There are two histories of Sociology in India, from 1906-1975. Department of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is not mentioned or discussed here because the time period covered for this write up is roughly from 1906 to 1975, that is, the emergency in India. While JNU was established in 1969, teaching of Sociology in JNU began only in 1972.
One is the official history, which says that Indian Sociology started with the establishment of the Department of Sociology in Bombay in 1919. Another is the history provided by Ramkrishna Mukherjee in Sociology of Indian Sociology (1979), which mentions that the department of Sociology in Kolkata emerged gradually after the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. Ramkrishna Mukherjee’s book Sociology of Indian Sociology was published by Allied Publishers in 1979 and Yogendra Singh’s book was published in 1986. But the question is: why do we know very little about the Calcutta School of Sociology or the Lucknow School of Sociology in comparison to that of the Bombay School of Sociology and the Delhi School of Sociology?
The above question can be answered by understanding the context of the undivided India, when the freedom movement was going on. This can be traced by two histories of the freedom movement in India. The first is from the struggle of 1857. The point to be noted here is that Bombay was not a very significant town of India before the Second World War. Bombay was a Portuguese town in the beginning. After 1857, India had become a colony of the British Empire. The important towns of India before the Second World War were Calcutta, Lahore and Madras, followed by places like Kashi and Murshidabad. The second set of history says that the freedom movement in India began with the establishment of the Congress Party by A.O. Hume in 1885. A.O. Hume was not only British, but was also a very important bureaucrat of the Viceroy. Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee became the first president of the Indian National Congress plenary and A.O. Hume also was his secretary.
The conservative Nationalists were against this Congress party, so very few intellectuals or citizens of Bombay attended the first Congress session. Dadabhai Naoroji persuaded the Zoroastrians of Bombay to attend the second Indian National Congress plenary session and tried to engage them in a dialogue with the people associated with Indian National Congress. Dadabhai Naoroji took the lead in mobilising the middle class of Bombay to participate in the movement by the 1890s. As a result, he became pertinent Indian leader of the Congress, which was still dominated by A.O. Hume and his employees.
By that time, the film industry in India had begun as the cultural wing of the freedom movement, primarily under the leadership of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who was from Pune. By now, Tilak had realised that the British could not be defeated in 1857 through the use of force alone. Hence, there was a need to change the medium and the weapon to fight the British. Dadasaheb Phalke, Raja Ravi Varma and Bal Gangadhar Tilak are people of three different generations but still contemporaries.
When Bal Gangadhar Tilak became the president of Indian National Congress, he invited Raja Ravi Varma from Malabar to Bombay. Bal Gangadhar Tilak (a Marathi, who didn’t know Malayalam) and Raja Ravi Varma (a Malayali, who didn’t know Marathi) engaged in private conversation, which was captured through the letters exchanged between them. It is still found in Bhandarkar Institute. The letter was neither written in English nor in Hindi. In the middle of the letter, there is a Marathi or Malayali text, but on the sides there are symbols. During British rule and in the war of independence in 1857, Indians could not communicate because censor of letters was in practice. The postmaster used to read all the letters before delivering. Therefore, symbols were used to communicate. This is how Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Raja Ravi Varma communicated. Raja Ravi Varma finally came to Bombay.
Raja Ravi Varma was a full time artist, and not a political person. Bal Gangadhar Tilak proposed that the Congress Party will manage the finances of Raja Ravi Verma by reproducing all the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma through the press. A team was arranged, in which Dadasaheb Phalke became an apprentice of Raja Ravi Varma. A photocopy machine was imported called Litho Press. All the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma were photocopied, in the similar manner, as Chairman Mao had photocopied American books, during the Cultural Revolution. It is important to understand the context in which B.G. Tilak did this, rather than indulging in the question of legality.
Context to the above can be understood by looking at the rate of literacy in India. In the 1901 census, only 9.8 percent males, 0.6 percent females and a total of 5.4 percent were literate. During British rule and in the war of independence of 1857, Indians could not communicate because censor of letters was in practice. As a result, symbols were used intelligently.
This is the context in which Bal Gangadhar Tilak was trying to devise the narrative to fight with the British, the mightiest empire of the globe. Though the print technology was conducive for the rise of nationalism elsewhere in Europe and other parts of the world, but Tilak believed that, in India, national narrative cannot be made through the printed word, as there is no common lingua franca. Therefore, despite being well educated, he decided to use symbols in order to make Indian nationalism a real mass based phenomena. Accordingly, all of Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings were made available and accessible to almost each corner of the undivided India. Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gandhi both devised some sort of cold war with the British. But Tilak realised that Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings were primarily about Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Hence, they can mobilise only the Hindu population.
During that time, significant non-Hindus in India were Muslims and Zoroastrians, and they were a very important force in Bombay. But in Islam, in Sunni Islam, one cannot represent Allah or the major things, as it is considered haram. But the Sufis were the veterans of the symbolic games by using the songs, dance, dargahs and also some other things. So, he persuaded the Sufis to mobilise the non-Hindus. For the Christians, it was decided that Church and printed word would be sufficient. All the Christians of India in 1911 were not literate, but they used to go to the Church. During the mass, some of the elements were incorporated (Source to this information is a letter written by Pyarelal to J.C. Kumarappa; J.C. Kumarappa was a Christian follower of Mahatma Gandhi; Gandhi is supposed to be a disciple of both Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta).
