Class 12 Sociology Part 2: NCERT PDF

 CONTENTS FOREWORD iii SUGGESTIONS FOR USE vii Chapter 1 1 - 16 Structural Change Chapter 2 17-34 Cultural Change Chapter 3...

 CONTENTS FOREWORD iii SUGGESTIONS FOR USE vii Chapter 1 1 - 16 Structural Change Chapter 2 17-34 Cultural Change Chapter 3 35-54 The Story of Indian Democracy Chapter 4 55-72 Change and Development in Rural Society Chapter 5 73-90 Change and Development in Industrial Society Chapter 6 91-112 Globalisation and Social Change Chapter 7 113-134 Mass Media and Communications Chapter 8 135-160 Social Movements Glossary 161-164 1 Structural Change  Social Change and Development in India Understanding the present usually involves some grasp of its past. This holds true probably as much for an individual or social group as for an entire country such as India. India has a long and rich history. While knowing about its past in ancient and medieval times is very important, its colonial experience is particularly significant for comprehending modern India. This is not just because many modern ideas and institutions reached India through colonialism. It is also because such an exposure to modern ideas was contradictory or paradoxical. For example Indians in the colonial period read about western liberalism and freedom. Yet they lived under a western, colonial rule that denied Indians liberty and freedom. It is contradictions of this kind that shaped many of the structural and cultural changes that chapter 1 and 2 looks at. As the next few chapters shall show, our social reform and nationalist movement, our laws, our political life and our Constitution, our industry and agriculture, our cities and our villages have been shaped by our paradoxical experience with colonialism. This has had lasting implications for our specific experience with modernity. The following are just some of the many instances we face in our daily life. We have a parliamentary and a legal system, a police and educational system built very much on the British model. We drive on the left side of the road like the British. We have ‘bread-omlette’ and ‘cutlets’ as menu offered in many roadside eateries and canteens. A very popular manufacturer of biscuits, is actually named after Britain. Many school uniforms include neck-ties. We often admire the west and as often resent it. These are just some of the many and complex ways that British colonialism lives on in contemporary India. 2 Structural Change Let us take the example of the English language to show how its impact has been many sided and paradoxical in India. This is not a matter about wrong spellings alone. English is not only widely used in India but we now have an impressive body of literary writings by Indians in English. This knowledge of English has given Indians an edge in the global market. Virtually English But English continues to be a mark Housewives and college students who know English take up of privilege. Not knowing English is plum assignments as online scorers in BPOs, writes K. Jeshi a disadvantage that tells in the job It is a familiar classroom scene. The only unfamiliar thing is the market. At the same time for those setting. Computer screens turn blackboards and housewives who were traditionally deprived of take over as teachers to evaluate English essays written by non- English speaking students in Asia. All, at the click of the access to formal education such as mouse. The encouraging comments given by the evaluators the Dalits, knowledge of English may here motivate students in Japan, Korea and China to learn open doors of opportunities that were English. formerly closed. Online education, the new wave in the BPO segment, is bringing cheer to those who want to earn a fast buck. All you In this chapter we focus on need is a flair for English, creative skills, basic computer structural changes that colonialism knowledge, the drive to go that extra mile and willingness to learn. brought in. We, therefore, need to Source: The HINDU, Thursday, May 04, 2006 shift from this broad impressionistic view to a clearer understanding of colonialism as a structure and system. Colonialism brought into being new ACTIVITY 1.1 political, economic and social structural changes. In this chapter we look at only ¾ Think of everyday objects, such as pieces of furniture two of these structural changes namely or kinds of food, or phrases in Indian languages that industrialisation and urbanisation. While may be traced to our past as a British colony. the focus is on specific colonial context ¾ Identify a novel or short story or film or television serial we also briefly touch on developments in any Indian language that recounts the times of after independence. colonialism. Discuss its many dimensions. All these structural changes were ¾ You must have seen a court scene in a film or television accompanied by cultural changes which, serial. Did you notice the procedures? Most are borrowed we look at in the next chapter. However from the British system. Not too many years any strict separation of the two is difficult. ago Indian judges wore wigs when in court. Find 3 As you will see the structural changes are out where did this practice come from? dif ficult to discuss without some mention of the cultural changes too.  Social Change and Development in India 1.1 UNDERSTANDING COLONIALISM At one level, colonialism simply means the establishment of rule by one country over another. In the modern period western colonialism has had the greatest impact. India’s past has been marked by the entry of numerous groups of people at dif ferent times who have estab- lished their rule over dif ferent parts of what constitutes modern India today. The impact of colonial rule is distinguishable from all other earlier rules because the changes it brought in were far-reaching and deep. History is full of examples of the annexation of foreign territory and the domination of weaker by stronger powers. Nevertheless, there is a vital difference between the empire building of pre-capitalist times and that of capitalist times. Apart from outright pillage, the pre-capitalist conquerors benefited from their domination by exacting a continuous flow of tribute. On the whole they did not interfere with the economic base. They simply took the tribute that was skimmed off the economic surplus that was produced traditionally in the subjugated areas. (Alavi and Shanin, 1982) In contrast British colonialism which was based on a capitalist system directly interfered to ensure greatest profit and benefit to British capitalism. Every policy was geared towards the strengthening and expansion of British capitalism. For instance it changed the very laws of the land. It changed not just land ownership laws but decided even what crops ought to be grown and what ought not to be. It meddled with the manufacturing sector. It altered the way production and distribution of goods took place. It entered into the forests. It cleared trees and started tea plantations. It brought in Forest Acts that changed the lives of 4 pastoralists. They were prevented from entering many forests that had earlier provided valuable forage for their cattle. The box carries a brief account of the impact of colonial forest policy in North-East India. Structural Change Forest Policy in the Colonial Period in North-East India BOX 1.1 … The advent of the railways in Bengal …marked an important turning point, which saw the conversion of its forest policy in Assam (Assam was then part of the Bengal province) from one of laissez faire into one of active intervention. …The demand for railway sleepers transformed the forests in Assam (this included all the present-day seven sister states) from an unproductive wilderness into a lucrative source of revenue for the colonial administration. Between 1861 and 1878, an area of approximately 269 square miles had been constituted as reserved forests. By 1894, the area had gone up to 3,683 square miles. And, by the end of the nineteenth century, the area of forests under the department was 20,061 square miles (constituting 42.2 per cent of the total area of the province), of which 3,609 square miles Train passing through India’s first creak bridge comprised reserved forests… Significantly, large near Thane - 1854 areas of these forests are located in the hill areas occupied by tribal communities who for centuries depended upon and lived in close harmony with nature. (Nongbri, 2003) Colonialism also led to considerable movement of people. It led to movement of people from one part to another within India. For instance people from present day Jharkhand moved to Assam to work on the tea plantations. A newly emerging middle class particularly from the British Presidency regions of Bengal and Madras moved as government employees and professionals like doctors and lawyers moved to different parts of the country. People were carted in ships from India to work on other colonised lands in distant Asia, Africa and Americas. Many died on their way. Most could never return. Today many of their descendents are known as people of Indian origin. To facilitate the smooth functioning of its rule, colonialism introduced a wide array After 1834 till 1920, ships left from the BOX 1.2 of changes in every sphere, be it legal or ports of India on a regualr basis carrying cultural or architectural. Colonialism was a people of various religions, gender, story apart in the very scale and intensity of classes and castes destined to work for a minimum the changes that it brought about. Some of of five years on one of the plantations in Mauritius. these changes were deliberate while some For many decades the recruiting ground was centred took place in an unintended fashion. For in Bihar, in particular, in districts such as Patna, Gaya, example we saw how western education was Arrah, Saran, Tirhoot, Champaran, Monghyr, introduced to create Indians who would Bhagalpur and Purnea. (Pineo 1984) manage British colonialism. Instead it led to the growth of a nationalist and anti- colonial consciousness. 