Doing Sociology in India

Genealogies, Locations, and Practices

edited by
Sujata Patel

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4 the discipline had changed from what it was, when they had structured it.
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology?
Assessing the Contesting Sociological Visions of
M.N. Srinivas and A.R. Desai
Sujata Patel
In this chapter, I compare the sociological visions of contemporary
India's foremost sociologists, Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas (1916-99)
and Akshay Ramanlal Desai (1915-94), the first a structural-functionalist
and the second a Marxist. Both studied at the University of Bombay! and
were doctoral students of G.S. Ghurye, popularly known as the father of
sociology in India. Srinivas played a major role in the institutionalization
of the profession and is considered a pioneer 'who changed the face of
sociology in India' (Beteille 2000: 22). In the same article, Beteille suggests
that Srinivas, more than any other single person 'dominated sociology
in the country ... and it is difficult to think of anyone who can fill the
place vacated by him'. Desai's contributions, no less significant, has not
evoked this kind of effusive response and support from his professional
colleagues. Possibly, this is because Desai was a Marxist sociologist who
questioned mainstream sociology's conservative positions and presented
an interdisciplinary social science viewpoint.
The sociological imagination of both Desai and Srinivas was
formulated in the 1940s and 1950s when India was transiting from
the colonial to post-independence period and when nationalist ideas
structured contemporary utopias. I examine their legacy and assess the
influences of colonial and nationalist ideas on their sociology. I ask, what
departures they made from the received colonial episteme on India?
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 73
To what extent these departures were conditioned by contemporary
conservative and radical nationalist ideas? What was the nature of their
engagement with these? Though both Desai and Srinivas continued to
engage and write till the end of their lives, that is the 1990s, India and
How relevant are their texts and their perspectives today?
Through this discussion, the chapter also converses with the debate
on how to 'read' sociology's disciplinary history. How does one evaluate
the discipline's past? Beteille has queried the constant need of new
interlocutors to suppose that the present inaugurates a novel situation.
He suggests that all new traditions are built on old ones and argues that
the Srinivisian perspective was new in some senses and yet it built on
the older traditions of sociological thought (Beteille 1997). Uberoi (2000)
has a different take. Writing at the turn of the century she argues that the
earlier agendas, that offor indigenization and self reliance are 'completely
misplaced in a globalised culture of social scientific knowledge' (Uberoi
2000:19). From this vantage point, recent developments can be seen as a
break from the past. Will this position allow the inauguration of a new
perspective on the discipline and its perspectives?
This question becomes pertinent because the Srinivasian position of
collapsing social anthropology with sociology became institutionalized
in Indian academia. Anthropological knowledge was structured in
t~rms of colonial imagination-a study of non-modern societies. Ori
the other hand India needs a discipline that can examine its modernity
and its present interface with global processes. What disciplinary and
theoretical identity would facilitate an explication of the relationship
between sociology, modernity and colonialism?
In the first 'section of this chapter I discuss recent scholarship among
Latin American thinkers in understanding colonialism, dependency, and
modernity as a prelude to an assessment of the legacy of M.N. Srinivas
and A.R. Desai. The second and third sections evaluate the contributions
and legacy of these. two sociologists while the last section discusses the
challenges contemporary sociologists in India face today.
COLONIAL MODERNITY AND SOCIOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
It is well-accepted truism that sociological theories, (systems ofinterrelated
concepts, categories and modes of explanation that are designed to
 74 Doing Sociology in India
make sense of the world) are enmeshed in normative projects (systems
of thoughts and beliefs concerned with a way of improving society).
Sometimes these normative projects are explicitly stated but often
implicitly argued. These normative projects are projects of power.
Although sociologists declare that sociology is and remains the most
reflexive of all social sciences, there has been very little reflection regarding
the implicit and explicit assumptions of power that have governed the
temporal and spatial location of its birth in Europe and later expansion
to, the United States. In the early 1980s, Anthony Smith surveying the
state of art on nation and nationalism had highlighted one aspect of this
normative project, when he argued that while sociologists have studied
'society' as a bounded territorial unit-the nation-state-they have failed
to acknowledge that the 'study of society always ipso facto the study of
the nation' (Smith 1973: 26). In The Consequences of Modernity (1990),
Giddens elaborates this point and gives an indication on what lines one
has to think out such a project and contends that such a work has not
been attempted:
Why should we have reservations about the notion of society as ordinarily
utilized in the sociological thought? There are two reasons. Even where they
do not explicitly say so, authors who regard sociology as the study of 'societies'
have in mind the societies associated with modernity. In conceptualizing them,
they think of quite clearly delimited systems, which have their own inner unity.
Now, understood in this way, 'societies' are plainly nation-states. Yet although
a sociologist speaking of a particular society might casually employ instead the
term 'nation', or 'country', the character of the nation-state is rarely directly
theorized. In explicating the nature of the modern societies, we have to capture'
the specific characteristics of the nation-state-a type of socialcommunity which
contrasts in a radical way with pre-modern states. (Giddens 1990: 13)
Sociology's normative origins were at birth, not only associated with
the nation-state, but also with an affirmation of an ideal and vision of
modernity-a universal project of progress and reason. European modernity
as we now know, incorporated two master narratives: the superiority of
Western civilization (its civilizing mission through progress and reason)
and the growth of capitalism (through modernization, development and
the creation of new markets). . of colonial modernity incorporated a set of axioms to frame knowledge
Recently some scholars from Latin America have discussed and
interrogated the theories of modernity that emerged in Europe from
nineteenth century onwards. They argue iliat this discourse was
Eurocentric premised on the basis of assessing itself (Europe), rather than
. Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 75
the 'Other' (the rest of the colonized world) which was its object of control.
It was a theory of 'interiority' (Mignolo 2002)-that is, a perspective that
perceived itself from within rather than from the outside. It affirmed a
belief that the social life and organization emerging in Europe from
around seventeenth century would influence the making of the new
world. It analysed its own birth and suggested it was produced through
the values and institutional system that were universalized in Europe in
the last 500 years. In many ways, these ideas were elaborated by Hegel,
Kant and the Encyclopaedists and were incorporated in the sociologies of
Durkheim, Weber, and Marx (Quijano 2000; Lander 2002).
