CHAPTER -IV

VALUE DISCOURSES IN THE STUDY OF INDIAN SOCIOLOGY

PART -I

4. The Indian values could be analyzed from the pre-sociological and sociological

works carried out in India. Attempts were made in the previous chapter to contextualize

the study on theoretical perspective. Which will provide an analytical understanding on

values and their propagat{)fs both in Western and Indian sociological analysis. This

chapter is an attempt to discourse and systematically elaborate the key ideas of some

selected Indian 'Sociologists with special reference to values. Beginning with 'historical

accounts on Indus civilization which is a complex and oldest civilization ever

flourished in Indian subcontinent, especially where it's social life and 'cultural tradition

is concerned. It has a history extending over thousands of years that shaped Indian

values through the ages. It is interesting to note that, like most of other civilizations the

Indus valley civilization is also believed to be raised near the river Indus. The rise of

civilization near river valleys signify that, human species 'since the very beginning

bound by certain values. Here the geographical conditions were favourable to the

development of civilizations. And these values has been guided and influenced by so

many factors that have briefly been discussed in chapter- II. Among the various factors

it is the physical, biological and social are very prominent that influence human values.

However, the Indus civilization is not the oldest civilization. As its existence was

revealed only in 1920s. Evidences of this civilization and its remains were found in

Baluchistan, Sind, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Western Uttar Pradesh. For

the sociological analysis of the values in the context of civilization, sociologists haye

borrowed these historical accounts from the historians and identified the values

associated with the people of different civilizations.

Value analysis with reference to Indus valley civilization can be carried out

keeping in view the historical accounts. For example the discovery of major cites at

Harappa and Mohenjodaro reflects the remains of well furnished road, house

constructed with burnt bricks have gives the existence of the values of advanced culture

and technology used during those days. The discovery of great bath and granary signify

the existence of the value of community life. The remains of granary also reflect that

people of Mohenjodaro valued agriculture as occupation. Simultaneously, there were

another group who were known as the Dravidians and formed another stage of the

social development in ancient India. They possess their own values and social life. The

arrival of Aryans was a great event in the Indian history and civilization. Their earliest

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culture and social values were mentioned in Rigveda. Gradually the Aryans were

settled and began their life. "In the process of diffusion, centuries old confrontation and

contact with the indigenous people, the Aryan way of life under went major changes. It

imbibed new values and assimilated a great deal of the animistic, ritua.Jistic, and

magical beliefs and practices of the non-Aryan tribes." (D.R. latava: 1987: 14) There

are so many examples from where the social values associated with the people could be

systematically elaborated. Similar way, the historians have found varieties of values

that were associated with the people of ancient, medieval and modern times.

In the study of 'Sociology as a subject cannQt complete its perfectiQn without

having knowledge about anthropology. Hence, some of the anthropological writings

cannot be ignored while analyzing values. Because of this c1Qse affinity between

sociology, and anthropology, there rise the separate subject of study became popular

and known as social anthropology. Like anthropology there are SQ many other branches

of social 'Sciences which help to bring the close affinity between sociology and other

social science subjects that mentioned in the above list. However, this chapter will

primarily be dealing with how some of the pioneer Indian sociologists have studied

values by giving value preferences and value orientation both in their research and

teaching subjects. Hence, the works of scholars and sociologists like Ananda K.

Coomarswamy, Radhakamal Mukerjee, G.S. Ghurye, A.K. Saran, N.K. Bose, D.~

Majumdar, T. N. Madan, D. P. Mukelji, Ramkrishna Mukheljee, M.N. Srinivas,

Yogendra Singh, Andre Beteille and T. K. Oommen have been discussed in this study.

4.1. Ananda Kcntish Coomaraswamy (1877-1947)

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy was a noted art historian, champion of Ceylonese and

Indian culture and an Orientalist. He born in Colombo and graduated from the

University of London with Honours in Geology. During his three year's stay as a

Director of the Mineralogical Survey of Ceylone, He formed the Ceylone Social

Reformation Society and led the University Movement in which he initiated national

education, teaching of vernaculars in all schools and revival of Indian culture. He was

also the Curator of Indian Art in the Boston and has given many numbers of lectures on

Indian art and formed societies for the study art. In the year 1938, he became the

Chairman of National Committee for India's Freedom. His contribution on Indian

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Philosophy, religion, art, and iconography, painting and, literature are of greatest

importance as were his contributions on music, science and Islamic art. However, most

part of his life he has devoted to the study of traditional Cey.1onese and Indian arts and

crafts, the cataloging of Indian art collections, and research on Indian art, religion,

metaphysics, and culture. He passes away in the year 1947.

4.1.1. Values: Religion and Philosophy of Life

According to Coomaraswamy the Hindus grasped more firmly than others the

fundamental meaning and purpose of life, and mote deliberately than others,organized . I .

society with a view to the attainment of the fruit of life; and this organization was

designed, not for the advantage of a single class, but, to his capacity, and to give .to

each according to his needs. He states in this context, "how far the rishis succeeded in

this aim may be a matter of opinion. We must not. judge of Indian society, especially

Indian society in its present moment of decay, as if actually realized the Brahminical

social ideas; yet even with all its imperfections Hindu society as it survives will appear

to many to be superior to any form of social organisation attained on a large scale

anywhere else, and infinitely superior to the social order which we know as "modern

civilization."(Ananda K. Coomaraswamy: 1970: 22)

In the context of philosophy of life, he says Indian mind differs most from the

average mind of modern Europe in its view of the value of philosophy. "In Europe and

America the study ofphilosophy is regarded as an end in itself, and as such it seems of

but little importance to the ordinary man. In India, on the contrary, philosophy is not

regarded primarily as a mental gymnastic, but rather, and with deep religious

conviction, as our salvation (moksha) from the ignorance (avidya) which for ever hides

from our eyes the vision of reality. Philosophy is the key to the map of life and the

means of attaining its goal. It is no wonder, then, that the Indians have pursued the

study of philosophy with enthusiasm, for these are matters that concern all." (Ibid: 23)

