Patel ColonialModernityMethodological 2017

Colonial Modernity and Methodological Nationalism: The Structuring of Sociological
Traditions of India
Author(s): Sujata Patel
Source: Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 66, No. 2 (AUGUST 2017), pp. 125-144
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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Article
Colonial Modernity
Sociological Bulletin
66(2) 125-144
© 2017 Indian Sociological Society
and Methodological SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
Nationalism: The DOI: 10.1177/0038022917708383
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/sob
Structuring of Sociological
Traditions of India
Sujata Patel1
Abstract
This article traces traditions of sociological thinking in India and suggests that in
order to write the disciplines' history, it is important to identify the episteme
that governs these traditions. It suggests that there are two broad epistemes
that have defined sociology as a discipline in India—colonial modernity and meth
odological nationalism—and it argues that they organise theories, perspectives,
methodologies and methods, teaching and research practices of the discipline.
The history of the imprint of these epistemes is investigated at four levels: first,
in the way one or both defined the discipline's identity and, thus, organised its
characteristic mode of thinking methodologically; second, in the way this identity
defined its theoretical direction and the theories that it borrowed, adapted to
and reframed; third, in the way the first two organised its professional orienta
tion and made it choose its identity as an academic discipline whose main role
is restricted to teaching and research within academic institutions at an expense
of a public orientation; and fourth, the way the aforementioned three defined
its geographical compass, limiting its queries to national concerns wherein the
macro became reduced to the micro abjuring discussions on global debates.
This article suggests that today there is a crisis in the received epistemes, and in
this context, it becomes imperative to take command to define a new episteme
which intersects the local, regional, national and global concerns, is theoretical
and methodologically eclectic and is comparative in nature.
Keywords
Sociological traditions, history of Indian sociology, colonial modernity, methodo
logical nationalism, professional culture
1 Professor of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
Corresponding author:
Sujata Patel, Professor of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
E-mail: patel.sujata09@gmail.com
126 Sociological Bulletin 66(2)
I consider it a privilege to stand before y

Address.
Sociology has had a long history in India. The teaching of sociology in India
started more than nine decades ago, in 1919 at the University of Bombay. However,
the discipline (as anthropology earlier, then as social anthropology and still later
as sociology) had established its presence decades earlier as a result of the need
of the colonial government to classify, categorise and document the people under
its rule. After its formal introduction in Bombay as a teaching subject, the dis
cipline's growth was slow—in 1947; three universities (Bombay, Calcutta and
Lucknow) taught sociology and/or anthropology, together with Poona, Mysore and
Hyderabad, where there were small centres. This pace quickened and by the end of
1970s, there were fifty universities together with many colleges that were floating
a masters course in sociology (Saberwal, 1983, p. 303). By 2000, sociology was
taught in almost 100 (of the 200 odd) state, central and deemed universities of the
country where a 100,000 undergraduate students, 6,000 postgraduate and 200 doc
toral students passed out with a degree in sociology every year. Additionally, there
were around 10,000 teachers teaching sociology at all levels (including schools)
across the country (University Grants Commission [UGC], 2001).
The theme of this conference is Rethinking Sociological Traditions in India.
So the first question that we need to ask is: What are traditions? Sociologists
have dealt with the concept of traditions for a long time and their reflections on
this concept has been varied; tradition is thought of as a process, as in tradition
and modernity or as institutions, such as traditional institutions, for example, the
extended family system. It is also thought of as a structure and a form of social
action; Max Weber was one of those who promoted this point of view. In this
presentation, I use traditions as embedded ways of thinking regarding knowledge.
Intellectual traditions in the form of theories and perspectives, methods and meth
odologies, pedagogies and practices once embedded are inevitably connected to
power and are legitimised and grounded through its episteme.
This presentation will excavate the moorings of the embedded systems of
thinking in sociology in India in order to map the received ideas, institutions and
practices that has organised its knowledge in India.
The sociology and history of ideas is generally explored in the fields of sociol
ogy of knowledge and sociology of sociology. Sociologists in India have given
little attention to these fields though recently there has been a renewed interest
in doing disciplinary history (Chaudhuri, 2003, 2010; Patel, 2011b; Uberoi,
Sundar, & Deshpande, 2007). These texts provide a history of and an assessment
of scholars, departments, syllabi and curriculum and scholarship since the initia
tion of the discipline.
A more comprehensive discussion on the sociology of sociological ideas/tradi
tions has emerged in the late 1980s and specifically in the early decades of this
century when sociological theory reframed itself as social theory. Social theory
sets for itself a new agenda: In order to constitute the architecture of social theory,
it had to first historicise the moorings/the episteme of the past intellectual tradi
tions of social sciences. Given that social sciences were organised around the
debate regarding modernity and its relationship with social science disciplines,
Patel 127
the future contours of doing social theory, it was argued, needed to deconstruct
both these fields, that is, that of modernity and that of the discipline organis
ing the theories of modernity. Once it did so, the goal of social theory would be
to reframe the relationship through a new epistemic linkage. Thus to do social
theory meant an excavation in the inherited epistemologies of social sciences and
thus of its intellectual traditions. And because these exist as established, accepted
and promoted knowledge, an examination of sociological traditions implies an
excavation of the structuring of power in the formulation of its theories, methods
and methodologies, teaching and learning practices and thus ways of thinking:
its episteme. In addition to the state, which promotes these, they are reproduced
through institutions—universities and research institutes—and through the dis
semination of knowledge in the forms of books and journals. The focus of inter
rogation should be the connections between the episteme and these forms of rep
resentative knowledge.
It is with this perspective I start this address. Drawing on the discussions and
debates on social theory made in postcolonial, decolonial and cosmopolitan theo
ries and my earlier papers, I am suggesting that sociological traditions in India
have been constituted in three phases. The first two have been dominated by two
distinct epistemes: colonial modernity and methodological nationalism and the
third phase is evolving as we speak about it; its history can only be written post
facto. However, it is still possible to use a critique of the first two phases to outline
the contours of the new episteme being framed and discuss its patterns.
Colonial modernity sometimes, referred to as Eurocentrism is a discursive
term/concept, that is, it is not only about modernity experienced in the colony
or in the period of colonialism but it is the way ideas, ideologies and knowl
edge systems were organised to refract and invisibilised the 'modern' contours of
everyday experience of the people who are colonised as that being non-modern.
Methodological nationalism is the naturalisation of the nation-state by the social
sciences. Scholars who share this intellectual orientation assume that countries
are the natural units for comparative studies, equate society with the nation-state
at the expense of local, regional or global concerns, and conflate national interests
with the goals of social science. Methodological nationalism reflects and rein
forces the identification that many scholars maintain with their own nation-states
(Patel, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c).
In this presentation, I examine the constitution of these two epistemes at four
levels: first, in the way one or both defined the discipline's identity and thus organ
ised its characteristic mode of thinking; second, in the way this identity defined
its theoretical direction; what theories did it borrow from, adapt to and reframe
and why; third, in the way the first two organised its professional orientation; did
it think of itself as an academic discipline whose main role is restricted to teach
ing and research within academic institutions or did it constitute the discipline to
commit itself to public and/or radical political concerns; and fourth, the way the
above three defined its own geographical compass; did it delimit its identity to
local/regional and national issues and abjure discussions on global ones and why.
This article suggests that the episteme of colonial modernity defined the iden
tity of sociology as it was organised within academia in the early 20th centuiy.
It also suggests that notwithstanding som

