Sociology in India

G.S Ghurye
 His Sanskrit education
exposed him to a wide range
G. S. Ghurye majored in
of ancient Indian texts,
English and Sanskrit during
inspiring in him an interest
graduation and post-
for the evolution and nature
graduation.
of civilisations, especially in
the Indian subcontinent.

History and sociology to him

are almost the same and a
For Ghurye the source of
sociologist should be
India’s social history was
concerned with the task of
classical religious literature.
exploring the social history of
the past
 Caste
• Caste is an institution based on segmental division. This means that
caste society is divided into a few closed, mutually exclusive segments or
compartments.

• Caste society is based on hierarchical division. Each caste is strictly

unequal to every other caste, that is, every caste is either higher or lower
than every other one.

• The institution of caste necessarily involves restrictions on social

interaction, especially the sharing of food. There are elaborate rules
prescribing what kind of food may be shared between which groups.
• Caste also involves differential rights and duties for different castes. These
rights and duties pertain not only to religious practices but extend to the
secular world.

• Caste restricts the choice of occupation, which is decided by birth and is

hereditary.

• Caste involves strict restrictions on marriage. Caste endogamy or marriage

only within the caste, is often accompanied by rules about exogamy of
whom one may not marry.
Tribe
• The Scheduled Tribe of India 1943

• The Burning Cauldron of Northeast India 1980

• Ghurye presents details of the various

practices of the tribes in Central India, who
have adopted Hinduism.

• Ghurye is commenting on the term ‘Adivasi’

which is commonly used to describe the
indigenous tribal communities in India.
• He argues that the use of this term has caused significant harm,
particularly by undermining efforts to create harmony among the diverse
racial and ethnic groups in India.

• His concern as that by distinguishing tribes from caste groups, it would

challenge the broader national integration that was essential for the unity
of India.

• Ghurye feared that recognising tribes as distinct from the rest of Indian
society would create division rather than fostering a sense of collective
identity and unity.
 Culture and Civilisation
• Culture has a single origin and through contact it has spread
through communities.
• Ghurye’s perspectives in the study of culture prescribed the
diffusionist idea that the history of a culture is not within
the country, and we must look beyond the region to
understand this.
• Ghurye , in developing the concept of culture and
civilisation strongly adhered to the Indo Aryan and
Brahmanical influences in the maintenance of cultural
unity.
• He believed that the non –Aryan culture that were in practice within India,
underwent acculturation to integrate to Aryan culture that developed into
the Indian civilisation.

• Acculturation is the process by which a culture adapts or borrows traits

from either prevailing culture of the society or the cultural environment
they wish to adapt for.
D P Mukerji
• DIALECTICAL APPROACH : It
focused on the economic o materialist
interpretation, social relations, and the
process of social change in the Indian
society.
He considered himself as a 'Marxologist'
and he was quest interested in the
Marxian methodology and kept a
distance from the Marxian ideology or
dogmas.

He used dialectical historical method to

analyse social change in Indian society.
He focused on the study of the
emergence of new middle class as a result
of British colonialism and subsequent
developments.
• Tradition and Modernity

• The social, political, and economic changes that happened in India as a

result of colonial invasion.

• The word meaning of tradition is ‘to transmit’, transmission of cultural

elements from one generation to another.

• In Modern Indian culture (1942) and Diversities (1958) D.P Mukherji

tried to understand the nature and significance of Indian tradition and
its engagement with modern Indian social reality.

• For D. P, tradition is not a static one, but it is constantly changing

according to different social and political changes
• The rootedness in the past does not reject the possibility of change in the
traditions.

• It indicates the possibility of constant changes and adaptations to the historical

situations and contexts.

• It also does not rule out the presence of internal or external sources of change in
the society.

• According to him the first and primary important duty of Indian sociologist is
the study of Indian tradition. This study will help us to unearth the relationships
between the economic or material relation and social change in Indian society.
• In Modern Indian culture:

✓ A sociological study published in 1942

✓DP considered Indian Tradition as a result of social and historical

process.
✓Different socio-political-religious and Economic factors contributed for
the development of this tradition.

✓Interactions between religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam

played an important role in the shaping of a synergetic culture and
traditions link India have.
• As we know, tradition is not a static one, it face different challenges and
change according to the socio-political and economic contexts.

• The modernization process is a quest for a push to higher stage of

development.

• In his works D P tried to understand nature and meaning of the Indian

traditions and different ways to change it for the welfare of the common
people.

• His dialectical materialist perspective focused on the dialectical relationship

between Indian tradition and modernity.
IRAWATI KARVE
• FIELD VIEW : The advocates of “field
view” believed that it is more suited to
understanding contemporary society
than the “book view” which constructed
India from the classical hindu texts.
Irawati Karve is the first Indian woman sociologist and anthropologist.
She studied sociology under G S Ghurye.

Born on December 15, 1905, and died on August 11, 1970

she lived through the phases of growth of sociology as a discipline and

also its professionalization in India.

she supplements the arguments developed from the textual sources

with abundant research findings through her field work and genetic
evidence.

She even questions the notion of Ghurye that caste was the product of
Indo-Aryan culture, with her field data.
 KINSHIP ORGANISATION IN INDIA

• Kinship Organisation in India was published in 1953

• The study of kinship for Karve was through understanding linguistic, caste
and family organization.