According to him the Western sociologist is apt to say that, the teachings of

religion and philosophy mayor may not be true, but in any case they have no

significance for the practical reformer. "The Brahmans, on the contrary, considered all

activity not directed in accordance with a consistent theory of the meaning and purpose

of life as supFemely unpractical." (Ibid)

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Indian philosophy is essentially the creation of the two upper classes of society, the

Brahmans and the Kshatriyas. The Brahmans possessed not merely the genius for

organization, but also the power to enforce their will upon others. The secret of their

power is manifold; but it is above all in the nature of their appointed dharma, of study,

teaching, and renunciation. (Ibid: 24) Referring the value of life in Buddhism,

Coomaraswamy says "Buddhist doctrine is a med!_cine solely directed to save the . ' ......

individual from burning, not in a future hell, but in the present fire of his own thirst. It

assumes that to escape from the eternal recurrence is not merely the summum bonum,

but the whole purpose of life; he is the wisest who devotes himself to the enlightenment

of others." (Ibid: 25) The Brahman value of life which is also considered as the religion

and philosophy in India have already indicated that this science recognizes the unity of

all life-one source, one essence, and one goal-and regards the realization of this unity as

the highest good, bliss, salvation, freedom, the final purpose of life. This is for Hindu

thinkers eternal life; not an eternity in time, but the recognition here and now of All

Things in the Self and the Self in all. This inseparable unity of the material and spiritual

world is made the foundation of the Indian culture, and determines the whole character

of her social ideals.

Coomaraswamy says that "the religion of men on the outward path is the

Religion of Time; the religion of those who returns is the Religion of Eternity. If we

consider life as one whole certainly Self-realization must be regarded as its essential

purpose from the beginning; all our forgetting is but that we may remember the more

vividly." (Ibid: 28) In fact, he explained, Brahmans prefer the three qualities of sattva,

rajas, and tamas. Brahman sociology, because of its philosophical basis adopting the

theory of sva-dharama, the "own-morality" appropriate to the individual according to

his social and spiritual status, and the doctrine of the many forms ofIsvara, which is so

clumsily interpreted by the missionaries as polytheistic. However, they held Self-

realization to be the end of life and saw very clearly that it would be illogical to impose

this aim upon those members of the community who are not yet weary of self-assertion.

Coomaraswamy says that, "the Brahman sociologists were firmly convinced

that in an ideal society, i.e., a society designed deliberately by man for the fulfillment

of his own purpose (purushartha)." (Ibid: 33) To describe the caste system in actual

practice he notices a few of its characters. "The nature of the difference between a

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Brahman and a Shudra is indicated in the view that a Shudra can do no wrong, a view

that must make an immense demand upon the patience of the higher castes, and is the

absolute converse of the Western doctrine that the king can do no wrong. These facts

are well illustrated in the doctrine of legal punishment, that that of the Vaishya should

be twice as heavy as that of the shudra, that of the Brahman twice or even four times as

heavy again in respect of the same offence; for responsibility rises with intelligence and

status. The Sh~dra is also free of innumerable fonns of self-denial imposed upon the

Brahman; he may, for example, indulge in coarse food, the widow may re-marry. It .... ~ may be observed that it was strongly held that the Shudra should not by any means

outnumber the other castes; if the Shudras are too many, as befell in ancient Greece,

where the slaves outnumbered the freeman, the voic·e of the least wise may prevail by

mere weight of numbers." (ibid: 33-34)

Coomaraswamy suggested that India has nothing of more value to offer to the

world than her religious philosophy, and her faith in the application of philosophy to

social problems. (Also see Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, 2001. Time and Eternity, New

Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd)

4.1.2. Values: Dance of Shiv a

Referring the dance of Shiva Coomaraswamy said that dancing came into being at the

beginning of all things, and was brought to light together with Eros, that ancient one,

for we see this primeval dancing clearly set forth in. the choral dance of the

constellations, and in the plantes and fixed stars, their interweaving and interchange and

orderly harmony.

He does mean to mean to say that the most profound interpretation of Shiva· s

dance was present in the minds of those who first danced in frantic, and perhaps

intoxica.ted energy, in honour of the pre-Aryan hill-god afterwards merged in Shiva. He

pointed out that, a great motive in teligion or alt, any great symbol, becomes all things

to all men age after age and it yields such treasure as they find in their own hearts.

Whatever the origins of Shiva's dance, it became in time the clearest image of the " activity of God which any art or religion can boast of. Among the various dances of

Shiva, Coomaraswamy spoke about only three of them. The first is an evening dance in

the Himalayas, with a divine chorus, described as follows in the Shiva Pradosha Stotra.

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(Ibid: 83-84) Placing the Mother of the Three Worlds upon a golden throne, studded

with precious gems, Shulapani dances on the heights ofKailasa, and all the gods gather

round Him. He also referred to that Sarasvati plays on the· vina, Indra on the flute,

Brahma holds the time marking cymbals, Lakshmi begins a song, Vishnu plays on a

drum, and all the gods stand round about: "Gandharvas, Yakshas, Patagas, Uragas,

Siddhas, Sadhyas, Vidyadharas, Amaras, Apsarases, and al the beings dwelling in the

three worlds assemble there to witness the celestial dance- and hear the music of the

divine choir at the hour of twilight." (Ibid: 84) This evening dance is also referred to in

the invocation preceding the Katha Sarit Sagara.

The second well known dance of Shiva is called the Tandava, and belongs to

His tamasic aspect as Bhairava or Vira-bhadra. It is performed in cemeteries and

burning grounds, where Shiva, usually in ten-armed form, dances wildly with Devi,

accompanied by troops of capering imps. "Representations of this dance are common

amongst ancient sculptures, as at Elura, Elephanta, and also bhuvaneshvara." (Ibid: 85)

Coomarswamy explained the mythological significance of the origin of dance of Shiva.