5 This magnitude and depth of the structural changes that colonialism unleashed can be better grasped if we try and understand some basic features  Social Change and Development in India of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and organised to accumulate profits within a market system. (We have already discussed the capitalist market in the first book – Indian Society.) Capitalism in the west emerged out of a complex process of European exploration of the rest of the world, its plunder of wealth and resources, an unprecedented growth of science and technology, its harnessing to industries and agriculture. What marked capitalism from the very beginning was its dynamism, its potential to grow, expand, innovate, use technology and labour in a way best assured to ensure greatest profit. What marked it too was its global nature. Western colonialism was inextricably connected to the growth of western capitalism. This had a lasting impact on the way capitalism developed in a colonised country like India. In the next section on industrialisation and urbanisation we see how colonialism led to very distinct patterns. If capitalism became the dominant economic system, nation states became the dominant political form. That we all live in nation states and that we all have a nationality or a national citizenship may appear natural to us today. Before the First World War passports were not widely used for international travel, and in most areas few people had one. Societies were, however, not always organised on these lines. Nation state pertains to a particular type of state, characteristic of the modern world. A government has sovereign power within a defined territorial area, and the people are citizens of a single nation. Nation states are closely associated with the rise of nationalism. The principle of nationalism assumes that any set of people have a right to be free and exercise sovereign power. It is an important part of the rise of democratic ideas. You will be reading more about this in chapter 3. It must have struck you that the practice of colonialism and the principle of nationalism and democratic rights are contradictory. For colonial rule implied foreign rule such as British rule over India. Nationalism implied that the people of India or of any colonised society have an equal right to be sovereign. Indian nationalist leaders were quick to grasp this irony. They declared that freedom or swaraj was their birth- right and fought for both political and economic freedom. 1.2 URBANISATION AND INDUSTRIALISATION THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE Industrialisation refers to the emergence of machine production, based on the use of inanimate power resources like steam or electricity. In most standard western textbook of sociology we learn that in even the most advanced of traditional civilizations, most people were engaged in working on the land. The relatively low level of technological development did not permit more than a 6 small minority to be freed from the chores of agricultural production. By contrast, a prime feature of industrial societies today is that a large majority of the Structural Change employed population work in factories, offices or shops rather than agriculture. Over 90 per cent of people in the west live in towns and cities, where most jobs are to be found and new job opportunities are created. Not surprisingly, therefore, we usually associate urbanisation with industrialisation. They often do occur together but not always so. For instance in Britain, the first society to undergo industrialisation, was also the earliest to move from being rural to a predominantly urban country. In 1800, well under 20 per cent of the population lived in towns or cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants. By 1900 this proportion had become 74 per cent. The capital city, London, was home to about 1.1 million people in 1800; it increased in size to a population of over 7 million by the start of the twentieth century. London was then by far the largest city ever seen in the world, a vast manufacturing, commercial and financial centre at the heart of a still- expanding British empire. (Giddens 2001: 572) Jaipur In India the impact of the very same British industrialisation led to deindustrialisation in some sectors. And decline of old urban centres. Just as manufacturing boomed in Britain, traditional exports of cotton and silk manufactures from India declined in the face of Manchester competition. This period also saw the further decline of cities such as Surat and Masulipatnam while Bombay Chennai and Madras grew. When the British took over Indian states, towns like Thanjavur, Dhaka, and Murhidabad lost their courts and, therefore, some of their artisans and court gentry. From the end of the 19 t h century, with the installation of mechanised factory industries, some towns became much more heavily populated. Urban luxury manufactures like the high quality silks and cottons of Dacca or Murshidabad must have been hit first by the almost simultaneous collapse of indigeneous court demand and the external market Mumbai on which these had largely depended. Village crafts in the interior, and particularly, in regions other than eastern India where British penetration was earliest and deepest, probably survived much longer, coming to be seriously affected only with the spread of railways. 7 (Sarkar 1983: 29)  Social Change and Development in India Unlike Britain where the The Census of India Report, 1911, BOX 1.3 impact of industrialisation led to Vol. 1, p. 408. more people moving into urban areas, in India the initial impact The extensive importation of cheap European piecegoods and utensils, of the same British industriali- and the establishment in India itself of numerous factories of the sation led to more people moving Western type, have more or less destroyed many village industries. into agriculture. The Census of The high prices of agricultural produce have also led many village India Report shows this clearly. artisans to abandon their hereditary craft in favour of agriculture…The extent to which this disintegration of the old village organisation is Sociological writings in India have often discussed both the proceeding varies considerably in different parts. The change is most contradictory and unintended noticeable in the more advanced provinces. consequences of colonialism. Comparisons have been made between the industrialisation in the west and the growth of a western middle class with that of the Indian experience. The box below carries one such observation. It also The substitutes offered by the BOX 1.4 shows how industrialisation is not East India Company and just about new machine based subsequently by the British production but also a story of the government were land ownership and growth of new social groups in facilities for education in English. The facts society and new social that the first remained unconnected with relationships. In other words it is agricultural productivity and the second with about changes in the Indian social structure. the mainstream of Indian cultural traditions amply show that the alternatives were not Cities had a key role in the sufficient in the sense that they could not economic system of empires. create any genuine middle class. We know Coastal cities such as Mumbai, only too well that the zamindars become Kolkata and Chennai were parasites in land and the graduates job favoured. From here primary hunters. commodities could be easily (Mukherjee 1979: 114) exported and manufactured goods could be cheaply imported. Colonial cities wer e the prime link ACTIVITY 1.2 between the economic centre or core in Britain ¾ Find out more about the beginnings of the three cities. and periphery or margins ¾ Find out also more about the story of the names they in colonised India. Cities were called by leading to the very recent changes from in this sense were the Bombay to Mumbai, Madras to Chennai, Calcutta to concrete expression of Kolkata, Bangalore to Bangaluru. 8 global capitalism. In ¾ Find out about the growth of other colonial urban British India for example centres. Bombay was planned and Structural Change re-developed so that by 1900 over three-quarters of India’s raw A model of the South Asian colonial city BOX 1.5 cotton were shipped through the The European town…had spacious bungalows, elegant city. Calcutta exported jute to apartment houses, planned streets, trees on both sides Dundee while Madras sent of the street,…clubs for afternoon and evening get-togethers…The coffee, sugar, indigo dyes and open space was reserved for…Western recreational facilities, such cotton to Britain. as race and golf courses, soccer and cricket. When domestic water supply, electric connections, and sewage links were available or Urbanisation in the colonial period saw the decline of some technically possible, the European town residents utilised them fully, earlier urban centres and the whereas their use was quite restricted to the native town. (Dutt 1993: 361) emergence of new colonial cities. Kolkata was one of the first of such cities. In 1690, an English merchant named Job Charnock arranged to lease three villages (named Kolikata, Gobindapur, and Sutanuti) by the river Hugli in order to set up a trading post. In 1698, Fort William was established by the river for defensive purposes, and a large open area was cleared around the fort for military engagements. The fort and the open area (called Maidan) formed the core of the city that emerged rather rapidly. THE TEA PLANTATIONS We have already seen how industrialisation and urbanisation did not happen in India quite the way it did in Britain. More importantly, this is not because we began industrialisation late, but because our early industrialisation and urbanisation in the modern period were governed by colonial interests. We cannot go into details about different industries here. We simply take the case of the tea industry in India as an example. Official reports show how the colonial government often used unfair means to hire and forcibly keep labourers. And clearly acted on behalf of the British planters. From fictional and other accounts we get a glimpse of what life was for planters in this industry. Significantly the colonial adminis- trators were clear that harsh measures were taken against the labourers to make sure they benefited the planters. They were also fully aware that the laws of a colonised country did not have to stick to the democratic norms that the British back home had to follow in 9 Britain.  