was institutionalised after independence
teme that of methodological nationali
place these embedded traditions in order
vision which integrates local/regional and
decolonised and denationalised theoretic
be generalisable across the globe.
This article is divided in four sections.
tive through which the sociology of epis
tions elaborate the three phases of the
traditions within India. In the second sec
nial modernity marked out the discipline
quent propagation of the use of its theor
understanding of patriarchal, upper cas
this phase, we also see a challenge emerg
of an anti-Western indigenous sociology
and rooted in 'Indian' values. I suggest th
colonial orientation, there was little attem
class and gender orientation of the disc
interpellated through the episteme of col
In the third section, I elaborate how th
discipline now redefined as sociology/so
the nationalist modern project of post-i
political project of the nation-state, in th
cation system and the standardisation of
ogy became 'social anthropology' utilising
view' to study the defining character of
The focus of social anthropology shifts t
tradition(s) and to assess incremental ch
without releasing it from its received p
tive. While a Marxist critique of this theor
its domination by suggesting that nation
critique did not break up the received ep
The fourth section which is the conclus
lenges facing contemporary sociology.
The Discourse of Colonial Modernity
Anthropology was the first discipline or knowledge system to be established

within the domain of social sciences in today's South Asia and I start my discus
sion with an assessment of its Eurocentric epistemic moorings in the 18th century
discussions of European modernity. Levi Strauss famously stated: anthropology
was a handmaiden of colonialism and it is to this issue I now turn my attention.
In 1988, Samir Amin published a small book titled Eurocentrism. The ideas
formulated in this text became foundational in the subsequent discussions on
Patel 129
this theme. Eurocentrism presented a historical argument on the relationship of

colonialism and capitalism and the growth of the Eurocentric episteme in the
18th century. It asserted that Eurocentrism is entwined in the twin processes
of crystallisation of the European society and Europe's conquest of the world.
Eurocentrism, Amin argues, clothe these twin processes by emphasising the first
and disregarding the significance of the latter in the formation of the first.
Amin's argument is presented at three levels: First, he contends that Europe
was the periphery of the Mediterranean tributary states (the other being that of
the Afro-Asiatic region) whose centre was at its eastern edge. Scholastic and
metaphysical culture of these tributary systems created four systems of scholas
tic metaphysics: Hellenistic, Eastern Christian, Islamic and Western Christian.
While all of these contributed to the formation of culture and consciousness of
Europe, it was the contribution of Egypt and later of medieval Islamic scholastics,
which was decisive in changing Europe's culture from being metaphysical to sci
entific (Amin, 2008, p. 38). Second, he shows how since the period of European
Renaissance, this history of Europe has been distilled and diluted to be replaced
with another history that narrated its growth as being the sole consequence of its
birth within the Hellenic-Roman civilisation. Third, through the means of what
the Latin American philosopher, Enrique Dussel (2000, p. 465) has called 'seman
tic slippages', Amin argues that the European narrative made Europe the centre
of the world and of modern 'civilisation', the distinctive characteristic of which
was science and 'universal reason'. The rest of the world was constructed to be
its peripheries, which, it was contended could not or did not have the means to
become modern.
This historical argument regarding Eurocentrism was extended by Immanuel
Wallerstein (2006) when he suggested that Eurocentrism is also an episteme of
social science. As latter, it is able to 'naturalise' the distinctions between 'scien
tific universalism against essential particulars' as it developed its discourse in the
19th century. These trends Wallerstein asserted crystallised an 'original episte
mology' (Wallerstein, 2006, p. 48). As a consequence, this epistemology became
'a key element' in managing the reproduction of modernity. Wallerstein's position
has got further fillip in the works of the philosopher Enrique Dussel and the soci
ologist, Anibal Quijano, who with others are now known as decolonial theorists.
First, for them Eurocentrism is not only a theory of history but an episteme, a
theory of power/knowledge. If this episteme theorised the 'I', it also theorised the
'other', the 'periphery'. Thus Dussel argues:
[MJodernity is, in fact, an European phenomena, but one constituted in a dialectical