It was believed that, in the forest of Taragram dwelt multitudes of heretical rishis,

foHowing of the Mimamsa. Thither proceeded Shiva to confute them, accompanied by

Vishnu disguised as a beautiful woman, and Ati-Sheshan. The rishis were at first led to

violent dispute amongst themselves, but their anger was soon directed against Shiva,

and they endeavoured to destroy Him by means of incantations. A fierce tiger was

created in sacrificial fires, and rushed upon Him; but smiling gently, He seized it and,

with the nail of His little finger, stripped off its skin, and wrapped it about Himself like

a silken cloth. Undiscouraged by failure, the sages renewed their offering, and

produced a monstrous serpent, which however, Shiva seized and wreathed about His

neck like a garland. Then He began to dance; but there rushed upon Him a last monster

in the shape of a malignant dwarf, muyalaka. Upon him the God pressed the tip of His

foot, and broke the creature's back so that it writhed upon the ground; and so, His last

foe prostrate, Shiva resumed the dance, witnessed by gods and rishis. (Ibid: 85)

However, there is some inherent meaning and values lies with the dance. "The

dance, in fact, represents His five activities (Pancakritrya), viz: shrishti (overlooking,

creation, evolution), Sthiti (preservation, support), samhara (destruction, evolution),

Tirobhava (veiling, emboidiment, illusion, and also, giving rest), Anugraha (release,

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salvation, grace). These, separately considered, are the activities of the deities Brahma,

Vishnu, Rudra, Maheshvara and Sadashiva." (Ibid: 87)

4.1.3. Values: Song and Music

Indian music is a purely melodic art, devoid of any harmonised accompaniment other

than a drone. According to Coomaraswamy song and music has been a cultivated art in

India for at least three thousand years. The chant is an essential element of Vedic ritual; ,.

and the references in later Vedic literature, the scriptures of Buddhism, and the

Brahmanical epics show that it was already highly developed as a secular art in

centuries preceding the beginning of the Christian era. He has pointed out that the art

music of India exists only under cultivated patronage, and in its own intimate

environment. He has further explained that, "it is the chamber-music of an aristocratic

society, where the patron retains musicians for his own entertainment and for the

pleasure of the -circle of his friends: or it is temple music, where the musician is the

servant of God." (Ibid: 103)

Coomaraswamy has viewed that, the Indian Music is not written; hence it

cannot be learnt from books. But it continues to survive through the special relationship

of disciples with their teachers in its different periods of transformation. The theory of

scale is everywhere a generalization from the facts of song. "The scale of twenty two

notes is simply the sum of all the notes used in all the songs-no musician sings a

chromatic scale from C to C with twenty two stopping places, for this would be a mere

tour de force." (Ibid: 105) The 'quarter-tone' or shruti is the microtonal interyal

between two successive scale notes: but as the theme rarely employees two and never

two and never three scale notes in succession, the microtonal interval is not generally

conspicuous except in ornament.

Coomaraswamy has pointed out that, every Indian song is said to be in a

particular raga or ragini- ragini being the feminine of raga, and indicating an

abridgement or modification of the main theme. The raga, like the old Greek and the

ecclesiastical mode, is a selection of five, six, or seven notes, distributed along the

scale. But the raga is more particularized than a mode, for it has certain characteristic

progressions, and a chief note to which the singer constantly returns. The possible

number of ragas is very large, but the majority of systems recognize thirty-six, that is to

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say six ragas, each with five raginis. The origin of the ragas is various: some, like

Pahari, are derived from local folk-song, others, like Jog, from the songs of wandering

ascetics, and still others are the creation of great musicians by whose names they are

known. More than sixty are mentioned in a Sanskrit-Tibetan vocabulary of the seventh

century, with names such as 'With-a-voice-1ike-a~thunder-c1oud,' 'Like the god-Indra,"

and 'Delighting-the-heart.' Amongst the raga names in modern use may be cited

'Spring,' Evening beauty,' 'Honey-flower,' 'The swing,' 'Intoxication'(Ibid:l07).

The Indian art-song is accompanied by drums, or by the instrument known as a

tambura, or by both. The tambura is of the lute tribe, but without frets: the four very

long strings are tuned to sound the dominant, the upper tonic twice, and the octave

below, which are common to rill ragas: the pitch is adjusted to suit the singer's voice.

The four strings are fitted with simple resonators-shreds of wool between the string

and the bridge-which are the source of their 'life': and the strings are continuously

sounded, making a pedal point background very rich in overtones, and againstthis dark

ground of infinite potentiality the song stands out like an elaborate embroider. He

further said that, "India has, besides the tambura, many solo instruments. By far the

most important of these in the vina. The Indian singer is a poet, and the poet a singer.

The dominant subject matter of the songs is human or divine love in all its aspects, or

the direct praise of God, and the words are always sincere and passionate." (Ibid: 115)

4.1.4. Values: Status ofIndian Women

While talking associated values of Indian woman Coomaraswamy referred to the duties

of woman are created in the rites of weddings, in the presence of the nuptial fire. She

becomes the associate of her Lord, for the performance of all righteous deeds. "She

should be beautiful and gentle, considering her husband as her god and serving him as

such in fortune and misfortune, health and sickness, obedient even if commanded to

unrighteous deeds or acts that may lead to her own destruction. She should rise early.

serving the gods, always keeping her house clean, tending to the domestic sacred fire.

eating only after the needs of gods and guests and servants have been satisfied, devoted

to her father and mother and the father and mother of her husband. Devotion to her

Lord is woman's honour, it is her eternal heave: and 0 Maheshvara." (Ibid: 115-116)

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"Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities.

a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife .... .If a wife obeys

her husband, she will for that reason alone be exalted in heaven. The production of

children, the nurture of those born, and the daily life of men, of these matters woman is

visibly the cause. She who <:ontrolling her thoughts, speech and acts, violates not her

duty to her Lord, dwells with him after death in heaven, and in, this world is called by

the virtuous a faithful wife." (Ibid: 116) According to Coomaraswamy, if such are the,

duties of women, women are accorded corresponding honour, and exert a

corresponding influence upon society. When Rama accepted Kaikeyi's decree of .. banishment, it was because 'a mother should be as much regarded by a son as is a

father.' Even at the present day it would be impossible to over-emphasize the influence

of Indian mothers not only upon their children and in all household affairs, but upon

their grown-up sons to whom their word is law. (Ibid: 117) Coomaraswamy has pointed

out that, "It is according to the Tantric scriptures, devoted to the cult of. the Mother of

the World, that woman, who paltake of her. nature more essentially than other living

beings, are ,espedally honoured; here the woman may be a spiritual teacher (guru), and

the initiation of a son by a mother is more fruitful than any other." (Ibid: 118)

