Genealogies, Locations, and Practices

edited by

Sujata Patel

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:<£ontents

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. ':Preface,pr'.l.:;rftroduction: Ruminating on Sociological Traditions in India;:;.~6~Sujata Patel, ~H;("'~,f:~1'll..PASTS AND PRESENTS: DEBATING DISCIPLINARY GENEALOGIES

~k~t'SOciology: The Genealogy of the Discipline in Bombay'Manorama Savur

ix

xiii

3

!.'~~e Public Culture of Sociology in Calcuttar.,Anjan Ghosht

,j- -Searching for Bedrock:. "'Contending with the Lucknow School and Its Legacy

..•..'I'isasheejHegde.t/~.. .§~cial Anthropology or Marxist Sociology?

t~1;~~essingthe Contesting Sociological Visions ofM,N. Srinivas and A.R. Desait'

I~1JjataPatel

l;.f'II BETWEEN NATION AND REGION: SITUATING SOCIOLOGY

29

47

72

l"iQ(Centres and Peripheries: Sociology in GoaAlita Siqueira and Manish Thakur~:.

,r.J!.egacyand Rigour: The Bombay School of Sociology.iind Its Impact in Universities in Maharashtra,D.N. Dhanagare

::f!Looking Back: The Practice of Sociology in CSSS/JNU. i"'M'<;' aitrayee Chaudhuri

103

127

158

IntroductionRuminating on Sociological Traditions in India

Sujata Patel

This volume brings together thirteen papers that discuss and debate manydifferent ways in which ideas, practices, and traditions of sociology grew,were organized, and institutionalized in India from mid-nineteenthcentury till today. It introduces the reader to a (small) slice of the historiesof the discipline, while critically examining their origin and growth, theirimpact and their limitations. The interplay of three themes structures thearguments in these papers-time, space;' and power.

This book proposes that any account of sociology in India needs toacknowledge four features: a) that the discipline and its traditions arevarious and diverse (having a history of conversations and contestations)and that some of them draw their lineages from anthropology whileothers draw these from sociology; b) that these find expressions both inits subjects and objects-scholars and their scholarship, curriculum, andresearch together with the social relationships established in the teachingand learning processes within the profession and also within processesoutside academia-in movements and associational groups-whichtogether represent its traditions-, c) that these diverse traditions need to beexamined in terms of two phases-c colonial and post independence, andd) that these traditions are enmeshed in political projects of constructinga 'society' taking place in India since the last hundred years or more.

The papers affirm that there have been strong and weak traditionsof scholarship in India and outline some of the features as these areembedded in different scholarships. Also, most of them highlight twoseparate but connected dominant positions that have structured the

I

I·

xii Introduction

formation of sociological traditions in India. These are: a) colonialism andits practices and b) ideologies of nationalism and notions of nation andnationhood. They argue that sociology in India has evolved in dialoguesand contestations with these positions, sometimes challenging and othertimes accepting these dominant perspectives. While often there has beencontinuity, these dialogues and contestations have also led to the growthof new traditions.

Authors explore three processes that have aided this development atvarious times. These are: a) reflexive interrogation of received scholarshipthrough the development of endogenous' theoretical frames andadaptation of imported perspectives, b) probing received 'ideal types'of theories practised within classroom and through teaching/learningprocesses, and c) questioning the existing debates on society and itslanguages (and thus on the sociological discourses) within various kinds ofpublics and counter publics! (such as within 'communities', tribes, dalitsand/or women), within associational groups and social movements.

Papers explore the discipline's early language in Calcutta and later inBombay, where it found its institutionalized expressions. It also examinesits diffusion from there to other parts ofIndia (such as Maharashtra andKarnataka) and to some small and big cities ofIndia (Lucknow, Delhi, andGoa) as the colonial state and later the post-independent state organizedand expanded the higher education system in India. Authors discussthe scholars and their departments and explore their differential visionsregarding the discipline. They assess the historical and contextual reasonsfor the differences between scholars and their scholarship, departmentsand universities, and within cities and regions while evaluating the distinctstyles of sociology being practised in these locations.

Some papers consider and deliberate theoretical frameworks,worldviews, and philosophical positions; others trace the lack of theoreticaland methodological rigour to assess their contemporary and futurerelevance. Papers use the sociology of knowledge perspective to presentevents, processes, and institutions that have augmented, embedded,and structured historical and spatial differences and similarities acrossintellectual traditions within the discipline. They also suggest that thediscipline's narratives need to be evaluated against the backdrop ofprojects for and of social sciences proposed and legitimized by the colonialand post-independent states respectively.

Introduction

COLONIALISM ANTH ., ROPOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY

There is one important issue th t da nee s clarification before we proceed.It relates to a general and by now commonsensical notion within~cholar~hip in India and in particular, sociological scholarship, that thereIS no dIfference between the practices of sociology d th I. . an an ropo ogy.This claim was first made in print in 1952 when M N S ... ' . . nnivas wrote an~r~Icle adv~cating the .unit! between sociology and social anthropologyin the ~rst Issue of Sociological Bulletin. 5 This position has implicitly heldsway since the twenties and is reflected in the works of sociology's pioneerG.S. Ghurye (see Savur in this volume and Upadhya 2007). In manyw~ys, o~e can argue that since the moment of its official birth (that is asa teachmg discipline at the University of Bombay), Indian scholarship~as ~ot ~istinguished between the two disciplines. For instance, M.S.A.

ao m hIS survey of the growth of the discipline states: 'It is importantto note that a sharp distinction between anthropology and sociology didI;1Otemerge' (Rao 1974: xxvi).