These scholars applaud Immanuel Wallerstein's (1996a) assessment
of modernity as a theory of historical capitalism that saw the growth of
modernity as embryonically linked to the development of capitalism in
Europe from the fourteenth century onwards as an important argument.
But they argue that Wallerstein's theory remains locked into a perspective
of 'interiority' and has not been able to examine the means through which
the theory of modernity constructed a new knowledge regarding what
it was and its own history as universal knowledge. Wallerstein's work,
Mignolo (2002) contends has remained silent on the latter aspects, that
is, the ideological aspects of the theories of modernity. For, the theory
of modernity was also an episteme. It made possible the control and
domination of the rest of the world through its other side-coloniality.
If the project of modernity was a project of the expansion of capitalism
(through colonialism), it was also a project' ot creating an episteme of
coloniality, (Quijano 2000) also described as colonial difference (Mignolo
2002) and 'trans'<modemity (Dussel 2002). Thus the most important
attribute of the normative project of sociological theory, as it grew in
Europe and the United States, was of postulating an episteme of colonial
modernity, through the assertion of the immanence of modernity, the
belief in progress, and triumph of universal reason.
How was the theory of colonial modernity embedded within European
and North American social theory? Quijano (2000), Mignolo (2002),
Dussel and Mendieta (1996), and Lander (2002) argue that the discourse
of society.
These axioms at an epistemic level were comprised of binaries that
classified modern knowledge system in terms of oppositions, such as
nature and culture, subject and object, masculine and feminine, material
76 Doing Sociology in India
and spiritual within the rubric of the master binary of the West and East.
This master binary linked the division and subsequent hierarchization
of groups within geo-spatial territories in terms of a theory of temporal
linearity: the west was modern because it has reason; the east was
traditional because it was religious and spiritual. 'Maintaining a
difference under the assumption that we are all human' (Mignolo 2002:
71) was part of the normative project of modernity and subsequently of
its sociological theory.
It is possible to argue thus that the perspective of colonial modernity
opens up the language of silences that this discourse has strung together-
that of creating binary oppositions through which knowledge is organized;
placing values on these oppositions; creating hierarchies between them
and thereby framing knowledge in terms of T and the 'other'; positing
an universality for T and particularities for the 'other', reconstructing
history in terms of a linear analysis; and asserting a progressive growth
of science and technology. These were the 'truths' of modernity and the
modern world-objective and universal. Asserting that these are theories
of colonial modernity would help to open up for discussion on the nature
of this episteme and examine modernity's normative projects. What is
the implication of this process on the making of sociology in India?
The seminal assumptions relating to colonial modernity were embodied
in the discipline of anthropology, as contemporary sociology was identified
in India. This episteme structured at the first level, the construction of
academic knowledge regarding societies in the west as sociology and the
east as anthropology and created a hierarchy between them by associating
the value of modernity on sociology (the study of modern societies) and
that of the non-modern East on anthropology (the study of the other). In
turn, anthropological knowledge divided the East in separate geo-spatial
territories of political states, with each territory given an overarching
value. In the case of India, it was religion: Hinduism. India and Hinduism
collapsed into each other (PateI2006a, 2007a).
In the late nineteenth century, anthropological/sociological
knowledge dissolved the cultural distinctions among the thousands of
communities across the geographically vast subcontinent of South Asia
and re-categorized them within four or five major religious traditions,
thereby constructing a master narrative of the majority and minority.
This logic homogenized distinctions within and between groups and
also naturalized one master narrative to assess unequal distribution of
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 77
power and resources within the subcontinent. Hinduism as a majority
religion was redefined to include all kinds of ideas and cultural practices,
as it became a Great Tradition, and anchored into a timeless civilization
(Patel2007a).
Drawing from Quijano (2000), Dussel (2002), and Mignolo (2002)
one can argue that colonial modernity constructed new binaries of those
who inhabited the Indian territory and placed them in a linear time
scale-from primitive to civilized. In the process, castes were defined
in the context of Hinduism, as groups who cultivated land, had better
technology and a high civilizational attribute, while tribes were defined
in contrast to castes, as those who practised primitive technology, lived
in interior jungles and were animistic in religious practices. Thus caste
and tribe was made out to be far more pervasive, totalizing and uniform
as concepts than ever before and defined in terms of a religious order,
which it was not always so (Patel2006a).2
Colonial modernity affected the use of philosophical systems-the
latter being crucial and critical in the formation of social sciences.
Generally, there are two kinds of philosophical activities-vanalysing
systems to create new ones and adjusting to existing systems.' Without
the first, the system of adjustments cannot afford to consolidate a
philosophical ground or a vision for the growth of reflexive social sciences,
eventually 'loitering within local frameworks'. Colonial modernity not
only impeded the creation of such a theoretical system in India, but also
ensured that there was no realization that this is the major problem in
the construction of social sciences (Raghuramaraju 2009).
The use of existing scientific methods constructed in the West
was critical in the adjustments made to structure colonial modernity.
Historians and anthropologists have shown how the initial classificatiori
and categorization of groups was done from the late nineteenth century
onwards through the mechanics of formulating the census (Cohn 1997;
Dirks 2001). Simultaneously, there was an effort to document social
behaviour, customs and mores of some individual communities through
the ethnographic method and also to make region-wise analysis of these
communities thereby creating spatial-cultural zones (Cohn 1997). Further
refinement of spatial zones was attempted when the need to facilitate
clear taxation system made the colonial authorities create villages, estates,
and properties in which bounded space, caste, and tribes were identified
and ethnographical investigation of these groups were undertaken.
 78 Doing Sociology in India
This perspective came to be refined as research questions, methods,
and methodologies were perfected as these evolved in Europe and came
to be adjusted as knowledge production expanded. Anthropology moved
beyond classification and ethnographic studies that merely assessed
racial stocks, through physical anthropomorphic perspectives. Now it.
studied socio-cultural attributes in the context of Indological approach
(the study of India through scriptures). The use of the latter method
benefited one indigenous group, the Brahmins, who were now given
enhanced status that of being the 'indigenous intellectual' and sociology/
anthropology came to be imagined in the visions of these indigenous
intellectuals, the 'natives'.' Colonial modernity was now institutionalized
through methodologies and the adjustments made of methods.