Referring the status of woman he says, "The claim of the Buddhist nun-'How

should the woman's nature hinder us?' -has never been systematically denied in India, It

would have been contrary to the spirit of Indian culture to deny to individu~l woman

,the opportunity of saints hip or learning in the sense of closing to them the schools of

divinity or science after the fashion of the Western academies in the nineteenth century,

But where the social norm is found in marriage and parenthood for men and women

alike, it could only have been in exceptional cases and under exceptional oircumstance

that the latter specialised, whether in divinity, like Auvvai, Mira Bai, or the Buddhist

nuns, in science, like Lilavati, or in war, like Chand Bibi or the Rani of lhansi." (Ibid:

20) Coomaraswarny found that a majority of Indian woman have always preferred

marriage and motherhood to socially approved conditions. "What we have to observe is

that Hindu sociologist have always regarded these specializations as more or less

incompatible with wifehood and motherhood; life is not long enough for the

achievement of many different things." (Ibid: 119) He has pointed out that, "in the

words of Manu: 'To be mothers were women created, and to be fathers men;' and he

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added significantly 'therefore are religious sacraments ordained in the Veda to be

observed by the husband together with the wife." (Ibid: 20)

He argued that for Hindu sociologists marriage IS a social and ethical

relationship, and the begetting of children the payment of a debt, Romantic love is a

brief experience of timeless freedom, essentially religious and ecstatic, in itself as

purely antisocial as every glimpse of Union is a <tenial of the Relative; it is the way of

Mary. "And woman represents the continuity of the racial life, an energy which cannot

be divided or diverted without a corresponding loss of racial vitality; she can no more

desire to be something other than herself, than the Vaishya could wish to be known as a

Kshatriya or as a Brahman." (Ibid: 123-124) He has also referred to the practice of the

Sati in India. "The root meaning of the word is -essential being, and we have so far

taken it only in the wide sense. But she who refuses to live when her husband is dead is

called Sati in a more special sense, and it is only so that the word (suttee) is well known

to Europeans." (Ibid: 126) Indeed he states that for some reason it has come to be

believed that Sati is a man made institution imposed on woman by men for reasons of

their own, that it is associated with feminine servility, and that it is peculiar to India.

Addressing the western critics which asserted that the Oriental woman is a slave, he

replies that we do not identify freedom with self-assertion, and the Oriental woman is

what she is, only because our social and religious culture has permitted her to be and to

remain essentially feminine. The Eastern woman is not, at least superior to other

woman in her innermost nature. According Coomaraswamy she is perhaps an older,

purer and more specialised type, but certainly a universal type and it is precisely here

that the industrial woman departs from the type that we' have discussed. "Savitri,

Padmavati, Sita, Radha, Uma, Lilavati, Tara our divine and human heroines-have a

universal fellowship, for everything feminine is ofthe mother." (Ibid: 130)

4.1.5. Description about the History of Indian Art, Culture and Nationalism

His contribution covers a broad spectrum of Coomaraswamy's work in the fields of a11

history, philosophy, religion, and social criticism. His Book Essays in Idealism (1981)

concern with the wider range of subjects including the deeper meanillg of the struggle,

Indian nationalism, Indian art, art in relation to Yoga, Influence of modern European

and Greek art on Indian art, education in India, Christian missions in India, swadeshi

and Indian music etc. He says Indian Nationalism is essentially concerned upon the fate 168

of India as a nation depends. Our struggle is a wider one, the conflict between the ideals

of Imperialism and the ideals of Nationalism. Nationalism is inseparable from the idea

of internationalism. (For more details see Ananda K. Coomaraswamy: 1981: 02)

According to Coomaraswamy, art in India' and 'art' in the modern world mean two

very different things. His book Introduction to Indian Art (.1966) deals with the

historical aspects of development of arts and culture in India. Indian art has always an

intelligible meaning and a definite purpose. An 'art for art's sake', a 'fine' or useless

art, if it could have been imagined, would only have been regarded as a monstrous

product of human vanity. He has viewed that art in India is the statement of a racial

experience, and serves the purposes of life, like daily bread. Looking at the historical

perspectives of arts Coomaraswamy stated that, "the chalco lithic culture was

everywhere characterized by matriarchy and a cult of the productive powers of nature,

and of a mother goddess; and by a great development of design. An early culture of this

kind once extended from the Mediterranean to the Ganges valleys, and the whole of the

Ancient East has behind it this common heritance." (Anand K. Coomaraswamy: 1966:

01-02) By studying the antiquities found in Indus valley he has tried to establish the

possible relations of Sumerians of Mesopotamia and arrival of Aryans and reflected

about the civilizational values. According to him, "painted pottery analogous to the

prehistoric pottery of Baluchistan is abundant; it may be remarked that in Baluchistan

there survives an isolated Dravidian language, Brahui, which had long been regarded as

a possible island, connecting Dravidian India with the West." (Ibid: 02)

Coomaraswamy says Vedic Art was essentially practical and its Aesthetic

consisted w,ith the appreciation of skill. Explaining the Dravidian and Aryan

relationship he argued that before the second millennium B.c. the Dravidians, whether

of Western origin, or as seems quite probable, of direct Neolithic descent on Indian

soil, had come to form the bulk of population thinly scattered throughout India. He has

also focuses on the antagonistic relations between these two races Dravidian and

Aryans. He further explains that, "the early history of the Dravidians in the Deccan and

Southern India is obscure. It is fairly evident that in these areas Dravidian culture had

already attained a high level, economic, martial and literary, in centuries preceding the

Christian era. (Ibid: 06) Dravidians are probably due the forms of architecture based on

bamboo construction; the architecture of the Toda hut has been cited as a prototype and

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looks like horse-shoe arch. The curved roofs common in India, are rare in the world.

