CHAPTER 2

Sociology in India

Chapter 1 stated that the origins of the social sciences lay somewhere in nineteenth-century Europe. We also hinted that colonialism and industrial revolution provided the needed spurt. The introduction of these branches of knowledge in India and in other countries of Asia came later. Sociology, though, was introduced much later compared to other social science disciplines such as economics, political science, and psychology.

While the social sciences are a product of the nineteenth century, pre-colonial indigenous scholarship was also reflected on the social terrain. Indigenous traditions of learning were, however, largely sacred in character, and laid emphasis on the abstract and the abstruse. As part of Indian (that is, Hindu) philosophy, there exist several scriptures that were prescriptive in nature, emphasizing the ‘desirable’, the ‘ideal’, and listing the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. There are also the writings of various social reformers, which talk of the prevailing ills in society and pontificate on the ideals. The work on Hindu society most often mentioned is the Manusmriti, supposed to have been written by a sage called Manu. There also exist travel accounts of visitors from neighbouring countries, which provide some what dependable accounts about the society of that time.

Based on such resources, the picture of Indian society painted by scholars, who were called Indologists, was aptly described by Srinivas as a ‘book-view’ and ‘upper-caste view’. Others characterized such descriptions as ‘prescriptive’ or at best ‘ideal’, hinting at their distance from the ‘real’, that is, the actually existing reality.

Entry Of Sociology In To The Indian Academia

In the colonial period, several visitors came from Europe, especially from Great Britain. They produced interesting travelogues highlighting the peculiarities of the cultures inhabiting the vast subcontinent and forming part of the indigenous civilization of India. Francis Buchanan’s travelogues written in the early nineteenth century received wide publicity.

The officials recruited by the British to rule over India also produced some accounts of Indian life. Colonel James Todd’s work, titled The Annals and Antiquities of Rajputana (1820),is one such classic example. Other works that are most often cited include: the District Gazetteers of India; the Census Reports since 1891; Herbert Risley’s monumental work on The Peoples of India; Russell and Hiralal’s work on Tribes and Castes in India;B. H. Baden-Powell’s study of Land System of British India; the monographs on Indian Caste by Nesfield, W. Crook, and E. Thurston; study of Village Communities in the East and West by Sir Henry Maine (quoted often by practitioners of Law); and Grierson’s path-breaking Linguistic Survey of India.

Prior to the inclusion of social sciences in institutions of higher learning, social science activity occurred by way of fieldwork and studies based on library research, mainly by the foreigners. Like other Asian societies that were colonized, India became a research site for foreign researchers.

This was also the time when Indian scholars were writing on various aspects of Indian society, either to prepare the ground for social reform or to recount the greatness of the Hindu civilization. Some indigenous scholars took upon themselves the task of criticizing foreign interpretations of Indian philosophy or religion, and even of proposing an alternative Hindu sociology. This was in a way a period of pre-sociological tradition that paved the ground for the introduction of sociology proper.

Some writers of the history of Indian sociology have termed authors of this genre the ‘Founding Fathers’. Thus, Bela Dutt Gupta had attempted to install Rammohun Roy, Akshay Kumar Dutta, Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Pyari Chand Mitra, Kaliprasanna Sinha, Bhudev Mukherjee (all from Bengal) and Vishnu Bhikaji Gokhale of Maharashtra in the list of founding fathers. Some others have added the names of Keshab Chandra Sen, philosopher Ramakrishna Paramhansa, and Vivekananda from Bengal; still others included in this list are the names of freedom fighters like Dadabhai Naoroji, B. G. Tilak and G. K. Gokhale, and economic historians like R. C. Dutt and M. G. Ranade. Inclusion of Gandhian thought and Vinoba Bhave’s Bhudan Movement in some sociology courses sent the young generation the wrong message that they were also sociologists. Similarly, writings of B. R. Ambedkar are becoming part of sociological studies, particularly the study of Dalits—the oppressed groups, but he cannot be classed as a sociologist.

Two names have recently been pushed for inclusion in the list of founding fathers. They are Benoy Kumar Sarkar from West Bengal and Shyamaji Krishna Verma.

