The social sciences and history have a fairly long and vibrant tradition in India. Systematic and thoughtful probes into the complexities of life and living conditions are constantly made from the different perspectives of these disciplines. However, it seems to be quite desirable that such perspectives should be periodically subjected to critical appraisal in order to assess their validity and relevance. This exercise involves the task of scrutinizing the significance and efficacy of the 'concepts' held crucial in the discourses of these disciplines. These concepts form part of the battery of tools used for exploration, understanding, explanation and interpretation of social and historical facts. The way such concepts are understood and used reflects their underlying perspectives that implicitly or explicitly guide the perception of socio-historical reality. A critical examination of these concepts may, therefore, reveal the status of the perspectives incorporating them in terms of their capacity of comprehension and appropriateness. This volume is chiefly devoted to this task and presents the contributions of distinguished social scientists and historians with insightful discussions and analysis of 'caste', 'class', 'tribe', their inter-relationship, and of 'region' as well as the approach of 'regional history'.
Ramkrishna Mukherjee draws the attention of social scientists to the issues of 'caste in itself', 'caste and class', and 'caste in class', and briefly discusses each in terms of its appropriateness in the historical context. He describes the emergence of the cultural interpretation of the caste system since colonial days. According to him, it was Max Weber who had denounced Marx's contention regarding the caste system as a system denoting the relations of production in ancient and medieval periods. After independence, Weberian notion gained ground and is, at present, the dominant perspective. But, the approach of 'caste in itself', that follows Weberian idea, does not appropriately depict the Indian reality. Class structure has cut across the caste heirarchy giving rise to 'new alliances and antagonisms'. Under the circum-stances, Mukherjee suggests that 'caste in class' appears to be the appropriate approach to understanding Indian social reality today.
Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri elaborates on caste-tribe contact in the eastern part of India as observed by administrators of the colonial period and anthropologists such as Sarat Chandra Roy, Martin Orans, Nirmal Kumar Bose and Surajit Sinha. His focus is on the tribal communities of Bhumij, Santal, Munda, Oraon and Ho, which had linkages with their non-tribal neighbours, and, therefore, were not 'primitive isolates'. An exchange of cultural traits between them must have occurred under the circumstances. However, Chaudhuri's main objective in this context is to ex-amine the validity of 'Hinduization' of tribes.
He analyses the works of H.H. Risley, W.W. Hunter and vari-ous official records of the British period regarding the socio-religious and political movements of tribal communities. He also closely examines the historical and anthropological studies of such movements. He contends that differential diffusion characterized the spread of Hindu influence among the tribes. Those who became known as 'Rajputs' were averse to the idea that their entire community should follow their example and become Rajputs like them. So, the bulk of the community remained separate from the Hindufold. This segmentary integration and assimilation, an important phenomenon of Indian history and anthropology, is intensively discussed by Chaudhuri. His analysis can facilitate in explaining the present day tribe versus dikku relation-ship within the tribal zone and the relationship between tribal and non-tribal leaders in the arena of state and national level politics.
Hindu (935)
Agriculture (118)
Ancient (1085)
Archaeology (754)
Architecture (563)
Art & Culture (910)
Biography (702)
Buddhist (544)
Cookery (167)
Emperor & Queen (565)
Islam (242)
Jainism (307)
Literary (896)
Mahatma Gandhi (372)
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