Mainstream Indian nationalism embodied many of these features
within its consciousness. Sumit Sarkar argues that while modern (western)
history writing has generally been state oriented (with an understanding
of nation as a reflection of the nation-state), the historical consciousness
of the Indian intelligentsia, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century's, was oriented to the valorization of culture against the state,
(because it was a colonial state). He states:
In this period samaj (society, community) came to be counterpoised to rashtra
or rajshakti (state, the political domain). The real history of India, it was
repeatedly asserted, was located in the first, not the second, for samaj embodied.
the distinctive qualities peculiar to the genius, culture and religion of the Indian
people. (Sarkar 1997: 21)
Further, Sarkar argues that, ' .... samaj was simultaneously all too often'
conceptualised in Hindu, high caste gentry, and paternalistic terms .. .'
(ibid.: 23).
The episteme of colonial modernity mediated to create the nationalist
identity at two levels and through a double movement, in the process
collapsing society with space and particularly the territory as defined
by the Indian nation-state. At the first level, it allowed an affirmation:
of the identity of the collective Indian self-the nation, and did so by
distinguishing itself through an opposition from the West-the first
moment. In turn, this logic allowed the elite savarna (upper caste) led
nationalist consciousness to be articulated within the politics of binary
construction, framed by western modernity-the second movement. This
mediation also legitimized at the second level, -the creation of subaltern
identity in the mirror of the savarna one.
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? /,
'll'his became a political project in two senses, in reaffirming tradition
to-interrogate the 'modern' and in fashioning a tradition in the image
of the savarna perception. Colonial modernity fashioned a culturist
liomogenised nationalist identity to be institutionalized. Religion as
tradition naturalized the relationship of domination-subordination,
together with processes and forms ofinequalities, exclusions, and violence
prevalent in the subcontinent. The discourse of colonial modernity
became a tool of creating a new knowledge of power and domination
to classify, categorise, order and thus divide in a new representation, the
disadvantaged and underprivileged groups (Patel2007a).
;, No wonder the discipline and its theoretical perspectives did not
recognize the significant role of the economic processes of capitalism
and the political role of the state in the making of samaj? Simultaneously
~d crucially it could not assess the complex process of identity
formation taking place in the subcontinent, except within the binary of
the rEast and the West. 6 Colonial modernity and its knowledge systems
in its valorization of culture and its efforts to search for indigenous
religious origins of all traditions, opposed science-its methodologies
ana as a value." The implications of this process were immense. On one
hand when science developed, its practices were imposed rather than
reflexively created'' and the other hand, secularism was perceived as a
Western import."
, This hegemonic savarna Indian nationalism faced challenges in the
early twentieth century, by an all encompassing critic, based on Marxist
ideas of class which highlighted the significance of material processes
in assessing the formation of groups placed within production relations.
This interpretation of nationalism emphasized class above nation and
made a critic of capitalism and its inequalities the focus of analysis, while
examining the negative role of colonialism. It interrogated mainstream
conceptions of nationalism embedded in the notions of samaj (as
elaborated above) and indicated how it represented bourgeois interests.
However this critic remained marginal in context to mainstream
nationalism. Also it was caught in orthodoxies of economism. While
some Marxists have made incisive critiques of contemporary capitalism, 10
they have not been able to assess and evaluate the epistemic organization
of binaries of colonial modernity.
Mainstream sociology in India and its establishment is associated
with G.S. Ghurye, who headed for a long time, the first Department of
80 Doing Sociology in India
Sociology in India, at Bombay. In his work, we fmd a reflection of many
of the principles associated with the colonial modernity and incorporated
in hegemonic savarna nationalist consciousness, such as, the fact that
the groups that reside in India are all Indians and are integrated in a
cohesive Indian identity, defined by Hindu religion, that this religion has
a civilizational canvass, whose attributes can be located in the ancient
Indian past of the Vedas, the first scriptures, and that the Indian society is
structured by the institutions of caste, kinship, and family, these being the
societal representations of our samaj (Upadhya 2007). Ghurye created a
sociology that adjusted with the existing consciousness embedded within
colonial modernity. What about M.N. Srinivas and A.R. Desai?
Srinivas's and Desai's intellectual inspirations and, thus, careers
followed different paths. Srinivas' ideas on society and methods were
reformulated as he moved to Oxford and first registered with Radcliff-
Brown and later completed a second doctorate with Evans-Pritchard.
After coming back to India, he established the Department of Sociology in
Baroda's M.S. University and later at the University of Delhi and played
a premier role in legitimizing 'his' sociology. By the 1970s, his ideas on
Indian society elaborated in his various books came to be accepted as the
staple for all graduating sociology students.
On the other hand A.R. Desai's sociology drew its inspiration from
the Marxist tradition and had very little engagement with Ghuryian
perspective. Desai was by then active in labour movement in Mumbai
and. henceforth continued to play a significant role in various social
movements over the next thirty years, while practicing his sociology at the
Department of Sociology at the University of Bombay, which he joined as
a lecturer, till he retired from it, as Professor and Head of the department.
In Desai, we have a radical version of conceiving a nation, the collective
self, and thus of Indian society, though mainstream sociology has not
considered this interpretation as noteworthy for reframing sociology.'!
Both Srinivas and Desai made significant departures (in case of Desai
in radical ways) from the received traditions of theorizations built into
colonial modernity and elaborated by Ghurye. Below, I examine the
nature of their sociological visions and evaluate these departures. I ask
what instruments and tools, theories, and methods did they use to make
these departures? Given that sociology is an empirically oriented science,
the methods of organizing and interpretation of data/information
remain critical for introducing new changes. Did these tools allow them
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 81
to reconstruct and frame a new sociology? What were the results of this
exercise? Certainly both Srinivas and Desai reframed existing theories
and presented new concepts to understand Ii-Idian society. But were
Srinivas and Desai able to invert colonial modernity to change the face
of sociology in India?
In this chapter, I am arguing that mainstream sociology in India, has
by and large adapted itself to systems of thought, methodologies, and
methods constructed within the binary, rather than create new ones.'?
I show how Srinivas' social anthropology rearticulated these principles
structured by the imperatives of the nation-state. Though he declared
that he was practising sociology, his methods remained anthropological.
