The First Indian Social Theorist: Ideas of Bhudev Chandra Mukhopadhyay

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

About the Book The book is a critical evaluation of the ideas of Bhudev Chandra Mukhopadhyay, a nineteenth century Bengali thinker, about the society and culture of India and also the Western civilization. They say that Mukhopadhyay deserves the epithet: the First Indian Social Theorist. The work examines in detail the validity of the claim. Mukhopadhyay analyzed the problems that beset those who strive for the construction of Sociology as a nomothetic science of society, highlighted the need for challenging the cultural, political and economic hegemony of the colonial West, and called for reflection by the colonized Indians on their enchantment with the West and disparagement of their indigenous values and practices. However, Mukhopadhyay's ambivalence remains evident all through his defence of tradition and critique of modernity. The book, a narrative of all this, is an addition to the literature on Sociology of Indian Sociology, which has so far received scant attention. It will be of interest to the students of Sociology, History, Anthropology and Indology.

About the Author Gayatri Bhattacharyya, nee Ray, was awarded National Scholarship because of her creditable performance in the Higher Secondary Examination, West Bengal. She stood First in the First Class in the first-ever B.A. Honours Examination in Sociology of the University of Kalyani and received Certificate of Merit from the Chancellor of the University. She repeated the feat in the first-ever M.A. Examination in Sociology of the University of Calcutta and was awarded the University Gold Medal. As a U.G.C. Jr. Research Fellow she started taking classes in P.G. Department of Sociology in the University of Calcutta along with pursuing her research work. She earned Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Kalyani.

Dr. Bhattacharyya has delivered lectures on the development of Sociology in India in different universities of India and Bangladesh. She has written two books on Sociology in Bengali for the Netaji Subhas Open University and contributed articles to academic journals. Mother of two sons, Dr. Bhattacharyya is currently the Head of the Department of Sociology, Calcutta University. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal, Sociologia Indica.

Preface Sociology like history or any other discipline in colonial and post-colonial India has been appropriated by the colonizing west. Consequently, any narrative of sociology in India has been the account of the discipline as viewed by the westerners. How the students of society and culture in India should study their own society is governed by the canons of western sociology. There may be and there is western sociology and its hegemony will determine and has actually determined the course of sociological studies in India so much so that sociological pursuits in India have been described, not only by western sociologists but by many Indian sociologists, as "anthropological" studies. And, in this way, the possibility of any indigenous theory regarding the Indian society and culture has ipso facto been ignored. Recently, there have been signs of rethinking this deplorable state of affairs. The present work is a very modest step in that direction.

The work is the story of intellectual efforts of Bhudev Chandra Mukhopadhyay, a nineteenth century Bengali thinker, who may legitimately claim the epithet of the first Indian social theorist, towards the development of Indian sociology. He is remarkable for trying to analyse the nature of Indian society and culture, its dynamic tradition that shows a high degree of resilience against the hegemony of an alien system, covertly and overtly nurtured with care and cunning by the then colonial masters of India. And, he does it with the help of notions and principles that have emanated in the main from the age-old experience of the Indians themselves.

The son of a Sanskritist, traditional Brahmin, Bhudev acquired English education in order to earn a materially decent standard of living in the colonial set up. And, despite a few detractors in the rank of the high-ups in colonial administration, Bhudev, because of his innate strength of character, steadfastness and punctiliousness about the performance of his duties, sense of decency and suavity as well as presence of mind, rose to a very high position in the Educational Service under the British Government in Bengal. His career has been marked by the genuine admiration by the Europeans and his countrymen alike.

Withal, Bhudev does not abandon his deep respect for the tradition of his society. Part of his explication of this tradition challenges the colonial construction of communalism in India. He dilates at length on the nature of multiculturalism that is, according to him, a remarkable feature of the traditional way of life in India. He exposes the sinister design of the British historians and rulers in spreading the false belief that the Hindus and Muslims in India had always been at daggers drawn against each other.

Bhudev's strong defence of what is called Hindu manners and customs may cause the rational and secular readers to raise their eyebrows. But, he is free from all kinds of bigotry. The strategy adopted by him may be described as a strategy which is adopted by a subordinate group in order to combat the dominance and hegemony of those who dominate, i.e., collaboration accompanied by resistance (cf. Figure 1 in Ranajit Guha's (1989) "Dominance without Hegemony and its Historiography" in Subaltern Studies VI, p. 229).

Despite being an efficient Officer serving the British Government and earning the title CIE, Bhudev has remained relentless in his attack on the cultural and institutional dominance or hegemony attempted by the colonial powers and on those who were enchanted by them. He has performed the task first, by revealing the meaning and values underlying the social and cultural framework and practices of his countrymen and, secondly, by comparing the Indian, rather, Hindu view of life with the western view. He has been an illustrious pathfinder in what is described today as comparative study of religions and societies and, the readers will appreciate, he has accomplished the task in a competent manner. Through his efforts in the domain he has propounded a theory which exposes the unreason lying hidden in the so-called rational, western theory of religion and society. His trilogy Parivarik Prabandha (Essays on the Family), Samajik Prabandha (Essays on Society), and Achar Prabandha (Essays on Rites and Rituals) is a brilliant exposition of the theory. Through these works along with his Vividha Prabandha the basic structure and core values of Bhudev's native society come to the fore. These cannot be spoiled by the systems and ideas and ideals borrowed or imported from or implanted by the west. One may bring the charge of practising essentialism against Bhudev because of this. But, Bhudev has grave doubts about any attempt at homogenization of cultures and societies across the globe.

