Section XH6.6: Indian Society / Sociology of India

This chapter answers Section XH6.6 of XH6 Sociology in the Humanities and Social Sciences (XH) paper, one of the six optional sections, chosen at application. The heading reads: "Colonial, Nationalist, Indological perspectives (G.S. Ghurye); Structural-Functional approach (M.N. Srinivas); Dialectical approach (A.R. Desai); Subaltern studies (R. Guha); Non Brahmin perspectives (Phule, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar); Feminist perspectives (Leela Dube, Sharmila Rege); Social Institutions; Social Stratification; Tradition and Modernity (M.N. Srinivas, Yogendra Singh, Dipankar Gupta); Peasants and agrarian sociology (Andre Beteille, A.R. Desai, D.N. Dhanagare); Social Movement (T.K. Oommen), Village studies; Communalism and Secularism." This is an attribution-heavy chapter: its whole task is to tie each perspective and concept to the right Indian sociologist. Every idea below is matched to its author; where scholarship is contested, the chapter says so.

1. Colonial, nationalist and Indological perspectives; Ghurye

Indian society was first written about by colonial administrators and orientalists, who read it largely through its sacred texts and treated caste as its essence. Nationalist writers answered back, using the same material to argue the dignity and antiquity of Indian civilisation. The Indological (textual) perspective reads Indian society through classical Sanskrit sources, and a leading Indian exponent is G.S. Ghurye, often called a founder of Indian sociology. His Caste and Race in India set out the well-known six features of caste, among them segmental division, hierarchy, restrictions on food and social intercourse, and endogamy.

Against this textual "book view", M.N. Srinivas urged a "field view": caste and religion as actually practised and observed in a living village, not only as prescribed in the scriptures. The shift from the book view to the field view is the hinge of modern Indian sociology, and it is the ground of Srinivas's own structural-functional work discussed next.

🧠 Match the thinker to the lens
This chapter rewards one skill above all: pairing a perspective with its author. Indological, textual, six features of caste means Ghurye. Field view, Sanskritization, dominant caste means Srinivas. Dialectical, Marxist account of Indian nationalism means A.R. Desai. Subaltern, the autonomy of the people's politics means Ranajit Guha.

2. Srinivas's concepts and the village studies

  • Sanskritization (Srinivas): the process by which a "low" caste, tribe or group takes on the customs, rituals, beliefs and way of life of a higher, often twice-born, caste, to claim a higher position. It is positional change within the system, not a change of the system itself.
  • Westernization (Srinivas): the changes in technology, institutions, ideology and values that followed British contact. It is distinct from Sanskritization, whose model is an indigenous higher caste rather than the West.
  • Dominant caste (Srinivas): a caste dominant in a locality when it is numerically strong, holds economic and political power, and is not too low in ritual rank. Dominance is thus a bundle of numbers, land, power and ritual standing.

Srinivas developed these in village work (Rampura, later written up as The Remembered Village). The village studies of the 1950s, by Srinivas, S.C. Dube (Shamirpet) and others, demolished the colonial image of the Indian village as a self-sufficient, changeless "little republic". They showed villages to be internally stratified and firmly linked to markets, towns, castes and the state beyond their boundaries.

3. Dialectical and subaltern perspectives: Desai and Guha

A.R. Desai brought a dialectical (Marxist) approach to Indian society. In Social Background of Indian Nationalism he explained the national movement not as a clash of ideas alone but as the product of the material conditions created by colonial capitalism, reading Indian history through class forces and the mode of production rather than through sacred texts or static function.

Ranajit Guha founded the Subaltern Studies project. Its target was both colonialist and nationalist-elite history, which, Guha argued, wrote the common people out of their own story. Against this he asserted the relative autonomy of subaltern politics — the idea that peasants and labourers acted as conscious agents on their own initiative, not merely when mobilised from above. His Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India reads revolt itself as the text of subaltern consciousness.

