Another social construct

The year was 1996. A group of young students, myself included, were entrants to the department of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics.

We were being inducted into the department at a formal "orientation" ceremony. Ranged us were the greats of Indian sociology, Andre Beteille, J P S Uberoi, Veena Das, B S Baviskar et al.

During a pause in the conversation, a student wanted to know the course work: whether the works of Ambedkar and Gandhi were to be taught, as they were in JNU.

The reply to this question was given by Beteille, the author of the writings that compose the book under review. Without commenting on the relative merits of Ambedkar's or Gandhi's sociological work and scholarship, Beteille informed the student that "the Delhi School of Economics pursues sociology as a rigorous discipline, not as activism".

That sentence defined not just D School (as the place is called, affectionately), but Beteille himself. His writing and his present work, including this book, show him to be a firm believer in the instruments of liberal democratic societies in reducing the disadvantages that accrue from inequality.

True to the title, he has been unfashionably anti-utopian, having little faith in a linear, largely western progression towards an ideal society.

Instead, he wrote inequalities do persist, though they can be mitigated through social action and factors such as difference.

A proponent of extensive ethnography and field work, it isn't as though Beteille has not engaged in political questions, but like his favourite sociologist Max Weber, he has not allowed these questions to consume his sociological analysis.

This is particularly evident in the article Individualism and Equality, where he argues that the earlier formulations by thinkers like Alex de Toqueville and Maine, inextricably linking individualism with equality, do not stand scrutiny.

Despite his view that the pursuit of equality (in Indian policy terms positive discrimination) "limits the attainment of other ends such as those of efficiency, liberty, and even self realisation of the individual", Beteille cautions modern society against the neglect of either of those two ends.

This rigour in his analysis is also evident in his various entanglements with sociologist Louis Dumont, whose love of symmetrical comparison between Indian society based on hierarchy ("homo hierarchicus") and western society based on individualism ("homo aequalis") Beteille takes particular delight in demolishing.

At a time when the analysis of Indian society was done mostly on the basis of a normative brahmanical order to the exclusion of all else, M N Srinivas and later Beteille emphasised that social classifications in India were not as static as western minds perceived them to be and that differences were just as important in social stratification as hierarchy.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Beteille's work in a Thanjavur village, written in his first work Caste, Class and Power, was one of the first to bring the term "dominant caste" into prominence.

He broke the symmetry of Dumont's thesis, in order to make the caste system "more real" to sociologists. His contention that intermediate castes would become the dominant caste in India and race far ahead of the scheduled castes and tribes was almost prophetic when he wrote his first work four decades ago.

The compilation of Beteille's work gains a lot from the fact that it has been edited by Dipankar Gupta, professor of sociology at JNU.

The two have great affection for each other, which is obvious from Gupta's introduction, and also the fact that when Beteille taught for a term at JNU, as a guest, it was at Gupta's behest despite the fact that he had to make do with sharing Gupta's office at the university.

Gupta's inclusion of an article entitled "My Two Grandmothers", written by Beteille on his mixed Indo-French heritage, and his interview by Gupta give a personal touch to a largely academic compilation.

Beteille's writing, like his teaching, is clear and concise, and fearless in articulating what can be quite unfashionable as views, including resisting the lures of Left politics when he was a student in St Xavier's College in Kolkata.

A must-read for all sociology students, if only to know how sociology as a subject was constructed in India.

ANTI-UTOPIA
ESSENTIAL WRITINGS OF ANDRE BETEILLE

Dipankar Gupta (ed)
Oxford University Press
Price: Rs 595;
Pages: 494