Social Change and Development in India How were labourers recruited? BOX 1.6 Tea industry began in India in 1851. Most of the tea gardens were situated in Assam. In 1903, the industry employed 4,79,000 permanent and 93,000 temporary employees. Since Assam was sparsely populated and the tea plantations were often located on uninhabited hillsides, bulk of the sorely needed labour had to be imported from other provinces. But to bring thousands of people every year from their far-off homes into strange lands, possessing an unhealthy climate and infected with strange fevers, required the provision of financial and other incentives, which the tea-planters of Assam were unwilling to offer. Instead, they had recourse to fraud and coercion; and they persuaded the government to aid and abet them in this unholy task by passing penal laws. …The recruitment of labourers for tea gardens of Assam was carried on for years mostly by contractors under the provisions of the Transport of Native Labourers Act (No. III) of 1863 of Bengal as amended in 1865, 1870 and 1873. From Curzon’s Speeches II, pp. 238-9 BOX 1.7 The labour system in Assam was essentially that of indenture by which the labourers went to Assam under contract for a number of years. The government helped the planters by providing for penal sanction in case of non-fulfillment of the contract by the labourers. This view is explicitly made by T. Raleigh, Law Member, when speaking on the Assam Labour and Emigration Bill of 1901: “The labour-contract authorised by this Bill is a transaction by which, to put it rather bluntly, a man is often committed to Assam before he knows what he is doing, and is thereupon held to his promise for four years, with a threat of arrest and imprisonment if he fails to perform it. Conditions like these have no place in the ordinary law of master and servant. We made them part of the law of British India at the instance and for the benefit of the planters of Assam… The fact remains that the motive power in this legislation is the interest of the planter, not the interest of the coolie”. ( ICP 1901, Vol XL, pp.133 cited in Chandra 1966: 361-2 emphasis inserted). EXERCISE FOR BOX 1.6 AND 1.7 Read the two boxes below and discuss: ¾ The role of the colonial government and its legislations to regulate work. ¾ The role of the colonial state to help British tea planters. ¾ Find out where the descendents of the workers work and live today. 10 You have a sense of the lives of the labourers. Let us see how the planters’ lived. Structural Change How did the planter’s live? BOX 1.8 Parbatpuri had always been an important offloading and loading point. The doughty British managers and their mems always came down from the estates surrounding Parbatpuri when a steamer docked there. In spite of the inaccessibility of the gardens, they had lived lives of luxury. Huge, sprawling bungalows, set on sturdy wooden stilts to protect the inmates from wild animals, were surrounded by velvety lawns and jewel bright flower beds…They had trained a large number of malis, bawarchis and bearers to serve them to perfection. Their wide verandahed houses gleamed and glistened under the ministrations of this army of liveried servants. Of course, everything from scouring powder to self-raising flour, from saftey pins to silverware, from delicate Nottingham lace tablecloths to bath salts, had come up the river on the steamers. Indeed, even the large cast-iron bathtubs that were invitingly placed in huge bathrooms, tubs which were filled every morning by busy bistiwallahs carrying buckets up from the bungalow’s well, had been brought up via steamer. (Phukun 2005) INDUSTRIALISATION IN INDEPENDENT INDIA We saw in the earlier section how the colonial state had an important role in the way industrialisation and urbanisation took place in India. Here we very briefly touch upon how the independent Indian state played an active role in promoting industrialisation. And in some sense was responding to the impact that colonialism had on the growth of industry in India. Chapter 5 will deal with Indian industrialisation and its shift from the early years of independence to developments after 1990 with liberalisation. For Indian nationalists the issue of economic ACTIVITY 1.3 exploitation under colonial rule was a central issue. Images of pre-colonial fabled riches of India contrasted with the poverty of British India. The Swadeshi movement For many of you Amul Butter and strengthened the loyalty to the national economy. Modern other Amul milk products may be ideas made people realise that poverty was preventable. familiar names. Find out how this Indian nationalists saw rapid industrialisation of the milk industry emerged? economy as the path towards both growth and social equity. Development of heavy and machine-making industries, expansion of the public sector and holding of a large cooperative sector were considered very important. A modern and prosperous India, as visualised by Jawaharlal Nehru, was to be built on an edifice of giant steel plants or gigantic dams and power stations. Read Nehru’s remarks on the Bhakra Nangal dam: Our engineers tell us that probably nowhere else in the world is there a dam as high as this. The work bristles with difficulties and complications. As I walked around the site I thought that these days the biggest temple and mosques and gurdwara is the place where man works for the good of mankind. Which place can be greater than this, this 11 Bhakra Nangal, where thousands and lakhs of men have worked, have shed their blood and sweat and laid down their lives as well? (Nehru 1980: 214)  Social Change and Development in India BOX 1.9 Nearly a decade before the country’s Independence, in 1938 a National Planning Committee with Jawaharlal Nehru as the Chairman and K.T. Shah as the general editor was set up by the Indian National Congress. The Committee started functioning in 1939, but it could not make much headway as the chairman was arrested by the British and the war broke out. Notwithstanding these obstacles, 29 sub-committees divided into eight groups were set up to deal with all aspects of national life and to work in accordance with a predetermined plan. The major areas on which the Committee focussed its attention were: (a) Agriculture and other sources of primary production (b) Industries or other secondary sources of production (c) Human factor: labour and population (d) Exchange and finance (e) Public utilities: transport and communication (f) Social services: health and housing (g) Education: general and technical (h) Woman’s role in a planned economy Among the sub-committees some submitted their final reports and several others interim reports before India became independent. Several reports were published by 1948-49. The Planning Commission was set up in March 1950 by a resolution of the Government of India, which is defining the scope of the Commission’s work. ACTIVITY 1.4 Many new industrial towns emerged in India in the years after Independence. May be some of you live in such towns. ¾ Find out more about towns like Bokaro, Bhilai, Rorkella, Durgapur. Find out whether such industrial towns exist in your region. ¾ Do you know of townships built around fertilizer plants and oil wells. ¾ If no such town exists in your region, find out the reasons for the absence. URBANISATION IN INDEPENDENT INDIA You would be more than aware of increasing urbanisation in India. Recent years of globalisation have led to enormous expansion and change of cities. We 12 shall be dealing with that later in chapter 6. Here we draw from a sociological account of the different kinds of urbanisation in India. Structural Change Writing on the dif ferent kinds of urbanisation witnesses in the first two decades after independence sociologist M.S.A. Rao argued that in India many villages all over India are becoming increasingly subject to the impact of urban influences. But the nature of urban impact varies according to the kind of relations a village has with a city or town. He describes three A view of an different situations of urban urban village impact as mentioned in the box. Firstly, there are villages in which a sizeable number of people have sought BOX 1.10 employment in far-off cities. They live there leaving behind the members of their families in their natal villages. In Madhopur, a village in north central India, 77 out of 298 households have migrants, and a little less than half of all the migrants work in two cities of Bombay and Calcutta. About 75 percent of the total migrants send money regularly, and 83 per cent visit the village from four to five times a year to once in two years... A considerable number of emigrants reside not only in Indian cities but also in overseas towns. For instance, there are many overseas migrants from Gujarat villages living in African and British towns. They have built fashionable houses in their natal villages, invested money on land and industry, and have donated literally to the establishment of educational institutions and trusts... The second kind of urban impact is to be seen in villages which are situated near an industrial town...When an industrial town like Bhilai comes up in the midst of villages, some villages are totally uprooted while the lands of others are partially acquired. The latter are found to receive an influx of immigrant workers, which not only stimulates a demand for houses and a market inside the village but creates problems of ordering relationships between the native residents and the immigrants......The growth of metropolitan cities accounts for the third type of urban impact on the surrounding villages...While a few villages are totally absorbed in the process of expansion, only the land of many others, excluding the inhabited area, is used for urban development... (Rao 1974: 486-490) EXERCISE FOR BOX 1.10 Read the above account carefully. May be you have seen other ways or similar ways that 13 urbanisation takes place. Write a brief account of this. Discuss each other’s accounts in class.  