Showing papers in "Contributions to Indian Sociology in 1998"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse two popular Hindi films of the mid-1990s, Dilwale dulhania le jayenge (DDLJ) and Pardes, that thematise the problems of transnational location in respect of courtship and marriage.
Abstract: A significant new development in the field of Indian family and kinship, and one which has so far barely been addressed in the sociology of India, is the internationalisation of the middle-class family. This paper analyses two popular Hindi films of the mid-1990s, Dilwale dulhania le jayenge (DDLJ) and Pardes, that thematise the problems of transnational location in respect of courtship and marriage. The two films share a conservative agenda on the family, but differ in their assessment of the possibility of retaining Indian identity in diaspora. DDLJ proposes that Indian family values are portable assets, while Pardes suggests that the loss of cultural identity can be postponed but ultimately not avoided. These discrepant solutions mark out Indian popular cinema as an important site for engagement with the problems resulting from middle-class diaspora, and for articulation of Indian identity in a globalised world.
100 citations
TL;DR: In the context of Sri Lanka's inter-ethnic conflict between the Tamils and the Sinhalese, the Tamil speaking Muslims or Moors occupy a unique position.
Abstract: In the context of Sri Lanka's inter-ethnic conflict between the Tamils and the Sinhalese, the Tamil- speaking Muslims or Moors occupy a unique position. Unlike the historically insurrectionist Māppilas of Kerala or the assimilationist Marakkāyars of coastal Tamilnadu, the Sri Lankan Muslim urban elite has fostered an Arab Islamic identity in the 20th century which has severed them from the Dravidian separatist campaign of the Hindu and Christian Tamils. This has placed the Muslim farmers in the Tamil-speaking north-eastern region in an awkward and dangeruus situation, because they would be geographically central to any future Tamil homeland. The first part of this essay traces the historical construction of contemporary Muslim ethnicity and surveys their position in contemporary Sri Lankan politics. The second half of the essay provides an ethnographic portrait of a local-level Muslim com munity closely juxtaposed with their Hindu Tamil neighbuurs in the agricultural town of Akkaraipattu in the eastern Ba...
65 citations
TL;DR: A study of the grammar of signification in the 'imagined landscape' of India, a landscape constructed of the pilgrimage places (tirthas) and pilgrimage networks that have long served to create a complex sense of place, is presented in this article.
Abstract: This is a study of the grammar of signification in the 'imagined landscape' of India, a landscape constructed of the pilgrimage places (tirthas) and pilgrimage networks that have long served to create a complex sense of place—locally, regionally, and nationally. Here I provide an overview of the patterns of signification that have generated this symbolic landscape characterised by its polycentricity, pluralism, and duplication. I look at the intricate interrelation of myth and landscape, in which myth 'takes place' in thousands of shrines and in the culturally-created mental 'map' of Bharata. The symbolic language of the body-cosmos, the avatarana from heaven to earth, the multiple patterns of four-dhams and self-manifest svayambhu images—all contribute to the shaping of this imagined landscape.
46 citations
TL;DR: The caste system, according to the currently prevalent view, is based on purity, each caste being located on a hierarchical gradation of purity, a thesis laid out most compellingly by Louis Dumont.
Abstract: The caste system, according to the currently prevalent view, is based on purity, each caste being located on a hierarchical gradation of purity, a thesis laid out most compellingly by Louis Dumont....
31 citations
TL;DR: Srinivas as mentioned in this paper traced the origins and development of one of the most widely influential anthropological contributions to thinking about Indian society, "Sanskritization", tracing its sources and its evolution in the thought of M.N. Srinivas, its author.
Abstract: The paper sketches the origins and development of one of the most widely influential of anthropological contributions to thinking about Indian society, 'Sanskritization', tracing its sources and its evolution in the thought of M.N. Srinivas, its author. As a process, he identified it first in his work as a student of G.S. Ghurye on 1930's rural Mysore. The roots and the form of this identification are examined. The theory was named and proclaimed in his classic Religion and society among the Coorgs, based on his Ph.D. work for Ghurye which he had reworked under the influence of Radcliffe-Brown's structural functionalism. Appearing thus, its original limited base was hidden: it was no longer a theory about Mysore society but about India in general, and indeed India resurgent in the era of Independence. Two diverging theses developed, linked by the centrality of the Brahman. One, seminal for future theoretical development, introduced social mobility into caste analysis; the other, more politically significa...