" J'v!..ost c~mmentators including Indian sociologists andanthropologIsts, such as Beteil1e (2006) and recently Uberoi et al. (2007)and Oomrnen (2007) have argued that the division of the two arose inthe West for pragmatic purposes and represent at best an 'ambiguity'

. (Oo~men 2007: 2). As many scholars suggest, in a world in whichbarr~ers be.tw~e~ social sciences are being diluted and multidisciplinaryand mterdiscIplmary perspectives being articulated, such divisions areunnecessary. Thus in a recent commentary Uberoi et al. (2007: 7) havesuggested that: 'It's actually rather a nonsensical distinction from theperspective of non-western sociologist/anthropologist ... ' Others haves~g~ested that such a legacy augers well for Indian scholarship (see~ete~e 200~) ~n~ is ~ testament to Indian scholarships' early entranceIQtO mterdiscIpltnanty. This position also reflects an institutionaltrend which occurred in colonial India; though a separate departmentof ~nthropology was instituted in 1920 at the University of Calcutta,sociology was taught with economics (Lucknow) while in Calcutta itwas ta.ught ~ith economics and politics. Elsewhere sociology was partof social phIlosophy (Mysore) and in Pune it was part of a combineddepartment of sociology and anthropology. In Bombay, Manorama~avur argues in this volume, sociology was taught as a combination ofmdology and anthropology.

xiv Introduction

Hit is also clear that these divisions were not merelyowever, 1 .

pragmatic. These emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentie~

t nly as a means of tdenufyin g entry into study, scholarship,century no 0 . . aland recognition of scholars and their lineages but were part of a politi~

. f I iali imbibed in Europe and the west where socialproject 0 co om sm .. ces originated.6 This political project divided the study of two kinds

scien f' 'h dof societies into two disciplines-sociology as a study 0 ,u~, t ,e mo ernwestern society; and anthropology as the study of the o~er, the non-modern societies. This project remains in some form a frame ~f referencefor social scientists in the west. It also continues to organize researchand teaching in a large measure in contemporary p~riod. No wond.er,Andre Beteille had this to state in an interview to Swedish anthro~ol~glst,Stefan Molund, 'Anyone who studies India, Africa or Melanes~a ~s ~anthropologist, whereas to be a sociologist one has to be a speclalist m

western industrial societies' (Beteille 2002: 236). .Since the late 1960s, anthropologists in the North have recogruzed ~at

thei di . line (and thus the divisions) was associated with a colonialelf SClp. th di . li

. t d that the knowledge which they created, and e SC1Pne,proJec an . , , ., fwhich they organized and institutionalized, represented the othenng. 0the east. Since then, these anthropologists have embarked on the refle~vejourney of the colonial project and have described anthropology a~bemg,a 'handmaiden of colonialism' and 'a daughter to (an) era of violence

(quoted in Uberoi et al. 2007: 22). .Uberoi et al. (2007: 11-22) have done an exemplary survey on this

debate as it exists within anthropology. They note as others have.before,that this discussion progressed from initial deliberations regardin.g theprocesses which made possible anthropological knowledge-th~t IS thecolonial e;q,loits sponsored by imperialist states-to an analY~ls of ~ecolonial state on whose demands the discipline's study of the. o~e.r ~rthe 'natives' was conceptualized. Anthropologists studied the disclpline shistory in order to understand how anthropologiC~ ~owledgeincreasingly imbricated itself to uphold the civilizin~ mlSS10n of thecolonial authorities and became, in turn, instrumentalized throu~ theuse of various administrative practices. They studied the productlOn ofinstrumental knowledge through the census, the documents of the s.t~te:the use of statistical tables, legal codes (termed 'investigative modalities

b C hn 1997: 4) and excavated the archives to understand and locateyo, 'ob 'f'fthem. Cohn (1997) has called the latter process the 0 [ectrva ion 0

Introduction xv

knowledge, that is, the coding of the colonised country, such as India, tomake it available for colonization.

It is not that sociologists in India had not recognized and commentedon the role played by the colonial state in the formation of anthropologicalknowledge. For example, Srinivas and Panini (1973: 180) have stated:

Anthropology, as iswellknown, was the product of European expansion over theworld during the last three or four centuries. The need to govern men ofvariousraces and vastly different cultures created in the European rulers a need to studythe life and cultures of the ruled.

However, the new discussions initiated by anthropologists in theNorth were notably different. These used a post-structuralist and post-colonial analysis to elaborate how the discipline's research themes, itstheories and methodologies became closely aligned to the needs andthe policies of the colonial state. These deliberations examined how theprocesses of reification engulfed concepts and categories representingsociabilities within the subcontinent. They elaborated how basiccategories of classification, in the Indian case that of 'tribe' and 'caste',was made out to be far more pervasive, totalizing, and uniform thanever before and defined in terms of a religious order, which was notalways so. In fact, as stated earlier in a review on this theme (Patel 2006),ancient and medieval historiographers have argued that those whomwe identify as castes and tribes were groups that were shaped by manydifferent political struggles covering varied processes and over a rangeof material resources. Indian scholarship on these themes had merelyshown a negative relationship between colonialism and anthropologicalknowledge. This scholarship had not examined nor elaborated thedistinctive attributes of this relationship.

Cohn has indicated that for India, the British played a major rolein identifying and producing Indian 'tradition', that is the beliefs andcustoms, of those living in the region, which in turn became the norm onwhich to judge a 'culture' and to intervene to protect it through its lawand order machinery. For instance, he states:

In the conceptual scheme which the British created to understand and to act inIndia, they constantly followedthe samelogic;they reduced vastlycomplexcodesand associated meaning to a few metonyms.... [This process allowed them] to

:ve themselves the effort of understanding or adequately explaining subtle orot-so-subtlemeanings attached to the actions of their subjects.Once the Britishd defined something as an Indian custom, or traditional dress, or the proper

xvi Introduction

form of salutation, any deviations from it was defined as a rebellion or an act tobe punished. India was redefined by the British to be a place of rules and order;once the British had defined to their own satisfaction what they constructed asIndian rules and customs, then the Indians had to conform to these constructions.(Cohn 1997: 162)

In pre-colonial India, groups were defined by multiple markers of identityand their relationships with each other were contingent on complexprocesses, which were constantly changing and were related to politicalpower. Varied groups classified as differently as temple communities,territorial groups, lineage segments, family units, royal retinues, warriorsub castes, 'little as opposed to large kingdoms', occupational referencegroups, agricultural and trading associations, networks of devotionaland sectarian religious communities, and priestly cables were laterstandardized under the name of 'caste' as being the only rather thanone among many way of representing and organizing identity (Dirks

\2001). With the help of anthropological theories and methods, colonialrulers constructed a new genealogy of hierarchy wherein they entangledEuropean race and evolutionary theories with those articulated by 'native'elites, for example, brahminism in India (Dirks 2001). Anthropology as aproject of the colonial state also legitimized its role by using the languageof 'native' elites.

No wonder, Dirks (2001: 8) has asserted that the colonial conquestwas sustained not only by superior arms and military organization,nor by political power and economic wealth, but also through culturaltechnologies of rule. Anthropology and its knowledge, together with itstheories and methodologies became part of these processes of rule.

However, these debates (in this form) have rarely been part of adiscussion within scholarship in India? Recently some scholars haveicitiated discussions on the historical studies of the concept of 'tribe' andthe assessment of the sub-discipline of physical anthropology. But these,do not extend to the colonial formulations of the concept of caste and itsvarious theories.

