I P Desai and Sociology of India

I P Desai and Sociology of India Ramkrishna Mukherjee In the four decades of pursuing sociology I P Desai examined a wide range of topics. The significance of his work lies not so much in the fact that he was more critical than his contemporaries but in the methodology he used. Whatever be the subject he dealt with he used the inductive analysis in the place of deduction. In his studies on the Indian family, he drew attention to the kinship network of family units instead of considering only their insular attributes of co-residence and commensality which was the valuation prevalent in the West, His enquiries on whether caste should be a basis for recognising backwardness are noteworthy for their rigorous research. He rejected the concept of caste as a unique or an intrinsic or a persistent phenomenon in Indian society. Examining the concepts of sanskritisation and westernisation, I P Desai found that the 'new elite' on the contrary, arises out of an amalgam of the two processes.