31 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine both the donors and recipients of almsgiving in a contemporary urban context in Madras and show how the relief of poverty is a vital ingredient in the definition of Anglo-Indian leadership.
Abstract: This article attempts to further the study of gifting in India by examining both the donors and recipients of charity in a contemporary urban context. Considering the case of Anglo-Indians in Madras, many of whom have been the objects of philanthropy since the colonial period, it explores various dimensions of this activity today. For one thing, it notes the highly personalised character of charity, which contributes to the definition and realisation of a moral community of benefactors and their beneficiaries. For another, it seeks to demonstrate how the relief of poverty is a vital ingredient in the definition of Anglo-Indian leadership—as of leadership in India generally—and occupies a significant place in the discourse of community politics. Finally, it seeks to take account of the recipients of philanthropy, exploring some of the ways in which the ideologies and practices surrounding almsgiving bothfragment and unite the poor in their distress, and asks how those in a relationship of almost total econ...
18 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on Indian diaspora as a case study of globalisation and multiculturalism and raise the question of a structural and historical distinction between the socio-cultural pluralism of different cultures.
Abstract: The paper focuses on Indian diaspora as a case study of globalisation and multiculturalism. It raises the question of a structural and historical distinction between the socio-cultural pluralism of...
17 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the realm of "the moral" in ethnographic analysis consists not of abstract rules or ideologies, but of whatever has overwhelm ing practical relevance in the lives of the people and communities they study.
Abstract: T.N. Madan made the study of comparative moral systems into an important mainstay of Indian sociology. In this essay, we will be using the idea of 'moral practice' to compare notions of effi cacy in psychotherapy and various forms of religious healing. We argue that the realm of 'the moral' in ethnographic analysis consists not of abstract rules or ideologies, but of whatever has overwhelm ing practical relevance in the lives of the people and communities we study. Both psychotherapy and religious healing systems define efficacy in terms of culture-specific understandings of personhood and moral order; these, however, are mediated by the irreducible contingencies of social position, political strategy, and life histories of both sufferers and healers, as well as by large scale economic and political forces. Healing efficacy emerges from this study as a shifting, multi-vocal, and sometimes unattainable value. By turning our attention from the language of moral concepts to that of moral stakes, therefore, w...
17 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that extended family households of South Asia distinguish their core female personnel as sexually active or inactive, junior or senior, and own or other, and that the common and congruent female family core is a likely source of the civilisation's diversity as well as of its underlying assumptions.
Abstract: Extended family households of South Asia distinguish their core female personnel as sexually active or inactive, junior or senior, and own or other. (i) Noting similar variables in the region's classical theories and elsewhere in its ethnography, and constructing from these a paradigm to assist fur ther questioning, this paper finds (ii) eight major societal qualities generated by the same paradigm, (iii) eight corresponding domestic role-types, (iv) a common female life-course through those role-types, (v) characteristic relations of worship complementing that female life-course, and (vi) diverse related perspectives on male—female differences. So many results from questioning with this one paradigm make the common and congruent female family core a likely source of the civilisation's diversity as well as of its underlying assumptions.
14 citations
TL;DR: The authors reconstructs the debate that marked the advent of vaccination in the 19th century, having to contend with the ongoing practice of variolation, backed by professional variolato...
Abstract: This paper attempts to reconstruct the debate that marked the advent of vaccination in the 19th century. Having to contend with the ongoing practice of variolation, backed by professional variolato...
13 citations
TL;DR: A major source of the problems in recent discussions of the continued relevance to contemporary Indian political life of the secular state and the practices associated with secularism lies in the heavy burden that has been placed upon these terms as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: A major source of the problems in recent discussions of the continued relevance to contemporary Indian political life of the secular state and the practices associated with secularism lies in the heavy burden that has been placed upon these terms. Secularism, properly speaking, is an orientation and a set of practices. However, in India, it has become an ideology seen as both contesting with Hindu communalism by those who uphold it, and as contesting against the faith of the Indian peoples by those who lately stand against it. Secularism as an orientation and a set of practices is indispensable to India's future as a liberal democracy. However, it loses its force as a binding principle of Indian unity if it is transformed into an ideology.
