Indian Sociologists Notes in English Class 11 Sociology Chapter-3 Book-Understanding Society

Indian Perspective of Sociology  

• Formal education in sociology in India began in 1919 at Bombay University. 

• In 1920, Calcutta and Lucknow Universities also started teaching sociology and anthropology.

• In the initial period it was not at all clear what and how the format of Indian sociology would be.

• Indian sociologists and anthropologists came into being, mostly by accident.

• Those who showed interest in this subject in the first twenty-five years of the 20th century had to decide for themselves what its role would be in India.

The Indian context raised many questions.

• If Western sociology emerged as an attempt to understand modernity, what would be its role in a country like India?

• Anthropology emerged in the context of European society's curiosity to know about 'primitive cultures', so what should be its role in India?

• What important role can sociology play in a prosperous, independent, new nation like India which is moving towards planned development and democracy?

Shri L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer

• Started his career as a clerk

• then school teacher 

• Appointed as a teacher in the Cochin Princely College

• In 1902 he was asked by the Dewan of Cochin to assist in the ethnographic survey of the state.

• His work was highly praised by British anthropologists 

• He was invited to the Mysore State to assist in a similar survey.

• The first was a trained anthropologist who gained national and international fame as a scholar and academician.

• He helped establish India's first postgraduate anthropology department.

• He remained in Calcutta University from 1917-1932.

• He had no formal degree in anthropology, but was elected president of the ethnological section of the Indian Science Congress.

• He was awarded a doctorate degree by a German university. 

• He was honoured with the titles of Rai Bahadur and Diwan Bahadur by the Cochin Princely State.

Sarat Chandra Roy 

• Lawmaker

• He became an anthropologist by accident. 

• He obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degree in English subject.

• Law degree from Ripon College, Calcutta 

• In 1898, he started working as an English teacher in a Christian missionary school in Ranchi.

• He travelled extensively in tribal areas and lived among them and conducted in-depth field studies.

• During his entire service period, more than a hundred articles were published in national and British educational journals.

• He became renowned as a well-known anthropologist in India and Britain and became recognized as an expert on 'Chhota Nagpur.' 

• In 1922 he founded the journal Man in India, which was the first journal of its time and kind and is still published in India.

Govind Sadashiv Ghurye 

• He is credited with establishing sociology as an institutional form. 

• First postgraduate level teaching position in Sociology Department at Bombay University  

• Worked in this department for thirty-five years.

• founded the Indian Sociological Society 

• Also published a journal called Sociological Bulletin.

• Ghurya is known for his excellent work on caste and race

• Nurtured sociology as an Indian subject. 

• The Bombay University Department became the first department to successfully implement two major programmes. 

1. Active teaching and research work to be carried out in the same institution, 

2. To establish social anthropology and sociology as a broad category.

Ghurye's views on caste and race

• Ghurya's doctoral dissertation was later published in 1932 as Caste and Race in India. 

• Ghurye's work attracted attention because it addressed issues in contemporary Indian anthropology.

Some characteristics of caste by Ghurya 

• Caste is an institution based on segmental division.

• Caste is determined by birth.

• Caste membership is granted by birth only.

• Caste societies are based on hierarchical divisions.

• Caste as an institution imposes restrictions on social interaction

• Different rights and duties are prescribed for different castes.

• Caste also limits the choice of occupation

• Between 1920 and 1950, two major departments of sociology were opened in India in Mumbai and Lucknow. 

• Both started as mixed departments of sociology and economics. 

• The Mumbai division was at this time being run by G.S. Ghurye 

• The Lucknow department was run by the famous 'Tridev' Radhakamal Mukherjee (founder), D.P. Mukherjee and D.N. Majumdar.

Dhrujati Prasad Mukherjee

• Studied history and economics before sociology.

• Wrote many books in English and Bengali. 

• Introduction to Indian Music written by him is a great work in this subject which is considered a classic of this category.

• Because of his dissatisfaction with Indian history and economy, he turned to sociology.

• The social system of India is its distinctive feature and hence, it is essential for social science

I believe that sociality is in abundance in India, apart from this there is very little of everything else. India's history, its economics, even its philosophy revolves around social groups, at the most it can be said that it revolves around socialized individuals, I feel so.