ℹ️ Where "subaltern" comes from
The word subaltern is taken from Antonio Gramsci, where it names the subordinate groups whose history is fragmentary because the dominant classes control the record. Guha's school carried it into Indian historiography and sociology.

4. Non-Brahmin and feminist perspectives

The non-Brahmin perspective reads Indian society from below the ritual hierarchy. Jotirao Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj and, in works such as Gulamgiri, attacked Brahminical domination and championed education for the shudras, the "untouchables" and women, opening some of the first schools for girls and lower castes. B.R. Ambedkar gave caste its sharpest analysis: in Castes in India he argued that caste is in essence endogamy — a class closed in on itself by the prohibition of marriage outside — and in Annihilation of Caste he called for its destruction rather than its reform.

The feminist perspective on Indian society insists that caste and class cannot be understood without gender. Leela Dube showed how kinship encodes gender, for example in the widespread "seed and earth" symbolism, in which the man is imagined as the seed and the woman as the field, a metaphor that quietly privileges the male line. Sharmila Rege developed a Dalit feminist standpoint, criticising mainstream (largely upper-caste) feminism for ignoring caste and the Dalit movement for ignoring gender, and arguing that the Dalit woman's position gives a distinctive and fuller view of Indian society.

5. Social institutions: family, kinship, household, village and urban settings

Indian sociology studies institutions as they are lived. On the family, A.M. Shah separated the household (those who share a hearth and a residence) from the wider family of kin, and showed that a household passes through a cycle of growth and division, so the joint family cannot be read off a single census snapshot. I.P. Desai, in his study of Mahuva, argued that jointness should be judged by obligations and exchange of help between related households, not only by common residence, and spoke of a functional joint family. Irawati Karve's kinship zones and the Northern and Southern patterns of marriage (taken up in the family chapter) belong to the same tradition.

Village and urban settings are not opposites. The village studies showed rural life tied to markets and the state; studies of cities show the mirror image. Caste and kin networks are carried into urban life, shaping housing, jobs, migration chains and marriage, while city and village stay linked through migration and remittances. The old picture of the city dissolving caste and the village preserving it unchanged is therefore too simple, and an answer should say that caste changes its form in the city rather than vanishing.

⚠️ Household, family and joint family are three different things
A household is a residential and commensal unit; a family is a network of kin; jointness may be judged by residence (Shah's household cycle) or by obligations across households (I.P. Desai's functional joint family). An item that says "the joint family is disappearing" without naming which measure it uses is making an unsupported claim.

6. Social stratification; tradition and modernity

Indian stratification rests on caste, class, tribe and gender. The varna scheme is the fourfold textual model (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra); jati is the actual, local endogamous group in which caste is lived. Louis Dumont read the caste order as a hierarchy founded on the opposition of the pure and the impure, with ritual status encompassing secular power. Andre Beteille's study of the Tanjore village of Sripuram, Caste, Class and Power, showed that caste, class and power, once largely congruent in Brahmin hands, had come apart over time, so that ritual rank, wealth and political power no longer moved together. Tribe is handled either as a distinct order or as part of a caste-tribe continuum (the debate is taken up in the agrarian chapter), and gender cuts across all of these, so a woman's position is shaped by her caste and class as well as by her sex.

On tradition and modernity, Srinivas read change through Sanskritization and Westernization. Yogendra Singh, in Modernization of Indian Tradition, analysed change through sources working from within tradition and from outside it, treating tradition and modernity as interacting rather than simply opposed. Dipankar Gupta, in Mistaken Modernity, argued that India often mistakes the outward trappings of the West for genuine modernity, whose real content is equality, individual dignity and the rule of law.

7. Agrarian sociology, social movements, communalism and secularism

Peasants and agrarian sociology in India are associated with Andre Beteille (caste, class and power in the village), A.R. Desai (a Marxist rural sociology and the study of peasant struggles) and D.N. Dhanagare, whose Peasant Movements in India, 1920-1950 analysed the social base, leadership and ideology of the great agrarian risings. On social movements more broadly, T.K. Oommen's work on protest and change studies how movements arise, who leads them, and how they relate to the state and to social transformation.

