INTRODUCING INDIAN SOCIETY
Why is it necessary to unlearn, the knowledge about Society?
Prior knowledge or familiarity with society is both an advantage and a disadvantage for sociology. The advantage is, it is an integral part of the process of growing up, knowledge about society seems to be acquired “naturally” or “automatically”. The disadvantage is that this prior knowledge can be a problem because in order to learn sociology, we need to unlearn what we already know about society.
This is necessary because our prior knowledge about society is our common sense and is acquired from a particular viewpoint . This viewpoint of the social group and social environment that we are socialized into.
So our unlearnt knowledge or common sense allows us to see only a part of social reality, moreover it is liable to be tilted towards the viewpoint and interests of our own social group.
What Sociology Teaches Us?
Sociology does not offer a solution to problems in the form of a perspective that can show us the whole of reality in a completely unbiased way. Indeed sociologists believe that such an ideal vantage point does not exist.
What sociology offers is to teach us how to see the world from many viewpoints and not just our own, but also that of others unlike ourselves.
Each viewpoint provides only a partial view, but by comparing what the world looks like from the eyes of different kinds of people we get some sense of what the whole might look like, and what is hidden from view in each specific standpoint.
Sociology can show you what you look like to others; it can teach you how to look at yourself ‘from the outside’, so to speak. This is called ‘self-reflexivity’, or sometimes just reflexivity.
With a geographical map, locating oneself on a social map can be useful in the sense that you know where you are in relation to others in society.
A comparable social map would tell you where you are located in a society.
Sociology can do more than, simply help to locate you or others in this simple sense of describing the places of different social groups. As C. Wright Mills, a well-known American sociologist has written, sociology can help you to map the links and connections between “personal troubles” and “social issues”.
Personal troubles means the kinds of individual worries, problems or concerns that everyone has. A social issue, on the other hand, is about large groups and not about the individuals who make them up.
The “generation gap” or friction between older and younger generations is a social phenomenon, common to many societies and many time periods. Unemployment or the effects of a changing occupational structure is also a societal issue that concerns millions of different kinds of people.
Both men and women, as distinct social groups, are affected by gender inequalities, but in very different ways.
A sociological perspective teaches you how to draw social maps.
Introduction to Indian Society
The economic, political and administrative unification of India under colonial rule was achieved at great expense. Colonial exploitation and domination scarred Indian society in many ways. But paradoxically, colonialism gave birth to its own enemy Nationalism.
Historically, an Indian nationalism took shape under British colonialism. The shared experience of colonial domination helped unify and energize different sections of the community.
Colonialism and western education also gave the impetus for the rediscovery of tradition. This led to the developments on the cultural and social front which solidified emergent forms of community at the national and regional levels.
Colonialism created new classes and communities which came to play significant roles in subsequent history. The urban middle classes were the main carriers of nationalism and they led the campaign for freedom. Colonial interventions also crystallized religious and caste based communities.
The basic building blocks of Indian society in the form of the institutions of caste, tribe and family. But the family as an institution has also been subjected to tremendous pressure in these times of rapid and intense social change.
The socio-cultural dimensions of the market as a powerful institution that has been the vehicle of change throughout world history. The most sweeping and rapid economic changes were brought about first by colonialism and then by developmental policies.
The features of our society that have been the cause of greatest concern are its seemingly unlimited capacity for generating inequality and exclusion in the context of caste, tribe, gender and the ‘differently abled’.
Notorious as an instrument of division and injustice, the caste system has been the object of concerted attempts by the state and by the oppressed castes to reform or even abolish it.
The familiar clichés and slogans about India being a land of unity in diversity have a hard and complex side to them. Despite all the failures and inadequacies, India has not done too badly on this front.
Young adults face issues like communal conflict, regional or linguistic chauvinism, and casteism without either wishing them away or being overwhelmed by them. It is important for our collective future as a nation that every minority in India should not feel insecure.
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