Desai on the other hand, went on another path, adjusting Marxism to a
critical assessment ofIndian society and in the process attempted to break
the shibboleths that structured mainstream anthropology masquerading
as sociology. However, his attempts did not bear fruit and his work
remained trapped in some of the assumptions of colonial modernity.
THE SRINIVASIAN SOCIOLOGY AND ITS DEPARTURES
In a seminal article published in 1954, Srinivas stated, 'An attempt is
made in this essay to consider the relation between caste as it is in fact,
and not as it is subsumed by the traditional concept of Varna' (Srinivas
2002: 166).With this statement, a new method for assessing Indian society
was inaugurated, now known as the 'field view' as against the earlier
one, known as the 'book view' (the Indological method). In a series of
articles written in the decade of the 1950s, Srinivas elaborated the nature
of the field view and its roots in the use of theory and methodology
institutionalized in the structural-functional theory of Radcliffe-Brown
and Malinowski's method of ethnography. At the same time, Srinivas
adjusted their theory and methodology to create a new version of the
discipline of sociology and to remake it into social anthropology. In this
section, I discuss to what extent did the field view invert the episteme of
the colonized modernity?
Of particular significance in understanding Srinivas's departures
from the Indological method promoted by Ghurye are two articles-
'Social Anthropology and Sociology' published in the Sociological
Bulletin in 1952 and 'The Social System of a Mysore Village', (1955)
in a book edited by McKim Marriott, respectively. In the paper 'Social
 82 Doing Sociology in India
Anthropology and Sociology', Srinivas's endeavour is to justify and
legitimize the need to use social anthropological theory and method.P
In cryptic statements he presents his assessment of the practices of
anthropology in India-its proclivity towards physical anthropology
and ethnology, and shows how it remains tied to an analysis of culture
rather than society. He criticizes the received practices of sociology'
in India-social philosophy on one end and social work on the other,
and its contemporary practices in America-that of examining social
problems and using the survey method.
After incorporating anthropology into sociology, he asserted that
there was no difference between sociology and social anthropology and
he quickly went on to give his own alternative:
A modern sociologist regards a society as a system or unity, the various parts of
which are related to each other. He considers that any single aspect of society
abstracted from its matrix of sociological reality, is unintelligible except in
relation to the other aspects. And even when he is writing only about a single
aspect of a society like religion or law or morals, he brings to bear on his study his
knowledge of the total society. The importance of such a perspective cannot be
over-emphasised, and it can only be achieved by the intensive study over a long
period of time, of a single small society. (Srinivas 2002: 460)
No wonder he later admitted that,
.. .it was from two micro studies, one of the Coorgs, ... and the other of the village
Rarnpura, ... that concepts such as Sanskritisation and Westernisation, dominant
caste, vote bank, and the book view versus the field view, emerged, and they
continue to be used in the analysis of cultural and social change in different parts
ofIndia. It is well to remember here that in spite of its enormous diversity, India
is one culture and this is visible in every village. (Srinivas 2002: 566)
In Varna and Caste, Srinivas initiates a discussion on the nature of the
caste system in India. He argues for the substitution of 'varna' (the book
view) by 'jati' (the way the Indians themselves understand caste) in order
to assess the nature of the caste system. When Srinivas discusses the
caste system, in 'The Social System of the Mysore Village', he does it by
evaluating it within the limits of the village. In this, Srinivas's perspective
is in tune with the colonial practice that valorized space as a site for
examining 'tradition' and reinforced within nationalist consciousness
when it separated samaj from rajshakti. Samaj for Srinivas was the
repository of the civilizational ideas of the Indian nation as embodied
by the caste system, the unique structure that defined Indian socialities.
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? ,
However, while Ghurye's definition of caste remained couched in the
Indological standpoint; Srinivas using the field view, the empirical
method of ethnography and reorganized the study of caste (samaj) to
examine it with a new lens.
Srinivas divides the population of the village by caste and by occupation
and then examines the relationship of these castes with agriculture, and
connects these to their occupation. The idea here is to show the organic
integration of castes with each other and the way these relate with each
other, in a functional perspective elaborated by Radcliffe-Brown (Patel
1998). The system is shown to have flexibility because of the integration
of the parts to the whole. Further he states that caste is best understood
by focusing not only on the middle ranks, but also in context of the
internal ranking of each jati with the other. The ambiguity of rank and
status allows for mobility of groups. It is in this context that he coins a
new concept-that of dominant caste, and makes it coterminous with
the peasant caste which dominates the village.
What kind of ethnography does one get through such an approach? I
had earlier argued (Patel 2005: Ill) that this problem relates to the way
ethnography was related to the functionalist paradigm and framed in the
context of the principles of the British liberal ideology of the nineteenth
century. Epistemically, it made a distinction between subject and object
and suggested that the subject, the social scientist, should distinguish
herself 'from the object that she observed. In these circumstances,
ethnography merely mirrors the subject's ideology. Research so
produced become empiricist on one hand and creates theoretical and
methodological ambiguities on the other. 14
The first methodological related ambiguity in Srinivas's ouvre emerges
as a result of the adjustment of the structural-functionalist approach with
colonial modernity when it examines the inter-linkages between caste
and village. It is not clear what is the system that he is studying, that of
the village or caste. One presumes that he is discussing the caste system
because of his earlier discussions on this theme. But the village is also
seen as a system, viz., the title of the paper. The lack of theoretical clarity
on this issue leads to a teleological position whereby castes can only be
understood sociologically as a system in the context of the village, while
the village in turn can be assessed in context to the castes. IS
I have earlier argued (Patel 2006a) that the collapse of the social to
the spatial also made possible an exclusion of groups and communities
84 Doing Sociology in India
within the nation-state whose culture and practices couldn't be explained
by the caste system, or the dual system of 'varna' and 'jati' as Srinivas
understood it. The issue is not merely that of sociological conservatism
which many commentators view as deep-seated in functionalism, but is a
larger question of exclusion of a number of groups (tribes, religious, and
ethnic groups other than caste) who define themselves differently and
who are eliminated from the sociological space. Srinivas did not agree
with the position that the village was a self sufficient and isolated unit,
but the emphasis on the village as a unit of ethnographic study made his
paradigmatic principles contradict his avowed intentions (Patel 2006a).