Following the footsteps mapped by theorists ·such as Dirks and Cohn,Meena Radhakrishna, has explored how theories and methods of physicalanthropology constituted the language of 'high and low races'. She hasargued that there was a 'convergence of interests between scientists,ethnographers, colonial officials, travelogue-writers, fiction writers andlocal structures of power fused politics with academics, history with myth,

Introduction xvii

and science with fiction by its practitioners' (Radhakrishna 2006: 22).The ~digen.ous peoples were made out to be 'relics of the past' therebydenying their struggles as being modern and 'a legitimate place in thepresent' (ibid.).

Where does this discussion take us? We can highlight two themes thatcan help to comprehend the trajectories in the formation of traditions ofsociology in India.

. First,.we w~uld need to accept that notwithstanding the contemporary~p~r~tIve of mterdisciplinarity and the practices of conflating the twodisciplines as one, there is a need to recognize and enumerate the historicalprocesses that divided the two disciplines of sociology and anthropologyand the political project that embedded this division in the west," Thusa te~ debating the history of intellectual traditions needs to distinguishand Juxtapose those of sociology from those of anthropology in order tounderstand where ~ese interface and where they do not. Following this,a volume on the history of these two traditions needs also to highlight,~~~n, how, and why scholars conflated them and for what purposes. Wemitiate such an attempt here.?

This volume not only recognizes but argues that the discipline ofanthropology since the late nineteenth century legitimized a colonialframe of reference of examining and evaluating 'communities' and thusbec~.e. a.powerful instrument and tool of understanding contemporarysociabilines. Following this, we contend that historians of knowledgeneed .to assess and map ways in which colonialism structured the myriadpractices of anthropology. 10 Within scholarship in India, this project hasbeen recently initiated and needs to be taken further.

In this context, it is imperative to recall the cautionary remarks madeby Dirks (1997). He has suggested that scholars studying anthropologicalknowledge need to propose a nuanced analysis of the relationship between~owledge and power. While affirming that the overall argument ofmstrumentalization of anthropological knowledge for augmentationof the colonial project has value, he contends that scholars should notconflat~ 'cause and effect, or ascribing intention as well as system to acongenes of activities and a conjunction of outcomes which, thoughrelated and at times coordinated were usually diffuse, differentiated andon~adictory' (ibid.: xvi), It allowed spaces for construction of thinking~ mtellectual engagements which, while it could not displace the

SMstemeJ certainly allowed new ways for its reconstruction.

This caution has led to the evolution of new interpretations on thistheme (Damodaran 2006, Dasgupta 2007) and resonates in the paperpresented by Carol Upadhya in this volume on S.c. Roy, tribal identity,and anthropology. Starting from the premise that the 'anthropologicalunderstandings of the 'peoples of India' have shaped or influenced, indiverse ways, the governing practices of colonial and post-independentstate, she traces how these received ideas has also formulated new culturalidentities among groups and, in turn, become a frame of reference fordemanding rights within social movements.

Second, following from the above, there is a need to assess how thestudy of sociology (as against anthropology) was organized during thecolonial period. Did the sociologists borrow their language of assessingmodern India from those that were fashioned by colonial anthropology?

. If so, what kind of sociology developed? Did Indian sociologists alsoengage with contemporary western sociological theories and did they

adapt these to Indian conditions?Papers in this volume discuss the questions outlined above and show

the complex, contradictory, and contesting histories of sociologicaltraditions in the various locations during the colonial period andimmediately after, before the spiralling expansion of the universitysystem in the 1960s. These papers indicate that sociological perspectivesand scholarship took varied shapes as it developed initially outsideacademia in local contexts from the late nineteenth century (in Calcutta)and came to be institutionalized in various departments, such as in

Bombay in 1919.The papers recognize the shadow of colonialism on its growth, but

attest to the vibrancy of its formation due to the association of scholarsand scholarship with public associations and social movements, suchas nationalism. The fact that the discipline was not directly associatedwith the needs of administrative practices of the colonial state obviouslycreated a space for different kinds of conversations and dialogues tooccur and the diversity of traditions to be created.

It is possible to distinguish between two trends and then locatevarieties of expressions within these. The first trend covers the periodfrom late nineteenth century and early twentieth century and is assessedin two colonial cities, Calcutta and Bombay. The second trend coversthe two decades from forties to late fifties. This volume discussesthe sociological visions of four scholars: Radhakamal Mukerjee, D.P.

Introduction xix

Mukerji, M.N. Srinivas, A.R. Desai, and G.S. Ghurye all of whom wrotetheir foundational texts in this period.

Together, the papers highlight that in the case of Calcutta and Lucknowand partially Bombay (through the scholarship of Desai), the intellectuallocations of scholars within radical. nationalist concerns fuelled newvisions for sociological languages on the study of contemporary India.Issues, such as, poverty or the plight of agricultural labourers and theartisan classes together with a focus on women and marginal groupsevolved. In the department at Bombay, another tradition evolved in thework of Ghurye and his colleagues who were influenced by conservativenationalism. They propelled a sociology that mixed indological andanthropological studies (Upadhya 2007). These papers debate the waysin which the two trends of nationalism impacted the formation ofsociological traditions differently in Bombay, Calcutta, and Lucknow inthe context of colonialism.

Manorama Savur excavates the political underpinnings that framedthe discipline of sociology and converted it into anthropology at Bombay.The story in Bombay starts with Patrick Geddes and his radical ideas oftheory and methodologies regarding the study of contemporary societyand thus on sociology.'! His orientation to sociology was questionedby (mainly upper caste) nationalists within the senate who gave theresponsibility of the department to G.S. Ghurye, a sanskritist and latera trained anthropologist. She suggests that the department under theleadership ofGhurye started defining the study of sociology in indologicaland empiricist terms, as the study of 'traditional' India, of castes, tribes,and races. Savur argues that the study of modern India at Bombay'sdepartment of sociology was inaugurated only after independence whenA.R. Desai joined the department and started teaching modern Indiathrough an assessment of classes and later changed the curriculum toincorporate this vision.

In Calcutta, Anjan Ghosh, discusses another trend that structuredsociological traditions. There the discipline was vitalized throughthe interventions of public associations. The need for sociology wasarticulated in early and mid-nineteenth century and presented in thedebates and discussions that were carried on in various learned societiesand its journals which wished to understand and assess contemporaryIndian society. These developments led ultimately to the formation ofBengal Social Science Association in the late nineteenth century-one of

xx Introduction

the first such associations in the world. These societies and associationscultivated a culture of criticality, interdisciplinarity, and encouragedempirical work on the various aspects of contemporary society such asthe plight of agricultural labourers, the artisan class, and education ofwomen. Ghosh suggests that this vibrancy in analysis and methodologyslowly disintegrated when sociology as a discipline started being taughtat the university after the 1920s.

