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The NCERT Class 11 Sociology Chapter 5: Indian Sociologists from Understanding Society explores the development of sociology in India through the contributions of pioneers like L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, Sarat Chandra Roy, G.S. Ghurye, D.P. Mukerji, A.R. Desai, and M.N. Srinivas. It examines how these scholars adapted sociology to India’s colonial and post-independence context, addressing issues like caste, tribal societies, tradition, and village life. This blog provides detailed solutions to the chapter’s exercise questions, simplifying complex sociological concepts for better understanding and exam preparation.
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Explore Notes of Class 11: Understanding Society
NCERT Solutions Class 11 Sociology Chapter No.5 Indian Sociologists
This section guides students to clear solutions of Class 11 Sociology Chapter 5: Indian Sociologists. You can go through the detailed explanation of the questions mentioned in the exercise by understanding the solutions below.
Exercise
- How did Ananthakrishna Iyer and Sarat Chandra Roy come to practice social anthropology?
- What were the main arguments on either side of the debate about how to relate to tribal communities?
- Outline the positions of Herbert Risley and G.S. Ghurye on the relationship between race and caste in India.
- Summarise the social anthropological definition of caste.
- What does D.P. Mukerji mean by a ‘living tradition’? Why did he insist that Indian sociologists be rooted in this tradition?
- What are the specificities of Indian culture and society, and how do they affect the pattern of change?
- What is a welfare state? Why is A.R. Desai critical of the claims made on its behalf?
- What arguments were given for and against the village as a subject of sociological research by M.N. Srinivas and Louis Dumont?
- What is the significance of village studies in the history of Indian sociology? What role did M.N. Srinivas play in promoting village studies?
Also Read:
- NCERT Class 11 Understanding Society Chapter 2: Social Change and Social Order in Rural and Urban Society Notes (Free PDF)
- NCERT Class 11 Sociology Chapter 2 Terms, Concepts, and Their Use in Sociology Solutions (Free PDF)
Solutions
- L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer and Sarat Chandra Roy became social anthropologists by accident, entering the discipline without formal training due to professional circumstances. Ananthakrishna Iyer (1861–1937) started as a clerk and later became a school and college teacher in Cochin. In 1902, he was tasked by the Dewan of Cochin to assist with an ethnographic survey of the state, which the British government required for princely states. Working voluntarily while teaching at Maharajah’s College, Ernakulam, Iyer conducted ethnographic work on weekends, earning recognition from British anthropologists. This led to further work in Mysore, lectures at the University of Madras, and a readership at the University of Calcutta, where he helped establish the first post-graduate anthropology department.
Similarly, Sarat Chandra Roy (1871–1942), a lawyer with degrees in English, moved to Ranchi in 1898 to teach at a missionary school. After resuming legal practice, he was appointed as a court interpreter in Ranchi, where his need to understand tribal customs sparked his interest in anthropology. Roy conducted extensive fieldwork among Chhotanagpur tribes (e.g., Oraon, Mundas, Kharias), publishing monographs and founding Man in India (1922). Both practised anthropology as self-taught scholars, driven by practical roles that exposed them to ethnographic work, laying the foundation for the discipline in India.
- In the 1930s and 1940s, there was a significant debate regarding the relationship with tribal communities in India, involving British administrator-anthropologists and Indian nationalists like G.S. Ghurye. On one side, British anthropologists, such as Verrier Elwin, argued for a protectionist approach, viewing tribes as primitive peoples with distinct cultures separate from mainstream Hinduism. They believed tribes were innocent and vulnerable to exploitation and cultural degradation through contact with Hindu society. Thus, they advocated state protection to preserve tribal culture and way of life, preventing assimilation into mainstream Hinduism, which they saw as harmful. On the other side, Indian nationalists, with Ghurye as a prominent voice, supported assimilation, arguing that tribes were “backwards Hindus” who had long interacted with Hinduism and were part of India’s unified cultural fabric. They viewed efforts to preserve tribal culture as misguided, maintaining tribes in a “backwards” state as “museums” of primitive culture. Nationalists believed tribes, like other backwards sections of society, should modernise and develop, facing the same challenges as others on the path to progress. Ghurye provided evidence of historical interactions between tribes and Hinduism to support this view, asserting that assimilation was a natural process already underway.