relation with a non-modern alterity that is its ultimate content. Modernity appears when
Europe appears itself as the 'centre' of World history that it inaugurates; the periphery
that surrounds this centre is consequently part of its self-definition. The occlusion of
this periphery [. ..] leads the major thinkers of the centre into a Eurocentric fallacy in
their understanding of modernity. (Dussel, 1993, p. 65)
Second, this episteme now termed 'categorical imperative' (a la Kant), simultane

ously creates the knowledge of the T (Europe, the moderns, the West) against the
'other' (as the peripheral, non-modern and the East). This perspective legitimises
a theory of the separate and divided nature

East. It divides the attributes of the West an
divisions; while one is universal, superior a
ticular and non-emancipatory and thus inf
who argued that while European 'Enlightenm
own efforts from the state of guilty imma
reasons why the great part of humanity rem
turity' (ibid., p. 68). This inferiority, a cond
turn further legitimates the need to emulat
nising process as a 'civilising' process. This
according to Dussel to the management of t
If one understands Europe's modernity—a lo

unfolding of new possibilities derived from its c
lary constitution of all other cultures as its periph
all cultures are ethnocentric, modern European e
pretend to claim universality for itself. Modern
between abstract universality and the concrete
position as center. (Dussel, 2000, p. 222)
Third, as mentioned earlier, Eurocentric kno

multiple and repeated divisions or oppositio
chies. These oppositions, Anibal Quijano (200
sification of the world population. This princi
divide the peoples of the world in geo-cultu
further oppositions, such as reason and bod
object, culture and nature, masculine and fem
European modernity conceptualised its grow
tered the (various) East(s) divided between tw
barbarians and the civilised as being enclosed
episteme could not provide the resources to e
Karl Marx's insightful statement of 'annihila
The consolidation of these attributes across the West-East axis and its subse
quent hierarchisation across spatial regions in the world allow for social science to
discover the 'nature' of the various people, nations and ethnic groups in the world
in terms of the attributes of the binaries. This structure of power, control and
hegemony termed by Quijano as 'coloniality of power' is founded on two myths:
[F]irst, the idea of the history of human civilization as a trajectory that departed from a
state of nature and culminated in Europe; second, a view of the differences between
Europe and non-Europe as natural (racial) differences and not consequences of a history
of power. Both myths can be unequivocally recognized in the foundations of evolution
ism and dualism, two of the nuclear elements of Eurocentrism. (Quijano, 2000, p. 542)
These seminal assumptions were embodied in the framing of the disciplines of

sociology and anthropology in the late 19th century. Sociology became the study
of modern European (later extended to western) society while anthropology was
Patel 13!
the study of non-European (and non-Western) traditional societies. Thus, sociolo

gists studied how the new societies evolved from the deadwood of the old; a
notion of time and history were embedded in its discourse. Contrary anthropolo
gists studied how space/place organised 'static' culture that could not transcend its
internal structures to become modern.
The Constitution of Anthropology in India

Contemporary Indian sociology's moorings are in the 19th century Anthropology
whose main contours were framed by colonial administrators in the context of
growth and spread of the Orientalist positions in Europe and institutionalised in
India a century earlier, first through the study of Indian languages and through
them the study of its society. It is thus no surprise to note that these became the
frame of reference for administrators a hundred years later, when enjoined by the
colonial state to create knowledge about Indian society.
Two Eurocentric assumptions shaped the disciplinary identity of anthropology
in India: the first created distinction of groups living in India from the spatial
cultural structures of the West and the second constituted these in an internal
hierarchy. Following Orientalist/racial principles, British civil servants and anth
ropologists and later Indian anthropologists placed the debate of identifying and
designating these as 'caste' or 'tribes' within the discussion of 'stocks' or 'races'
in relation to other 'stocks' and 'races' in the Western world. In order to formulate
these categories, they took the help of evolutionary theory, but also Victorian social
thought associated with 'race science'. In this, they were aided through a theory
of the 'Aryan' (white or fair-skinned) invasion of India, which grew out of the
discovery of the Indo-European language family in the late 19th century. Hence,
linguistic classification merged with racial classification to produce a theory of
the Indian civilisation formed by the invasion of fair-skinned, civilised, Sanskrit
speaking Aryans, who conquered and partially absorbed the dark-skinned savage
aborigines (Patel, 2006).
This theory was critical in producing the basic division of groups in India into
Aryan and non-Aryan races, now termed 'castes' and 'tribes'. What is of interest is
the fact that while 'castes' were defined in the context of Hinduism, as groups who
cultivated land, had better technology and a high civilisational attribute, 'tribes'
were defined in contrast to castes, who practised primitive technology, lived in
interior jungles and were animistic in religious practices. Such classification and
categorisation were not peculiar to India. They also found manifestation in the
African continent, as British officials used this knowledge to construct categories
of social groups in Africa and retransferred these newly constructed classification
back again to India, as happened in the case of the term 'tribe' as a lineage group
based on a segmentary state.
In the process, 'caste' and 'tribe' was made out to be a far more pervasive,
totalising and uniform concept than ever before and defined in terms of a religious
order, which it was not always so. In fact, ancient and medieval historiographers
now inform us that those whom we identify as castes and tribes were groups
that were shaped by political straggles and