Sasheej Hegde explores the wide-ranging theory of sociology amongthe founders of the Lucknow school, Radhakamal Mukerjee andD.P. Mukerji. These scholars were highly influenced by nationalism,located their sociology in philosophical reflections, and emphasizedon interdisciplinarity. Their work, it seems, in scope and nature wascomparable in its ambitions with sociology of the classical Europeansociologists. Earlier commentators such as Joshi and Madan (2007) hadalready alerted us to the differences of perspectives in the sociologicalvisions of these scholars. While Radhakamal Mukerjee sought to finda universal perspective to classify and categorize concepts that coul~integrate social sciences across the world, D.P. Mukerji emphasized a'culturist' and thus a particularistic model for organizing the categoriesof social science.

For Hegde, these different orientations to sociology, were togetheraffirming three claims: the first was ontological-that the Indian socialorder was to be assessed in terms of change, of historicity, and of'progressivism'; the second was methodological-a need to theorize themechanics of change and that of history and the last was epistemologicalone-to create a knowledge that can assess this change through ananalysis of its own history. These claims defined the endogenous natureof all sociology, as a theory specific to a region or a nation-state based onthe elaboration of the history of its own 'progressivism'.

Sujata Patel evaluates in her paper the contrasting visions of twocontemporary scholars, M.N. Srinivas and A.R. Desai, both students ofG.S. Ghurye, who adapted the western perspectives to create alternatesociological perspectives to study modern India. Desai used westernMarxist concepts to frame sociology of class, nation, and state througha reinterpretation of Indian radical nationalist language. His visiontogether with that of the Lucknow sociologists made an attempt andpresented an ambition to move away from the eategories and theories thatstructured colonial anthropology (as was framed in Ghurye's sociology

Introduction Jot.

in Bombay) and to perceive modern India in a sociological language thatwas simultaneously, both universal and particular, and both westernand Indian. These expressions emerged from an engagement with ideasand practices that were fashioned outside academia and came to beinstitutionalized within academia. These essays confirm that sociologicaltraditions and their disciplinary practices evolve a vitality and vigourwhen it draws from public concerns. However, public concerns may alsobe "ideological and may limit the growth of creative critical reflections.This tension is explored in the work of Desai and other essays presentedin the volume.

Srinivas's sociology charted out a distinct legacy. On one hand itinterrogated the indological method, ('book view') by supporting 'fieldview', (empirical work) and, on the other hand it did so by adaptingRadcliffe Brown's social anthropology to legitimize 'an insider'sperspective'. Patel argues that Srinivas's sociology brought back the legacyof anthropological perspectives of colonial India now conceptualizedin new frames; with its emphasis on caste and small segmented groups,especially the study of its middle ranks, on village as a key unit ofinvestigation and its focus on social mobility.

Taken together these expressions indicate that the early years ofsociology in India showed strength, vigour, and vibrancy. There wasconcern with modern life and its exploitative processes and an effort tostudy the specificities of this modern life in India. Sociologists in Indiadrew their intellectual resources from nationalism and their sociologicallanguage from varied thinkers: those of the late nineteenth century -Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, and from the contemporary ones such asSpencer+' (Shah 2006) and Parsons. 13 There were discussions on scienceand modernity and on the impact of colonialism as Shiv Visvanathanattests in his paper in this volume. The sites of production of theseperspectives were varied and included universities but also social sciencesocieties and public associations giving this early history of sociology acatholicity and rigour which is rare to find today.

NATiO'N(S)) NATIONALISMS) AND

SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITIONS

In. the context of creating a global cosmopolitan theory, social theoristshave recently raised some seminal questions regarding the imprint of

xxii Introduction

the idiom of the nation in classical and twentieth century sociologicalthought. Much in the same way as the discussions on colonialism andanthropology proceeded, social theorists who have termed this 'imprint',methodological nationalism, have deliberated the ways on which ithas framed and organized sociological knowledge and carried withit assumptions which work to structure sociological inquiry. Thoughsociology was structured through the prism of the nation, nation-state,and that of nationalism, sociological theories ignored these intellectualmoorings and universalized its language disregarding this history

(Beck 2007).In its most straightforward usage, methodological nationalism implies

coevalness between 'society' and the 'nation-state' i.e, it argues that adiscussion on modern society (which sociology does) entails an implicitunderstanding of the nation. Or, in other words, the nation is treatedas 'the natural and necessary representation of the modern society'(Chernillo 2008: 2). Methodological nationalism is the taken-for-grantedbelief that nation-state boundaries are natural boundaries within whichsocieties are contained. Sociology, according to Beck.l" assumed thathumanity is 'naturally divided into a limited number of nations, whichon the inside, organized themselves as nation-states, and on the outside,set boundaries to distinguish themselves from other nation-states' (Beck2007: 287). This outside limitation and the competition between nation-states present 'the most fundamental category of political organization'.Thus sociology's visions of culture and politics, law, justice, and historyrepresent that of individual nation-state's (ibid.).

Wimmer and Schiller (2002) suggest that there are three differentstrands of methodological nationalism. The first is ignorance and/orblindness in recognizing that modern societies are structured in termsof the way nation and nationality are organized. As a result, sociologistsignore the study of nation and nationalism in each country and do notframe their theories to understand the interface between modernityand nationalism. The second strand, following the point noted above ismode of 'naturalisation'. Sociological theories take for granted officialdiscourses, agendas, loyalties, and histories without problematizingthem.P They study groups and cultures as being unitary and organicallylinked to territories thus reproducing the social world as boundedculturally spl~ific spatial units. The third strand is that of territorializationof the social science imaginary and its reduction to the boundaries of

Introduction xxiii

the nation-state. There is an obsession to comprehend all aspects of lifein terms of territory, rather than seeing social interconnections betweenterritorial boundaries.

Did sociological traditions of post-independence India framethemselves in similar ways? The post-independent Indian state initiatedthe expansion of the system of higher education in order to redressthe imbalances created by colonialism and to create pathways towardsmodernity. This policy drew its inspiration from nationalist thought. Nowonder most Indian academics were supporters of this programme andactors and deliberators with the state in its higher education policies. Itled to the institutionalization of a close functional relationship betweenIndian academia and higher education and by extension between theproject of knowledge creation and that of nationhood.