Communalism is the belief that people who share a religion thereby share common secular (political and economic) interests opposed to those of other religions; it turns religious identity into a line of political conflict, and must be distinguished from faith itself. Secularism names the state's stance towards religion. The Western model is often read as a strict separation, a "wall" between religion and state; the Indian model is better read, on one influential account, as "principled distance" (Rajeev Bhargava), under which the state keeps equal respect for all religions and may intervene for reform rather than simply standing apart.

⚠️ Communalism is not the same as being religious
A common error treats communalism as mere religiosity or as inter-religious difference. In sociology it is specifically the political claim that one's whole religious community shares one secular interest set against another community's. Keep the concept, not the loose everyday sense, when answering.

Key takeaways

  • Ghurye is the Indological (textual) perspective and the six features of caste; Srinivas replaced the book view with the field view. Desai gave a dialectical (Marxist) account of Indian nationalism; Guha founded Subaltern Studies and argued for the autonomy of subaltern politics.
  • Srinivas's concepts: Sanskritization (a low group adopts a higher caste's ways, positional not structural change), Westernization (change from British contact), and the dominant caste (numbers, economic and political power, plus not-too-low ritual rank).
  • Non-Brahmin: Phule (Satyashodhak Samaj, education for shudras and women) and Ambedkar (caste as endogamy; Annihilation of Caste). Feminist: Leela Dube (kinship and gender, the seed-and-earth metaphor) and Sharmila Rege (Dalit feminist standpoint).
  • Stratification: varna is the textual fourfold model, jati the lived endogamous group; Dumont reads caste as pure-versus-impure hierarchy. Beteille's Sripuram showed caste, class and power coming apart. Tradition-modernity: Srinivas, Yogendra Singh (Modernization of Indian Tradition) and Dipankar Gupta (Mistaken Modernity).
  • Village studies demolished the "little republic" image, showing villages stratified and linked to the wider society; cities carry caste and kin networks rather than dissolving them. Shah separated household from family and I.P. Desai proposed the functional joint family. Agrarian sociology: Beteille, A.R. Desai, Dhanagare (Peasant Movements in India, 1920-1950). Social movements: T.K. Oommen.
  • Communalism is the political claim that a whole religious community shares one secular interest against another, not mere religiosity. Indian secularism is read as principled distance (equal respect, room to reform), contrasted with the Western wall of separation.

Practice questions (16)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

  1. The Indological (textual) perspective in Indian sociology, which reads society through classical Sanskrit sources and set out the six features of caste, is most associated with which thinker?

    1. G.S. Ghurye, the author of Caste and Race in India, often called a founder of Indian sociology
    2. A.R. Desai, who gave a dialectical and Marxist reading of Indian nationalism and its class forces
    3. Ranajit Guha, who founded Subaltern Studies and wrote on the autonomy of peasant insurgency
    4. M.N. Srinivas, who urged the field view and coined the concept of Sanskritization
    Show answer

    Answer: A — G.S. Ghurye, the author of Caste and Race in India, often called a founder of Indian sociology

    The Indological, textual perspective and the six features of caste are Ghurye's. Desai is the dialectical (Marxist) approach, Guha is subaltern studies, and Srinivas is the field view and Sanskritization, so each of the others names a different perspective.

  2. M.N. Srinivas is said to have replaced the "book view" of Indian society with the "field view". What does this contrast mean?

    1. A shift from studying only the written output of villagers to studying only their oral folklore, songs and local legends of the area
    2. Moving from understanding caste and religion mainly through scripture to observing them as actually practised
    3. A shift from fieldwork in villages to the exclusive reading of colonial administrative records, revenue files and district gazetteers
    4. A shift from sociology altogether towards the discipline of classical Sanskrit philology, grammar and textual editing
    Show answer

    Answer: B — Moving from understanding caste and religion mainly through scripture to observing them as actually practised

    The field view means studying caste and religion as they are actually lived and observed in a village, rather than only as prescribed in texts (the book view). The other choices misdescribe it: it is not a turn to folklore alone, not a return to colonial records, and certainly not a move away from sociology into philology.