Dhrujati Prasad Mukherjee

• Given the central position of society in India, it was the first duty of the Indian sociologist to study social traditions.

• “It is not enough for an Indian sociologist to be just a sociologist. Rather, his first requirement is to be an Indian because only by connecting with folk customs, customs, practices and traditions will he be able to understand what is inside and beyond his social system.”

The tradition was a living tradition

• The root meaning of the word tradition is to transmit

• Tradition has strong roots in the past and is kept alive by telling and hearing stories and myths.

• Indian culture and society are not individualistic in the Western sense. 

• The direction of the Indian social system is largely determined by the activities of groups, communities and castes and not by 'voluntary' individual actions.

The Indian tradition recognizes three principles of change

1. Shruti

2. Memory 

3. Experience

• The most important principle of change in Indian society was generalized experience or collective experience of groups.

• The higher traditions were based on Shruti and Smriti but they began to be challenged by collective experiences 

• DP was a critic of the tradition he inherited and also an admiring critic of modernity which shaped his own intellectual perspective.

Akshay Ramanlal Desai

• A. R. Desai was directly involved in politics as a formal member of political parties. 

• Desai was a lifelong Marxist and became involved in Marxist politics while pursuing his undergraduate studies in Baroda.

• Desai's father was a middle-level administrative officer in Baroda, 

• Desai led a migratory life due to his father's frequent transfers to various places in Baroda.

• After completing his graduation in Baroda, he joined the Sociology Department of Bombay University where Ghurye was his mentor.

• In 1948 his thesis The Social Background of Indian Nationalism was published which is the best known of his works.

• Marxism was not very influential in Indian sociology 

• A.R. Desai became more famous outside his subject than in his own right.

• He was also the President of the 'Indian Sociological Society', Desai was a very influential personality in Indian sociology.

Desai's views on the state

• The modern capitalist state was an important subject in which A.R. Desai was interested.

• In his essay 'The Myth of the Welfare State', Desai has critically reviewed it in detail and drawn attention to its shortcomings.

Characteristics of the state 

1. A welfare state is a positive state.

• It actively uses its powers to formulate and implement social policies for the betterment of society.

2. A welfare state is a democratic state.

• Democracy is an essential condition for the birth of a welfare state.

3. The economy of a welfare state is mixed

• Private capitalist companies and state or collective companies work together.

Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas

• Indian sociologist, M.N. Srinivas received his doctorate twice-one from Bombay University and the other from Oxford. 

• He was a disciple of Ghurye in Mumbai.

• His intellectual orientation changed while studying at the Department of Social Anthropology at Oxford.

• His doctoral dissertation was published as Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India.

• Worked on the structural functionalist perspective that was dominant in British social anthropology

• He was appointed lecturer in the newly established Indian Sociology Department at Oxford, but resigned in 1951 and returned to India 

• Where he took over as the Head of the newly established Department of Sociology at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda. 

• In 1959 he came to Delhi where he established the Department of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, which soon became an important centre of sociology throughout India.

• Like G.S. Ghurye and the Lucknow scholars, Srinivas too groomed a new generation of scholars who were to emerge as giants of their discipline in the decades to come.

Srinivas's thoughts about the village 

• Srinivas's interest in Indian villages and rural society remained throughout his life. 

• Although he had visited villages several times for surveys and interviews, it was only after working for a year in a village near Mysore that he gained direct knowledge about the rural society.

• The experience of living and working in the village proved important for his professional and intellectual development

Srinivas's articles on the village are mainly of two types.  

1. Ethnographic data of field work carried out in the villages

2. Historical and conceptual discussions on how the Indian village serves as a unit of social analysis

Louis Dumont

• Social institutions like caste were more important than the village because the village was only a group of a few people living in a particular place. 

• Villages may persist or disappear and people may leave one village for another, but their social institutions, like caste or religion, remain with them and become active wherever they go

Srinivas

• Village is an essential social identity. 

• Historical evidence shows that villages have developed a unified identity and rural unity is of great significance in rural social life.

• The villages were never self-sufficient and were linked regionally by a variety of economic, social and political ties.

• It provided eyewitness accounts of the rapid social change taking place in Indian villages at a time when the newly independent nation was making plans for development. 

• This diverse information regarding rural India was greatly appreciated at that time as it gave urban Indians and policy makers an idea about what was happening in the interior parts of India.