• The categories of knowledge, their meaning, content, and the methodology of their construction are shaped by the social and historical forces of the time.
• Evidence of this conditioning is found in the writings of pioneers like Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Indian pioneers of sociology.
• Social conditioning is historically constituted. For Western pioneers, challenges stemmed from industrial society and cultural tensions, while in India, the colonial experience, memory of past glory, and political and cultural emancipation were key concerns.
• These concerns were reflected in concepts, theory, and method as Indian sociology gained status.
• Yogendra Singh (1986) discusses the social conditioning of Indian sociology, adapting these ideas for further study.
• During the colonial period, British and European writings used Eurocentric categories for studying Indian society, distorting history and perpetuating colonialism.
• Concepts like caste, tribe, village, community, family, and kinship were defined as segmentary entities, often misrepresenting them as isolated from broader social structures.
• The discreteness of these entities was emphasized, neglecting social and cultural linkages within Indian society.
• This bias is seen in the treatment of caste and tribe as distinct structural and cultural formations, which G.S. Ghuryecritiqued in 1943.
• Colonial ethnographers viewed tribal societies in a static way, often as isolated and primitive, failing to account for their dynamic aspects.
• Similarly, village communities were treated as autonomous entities, as noted by Louis Dumont and Sir Henry S. Maine.
• British administrators-turned-ethnographers modeled the Indian village after European models, lacking an ethnographic base.
• D.P. Mukerji (1958) interpreted the sangha (community) as collective, without the individual-focused concepts seen in the West.
• The integrative role of institutions like caste, tribe, and village in unifying Indian society was often overlooked.
• Irfan Habib illustrates how commodity production linked villages with towns in Mughal India, showing the interdependence of these systems.
• In the 1950s and 1960s, literature emerged rejecting the myth of autonomy of Indian social structures, highlighting interlinkages among caste, tribe, village, and kinship.
• The colonial interpretation of Indian society was conditioned by ideological biases and methods that treated institutions as isolated and static.
• Bernard S. Cohn identified three key orientations in interpreting Indian society: orientalist, missionary, and administrative.
• Orientalists viewed India as static, offering a timeless picture based on texts; missionaries saw Indian society as degenerate and sought redemption through conversion.
• The administrative view followed a utilitarian perspective, seeing Indian institutions as impediments to modernization.
• These perspectives were shaped by the social origin and ideological positions of scholars, leading to a fragmentedand non-historical view of Indian society.
• William Wiser’s study of the Hindu Jajmani System (1936) exemplifies how economic anthropology of the villagewas framed within village territories.
• The sociology of India (1775-1940) was shaped by the social background, ideology, and methods of each scholar.
• Yogendra Singh outlines four theoretical orientations in Indian sociology: philosophic-theoretic, culturological, structural-theoretic, and dialectical-historical.
• None of these orientations were fully formalized into systematic theories but instead served as styles of analysis or quasi-formal conceptual schemes.
• Early 20th-century Indian sociology focused on caste, social customs, folklore, land systems, and village communities, comparing them with Western institutions.
• The key meta-theoretical contribution was ethno-sociological awareness and a universalization of native categories in Indian sociology.
• Conceptual categories widely used in the study of Indian society include:
  • Sanskritization and Westernization (M.N. Srinivas)
  • Little and Great Traditions (McKim Marriott)
  • Multi-dimensional Tradition (S.C. Dube)
  • Structuralism (Richard Lembert, D.P. Mukerji, A.R. Desai)
  • Historicity of Emotions (Louis Dumont)
• Other major categories include:
  • Modernization (Yogendra Singh)
  • Dominant Caste and Caste Hierarchy (M.N. Srinivas)
  • Reference Group Model for Caste (Y.B. Damle)
  • Universalization and Parochialization (McKim Marriott)
  • Rural Cosmopolitanism (Oscar Lewis)
  • Resource Group (K.N. Sharma)
• These categories have been constructed by both Indian scholars (e.g., Srinivas’ concept of Sanskritization) and Western scholars conducting fieldwork in India.
• Despite Western scholars, categories like Little and Great Traditions (McKim Marriott) were developed for analysis within the Indian context.
• Yogendra Singh proposes an integral approach for studying Indian society, considering these diverse theoretical and conceptual categories.

Village Studies

• Village studies in India began as an administrator-led concern, primarily in the pre-independence period, with practitioners from economics. Sociologists and social anthropologists began studying rural areas after independence, focusing on ethnographic approaches.
• Anthropologists studied tribes as larger units (tribes), while in rural areas, villages were treated as isolated, holistic units.
• Robert Redfield introduced concepts such as indigenous civilization, little community, peasant society, and great and little traditions. These concepts were further developed by McKim Marriott (1955) through universalization and parochialization.
• Oscar Lewis (1958) added the idea of rural cosmopolitanism.
• S.C. Dube (1955) classified Indian traditions as classical, regional, local, western, and emergent national.
• Comparative studies of multiple villages began, shifting focus from complete village studies to specific topics like caste, family, economic life, group dynamics, and factionalism.
• The concept of village has been a point of debate, with researchers using different definitions such as nucleated and dispersed villages.
• Caste has been central to studies, with criticism directed at village studies for an overemphasis on caste, yet caste remains a vital component of Indian society.
• Irawati Karve (1958) questioned the nature of caste, distinguishing between varna, jati, gotra, and vansha.
• Mayer’s (1960) distinction between kindred of cooperation and kindred of recognition in caste was influential but challenged by Atal (1968), who proposed that caste as a unit (jati) is defined by endogamy.
• Dominant caste and caste hierarchy became important concepts, with M.N. Srinivas (1959) introducing dominant caste, later debated by B.R. Chauhan (1967), Yogesh Atal (1968), and others.
• Factionalism in villages, introduced by Oscar Lewis (1958), involved kin-linked permanent factions and ephemeral factions identified by Yogesh Atal.
• Scholars like Ralph Nicholas (1963), Paul Brass (1965), and Richard Sisson (1972) contributed to the factionconcept.
• K.N. Sharma (1963, 1969) introduced the idea of resource group in rural studies.
• The Community Development Programme (CDP) in the 1960s spurred studies on externally induced cultural change.
• Re-studies, like Wiser’s Behind Mudwalls (1961) and Srinivas’ The Remembered Village, focused on social changeand how village life had evolved.