precolonial India, multiple markers of iden
groups and were contingent on complex pro
ing and were related to political power. Thu
ritorial groups, lineage segments, family un
'little as opposed to large kingdoms', occupa
and trading associations, networks of devot
nities and priestly cables. Those who came
the colonial powers were just one category
senting and organising identity (Dirks, 2001
The categories of caste and tribe were furt
ities organised the revenue settlements to f
British officials searched for a new classification to understand and assess the
material conditions that organised groups within the Indian subcontinent. On
one hand, the rulers needed to create spatial units, for the maintenance of law
and order as well as for the regular collection of taxes once these were assessed.
Simultaneously, on the other, they needed to ensure proper collection and thus
created new positions, which they did based on their knowledge of the way taxa
tion worked in England.
Three units were created in India: villages, estates and properties with posi
tions such as zamindars, patels, chaudhuris, talukdars, chiefs, rajas, nawabs and
princes; while in Africa, the spatial units were hamlets, lineages, clans and tribes
and the positions were headman, elders and chiefs (Cohn, 1987, p. 206). The
village was given a boundedness, making it almost like an 'island society' (first
theorised by Radcliffe-Brown) in which communities of castes lived in harmony.
Since colonialism, this perception came to be firmly embedded as it resonated in
many ways both in nationalist thought and in the sociological imagination. Thus,
when empirical social science developed in the 1950s and the 1960s, sociolo
gists made the village the locale for understanding the caste system (Patel, 2006).
Colonial conquest and knowledge both enabled ways to rule and to construct what
colonialism was all about: its own self-knowledge. The British played a major
role in identifying and producing Indian 'tradition' that is the belief and customs,
of those living in the region. Thus, Cohn states that
[i]n the conceptual scheme which the British created to understand and to act in India,
they constantly followed the same logic; they reduced vastly complex codes and associ
ated meaning to a few metonyms [...] [This process allowed them] to save themselves
the effort of understanding or adequately explaining subtle or not-so-subtle meanings
attached to the actions of their subjects. Once the British had defined something as an
Indian custom, or traditional dress, or the proper form of salutation, any deviations from
it was defined as a rebellion or an act to be punished. India was redefined by the British
to be a place of rules and order; once the British had defined to their own satisfaction
what they constructed as Indian rules and customs, then the Indians had to conform to
these constructions. (Cohn, 1997, p. 162)
This classificatoiy schema that is of use to the attribute of race to divide the
peoples of the world found its own 'local' legitimation, its own articulation and a
Patel 133
'voice' once colonial authorities had imposed these to divide the 'natives'. Thus,
this project found an expression (ironically and paradoxically) in the work of
indigenous intellectuals in the subcontinent searching to find an identity against
colonialism. For them, the immediate necessity was to locate 'our modernities'.
Thus, unlike the Europeans for whom, 'the present was the site of one's escape
from the past', for the indigenous Indian intellectuals 'it is precisely the present
[given the colonial experience] from which we feel we must escape'. As a result,
the desire to be creative and search for a new modernity is transposed to the past
of India, a past ironically constructed by orientalist colonial modernity. Thus
Chatterjee argues 'we construct a picture of "those days" when there was beauty,
prosperity and healthy sociability. This makes the very modality of our coping
with modernity radically different from the historically evolved modes of Western
modernity' (Chatteijee, 1997, p. 19). This past was now rarefied to understand the
present and the future; an orientalist imagination came to define the so-called
indigenous expression.
In a different way, the historian, Sumit Sarkar makes a similar argument when
he suggests that while modern Western history writing has generally been state
oriented (with an understanding of nation as a reflection of the nation-state), the
historical consciousness of the Indian intelligentsia, in the late 19th and the 20th
centuries, was oriented to the valourisation of culture against the state. He states:
In this period samaj (society, community) came to be counterpoised to rashtra or

rajshakti (state, the political domain). The real history of India, it was repeatedly
asserted, was located in the first, not the second, for samaj embodied the distinctive
qualities peculiar to the genius, culture and religion of the Indian people. (Sarkar, 1997,
p. 21)
And
samaj was simultaneously all too often conceptualised in Hindu, high caste gentry, and
paternalistic terms [. ..]. (ibid., p. 23)
Obviously racial constructions of 'difference' found a new legitimacy within a

Brahminical casteist patriarchal ideology as these two overlapped each other to
organise the study of social sciences through new reconstructed majoritarian and
or/casteist positions (Patel, 2007).
Was there no intervention to displace this episteme? We can note some attempts
made by Indian scholars since the 1930s and the 1940s as they started becoming
anthropologists and sociologists. One of the key influences in their work was two
trends of the nationalism which Bhikhu Parekh (1995) identifies as modernist
and modernist-traditional; the Marxist sociological interventions of A. R. Desai
were articulated through and engagement with the modernist current while that of
certain scholars in the Lucknow school was moored in modern-traditional nation
alist currents. There was one other attempt to conceptualise society, this was in
and through the anti-Brahminical movements that emerged in the mid-19th and
early 20th centuries in today's Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. However, neither
of these movements made a significant impact on the framing of the discipline
in the post-1950s period. This was because o