• Her approach to kinship studies adopted a historical perspective and she

studied the ethnographic sources, Sanskritic texts and the folk literatures to
study the regional differences and patterns of Kinship organisation in India
• Karve observes that the Indian kinship organization with its variation, is
united at the point of clan exogamy and caste endogamy.

• Marriage across the Indian subcontinent was acceptable only within the
same caste or tribe, making it caste endogamous.

• Marriage within the family, that is, between parents and children or
between siblings was strictly forbidden, hence making the marriage clan
exogamous.
M. N. SRINIVAS
• Structural functionalist : The
structural functionalist approach
studied the functional expression of
caste in the society through
extensive fieldwork, rather than
looking for textual and Indological
sources to legitimate the origin and
structure.
• M.N. Srinivas was Born 16
November 1916
• His early education was at Mysore
University, and he later went to
Bombay to do an MA under G.S.
Ghurye
• He also founded the department
of sociology in the Delhi
University.
• As a strong advocate of field-
based research in Indian sociology,
he was able to reframe and
develop new concepts, especially
with respect to the persistence
and transformation of caste in
India.
 The concept of Sanskritisation was introduced
into sociology of India by M. N. Srinivas in his
doctoral dissertation on the religion of Coorgs.

He notes that the castes in the higher positions

of caste hierarchy are more sanskritised and the
lower caste and outlying tribes tend to adopt
Sanskritisation these practices to improve their status.

Sanskritisation is the process by which a ‘low’

Hindu caste or tribal or other group, change its
customs , ritual, ideology, and way of life in the
direction of a high and frequently , twice born
caste.
 Dominant caste as a sociological term was
developed by M.N. Srinivas to address the
emergence of a certain caste in any region as
having a greater economic and political position

M.N. Srinivas developed this concept in the

context of his study of Rampura village in
Dominant Mysore. Through this, he tried to understand
Caste the social, economic and political life of the
rural communities and their day-to-day life.

The numerical strength and economic and

political power of a caste group will decide the
power of the caste group in the particular region
and their position in the caste hierarchy.
 Characteristics of a
dominant caste
• Numerical strength : To exert dominance a caste
should occupy a considerable portion of the total
population.
• Economic power : In the village, a caste that owns
the most percentage of the land will have a great
control of the society within the village.
• Political power : They hold positions of political
power and have established strong relations with
other political leaders and elected representatives.
In the village, the panchayat and other local
governing bodies are often controlled by these
castes.
B. R.
AMBEDKAR
• SUBALTERN
PERSPECTIVE : The
study of the subaltern
literally means that
perspective from below;
for a consciousness spread
among the people or
society.
Subaltern studies examine the "binary relationship" of the subaltern and the
governing classes, and thus analyse the relationship of dominance and
subordination in colonial systems.

The downtrodden underclass in a culture where the hegemon exercised

hegemony was the subject of India's subaltern sociology.

Ambedkar's subaltern philosophy placed emphasis on the Dalits’

empowerment and emancipation.

B.R. Ambedkar was born into the untouchable caste of Mahar-Dalit.

Writings of
Ambedkar
● The Untouchables, Who
are they?
● Who were the Shudras?
● State and Minorities?
● Emancipation of the
Untouchables
● Annihilation of Caste
 Concept of Dalit
• The concept of Dalit is mainly used to refer to the
Schedule Caste, which denotes the untouchable
caste or depressed classes.
• The term "Dalit" includes all the oppressed and
exploited sections of society.
• The untouchables were placed at the bottom of the
hierarchy and had different names in different
regions of the country.
• Mahatma Gandhi called them "Harijan-Hari",
meaning "God". "Jan" means people or man. It
literally means "Man of God.“
• Dalits belong to the bottom line of the hierarchical
social structure. He asserted that, "Dalits will be
uplifted by education because it will make them
more inclined to organise and agitate for their
rights."
 Annihilation of Caste

• B. R. Ambedkar wrote the famous speech

Annihilation of Caste in 1936.
• In the essay, Ambedkar criticised the Hindu
religion. He identified that Hinduism has lots of
ideological splits.
• Ambedkar argues in Annihilation of Caste that
eliminating the notion of the Shastras' purity and
rejecting their authority is the only long-term
approach to attaining a truly casteless society.
• Ambedkar wrote a book titled Riddles in
Hinduism in 1954–1955, which was critical of
Hindu holy writings and epics
 Constitutional Democracy
• According to Ambedkar, Indian society was a structure
that did not allow for the development of the equality
and fraternity sentiments that are necessary for a
democratic type of government.
• Constitutional democracy was the focus of his primary
area of study. He was a crucial figure in creating the
framework for India's constitution.
• On August 15, 1947, Ambedkar accepted Jawaharlal
Nehru's offer to become the State of India's minister of
law.
• Two weeks later, Ambedkar was appointed chairman
of the committee responsible for writing the future
Republic of India's constitution.
• The Indian constitution guarantees and safeguards a
wide range of civil liberties for individual citizens,
including freedom of religion, the abolition of
untouchability, and the prohibition of all forms of
discrimination.