The stone slab construction of many early temples is like wise of Dravidian (dolemen)

origin. He also stated that the early maritime trade and all that has to do with fishing are

of an early Dravidian contribution. The Aryans, whose origin is uncertain appear to

have entered India between 2000 and 1500 B.C. through Afghanistan and the Hindu

Kush, and settled at first in the upper Indus valley, later in the upper Ganges valley,

later reached up to the sea, the Vindhyas and the Narbada and still later penetrated into

the Deccan and the far south. "The V.edic Aryans were proficient in carpentry, building

houses and racing chariot of wood; and in metal work, making vessels of ayas,.

presumably copper, for domestic and ritual use, and using gold jewellery. They wove,

knew sewing and tanning, and made pottery." (Ibid: 09) However, Coomaraswamy has

opined that Indian art and culture, in any case, are a joint creation of the Dravidian and

Aryan genius, a wielding together of symbolic representative, abstract and explicit

language and thought. (Ibid: 10)

According to Coomaraswamy the later Vedic books show knowledge of the

metals like copper, iron, tin, lead, and silver that had advanced. The use of cotton,

linen, silk and woolen garments were known. Besides this, linen robe used in the

Rajasuya (a type of royal) ceremony was embroidered with representations of ritual

vessels. He has further stated that Indian art has always been produced in response to a

demand: that kind of idealism which would glorify the artist who pursues a personal

ideal of beauty and strives to express himself, and suffers or perishes for lack of

patronage, would appear to Indian thought far more ridiculous or pitiable than heroic.

Round and square huts, bricks, plates, cups and spoons of gold and silver, iron knives,

needles, mirrors, elevated bedsteads, thrones and seats, musical instruments, millstones,

cushions, turbans (worn by the king in the Rajasuya ceremony, by students after

graduation and by Vratyas), crowns, jewellery, earthernware and a ship are mentioned

in connection with the rituals.

4.1.6. Religion, Art and Sculpture

Very systematically Coomaraswamy has attempted to correlate with the art, religion,

rituals and sculpture in Indian social life through available historical accounts. In his

rei igious orientation to values Coomaraswamy has pointed out that, "the "words of

God" are precisely those ideas and principles that can be expressed whether verbally or 170

visually by art; the words or visual forms in which they are expressed are not merely

sensible but also significant." (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy: 1994: 31) According to him

the early Vedic religion- the religion of the Aryans in Northern India - consisted in the

worship of the personified powers of Nature, in particular of Agni, Indra, Surya,

Varuna, Vishnu, Rudra and Varna. These and other powers and beings were

. anthropomorphically conceived and are described as wearing garments, carrying

weapons and driving in cars; they were worshipped with hymns and sacrifices, that they

might bless and protect their worshippers. The spirits of the ancestors were served with

offerings. However, the ritual practices gradually grew in complication and came to lie

almost entirely in the hands of expert priest the so called Brahmins. There existed also

aboriginal (Dravidian) cults of various popular divinities,such as the Yakas, Nagas and

other nsture's spirits not yet received into the Brahmnical pantheon; of a primitive

deity, afterwards identified with Shiva, whose followers referred to in the Rgveda as

worshippers of the Phallus god (Sisna-deva); and of the Earth and other female deities.

The industrial arts were mainly in the hands of the non-Aryan communities. (Anand K.

Coomaraswamy: 1966: 20) According to him, during the Vedic' age rude images were

employed in the popular cults. Wood and brick were used for building and the uses of

iron, copper, silver, gold and lead were known. (Also see Ananda K. Coomarswamy,

J 981. Essays in National Idealis111 , New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt.

Ltd.)

Coomaraswamy has pointed out that the early development of Indian sculpture

and painting l like that of the drama, appears to have been connected with ancestor cults

and hero worship. "The oldest Indian sculpture so far known appears to be the weH-

known 'Parkham Statue' of the Mathura Museum ... which bears, according to recent

readings, an inscription referring to Kunika Ajatasatru, of the Saisunaga dynasty, who

died in 618 B.C. Closely related to this image is the female figures, perhaps a Yaksi,

from Besnagar, now in the Calcutta Museum. Two statues found at Patna bear' the

names of other Saisunaga emporers, Udayin, and Nandavardhana, both of the fifth

century B.C. The female cauri-bearer lately found at Didarganj, now in the Patna

Museum, may be equally early. (Anand K. Coomaraswamy: 1966: 21) The course of

Indian temple building and sculpture continues uninterruptedly until the end of the

171

twelfth century in Northern, Western and Central India, to the end of the thirteenth .

century in Orissa and Ceylone, and up to the present day in Southern India.

By the eighth century B.G. philosophical speculation had advanced and the

doctrines of Karma and Samsara had generally come generally accepted.

Simultaneously the notion of salvation (moksa, nirvana) or free from the rebirth was I

recognized as the. highest good. Coomaraswamy has pointed out that, the meaning of

life was only to be found in the knowledge of the Self, in the identification of all that is

known with the knowing subject. It finds its purest expression in the Upanishads, and,

later in Buddhism and lainism and other individual system. Buddhism and lainism

developed on parallel lines in formal opposition to Hindu systems. Manu forbids the

house holders to dance and sing, and reckons architects to and actors amongst unworthy

men who should not be invited to sacrifices. Buddha also condemns the presentation of

the Dhamma in an attractive literary form.