  3. Which of the following correctly match a perspective on Indian society with the thinker associated with it?

    1. Indological (textual) perspective — G.S. Ghurye
    2. Dialectical (Marxist) approach — A.R. Desai
    3. Subaltern studies — Ranajit Guha
    4. The concept of Sanskritization — A.R. Desai
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Indological (textual) perspective — G.S. Ghurye; B — Dialectical (Marxist) approach — A.R. Desai; C — Subaltern studies — Ranajit Guha

    Ghurye is the Indological perspective, Desai the dialectical approach, and Guha the founder of subaltern studies. Sanskritization is Srinivas's concept, not Desai's, so crediting it to Desai is the wrong pairing.

  4. What is the central claim of Ranajit Guha's subaltern-studies project about Indian history?

    1. That Indian history is best written entirely from the official records, reports and correspondence left by the colonial administration
    2. That the nationalist elite alone gave the Indian masses whatever political consciousness they ever came to have in the colonial period
    3. That subaltern groups had a relative autonomy of politics and were conscious agents, a domain elite history erased
    4. That caste in India is explained most fully as a form of endogamy that encloses a class upon itself and shuts its members in
    Show answer

    Answer: C — That subaltern groups had a relative autonomy of politics and were conscious agents, a domain elite history erased

    Guha's core claim is that subaltern groups had a relative autonomy of politics and were conscious agents, a domain that both colonialist and nationalist-elite history had written out. The first two choices are the elite positions he attacked, and the endogamy claim is Ambedkar's analysis of caste, not Guha's thesis.

  5. Who founded the Satyashodhak Samaj and, attacking Brahminical domination, championed education for shudras, "untouchables" and women?

    1. G.S. Ghurye, the Indological scholar who set out the classical six features of the caste system
    2. Andre Beteille, who studied caste, class and power in the Tanjore village of Sripuram
    3. M.N. Srinivas, who developed the concepts of Sanskritization and the dominant caste
    4. Jotirao Phule, the Pune reformer who wrote Gulamgiri and opened schools for girls
    Show answer

    Answer: D — Jotirao Phule, the Pune reformer who wrote Gulamgiri and opened schools for girls

    Jotirao Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj and campaigned for the education of lower castes and women against Brahminical domination. Ghurye, Beteille and Srinivas are major sociologists but none founded that body or led that campaign.

  6. In his essay Castes in India, B.R. Ambedkar argued that the essential mechanism of caste is:

    1. A division of labour fixed by the differing natural aptitudes with which members of each group are born
    2. Endogamy — a class that has closed itself off by prohibiting marriage outside the group
    3. The racial separateness of distinct peoples who migrated into the subcontinent in successive waves
    4. A purely religious hierarchy of ritual purity that has no bearing at all on marriage or on wealth
    Show answer

    Answer: B — Endogamy — a class that has closed itself off by prohibiting marriage outside the group

    Ambedkar located the mechanism of caste in endogamy, a class enclosed upon itself by the ban on marrying out. The natural-aptitude and purely-religious options are the very justifications he rejected, and he did not reduce caste to a racial account, so endogamy is the correct reading.

  7. Consider these statements on feminist perspectives in Indian sociology. P: Leela Dube showed how kinship encodes gender, using the "seed and earth" symbolism. Q: Sharmila Rege developed a Dalit feminist standpoint, criticising mainstream feminism for ignoring caste. R: Both held that caste can be fully understood without any reference to gender at all. S: Rege's standpoint also criticised the Dalit movement for overlooking gender. Which are correct?