the traditional nationalist current in the con
sation of its key thinker, G. S. Ghurye as th
sociologists.
Let me explain this argument. In an earlier
from Bhikhu Parekh to indicate how three
ernists, the traditionalists and modern-trad
scholarship regarding Indian society. Parekh
greement between the three on the causes
dence. All three agreed that these were relat
British, the extraction and control for imper
resources and the destruction of its vitality
also agreed in the necessity of a strong stat
However, there were differences regarding t
ences, I suggest, affected the subsequent iden
However as Partha Chatterjee has argued al
epistemes'. He (1997, p. 19) reminded us
modernity outside the network of power' an
Colonialism brought together for the once
gle for 'dreams of freedom' and at the sam
victims and its episteme organised both the
of power'. No wonder the discussion on mo
ambiguity given colonialism's framing of m
ously of freedom and of subjugation. Nation
being both unfree and free to change the wo
the colonial binary in a new context, that o
itself out in context with the framing of n
all the three trends mentioned earlier.
The 'modernists' wanted India to identify w
They argued that the problems that India f
culture which had made the 'Indian' people
These scholars had ideological affiliation to
positions, advocated the path set by Eur
have a new industrial economy, free from
early work, which elided a discussion on ca
this approach within sociology. The 'moder
through syncretism culturist positions. Th
to understand the present and construct a
bring in transformation of the specific cultur
influences can be seen in the work of sociol
sense they remained trapped in the colonial
It was the traditionalist current that was
identity of sociology. These scholars argued
theories from the past, from that of India's
suggested that though the Indian civilisation
tially and fundamentally sound and was em
Patel 135
strengths had kept the 'Indian' people together over centuries and these ideas
will continue to bind them together in the future. They also contended that Indian
society had a distinct character and history and had evolved in interaction with its
people and its agencies. Indians and its social sciences needed to mobilise their
society's creative resources for its regeneration without losing its coherence and
inner balance. They also cautioned Indians not to imitate the West, take its lan
guage and its values. India has to work out its own salvation in its own terms: its
temperaments, traditions and circumstances. This set of ideas framed sociological
language in India and can be best seen in the work of G. S. Ghurye who used an
Orientalist methodology to discuss indigenous concepts that organised Indian tra
ditions: such as caste, tribe and family system and Hinduism (Patel, 2013).
Eurocentric episteme thus became part of the 'background understandings'
and 'beliefs' of doing anthropology and later sociology. Specifically in the case
of India, this knowledge (a) was produced as part of colonial politics of rule,
(b) was expressed and organised in terms of values that were in opposition to
modernity, (c) used disciplinary practices such as Indology and ethnography
to elaborate these positions, (d) was codified with the help of native intelligent
sia, especially the Brahmins, (e) thus reflected the social order as represented by
this group both in its expressed articulations (in anthropology and later social
anthropology) and in its silences and (f) lastly, it mitigated an examination of
the way classification systems of the state organised new forms of inequalities
in the colonial territory (Patel, 201 la).
Methodological Nationalism and the Formation of

Sociology
In its most straightforward usage, methodological nationalism implies coevalness
between 'society' and the 'nation-state', that is, it argues that a discussion on
modern society (which sociology does) entails an implicit understanding of the
nation. Or, in other words, the nation is treated as 'the natural and necessary rep
resentation of the modern society' (Chernillo, 2006, p. 2). Methodological nation
alism is the taken-for-granted belief that nation-state boundaries are natural
boundaries within which societies are contained. Sociology, according to Ulrich
Beck, 'assumed that humanity is naturally divided into a limited number of
nations, which on the inside, organised themselves as nation-states, and on the
outside, set boundaries to distinguish themselves from other nation-states' (Beck,
2007, p. 287). This outside limitation and the competition between nation-states
present 'the most fundamental category of political organisation'.
Thus, sociology's visions of culture and politics, law, justice and history rep
resent that of individual nation-state (ibid.). Wimmer and Schiller (2002) suggest
that there are three different strands of methodological nationalism. The first is
ignorance and/or blindness in recognising that modern societies are structured
in terms of the way nation and nationality are organised. As a result, sociolo
gists ignore the study of nation and nationalism in each country and do not frame
their theories to understand the interface between modernity and nationalism.
The second strand, following the point not

Sociological theories take for granted offic
histories without problematising them. The
unitaiy and organically linked to territories
bounded culturally specific spatial units. Th
tion of the social science imaginary and its
nation-state. There is an obsession to comp
territory, rather than seeing social interconne
All social sciences in India including sociol
of methodological nationalism. Unlike in Eu
alism is not associated with nationalist agen
and other social scientists were self-consciou
project to use higher education and the socia
the nation and the state. In this context, wh
sion in India?
Earlier I had suggested Eurocentric episte
study the 'social', sociology and anthropolog
gies and methods in distinct binaries—one for
other the study of traditional society. It is my
project of the Indian nation-state to create k
sociology in India carried forward the colon
anthropology in the shape of sociology. The
ism in sociology allowed anthropological pos
as a consequence of three processes discernib
First, the university became the main (and
tices of the discipline. Thus, there was huge
Second, there was an attempt to standardis
the knowledge governing the discipline wh
role. The first of these was the UGC which
tion through the organisation of syllabi ac
The second was the Indian Council of Soc
introduced the idea of doing bibliographic s
pology (as other social sciences) in India i
tions in the discipline and aid research in t
Sociological Society, which emerged after i
All India Sociological Conference as a strong
of sociologists with its own journal (Pate
knowledge was organised to discuss, debate
ring within one nation and territory: India.
Third, in this context it is no coincidence
sociologists together with other social scient
knowledge about contemporary society as i
most sociologists affirmed a need to have a
hend the uniqueness of Indian nation, its cu
in India saw their project as that which a
one's (indigenous) 'own terms', without colo
Patel 137
project allowed for the institutionalisation of a particularistic problematique—an