Thus sociologists in India (unlike those in Europe and the UnitedStates) were neither blind nor ignorant about the significance of thenation and nation-state. Rather they were enthusiastic supportersof the project of higher education and the particular roles that thestate demanded that they play within the higher education system associologists. For instance, Srinivas and Panini declared that: 'We areconvinced that their (sociology and social anthropology's) growth wasintimately influenced by nationalism' (Srinivas and Panini 1973:180).16This agenda entailed a need to professionalize the discipline and organizeit within the territory of the nation-state. In this context, two strands ofmethodological nationalism 17mentioned above, that of ,territo ria lisat ion'and 'naturalisation' became in new ways, symbiotically linked with eachother to become an integral part of the traditions of sociological thinkingin India. The discipline was closely associated with the official discoursesand methods of understanding the relationship between nation, nation-state, and modernity. It self consciously proclaimed a methodologicalnationalism as its project. Thus this sociology was particularistic (unlikesome of the colonial variants, which posited an universal sociology) in sofar as it constructed a sociology ofIndia as Indian sociology and equatedthe Indian society with the territory controlled by the Indian state.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were critical years to understand thesedevelopments and the making of the discipline. Three trends playeda significant role: first the university became the main (and only) sitefor organizing the practices of the discipline. Phenomenal expansionof public higher education aided this process. If before independence

xxiv Introduction

there were only three main Universities (Bombay, Calcutta, andLucknow) which taught sociology and/or anthropology, with Poona,Mysore, and Hyderabad which housed small centres of sociology andanthropology, then by 1977 this number had expanded to fifty. Theseuniversities departments were able to enrol 6,548 Masters level studentsand 415 doctoral students (Saberwal 1983: 303). By 2000, the numbershad galloped upwards with the expansion of undergraduate teaching.The University Grants Commission (UGC) has recorded that nearly 50per cent of the 200 odd universities teach sociology. These universitiesgraduate nearly 100,000 students every year, 6,000 post graduate and 200doctoral students in sociology every year (UGC 2001).

Second, there was an attempt to standardize and make uniformthe contours of the knowledge governing the discipline wherein threeinstitutions played a key role. The first of these was the UGC whichinitiated the process of standardization through the organization ofsyllabi across universities within the country. The second was the IndianCouncil of Social Science Research (ICSSR) which introduced the ideaof doing bibliographic surveys of sociology and social anthropology (asother social sciences) in India in order to chart out the specializationsin the discipline and aid research in these areas.l'' The last was theIndian Sociological Society which emerged after its merger with theLucknow-based All India Sociological Conference as a strong pan-Indiaprofessional organization of sociologists with its own journal (Patel2002).19 Henceforth all sociological knowledge (and equally all socialscientific ones) were organized to discuss, debate, and represent socialchanges occurring within one nation and territory-India.

Third, it is no coincidence that when the state demanded thatsociologists together with other social scientists develop and organizesystematic knowledge about contemporary society as it responds toplanned social change, most sociologists affirmed a need to have asociological language that can comprehend the uniqueness of Indiannation, its culture, and its civilization. Sociologists in India saw their projectas that which analyses one's own society (India) in one's (indigenous)'own terms', without colonial and now neo-colonial tutelage.PThis project allowed for the institutionalization of a particularisticproblernatique-an assessment of the changes occurring within India'scharacteristic institutions-caste, kinship, f~mily, and religion. Thisparticularistic problernatique had much in common with the notions

Introduction

of India embedded within elite and mainstream nationalism." Thus, ifcolonial heritage was a key element that structured this effort, the needto examine how modernity and modernization (in the context of nationbuilding) were organizing the changes occurring within the institutionsof family, caste, kinship, and religion fuelled its energy.

Of the many alternatives that the discipline inherited from its earlytwentieth century experiences, what was ultimately institutionalized asa standard and uniform language to examine and assess 'social changein modern India', was the perspective provided by M.N. Srinivas.Srinivas' perspective was extremely well placed to be incorporated asa standard variant. It was modern, in that it promoted the 'field view'(empirical investigations) against the 'book view' (indology) associatedwith colonialism. At the same time it continued the earlier ethnographicapproach of studying 'communities' now as segmented groups of jatis/castes. Simultaneously, it was indigenous in so far as it introducedparticipant observation as an 'insider's perspective' of doing sociology.Last, it was closely affiliated to elite visions of society. The key leadershiproles that Srinivas and his colleagues at the Department of Sociology ofUniversity of Delhi took in the various institutions mentioned abovealso legitimized the universalization of his sociological vision, with otherpositions being pushed in the margins. The diversity of perspectives thatwas the feature of the colonial period was now substituted by a masternarrative. Social anthropology of Srinivasian perspective was designedto represent the language of sociology.

In what ways did sociologists in India react to these processes? Bythe late 1970s and early 1980s it was clear (at least) to some sociologiststhat, the discipline was caught into problems. For many this problem wasrelated to the methodology being used-that of participant observation.Saberwal (1983) was one of the first to criticize the sole reliance onparticipant observation to study social change in India. The latter does notallow, he argued, its user to present a theoretically and methodologicallychallenged perspective to assess and examine the complex processesof conflict and consensus at work in India. The discipline needed alanguage that can study the complex macro interfaces between groupsand processes which often were in a relationship of involution.

Oomrnen (1983/2007) continued this argument by highlighting howthe unit of analysis is critical in understanding contemporary modernprocesses. It is possible to examine family, caste, and kinship through small

xxvi Introduction

units of study. But this is not so in the case of critical issues of contemporarysalience, such as the impact of partition on the Indian nation, or thequestion why untouchability continues to be practised in contemporaryIndia. The same argument was reiterated by Dhanagare (1980: 25), whoadded to this debate, pointed his criticism to the functionalist theory, whichhe argued could not assess conflicts and contestations that are becomingpart of the Indian experience of modernity. Sociology, he argued, needsto be understood as social criticism. If historical analysis is used to assesschanges then sociologists would be able to grasp the interrelationshipbetween macro and micro processes.

For Saberwal (1983) the problem was also related to the way the methodof participant observation was conceptualized and institutionalizedacross departments, within the teaching and learning processes.With non-trained teachers as interlocutions of the teaching process,increasingly description rather than analysis dominated the teachingof this method. This pattern got inflated with simultaneous expansionof departments. To Saberwal the problem thus relates to the Indiannotions of modernity. In the 1950s, he stated, an idea gained currency,that modernity can be organized through the expansion of universitiesrather than first creating a group of professionals that can understandthe strengths and weaknesses of the perspectives and methodologiesbeing used, who would then transmit these in professional ways.