    1. P
    2. Q
    3. R
    4. S
    Show answer

    Answer: A — P; B — Q; D — S

    P, Q and S are correct accounts of Dube and Rege: Dube on kinship and gender, Rege on a Dalit feminist standpoint that criticised mainstream feminism for ignoring caste and the Dalit movement for ignoring gender. R is false and is in fact the reverse of their shared position, since both insisted that caste cannot be understood without gender.

  8. Sanskritization, as defined by M.N. Srinivas, refers to:

    1. A process by which a low caste or tribe adopts the ways of a higher caste to claim a higher position
    2. The adoption of Western technology, dress, education, law and values following the long contact with British rule
    3. The compulsory teaching and official promotion of the Sanskrit language in government-run schools across the country
    4. The migration of Brahmin priests from northern India to settle in and ritually serve southern temples
    Show answer

    Answer: A — A process by which a low caste or tribe adopts the ways of a higher caste to claim a higher position

    Sanskritization is a low group's adoption of a higher caste's customs and style of life to raise its own standing. Adoption of Western ways is Westernization, a different concept; the Sanskrit-language and Brahmin-migration options confuse the word with language teaching or priestly movement.

  9. According to M.N. Srinivas, a caste is a "dominant caste" in a locality when it:

    1. Stands at the very top of the ritual purity hierarchy, regardless of its numbers, land or political weight
    2. Is numerically strong, holds economic and political power, and is not too low in ritual rank
    3. Has most recently completed a thorough process of Sanskritization of its rituals and diet
    4. Is officially listed as a backward class and therefore qualifies for reservation benefits in the area
    Show answer

    Answer: B — Is numerically strong, holds economic and political power, and is not too low in ritual rank

    For Srinivas dominance combines numerical strength, economic and political power, and a ritual rank that is not too low. Pure ritual height alone is not dominance, Sanskritization is a separate process, and administrative backward-class status is a legal category, not Srinivas's criterion.

  10. Why do sociologists say that Sanskritization brings only "positional" and not "structural" change?

    1. Because it abolishes the caste hierarchy outright and replaces it with a classless and casteless social order
    2. Because it is driven entirely by the spread of Western education, modern technology and individual legal rights
    3. Because a group may rise within the ranking while the purity-pollution hierarchy itself stays in place
    4. Because it affects only tribal groups standing outside the caste order and never touches any Hindu caste at all
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Because a group may rise within the ranking while the purity-pollution hierarchy itself stays in place

    Sanskritization lets a particular group climb within the hierarchy while leaving the hierarchy of purity and pollution itself untouched, which is why it is positional, not structural, change. It does not abolish caste, is not driven by Western contact (that is Westernization), and is not confined to tribes.

  11. In Mistaken Modernity, Dipankar Gupta's central argument is that India often:

    1. Mistakes the outward trappings of the West for genuine modernity, whose real content is equality and dignity
    2. Has already become fully modern, so that caste and hierarchy have everywhere ceased to matter in daily life
    3. Should abandon all modern institutions and return wholesale to the sources of its own indigenous tradition
    4. Becomes modern purely through Sanskritization, with no role at all for Western ideas, law or technology
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Mistakes the outward trappings of the West for genuine modernity, whose real content is equality and dignity

    Gupta argues that India mistakes Westernised consumption and style for real modernity, which is about equality, individual dignity and the rule of law. The other choices misstate him: he does not claim India is already fully modern, does not call for a return to pure tradition, and does not reduce modernisation to Sanskritization.

  12. Andre Beteille's study of Sripuram (Caste, Class and Power) is chiefly cited for which finding about stratification?

    1. That caste, class and power are permanently fused, so that ritual rank, wealth and political power always move together
    2. That caste, class and power, once largely congruent, had grown increasingly dissociated from one another over time
    3. That class had entirely disappeared from the village, leaving ritual caste rank as the sole axis of inequality
    4. That political power in the village rested wholly and only with whichever caste stood highest in ritual purity
    Show answer

    Answer: B — That caste, class and power, once largely congruent, had grown increasingly dissociated from one another over time

    Beteille showed that in Sripuram caste, class and power, once concentrated together in Brahmin hands, had come apart over time, so the three dimensions no longer coincided. The permanent-fusion and ritual-rank-only options are precisely the view his study overturned, and class did not vanish from the village.