B. K. Sarkar (1887–1949) was a double graduate in english and history, after which he did his Masters in economics, which earned him a lectureship in the Department of Economics. He was a vehement critic of the western interpretation of Hindu society and, to prove his point, he wrote a book (1914) on The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology. He also wrote another book, Hindu Achievement in Exact Science, which was a study in the history of scientific development in India. Both are important works in a historical sense, but do not belong to sociology proper.

Shyamaji Krishna Verma (1857–1930) was a freedom fighter and political guru of Veer Savarkar, V. V. S. Iyer, and many other freedom fighters. Hailing from Mandvi village of the Kutch district in Gujarat, he went to England for his studies. He was later appointed Assistant Professor of Sanskrit at Balliol College in Oxford. Subsequently, he entered Temple’s Inn and became the first Indian bar-at-law. He returned to India in January 1888 and served first as Diwan (Prime Minister) of the small state of Ratlam, and then of the states of Ajmer and Junagarh; these were all short-term assignments. He returned to England in 1899, where he encouraged Indians to fight for India’s freedom from British rule. For this purpose, he founded the famous India House, where Gandhi came in contact with him.

 

Figure 2.1  Indian Sociologist

Photo facsimile of this journal started in London by Shyamaji Krishna Verma.

As a part of his freedom struggle, he began publishing a monthly one penny journal called Indian Sociologist (see Figure 1.1). The journal was meant to be a vehicle to spread his revolutionary ideas and had nothing to do with Indian sociology.

Some authors have gone so far as to mention his relationship with Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer to make the point that Shyamaji Krishna Verma was a pioneering Indian sociologist. In their enthusiasm, however, they failed to check the fact that Verma was born the year Comte passed away. His acquaintance with Herbert Spencer is, however, not questioned, but one is not sure whether this has anything to do with sociology. Shyamaji was an admirer of Herbert Spencer. He borrowed one of Spencer’s sentences as his favourite motto (jap mantra): ‘Resistance to aggression is not only justifiable but also imperative’. Standing before the grave of Herbert Spencer in September 1904,^1.. he announced his decision to award scholarships to outstanding Indian students on the condition that the recipients of the award would not accept any service under the British government.

The works of both Sarkar and Verma is well deserving of sociological research, but it would be misleading to regard them as the founding fathers of Indian sociology. The ‘indigenous pre-sociological intellectual tradition … influenced the later development of Indian sociology and social anthropology only marginally’ (Dhanagare, 1985: 316).

The first phase of sociology and social anthropology in India roughly synchronizes with the initial phase of the colonial era. It is characterized by first-hand accounts of the life of backward/primitive communities of India. In contrast to the works on Indian society by Indian philosophers and reformers, the imported social science laid emphasis on objectivity and empirical research—that is, field research—for the collection of data of actually existing social formations, and on ‘value-neutrality’.

As Srinivas and Panini observe:

The administrative needs of the British rulers led them to collect information about the economic, social, and religious life of the people. This task became increasingly complex and systematic as the nineteenth century progressed and it provided the stimulus for not only social anthropology and sociology but also Indology (1973: 184).

Similarly, Dhanagare points out that:

‘The history of the early development of sociology and social anthropology in India is, thus, punctuated by multi-level syntheses—of Western theories, concepts and models and indigenous social thought and ideas’ (Dhanagare, 1985: 318).

In a 1979 publication titled Sociology of Indian Sociology, Ramkrishna Mukherjee identified growth in terms of its practitioners, whom he classified as pioneers, modernizers, insiders, and pace makers and non-conformists. This classification is not chronological, however. He made a critical assessment of the contributions made by scholars belonging to these categories. His category ‘insiders’ emerged in the late 1960s, and consists of those who were the product of the system rather than entrants from other disciplines—in other words, those who had their formal degrees in sociology.

Ramkrishna Mukherjee’s list of pioneers included A. K. Coomarswamy, B. N. Seal,B. K. Sarkar, G. S. Ghurye, D. P. Mukerji, Radhakamal Mukerjee, S. V. Ketkar, B. N. Dutt, and K. P. Chattopadhyay. ‘Modernizers’, according to Mukherjee, were those who ‘shared the ideology of the policy makers and the corresponding practice of the policy promoters’ (1979: 47). These scholars followed a pragmatic approach and focused on empirical research. His list includes M. N. Srinivas, S. C. Dube, R. N. Saksena, D. N. Majumdar, I. P. Desai, K. M. Kapadia, and their contemporaries. ² From studies of the social structures of local communities, they moved towards the changing scene.³ Srinivas’ concepts of Sanskritization and Westernization⁴ were widely used, discussed, and debated.

Three centres of higher learning in India took the first steps to introduce courses in sociology and social anthropology—Calcutta University, Bombay University, and the University of Lucknow.⁵Of these, Bombay and Calcutta were the first to introduce the courses in the second decade of the twentieth century.

At Kolkata, the ground was prepared by B. N. Seal, who encouraged studies on religion, culture, and ethnicity. B. K. Sarkar’s writings on Hindu society, particularly his criticism of western interpretations of Indian society, influenced the Bengali intelligentsia and freedom fighters. Nirmal Kumar Bose (1901–72) and K. P. Chattopadhyay (1897–1963) who took the first steps to introduce the teaching of anthropology at Kolkata University.

N. K. Bose (1901–1972)

N. K. Bose (1901–72) took his B.Sc. (Hons) degree in Geology in 1921; in 1923 he joined the Department of Anthropology at Calcutta University to do an M.Sc. As a student, he studied the food-gathering tribe of the Juangs. Initially, he taught geology and human geography. Through geography, he introduced anthropology to his students. He came out with a book in 1929 called Cultural Anthropology. On the advice of C. F. Andrews—a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi—Bose conducted a survey of Indian indentured labour who were repatriated from Fiji. He then became interested in the temple architecture of Orissa. Later, he joined Mahatma Gandhi in his freedom struggle and participated in the famous Salt Satyagraha. While with Gandhi, he maintained a diary that was published later.

Bose joined the Department of Anthropology at Calcutta University as a lecturer in 1938, and went on to become a Reader in 1946. For nearly 20 years, he edited Man in India, which was founded by S. C. Roy. The journal was devoted to research in the field of anthropology.

Bose took over as Director of the Anthropological Survey of India in 1959 and retired from that post in 1964. During his tenure, he initiated an all-India project on culture areas using the diffusionist ⁶ framework, and produced a monumental work on Pottery in India. His book, The Structure of Indian Society (1949), was widely read; it appeared in Bengali originally and was then translated into English by one of his students—Andre Beteille, a well-known sociologist—in 1975.⁷

The credit for setting up the Department of Anthropology at Calcutta University, and giving a spurt to research in this area, however, goes to Kshitish Prasad Chattopadhyay (1897– 1963). After doing his B.Sc. in physics, he proceeded to Cambridge to do his M.Sc. in the same subject. But there he came in contact with the famous anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers⁸ (1864–1922) and decided to register for a Masters degree in anthropology, which earned him a job back home at Calcutta University. He did pioneering work on kinship terminology. After teaching for a few years, he joined the Anthropological Survey of India, but returned to the University in 1937 to occupy the Chair in Anthropology, where he worked till his death in 1963.

D. N. Majumdar (1903–60)

(Source: © Folk Culture and Enthnographic Society)

Known as the doyen of Indian anthropology, D. N. Majumdar (1903–60)⁹was also a product of Cambridge University. He went to Cambridge in 1922 for further studies under T. C. Hod-son and G. M. Morant.¹⁰He also established contact with Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942),whose influence is visible in his writings.

As a major intellectual centre, Calcutta University influenced the development of higher education in other parts of the country. Products of Calcutta were hired to man the departments of the newly found universities. In the 1940s, Radhakamal Mukerjee was appointed by the University of Lucknow as Head of the Department of Economics, and Radhakumud Mukerjee, his brother, the Head of the Department of History. Another scholar,D. P. Mukerji, also joined the Department of Economics. These professors introduced papers in sociology in the economics department. In fact, students doing their B.A. Honours were given the option to either specialize in economics or in sociology, which were taught by Radhakamal Mukerjee and D. P. Mukerji. Since there was no provision for a post in anthropology, D. N. Majumdar was inducted as lecturer in ‘Primitive Economics’. Thus, the department produced sociologists and anthropologists who had degrees in economics. These scholars include Sewa Ram Sharma, A. K. Saran, R. N. Saksena, and Brij Raj Chauhan—all well-known names in sociology.