The beginnings of Buddhist Art appear to be associated with the memorial

monuments (caityas) erected on the sites of the Four Great Events of the Buddha's life

and in other places. "Medieval Buddhist art is often the work of Buddhist monks; but

the early Buddhist art is the art of the people, used for the glorification of religion.

telling the story of Buddhism in the clearest and simplest possible way, and never

attempting the ~mbodiment of spiritual ideals in terms of form." (Ibid: 30 I

Coomaraswamy believes that the apparent predominance of Buddhist Art is mainly due \

to special circumstances of patronage and con.sequent abundant production in certain

centres and not to any real submergence of the Brahmnical traditions. "The first

expansion of the Mohabharata, for example, in which Siva and Visnu, side by side with

Brahma, are already regarded as the supreme gods, Hindu temples as well as Buddhist

Stupas are mentioned and the Bhagvad-Gita appears, belongs to the three centuries

between the Mauryans and Kusana periods: the final stage, with its complete statement

of Hindu Dharma and social organization, belongs to the Kusana and eady Gupta

periods." (Ibid: 32)

While analysing the history of arts in India, Coomaraswamy has stated that the

Gupta period is the golden age of India, the age of maturity when Bharatavarsa attained

the fruit of her birth. The seals and gold cpins of the Guptas are masterpieces of design.

the coins superior to those of any other phase of Indian art. During this period "India 172

herself is now for the first time spiritually and intellectually one, the normal rhythm of

life is established in and by the epics, and a fundamental unity of experience and

character transcends all political, racial, linguistic and sectarian distinctions. Vedic

ritualism, a survival from a remote past, and primitive Buddhism, correctly interpreted

by medieval Hindu thought as a kind of heresy or treason against the social order are no

longer state religions: Vaisnavism, Saivism, Saktism and Mahayana Buddhism, the

religions of devotion to Visnu, Siva, Devi, Buddha or Bodhisattva, are patronized

impartially. (Also see Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, 1996. Hinduism and Buddhism,

New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.) Images and temples

appropriate to each of these persuasions of Hinduism appear in profusion, and

determine the leading forms of all later imagery and architecture." (Anand K.

Coomaraswamy: 1966: 44) Coomaraswamy wrote that Buddhism was completely fused

with the national life; the Buddha figure, still extraneous at Amaravati, has become an

integral part of the architecture. The paintings of Ajanta reflect the same abundant,

exquisite, sophisticated and brilliant life that forms the theme of Bana's Kadambari.

Earlier Indian art is a product of nature, rather than of artifice, and characterized by

naturalism and simplicity. But the Gupta art is the flower of an established tradition,.a

polished and perfected medium like the Sanskrit language having with a grammer and

vocabulary of its own. Coomaraswamy has referred important monuments to analyse

the inherent meanings associated with the art, religion and sculpture. He has pointed ,

out that, there are cave temples at Udaygiri near Besnagar Bhopal, one of which bears

an inscription dated back to A.D. 401. Here the principal sculptures are the great relief

facade representing the Raising of Earth from the waters by Visnu as Varaha, a

Pauranic subject, and the representation of river goddesses, common in Gupta art, in the

Chandragupta cave. He has also mentioned that there is a three-headed Visnu of the

fifth or sixth century in the Boston Museum, a~d a four headed copper or bronze image

of Brahma, of early Gupta date, from Mirpur Khas, in the Museum of Karachi.

4.1.7. Buddhist, Jain and Rajput Paintings

Coomaraswamy has revealed that the frescoes of Ajanta preserve an infinitely precious

record of the golden age of Indian painting. The subjects treated by Ajanta painters are

those characteristic of Buddhist art at all times - scenes from the life of Buddha, and

Jatakas. "Jaina paintings, evidently of great importance and beauty, have been

173

discovered at sittanavasal near Pudukottai, and assigned by M. 10uveau-Dubreuil to the

time of Mahendravarman I (600-25)." (Anand K. Coomaraswamy: 1966: 49) the

monuments of the eighth century, particularly those of Ellora, Elephanta and

Mohabalipuram have regarded as representing the Zenith of Indian art. He has further

pointed out that, "at EBora, the most renowned monument is the Kailasa. This great

shrine is not an interior excavation, like the earlier cave temple, but a model of a

structural temple, cut from the living rock and standing free from it, though sunk, as it

were, in the sloping side of the hill from which it has been ,excavated. Here the type of

South Indian (Dravidian) architecture, with its flat roofs, enormous curved eaves, and

domed vimana or sikhara is fully developed." (Ibid: 52) Similarly, "the excavated Saiva

temples at Elephanta, near Bombay, preserve, besides many other sculptures of great

importance, the well-known colossal 'Trimurti' (Mahesvaramurti); a relief representing

the marriage of Siva and Parvati; and a four headed statue of Sadasiva, in the round.

(Ibid) The equally important monuments at Mahabalipuram are assigned to

Narasimhavarman I (ca. 625-650) and those of his predecessor Mahendravarman I

(600-625) are all well known 'caves'. Coomaraswamy has referred to only the only old

Dravidian painting of fine eight-armed Nataraj fresco of the Siva temple at Ettamanur

in North Tt'avancore. (Also ·see Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, 1996. Hinduism and

Buddhism, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.)

He mentions, of the available "Indian Buddhist manuscripts, there are two from

Bengal, on palm leaf, of which, one with painted wooden covers and both with

miniatures representing Buddhisrdivinities and scenes from the life of the Buddha. A

similar text, dated about A.D. 1136, is now in the Boston Museum: there are eighteen

miniatures in the text, and the wooden covers are intact, painted with divinities, and

scenes from the life of Buddha, in particular, the Nativity and Mara Dharsana, also

group of the seven Previous Buddhas and Maitreyas." (Anand K. Coomaraswamy:

1966: 68) "Besides these manuscripts, there are some undoubtedly ancient ... Nepalese

or, at any rate, Indian paintings of Bodhisattavas found at Tun Huang in Western

China, and the same site has yielded what is probably the oldest surviving Tibetan

Buddhist Banner." (Ibid: 69) "A tradition of Buddhist painting has also flourished in

Burma, Siam and Cambodia, and survives to the present day in Burma, Siam. A highly

sensuous and beautiful school of Buddhist and Hindu painting, on walls, on cloth and

174

manuscripts, was flourishing in Bali in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and still

survives." (Ibid: 69)

Explaining Jaina paintings Coomaraswamy pointed out that, "the tradition of

Jaina painting is recovered in manuscripts of the thirteenth and subsequent centuries.

