Social Profile of Tarakeswar- Study of a Pilgrim Town in West Bengal (An Old and Rare Book)

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One of the tasks which I believe needs to be undertaken by the academic community in India, and especially by sociologists, is the development of an empirical approach to the study of religion, and thus to a clearer understanding of the nature of the religious situation in India. So often one hears speakers in seminars and such gatherings describing the role of religion 'in society' entirely in terms of the normative prescriptions set out in sacred texts, with apparent total unconcern with the fact that such normative prescriptions on the one hand and present day actualities on the other are very far apart. What we need to know, in order to be able to act constructively and wisely, is what actually is being done in the name of religion rather than being offered well-worn platitudes about what the texts tell us, for it is what is being done that has social consequences and implications.

In Dr. Prafulla Chakrabarti's present book we have a valuable contribution of the kind that is needed. Like the doctoral dissertation of which it is a revised version it has impressed me with the appropriateness of its analytical concepts and methods. As the author himself sees the matter, both normative and empirically descriptive materials have to be used, for as he says, the two are often inextricably interrelated.

The survey which he carried out at Tarakeswar, one of the smaller, non-Puranic centres of pilgrimage in West Bengal, is commendable for its thoroughness. He was fortunate in his initial familiarity with the area, and in the considerable resources to which he had access as a member of the staff of the Indian Statistical Institute's Sociological Research Unit. Not least among the advantages which that afforded him as the high degree of sophistication in research methods that was open to him. In his book he makes full analytical use of the very extensive data which he amassed in the course of his research over a period of two years.

As the world intellectual community becomes ever more secularized, it becomes increasingly difficult for intellectuals to understand the motivation behind, and the organization of, a major activity of human kind-the practice of religion. Yet, given to the degree to which religion apparently permeated social life in the past, and perhaps still does even today in at least some countries, an understanding of religious activity would seem crucial for our understanding of society.

That historically people in most societies have exhibited a high degree of religiousity seems to be a general assumption of many historians and social analysts. Thus, for instance, the history of many societies has been written, at least in part, in terms of the rise of new mass religions, the rendering of their hegemony by challenging counter-religions and sects, and the attempts of the initial religions to maintain their dominance. For Europe, historians stress the rise of the Catholic Church, the challenge of Protestantism, and the Counter-Reformation; for India, the rise of Hinduism, the Buddhist challenge, and the ultimate Hindu victory. Whether more detailed studies will sustain this image of a high level of historical religiousity is, for me at least, an open question, but it does seem a reasonable working assumption.

For the present day, matters are somewhat more complicated. Data indicate, for instance, that church attendance has dropped off precipitously in many Western European countries and in Canada in recent decades, and one might argue that there is a world wide trend toward secularization, so that religion is now relatively unimportant in most people's lives, whatever may have been the case in the past. On the other hand, in one of the largest of the Western countries, the United States, religious participation, at least up until the mid-1970's, seems to have remained quite high. In some countries of the Middle East, Islam appears to be undergoing a powerful revival. And in India, many millions of people continue to participate in religious festivals and make pilgrimages to religious centers.