In due course of time, anthropology was given an independent status as a department at the Lucknow University with D. N. Majumdar as its head. Similarly, sociology and social work were separated from the Department of Economics.

Majumdar started a journal called the Eastern Anthropologist, which remains one of the oldest journals in anthropology in India, now focusing mainly on social anthropology. Due to the unavailability of lecturers in anthropology, Majumdar invited S. C. Dube (1922–96), then a lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Lucknow University, to share some of the teaching load and assist him in editing the journal. Although a political science graduate, Dube was working for his Ph.D. in anthropology, based on his fieldwork among the Kamars of Chhattisgarh.

Radhakamal Mukerjee (1889–1968)

(Source: © Folk Culture and Enthnographic Society)

D. P. Mukerji (1894–1961)

S. C. Dube (1922–1996)

Brij Raj Chauhan (1927–2009)

 

Majumdar made fieldwork an important part of the training of an anthropologist. He took his students during summer vacations to conduct fieldwork in tribal areas, and made it compulsory to write a monograph as part of the Masters degree.

Students graduating from Lucknow in sociology and anthropology went on to teach at other institutions in north India. R. N. Saksena introduced it at DAV College, Dehradun, and then set up an Institute of Social Sciences at Agra University. L. P. Vidyarthi promoted anthropology at Ranchi University, where it was started by Sachchidanand—a historian turned anthropologist— after a stint at SOAS, University of London. Brij Raj Chauhan pioneered the teaching of sociology and anthropology in Rajas-than, at M. B. College, Udaipur, which was affiliated to the Rajasthan University. S. C. Dube moved to Osmania University, Hyderabad, to occupy the Chair vacated by Christoph vonfürer- Haimendorf. Later, in 1957, he became the first professor at the University of Sagar, Madhya Pradesh. At this university, prior to the arrival of Dube, there had existed a department of anthropogeography headed by a British scholar. In 1957, this department was split into two separate departments of anthropology and geography. Dube introduced the teaching of sociology in his department, and changed its name to cover the two disciplines. However, after he left the university his own students succeeded in creating two separate departments of sociology and anthropology, resulting in social anthropology taking a back seat in the anthropology department which virtually became department of physical anthropology ¹¹

If social anthropology entered Calcutta University via the teachers of geology, human geography, and even history, the introduction of sociology and social anthropology at Lucknow occurred through economics. The story of the entry of these disciplines in Mumbai was somewhat different. An urban geographer from New Zealand, Sir Patrick Geddes, joined Bombay University in 1914 to establish a School of Economics and Sociology. The sociology department was formally inaugurated in Bombay University in G. S. Ghurye(1893–1983).

 

Trained as an Indologist, Ghurye was exposed to British social anthropology. This twin orientation is amply reflected in his several works on Indian culture.

G. S. Ghurye (1893–1983)

Ghurye’s work ranges from the study of tribes and castes to Indian sadhus. He has written on gotra and charan as two Brahamanical institutions. On the one hand, he studied, in the 1930s, the sex habits of the middle class in Bombay, and on the other, he presented an ethnographic account of the Mahadev Kolis. K. M. Kapadia—his colleague—wrote on Hindu marriage and kinship, basing his work on religious scripts. Irawati Karve (1905–70), who set up the department in Pune, also wrote extensively on kinship organization in India and on the caste system. She was trained in physical anthropology in Germany, and also produced anthropometric¹² studies. She combined the perspectives of physical and social anthropology with those of sociology and Indology in her interpretation of Indian society. Others, like A. R. Desai, followed the Marxian approach.

M. N. Srinivas (1916–1999)

M. N. Srinivas was also a product of this school, and brought in a social anthropological orientation to the study of Indian society. Unlike traditional anthropologists, he worked on non-tribal communities such as the Coorg, and in a village in Mysore state, now called Karnataka.