The challenge of de-traditionalization posed by the western politico-economic and cultural systems has to be met with firmness by the so-called less developed societies and cultures of the world. If that is not done, obliteration of socio-cultural identities waits for the peoples at the end of the road. If it is a serious problem today because of the ever-expanding hegemony of globalization, it has been more dangerous for a people groaning under colonial subjugation and suffering deprivation of freedom and sense of dignity - a people Bhudev belonged to. The people must, therefore, discover or, if need there be, invent a social theory that makes it feel equal with or even superior to the dominant colonizers. To notice the process how it has been done is fascinating and the present work tries to capture a glimpse of the process.

The book highlights, of course, the problem of tradition versus modernity in societies such as India. The problem does have political connotation which has not been ignored in the present work; nor has the implication of Achar Prabandha (and also Vividha Prabandha) in the corpus of Bhudev's writings been neglected or suppressed, as it has been done by several scholars focussing on Bhudev's ideas. In the process Bhudev may appear to be a conservative thinker championing the cause of patriarchy and certain other values and practices that seem to be anachronism or even anathema to a modernist. Bhudev must face criticism where he deserves it. This may, however, be said about Bhudev that he has sought to guard the ramparts of his native society and culture against the cultural and political and economic imperialism of the west. Rather, he has been after the search of a social and cultural core that must not be despoiled by the processes let loose by the colonizers. Maybe, Bhudev has been trying to do the impossible. Has it really been so? Or has Bhudev been trying to imagine an alternative to the system that seems to have bewitched his countrymen in the colonial and also post-colonial period? The work that is placed before the readers seeks answers to the above questions. The readers may notice that Bhudev did not prove to be sterile in his thinking and has been changing, though slowly and cautiously, his views on social issues. It is evident.

The readers will, hopefully, appreciate the way in which the author has tried to combine what may be considered a sort of fieldwork with a venture that is predominantly theoretical. Several photographs and conversations with relevant persons, recorded in the book, bear a testimony to the attempt.

The groundwork for the finished product that is presented here before the readers has been spread over a large span of time and has been made possible through the help and inspiration of many a person. The author very fondly and with a deep sense of gratitude recalls what she received from her parents, Amaresh Ray and Anjali Ray, who have since left the world. She lovingly dedicates this work to their memory.

Introduction The story of the development of sociology in India is slowly taking shape and the present work is a modest effort to help the process. More precisely, it is a critical analysis of the writings of Bhudev Chandra Mukhopadhyay, a nineteenth century Bengali thinker, about the nature of Indian society and culture that encountered the colonial regime of the British in India, in the light of its comparison with society and culture in the occident. The writings of this thinker were addressed primarily to the Bengalis in colonized Bengal, the part of India where the English started their work of empire-building in the country after the Battle of Plassey (Palassy) in 1757.

Himself a Bengali Hindu Brahmin, Bhudev noted with concern how the Bengali Hindus, specifically, the English-educated among them, capitulated before the political and cultural hegemony of the west. He sought to utter a note of caution against it. In the process he came to consider not only the socio-cultural history of Bengal but the tradition of India as a whole, of which the Bengali culture was but a part. While analyzing the tradition of India and the social structure sustained by it, he came to develop a social theory which called for the intellectual autonomy of a people to understand and explain its own society and culture, policy and economy, in terms of its own, indigenous concepts and principles. In this way, Bhudev came to lay down the initial foundation of sociology in India which would not look forward to the concepts, categories, theories developed by the western thinkers for guidance at every step of setting its agenda. But, it is repeated ad nauseam in this work with regret that Bhudev's ideas have not been given, until very recent times, adequate attention even by the Bengali Sociologists who are familiar with Bengali language in which Bhudev recorded his ideas, let alone sociologists with mother tongues other than Bengali. The present work, therefore, engages in exegesis of the writings of Bhudev Mukhopadhyay (in his later life, the middle name Chandra was not used by the thinker himself). This exegetical piece is, of course, related to the larger project of understanding the development of sociology in India.

It is interesting that sociologists, Indian or Western, have betrayed, through all the years of development of the discipline in India, serious trepidation about the possibility of an Indian sociology that is concerned with the specificities of the socio-cultural phenomena emanated and experienced by the inhabitants of the sub-continent called India which has a millennia-old tradition. In the third issue of the Contributions to Indian Sociology started by Dumont and Pocock, Bailey declared that he was "not comfortable in the strait jacket they [Dumont and Pocock] have designed for 'Indian Sociology'."' In a positivistic vein, Bailey taunted Dumont and Pocock's "anxiety for the welfare of Indian sociology (is there also an Indian chemistry?) and their distress at the prospect of India having no sociology of India, 'except in a vague geographic sense'."2 He charged the two with practising culturology in the name of sociology. Ramkrishna Mukherjee has, of course, considered the sociology of Indian Sociology but has not adequately addressed the problem of the study of socio-cultural specificity of India. Srinivas and Panini too have given some attention to the problem but they recounted the story of development of both sociology and social anthropology in India in the same breath.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages