Indian Sociologists

L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer and Sarat Chandra Roy came to social anthropology by accident, not through formal training.

- Ananthakrishna Iyer began as a clerk, then became a school teacher and later a college teacher in Cochin. In 1902, he was asked to help with an ethnographic survey of Cochin state. He did this voluntarily while continuing his teaching work, and later received recognition for it.
- Sarat Chandra Roy first studied English, then law, and later went to Ranchi as a teacher. While working as a lawyer and official interpreter in the Ranchi courts, he became interested in tribal society because he had to interpret tribal customs and laws. This led him to intensive fieldwork among tribal communities.

So, both became anthropologists through practical work and field experience rather than through university degrees in anthropology.

The debate was between the protectionists and nationalist Indians.

- The protectionists were mainly British administrator-anthropologists. They believed tribal communities were primitive peoples with distinctive cultures that should be protected from contact with mainstream Hindu society. They feared that assimilation would lead to exploitation, cultural degradation, and even the loss of tribal culture.
- The nationalists, including Ghurye, believed that India should be seen as a unified nation moving towards modernisation. They argued that preserving tribal communities as separate cultures would keep them as “museums” of primitive life and would maintain backwardness. In their view, tribals should develop and become part of the larger Indian society.

So, one side wanted to preserve tribal distinctiveness, while the other wanted assimilation and development within the broader Indian society.

Herbert Risley and G.S. Ghurye both discussed caste in relation to race, but they differed in emphasis and conclusion.

- Risley argued that caste originated in race. He believed India was a good place to study racial types because caste prevents inter-marriage. On the basis of physical measurements such as skull size and nose length, he claimed that higher castes were closer to Aryan racial traits, while lower castes belonged to non-Aryan, aboriginal, Mongoloid or other racial groups.
- Ghurye did not fully accept Risley’s conclusion. He said the racial theory was only partly correct. He pointed out that Risley’s view seemed broadly true mainly for northern India. In most other parts of India, the anthropometric differences between caste groups were not very clear, suggesting long-term mixing of racial groups. Ghurye therefore argued that racial purity through endogamy was relevant mainly in Hindustan proper (north India), while elsewhere endogamy may have been introduced into populations that were already mixed.

Thus, Risley saw caste as basically based on race, while Ghurye treated that idea as only partially valid and limited to some regions.

The social anthropological definition of caste given in the chapter highlights six features:

1. Segmental division: caste is divided into closed, mutually exclusive groups; membership is decided by birth.
2. Hierarchical division: castes are arranged in a strict order of superiority and inferiority.
3. Restrictions on social interaction: especially rules about food-sharing and purity-pollution, including untouchability.
4. Differential rights and duties: different castes have different obligations and privileges in both religious and secular life.
5. Restriction of occupation: occupation is hereditary and tied to caste.
6. Restrictions on marriage: caste is governed by endogamy and often also by rules of exogamy.

Taken together, these features show caste as a rigid, birth-based social system that regulates status, interaction, work and marriage.

By a living tradition, D.P. Mukerji meant a tradition that is not frozen in the past. It keeps a connection with older forms, but it also changes and adapts to present conditions. It preserves some older elements while absorbing new ones, so tradition remains active and alive.

He insisted that Indian sociologists be rooted in this tradition because he felt that Indian society is deeply shaped by its social traditions. To understand India properly, a sociologist had to know the folk-ways, customs, mores, languages and cultural practices of Indian people. He also believed that Indian society changes through its own historical and cultural processes, not by blindly copying western ideas. So the sociologist must study India from within its living social reality.