  13. Which of the following statements about caste as a system of stratification are correct?

    1. Varna is the fourfold textual model, while jati is the actual local endogamous group in which caste is lived
    2. Louis Dumont read the caste hierarchy as founded on the opposition of the pure and the impure
    3. Endogamy, the prohibition of marriage outside the group, is a defining feature of caste
    4. Varna and jati are simply two names for exactly the same thousands of local groups
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Varna is the fourfold textual model, while jati is the actual local endogamous group in which caste is lived; B — Louis Dumont read the caste hierarchy as founded on the opposition of the pure and the impure; C — Endogamy, the prohibition of marriage outside the group, is a defining feature of caste

    Varna is the textual fourfold model and jati the lived local endogamous group; Dumont founded the caste hierarchy on purity versus pollution; and endogamy is a defining feature. The claim that varna and jati are simply the same thing is false, since the handful of varnas are not identical with the thousands of jatis.

  14. The Indian village studies of the 1950s (Srinivas, S.C. Dube and others) are credited with overturning which older image of the village?

    1. The image of the village as a place riven by class conflict and permanently cut off from all religious life
    2. The image of the village as a self-sufficient, changeless "little republic" isolated from the wider society
    3. The image of the village as a modern industrial settlement already fully integrated into the global market economy
    4. The image of the village as a caste-free commune in which ritual rank had no influence on everyday life or work
    Show answer

    Answer: B — The image of the village as a self-sufficient, changeless "little republic" isolated from the wider society

    The village studies dismantled the colonial picture of the self-sufficient, unchanging "little republic", showing villages stratified and tied to the wider economy and state. The other images (class-riven and irreligious, already industrial, or caste-free) are not the view those studies refuted.

  15. Which of the following pairings of a scholar with a contribution to Indian sociology are correct?

    1. D.N. Dhanagare — a study of peasant movements in India in the period 1920 to 1950
    2. T.K. Oommen — the sociological study of protest, social movements and social change
    3. Yogendra Singh — the analysis of tradition and modernity in Modernization of Indian Tradition
    4. G.S. Ghurye — the coining of the concept of the dominant caste from fieldwork in a Mysore village
    Show answer

    Answer: A — D.N. Dhanagare — a study of peasant movements in India in the period 1920 to 1950; B — T.K. Oommen — the sociological study of protest, social movements and social change; C — Yogendra Singh — the analysis of tradition and modernity in Modernization of Indian Tradition

    Dhanagare wrote on peasant movements of 1920-1950, Oommen on protest and social movements, and Yogendra Singh on tradition and modernity. The dominant-caste concept is Srinivas's, not Ghurye's, so the Ghurye pairing is wrong.

  16. In the sociological sense, and reading Indian secularism as Rajeev Bhargava does, which best captures the difference between communalism and secularism in the Indian context?

    1. Communalism simply means being devout in one's own faith and practising it openly, while secularism means holding no religious belief of any personal kind whatever
    2. Communalism is a tolerant respect for all faiths in society at large, while secularism is the open hostility of the state towards every single religion
    3. Communalism is the political claim that a religious community has one secular interest against others; Indian secularism is principled distance with equal respect
    4. Communalism and secularism are two names for the same policy of keeping an absolute wall between all religion and the state at every level of government
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Communalism is the political claim that a religious community has one secular interest against others; Indian secularism is principled distance with equal respect

    Communalism is the political claim that a religious community shares a single secular interest opposed to another community's, whereas, on Rajeev Bhargava's influential reading, Indian secularism is the state's principled distance and equal respect towards religions. The other choices confuse communalism with ordinary devotion or tolerance, misdescribe secularism as hostility, or wrongly merge the two terms.