We are in disillusionment phase
Like refresher courses on research methodology, revisiting village studies is in vogue. Fairly, the collapse of Functionalism and then bankruptcy of Marxism at the close of previous century prompted a search for alternate modernity or multiple modernity at the advent of this century. This is a fresh political and academic discourse in the universities. The world is one, yet divided by the narratives of hegemonies. It needs fresh understanding from micro to macro level in the process of continuum comprehension.
Sociology in India found its journey through village studies soon after independence, though it was introduced to India in between the two world wars. There were many brilliant scholars who with their micro studies, across the country, contributed to the understanding of rural India, more or less through the categories of caste, class and communities, bound by boundaries and by mutual interdependence.
These studies from early 1950s to the close of 1960s paved the track for diversification of Sociology in subsequent years, amidst disillusionments with western perspectives, especially with Functionalism. Srinivas’ work was carried on by continual generation of Delhi School of Sociology, for it has influenced western scholarship in terms of its utility as a conceptual scheme referring, mainly through the cultural imitation of built-in structural notion of power and hierarchy in Indian society. Within this conceptual category, the gamut of cult, power and hegemony were explained through many such micro studies.
It did open, even then, the debate that Hinduism was multiple and not unitary in nature. Like Professor Srinivas, Professor Dube’s start was with village study, but he soon jumped from one theme to another. Unlike Srinivas’ passion with the caste continuum., he opened space for subsequent generations of scholars to go with the tide, beyond caste. In a way, he was a pioneer in the diversification of sociology, that was streamed up articulately by professor Oommen.
The advent of this century witnessed rural urban continuum in a different way, partially to show it as the imbibing the spirit of modernity or critique of it in the mistaken modernity. Nothing out of established categories could determine the understanding of Indian society as something of an evolving society, retaining, rejecting and readjusting with different and cross sectionalist influences prompting up from the processes of globalization and digitalization.
The new scholarship found it fascinating to look into rural studies through agrarian angle, with emergence of new classes and expansion of social geographies. Apart from showing the linkages that villages were never isolated pockets, with caste hierarchal spaces in ancient India, these scholars try to show us that these were colonial constructions and colonial engineering to generate self and the other binaries. The state in post-colonial era pushed its policies so that it remains a subversive sight. The farmer’s agitation is cited to illustrate the disconnect between state bureaucratic policy formation and the ground realities of agrarian realities, especially in Punjab.
There is no doubt that agriculture globally has diminished but rural India is alive, not as a notion of urban middle class static imagination. It is evolving in cross sectionalist mode of meeting different forces at different points of time, which do not go akin with the established notions of order making. If we justify our judgements on colonial engineering of creating binaries and demeaning our social existence, and then even in the current scenario, then how much of our state and society are independent to choose is equally problematic to judge.
Social geographies are well spread all over the world, moderately living in different countries connected through the social networks and some what perceiving in imagined communities. Internal migration inside the country and then external immigration to other countries have new types of social formations. It is based on the new consumer culture as well as shaping through the cultural political economy of identity formation, negotiating for the changed life chances. Look at the internal migrations in the big cities, especially in north India.
The migrant settlements are having mostly their origins from remote villages of central India and Bengal. They have captured urban cities, where class mobility has generated a hybrid culture to flourish. Politically, it has been tacitly permitted and socially it has been accepted for its skilled occupational support, which urban middle class needs for its survival on daily basis. But it is generating cultural conflicts and hybridity that suits the state in short term governance. Since world order is so fragile, any codification becomes problematic, hence rural urban continuum would work, because categories to any extent of precision shall fail to comprehend the reality. We are in disillusionment phase.
It is definitely a global world with huge inequalities. Any research book is an additional information rather than scholarly epistemic categorization for fresh understanding. Can Indian tradition or its knowledge system be codified? Its multiplicity, diverse intersections in history and then evolving cultural continuum be rejected? Imagine the historical stigma of caste hierarchical humiliation has been turned into positive silent movement through constitutional means in the processes of democratization for gaining power with regained identity. Who could have imagined it to happen. Caste humiliations might have not gone by completely, but its dynamics cannot be understood through the established categories for evaluation.
Invoking traditional knowledge does not mean giving currency to primordialism. It might suit the political rhetoric, but for scholarship it is more serious concern than put in vogue in the new academic versions. Knowledge realm too is in continuum stage. Imagine civilization journeying. Unexplored indigenous repertoires in multiple forms remain unexplored. Whatever has been explored has been explored collectively. It has always been possible with the visiting scholars and passionate learners, whose inquisitive minds opened the lid to knowledge repertories in the different parts of the world at different time periods. We have missed flawless episteme indeed, but continuum links too were operative that have given the current world the ideas, science and technologies. Scholarly transformation of both Sanskrit and Greek works, in whatever quantity were translated into Arabic during 8th to 12th century that triggered competition for the European scholars to comprehend and assemblage the modernity with ideas and material from all over the world.
Seeking knowledge system from our deep past has to be two-fold process of brilliant minds of linguistic capacities at work in continuum with scientific temper. It needs a sustained research to explore what remains unexplored in the repertoires of different languages and philosophies. And then what have been translated by scholars in the past coming from outside or within need revisiting. It has not to be apolitical rhetoric of imagining past, but sustained research in continuum in time and space. Continuum never means compartmentalization or exclusiveness. In fact, it means validating each passing moment with scientific enquiry, with passion and institution. It cannot be exclusive political agenda but has to be an inclusive collective human project.
Prof. Ashok Kaul, Retired Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Banaras Hindu University
