New
Delhi: The study of inequality in India has to be
holistic and take into account the inequities arising from caste,
imbalances in distribution of land, power structure and
opportunities, says India's top sociologist Andre Beteille.
"If you are to write about social inequality in a village, you
cannot escape caste and other inequities that arise from
inequality of land and power," he said.
The 77-year-old sociologist was at India International Centre
Friday to take part in a discussion on his book, "The Andre
Beteille Omnibus" , published by Oxford University Press. The
omnibus compiles three of his seminal works, "Caste, Class and
Power", "Inequality and Other Essays" and "Equality and
Universality".
The three books in the omnibus are works spanning nearly 40 years,
Beteille said. "The first book was written in 1965 and the last
one in 2003. That makes it nearly 40 years," the sociologist said.
The omnibus, however, does not contain two significant aspects of
Beteille's research.
"There was a time (in 1968) when I was interested in studying the
agrarian social structure. It has not been included in the
omnibus. What is also not included is my work on the nature of
sociology as an intellectual discipline," he said.
Recalling his research on the caste system in Tanjore in southern
India, Beteille said, "In 1962-1963, I had stumbled upon the
significance of social inequality and the changes taking place in
a village".
Beteille said he had to study the changes taking place in all
these aspects in order to write about transformation in villages.
"In my work, 'Caste Old and New', I wrote about inequality of
caste on a wider canvas. The sociological understanding of a
society is a collective fieldwork. I decided that my agrarian
social structure would have to deal with inequalities between
landowners, wage earners, share-croppers and tenants," he said.
According to Beteille, the idea of equality is made of components
that have tensions between them. "There is tension in the equality
of opportunity, and we can carry on the argument of equality only
up to a certain point."
Citing an example, Beteille said: "If you look at education in the
country and the access to education, I think the criteria of
access to education changes as you move from one level to
another".
If universality is a criteria when a parent is seeking admission
for a child to elementary school, you can grant it without any
consideration, he said. But when it comes to higher education,
"can one say that access should be open without consideration of
ability, merit and talent?" he said.
"Our contemporary life is permeated by the contradiction between
the principles of equality and the price of inequality," he said.
"This contradiction is particularly marked in India where a
constitution with its strong emphasis on equality confronts the
most bewildering variety of inequalities in almost every sphere of
life," he said.
In his book, "The Idea of Natural Inequality and Other Essays",
Beteille says, "It is remarkable how greatly the political concept
of equality of opportunity has altered from the first half of the
19th century to the second half of the 20th century".
"At the beginning of the 19th century, it was a radical concept
offering the prospect of a new kind of society in which inherited
privilege would be replaced by individual achievement. By the time
it came to be written into the constitution of India, equality of
opportunity as an ideal had become a little too commonplace to be
considered radical," Beteille observed.
He said if he was studying Indian society today, he would
recognise the importance of identity politics.
"And I have an ingrained antipathy to identity politics," he said.
Beteille has taught in several institutions of higher learning,
including the Delhi University, the Delhi School of Economics,
Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Chicago.
Beteille, who was born in Chandannagore in West Bengal and studied
in Kolkata, has been honoured with the Padma Bhushan. He is known
for his studies of the caste system in south India.
His book, "Caste, Class and Power" first published in 1965 is
considered a classic in Indian sociology. Based on his doctoral
thesis, the book illustrates the process by which modernity
transformed a traditional village with a caste-based social
structure to one based more on political parties or panchayats.
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