assessment of the changes occurring within India's characteristic institutions—
caste, kinship, family and religion. This particularistic problematique had much in
common with the notions of India embedded within elite and mainstream nation
alism. Thus, if colonial heritage was a key element that structured this effort,
the need to examine how modernity and modernisation (in the context of nation
building) were organising the changes occurring within the institutions of family,
caste, kinship and religion fuelled its energy (Patel, 201 la).
But how was this sociology defined and identified? Very early in his career,
M. N. Srinivas argued that there was no distinction between sociology and social
anthropology, rather he suggested, there needs to be a distinction between sociol
ogy/social anthropology and anthropology. The latter should deal with physical
anthropology and ethnology and study the primitives and the former should use
functionalist perspective to study castes as jatis. This approach found acceptance
by the growing sociological community as many of those trained in Bombay
found careers in Delhi, Pune, Mysore and Bangalore and in context of Delhi
University becoming the key centre for sociological thinking. Of the many alter
natives that the discipline inherited from its early 20th century experiences, what
was ultimately institutionalised as a standard and uniform language to examine
and assess social change in modern India was the perspective provided by M. N.
Srinivas. In this form the episteme of colonial modernity was not displaced, rather
it found a new vibrancy in Srinivas' perspective as it became a standard variant.
Srinivas' sociology/social anthropology was constituted as a modern discipline,
though it studied the 'social' not in its modern variant: it continued the earlier eth
nographic approach of studying 'communities' now as segmented groups of jatis/
castes. Its modern orientation however was reaffirmed because it promoted the
'field view' (empirical investigations) against the 'book view' (Indology) which
was associated with colonialism. And because it was indigenous in so far as it
introduced participant observation as an 'insider's perspective' of doing sociol
ogy, it also affirmed a nationalist position. Lastly, it remained closely aligned to
elite nationalist visions of society and therefore found resonance with the new
ruling groups managing the nation-state.
The key leadership role that Srinivas and his colleagues at the Department of
Sociology of University of Delhi took in the various institutions mentioned above
also legitimised the universalisation of his sociological vision, with other posi
tions such as that practiced by sociologists from Lucknow, of Marxist sociology
by A. R. Desai and structural functionalism by Y. B. Damle being pushed in the
margins. The diversity of perspectives that was the feature of the colonial period
was now substituted by a master narrative. Social anthropology of Srinivasian
perspective was designed to represent the language of sociology (Patel, 201 lc).
As a consequence, the episteme of colonial modernity translated itself within
the discipline of sociology to conceive the nation consists of discrete groups,
called castes and that its diverse manifestations are the nation's signature and that
economic development and planning will help to reframe the social and cultural
into modern India. Those that were not castes, such as tribes (both in Central
India and the Northeast) and the minorities were relegated to being backward
and/or undeveloped. Henceforth the hegem

ruling groups and their practices and dispositi
science thereby not only silencing the recogn
also advocating its virtual disappearance in
after independence. If one attribute of inequal
state, it was that of income and was related
coincidence thus to note that the sociological
ical moorings of this project imbricated as th
metropolitan advanced capitalism and its em
accumulation on a world scale. It took for gr
courses, agendas, loyalties and histories witho
methodological nationalism made possible t
state's boundaries and made these natural bou
fought for by its people. Thus, social scienc
gendered elite visions of the nation imbrica
these as a lens to understand groups articulatin
This orientation stamped the extensive pro
India after independence. This literature was
tions, of universities, research institutes and f
the state as it expanded the system of highe
functional relationship between Indian acad
cation and by extension between the project
upper class and savarna conceptions of nati
in India was a culture of professionalisation
logical knowledge to the state's policy orient
social sciences developed through a reflecti
its professionalisation was related to the latt
Lastly, this nationalist perspective legitim
zens do research, they are rid of the colonia
and that nationalist regulations will constrai
production. However, Eurocentrism is not o
organise the production, distribution, cons
edge unequally across the different parts o
Alatas (1972) and the African philosophe
these as the 'captive mind' and 'extraversion
respectively. They argue that the syndrom
can be seen in the teaching and learning pro
syllabi is framed; in the processes of researc
and in the methods and methodologies being
adopted for accepting articles for journals a
what and where one publishes and what is
here is that the trenches of this episteme ar
cannot be merely replaced through cognitiv
methods, which was what the best nationali
In what ways did sociologists in India reac
1970s and early 1980s it was clear (at least to
Patel 139
was caught into problems). For many, this problem was related to the methodol
ogy being used: that of participant observation. Saberwal (1983) was one of the
first to criticise the sole reliance on participant observation to study social change
in India. The latter does not allow, he argued, its user to present a theoretically
and methodologically challenged perspective to assess and examine the complex
processes of conflict and consensus at work in India. The discipline needed a lan
guage that can study the complex macro interfaces between groups and processes
which often were in a relationship of involution. Oommen (2007[1983]) continued
this argument by highlighting how the unit of analysis is critical in understand
ing contemporary modern processes. It is possible to examine family, caste and
kinship through small units of study. But this is not so in the case of critical issues
of contemporary salience, such as the impact of partition on the Indian nation, or
the question why untouchability continues to be practiced in contemporary India.
The same argument was reiterated by Dhanagare (1980, p. 25), who added to this
debate, by pointing his criticism to the functionalist theory, which he argued could
not assess conflicts and contestations that are becoming part of the Indian experi
ence of modernity. Sociology, he argued, needs to be understood as social criti
cism. If historical analysis is used to assess the changes then sociologists would be
able to grasp the interrelationship between macro and micro processes.
For Saberwal (1983), the problem was also related to the way the method of
participant observation was conceptualised and institutionalised across depart
ments, within the teaching and learning processes. With non-trained teachers as
interlocutions of the teaching process, increasingly description rather than analy
sis dominated the teaching of this method. This pattern got inflated with simulta
neous expansion of departments. In the 1950s, he stated, an idea gained currency,
that modernity can be organised through the expansion of universities rather than
first creating a group of professionals that can understand the strengths and weak
nesses of the perspectives and methodologies being used, which would then trans
mit these in professional ways. To Saberwal the problem thus relates to the Indian
notions of modernity.
Thus the expansion of universities bred its own contradictions, such as above.
The latter were reinforced due to disparity in accessing physical and human
resources, differential structures of academic autonomy, these being dependent on
the university's legal character: that of it being a state or a central university. Thus,
the central universities were better funded, more autonomous and had a 'national
character'. State universities needed to project a regional identity, had less funding
and low staff strength. This process became more complicated with further expan
sion of state universities and the growth of a new state elite demanding that state
universities teach the language spoken in the region. Unfortunately, there was
little to no intellectual investment to create a vocabulary of social sciences in
these regional languages. In these circumstances, this demand further impinged
on the quality of the learning process and implicated what gets taught and what is
researched. Thus, the problem confronting the discipline was not merely that of
its own language but also of the limitations inherent within the modern institu
tional structures that sustained its practices. Increasingly, the sociologist/ethnog
rapher-teacher within departments encouraged doctoral students to use 'insider'
descriptive perspectives to generate m