This ambiguity and contradiction flows into another arena-that
of the study of social change. Particularly when examining mobility
in modern India, he highlighted the continuous adaptive character of
the caste system and its ability to adjust to modern processes of change .
and presented us with the two paths to mobility, that of sanskritization
and Westernization. Srinivas highlighted two forms of mobility-
Sanskritization (emulation of upper caste/dominant practices), and
Westernization (adoption of Western technology, education, 'life-style',
values). For Srinivas, the caste system of today contrasts with that of the
earlier versions of the system, which respected different occupation and
ways of living. These changes make caste adaptive to new influences,
modify, and moderate its characteristics, but do not lead it to transform
or completely vanish.
This new savarna vision of nation became by the early seventies
institutionalized in many ways as Srinivas' views on caste in modern
India, his ideas on social change in contemporary India, and hisconcept
of dominant caste soon became part of the representations that defined
the changes taking place during the Nehruvian period. It also became
the new academic language of practising sociology as he intervened and
organized various initiatives that helped to consolidate this position.
He saw sociologists taking a proactive role and argued that sociologists
need to assess the processes of change which he called 'a quiet revolution,
bloodless, continuous, progressively more inclusive, and faster' (Srinivas
1992), and also mediate between the public and government. For instance,
Srinivas was the chair of the UGC's first committee that drafted the status
report on teaching of sociology and which developed model syllabi. He
was also one of the five signatories of Memorandum of Association that
set up the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR)-the other
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 85
being four economists. And he organized ICSSR's first bibliographic
survey of sociology and social anthropology in India that charted out
the specializations in the discipline, thereby directing research in defined
areas."
In continuation with these arguments but also in terms of the
main thesis of this chapter, I would like to highlight the fact that in
Srinivas' work, the structure of Indian society determined by caste
emerges as a kind of adjustment mechanism that expands and fits into
macro changes as these envelop jatis in search of new status positions.
His perspective reproduces in new ways the colonial episteme that
structured itself in terms of the theory of linear transition towards
progressive changes. Colonial modernity had propounded the theory of
two-fold evolution of society towards modernity-from pre-literate to
modern. The civilizational approach, borrowed from Ghurye (and in
turn constructed from the binaries) now reframed through structural-
functionalism, allowed Srinivas to posit an adaptive caste structure,
which has perennially been reproducing itself over centuries-a theory
of incremental social change. -
Sociologists in India have since adopted this perspective as a way of
identifying and practising sociology in India, despite various differences
regarding theory and approach.'? Thus despite the fact that India was
modern, social anthropologists in India, like Srinivas did not study
its' modernity, rather they studied its constructed traditions, a frame
of dominant colonial modernity. There have been extensive critical
comments on Srinivas's concept of sanskritization and Westernization
from Marxist (the lack of recognition of jati' s placement in the economic
structure and the processes of politics and thus its relationship with
classes) and from Dalit and feminist approaches. IS Today ethnography
has acknowledged the power dimension in the relationship between the
insider and the outsider and the politics in the construction of knowledge
of the other.
What is the implication of this sociology? In this sociology, we lose
not only a sense of history but also the analysis of colonialism as a force
and process of destruction and creation of discourses regarding the
binaries of modernity-tradition, of capitalism as a generator of change
that distributes rewards unequally, and of development and planning
as a process of elite-organized ideology of refashioning society. Srinivas'
sociology does not present us with concepts and theory that can evaluate
86 Doing Sociology in India
and understand the contemporary processes of change and conflict in
society. In order to have this repertoire we have to accept that change,
especially in the epoch of the world system, is exogenous, market-
oriented and one which distributes rewards unequally, and thereby
constructs localities and regions, classes and ethnic groups in unequal
relations with one another.
A.R. DESAI'S MARXIST SOCIOLOGY
The architecture of Desai's sociology follows a completely different
genealogy than that of M.N. Srinivas. Desai was also a public intellectual
but of a different kind. He wrote pamphlets and booklets in regional
languages for those in the struggles, in addition to books and articles
for those in the academia. A.R. Desai was a Marxist and a sociologist
who did not see a difference between the two. Unlike Srinivas, who
assessed social systems to understand the continuity of caste system as
a specific civilizational social order, Desai was interested in analysing
contemporary social change in order to assess how it benefited a few. His
work was a critique of mainstream nationalism and its political projects.
Its focus was on the nature of the ruling class, their control of the state
institutions, and their constant efforts to use developmental programmes
to aid their own reproduction.
As discussed earlier, colonial modernity had embodied an upper caste
notion of nation/community/samaj. This was a dominant metaphor in
Ghurye's and Srinivas's sociology and remained embedded within this
lineage as it developed further (see Oommen 2007). Desai contested
these received conceptions of the nation in Social Background of Indian
Nationalism (1948) by analysing the ideology of Indian nationalism and
showed how it represented the interests of dominant classes. He attested
that nation and class are in a contradictory relationship. While nationalism
was a movement of various classes and groups forging one nation into a
whole, it remained internally divided, with classes contesting with each
other to mark it with their own interests. 19 The class at the helm imposes
its own class interests on the movement subordinating those of other
classes to its own. Desai's sociology interrogated the normative projects
of mainstream sociology/anthropology by redefining it as one that
analyses the relationship between nation, classes, and power through a
historical and interdisciplinary perspective.
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 87
This text refashions three discrete positions into one. It explained
firstly, how colonialism intervened in the transition from feudalism
to capitalism in India, destroying the growth of indigenous capitalism.
It then moved on secondly, to evaluate the specificity of the nature of
Indian pre-capitalist formation in the form of the caste system and then
thirdly, examined the role played by nationalism in confronting colonial
capitalism. This radical rethinking of class and nation, and colonialism
and nationalism broke in some measure the received linearity of
historical time built into Marxist theory and which was also part of the
colonial modernity, given their shared origin in European theories of
modernity. Additionally, the analysis and interpretations given in this
book also heralded a new perspective for doing sociology in India-the
fact that it needs to study the many interfacing macro processes that
constitute contemporary capitalism and its inequities, that this has to be
done through a historical perspective and that an analysis of colonialism
and nationalism is integral to this framework." This text remains an
exemplary model of the use of historical method in assessing sociological
concepts and theories and paved the way for similar interventions by
later scholars.I! .
