YOGENDRA SINGH ON ‘MODERNISATION OF INDIAN TRADITION’

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UPSC SOCIOLOGY – Paper 2 – Chapter 1  – Impact of colonial rule on Indian society : Modernization of Indian tradition.

  • Modernisation includes disposition to accept new ideas, faith in rationality of though, and belief in distributive justice.
  • Modernisation is about a set of values which is cultural neutral.
  • Max weber viewed Indian tradition in terms of spiritual values and the Western modernisation in terms of material values.
  • According to Yogendra Singh, Modernisation is  a form of cultural response involving attributes which are basically universalistic and evolutionary; they are pan-humanistic, trans-ethnic and non-ideological. 

 

METHODOLOGY OF YOGENDRA SINGH

  • Yogendra Singh is neither functionalist nor Marxist but he empha­sizes theory in relation to context.
  • Therefore, he relates structural-functional, structuralism, structural-historical, culturalism and Marxist orientation and constructs in the study social stratification.
  • He applied integrated approach for his analysis of social stratification, modernization and change in Indian society.

 

MODERNISATION OF INDIAN TRADITION 

  • The composite nature of this concept renders it pervasive in the vocabulary of social sciences and evokes its kinship with concepts like ‘development’, ‘growth’, ‘evolution’ and ‘prog­ress’.
  • In the book on Essays on Modernization in India (1977), Singh has analysed the varied and complex processes involved in the modernization in India.
  • Offering an integrated perspective, Singh portrays the challenges and contradic­tions that India encounters in the course of its modernization.
  • He critically examined the concept of cultural change – Sanskritisation, Westernisation, Little and Great tradition.
  • His idea of modernisation is  a combination of cultural as well as structural change.
  • Evolutionary Approach – He locates sources of social changes such as Sanskritisation, Islamic influence, Western influence which led to cultural change. At the structural level – institutions of bureaucracy, army, middle class, etc were results of modernisation of tradition in structural terms. 
  • Micro changes in structure are analogous to Little tradition. Eg: Changes in caste, family, etc.
  • Macro Changes are analogous to the great tradition. Eg: Political, industrial, bureaucratic and urban structures. 
  • Modernisation of tradition was selective ad micro structure was even deliberately left undisturbed b the colonial rulers. 
  • National movement and Social reforms played a significant role in modernisation process.

 

CULTURAL CHANGE IN INDIA

  • The compilation of essays by Yogendra Singh on Culture Change in India: Identity and Globalization (2000) is an effort to focus upon some of the significant processes of changes in the domain of culture in India.
  • These cultural changes could be divided into two categories: first, those which concern the substantive structures of culture and its relationship with social institutions; and secondly, those which refer to the processes of change in culture, specially engendered by the forces of global­ization, telecommunication revolution and the emergence of market economy in a qualitative new form.
  • Singh views that globalization expands the scope and speed of cultural interaction across societal boundaries; the incidence of migration and emergence of cultural diaspora bring about intense cultural, social and economic interaction.
  • This is made possible due to the telecommunication revolution but the cultural processes that it sets into motion acquire significance, related as these are to the possibilities of cultural assimilation, adaptation, integration or conflict in course of such cultural contacts.