TL;DR: The Mughal empire of the 17th and 18th centuries, the period I am discussing, was characterized by a devolutionary distribution of authority among multiple lesser sovereignties, by a complex hierarchy of land tenure and appropriation of product, and by a tolerance and coexistence of pluralistic subcultures as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Bernier's text Travels in the Mughal Empire; A.D. 1656-1708 was a primary source for certain European writers from Montesquieu to Marx for their representation and characterisation of oriental despotism. The distinctive features of oriental despotism in their eyes were absolutist and tyrannical monarchs who ruled over polities that lacked a hereditary nobility and private property in land. In this paper I have attempted to demonstrate that, when read closely, Bernier's text discloses particulars that can be shown to yield a quite different patterning. The Mughal empire of the 17th and 18th centuries, the period I am discussing, was characterised by a devolutionary distribution of authority among multiple lesser sovereignties, by a complex hierarchy of land tenure and appropriation of product, by a developed system of commerce, and by a tolerance and coexistence of pluralistic subcultures. The contours of the empire seem to conform to a model of what I have previously conceptualised in my writings as the '...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explain three widely-held "stylised facts" about the recent history of north Indian classical music: in the precolonial period, music and musicians were patronised by the courts, from the early colonial period patronage declined and music tended to be commercialised.
Abstract: This paper attempts to explain three widely-held 'stylised facts' about the recent history of north Indian classical music. First, in the precolonial period, music and musicians were patronised by the courts. Second, from the early colonial period patronage declined and music tended to be commercialised. And third, in the process, accumulated knowledge and the quality of crafts manship decayed. In a received view in music scholarship, the transition from patronage to market involved an institutional change and a diffusion of teaching from 'family' to out siders. Decay is attributed to the consequent reluctance of masters to teach well. The paper disputes this view. It suggests that the decay can be seen as an imperfect adaptation by individuals to the changing economic environment, and that this is a more general phenomenon than music scholarship believes. On the other hand, in the instructional system, which was primarily apprenticeship, there was substantial continuity. In this interpretation, music history can be seen to belong to a larger history of north Indian craftsmanship. The paper illustrates this proposition by drawing on the experiences of other skilled urban crafts.
TL;DR: In this article, a comparative discussion of food in Hindu religion and law and in Indian democratic polity is presented, examining the general question whether the Hindu system possesses at all a substantive cultural basis of its own for addressing the goal of "food-accessibility-for-all".
Abstract: The paper starts with a comparative discussion of food in Hindu religion and law and in Indian democratic polity, examining the general question whether the Hindu system possesses at all a substantive cultural basis of its own for addressing the goal of 'food-accessibility-for-all'. Though democracy demands egalitarian 'public policy' and 'public action programmes' for food for all its citizens, the Hindu system frames the issue within its language of karma, debts and duties, and yields some moral-practical (if socially weak) formulations and four specific 'notions of shared sustenance'. But today, as dharma, history, caste, and modern India entangle with one another, there is no clear social direction, and the issue of 'right to food' also remains correspondingly muddled.
TL;DR: In this article, the author has drawn on incidents from his own life, newspaper reports, and laboratory experiments, and knitted together photographs and other graphic material into visual essays to make the book "reader-friendly" and to show how everyday events are linked to the large structural characteristics of society.
Abstract: Using an informal and conversational style of writing, the author has drawn on incidents from his own life, newspaper reports, and laboratory experiments, and knitted together photographs and other graphic material into visual essays to make the book ‘reader-friendly’, and to show how everyday events are linked to the large structural characteristics of society. Volume I covers basic sociological concepts such as role, culture, deviance, race and class. Each chapter is followed by exercises designed to promote first-hand experiences in sociology. The companion reader has essays on topics ranging from Olympic athletes to bulimia to male secretaries, many of which make for interesting reading. The currency of topics covered should attract younger readers to the subject even though the books are very America-centred in their exposition, and would require Indian students to use their imagination to find similar links in their own society.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors reveal that the Agravāl origin myth belongs to a class of similar origin myths found among North Indian trading castes and the central element in these myths is the ancient rite of sacrifice.