This early critic of the colonial state was enlarged when in 1960 Desai
published a sequel titled Recent Trends in Indian Nationalism, where he
examined the nature of post-independence state. For the first time, a
sociologist in India reflected on the nature of the state from a sociological
perspective. This text signalled a major departure for sociology from
the nationalist tradition that valorized samaj by ignoring rajshakti. It
examines the classes that control the post-independence state and the role
these played in developing capitalism. In this book Desai set the terms
of doing a Marxist political sociology of India. The Indian state, Desai
argued was led by a weak bourgeoisie that had cemented a relationship
with the feudal land-owning class, and ruled through the received colonial
state apparatus. To sustain an economically weak bourgeoisie and the
contradictions emerging from its collaboration with the feudal landed
and that of the colonial institutions, the state in India assumed enormous
powers for itself, taking initiatives in intervening and participating in
policies and programmes that are necessary for the sustenance and
legitimation of the power of the bourgeoisie. This analysis led Desai to
assess the planning process in India, especially the programmes of land
reforms (which eliminated parasitical landlordism and created new
88 Doing Sociology in India
classes, such as that of the rich peasants), and community development
and panchayati raj (Rural India in Transition, 1961). Desai believed that
the state's focus on agrarian policy was to create a class of agricultural
capitalists, rich farmers and viable middle peasant proprietors directly
associated with the state.
From the 1970s onwards, A.R. Desai's perceptions on society and his
assessment of development of new processes led him to make further
penetrating analysis on contemporary Indian class structure. Agitations,
protests, and struggles were emerging in the countryside (the growth of
Naxalite movement) and in urban arena (the railway strike, the women's
movement and the protests against slum demolitions). The working class,
the traditional revolutionary force, was in the throes of changes both
in the context of its structure and its changing political consciousness.
Simultaneously politics was changing and political parties were using
caste and religious issues in mobilizing the populace. For Desai, the key
to an assessment of all these processes lay in the analysis of the modern
Indian state. It is important he argued, that we ask the question, why
was the state playing an undemocratic role? Why was the state in India
using extra constitutional powers to repress the growth of democratic
movements in the country? Answers to these questions, he argued, can
only come through a historical-comparative analysis of the state-civil
society dynamics taking place in India.
During these two decades, Desai initiated four organically related
complementary projects three of which published collated information
put together through many travels he undertook to understand new
movements and trends taking place across India. In the first project,
he expanded on his earlier work on rural transition and attempted to
capture the growth of new contradictions in rural India by documenting
the struggles and agitations occurring in contemporary agrarian India.
Titled Peasant Struggles in India (1979) and Agrarian Struggles in India
after Independence (1986) these sets of books immediately became and
continue to be a major source of reference on agrarian social movements
in India and for the sociology of agrarian society in India.
Second, during these decades Desai initiated one of his most ambitious
projects to date, that of documenting the history of the working class
movement in India. This work is significant not only because it made
visible a series of struggles and agitations of the working class, not known
nor documented before, but also because of the definition of the worker
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 89
and the working class. His study was not restricted to the industrial
working class alone but encompassed the entire oppressed sections in the
society who were selling their labour power in the market.P The change
in definition is significant because Desai was first to notice and highlight
the 'informal sector' and the struggles of the unorganised workers later
to be theorized by economists and anthropologists. These volumes are
now published."
Third, Desai wrote a series of articles on the relationship between
state and society in India that assessed the programmes policies and
institutions of the state and simultaneously captured the social and
political processes that they promoted. These essays published as
State and Society in India: Essays in Dissent (1975) and India's Path to
Development: A Marxist Approach (1984) not only layout the terms of
a Marxist sociology of development but also questioned the theories of
modernization being used by social scientists.r" In these essays Desch
engages with the theories of dependency and underpevelopment to
explain India's particular situation. These books contain an evaluation
of the implications of imperialism, the planning process, the mixed
economy, the public sector on one hand and the nature of casteist and
communalist politics, which has emerged on the other.
The importance and significance of the state and the use it made of
the repressive powers made Desai initiate the last of his major projects,
(the fourth one) which occupied him through most of the 1980s. The
result of this endeavour was a two-volume book, Violation of Democratic
Rights of India (1986b) and Repression and Resistance in India (1990) that
focused on the state and documented the way it restricted and curtailed
the rights of the oppressed. What is remarkable is the fact that for the
first time Desai incorporates in his analysis the struggles not only of
classes but also other groups who cannot be defined as a class in Marxist
language. For instance, he uses the category 'rural poor', 'adivasis' (to
denote tribes) and Dalits (to denote the ex-untouchables). Certainly,
there is an effort here to move beyond Marxist categories and theorize
new concepts within an overarching Marxist framework.
In the 1970s and 1980s these departures presented radical alternate
conceptions of doing sociology. By asserting that sociology was an
interdisciplinary social science rooted in the historical method that
engages with the political economy approach, he questioned the culturist
perspectives of mainstream sociology. He also affirmed the need to
 90 Doing Sociology in India
study power in its various dimensions-within dominant institutions
(for example. the state), in its invisible manifestations (through policies'
and developmental programmes), as insidious expression (through
communalism) together with its emancipatory potential (within social
movements). He asserted that the discursive practices of the discipline
be organized around new concepts that draw on the narratives of those
who are excluded. Desai wanted the sociologist to be simultaneously an
archivist, an analyst, and an activist.
However for a large number of sociologists including Marxists, Desai's'
project of sociology remained overtly ideological and political, and
oriented to the debates within the mainstream communist movement
and particularly to the question of how to usher in a capitalist or, a
socialist revolution."
More specifically, his work did not have a theoretical perspective
to assess and examine the interface of class and caste nor its linkages'
with gender." ethnicity, and language and the complexities inherent-in,
identity formation within the subcontinent. He was the first sociologist
to distinguish between movements in terms oflocalities and regions-his.
sociology generally collapsed the sociological construction of space into
its political and administrative connotations, thereby reproducing the
perspective of colonial modernity.F
Thus like Srinivas there remained slippages between state, nation;
and territory. Srinivas followed via Ghurye, the colonial anthropological'
traditions and wherein sociology/anthropology valorized tradition;
nation, and savarna identity. In Desai's case, it emerges with his personal,
and political involvement with Indian nationalist and later Marxist;
movements and his catholic upbringing by a litterateur father- that was
influenced by Gandhism (Patel2007b: 421-2).
