PERSPECTIVES ON STUDY OF INDIAN SOCIETY

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UPSC SOCIOLOGY Syllabus – Paper 2 – Chapter 1 – Introducing Indian Society

(a) Indology  (GS. Ghurye).
(b) Structural functionalism  (M N Srinivas).
(c) Marxist sociology  ( A R Desai).

 

  •  Sociological research in India started long before the arrival of formal sociology by British administrators.
  • The lack of a proper grasp and appreciation of Indian social realities, the inadequate, and often inaccurate, understanding of local customs and traditions, and misinterpretations about different institutional arrangements led the colonial administrators to make use of sociology and social anthropology to smoothly run the colonial administration.
  • A vast difference could be seen between the Western and Indian intellectual development. ‘Religion’ had a great impact on the mind-set of western and modern intellectuals, whereas in India, the thinkers paid more emphasis on ‘secularism’.
  • Although, at the same time Indian sociologists were positively influenced by the Western traditions of the philosophy of rationalism, positivism, and historical materialism.
  • Moreover, the pioneers of Indian sociology drew their value premises and perspective on studying Indian society from the nationalist reformation leadership of the nineteenth century.

 

INDOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

  • Indology is known as the science of Indian Society.
  • The Indological perspective claims to understand Indian Society through the concepts, theories and frameworks that are closely
    associated with Indian Civilization.
  • It made a claim that Indian Society is unique in structure, function and dynamics and cannot be associated with the European Society. Indology relies on book view and culture and denounces rigorous empirical investigation. Indology is both an approach to study the Indian Society and also an independent discipline with Indian Society as subject matter.
  • In both the form Indology consists of studying language, beliefs, ideas, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, rituals, ceremonies and other related components of culture.
  • Focusing on the origin of the perspective , Indological Perspective owes its origin to the contribution of the Orientalists like William Jones, Henery Maine, Max Muller etc. They have contributed tremendously for the development of the society and from their contribution there was the evolving of Indological Perspective.
  • All of them have based their studies on rich cultural tradition of India and the principle that govern India and out laws of Hindu. Therefore they were also called as the Indologist.
  • Many founding fathers of Indian Sociology are also influenced by Indology.
  • The various scholars are like B.K. Sarkar, G.S. Ghurye, R.K. Mukherjee, K.M. Kapadia, Irawati Karve, P.H. Prabhu, Louis Dumont.

 

STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM

  • Structural-Functional approach in the study of society emerged from the writings of early thinkers like August Comte, Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim during the later part of 19th
    century and became a predominant trend in sociology, social and cultural anthropology and other social sciences during the first half of 20th century. 
  •  Radcliffe-Brown defines function of any social institution in terms of the contribution it makes to the maintenance of the whole society. Functionalism begins with the observation that behaviour in society is structured. Relationships between the members of society are organized in terms of rules or norms and hence patterned and recurrent. Values provide general guidelines for behaviour.
  • The Structural-functional approach has been a predominant approach in the study of Indian society since the 1940s till the end of the 20th century.
  • Students of Indian society, both sociologists and social anthropologists, have undertaken extensive analysis of the caste and village systems in order to understand the unique nature the Indian society.
  • Among the Indian scholars, G. S. Ghurye, M. N. Srinivas and S. C. Dube may be considered to be in the forefront of structural-functional approach in the study of Indian society. The structural- functionalists view that the Indian society is made up of castes as significant parts that collectively constitute the social system.

 

MARXIST TRADITION

  • Marxism aims at providing a scientific study of society from a class angle.
  • The Marxist thinkers in India believe that the emergence of Indian society and its unique institutions could be best examined from the Marxian perspective than any other approach since the only reality is that of material phenomenon that determines everything else.
  • The material mode of production forms the basic structure of any society and the socio-cultural domain of social relationships and institutions constitute the ‘superstructure’. D.D. Kosambi was one of the well known Marxist historians who tried to employ the Marxian dialectical method to analyze ‘materialism’ of Indian social system.
  • The study of Indian Society from Marxian Perspective has been done by scholars like D.P. Mukherjee, M.N. Dutta, D. D. Kosambi, A. R. Desai, P.C. Joshi and others.
  • Among all the scholars of Marxist perspective the scholars whose work has been very significant are A.R. Desai, D.P. Mukherjee and Ramkrishna Mukherjee. They have adopted the dialectical- historical approach for studying Indian Society.

 

SUBALTERN VIEW

  • Sub Altern Studies began its impressive career in England at the end of the 1970s, when conversations on subaltern themes among a small group of English and Indian historians led to a proposal to launch a new journal in India. But Subaltern Studies began in India, where writing about Subaltern Studies began in book reviews.
  • The Subaltern Studies emerged in 1982 as a critique of two contending schools of the modern Indian history, namely that of the Cambridge and of the nationalist-Marxist historians.
  • Both these schools, from a Subaltern perspective, constructed history of Indian nationalism as a story of achievement of a tiny elite group.
  • Therefore, they “could not explain the contributions made by people on their own, that is, independent of the elite to the making and development of this nationalism”. This necessitated the Subaltern Studies to inaugurate an “anti-elitist approach to history” in which “the subaltern groups were viewed as the subjects of history.”
  • The word ‘subaltern’ refers to the general attribute of subordination, which is expressed in terms of a caste, class, age, gender etc.