The Bombay School influenced the growth of sociology in several parts of the country, especially Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. After teaching for a few years at M. S. University, Vadodara,¹³ Srinivas moved to Delhi University to set up a Department of Sociology within the Delhi School of Economics. I. P. Desai—another product of Bombay—continued at Baroda, and finally took retirement to set up a research institute at Surat under the aegis of the Indian Council of Social Science Research.

Despite the fact that Delhi University has a separate department of anthropology, with faculty specializing in social anthropology as well, the Department of Sociology maintained its orientation to social anthropology. The department had noted scholars such as Andre Beteille (trained in anthropology from Kolkata), J. P. S. Uberoi (with a degree in anthropology from Australia), M. S. A. Rao, and A. M. Shah. Many in the profession considered the Department of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics as a department of anthropology because of its main focus on caste and village studies, and relatively lesser emphasis on survey research and the use of quantitative methods.

With the creation of several departments of sociology and anthropology in the country in the late 1950s and early 1960s, these disciplines gained entry into the academia. This period also witnessed debates about separate spaces for the two disciplines of sociology and anthropology, and also on what constitutes Indian sociology.

The professionalization of sociology in India occurred in the late 1950s with two separate initiatives.

The Bombay University alumni participated in the initiative taken by Ghurye and joined the Indian Sociological Society. The society organized occasional seminars and launched a journal named Sociological Bulletin.

Another group of sociologists and social anthropologists, as well as sociologically inclined economists and social psychologists—all mainly products of the Lucknow University—joined hands to convene the first All-India Sociological Conference in Dehradun in 1956. R. N. Saksena, then principal of DAV College, Dehradun, played the host at this conference. It was presided over by D. P. Mukerji. The second conference was held in Patna in 1957, with D. N. Majumdar as the general president. The third conference was held in 1958 at Agra, where R. N. Saksena had moved as director of the newly established Institute of Social Sciences, Agra University. This was presided over by Radhakamal Mukerjee. R. N. Saksena was the president of the fourth conference held in 1959 at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. This was followed by a fifth conference at Lucknow in 1960 under the presidentship of economist D. G. Karve, and a sixth conference in the same year at Sagar with psychologist Kali Prasad—also from Lucknow—as president.

As must be clear from the above discussion, the group involved in this activity was directly or indirectly linked to Lucknow, and scholars belonging to the Bombay school did not participate in the conferences. It should also be mentioned that in all these conferences, an integrated approach to the twin disciplines of sociology and social anthropology was projected. Each conference had separate sections for sociology, social anthropology, social psychology, and research methodology; naturally, participants were drawn from all these disciplines. The general presidents of the conferences also reflected this orientation—they hailed from economics, sociology, anthropology and social psychology.

However, the momentum then almost died down, as no conferences were held between 1961 and 1966, although various centres organized national and regional seminars. A need was, however, felt to resuscitate the conference activity. The Indian Sociological Society, which had abstained from the All-India Sociological Conferences, took the initiative at the instance of its current President—M. N. Srinivas—to convene a ‘Conference of Indian Sociologists’ in 1967 at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, then headed by M. S. Gore. It was at this conference that a resolution was moved to link the Bombay session with the previous six conferences, and bring these under the common umbrella of the Indian Sociological Society. Thus, the 1967 Conference became the seventh in the series of the All-India Sociological Conferences. As of January 2013, the Indian Sociological Society had organized 38 conferences, one every year since 1967.

Key Emphases In Indian Sociology

The 1950s and 1960s witnessed the gradual acceptance of sociology and anthropology as subjects of specialized study at institutions of higher learning on the one hand, and academic politics to delineate the areas of the two disciplines on the other. Questions were also raised with regard to what constitutes Indian sociology.

