Class 11 Sociology Book 2 Chapter 5 Indian Sociologists Short Notes

Quick-revision summary of Chapter 5: Indian Sociologists (Understanding Society, Class 11, Book 2). For full explanations, read the complete notes.

1 Key definitions

2 Beginnings and pioneers

• Sociology taught first at the University of Bombay, 1919; Calcutta and Lucknow in the 1920s.
• Three Indian questions: modernity came with colonialism; anthropology in an ancient civilisation; a role in planned development and democracy.
• L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer (1861-1937): clerk to teacher; 1902 Cochin ethnographic survey for the Dewan, unpaid; Calcutta 1917-1932, first PG anthropology department; self-taught; Rao Bahadur, Dewan Bahadur.
• Sarat Chandra Roy (1871-1942): lawyer; Ranchi 1898, 44 years; court interpreter of tribal customs; Oraon, Mundas, Kharias; Man in India (1922).

3 G.S. Ghurye (1893-1983)

• Founder of institutionalised sociology; Bombay department 35 years; Indian Sociological Society (1951); Sociological Bulletin (1952); first Ph.D. to G.R. Pradhan (1936).
• First: teaching + research together; sociology + social anthropology merged.
• Tribal debate (vs Verrier Elwin): protectionists wanted the state to protect tribes; Ghurye called them ‘backward Hindus’; agreed: tribes hardly ever isolated.
• Caste and Race in India (1932): Risley said caste came from race; Ghurye: only partially correct, true for north India (‘Hindustan proper’); elsewhere groups mixed; endogamy may have come into already mixed groups.
• Six features: segmental division, hierarchy, restricted interaction (purity-pollution), differential rights and duties, hereditary occupation, endogamy + exogamy. Based on classical texts.

4 D.P. Mukerji (1894-1961)

• Lucknow ‘trinity’ with Radhakamal Mukerjee and D.N. Majumdar; Marxism as a method; Introduction to Indian Music.
• India “had had society, and very little else”; the sociologist must be “an Indian first”.
• Living tradition; tradition = to transmit (parampara, aitihya).
• Not individualistic: group, sect, caste-action.
• Economy weak as a source of change; class conflict “smoothed and covered by caste traditions”; study non-economic causes.
• Shruti, smriti, anubhava; generalised anubhava = collective experience (bhakti, Sufis); anubhava and prem, not buddhi-vichar.
• Revolts transform orthodoxy but are reabsorbed; tradition neither worshipped nor ignored.

5 A.R. Desai (1915-1994)

• Life-long Marxist, party member (CPI, then Revolutionary Socialist Party); The Social Background of Indian Nationalism (1948).
• “The myth of the welfare state”: welfare state = positive, democratic, mixed economy.
• Five tests: poverty and security, income inequality, profit motive, stable development, employment for all.
• Britain, USA, Europe fail: the welfare state is “something of a myth”. Also criticised Communist states; upheld democracy and the rule of law.

6 M.N. Srinivas (1916-1999)

• Doctorates from Bombay and Oxford; Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India: structural-functional.
• Baroda 1951; Delhi School of Economics 1959; Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bangalore 1971; links with Chicago.
• A year’s fieldwork near Mysore; with S.C. Dube and D.N. Majumdar made village studies dominant (1950s-60s).
• Dumont: caste matters more; a village is just people in a place. Srinivas: the village is a relevant entity with real unity; not a self-sufficient “little republic”; it changed and had regional links.
• Village studies: ethnographic methods, eye-witness accounts of change, a new role for sociology.