Social Change and Development in India POPULATION OF SELECTED METROPOLITAN CITIES (URBAN AGGLOMERATIONS) DECADAL GROWTH RATE POPULATION OF SELECTED METROPOLITAN CITIES IN PERCENTAGE 14 Structural Change CONCLUSION It will be obvious to you that colonialism is not just a topic in history but something which lives on in complex ways in our lives even today. It is also evident from the above account that industrialisation and urbanisation implies not just changes in production systems, technological innovations, density of settlements but also ‘a way of life’. (Wirth 1938). You shall be reading more about industrialisation and urbanisation in independent India in chapter 5 and 6. 1. How has colonialism impacted our lives? You can either focus on one aspect like culture or politics or treat them together. 2. Industrialisation and urbanisation are linked processes. Discuss. 3. Identify any town or city with which you are familiar. Find out both the history of its growth and its contemporary status. 4. You may be living in a very small town, may be in a very big city, a semi urban settlement or a village. „ Describe the place where you live. Questions „ What are the features, which make you think it is a town and not a city, a village and not a town, or a city and not a village? „ Is there any factory where you live? „ Is agriculture the main job that people do? „ Is it the occupational nature that has a determining influence? „ Is it the buildings? „ Is it the availability of educational opportunities? „ Is it the way people live and behave? „ Is it the way people talk and dress? 15  Social Change and Development in India REFERENCES Alavi, Hamza and Teodor Shanin Ed. 1982. Introduction to the Sociology of Developing Societies. The Macmillan Press. London. Chandra, Bipan. 1977. The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism. People’s Publishing House. New Delhi. Dutt, A.K. 1993. “From Colonial City to Global City: The Far from Complete Spatial Transformation of Calcutta” in Brunn S.D.and Williams J.F. Ed. Cities of the World. pp. 351-388. Harper Collins. New York. Giddens, Anthony. 2001. Sociology (Fourth edition). Cambridge. Polity. Mukherjee, D.P. 1979. Sociology of Indian Culture. Rawat. Jaipur. Nehru, Jawaharlal. 1980. An Anthology. Ed. by S. Gopal. Oxford University Press. New Delhi, Nongbri, Tiplut. 2003. Development, Ethnicity and Gender: Select Essays on Tribes in India. Rawat. Jaipur/Delhi. Mitra and Phukan. 2005. The Collector’s Wife. Penguin Books. New Delhi. Pineo, H.I.T.F. 1984. Land way: The Life History of Indian Cane Workers in Mauritius. Moka: Mahatma Gandhi Institute. Rao, M.S.A. Ed. 1974. Urban Sociology in India: Reader and Source Book. Orient Longman. Delhi. Sarkar, Sumit. 1983. Modern India 1885 -1947. Macmillan. Madras. Wirth, Louis. 1938. ‘Urbanism as away of life’. American Journal of Sociology. 44. 16 2 Cultural Change  Social Change and Development in India We saw in the last chapter how colonialism brought in changes that altered the structure of Indian society. Industrialisation and urbanisation transformed the lives of people. Factories replaced fields as places of work for some. Cities replaced villages as places to live for many. Living and working arrangements or structures changed. Changes also took place in culture, ways of life, norms, values, fashions and even body language. Sociologists understand, social structure, as a ‘continuing arrangement of persons in relationships defined or controlled by institutions’ and ‘culture’ as ‘socially established norms or patterns of behaviour’. You have already studied about the structural changes that colonialism brought about in chapter 1. You will observe how important those structural changes are for understanding the cultural changes that this chapter seeks to understand. This chapter looks at two related developments, both a complex product of the impact of colonial rule. The first deals with the deliberate and conscious efforts made by the 19th century social reformers and early 20th century nationalists to bring in changes in social practices that discriminated against women and ‘lower’ castes. The second with the less deliberate yet decisive changes in cultural practices that can broadly be understood as the four processes of sanskritisation, moder nisation, secularisation and wester nisation. Sanskritisation pre-dates the coming of colonial rule. The other three processes can be understood better as complex responses of the people of India to the changes that colonialism brought about. 2.1 SOCIAL REFORM MOVEMENTS IN THE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY You have already seen the far- reaching impact of colonialism on our lives. The social reform movements which emerged in India in the 19th century arose to the challenges that colonial Indian society faced. You probably are familiar with what were termed social evils that Raja Ram Mohun Roy Pandita Ramabai Sir Syed Ahmed Khan plagued Indian society. The well- known issues are that of sati, child marriage, widow remarriage and caste discrimination. It is not that attempts were not made to fight social discrimination in pre-colonial India. They were central to Buddhism. They were central to Bhakti and Sufi movements. What 18 marked these 19th century social reform attempts was the modern context and mix of ideas. It was a creative combination of modern ideas of western liberalism and a new look on traditional literature. Cultural Change The mix of ideas BOX 2.1 ¾ Ram Mohun Roy attacked the practice of sati on the basis of both appeals to humanitarian and natural rights doctrines as well as Hindu shastras. ¾ Ranade’s writings entitled The Texts of the Hindu Law on the Lawfulness of the Remarriage of Widows and Vedic Authorities for Widow Marriage elaborated the shastric sanction for remarriage of widows. ¾ The content of new education was modernising and liberal. The literary content of the courses in the humanities and social sciences was drawn from the literature of the European Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment. Its themes were humanistic, secular and liberal. ¾ Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan’s interpretation of Islam emphasised the validity of free enquiry (ijtihad) and the alleged similarities between Koranic revelations and the laws of nature discovered by modern science. ¾ Kandukiri Viresalingam’s The Sources of Knowledge reflected his familiarity with navya-nyaya logic. At the same time he translated Julius Huxley. Sociologist Satish Saberwal elaborates upon the modern context by sketching three aspects to the modern framework of change in colonial India: „ modes of communication „ forms of organisation, and „ the nature of ideas New technologies speeded up various forms of communication. The printing press, telegraph, and later the microphone, movement of people and goods through steamship and railways helped quick movement of new ideas. Within India, social reformers from Punjab and Bengal exchanged ideas with reformers from Madras and Maharashtra. Keshav Chandra Sen of Bengal visited Madras in 1864. Pandita Ramabai travelled to different corners of the country. Some of them went to other countries. Christian missionaries reached remote corners of present day Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya. New technologies and organisations that speeded up various forms of communication 19  Social Change and Development in India Modern social organisations like the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal and Arya Samaj in Punjab were set up. The All-India Muslim Ladies Conference (Anjuman-E-Khawatn-E-Islam) was founded in 1914. Indian reformers debated not just in public meetings but through public media like newspapers and journals. Translations of writings of social reformers from one Indian language to another took place. For instance, Vishnu Shastri published a Marathi translation of Vidyasagar’s book in Indu Viresalingam Prakash in 1868. New ideas of liberalism and freedom, new ideas of homemaking and marriage, new roles for mothers and daughters, new ideas of self- conscious pride in culture and tradition emerged. The value of education became very important. It was seen as very crucial for a nation to become modern but also retain its ancient heritage. The idea of female education was debated intensely. Significantly, it was the social reformer Jotiba Phule who opened