Sociology

DHURJATI PRASAD MUKERJI

Indian Tradition and Social Change

The word tradition, which refers to the non-historical study of traditions, derives from the Latin verb tradere, which means to transmit. Either Parampara, which means succession, or aitihya, which has the same root as itihas, or history, are the Sanskrit words for tradition. Traditions are thought to have originated from a source, which may have been the scriptures, sages (āpta-vākya), or unnamed or named mythical heroes. Whatever the origin, most people are aware of the “historicity” of traditions. They are cited, referred to again, and valued; in reality, their ages-long succession becomes a guarantee of worth that has already accrued due to its useful functioning as a component of social cohesiveness or social solidarity. In Roman law, the term ‘traders’ also denotes the safekeeping and deposit of something valuable; as a result, it refers to trustworthy individuals whose customary and legal obligation is to maintain the valuable item intact.

Social Tradition

The study of social tradition includes examining how internal and external forces influence traditions. The latter are primarily economic, and the way economic forces operate differs from how a mechanical force would move inert stuff. The ability to withstand and absorb is quite strong in traditions. Traditions survive by adaptation unless the economic drive is very powerful, and it is that strong only when production techniques are changed. Traditions’ adaptability is a good indicator of their vitality. In other words, the first and most important responsibility of an Indian sociologist is to research Indian traditions, which should come before socialist explanations of changes in Indian customs in terms of economic causes.

Mukherji believes that becoming a sociologist in India is insufficient. To grasp his social system and what lies behind and beyond it, he must first identify as an Indian, which entails sharing in the folkways, mores, customs, and traditions. He ought to be well-versed in all facets of Indian mythology. The local dialects are important for the lower ones, whereas Sanskrit is necessary for the high ones. The spirit is frequently absent, and the letters alone persist despite anthropologists’ and ethnologists’ attempts to grasp the latter.

Social research in India will be a pale replica of what is being done elsewhere unless sociological training is based on Sanskrit or another language in which the traditions have been embodied as symbols. Indian academics give in to the allure of contemporary “scientific” methods imported from abroad as a component of technical assistance and “know-how,” without protest or dignity. There seem to be no terms we can propose or a foundation upon which to stand in the current intellectual interactions.

1. A System of Culture

According to Mukerji and Parsons, a system of culture is an abstraction on a different scale than a social system, despite drawing largely from the same concrete facts. His only goal was to urgently draw the attention of other sociologists to two key points:

1. The common concrete phenomena of which both the social system and the culture are ‘abstractions’ are the subject matter of sociology.

2. As far as Indian society is concerned, those common concrete phenomena had best be studied through group action and traditions.

The Indian social structure does not revolve around the individual as an actor, as an entity with the fundamental traits of striving to achieve goals, reacting emotionally or affectively to things and occurrences, and to some extent, cognitively knowing or comprehending his circumstances his aims, and himself.

According to him, Indian action is not individualistic; it is essentially based on a normative, teleological rather than a voluntaristic system of coordinates or axes; failing to achieve it does not result in disappointment. Indians do not share the fear of loneliness. Rarely does the operating system allow “voluntarism” based on personal preferences. The socio-cultural group pattern of the average Indian “individual” more or less rigidly fixes his pattern of desires, and he scarcely deviates from it until under extreme economic pressure. India's ancient way of life is reflected in both her culture and religion. Therefore, her social structure essentially promotes group, sect, or caste activity as the norm rather than “voluntaristic” individual action. Therefore, if you are an Indian and a sociologist, there is no way to avoid traditions.

2. Voluntarism

In particular, middle-class voluntarism in urban areas and on the outskirts of towns. However, for the Indian socialist, they make for an intriguing, unique study. They are verbally significant, but if you closely observe their behaviour, you’ll notice that their anti-traditional Individualism is also creating its own tradition—a tradition of uprising. According to Mukherji, the ongoing conflict between the traditional values that make up the principle of dhriti, that is, dharijia, that which holds, maintains, and continues, and the new traditions that the urban middle class has been attempting to establish over the last century or so. From the perspective of how traditions develop via conflict, the sociologist would approach the situation. In any case, Indian society has benefited at least somewhat from the lack of voluntarist activity. A notable aspect of Indian life, if you exclude the middle classes, is the lack of the kind of dissatisfaction that may result in psychoses of every kind. Everyone may notice the dignity displayed by the Indian peasant and family leader. The issue is that level is still dominated by traditions, which determine the level of culture and values for the majority of Indians. It may be on the low “level of aspirations,” as the psychologist may put it. This should not be overlooked when we need to raise the bar for wants.

3. Indian Concept of Freedom

In India, social life is like bees and beavers: regimented, totalitarian, and almost communistic in its conception of freedom if the group remains the unit of action, aspiration, orientation, normative, affective, and cognitive. This is because our conception of man is that of the ‘Purusha’ and not the individual or vyakti. This, however, would not be a big deal if the entirety of modern communications were not directed at us to make us part of a “free” society of people exercising their right to choose despite advertisements, press chains, chain stores, and empty purses too, which, you must admit, does not leave much scope for “consumer’s sovereignty.”

The Indian sociologist will have to give up the individual in favour of the group as his defining element. However, he ought to approach his profession with an open mind. He cannot call himself a “scientist” if science only deals with facts. He also cannot be a historian of social change because history is essentially the study of facts. To put it another way, he will have to face the new, daring scientific world and be an outcast. His main point will be that tradition is a forgotten fact, not a fact. As has been well put, the tradition most clearly deserves its name and fulfils its true purposes when it no longer serves as a description of an actual event and when it has partly lost its luster as a code of conduct. The study of traditions need not be unscientific in the strictest sense, at least not in the understanding of modern science, which engages in trade and commerce with a variety of fairly ephemeral items.

Each term’s Sanskrit translation will immediately occur to us all. The succession is by birth or initiation; the value is of the order of sacredness; the people are either Brahmins or the sampradaya, which is the corporate custodian; the preservation of the traditions is accomplished through correct speech or pronunciation of sacred texts, psychological fixations to uphold the social structure and vice versa, and primarily by the caste system with the custodians at the top.

4. Chain of Traditions

Up until now, the Indian social system’s real history has been traced through the sampradaya parampara or chain of traditions. The continuity of the Indian social system has been preserved via the development of the normative approach. Tradition is only the practice of conserving, therefore conservative. Yes, traditions do change. The class relations among the endogenous are proposed for two reasons:

1. Caste traditions have long smoothed over class conflicts in our culture, preventing the emergence of new class relations.

2. We know very little about India’s socioeconomic past.

Thus, the immediate focus of dynamic sociology in India would be to thoroughly explain the complex mechanisms of the internal, non-economic transformations. Our traditions acknowledge three principles of change: sruti, smriti, and anubhava. The ground-breaking idea is anubhava or firsthand knowledge. It serves as the primary foundation for several Upanishads.

5. Collective Experience

Without a doubt, personal experience was the source, but it quickly grew into a collective experience. Generalized anubhava is said to be the most important principle of transformation throughout the history of collective dissent, from the medieval ages to the current period. Suppose we are interested in learning more about the history of the many sects and paths. In that case, we discover that their saint founders began by drawing on their own personal experience, had little to no connectedness with rituals, temples, or priests, and conversed in local dialects rather than Sanskrit.

Preaching the ideology of love, prem, and sahaj, spontaneity, which arrived like a tidal wave flooding the earth and leaving a rich deposit on the banks of time and tradition, gave women equal status and was taught to the lowest classes and castes. The principle of change was provided by dialectical exegesis in the high traditions, which were primarily intellectual and focused on smriti and sruti.

With the exception of philosophical speculating and exegetical norms, rationality hasn’t had much chance in our social order. Interpretations have occasionally ruined traditions, but practically seldom do the interpreters seem to have been willing to face the consequences of their actions. Therefore, whenever the high and low intellectual traditions had a chance to clash, they were understood and brought together inside some abstract thinking patterns and emotions.

6. Depth Analysis of Social Reality

Gurvitch refers to this as a deep analysis of social reality. This analysis begins at the surface and descends via the many layers of traditions and traditional lore to the deepest level of spiritual values and their collective, direct, and integrated experience, including spiritual and sense. Traditions impact how physical changes and biological desires are transformed, even on the surface of human geography and demographic pattern.

For instance, family and city planning are so intertwined with tradition in India that an architect or social reformer can only disregard it at the risk of their own pet projects. Lower down, some superstructures are organized and disorganized and function through rituals, such as achar and kria, which formalize and style group behaviour. For most Indians, this is where the dynamic aspect of traditions ends. However, if social symbols that are actually and genuinely present while also hiding and searching, disclosing by concealing while also concealing by exposing both the spiritual and social truth, make these rituals alive, the dynamics may develop.

The artistic side of symbols now starts. Neither signals nor expressions nor outward manifestations of particular objects are symbols. The things themselves are they. In addition to lacking a subject, object, predicate, and preposition, symbols also lack syntax. Of course, there are other symbols, some of which are societal and others less so.

Social symbols are insufficient representations of the spiritual worlds tailored to specific social contexts, common social structures, and established collective mindsets through which various facets of the spirit manifest and are understood. Social symbols are, therefore, simultaneously influenced by social reality and the spirit that materializes inside; they vary in their relationship to both these realities and the spirit that inhabits them. Because of this, symbols serve as both creators and products of social reality, making them the main focus of the sociology of the human spirit.

The study of traditions is at the heart of sociology, and studying traditions ultimately entails studying symbols because these are explosively creative and dynamic under certain circumstances and at particular levels. As a result, values and norms maintain and deepen their noetic connections to particular social structures and concrete historical contexts.

7. Group Action

Knowing the many levels and layers of how a person functions inside and outside of society—Gurvitch refers to this as depth-sociology along the lines of depth-psychology—ultimately establishes the true relationship between the social sciences. Sociology’s analysis of transformational processes should finally point to a path out of the social system. And I believe that Indian society and Indian sociology—all of our shastras are sociological—perform very well in this regard, but only in the narrow context of non-economic endogenous group-action. Indians thus see the diverse social disciplines as the rings of the tree of life, which has its roots above ground and no Yggdrasil to burrow from below, as distinct philosophical systems of India indicate the various phases of people’s and men’s spiritual progress. Since Western civilization started to fall apart, the sciences have begun to differ. Even though Indian society is evolving, there haven’t been many breakdowns.

For a while, Indian sociology will have to rely more heavily than nineteenth-century science on interpretive methods of understanding gained through active engagement in the Indian social activity system. An investigation will always be available, but it will need to focus on the observed objects’ symbolic meaning.

8. Study of Traditions

According to the study of traditions, progressive organizations have struggled intellectually and consequently in economic and political activity, mainly because they are unaware of and unrooted in India’s social reality. Additionally, the desire for self-respect and national conceit might cause the study of traditions by dependent people to develop into an argument for traditionalism. A guarantee of stable and balanced growth may be the study of their traditions. Revolution frequently involves a jump, but one must always land soundly.

The study of the Indian social system, in as much as it has been operating up to this point, demands a distinct approach to sociology due to its unique traditions, symbols, and cultural and social behaviour patterns. Indian sociologists should have the guts to declare as much out loud. What follows is a discussion of how economic and technical advancements have affected Indian customs, culture, and symbols.