The text most frequently illustrated is the kalpasutra of Bhadrabahu, containing the

lives of the Jainas, most of the space being devoted to Mahavira. There are also

illustrated cosmologies and cosmological diagrams, and appended tiT the kalpasutra

there is usually to be found the edifying tale of Kalikacarya." (Ibid: 70) According to

Coomaraswamy, "medieval Indian art is nothing finer to show than the Jaina paintings:

only the early Rajplit pictures of ragas and raginis are of equal aesthetic rank." (Ibid:

72) "Rajput painting - the painting of Rajasthan and the Punjab Himalayas under

Rajput patronage - constitutes the only considerable body of Hindu painting extant.

Wall paintings of the seventeenth century are found at Bikanir, Palitana, Udaipur,

paintings of almost life size at Jaipur, and probably wall paintings at other places in

Rajaputana: most of the work, however, is executed on paper and is of comparatively

small size. The known paintings cover a period extending roughly from the middle of

the sixteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth, about three hundred years: the

tradition is no\\" almost extinct." (Ibid: 73) "The greatest interest attaches to the

sixteenth and early seventeenth century Rajasthani paintings, which are almost

invariably sets of pictures illustrating Ragamalas, poems describing the thilty-six, or

sometimes more, musical modes, the ragas and raginis. The paintings, like the poems

which they illustrate, represent situations of which the emotional colouring corresponds

to the feeling or burden of the musical mode. The time of day or night. time of year and

state of the weather appropriate to the mode are also indicated in the paintings." (Ibid:

73) "The paintings of the Jammu district, dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, very often have their inscriptions in the Takri character peculiar to the Dogra

hills." (Ibid: 75) Referring Kangra School he says, "the Kangra school is a term used

with reference to the work done in the whole Kangra valley and adjacent Punjab plains

and includes also the branch represented by Mola Ram of Garhwal." (Ibid: 75) "Kangra

painting is widely different from that of Rajasthan and Jammu." (Ibid: 75)

175

4.1.8. Medieval Art and Sculpture

Coomaraswamy has tried to define the associated values of temple buildings, arts and

sculpture during the medieval period. He says, "in southern India, the most important of

the earlier medieval temples is the great Saiva shrine at Tanjore, an imposing and

consistently planned building, with a high pyramidal tower rising over the main shrine:

it was in process of construction by Rajaraja Deva about the end of the tenth century."

(Ibid: 60)

Referring to the south Indian Art and sculpture, Coomaraswamy stated that,

"most of the south Indian shrines, from 1350 to 1750, consists of an accumulation of

erections about a small and inconspicuous central shrine of greater antiquity, the

enormous gate\vays rising high above every thing else, and giving their distinctive

character to the great cathedral cities. Parts of the temple at Cidambaram, one of the

most sacred of all Southern and dedicated to Nataraj, are as old as the tenth or eleventh

century, the Nrytyasabha. or Dancing Hall, of thirty-six pillars about eight feet high,

being the oldest and most beautiful element." (Ibid: 60) Besides southern and western

India, Coomaraswamy has studied the art and sculpture of eastern India. In Orissa,

mainly at Bhuvanesvara, Puri and Konark, the continuous development of the northern

style of architecture with sloping-sided sikhara crowned by' an amalaka may be

follow'ed from the flat or nearly flat-roofed Parasuramesvara temple of the seventh or

eight century onwards. (Also see Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, 1994. Christian and

Oriental Philosophy of Art. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd)

He further exp1ained that, "the course of Indian temple building and sculpture

continues uninteruedly until the end of the twelfth 'century in Northern, Western and

Central India, to the thirteenth century in Orissa and Ceylon, and up to the present day

in Southern India." (Anand K. Coomaraswamy: 1966: 56) The great Lingaraja temple

in Orissa has been called the finest example of a purely Hindu temple in India; it dates

from the ninth or tenth century, with later additions. The great tower is imposing

beyond words, and the sculptured detail full of beauty. The somewhat similar

Jagannatha ('Juggernaut') temple at Puri, dating from the latter part of the eleventh

century, has a world-wide celebrity through the annual car festival. The Black Pagoda

at Konark, nineteen miles nOitheast of Puri, is assigned to the middle of the thirteenth

century, and now forms one of the most magnificent ruins in India. The temple was 176

dedicated to the Sun, closely connected with the cults of Visnu. The main temple is in

the form of a car (ratha or vimana) borne on immense wheels drawn by horses.

Coomaraswamy says that, "one of the most famous of all India buil-dings is the

Saiva t'emple at Somnath, which was destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni about 1025 and

rebui It by Kumarapala in 1168." (Ibid: 57) Perhaps the most remarkable medieval

temple groups of Western India are those of the Jainas, at mount Abu, Girnar and

Palitana. All three sites are sacred hills, where an aggregate of temples forms a city of

the Gods, not used by men. He further says there scarcely exist intact remains of any of

the Buddhist monasteries and temples erected at Sarnath, Nalanda and elsewhere in

Bihar, Bengal and Orissa during the mid-medieval period; but, on the other hand, the

Buddhist and Hindu sculptures of the Pala Dynasty (740-1197) are abundant and well

preserved." (Ibid: 58) , . I

4.1.9. Functional Values of Art

Coomaraswamy's Book "Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art", (1994), concerns

with the true function of aesthetic in art, the importance of symbolism, and the

importance of intellectual & philosophical background of art and analyse the traditional

culture in enriching alt, they demonstrate the abstract art, folklore and modern art and

the union of traditional symbolism and individual pOltraiture in premodern culture.