Thus the expansion of universities bred its own contradictions, suchas above. The latter were reinforced due to disparity in accessing physical-and human resources, differential structures of academic autonomy,these being dependent on the university's legal character-that of itbeing a State or a central university. Thus the central universities werebetter funded, more autonomous, and had a 'national character'. Stateuniversities needed to project a regional identity, had less funding, andlow staff strength. This process became more complicated with furtherexpansion of state universities and the growth of a new state elitedemanding that state universities teach in the language spoken in theregion (Sheth 1995). Unfortunately there was little to no intellectualinvestment to create a vocabulary of social sciences in these regionallanguages. In these circumstances, this demand further impinged onthe quality of the learning process and implicated what gets taught andwhat is researched (for another point of view see the paper by Sharmila

Introduction xxvii

Rege in this volume). Thus the problem confronting the discipline wasnot merely that of its own language but also of the limitations inherentwithin the institutional structures that sustained its practices.

Increasingly, the sociologist/ethnographer-teacher within departmentsencouraged doctoral students to use 'insider' descriptive perspectives togenerate monographs of 'my village' and/or 'my community'. Over time,learning of sociology became a 'soft experience' (Saberwal 1983: 308). Ifsociology in India could boast some of the best in the field, it was alsoproducing a large mass of professionally untrained students and thusteachers/researchers. In this volume, we discuss narratives that chart outhow the 'best' was realised and those wherein the 'best' could not be realized.Thus, by 1993, Veena Das was to declare that the rapid expansion of highereducation and universities together with its bureaucratization had led to acrisis of sociology. She asserted that a large number of doctorates are beingproduced who have little to no acquaintance with.the classic argumentsand contemporary theories of sociology.

These contradictory trends-a) an avowed interest to create a theoryof social change to assess modern India while contrarily standardizinga perspective that cannot methodologically grasp these very processes;b) a stated obligation to create an endogenous theory and an inabilityto institutionalize a professional culture to aid this growth; and c) acommitment to the project of the nation state and to elite notions ofnationalism when the nation was breaking into its many fragments-structured the distinct responses that were articulated among variousdepartments of the country.

This volume narrates the specific histories of some of the departmentsas they coped with the challenges presented by these contradictions. Thepapers indicate and elaborate the specific localized visions structuringdistinctive practices of scholars, scholarship, and learning in this context.They trace the ups and the downs experienced by old departments andexamine the manners in which new ones confronted the trends outlinedabove. They also discuss the ways in which scholars coped with thenation-region binaries. This volume discusses the challenges, successes,and failures of the departments in the two regions-within the states ofMaharashtra and Karnataka together with a detailed exegesis of two other'national' departments-the Centre of Study of Social Systems (CSSS) atJawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the department of sociology

xxviii Introduction

at the University of Goa. These specific histories, we contend, indicatediverse trends that have structured sociological traditions in India as theyresolve (or not) the above mentioned contradictions.

Why departments? Within sociology, there has been a long discussionabout the critical intervention of the Chicago department in formulatinga new (Chicago) school and thus contributing to the reformulation ofthe disclpline.F In India, one has to discuss schools and the role of thedepartments in terms of the agenda for higher education fashioned bythe nation-state. Jayaram asserts that in the initial post-independenceyears, the state had enjoined the departments to create professionalsociologists who could through their research assess the impact ofplanned social change on its 'traditional' social institutions. This researchagenda he argues, slowly disintegrated as teaching replaced research asthe new objective of university education. Were these departments ableto confront the challenge to create schools? Were they able to formulatenew theo~etical frames to study the transition and transformation taking

place in India?D.N. Dhanagare in this volume argues otherwise ..According to him,

though there was an avowed interest, sociology departments in Indiawere not 'able to promote schools which propagate a coherent theoreticalperspective that is supported by all its members. At the same time, thelatter were not involved in 'paradigmatic research', or bound togetheras an epistemic community. Rather, what is seen in India are statutoryDepartments+' obtaining attributes of being an epistemic community,

postfacto.This is the story, he argues of the 'Bombay school', the first teaching

department of sociology in India. In Dhanagare's opinion, it wasnot Ghurye, but A.R. Desai who, using a Marxist theory presented atheoretically rigorous perspective to analyse Indian society. The latteralso created a community/group of students to evaluate Indian societythrough this perspective. Dhanagare argues that Desai produced asubstantive body of knowledge on key trends regarding the socialchange in India. Desai also launched many initiatives, through collectiveresearch and curriculum changes (see Savur and Patel in this volume)that helped to establish a new language to examine social processes inIndia and counter the conservative Srinivasian perspective. Dhanagareattests that in the period when Desai was Head-there developed a cultureof criticality as Desai encouraged his colleagues and students to debate

Introduction

and contest his ideas and theories on Marxist sociology. Thus Dhanagarecontends that we should not look for schools in India but departmentswhere rigourous work is encouraged through debates and discussions.A similar development took place at Pune, under the leadership ofIravatiKarve, and later of Y.B. Damle, and D.N. Dhanagare, all of whom haddifferent perspectives from each other.

Maitrayee Choudhuri's paper on JNU's department also suggests thatsuch plurality aids the growth of a culture of critical thinking and allowsthe department to take up new perspectives as it confronts challengestaking place in contemporary India. While agreeing that JNU's CSSSis considered a 'conservative centre' in terms of its other social sciencedepartments, she argues that it has established a trend setting perspectiveon contemporary sociological processes. The CSSS' history was associatedwith its incorporation of the Parsonian approach to Indian sociology,which was adapted to promote the study of modern India from a systemicperspective. This self-conscious choice was dictated to juxtapose itsperspective to do sociology from the social anthropological perspectivespropounded at the University of Delhi. Sociology at CSSS asserted thestudy of macro-processes rather than micro-ones, used survey methodrather than participant observation, discussed social movements ratherthan village studies.

According to Choudhuri, CSSS has contributed to redefining thediscipline through an interrogation of the concepts of 'class, development,nation and state in the 1970s, that of caste, tribe and gender in the eightiesand then of globalization and progress in the nineties'P' She argues thatthe vibrancy at CSSS was due its ability to draw its identity from Nehru'svisions-that of affiliation to modernity, his commitment to economicdevelopment, and his civilizational understanding of Indian tradition.Additionally the translation and extension of these principles through thepromotion of a professional culture that encouraged interdisciplinarityand academic au tonomy for all teachers accompanied by an inclusive andcosmopolitan ambience as a consequence of the recruitment of a pan-Indian student body allowed CSSS to make a significant contribution tothe reformulation of sociology.