The first few issues of the journal Contributions to Indian Sociology contained articles on the debate around Indian sociology. The debate was inaugurated by the presidential address to the first All-India Sociological Conference delivered by D. P. Mukerji. He emphasized the need to study ‘tradition’ to understand Indian society. He attributed the failure of social sciences to contribute to Indian development ‘chiefly on account of their ignorance of, and un-rootedness in, India’s social reality’ (Mukerji, 1958: 234). His argument was that ‘greater ease of insight and understanding’ can be ‘secured by the sociologist when he is saturated in his own traditions’ (ibid.: 232). Although Mukerji took care to qualify his statement by saying that he did not want to ‘bar foreign scholars out of Indian problems’, he was understood as an advocate of ‘insiderism’. A. K. Saran—a student of Mukerji—took this seriously, and even questioned the possibility of sociology as was understood then. It must, however, be said that Saran denied belonging to the ‘Marxologist school’ of his teacher. Clearly, there were those who thought of Indian sociology as ‘sociology by the insiders’, and who went so far as to indicate that it should be built from an Indological perspective.

A contrary view was propounded by M. N. Srinivas, S. C. Dube, and others who had anthropological orientation. They felt that a proper understanding of Indian society needs both insider and outsider perspectives, and a solid grounding in fieldwork. Srinivas said that the insider is so ‘fundamentally and even hopelessly enslaved in one’s society that detachment is well-nigh impossible. Such detachment is necessary if one wants to present an account of one’s society which is intelligible to others …’ (Srinivas, 1955: 4).

Apart from this debate surrounding what constitutes Indian sociology, the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s saw debates surrounding who qualifies as a sociologist. Since courses were introduced in these disciplines and degrees awarded in sociology and anthropology, regimentations began to occur, and academic politics began revolving around the basic degree. The futility of these distinctions were apparent as both sociologists and anthropologists were researching various aspects of Indian society and following the same methodology, with the exception that those trained in sociology began using survey research that required sampling, administration of questionnaires, and statistical analysis, and those trained in anthropology laid emphasis on participant observation and microcosmic studies of villages. But when they engaged in the study of processes of modernization—industrialization and urbanization, analyses of directed culture change, and policy-relevant research—their research techniques depended on the subject matter and the type of population group being studied.

While such debates continued, leading scholars hailing from different backgrounds—economics, political science, psychology, sociology, or anthropology—received due attention and their writings influenced the younger generation of sociologists. Now, with the increasing emphasis on interdisciplinarity, this debate has died down, and sociologists are becoming more open to outside influences. The growth of specializations such as political sociology,social ecology, economic sociology, criminology, etc., has exposed sociologists to contributions from related social science disciplines.

The situation has changed remarkably over the years. One no longer notices the kind of acrimony between sociologists and social anthropologists that prevailed in the 1960s, although there remain people who prefer such a division.

In the area of sociology, one can discover changes on several indicators—the number of departments, size of the faculty, number of Ph.D.s, number of students enrolled in post-graduate courses, volume of publications, membership to the Indian Sociological Society, even the number of Research Committees (RCs) created by the ISS. The profession has grown, no matter what indicator we employ.

Sociology is currently taught in 89 universities in 25 states and 6 union territories. From 49 universities in the 1970s, the number of sociology departments in the universities has grown to at least 89. The number of colleges affiliated to these universities and those teaching sociology is indeed quite large. Add to this the institutes set up to teach management and business administration, where some aspects of sociology form part of the essential core syllabus. In this sense, sociology has gained immense popularity and importance in recent years.

The same trend can be seen in the field of anthropology. In the 1970s, there were 15 departments of anthropology. The Status Report on Anthropology, published by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1982, counted 26 departments in 22 universities, two universities having two and three departments, respectively. Sixteen of them were exclusively departments of anthropology. Six were composite departments.¹⁴ There are presently 33 university departments of anthropology, the most recent addition being at Bundelkhand University, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh. However, as stated earlier, despite the growth of anthropology departments, the situation of social anthropology within them is not very encouraging. Even research on tribal communities, once the strong point of social anthropological research, is becoming less popular. Rural studies, in which social anthropology played a lead role in India, have suffered a similar fate.

Sociology is now a well-established discipline in the Indian academics, and both sociologists and social anthropologists are contributing to its development. Most of the research in sociology carried out in India relate to issues of development, industrialization and urbanization, the Indian diaspora, peasant movements, gender studies, and agrarian studies. At appropriate places in the book, we shall refer to Indian contributions to various fields of sociological enquiry.