- Herbert Risley, a British colonial official and anthropologist, proposed that caste originated from racial differences. He argued that India was a unique “laboratory” for studying racial evolution due to the caste’s prohibition of intermarriage, preserving distinct racial types. Risley suggested that higher castes exhibited Indo-Aryan traits, while lower castes belonged to non-Aryan groups (e.g., aboriginal, Mongoloid), based on physical measurements like skull size or nose length. He posited that lower castes were India’s original inhabitants, subjugated by Aryan settlers. In contrast, G.S. Ghurye, in his book Caste and Race in India (1932), partially agreed but refined Risley’s theory. Ghurye critiqued the use of average measurements, emphasising variations within groups. He argued that Risley’s racial distinction (Aryan upper castes vs. non-Aryan lower castes) was broadly true only in northern India, where endogamy preserved racial purity. Elsewhere, inter-group differences in measurements were less systematic, suggesting long-term racial mixing. Ghurye concluded that caste’s endogamy was introduced into already racially mixed groups outside north India, challenging the strict racial basis of caste and highlighting historical intermingling.
- G.S. Ghurye provided a comprehensive social anthropological definition of caste, emphasising six key features:
- Segmental Division: Caste divides society into closed, mutually exclusive segments, with membership determined by birth, unchangeable and unavoidable.
- Hierarchical Division: Castes are strictly unequal, with each caste ranked higher or lower than others, theoretically never equal.
- Restricted Social Interaction: Caste involves rules on food sharing and social contact, governed by purity and pollution concepts, exemplified by untouchability, where certain castes’ touch is considered polluting.
- Differential Rights and Duties: Castes have distinct religious and secular rights and duties, shaping interactions based on ethnographic accounts of caste society.
-Restricted Occupations**: Caste determines hereditary occupations, functioning as a rigid division of labour, with specific roles allocated to specific castes.
- Endogamy: Caste enforces marriage within the caste, often accompanied by exogamy rules (prohibiting marriage with certain groups), reinforcing the caste system’s reproduction.
This definition, rooted in classical texts, systematised the study of caste, though ethnographic fieldwork later showed that these features were evolving in practice.
- D.P. Mukerji viewed a ‘living tradition’ as a dynamic system that maintains links with the past while adapting to the present, evolving through continuous transmission and retelling of stories and myths. The term ‘tradition’ derives from the Latin for ‘to transmit,’ with Sanskrit equivalents like parampara (succession) and aitihya (linked to history). For Mukerji, tradition is not static but a process of adaptation, responsive to internal and external changes, such as collective experiences (anubhava). He insisted that Indian sociologists be rooted in this living tradition because India’s social system was its defining feature, with “over-developed” social dimensions compared to history or economics. Mukerji believed that understanding India’s folkways, mores, customs, and traditions—both ‘high’ (e.g., Sanskrit, Persian) and ‘low’ (e.g., local dialects)—was essential for sociologists to grasp the social system and its underlying dynamics. This rootedness enabled sociologists to study change within India’s group-oriented society, where collective experience, not individualistic or economic forces, drove transformation. By engaging with tradition, sociologists could critically analyse India’s social reality without blindly adopting Western frameworks, ensuring relevance to the Indian context.
- Indian society is group-oriented, centred on caste, sect, or group action, rather than individualistic or voluntaristic action as in the West. The average Indian’s desires are fixed by socio-cultural group patterns, limiting deviation, though urban middle classes show emerging voluntarism. This group orientation stems from India’s “over-developed” social system, where social dimensions dominate over history, politics, or economics. Traditions, rooted in the past through shruti (revealed texts), smriti (remembered texts), and anubhava (collective experience), are living and adaptive, with anubhava as the revolutionary principle driving change. Unlike Western societies, where economic factors like class conflict drive change, India’s class conflicts are “smoothed” by caste traditions, inhibiting sharp class consciousness. Change occurs through collective experiences, such as the Bhakti or Sufi movements, which challenge orthodoxy but are reabsorbed into a transformed tradition, maintaining continuity. This pattern results in cycles of rebellion contained within tradition, preventing radical breaks. For example, the Bhakti movement transformed Hindu practices through collective devotion but was integrated into mainstream tradition, illustrating India’s unique, tradition-mediated pattern of change.