However, his lack of interface with contemporary Marxist
interventions in the theory of classes has puzzled many. The Marxist)
K. Balgopal (1986) while applauding Desai's major contributions in.
focusing on the Indian state is mystified by the triangular classification
(rich peasants, middle farmers, and landlords) of the agrarian classes.
Additionally, Balgopal questions Desai's division of agrarian struggles
into pre-Green Revolution and post-Green Revolution periods.
The problems at one level are of empirical substantiation and starts
from the first book onwards. In Social Background of Indian Nationalism,
he argues that pre-colonial India did not have private property and that
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 91
village India was self-sufficient, autocratic, and non-progressive, among
other things. These errors were not retracted in the subsequent editions
'of the book-" For instance, he uses the term 'rural sociology' (popular
among American sociologists) to depict the peasant society and the
agrarian society. Surely such usage does not advance scholarship nor
extends his political project? (Patel 2007b: 438) Desai suggested that
sociology is necessarily a politically oriented theory and that it cannot be
value neutral (ibid.: 439). While Desai could understand the normative
projects in mainstream conservative sociology, why could he not assess
the same in his own sociology? Though he focused on the state, we do
not find in his work a clear enunciation of the sociology of power.
Why did Desai not engage with Marxism's normative project when
these questions were uppermost in the minds of European Marxist,
sociologists from the late 1960s onwards? For instance, when Desai was
writing his sociology, the debates regarding these themes were being
I elaborated in the Frankfurt School. They questioned naive positivism
" and empiricism and elaborated a critical theory that engaged with
philosophical and methodological issues in",sociology together with the
relationship between reason and science on one hand and power and
domination on the other.
It seems that Desai's lack of engagement with these positions relate
to the legacy of colonial modernity which merely allows theories to
adjust empirical material to existing perspectives. This question emerges
anew when we consider Desai as a historian. He was certainly aware
of,' the debates in Marxist historiography regarding transition and
transformation and issues of class and state 29 (discussed among the New
Left as most of its members were influenced by Trotskyite ideas). Yet he
did not engage with these debates.
As a result, his assessments of contemporary India was restricted
to a macro universalistic analysis-an attempt to understand the play
of social and political forces in context of the nation state through an
orthodox Marxist economist perspective.'?
What is Desai's legacy? For Desai the contemporary problems can be
located in property relations established in India through colonialism
and nationalism. When he is arguing for a class analysis of nationalism
or making visible the complexities of peasant movements in India
(much before the subalterns made the study of peasants fashionable), or
assessing communalism and claiming human rights for all, he showed a
 92 Doing Sociology in India
sensitivity to new trends emerging in Indian society and remained much
ahead of his times. Yet Desai's theories has not paved the way for new.
arguments to be presented and new theoretical positions to be articulated
on themes that he explored such as class and the labouring poor; nation
and nationalism; development, state policies and poverty alleviation; and
social movements." His theories could not engage with the complexities
that modernity has thrown up in the case of the Indian subcontinent. At
best one can state that his work as an archivist helped to make visible the
colonial and postcolonial experiences of exploitation. This challenged
the conservative scholarship of sociology in India but could not set the
terms for new theorizations for the discipline.
COLONIAL MODERNITY AND
CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES
The 1970s and 1980s had inaugurated new trends and these have,
redefmed the state-society relationships in India. Social movements of
various kinds have emerged-within agriculture, (landless and peasant),
and within industrial and urban arenas (organized and non-organized,
working class together with that of slum dwellers). Simultaneously there.
has been mobilization of middle and lower castes-the ex-untouchables
and the spread of Dalit and Other Backward caste movements together
with adivasi (triball.and women's movements. Some of these movements
(especially in the heartland of India and the North East) raised anew
questions of sovereignty and linked the aspirations of these groups to the,
debates regarding nationality and self determination; Indian state's policies
and programmes of development and planning and industrialization;
ecological resource management; and social exclusions.
Since the 1980s efforts have been made to create a new sociological
tradition-and thus Beteille's paper on newness in sociology (Beteille
1997). An engagement with other disciplines and their new theorizations,
subaltern studies, and post colonial studies have made some to engage
with the question of Indian modernity (Gupta 2000; Deshpande
2003-4). Others have aligned to theoretical positions emerging from
feminist thought and Dalit studies to question the savarna orientation
of mainstream sociology (Oommen 2008). New nations have been
discovered-the adivasis (Sundar 2007 (19971), and the Dalits. New
interdisciplinary areas of research and teaching have been inaugurated-
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 93
such as Dalit and tribal studies, and cultural and media studies while older
areas were reconstituted, such as the sociology of family and marriage
(Uberoi 2006) and that of urban India (Patel 2006b). Additionally new
specializations have developed, such as feminist sociology, environmental
sociology and labour studies.
If these developments have helped to push into background the
Srinivasian project of sociology it has also not engaged the paths already
n~vigated by A.R. Desai critically.V Sociologists in India discuss the
need to develop an interdisciplinary perspective and assess subalternity.
However they have not questioned the episteme of colonial modernity.
, More significantly, have we moved beyond binaries of anthropology
as the other of sociology? Can one reconstruct the discipline withou~
interrogating these binaries?
In a discussion on coloniality, transmodernity, and colonial difference,
Dussel and Mendieta (1996) and Mignolo (2002) have argued that colonial
modernity can only be displaced if social sciences in the non-European
countries initiate a project to liberate themselves from dependent
theoretical traditions. There is a need for -social sciences to engage at
two levels: the first to displace coloniality and the second to assemble
new reflexive theories. Additionally there is a need to reconstruct new
philosophical systems that can integrate innovative interdisciplinary
. rtormative theories based on the experiences of oppressed who have been
exteriorized by the capitalist process, not only within the globe (as the
~bove authors argue), but also in the nation-state, in the region and in
the varied spatial localities. This is the challenge that the discipline has
to take if it needs to make a clear rupture with the past in this new phase
of globalization. Writing the disciplinary history becomes significant in
this context for it defines for us what we should not be doing, what is the
perspective we need to assert and what needs to be done in the future.
