• Andre Beteille is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, with a distinguished career teaching at Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of Chicago, and London School of Economics.
• He has been Professor Emeritus at University of Cambridge, London School of Economics, Erasmus University, University of California at Berkeley, and Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin.
• Beteille was the first Nehru Fellow and received numerous awards and fellowships from universities in India and abroad, including being elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1992, a rare distinction for an Indian sociologist.
• He has served as Chancellor of North-Eastern Hill University and Chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
• In 2005, Beteille was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the President of India for his scholarly contributions and distinguished service to the nation.
• He was appointed a member of the Prime Minister’s National Knowledge Commission but resigned in 2006 in protest over a proposal to increase caste-based reservations.
• In 2005, he was made National Professor and is currently the Chairman of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.
• Born in September 1934 in Chandannagore, then under French rule, Beteille is of French parentage with a Bengali mother and grandmother, shaping his identity as a quintessential Bengali Bhadralok.
• He is fluent in both Bengali and English and has a deep knowledge of European and English literature. He is also known as a good singer of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs.
• Beteille’s early education was in Chandannagore, Patna, and Calcutta, where his family moved after independence. He graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta.
• Initially a student of physics, he switched to anthropology, influenced by N.K. Bose, who became his intellectual mentor.
• He completed his M.Sc. in anthropology at the University of Calcutta and briefly worked as a research fellow at the Indian Statistical Institute.
• After teaching degree courses, Beteille joined the Department of Sociology at Delhi University, where he began his Ph.D. under the guidance of M.N. Srinivas.
• His early work focused on social stratification, equality, and universality. From 1990, he developed an interest in liberal philosophy and issues related to poverty and social injustice.
• He was the first Indian sociologist to apply John Rawls’ theories to the issue of positive discrimination.
• Beteille was influenced by N.K. Bose, particularly his work on ‘The Structure of Hindu Society’, and Srinivas, who emphasized the importance of fieldwork.
• He was also influenced by Evans-Pritchard, Max Gluckman, John Barne, and Meyer Fortes during his academic journey, particularly in ethnographic observation and the study of social networks.
• Beteille’s mixed background led to his natural inclination towards comparing ways of life. Initially, he intended to work with Tamil speakers in Delhi, but Srinivas encouraged him to work in a region very different from his own.

Theoretical Perspective

• Beteille’s critical contribution lies in contextualizing local concepts such as caste, class, hierarchy, and equalitywithin the broader frameworks of inequality, stratification, and justice.
• He integrates universal categories and concepts while always grounding them in empirical realities.
• His academic closeness to Weber marked his distance from Marx, a scholar he respected but with whom he had significant intellectual differences.
• Beteille is the best-known scholar in India for his work on liberal theory and its application to social policy.
• While acknowledging the limitations of the comparative method, he effectively uses it in his research.
• He employs Weberian categories and analytical modes in his work.
• Beteille refines the conceptualization of ‘ideas and interests’ and analyzes the similarities and interdependence of tribe and caste through the intermediary category of the ‘peasant’.

Writings of Andre Beteille

• Andre Beteille is one of India’s leading sociologists and writers, known for his studies on the caste system in South India.
• He has authored several influential books and written insightfully on India’s encounters with the West, the contest between religion and secularism, the relationship between caste and class, the links between poverty and inequality, and the role of public institutions.
• Beteille has also examined the position of backward classes in Indian society based on Smut’s lectures from Cambridge in 1985.
• His key publications include:
  • Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village (1965)
  • Castes: Old and New, Essays in Social Structure and Social Stratification (1969)
  • Inequality and Social Change (1972)
  • Studies in Agrarian Social Structure (1974)
  • Six Essays in Comparative Sociology (1974)
  • Inequality among Men (1977)
  • The Idea of Natural Inequality and Other Essays (1983)
  • Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative Perspective (1991)
  • The Backward Classes in Contemporary India (1992)
  • Antinomies of Society: Essays on Ideologies and Institutions (2000)
  • Sociology: Essays on Approach and Method (2002)
  • Chronicles of Our Time (2000)
  • Equality and Universality: Essays in Social and Political Theory (2002)
  • Ideology and Social Science (2006)
  • Marxism and Class Analysis (2007)
• Beteille also wrote essays on topics like Secularism, Race and Caste, Teaching and Research, Government and NGOs, and The Indian Middle Class.
• The major issues emerging from his writings include:
  • Civil Society
  • Social Stratification in India
  • The Idea of Equality and Inequality
  • Studies in Agrarian Social Structure
  • Society and Politics in India
  • Backward Classes in Contemporary India
  • Ideologies and Institutions
  • Religion and Secularism