the first school for women in Pune. Reformers argued that for a society to progress women have to be educated. Some of them Vidyasagar believed that in pre-modern India, women were educated. Others contested this on the grounds that this was so only of a privileged few. Thus attempts to justify female education were made by recourse to both modern and traditional ideas. They actively debated the meanings of tradition and modernity. Jotiba Phule thus recalled the glory of pre- Aryan age while others like Bal Gangadhar Tilak emphasised the glory of the Aryan period. In other words 19th century reform initiated a period of questioning, reinterpretations and both intellectual and social growth. The varied social reform movements did have common themes. Yet Jotiba Phule there were also significant differences. For some the concerns were 20 confined to the problems that the upper caste, middle class women and men faced. For others the injustices suffered by the discriminated castes were central questions. For some social evils had emerged because of a decline of the Cultural Change true spirit of Hinduism. For others caste and gender oppression was intrinsic to the religion. Likewise Muslim social reformers actively debated the meaning of polygamy and purdah. For example, a resolution against the evils of polygamy was proposed by Jahanara Shah Nawas at the All India Muslim Ladies Conference. She argued: …the kind of polygamy which is practiced by certain sections of the Muslims is against the true spirit of the Quran…and it is the ACTIVITY 2.1 duty of the educated women to exercise their influence among the relations to put an end to this practice. Find out about some of the social The resolution condemning polygamy caused reformers mentioned below? What considerable debate in the Muslim press. Tahsib-e- issues did they fight for? How did Niswan, the leading journal for women in the Punjab, they conduct their campaign? Was came out in favour of the resolve, but others disapproved. there any opposition? (Chaudhuri 1993: 111). Debates within communities were common during this period. For instance, sati was opposed by the Brahmo Samaj. Orthodox members of ¾ Viresalingam the Hindu community in Bengal formed an organisation ¾ Pandita Ramabai called Dharma Sabha and petitioned the British arguing ¾ Vidyasagar that reformers had no right to interpret sacred texts. ¾ Dayanand Saraswati Yet another view increasingly voiced by Dalits was a ¾ Jyotiba Phule complete rejection of the Hindu fold. For instance, using ¾ Sri Narayan Guru the tools of modern education, Muktabai, a 13 year old ¾ Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan student in Phule’s school writes in 1852: ¾ Any other Let that religion Where only one person is privileged And the rest are deprived Perish from this earth And let it never enter our minds To be proud of such a religion… 2.2 HOW DO WE APPROACH THE STUDY OF SANSKRITISATION, MODERNISATION, SECULARISATION AND WESTERNISATION In this chapter each of the four concepts, namely sanskritisation, modernisation, secularisation and westernisation, are dealt with in different sections. But as the discussion unfolds, it will become obvious to you that in many ways they overlap and in many situations they co-exist. In many situations they operate very differently. It is not surprising to find the same person being modern in 21 some ways and traditional in another. This co-existence is often seen as natural to India and many other non-western countries.  Social Change and Development in India But you know that sociology does not rest ACTIVITY 2.2 content with naturalist explanation. (Recall the discussion in chapter 1, Book 1 NCERT 2006) As While you read the way the four processes the last chapter has shown colonial modernity had its own paradoxes. Take the example of western are used in sociology, it may be interesting to education. Colonialism led to the growth of an discuss in class what you think the terms English educated Indian middle class. They read mean. the thinkers of western enlightenment, philosophers ¾ What kind of behaviour would you define as: of liberal democracy and dreamt of ushering in a Western liberal and progressive India. And yet, humiliated Modern by colonial rule they asserted their pride in Secular traditional learning and scholarship. You have Sanskritised already seen this trend in the 19th century reform ¾ Why? movements. ¾ Return to Activity 2.2 after you finish the As this chapter will show, modernity spelled not chapter. merely new ideas but also rethinking and ¾ Did you find any difference between reinterpretation of tradition. Both culture and common sense usage of the terms and tradition are living entities. People learn them and their sociological meaning? in turn modify them. Take the everyday example of how the sari or jain sem or sarong is worn in India today. Traditionally the sari, a loose unstitched piece of cloth was differently worn in different regions. The standard way that the modern middle class woman wears it was a novel combination of the traditional sari with the western ‘petticoat’ and ‘blouse’. ACTIVITY 2.3 ¾ Think of other instances of the mix and match both from everyday life and from the wider level. My father’s clothes represented his inner life very well. He was a south Indian Brahmin gentleman. He wore neat white turbans, a Sri Vaisnava caste mark..yet wore Tootal ties, The mix Kromentz buttons and collar studs, and match of the and donned English serge jackets over traditional his muslin dhotis which he wore and modern draped in traditional Brahmin style. 22 Source: A.K. Ramanujan in Marriot ed. 1990: 42 Cultural Change India’s structural and cultural diversity is self-evident. This diversity shapes the different ways that modernisation or westernisation, sanskritisation or secularisation effects or does not effect different groups of people. The following pages seek to capture these differences. The constraint of space prevents a further detailing out. It is up to you to explore and identify the complex ways modernisation impacts people in different parts of the country. Or impacts different classes and castes in the same region. And even women and men from the same class or community. We begin with the concept sanskritisation. The reason for doing so is because it refers to a process that pertains to social mobility that existed before the onset of colonialism. And persisted in diverse ways subsequently. The other three changes as we shall shortly see, arose in a context marked by changes that colonialism brought about. This included direct exposure to modern western ideas of freedom and rights. As mentioned earlier this exposure heightened the sense of injustice on the one hand and humiliation on the other. Often this led to a desire to go back to one’s traditional past and heritage. It is within this mix that we can understand India’s tryst with modernisation, westernisation and secularisation. 2.3 DIFFERENT KINDS OF SOCIAL CHANGE SANSKRITISATION The term sanskritisation was coined by M.N. Srinivas. It may be briefly defined as the process by which a ‘low’ caste or tribe or other group takes over the customs, ritual, beliefs, ideology and style of life of a high and, in particular, a ‘twice-born (dwija) caste’. The impact of Sanskritisation is many-sided. Its influence can be seen in language, literature, ideology, music, dance, drama, style of life and ritual. It is primarily a process that takes place within the Hindu space though Srinivas argued that it was visible even in sects and religious groups outside Hinduism. Studies of different areas, however, show that it operated differently in different parts of the country. In those areas where a highly Sanskritised caste was dominant, the culture of the entire region underwent a certain amount of Sanskritisation. In regions where the non-Sanskritic castes were dominant, it was their influence that was stronger. This can be termed the process of ‘de-Sanskritisation’. There were other regional variations too. In Punjab culturally Sanskritic influence was never very strong. For many centuries until the third quarter of the 19th century the Persian influence was the dominant one. Srinivas argued that, “the Sanskritisation of a group has usually the effect 23 of improving its position in the local caste hierarchy. It normally presupposes  Social Change and Development in India either an improvement in the economic or political Kumudtai’s journey into Sanskrit position of the group concerned or a higher group self- began with great interest and eagerness consciousness resulting from its contact with a source with Gokhale Guruji, her teacher at of the ‘Great Tradition’ of Hinduism such as a pilgrim school…At the University, the Head of centre or a monastery or a proselytising sect.” But in a the Department was a well-known highly unequal society such as India there were and scholar and he took great pleasure in still are obstacles to any easy taking over of the customs taunting Kumudtai…Despite the of the higher castes by the lower. Indeed, traditionally, adverse comments she successfully the dominant caste punished those low castes, which completed her Masters in Sanskrit…. were audacious enough to attempt it. The story below captures the problem. Source: Kumud Pawade (1938) Kumud Pawade in her autobiography recounts how a Dalit woman became a Sanskrit teacher. As a student she is drawn towards the study of Sanskrit, perhaps because it is the means through which she can break into a field that was not possible for her to enter on grounds of gender and caste. Perhaps she was drawn towards it because it would enable her to read in the original what the texts have to say about women and the Dalits. As she proceeds with