community'. Overtime, learning of
(Saberwal, 1983, p. 308). If sociology in In
field, it was also producing a large mass
thus teachers/researchers.
Towards a Conclusion
What has been the legacy of these trends? Currently, we can note three tend
First there is a new energy among a small group of sociologists in India to
earlier themes, such as marriage, family, caste and religion and reframe t
novel ways such as through the theoretical lens of intersectionality, exc
distinctions, identities and queer positions; engage with new perspectives
those framed by Pierre Bourdieu, Ulrich Beck or John Urry, and refram
recent ones, such as Marxism, Weberian sociology and feminism; concep
new areas of interdisciplinary investigation such as popular cultural
northeast studies, partition studies, violence studies, media and film stud
ality studies and reframe earlier ones such as urban studies, environmental
science and technology studies, Dalit studies, tribal and Adivasi studies,
new methodologies such as grounded theory and triangulation and/or co
historical and ethnographical methods to do research and study. Theoret
these sociologists have moved away from the debate of the indigenous,
they have embraced global theoretical perspectives.
Their sociological gaze is now towards the present. Their focus is on id
ing and interrogating the contemporary processes that are organising soci
and creating new groups. They wish to excavate the linkages between th
and the present of inequalities and exclusions. They assert a need to evalua
programmes and policies and assess how these are disorganising lives
placing the cultural moorings of individual and group identities. In sum, th
to unravel the complex and contradictory processes structuring current p
of modernity in India.
As a consequence, a new litany of concepts and theories are being arti
as old ones are being re-calibrated to examine and comprehend how cont
rary social imaginaries are being constituted. Today's sociologists are
ing subaltern voices and allowing these to help them reorganise their kno
This recognition has also helped in creating distanciation from earlier elite
promoted in the 1960s and the 1970s. No wonder slowly and steadily, the
assumptions associated with the epistemes of colonial modernity and me
logical nationalism are being chipped away. There is now a new affirmat
frame a sociological language that can assess the organic relationship bet
formal/institutional and non-formal forms of organisation of the 'social'.
Second, notwithstanding the fact that contemporary sociological discus
India have moved away from framing research in terms of the binaries o
ties: modern and traditional; disciplines: anthropology and sociology; the
indigenous versus western; methodologies: ethnography versus survey a
qualitative versus quantitative research, the geographical compass of res
Patel 141
and discussion has remained focused on the local and regional and on examin
ing cases or case studies defined by administrative boundaries: village, districts,
wards, towns and cities.
Though India is a vast country having diverse processes and uneven patterns
of sociability, the methodological tools that sociologists have used rarely allowed
them to compare these diversities in local and regional processes in various parts
of the country or give them the tools to assess similarities and differences between
regions. Thus, it will be no surprise to note that it is rare to find sociologists com
paring processes and attributes across nation-states. At this juncture, it is impor
tant to recall Satish Saberwal's queries mentioned earlier: he asked, how do we
examine the intersection of the micro, meso and the macro to assess the causes
and consequences of contemporary sociabilities?
The continued methodological dependence on using cases and focusing on
administrative sites as a locale of constituting sociabilities raises two issues: first,
with contemporary processes creating new geographies under what conditions
can we still use the case study method as it was fashioned in the 20th century?
Then, cases were used to generalise for the regional and national. It is imperative
that we ask whether it is still possible to use this approach today. If not, how do
we rethink case studies methodology in order to make them comparative and to
represent other/larger scales? Second, it is critical that we ask why we continue
to use administrative boundaries as sites for doing sociological work. If adminis
trative boundaries represent political projects should sociologists be using them
to understand the social space? Why are they reducing the social to a space of
power? Given that these methods are associated with the epistemes of colonial
modernity and methodological nationalism, it becomes extremely crucial that we
initiate a discussion on these issues.
We need to recognise that since the late 1970s and particularly after the 1990s,
the dynamics of the world have changed; the nation can no longer be equated to
the nation-state and be recognised and evaluated through the prism of the global.
At one level, the world has contracted. It has opened up possibilities of diverse
kinds of transborder flows and movements, of capital and labour and of signs
and symbols, organised oftentimes in intersecting spatial circuits. However, even
though we all live in one global capitalist world with a dominant form of moder
nity, inequalities and hierarchies are increasing and so are fragmented identities.
Lack of access to livelihoods, infrastructure and political citizenship across the
world now blends with exclusions relating to cultural and group identity and are
organised in local and/or regional spatial and temporal zones. Many sociologists
are wondering whether we need to search for a new framework that moves beyond
the 19th and the early 20th century social science language and addresses the new
challenges posed by contemporary processes and its new geographies. These trends
need a global conversation. Are we ready and we initiated such conversations?
Third, the above two points indicate a renewed energy among some sociolo
gists to self-reflect, to assess the reasons for the uneasiness regarding its future,
to comprehend the subject's contemporary angst, all of which is directing a small
group to ask new questions about their own language. But what about the others?
The larger community? The question we need to address today is the following:
are sociologists as a group and as a comm