The earlier two papers had discussed the ways in which departmentshad accepted challenges and reconstructed new traditions. Thesedepartments were within universities in metropolitan cities. But whathappens in state universities in the periphery/regions and in large towns?

~===--------===~- --

xxx Introduction

D.N. Dhanagare's paper evaluates the practices institutionalized at theUniversities of Nagpur, Aurangabad, and Kolhapur while N. [ayaramdiscusses the departments at Mysore and Banglore and within thehinterland of Karnataka. Both highlight the stellar roles played by theearly leadership (S.c. Dube in Nagpur, Parvatiamma in Mysore) thatestablished these departments. But later these departments went intodecline. Why does institutional routinization breed weakness in theculture of scholarship?

Iayararn suggests that this has something to do with the developmentsin the late 1970s after which educational institutions became institutionsof power and influence, to distribute patronage and to sway the largeconstituency that it was mobilizing. With colleges established by castesand communities, educational institutions became a site for the play oflocal and regional politics. Over-crowded classrooms, poorly equippedlibraries, and overworked teachers defined the culture of the teaching ofthe subject. Some departments also became the site for inconsequentialconflicts where personal issues (Jayaram discusses the case of Mysore)preceded discussion and debates about the subject and its identity. Thisaffected policies and programmes of the departments together withsyllabi formation. Additionally, because education became a meansof representing this power and substituted the ideals that directed thegrowth and expansion of the discipline, the goal of using sociology forthe development of modernity was displaced. This process has created adeficit of scholarship, theoretical rigour, and critical thinking.

Goa has experienced a similar deficit due to different reasons,Here there is an amalgamation of a standardized national curriculumtogether with some of the practices common with 'regional/peripheral'cultures, outlined above. Sequeira and Thakur interrogate the reasonsfor the institutionalization of this negative culture within Goa. Theyargue that though formally a state, Goa has inherited the rich mix of'urban' cultures structuring its history. Consequently, it has grown as acosmopolitan region and unlike other states there are no conflicts overmedium of instruction-everyone accepts the need to communicate inEnglish. Additionally, there is a vibrant public culture that has raisedissues regarding environment, gender and urban planning. Why is it,Sequeira and Thakur ask that these issues, rooted in local and regionalexperiences, and in the public domain, have not become launch padsfor creating new syllabi and teaching practices? Why do scholars and

Introduction xxxi

departments legitimize standard national syllabi and are not sensitive tolocal and regional public concerns? Why is there no flexibility and fluidityover choices of courses that universities need to organize in context withlocal and regional public issues? Why is it that we remain caught in thedominant binaries of nation-region and central and state universities indefining the profession and its identity?

These binaries, some authors consider (see Patel, Rodrigues, and Regein this volume), are the heritage of colonialism and nationalism and arediscourses of the dominant groups which refract genuine experiences ofdeprivation and place them in value terms; for example, the national beingsuperior and the regional being inferior. Edward Rodrigues (ironicallyin an elite college) whilst examining the slow decline of undergraduateteaching practices in Bombay suggests that the 'professional' cultures ofthe internal institutional structures at the university remains the primeculprit. In Bombay, the Board of Studies managed by undergraduateteachers decides syllabi. These teachers argue that they dilute thestandards oflearning to cater to the new group of first generation learnersinducted into the higher education system. These teachers have not seenthis development as an opportunity to reframe practices of teaching andlearning within the classrooms and the department. Rather, they haveused this process as an excuse to devaluate the practices of learning.

Rodrigues argues that this process is part of an institutionalized systemof instrumental rationality being practised in universities whose rootsare in colonialism. Modern education gave opportunities to the deprivedgroups, but it also allowed the same scientific rationality to legitimize thecontrol of an elite class of Indians ideologically supportive of colonialrule. As a result, during the colonial period, the pre-modern practicesof education were revived and education once again, became the site ofupper caste preserve. Because the 'dominant discourse within Indiansociology essentially privileged an upper caste representation of society'and with most teachers and students coming from the same background,it became easier to accept this instrumentalism and for the subject andits practitioners to ignore its deeply entrenched ideological aspects. Ateacher could thus instrumentally teach students to prepare for examsbut not to use sociological perspectives to interrogate the structures ofpower that have constructed this site. Nationalist thought was not able tocomprehend this dynamics and thus this way of thinking has integrateditself within the system.

xxxii Introduction

Authors in this volume argue that one needs to disassociate oneselffrom the discourses that are related to dominant positions. There aredifferent ways of doing this. In her paper on the Jharkhand movement,Carol Upadhya discusses the limitations of anthropological knowledgeand understands its colonial moorings. Anthropology should not be seenas merely a reflection, 'replication and appropriation' of knowledge of the'other'. Discussing anthropological knowledge and discourse displaces itshistoricity and restricts it to the way it has been represented in knowledgesystems rather than elaborating its continuous use by various subalterngroups to demand rights for themselves. Rather, she suggests there hasbeen complex dialectical history relating to the way narratives of livedreality have been continuously constructed and interpreted. She raises afundamental issue: how do we understand and conceptualize knowledge?She argues that the identity of knowledge cannot be restricted to itsinstitutionalization within academia but rather in the way it has cometo be organized over time within the public domain as it is contested bysubaltern groups.

But how do we understand the 'public' and in what ways can thepublic become part of sociological knowledge so that the discipline canidentify itself to a new ontology? Sharmila Rege, carries forward theargument presented by Rodrigues when she explores the recent historyof the discipline. which she suggests is defmed by the 'fear of identity'.The initial expansion of education and the teaching of sociology invarious state universities created an anxiety in the minds of sociologistsagainst the 'regional publics' who were seen as affirming a languageidentity and asserting that the teaching of the subject to be done throughthe medium of instruction. Why is it, Rege asks that sociologists do notexcavate the concerns of the regional public in its own terms and findways of appreciating how the use of medium of instruction can enrichthe discipline? Is it because it fears a discussion and debate with identityissues? She argues to a large extent this fear is structured by the way thebinaries have organized the discipline. Can we move out of these binariesinto a third space that can transcend received power relations embeddedin mainstream sociological 'language', she asks?

Rege asserts that identity is not postulated as a reflection from beingthe 'other' of the T and its polar opposite, but rather identity asserts theneed to experience differential locations. She argues that there is a need tounderstand the intersectionality of region, language identity, caste, and

Introduction lOOt"

gender which mainstream sociology finds difficult to address. Ultimatelythese questions allow us to understand modernity and sociology.