The critical events for the Indian Cinema in the period from 1906 to 1948 are Swadeshi movement, Jallianwala Bagh and the two World Wars. These were also critical for the Calcutta School of Sociology and Lucknow School of Sociology. But for Bombay School of Sociology, Caste, Village and Joint Family are important subjects because the Chairperson of the Sociology department was a geographer and town planner, Patrick Geddes. His illustrious student G.S. Ghurye succeeded him. Ghurye was a student of Patrick Geddes at Bombay University from the beginning (1919). Then, he went to England and worked under W.H.R. Rivers. Therefore, he came back with fusionist ideas. Hence, there was a gap.
At Calcutta School of Sociology, Historical Sociology became a very popular branch of Sociology under B.K. Sarkar, who was influenced by Auguste Comte and Positivism. He was succeeded in the 1930s by Civilisational Studies of Radhakamal Mukerjee. Radhakamal Mukerjee wrote books like ‘Sickness of Civilisation ’, ‘Destiny of Civilisation ’ and ‘Symbolic Life of Man’; books, which were written and published in the United States of America, but were made available to us much later. On the other hand, D.P. Mukerji wrote books like ‘Sociology of Indian Culture’, ‘Sociology of Indian Music’ and ‘Diversities’.
The point to be noted here is that all, including D.P. Mukerji, B.K. Sarkar, B.N. Seal and Radhakamal, wrote in two languages. D.P. Mukerji, B.K. Sarkar, B.N. Seal and Irawati Karwe wrote in English and Bengali. Ghurye and A. R. Desai also wrote in English and Marathi. The founding fathers of Bombay School were writing exclusively in English, for example, K.N. Kapadia and Dhirendra Narayan. Therefore, academic writing in two languages became a norm for the founding fathers of Indian Sociology. Three languages formula was a norm for the Indian State. Some South Indian states made an effort to learn their mother tongue, which may be Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil or Kannada, in addition to Hindi and English. But the North Indians were betraying the freedom movement. They would learn English as a third language besides first and second languages such as Hindi, Sanskrit or Urdu.
Even though the Indian Sociologists have not paid attention to some of the critical events of Indian history, Indian Cinema tried its best to understand and unite the Indian country and civilisation. In order to illustrate this point, let us take the example of the Indo-Chinese war of 1962 or 1971. These are very important events. But how will a sociologist work on these two events? There are multiple films in many languages for these two events. In the same way, there was much writing in European sociology about war before the two World Wars. But after the Second World War, there have been no classics written about the war. But war is a very important theme for Italian Cinema, German Cinema, Hollywood, Japanese Cinema, Chinese Cinema, Nigerian Cinema and Iranian Cinema. Although there is no film industry in Pakistan, they have a very developed television industry.
Therefore, I emphasise that in order to understand Indian society, we should treat Cinema and Sociology as complementary to each other. There are both the strengths and weaknesses of these two institutions, the two mediums. But, of course, there is a difference of respect and status. The status of Cinema in India is much higher than the status of Sociologists in India. If a corollary is drawn between the status of cinema and the Varna system of Indian society, then Cinema occupies the place of the Brahmins; the armament and military occupies the place of the Kshatriya. The Indian state is the Vaishya, as it has been controlling the economy and is still controlling. Similarly, among the social scientists, economists are the Brahmins, followed by historians, the Kshatriya.
During the 1950s, after India’s independence, Sociologist became important only in the Indian state, but not in the Indian society. In this context, Liaquat Ali Khan says, “I’m unable to understand the same Nehru who said no to the NATO proposal; he accepted the Ford Foundation proposal to study Indian villages.” All village studies in India since the 1950s have been funded by the Ford Foundation, led by M.N. Srinivas, S.C. Dube and T.N. Madan. The first Five Year Plan of India in 1952 was influenced by D.P. Mukerji, as K.N. Raj, who had drafted the first five year plan, was recommended by D.P. Mukerji to Jawaharlal Nehru. However, the emphasis shifted from rural to urban and from agriculture to industry in the Second Five Year Plan in 1957, after P.C. Mahalanobis succeeds K.N. Raj. Thus, there is a mismatch between the Five Year Plans of the Indian state.
Henceforth, the writing of the Sociologist like S.C. Dube, who has not only written ‘Indian Village’ but also written on India’s Changing Villages, which is a study of Community Development Programme (CDP). S.C. Dube, Yogesh Atal (a student of S.C. Dube; he was sent to UNESCO to head the UNESCO Chair of Sociology) and T.N. Madan were associated with the state (because the Institute of Economic Growth has a larger role in the Planning Commission).
Nonetheless, M.N. Srinivas, who was interested in impartial Sociology, has been writing again and again that the Sociologists should not play a collaborating role either with the state or with the society. They should always play a mediating role between the society and the state. Srinivas also mobilised a large number of his students to do the field work. After the village studies programme in India was funded by the Ford foundation, a large number of sociologists and students of sociology started doing field work in villages from 1950s to 70s.
Hence, from 1950s to 1970s, in Indian Sociology, the impression was being created that India is a country of village, caste and joint family. On the other hand, around the same time, Indian cinema was talking about the problems of alienation, problems of marginalisation of labour and the problems of industrialisation, faced by the Indian state and the competition they are facing from the outside market. Therefore, there is an imperative need to do collective work. There is a need to study Indian society and Indian cinema simultaneously to give a holistic picture of India today in the global village.