their subject and their discipline? Do we
common vision regarding our profess
today there is no consensus on what sho
and what should be the theoretical and
research? Not only is there no consensus
to debate these issues. It makes me wond
our thought and in our goals. Are we co
ing standards of professionalism that ab
interpersonal respect and civility among
There is a deep divide in our communi
hierarchical and in my opinion has a neg
On one hand there is a small elite (ment
language of global professional culture a
through their use of English language a
tioners, who are locally and regionally n
promote a sociology that uses descriptive
case study methods and whose sociologic
cal perspective of the subject. This divid
of learning the subject, one that promot
science, which is held out as typical for
the second the popularisation of anothe
tion' of scientific and professional pract
fessionalism with little to no connect wi
the vernaculars of the region. And becau
second group this has an impact on the e
To be sure, there are structural reason
the late 1980s, the nation-state's unders
institutions in the country's growth ha
tion was part of the development goal of
economic service to be consumed by ind
in terms of the immediate economic be
and the state. These notions together wi
and the Centre has created the conditio
structure. These changes have affected
that the contemporary positions do see a
Consequently, there has been uneven gr
investment in education by the private s
traditional universities and within them
change in state's orientation towards hig
a liberal understanding of what is the un
cal thinking. This was the heritage of th
heritage of nationalist culture is slowly
one should speak, when we should do so
the 1980s, sociologists inaugurated a deb
again analyse the moorings of the presen
Patel 143
Should the growing censorship on what we need to write about, the decrease
in human resources, decay in physical infrastructure and decline in financial
support for research and for upgradation of knowledge tools become incentives to
challenge policies of the state so that we reconvene as a community and re-energise
our professional culture? I think that moment has arrived once again where the
community of sociologists need to reflect on how they should go forward. And
when we do so let us remember that sociology as a subject was established
and institutionalised to study the problems faced by those who were exploited and
those who are poor. Its legacy is to use scientific practices to promote a critique
of those in power and its repertoire of theories and practices comprehends and
understand the complex processes that subject people to the mechanisations of those
who are dominant. This is the reason why sociology is and remains a modern social
science.
In this presentation, I have tried to show that sociological traditions in India
had a different heritage. The heritage of the epistemes of colonial modernity and
methodological nationalism entangled our scientific practices and professional
culture in non-modern practices and legitimised traditionalist perceptions and
practices. We constantly looked at the past to define the present. Today more than
ever, we need to look at the future to understand the limitations of the present. Can
we as a community take this challenge?
I leave you to answer this question.
Note
1. Presidential Address in 42nd All India Sociological Conference held at Tezpu

University, Tezpur, Assam on 27 December 2016. The final version of the Presidenti
Address was received on 15 January 2017.
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Colonial Modernity and Methodological Nationalism: The Structuring of Sociological

1 Professor of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.

I consider it a privilege to stand before y

It also suggests that notwithstanding som

The Discourse of Colonial Modernity

Anthropology was the first discipline or knowledge system to be established

this theme. Eurocentrism presented a historical argument on the relationship of

[MJodernity is, in fact, an European phenomena, but one constituted in a dialectical

Second, this episteme now termed 'categorical imperative' (a la Kant), simultane

a theory of the separate and divided nature

If one understands Europe's modernity—a lo

Third, as mentioned earlier, Eurocentric kno

These seminal assumptions were embodied in the framing of the disciplines of

the study of non-European (and non-Western) traditional societies. Thus, sociolo

The Constitution of Anthropology in India

that were shaped by political straggles and

In this period samaj (society, community) came to be counterpoised to rashtra or

Obviously racial constructions of 'difference' found a new legitimacy within a

in the post-1950s period. This was because o

Methodological Nationalism and the Formation of

The second strand, following the point not

project allowed for the institutionalisation of a particularistic problematique—an

and/or undeveloped. Henceforth the hegem

descriptive perspectives to generate m

are sociologists as a group and as a comm

1. Presidential Address in 42nd All India Sociological Conference held at Tezpu

Alatas, S. H. (1972). The captive mind in development studies. International Soc

Cohn, B. S. (1997). Colonialism and its forms o

Hountondji, P. (1997). Introduction. In P. Hountondji (Ed.), Endogenous knowled

University Grants Commission (UGC). (2001). Report of curriculum development commit

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