her studies, she meets with varied reactions ranging from surprise to hostility, from guarded acceptance to brutal rejection. As she says: The result is that although I try to forget my caste, it is impossible to forget. And then I remember an expression I heard somewhere: “What comes by birth, but can’t be cast off by dying - that is caste?” Sanskritisation suggests a process whereby people want to improve their status through adoption of names and customs of culturally high-placed groups. The ‘reference model’ is usually financially better of. In both, the aspiration or desire to be like the higher placed group occurs only when people become wealthier. Sanskritisation as a concept has been critiqued at different levels. One, it has been criticised for exaggerating social mobility or the scope of ‘lower castes’ to move up the social ladder. For it leads to no structural change but only positional change of some individuals. In other words inequality continues to persist though some individuals may be able to improve their positions within the unequal structure. Two, it has been pointed out that the ideology of sanskritisation accepts the ways of the ‘upper caste’ as superior and that of the ‘lower caste’ as inferior. Therefore, the desire to imitate the ‘upper caste’ is seen as natural and desirable. Third, ‘sanskritisation’ seems to justify a model that rests on inequality and exclusion. It appears to suggest that to believe in pollution and purity of groups of people is justifiable or all right. Therefore, to be able to look down on some groups just as the ‘upper castes’ looked down on the ‘lower castes’, is a mark of 24 privilege. In society where such a world-view exists, imagining an equal society becomes difficult. The study on the next page shows how the very idea of purity and pollution are valued or seen as worthwhile ideas to have. Cultural Change Although Goldsmith-castes are people higher than me, our caste rules prohibit our taking food or water from them. We have a belief that Goldsmiths are so greedy that they wash excrement to dig out gold. Although higher in caste, they are therefore, more polluting than we are. We also don’t take food from other higher castes who do polluting things: Washermen, who work with dirty clothes, and Oilpressers, who crush and kill seeds to make oil. It shows how such discriminatory ideas become a way of life. Instead of aspiring for an equal society, the excluded and discriminated seek to give their own meaning to their excluded status. In other words they aspire to be in a position from where they can in turn look down on other people. This reflects an essentially undemocratic vision. Fourth, since sanskritisation results in the adoption ACTIVITY 2.4 of upper caste rites and rituals it leads to practices of secluding girls and women, adopting dowry practices Read the section on instead of bride-price and practising caste discrimination Sanskritisation very carefully. Do against other groups, etc. you think that this process is Fifth, the effect of such a trend is that the key gendered, i.e., it affects women characteristics of dalit culture and society are eroded. For differently from men. Do you think example the very worth of labour which ‘lower castes’ do that even if it does lead to is degraded and rendered ‘shameful’. Identities based on positional change among men, the the basis of work, crafts and artisanal abilities, knowledge reverse may be true about forms of medicine, ecology, agriculture, animal husbandry, women? etc., are regarded useless in the industrial era. With the growth of the anti-Brahminical movement and the development of regional self-consciousness in the twentieth century there was an attempt in several Indian languages to drop Sanskrit words and phrases. A crucial result of the Backward Classes Movement was to emphasise the role of secular factors in the upward mobility of caste groups and individuals. In the case of the dominant castes, there was no longer any desire to pass for the Vaisyas, Kshatriyas and Brahmins. On the other hand, it was prestigious to be a member of the dominant caste. Recent years have seen likewise assertions of Dalits who now pride their identity as Dalits. However, sometimes as among the poorest and the most marginalised of the dalit caste groups, caste identity seems to compensate their marginality in other domains. In other words they have gained some pride and self-confidence but otherwise remain excluded and discriminated. WESTERNISATION You have already read about our western colonial past. You have seen how it often brought about changes that were paradoxical and strange. M.N. Srinivas defines westernisation as “the changes brought about in Indian society and culture as a result of over 150 years of British rule, the term subsuming 25 changes occurring at different levels…technology, institutions, ideology and values”.  Social Change and Development in India There were dif ferent kinds of Ways of thinking BOX 2.2 westernisation. One kind refers to the …John Stuart Mill’s essay ‘On emergence of a westernised sub-cultural Liberty’ soon after its publication pattern through a minority section of Indians became a text in Indian colleges. Indians came who first came in contact with Western to know about Magna Carta, and the struggle for culture. This included the sub culture of liberty and equality in Europe and America. Indian intellectuals who not only adopted many cognitive patterns, or ways of thinking, and styles of life, but supported its expansion. Many of the early 19th century Ways of living BOX 2.3 reformers were of this kind. The boxes show Devaki recalls that when she was the different kinds of westernisation. small, in her house boiled eggs were There were, therefore, small sections of eaten in eggcups and her mother would make people who adopted western life styles or the porridge and serve it separately on the table were affected by western ways of thinking. with the hot milk and sugar, to be mixed in each Apart from this there has been also the person’s bowl. This was distinctly different from general spread of Western cultural traits, other households. Devaki says, where boiled such as the use of new technology, dress, eggs were not eaten in egg cups and where the food, and changes in the habits and styles porridge, milk and sugar were all mixed together, of people in general. Across the country a cooked in a pan, and then served.. She very wide section of middle class homes have remembers asking her mother why they ate a television set, a fridge, some kind of sofa set, a dining table and chair in the living porridge like that and her mother saying that this room. was the way they used to eat porridge in the estate. (Abraham 2006: 146) Westernisation does involve the imitation of external forms of culture. It does not (This is drawn from an ethnographic study of the Thiyya community in Kerala) necessarily mean that people adopt modern values of democracy and equality. ACTIVITY 2.5 ¾ Can you think of Indians who are very western in their clothes and appearances but who do not have democratic and egalitarian values that are part of modern attitudes. We are giving two examples below. Can you think of other instances from both real and reel life? We may find people who are western educated but holding very prejudiced views about particular ethnic or religious communities. A family can adopt external forms of western culture like the way the interiors of houses are done up but may have very conservative ideas about women’s role in society. The practice of female foeticide combines discriminatory attitude towards women and the use of very modern technology. 26 ¾ You should also discuss that whether this contradiction is only true for the Indians or non- western societies. Or is it not equally true that racist and discriminatory attitudes exist in western societies. Cultural Change Apart from ways of life and thinking the west influenced Indian art and literature. Artists like Ravi Varma, Abanindranath Tagore, Chandu Menon and Bankimchandra Chattopadhya were all grappling with the colonial encounter. The box below captures the many ways that style, technique and the very theme of an artist like Ravi Varma were shaped by western and indigeneous traditions. It discusses the portrait of a family in a matrilineal community of Kerala but one that significantly resembles the very typical patrilineal nuclear family of the modern west consisting of the father, mother and children. In 1870 Ravi Varma received his first paid commission BOX 2.4 to paint the portrait of Kizhakke Palat Krishna Menon’s family. …This is a transitional work which blends elements of a flatter, two-dimensional style popular within earlier water- colours with the newer techniques of perspective and illusionism, made possible by the use of a medium like oil. Raja Ravi Varma You can see the many diverse levels that cultural change, resulting from our colonial encounter with the west, took place. In the contemporary context often conflicts between generations are seen as cultural conflicts …Another feature is the technique of spatial organisations of the resulting from westernisation. seated and figures in deference to age and hierarchy, which is once The following account in the again reminiscent of nineteenth century European portraits of the next page captures this gap. bourgeois family. …How strange then this portrait was painted in Have you seen this or faced matrilineal Kerala at a time when most of the Nayars, Krishna Menon’s this? Is Westernisation the caste, would have been unused to living in patrilocal nuclear only reason for generational families… conflicts? Are conflicts Source: G. Arunima “Face value: Ravi Varma’s necessarily bad? portraiture and the project of colonial modernity”. