society is divided into a number of closed, mutually exclusive segments
or compartments. Each caste is one such compartment.
• It is closed because caste is decided by birth - the children bom to parents of a
particular caste will always belong to that caste.
• There is no way other than birth of acquiring caste membership. In short, a person's
caste is decided by birth; it can neither be avoided nor changed.
2. Caste society is based on hierarchical division:
• Each caste is strictly unequal to other caste, that is, every caste is either higher or lower
than other one. In theory (though not in practice), no two castes are ever equal.
• The institution of caste necessarily involves restrictions on social interaction, specially
the sharing of food.
• There are elaborate rules prescribing what kind of food may be shared between which
groups. These rules are governed by ideas of purity and pollution.
• Caste also involves differential rights and duties for different castes.
• These rights and duties pertain not only to religious practices but also extend to the
secular world.
• Caste restricts the choice of occupation, which, like caste itself, is decided by birth and
is hereditary.
• At the level of society, caste functions as a rigid form of the division of labour with
specific occupations being allocated to specific castes.
• Caste involves strict restrictions on marriage. Caste 'endogamy, or marriage only within
the caste, is often accompanied by rules about
'exogamy', or whom one may not marry.
D.P. Mukerji on Tradition and Change
• D.P. Mukerji felt very strongly that the distinctive feature of India was its social system,
and that, therefore, it was important for each social science to be rooted in this context.
• For Mr. Mukerji, this study of tradition was not oriented only towards the past, but also
included sensitivity to change. Thus, tradition was a living tradition, maintaining its links with the past,
but also adapting to the present and thus evolving over time.
• He believed that sociologists should learn and be familiar with both 'high' and low'
languages and cultures - not only Sanskrit, Persian or Arabic, but also local dialects.
• Mr. Mukerji argued that Indian culture and society are not individualistic in the western
sense.
• Indian social system is basically oriented towards groups, sect, or caste-action, not
'voluntaristic' individual action.
Although 'voluntarism' was beginning to influence the urban middle classes.
• Mr. Mukerji pointed out that the root meaning of the word 'tradition' is to transmit. Its
Sanskrit equivalents are either parampara, that is, succession: or aitihya, which comes from the same
root as itihas or history.
• The most commonly cited internal source of change in western societies is the
economy, but this source has not been as effective in India. Class conflict, D.P. believed, had been
"smoothed and covered by caste traditions" in the Indian context, where new class relations had not yet
emerged very sharply.
• He concluded that one of the first tasks for a dynamic Indian sociology would be to
provide an account of the internal, non-economic causes of change.
• Mr. Mukerji believed that there were three principles of change recognized in Indian
traditions, namely; shruti, smriti and anubhava.
• The most important principle of change in Indian society was generalized anubhava, or
the collective experience of groups.
• Mr. Mukerji emphasized that this was true not only of Hindu but also of Muslim culture
in India. In Indian Islam, the Sufis have stressed love and experience rather than holy texts, and have
been important in bringing about change.
• Indian context is not only where discursive reason (buddhi-vichar) is the dominant force
for change; anubhava and prem (experience and love) have been historically superior as agents of
change.
• Mr. Mukerji's views on tradition and change led him to criticise all instances of
unthinking borrowing from western intellectual traditions, including in such contexts as development
planning. Tradition was neither to be worshiped nor ignored, just as modernity was needed but not to be
blindly adopted.
A R Desai
• A.R. Desai is one of the rare Indian sociologists who was directly involved in politics as a
formal member of political parties.
• Desai was a life-long Marxist and became involved in Marxist politics during his
undergraduate days at Baroda, though he later resigned from his membership of the Communist Party of
India.
• Desai joined the Bombay department of sociology to study under Ghurye. He wrote his
doctoral dissertation on the Social aspects of Indian nationalism and was awarded the degree in 1946.
• His thesis was published in 1948 as the Social Background of Indian Nationalism, which
is probably his best known work.
A.R Desai On State
• In an essay called "The Myth of the Welfare State", Desai provides a detailed critique of
this notion and points to its many shortcomings.
• Desai identifies the following unique features of the welfare state :
• A welfare state is a positive state. This means that, unlike the Laissez faire' of classical
liberal political theory, the welfare state does not seek to do only the minimum necessary to maintain
law and order.
• The welfare state is an interventionist state and actively uses its considerable powers to
design and implement social policies for the betterment of society.
• The welfare state is a democratic state. Democracy was considered an essential
condition for the emergence of the welfare state.
• Formal democratic institutions, specially multi-party elections, were thought to be a
defining feature of the welfare state.
• A welfare state involves a mixed economy. A 'mixed economy" means an economy
where both private capitalist enterprises and state or publicly owned enterprises co-exist.
• A welfare state does not seek to eliminate the capitalist market, nor does it prevent
public investment in industry and other fields.
• The state sector concentrates on basic goods and social infrastructure, while private
industry dominates the consumer goods sector.
• Performance of the welfare state can be measured.
• Does welfare state provide employment to all?:
• Even developed countries are unable to reduce economic inequality and often seem to
encourage it.
• The so-called welfare states have also been unsuccessful at enabling stable
development free from market fluctuations.
• The presence of excess economic capacity and high levels of unemployment are yet
another failure.
• Based on these arguments, Desai concludes that the notion of the welfare state is
something of a myth.
• Emphasized the importance of democracy even under communism, arguing strongly
that political liberties and the rule of law must be upheld in all genuinely socialist states.
M N Srinivas
• The best known Indian sociologist of the post-independence era, M.N. Srinivas earned
two doctoral degrees, one from Bombay university and other, from Oxford.
