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Avatars of Indian Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Richard G. Fox
Richard G. Fox
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

Like differing versions of Vishnu, the same difficult problems continuallyreappear in the scholarly literature on India. The nature of caste, itsresiliency or dissolution in the face of modernization; the quality oftraditional Indian civilization, its adaptation or collapse in response toeconomic development and industrialization, are two questions whichcontinue to haunt the specialist on South Asia. What hangs in the balance is not only our understanding of social change or non-change in industrializing societies, but the validity of anthropology and the other social sciences as adequate methods of description and analysis in the contemporary world. If the ‘ethnographic present’ always remains only the past, then is not the value of anthropology and social science immeasurably diminished?

Type
Tradition and Change
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , January 1970 , pp. 59 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1970

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References

1 Singer, Milton, ‘Preface’ in Structure and Change in Indian Society, Singer, Milton and Cohn, Bernard S., eds., Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology # 47 (Chicago: Aldine 1968), x.Google Scholar

2 Singer, Milton, op. cit., p. xi.Google Scholar

3 I, Lloyd. and Rudolph, Suzanne Hoeber, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. p. 10.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., pp. 10.

5 Ibid., pp. 12–13.

6 Ibid., p. 12.

7 The Rudolphs might argue that they do specify which traditional elements survive by their belief that those traditional aspects which prove resilient were deviant or had latent within them the potentiality for change (see pp. 10, 11). But since the Rudolphs provide no measure of such ‘deviancy’ or ‘latency’ save the actual survival, their statement amounts to saying that those aspects which are found to survive had built into them the ability to survive.

8 L. I.Rudolf, S. H., op. cit., p. 12.Google Scholar

9 Ibid.

10 Cf. note 2.

11 Rudolphs, , p. 63.Google Scholar

12 Schwartz, Barton M., ed., Caste in Overseas Indian Communities. San Francisco : Chandler, 1967.Google Scholar

13 Morris, H. S., The Indians in Uganda. A Study of Caste and Sect in a Plural Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.Google Scholar

14 For these terms, see Kuper, , in Schwartz, op. cit., p. 241.Google Scholar

15 Ibid, pp. 24–8, 32. The charts given by Benedict for castes found among immigrants, and those presently found among their descendants indicates the loss of specific caste identification and a transfer to varna categories. This process is particularly true for South Indian groups.

16 Schwartz, , op. cit., p. 31.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. 88.

18 Ibid., p. 144.

19 Ibid., p. 251.

20 Only one contributor to the Schwartz volume tries to get at what sentiments, value, and attitudes from India are resilient among overseas indentured Indians. Speaking of Guyana, Philip Singer tries to measure as an index of traditional survivals the preservation of Hindu personality structure. Unfortunately, his investigation seems diffuse and anecdotal. Singer administered Rorschach tests to six informants. However, he does not provide information on age, sex, or social characteristics of his informants. Furthermore, Singer attempts to characterize similarities of personality between overseas Indians and home populations in terms of psychological qualities such as obedience and dependency. This approach would seem to be overly general for the question of personality maintenance or loss to be judged. Singer does not feel that specific Hindu complexes such as body image, purity-pollution concepts, or ritual cleanliness are important, and perhaps this fact explains his failure to cite any of the cultureand-personality literature, such as Carstairs' book, from India. His approach seems much less rigorous and much less rewarding than Bharati‘s approach to similar problems for passenger Indians in east Africa, which also appears in the Schwartz volume.

21 Rudolphs, , op. cit., p. 157.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 159, 169.

23 Ibid., pp. 348–9.

24 Morris, , op. cit., pp. 15–16;Google ScholarKuper, and Bharati, in Schwartz, op. cit., pp. 242–3, 292.Google Scholar

25 Morris, , op. cit., p. 27;Google Scholarcf. Kuper, in Schwartz, op. cit., p. 252. Kuper speaks about the greater persistence of caste among passenger Indians in South Africa than among indentured Indians, but it is clear she means by this the persistence of the structure of individual castes, not the caste system.Google Scholar

26 Rudolphs, , op. cit., p. 45.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., pp. 64–7. Throughout their book, the Rudolphs make comparisons between the caste association developments in India and various ethnic pressure groups and the civil rights movement in the United States.

28 See Fox, Richard G., ‘Resiliency and Change in the Indian Caste System’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXVI (1967), 575–87, passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Rudolphs, op., cit., pp. 35–6.Google Scholar

30 Schwartz, op. cit., p. 89.