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 40, 1 (2003) 27 pp. 57 - 80)  Social Change and Development in India Often westernisation among the middle class makes generational difference BOX 2.5 more complex …And though they are of my own flesh and blood, they sometimes seem like total strangers to me. I no longer have anything in common with them…neither with their ways of thinking, nor with the way they dress up, talk or behave. They are the new generation. And my mental makeup is such that any sort of mutuality between them and me becomes impossible. Yet I love them with all my heart. I give them whatever they desire, for their happiness is all I want. Rabindranth’s words set my heart in a tremulous feeling: “This is your time; for now is the beginning of my end.” I have nothing in common with my children Pallav, Kallol and Kingkini. Pallav lives in a different country, in a different culture altogether. We, for instance, had worn the mekela-chadar from the age of twelve. But now my daughter Kingkini, a student of Business Management at Gauhati University wears pant and buggy shirts. And Kallol likes to sport a mass of unruly hair on his head. When I feel listening to a Meera-Bhajan, Kallol and Kingkini choose to play their favourite pop numbers by Whitney Houston. At times, when I feel like singing a few lines of Bargeet, Kinkin likes to play western tunes on her guitar. Source: Anima Dutta 1999 “As Days Roll On” in Women: A Collection of Assamese Short Stories, Diamond Jubilee Volume, (Guwahati, Spectrum Publications) Srinivas suggested that while ‘lower castes’ sought to be Sanskritised, ‘upper castes’ sought to be Westernised. In a diverse country such as India this generalisation is difficult to maintain. For instance, studies of Thiyyas (by no means considered ‘upper caste’) in Kerala show conscious efforts to westernise. Elite Thiyyas appropriated British culture as a move towards a more cosmopolitan life that critiqued caste. Likewise, Western education often implied 28 opening up to new opportunities for different groups of people in the North- East. Read the following account. Cultural Change My grandfather, like most Nagas who had come into close contact with Europeans, was convinced BOX 2.6 that education was the only way to get ahead in life. He aspired for his children the kind of life he had seen being lived by the British administration and missionaries. He sent my mother away to school first in neighbouring Assam, then as far away as Shimla. My mother was encouraged by one of the more educated men in her village who told her that with an education in these new times, she could even become like the Indian lady who spoke before the world- Vijaylakshmi Pandit, sister of Nehru, who represented India at the UN. My father by dint of his own intelligence and hard work put himself through the local mission school and college in Shillong. All Nagas of my parents’ generation who were able to, chose to get educated in English. For them it was more than a getway to upward mobility. In a region where tribes that live no more than 20 kms apart speak completely different languages, it was a medium through which they could communicate amongst themselves and with the world. They became the voice of their people and made English the official state language. (Ao 2005: 111) We usually refer to the colonial impact to discuss westernisation. However often we find new forms of westernisation in the contemporary period. Activity 2.6 draws attention to this. ACTIVITY 2.6 ¾ Observe the many small and big ways that westernisation affects our lives. ¾ You have already seen how British colonialism affected our lives. How westernisation meant emulating or wanting to be like the British. Increasingly we find westernisation being more Americanisation. Read a recent letter to the editor of a newspaper given below and discuss. The new Raj Presumably to set itself apart from the Continent, Britain and Ireland, from where its founders had come, the US chose to partly reverse the date-month-year format and create its own month-date-year one. …The 11th of September, the day of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, automatically became “9/11”. As this was the shorthand which the US used, the rest of the world used it too, never mind that in most countries the number of a month in a year follows that of a day in a month. How do we explain the fact that the shorthand used in the Mumbai train blasts is “7/11”? We were a British colony, so we mostly use the DD-MM-YY format… The Hindu August 21, 2006. At one time many Indians sought to speak English the British way. Has there 29 been a change in this? Is American accent more influential now?  Social Change and Development in India What kind of modernity? They (upper caste founders of MODERNISATION AND SECULARISATION various oganisations and The term modernisation has a long history. From the 19th conferences) pretend to be and more so the 20th century the term began to be associated modernists as long as they are in with positive and desirable values. People and societies wanted the service of the British to be modern. In the early years, modernisation referred to government. The moment they improvement in technology and production processes. retire and claim their pensions, Increasingly, however, the term had a wider usage. It referred they get into their brahmanical to the path of development that much of west Europe or North ‘touch-me-not attire’… America has taken. And suggested that other societies both have to and ought to follow the same path of development. Jotiba Phule’s letter to the Conference of Marathi Authors In India the beginnings of capitalism, as we saw in chapter 1, took place within the colonial context. The story of our modernisation and secularisation is, therefore, quite distinct from their growth in the west. This is evident when we discussed westerisation and the efforts of the 19th century social movements earlier in this chapter. Here we look into the two processes of modernisation and secularisation together for they are linked. They are both part of a set of modern ideas. Sociologists have tries to define what exactly constitutes the modernisation process. ‘[M]odernity’ assumes that local ties and parochial perspectives give way to universal commitments and cosmopolitan attitudes; that the truths of utility, calculation, and science take precedence over those of the emotions, the sacred, and the non-rational; that the individual rather than the group be the primary unit of society and politics; that the associations in which men live and work be based on choice not birth; that mastery rather than fatalism orient their attitude toward the material and human environment; that identity be chosen and achieved, not ascribed and affirmed; that work be separated from family, residence, and community in bureaucratic organisation….(Rudolph and Rudolph, 1967) In other words it means that people are influenced not just by local but universal contexts. How you behave, what you think is ACTIVITY 2.7 no longer decided by your family or tribe or caste or community. What job you wish to do Take any matrimonial column is decided not by the job your parent does, from any newspaper or but by what you wish to do. Work gets based websites like shaadi.com and on choice, not birth. Who you are depends try and see the pattern. How on what you achieve, not by who you are. A often is caste or community scientific attitude gains ground. A rational mentioned? If it is mentioned approach matters. Is this entirely true? many times does it mean that In India often the job we do is not by caste continues to play the choice. A scavenger does not choose his/her same kind of role as it did 30 job. (chapter 5 book 1, NCERT 2007) We traditionally? Or has the role of often marry within a caste or community. caste changed? Discuss. Religious beliefs continue to dominate our Cultural Change lives. At the same time we do have a scientific tradition. We also have a vibrant secular and democratic political system. At the same time we have caste and community based mobilisation. How do we understand these processes? This chapter has been trying to understand this mix. It would be simplistic, however, to term the complex combinations just as a mix of tradition and modernity as though tradition and modernity themselves are fixed entities. Or as though India has or had just one set of traditions. We have already seen that both plurality and a tradition of argumentation have been defining features of ‘traditions’ in India. They are in fact constantly being redefined. We have already observed this with 19th century social reformers. This process, however, persists today. The box below describe such a process in contemporary Arunachal Pradesh. With the advent of progress and the influences of modernisation, attitudes have changed to religion BOX 2.7 and to the celebration of the many festivals. Rituals, procedures of ceremonies, taboos associated with these ceremonies, the value and amount of sacrifices to be made, are now all subjects of constant change, especially in the mushrooming urban areas. These new pressures on the concept of tribal identity have meant that traditional practices and their preservation have become almost a necessary expression of being tribal. Festivals have emerged as an emphatic projection of that sense of a unified tribe identity. It is as if the collective celebration of the festival has become a fitting response to the clarion call of “Loss of Culture, Loss of Identity’ that is doing the rounds in today’s tribal society. It is currently a common practice for Festival Celebration Committees to be formed in place of the Traditionally loose- knit work gang for the celebration of the festival. Traditionally, seasonal cycles determined the days of the celebration; now dates for the celebration have been formalised with each marked on the official government calendar. At these festival celebrations, flags of no definite design, chief guests and speeches, and Miss Festival contests have become the new necessities. With rational concepts and worldviews infiltrating the minds of the tribal people, the practice and performance of the old faith is under due and undue scrutiny. In the modern west, secularisation has usually meant a process of decline in the influence of religion. It has been an assumption of all theorists of modernisation that modern societies become increasingly secular. Indicators of secularisation have referred to levels of involvement with religious organisations (such as rates of church attendance), the social and material influence of religious organisations, and the degree to which people hold religious beliefs. Recent years have, however, seen an unprecedented growth of religious consciousness and conflict world over. However even in the past, a view that assumed that modern ways would necessarily lead to decline in religious ways has not been entirely true. You will recall how western and modern forms of communication, organisation and ideas led to the emergence of new kinds of religious reform organisations. 