- A.R. Desai’s definition of a welfare state is a positive, democratic state with a mixed economy, characterised by:
- Positive State: Unlike laissez-faire liberalism, it actively intervenes to implement social policies for societal betterment, beyond maintaining law and order.
- Democratic State: It relies on formal democratic institutions, particularly multi-party elections, excluding socialist or communist states from this definition.
- Mixed Economy: It combines private capitalist enterprises with state-owned enterprises, with the state focusing on basic goods and infrastructure, while private industry dominates consumer goods.
Desai critiques the welfare state’s claims in his essay “The Myth of the Welfare State,” arguing that states like Britain, the USA, and European nations fail to meet key criteria: freedom from poverty and discrimination, reduced income inequality, a community-driven economy, stable development free from economic cycles, and full employment. He finds that these states have persistent poverty, increasing economic inequality, and high unemployment, with capitalist profit motives often overriding community needs. Economic fluctuations and excess capacity further undermine claims of stable development. Desai concludes that the welfare state is a myth, as it fails to deliver equitable social and economic security, reflecting his Marxist critique of capitalist states’ inability to prioritise societal welfare over profit.
- The debate between M.N. Srinivas and Louis Dumont on the village stands as a subject of sociological research. For the village (Srinivas): Srinivas argued that the village was a relevant social entity, with historical evidence showing villages as unifying identities in rural social life. He emphasised their significance in capturing India’s social structure and ongoing changes during post-independence development. Srinivas refuted the British view of villages as unchanging, self-sufficient “little republics,” demonstrating their economic, social, and political connections at the regional level. He believed village studies provided valuable ethnographic data, illustrating rapid rural transformations, as seen in his Mysore fieldwork. Against the village (Dumont): Louis Dumont argued that social institutions like caste were more significant than villages, which he viewed as mere collections of people in a particular place. He noted that villages could disappear or people could move, but caste and religion followed individuals, maintaining social structure. Dumont believed focusing on villages was misleading, as the caste’s enduring influence transcended geographic boundaries. This debate highlighted differing priorities: Srinivas valued the village’s empirical and contextual relevance, while Dumont prioritised abstract social institutions, reflecting broader anthropological tensions.
- The significance of village studies in Indian sociology is to provide a new role for the discipline in a modernising, independent India. Village studies illustrated the importance of ethnographic research methods, offering eyewitness accounts of rapid social change in rural areas during planned development. These studies were highly valued, enabling urban Indians and policymakers to understand transformations in India’s rural heartland, moving sociology beyond the study of “primitive” societies to a modernising context. They also challenged colonial stereotypes of villages as static, self-sufficient entities, revealing their dynamic regional connections.
M.N. Srinivas played a pivotal role in promoting village studies by encouraging and coordinating a collective effort to produce detailed ethnographic accounts, alongside scholars like S.C. Dube and D.N. Majumdar. His year-long fieldwork in a Mysore village shaped his career and intellectual path, leading to influential writings, including ethnographic accounts and conceptual discussions defending the village as a social unit. As head of sociology departments at Baroda and Delhi, Srinivas trained a new generation of sociologists, establishing village studies as a dominant field and enhancing Indian sociology’s global reputation through his international connections.
Download NCERT Solutions Class 11 Sociology Understanding Society Chapter No.5 Indian Sociologists
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Also Read:
- NCERT Class 11 Sociology Chapter 3 Understanding Social Institutions Solutions (Free PDF)
- NCERT Class 11 Understanding Society Chapter 2: Social Change and Social Order in Rural and Urban Society Solutions (Free PDF)
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