This theme is carried forward by Shiv Visvanathan who discusses thehistory of sociology of science in India. He argues that ideally scientificknowledge should allow for self-scrutiny and reflexivity. Its presence isnecessary, to assess the relationship between knowledge and democracyand assess hierarchies of power and the fate of diversities. Unfortunately,sociology engaged with science only by appreciating and celebrating theNehruvian imagination of modern development. What was this model?Visvanathan calls it TOT -transfer of technology-a transfer from theirest to the east. Sociology's dream was to modernize villages throughscientific development. Science rather than alleviating underdevelopmentand poverty was actually used to create displacement.

Today, Visvanathan argues that sociology of science is being discussednot within academia but outside it and the paper elaborates the manynew w~ys that the debates on science are being raised since the late 1970s.Visvanathan suggests that sociology should not remain hostile to thesedevelopments, rather it should embrace it. Sociology of science needsto be deeply implicated with democracy, since it allows varieties anddifferences to guarantee pluralities in ways of living. There implyingthe need for knowledge to be plural so as to increase life chances ofvarious groups of people. Such a vision of knowledge challenges usto rethink completely our notions of sociology both conceptually andinstitutionally.

, This volume argues for a break from the legacy of colonialism and,l u' .

nationalism. We need to re examine our pasts in order to frame themin terms of our common future. To do so we need to explicate thetendentious relationship between sociology and modernity organised inIndia and juxtapose with sociological languages in other regions of theworld (Patel 2010).

This is the task of sociology in India. Can the profession take up thischallenge?

NOTES

1. Spacehere is used in a Lefebevreian sense of it being a wayof thinking thepractices that are structured in places.

2. According to Genov (1989: 2), the production and reproduction oftwo aspects are critical to the growth of sociological traditions. These are first,

xxxiv Introduction

the social relations associating the different aspects of sociology (knowledgecomplex, research activity, and social institution) and its extended social milieu;and second, the internal social relations in a science organization.

3. Endogenous knowledge in a given cultural set-up is that knowledgewhich is experienced by that society as integral part of its heritage in contrast toexogenous knowledge, which is perceived at this stage at least as part of anothervalue system (Hountondji 1997: 18).

4. The concept 'public' was first used by C. Wright Mills in The SociologicalImagination. Since then it has been elaborated by Buroway in his many articles(the latest being Burawoy 2010). In this paper 'public' implies a constitution ofa group which interfaces within the public domain/sphere. 'Counter publics'denotes those publics that are constituted in contestation with those that are partof the hegemonic authority structures (Krause 2006: 119).

5. Srinivas (1952).6. According to Wallerstein (1996), social science expresses its Eurocentrism

in (1) its historiography, (2) the parochiality o£its universalism, (3) its assumptionsabout (western) civilization, (4) its Orientalism, and (5) its attempts to imposethe theory of progress.

7. The recent text by Oommen (2007) engages with almost all perspectivesbut ignores this one.

8. See in this context the history of the specializations in social sciences inWallerstein et al. (1997).

9. Though this volume maintains the distinctions between sociology andanthropology as elaborated in the text above, the title indicates the practiceslegitimized in Indian sociology.

10. An excellent perspective can be built by collating the informationavailable in the papers written in Uberoi et al. (2007).

11. Geddes arrived in India with a well developed ecological critique ofindustrial and urban civilization and of university education. These experimentswith theory and methodology were not understood nor appreciated by theconservative nationalist elite who controlled the senate of the University ofBombay and soon Geddes had to leave. On these experiments see Munshi (2007)and Visvanathan (n.d. and 2000).

12. In his article on The Indian sociologist, A.M. Shah (2006) documentsthe influence of Herbert Spencer in the formation of sociological ideas ofKrishnavarman who started publishing it in the early twentieth century.

13. Some sociologists have compared Radhakamal Mukerjee's generaltheory on personality-value and society to Parsons and Shils, theory of socialaction. See Singh (1955).

14. Beck has argued that all sociologists, including the classical theorists,assumed methodological nationalism, when they historically (in their study ofthe growth of modern society) and systematically (through their theories tounderstand modern society) equated the conceptual analysis of society with thatof the nation-state.

Introduction xxxv

15. Sociologists have focused on the study of groups and their identities,leaving the discussion of state and democracy to political scientists.

16. The only exception to this position was A.R. Desai who recognized thatthe state was controlled and represented by a ruling class and that its projects,including that of higher education was organized for the benefits of this class.

17. Would it be preferable to call this epistemological nationalism?18. The first survey was published by ICSSR in 1973. The second and the

third surveys were published in 1979 and 1999. Presently, the fourth one is beingorganized for publication.

19. It is no coincidence that in the decade of the 1970s, we see a profusionof studies on the discipline's history suggesting that the writing of this historybecame a critical starting point to frame the discipline's identity. (Mukherjee1973,1989; Srinivas and Panini 1973; Rao 1974; Dube 1977; Singh 1977).

20. The journal Seminar devoted an entire issue in 1968 to new ways inwhich academic colonialism is being harnessed. In this issue, Saberwal (1968:10-13) identified three processes that influence and structure dependencieswithin academia a) the use of identity and status of being foreigners, b) useof information for imperialist politics, and c) patronage of individuals, andinstitutions for conducting research. In this issue, commentators debatedthe impact of neo-colonial forms of knowledge, Yogendra Singh called this

'academic colonisation' and the 'colonisation of mind' (Singh 1968: 26). Thisdebate echoes a similar discussion inaugurated by Syed Hussein Alatas throughhis concept of'the captive mind' which he defined as an imitative and uncriticalway of thinking because of its domination by western thought (Alatas 2004: 83).Later Syed Farid Alatas has called it academic dependency which he identifiedas being in terms of ideas, media of ideas, techonology of education, teachingand research, investment in education and western demands in terms of skills(Alatas 2006: 64).

21. See Patel in this volume for the elaboration of this point.22. In a recent intervention, Calhoun (2007: 21) argues that the notion of

Chicago school is a result of later claims on Chicago tradition in sociology andhas been both promulgated and contested for decades. It would be more accurateto see it as a style or characteristic set of concerns.

23. For example Delhi's department was part of Delhi School of Economics,popularly known as 'D School'. See articles on the sociology department inKumar and Mookherjee (1998).

24. See Chapter 7 in this volume.

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I

Pasts and Presents:Debating Disciplinary Genealogies