• Srinivas was a student of Ghurye's at Bombay. Srinivas' intellectual orientation was
transformed by the years he spent at the Department of Social Anthropology in Oxford.
• Srinivas doctoral dissertation was published as Religion and Society among the Coorgs
of South India.
• This book established Srinivas international reputation with its detailed ethnographic
application of the structural-functional perspective dominant in British social anthropology.
M N Srinivas On Village
• First of all ethnographic accounts of fieldwork done in villages or discussions of such
accounts.
• A second kind of writing included historical and conceptual discussions about the
Indian village as a unit of social analysis.
• In the latter kind of writing, Srinivas was involved in a debate about the usefulness of
the village as a concept.
• Arguing against village studies, some social anthropologists like Louis Dumont thought
that social institutions like caste were more important than something like a village, which was after all
only a collection of people living in a particular place.
• Villages may live or die, and people may move from one village to another, but their
social institutions, like caste or religion, follow them and go with them wherever they go.
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
1. Mention Ghurye’s contribution to sociology.
G.S. Ghurye is considered the “Father of Indian Sociology.” His contributions include:
• Analyzing the caste system, viewing it as a product of Hindu civilization with six
structural features (e.g., hierarchy, endogamy).
• Introducing the concept of Sanskritization to explain cultural changes in Indian society.
• Emphasizing the integration of sociology and history.
• His works like Caste and Race in India highlighted the interlinkage between caste and
race.
• He laid the foundation for sociological studies in India by institutionalizing sociology as
an academic discipline.
2. Differentiate between the rural and urban society.
• Population: Rural societies have smaller, closely-knit populations; urban areas have
larger, more diverse populations.
• Occupation: Rural societies are agrarian-based; urban societies depend on industrial and
service sectors.
• Social Relationships: Rural communities exhibit strong kinship ties and face-to-face
interactions, while urban areas have impersonal and formal relationships.
• Lifestyle: Rural areas are traditional and community-centered; urban societies are
modern and individualistic.
3. Explain the structural features of caste given by Ghurye.
Ghurye identified six features of the caste system:
1. Segmental Division: Society is divided into fixed groups or castes.
2. Hierarchy: Castes are ranked based on purity and pollution.
3. Endogamy: Marriage is restricted within the caste.
4. Hereditary Occupation: Each caste traditionally has specific occupations.
5. Commensality: Rules govern eating and social interaction among castes.
6. Religious Sanctions: Caste divisions are justified through religious beliefs.
4. What was DP Mukherji’s view about traditions and modernity?
D.P. Mukherji emphasized the coexistence of tradition and modernity in India.
• He viewed tradition as dynamic and evolving, capable of adapting to modern influences.
• Mukherji believed in a “living tradition” that assimilates change without losing its
essence.
• He argued that modernity in India should not replace traditions but coexist and
transform them harmoniously.
5. What is the significance of village studies in the history of Indian sociology? What role did MN
Srinivas play in promoting village studies?
• Village studies are significant because villages form the backbone of Indian society. They
reveal insights into caste, economy, and social structures.
• M.N. Srinivas popularized village studies with his fieldwork approach, using participant
observation. His work on Rampura village introduced concepts like Sanskritization and dominant caste.
• Srinivas emphasized studying Indian society from within rather than relying on colonial
reports.
6. What arguments were given for and against the village as a subject of sociological research by MN
Srinivas and Louis Dumont?
• For: Villages represent traditional India and provide insights into caste, kinship, and rural
economy (Srinivas).
• Against: Louis Dumont argued that focusing on villages isolated them from broader
cultural and national processes, presenting an incomplete picture of Indian society.
7. What is a welfare state? Why is AR Desai critical of the claims made on its behalf?
• A welfare state ensures the well-being of its citizens through social and economic
policies like education, healthcare, and employment.
• A.R. Desai critiqued it, stating it serves capitalist interests while marginalizing the
working class. He argued that the state’s welfare claims are superficial and fail to address structural
inequalities.
8. What are the specificities of Indian culture and society, and how do they affect the pattern of
change?
• Indian society is marked by diversity in language, religion, caste, and traditions.
• Change occurs through processes like Sanskritization, urbanization, and modernization.
• These changes are unique due to India’s historical continuity and the interplay of
tradition and modernity.
9. What does DP Mukherji mean by a ‘living tradition’? Why did he insist that Indian sociologists be
rooted in this tradition?
• A “living tradition” is one that adapts to changing contexts while retaining its core
values.
• Mukherji believed Indian sociologists should be rooted in Indian culture to understand
the society authentically and avoid imposing Western frameworks on Indian realities.
10. Outline the positions of Herbert Risley and GS Ghurye on the relationship between race and caste
in India.
• Herbert Risley: Claimed caste in India is rooted in racial differences, particularly between
Aryans and non-Aryans.
• G.S. Ghurye: Disagreed with Risley, arguing caste is a social institution shaped by cultural
and religious factors rather than race.
11. What were the main arguments on either side of the debate about how to relate to tribal
communities?
• Integrationists: Tribals should integrate into mainstream society for development.
• Isolationists: Tribals should retain their distinct identity and culture.
• Sociologists like Verrier Elwin advocated for protecting tribal traditions, while others
emphasized economic and social integration.
12. How did Ananthakrishna Iyer and Sarat Chandra Roy come to practice social anthropology?
• Ananthakrishna Iyer: Started studying castes and tribes in Kerala, often through
government-commissioned work, and later formalized social anthropology in academic settings.
• Sarat Chandra Roy: A lawyer by profession, he studied tribal communities in Jharkhand,
producing pioneering ethnographic works on tribes like the Oraons and Mundas.