NOTES
1. After the change in name of the city from Bombay to Mumbai, the
university came to be known as University of Mumbai.
2. In pre-colonial India, multiple markers of identity defined relationship
between groups and were contingent on complex processes, which were
constantly changing and were related to political power. Thus we had temple
communities, territorial groups, lineage segments, family units, royal retinues,
warrior sub castes, 'little as opposed to large kingdoms', occupational reference
94 Doing Sociology in India
groups, agricultural and trading associations, networks of devotional and
sectarian religious communities, and priestly cables. Those who came under the
name 'caste' as defined by the colonial powers were just one category among
many and one way of representing and organizing identity (Dirks 2001).
3. Raghuramaraju (2009: 17) suggests that in India, as in other colonial
countries, we had the latter.
4. Other political entities that had had authority, such as that of region,
village or neighbourhood communities, kinship groups, factional parties, chiefly
authority, political affiliations, all got superseded, deleted from knowledge
frameworks and silenced.
5. No wonder economic and political sociology remained weak and these
specializations have very recently developed in India.
6. A nuanced theory of identity formation emerges only after the late 1970s
with the growth of feminist and Dalit studies. (See Sanghari and Vaid 1990, and
Pandian 2007.)
7. See Meera Nanda's arguments on the implications of this on the practices
of science in India (Nanda 2005).
8. See Visvanathan's chapter in this volume.
9. Caught in the binaries, mainstream sociology (for example, Madan
2004) has examined the concept of secularism as western and rarely been able to
excavate the manifold ways that secularist perspectives have found expressions
in the pre-modern and contemporary processes.
10. In this essay, Mignolo analyses the limitations of Wallerstein et al.'s
elaboration of the problems in social sciences, 'Open Social Sciences' (1996)
and indicates how it remains located within the episteme of European social
sciences.
11. See .Beteille's (2007) critic of Marxism and his dismissal of Marxist
viewpoint as legitimate within sociology/anthropology. Interestingly he does not
discuss Desai in any of his articles on Marxism.
12. In the 1970s, the subaltern school has attempted to create alternate
philosophical system to study contemporary society. Its successes and failures
have been now well documented. See Ludden (2001).
13. It is interesting that in this paper he does not engage with the views
presented by Radhakamal Mukerjee who had by then elaborated an indigenous
and value based approach to sociology. See his 'A General Theory of Society' in
B. Singh (ed.) nd.
14. In a recent article, T.K. Oommen argues that this disjunction is part
of the mismatch between field, method, and concept. See Sociological Bulletin
(2008).
15. See for further details Srinivas's The Remembered Village (1976).
16. The first survey was published by ICSSR in 1973. The second was
published in 1979 and the third has been published in 1999 (Patel 1998).
17. See Oommen (2008).
Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 95
18. The first proto Dalit critique came from Parvatharnma's appraisal of
Srinivas' The Remembered Village. Later this point of view was elaborated by
Pandian (2002). For a feminist assessment of caste see Chakravarti (2003).
19. The same theme resonates in a completely differentway in Chatterjee's
The Nation and its Fragments (1997).
20. Desai's Social Background of Indian Nationalism became the text for new
histories to be constructed. In the Preface of the essays on nationalism, Bipan
Chandra stares, 'The social character of the (national) movement, its origins
stages of development, the nature of social support and popular participation,
the tactics and strategies evolved or used, and stages of development were not
properly studied. There have been of course exceptions; for example the works
of A.R. Desai, R. Palme Dutt, and several economists during the 1920s and 1930s'
Bipan Chandra (1979: vi). However this was not true for the later text, Recent
Trends ... One wonders why this text has been ignored in a discussion of Marxist
political sociology.
21. See D.N. Dhanagare (2007) for a recent evaluation of the many
trajectories of historical sociology in India.
22. Interesting this definition does not include sex work.
23. A.R. Desai organized a collective of researchers to do this work sponsored
by the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). These included Praful Bidwai,
Sunil Dighe, Kamala Ganesh, M.N.V. Nair, S.D. Punekar, Manorama Savur, and
Robert Varikayal. Desai was the General Editor of these volumes. The first three
volumes titled Labour Movement in India were published by Popular Prakashan
Bombay in Desai's lifetime. The rest of the twenty-one volumes covering the
period from 1920 to 1947 were prepared for publication by Manorama Savur and
have been published by Pragati Publishers for ICHR between 2003 and 2005.
. 24. A prelude of this argument appears as an introduction of the two-volume
edited book published by the University of Bombay's Department of Sociology
on modernization theories on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of
the Department (1969).
25. While Desai was a member of the Communist Party for five years from
1934 onwards, his intellectual resources were drawn from the margins of Marxist
theory. From the 1940s he was associated with the Trotskyite position and was a
member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party till 1981 (PateI2007b).
26. A.R. Desai supported the institutionalization of women's studies. His
wife, Neeraben Desai was a key player in the foundation of the discipline of
women's studies in India. See Vina Mazumdar's tribute (1994).
27. How this methodological and theoretical problem affects the sociology
of urbanization in India, see Patel (2006a: 8-9).
28. Since its publication in 1948, this book has gone through six editions
and has been reprinted almost every alternate year (PateI2007b: 424).
29. This was related to the assessment of the peculiarities of the English case
and led to a debate between E.P.Thompson. and the New Left. The key to this
96 Doing Sociology in India Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? 97

debate was the contending methodologies developed by the empirical school of
Marxist historiography in England against the approach that combined Western
Marxist structuralist methodologies and theories. Additionally Desai knew
Thompson; the latter visited him when he came to India.
30. Chatterjee destabilizes the universalisms in the Marxist approach when
he discusses nationalism in his Nation and its Fragments (1997).
31. See the work of Ian Breman (2007) on the labouring poor, subaltern
theory on nation and nationalism (Ludden 2001), and Shah (2004) on social
movements.
32. Sociologists in India have generally kept away from engaging with
Marxist theories and this trend continues today.
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Balgopal, K. 1988. Probings in the Political Economy of Agrarian Classes and
Conflicts. Hyderabad: Perspectives, pp. 3-20.
Beteille, A. 1997. 'Newness in Sociological Enquiry', Sociological Bulletin, 46(1):
97-110.
---. 2000. 'M.N. Srinivas (November 16, 1916 - November 30, 1999)',
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