Abstract: In recent decades Agravāl leaders have been promoting a centre for caste pilgrimage at Agroha, the supposed place of Agravāl origin, and an associated Agravāl origin myth. Analysis reveals that this origin myth belongs to a class of similar origin myths found among North Indian trading castes. The central element in these myths is the ancient rite of sacrifice. The origin myths of the Khandelvāl Vaiśyas, Māheśvarīs, and Khandelvāl Jains all attempt to show how the caste in question acquired its current identity and social persona because of an alienation from the sacrifice, followed by a restoration to the rite on a new basis (or in the case of the Jains, a shift to an alternative ritual order). Variants of the Agravāl origin myth being publicised currently are often presented in a context suggesting social and scientific modernity, but underlying contemporary retellings the same sacrificial symbolism seen in the myths of other trading castes is found.
TL;DR: The conferral of immense symbolic importance on so-called "Bāuls" by educated, urban Bengalis from the end of the 19th century derives from and has contributed to various kinds of essentialisation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The conferral of immense symbolic importance on so-called 'Bāuls' by educated, urban Bengalis from the end of the 19th century derives from and has contributed to various kinds of essentialisation ...
TL;DR: The jajmani system has often been seen as the model representation of rural provisioning transactions which link landed members of agrarian societies to the labour and service caste groups as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The jajmani system has often been seen as the model representation of rural provisioning transactions which link landed members of agrarian societies to the labour and service caste groups. However, attention to a variant of provisioning transactions enacted in rural north Karnataka indicates the extent to which these transactions differ from the jajmani system and exemplify what might be called embedded transactions. It is their embedded dimension, in which political and economic motivations are intertwined with the social and cultural, that enables these transactions to function, simultaneously, as a form of social reproduction. However, recent shifts in the organisation of agriculture and in the changing identities of low-ranked caste members have led to a decline in these transactions, producing ruptures in the reproduction of the local social order. While the articulation of these transactions in their embedded state camouflages their economic and social orientation, it is in their state of decline that the special logics of these transactions can be discerned.
TL;DR: In this paper, the interaction between the Hindus and Christians of Pondicherry between 1700 and 1900, showing how Christianity gained a foothold among the Hindus, and rejecting the theory that there is a symbiosis at work between the Indians and Christians and affirming the distinctive existence of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic, and a Hindu-Buddhist world.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the interaction between the Hindus and Christians of Pondicherry between 1700 and 1900, showing how Christianity gained a foothold among the Hindus. On the one hand, pressures, preferences and persuasion were used by the French to induce conversions, while on the other hand certain cultural, social and moral aspects of Hinduism, like vegetarian ism and the caste system, made conversions difficult. The high-handed methods of some French colonisers and missionaries also slowed down the conversions. The paper brings out both the legendary tolerance of the Hindus and Hinduism, and the intolerance exhibited by egalitarian ideologies like Christianity, which pay scant regard to diverse cultural, moral and religious traditions and beliefs. The paper also rejects the theory that there is a symbiosis at work between the Hindus and Christians and affirms the distinctive existence of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic, and a Hindu-Buddhist, world.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that secularism as a concept and practice arose from the need in 16th and 17th century Europe to create a neutral space making possible intra- as well as inter-State discourse.
Abstract: This paper argues that secularism as a concept and practice arose from the need in 16th and 17th century Europe to create a neutral space making possible intra- as well as inter-State discourse. Th...
TL;DR: The authors examines the social-historical roots of the politicisation of the Babri Masjid and suggests that the contemporary symbolic manipulation of this historic structure, culminating in its phychological transformation, can be traced back to the 19th century.
Abstract: This study examines the social-historical roots of the politicisation of the Babri Masjid. It suggests that the contemporary symbolic manipulation of this historic structure, culminating in its phy...
TL;DR: In this article, a brief outline of the historical genesis and evolution of the Kashmir question, starting from the mid-l9th century onwards, is given, and Bose juxtaposes the fate of democracy and federalism under the Indian regime in the region.
Abstract: brief outline of the historical genesis and evolution of the Kashmir question, starting from the mid-l9th century onwards. Against this background he juxtaposes the fate of democracy and federalism under the Indian regime in the region. Recounting the role and consequences of the violence perpetrated by the Indian State in its attempts to settle this deep-rooted political problem until the 1996 Assembly elections, Bose shows how this precipitated ’the uprising for national self-determination’ with continuing massive support for the idea of independence. With these two key concepts of ’democracy’ and ’self-determination’ he works towards a lasting democratically negotiated resolution among the three contending actors-Pakistan, India and the struggling groups demanding independence. This is a welcome addition to the literature on the Kashmir question for it combines passion with expertise.