31 Furthermore, a considerable part of ritual in India has direct reference to the pursuit of secular ends.  Social Change and Development in India Connecting to God By Raja Simhan T.E. Are you distressed because your planned trip to the Meenakshi Amman temple in Madurai on your wedding anniversary will not materialise! Stop worrying. You are just a mouse click away from ordering an online puja on the Web and getting the blessings of the deity…..com offers puja service in over 600 temples spread all over the country. People all over the world can order for a puja to be performed at a temple of their choice, in Kanyakumari or in Uttar Pradesh, to their favourite deity… The puja is performed as per the browser’s requirement through a network of franchisees (mostly temple priests) spread across the country, and the ‘prasaadham’ is delivered to anywhere in the world, within 5-7 days….For residents of India who cannot pay through credit cards.com performs the puja and collects the payment through cheque or demand draft…..The online puja service costs anywhere from $9.75 for a basic puja performed at any temple that you wish to a $75 for combination pujas. Source: The Business Line, Financial Daily from The Hindu group of publications (Wednesday, September 20, 2000) ACTIVITY 2.8 Rituals have also secular dimensions as distinct from secular goals. They provide men and women with occasions for socialising with their peers and superiors, and for showing off the family’s wealth, clothing Observe advertisements during and jewellery. During the last few decades in particular, the economic, traditional festivals such as Diwali, political and status dimensions of ritual have become increasingly Durga Puja, Ganesh Puja, conspicuous, and the number of cars lined up outside a wedding house Dusserah, Karwa Chauth, Id, and the VIPs who attended the wedding, provide the index to the Christmas. Collect different household’s standing in the local community. advertisements from the print media. Watch the electronic There has also been considerable debate about what is media also. Note what the seen by some as secularisation of caste. What does this mean? In traditional India caste system operated within a messages of these advertise- religious framework. Belief systems of purity and pollution mnents are about. were central to its practice. Today it often functions as political pressure groups. Contemporary India has seen 32 such formation of caste associations and caste political parties. They seek to press upon the state their demands. Such a changed role of caste has been described as secularisation of caste. The box below illustrates this process. Cultural Change Everyone recognises that the traditional social system in India was organised around caste BOX 2.8 structures and caste identities. In dealing with the relationship between caste and politics, however the doctrinaire moderniser suffers from a serious xenophobia. He begins with the questions: is caste disappearing? Now, surely no social system disappears like that. A more useful point of departure would be: what form is caste taking under the impact of modern politics, and what form is politics taking in a caste-oriented society? Those in India who complain of ‘casteism in politics’ are really looking for a sort of politics, which has no basis in society. …Politics is a competitive enterprise, its purpose is the acquisition of power for the realisation of certain goals, and its process is one of identifying and manipulating existing and emerging allegiances in order to mobilise and consolidate positions. The important thing is organisation and articulation of support, and where politics is mass-based the point is to articulate support through the organisations in which the masses are to be found. It follows that where the caste structure provides one of the principal organisational clusters along which the bulk of the population is found to live, politics must strive to organise through such a structure. Politicians mobilise caste groupings and identities in order to organise their power. …Where there are other types of groups and other bases of association, politicians approach them as well. And as they everywhere change the form of such organisations, they change the form of caste as well. (Kothari 1977: 57-70) EXERCISE FOR BOX 2.8 Read the text above carefully. Look at the italicised sentences. Summarise the central argument being made. Give examples of your own. CONCLUSION This chapter has sought to show the distinct ways that social change has taken place in India. The colonial experience had lasting consequences. Many of these were unintended and paradoxical. Western ideas of modernity shaped the imagination of Indian nationalists. It also prompted a fresh look at traditional texts by some. It also led to a rejection of these by others. Western cultural forms found their place in spheres ranging from how families lived to what codes of conduct should men, women and children have to artistic expressions. The ideas of equality and democracy made a huge impact as evident in both the reform movements and the nationalist movement. This led not just to adoption of western ideas, but also an active questioning and reinterpretation of tradition. The next chapter on the India’s experience with democracy will again show how a Constitution based on radical ideas of equality and social justice functioned 33 in a society that is deeply unequal. It will further show the complex ways that both tradition and modernity constantly got and is getting redefined.  Social Change and Development in India 1. Write a critical essay on sanskritisation. Questions 2. Westernisation is often just about adoption of western attire and life style. Are there other aspects to being westernised? Or is that about modernisation? Discuss. 3. Write short notes on: „ Rites and secularisation „ Caste and secularisation „ Gender and sanskritisation REFERENCES Ramanujan, A.K. 1990. ‘Is There an Indian Way of Thinking: An Informal essay’ in Marriot McKim India Through Hindu Categories. Sage. New Delhi. Abraham, Janaki. 2006. ‘The Stain of White: Liasons, memories and White Men as Relatives’ Men and Masculinities. Vol 9. No. 2. pp 131-151. Ao, Ayinla Shilu. 2005. ‘Where the Past Meets the Future’ in Ed. Geeti Sen Where the Sun Rises When Shadows Fall. IIC Quarterly Monsoon Winter 32, 2&3. pp. 109-112. Chakravarti, Uma. 1998. Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai. Kali for Women. New Delhi. Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. 1993. The Indian Women’s Movement: Reform and Revival. Radiant. New Delhi. Dutt, A.K. 1993. ‘From Colonial City to Global City: The Far from Complete Spatial Transformation of Calcutta’ in Brunn S.D. and Williams J.F. Ed. Cities of the World. pp. 351-388. Harper Collins. New York. Khare, R.S. 1998. Cultural Diversity and Social Discontent: Anthropological Studies on Contemporary India. Sage. New Delhi. Kothari, Rajni. 1997. ‘Caste and Modern Politics’ in Sudipta Kaviraj Ed. Politics in India. pp. 57-70. Oxford University Press. Delhi. Pandian, M.S.S. 2000. ‘Dalit Assertion in Tamil Nadu: An Exploratory Note’ Journal of Political Economy. Vol XII. Nos. 3 and 4. Raman, Vasanthi. 2003. ‘The Diverse Life-Worlds of Indian Childhood’ in Margrit Pernau, Imtiaz Ahmad, Helmult Reifeld (Eds), Family and Gender: Changing values in Germany and India. Sage. New Delhi. Riba, Moji. 2005. “Rites, in passing …” IIC Quarterly Monsoon-Winter 32, 2&3. pp.113-121. Rudolph and Rudolph. 1967. The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India. University of Chicago Press. Chicago. 34 Saberwal, Satish. 2001. ‘Framework in Change: Colonial Indian Society’ in Ed. Susan Visvanathan Structure and Transformation: Theory and Society in India. pp.33-57. Oxford. Delhi. 3 The Story of Indian Democracy  Social Change and Development in India We are all familiar with the idea that democracy is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Democracies fall into two basic categories, direct and representative. In a direct democracy, all citizens, without the intermediary of elected or appointed officials, can participate in making public decisions. Such a system is clearly only practical with relatively small numbers of people – in a community organisation or tribal council, for example, or the local unit of a trade un