If the protected works of art be exhibited and made accessible and explained to

the public in the museums, certainly it .has some functional values. Art may be

conserved for the purpose of education or for some other purposes. For instance, it is

quoted in the work of Coomaraswamy that, "we are often told, and not quite

incorrectly, that primitive ornament had a magical value; it would be truer to say a

metaphysical value, since it is generally by means of what we now call its decoration

that a thing is ritually transformed and made to function spiritually as well as

physically. (Coomaraswamy: 1994: 18) He further says, "it is only when the symbolic

values of ornament have been lost, that decoration becomes a sophistry, irresponsible to

the content of the work." (Ibid: 19) .He has justified by giving examples that, "if the

exhibition of works of art, like the reading of books, is to have cultural value, i.e., if it

is to nourished and grow in suitable soils, it is to the understanding and not to fine

177

feelings that an appeal must be made. In one respect the public is right; it always wants

to know what a work of art is "about." (Ibid: 20)

Regarding the functional uses of art and its utility in the society Coomaraswamy

viewed that the use of art .. , "in general the good of man, the good of society, and in

particular the occasional good of an individual requirement. All of these goods

correspond to the desires of men: so that what is actually made in a given society is a

key to the governing conception of the purpose of life in that society, which can be \

judged by its works in that sense, and better than any other way." (Ibid: 24-25) The

artist is producing a art that means he is producing a utility in society, the purpose of

which has something to be used for good reasons. Art may please our taste and are

fashionable or it may be enjoyable to vital needs of individual and society. It may also

be used as a ~uxurious ornaments of the artifacts and fulfill the mental desires of the

individual.

In the context of folk-art, Christian and Oriental art, Coomaraswamy says that,

"in our traditional view of art, in folk-art, Christian and Oriental art, there is no

essential distinction of a fine and useless art from a utilitarian craftsmanship." (Ibid: 27)

He further says that, "noble" is an ethical value, and pertains to the a priori censorship

of what ought or ought not to be made at all. According to him, "the study of art, if it is

to have any cultural value will demand two far more difficult operations than this, in

the first place an understanding and acceptance of the whole point of view from which

the necessity for the work arose, and in the second place a bringing to life in ourselves

of the form in which the artist conceived the work and by which he judged it." (Ibid:

30) He has pointed out that; human society is perhaps the first society to find it natural

that some things should be beautiful and others useful.

According to Coomaraswamy, "individualists and humanists as we are, we

attach an inordinate value to personal opinion and personal experience, and feel an

insatiable interest in the personal experience of the others; the work of art has come to

be for us a sort of autobiography of the artist. Art having being abstracted from the

general activity of making things for human use, material or spiritual, has come to

mean for us the projection in a visible form of the feelings or reactions of the

peculiarly-endowed personality of the aliist, and especially those most peculiarly

178

endowed personalities which we think of as "inspired" or describe in terms of genius.

(Ibid: 62)

For the better analysis and explanation on functional values of art

Coomaraswamy has distinguished between use and values. He has explained that "if

use and value are not in fact synonymous, it is only because use implies efficacy, and

value may be attached to something inefficient. Augustine, for example, points out that

beauty is not just what we like, because some people like deformities; or in other

words, values what is really invalid. Use and value are not identical in logic, but in case

of the perfectly healthy subject, coincide in experience; and this is admirably illustrated

by the etymological equivalence of German brauchen "to use" and Latin frui "to

enjoy". (Ibid: 96-97)

According to Coomaraswamy, art is essentially a matter of feeling and if its

sufficient purpose is to please; the work of art is then a luxury, accessory to the life of

pleasure. In relation to art he has pointed out a profound distinction between the

deliberate pursuit of pleasure and the enjoyment of pleasures proper to the active or

contemplative life. He further says, it is one of the greatest counts against our

civilization that the pleasures afforded by art, whether in the making or of subsequent

appreciation, are not enjoyed or even supposed to be enjoyed by the workman at work.

4.2. Radhakamal Mukerjee (1889 -1968)

The major contributions in the study of values in Indian sociology comes from the work

of Radhakamal Mukerjee, a Bengal born Economist and Sociologist started his career

as a lecturer in economics in Krishnanath College and later on moved to Lucknow

University. He along with his colleague D.P. Mukelji is considered as the founder of

Sociology Department in L.U. His contribution to sociology of values is one of his

important areas of interests. He believes that studying values is important in the

discipline of sociology in this critical juncture of human history and the growth of

civilization because, "the various sciences of man, no doubt, recognize values as the

basis of the ideal of human growth and development, but neither clarify nor offer them

as guides to both the integration of personality and the unity of mankind." (Radhakamal

Mukerjee: 1964: 0 I) RadhakamaI Mukerjee in his book Social Structure of Values

(1965), very comprehensively analyzes values and attempts to develop theories on

179

values. Value study is one of his special subjects of interest and he tried to understand

values and its impact on society. He has given a very philosophical and theoretical

orientation to define the structure of values. \

4.2.1. Description about Values

According to him values are derived from life, from environment, from self, 'society

and culture, and beyond all, from the ideal, transcendent dimension of human existence

and experience. The psychological and social sciences dealing with values define them

as mere preferences and aversi'Ons, as desirablegoals,em'Otions and interests. The

humanistic disciplines, on the other hand, define them as functioning imperatives 'Or

'ought'. He further states that modern value theory has never escalated into the ideal or

transcendent dimension for the purpose 'Of psychol'Ogical and s'Ocial inquiries. The

unity, wholeness and transcendence 'Of the value system, are seldom envisaged by the

sciences of man, s'Ociety and culture. "Man's mind is the locus 'Of hierarchical

dimensions and polarities. Due t'O his unique bipolar, self-actualizing-transcendent

impulse and capacity, he always moves t'O and fro 'between the sensory-existential and

the ideal-transcendent dimensi'On and derives values from both." (Radhakamal Mukerji:

1964: 10) Values are integral experiences that t'Ouch simultaneously all dimensions of

human adaptation, organic, s'Ocial and cultural, and transcend them all in their

'propriate', forward-'Orientation. Human nature-in-the social environment is molded by

values, ideal's and norms unique in humans. Mukerjee says human values emerge due t'O

two factors, first, the impingement 'Of society and its meanings and. norms on the

fulfillment of the individual's needs 'Or drives; the sec'Ond, the introduction of his own

awareness, choice and judgment in need fulfillment. The two processes are

interdependent. According to Radhakamal Mukerjee, "man is the 'Only animal whose

environment has reached a wodd dimension. Biologically hi!: !~yoluti'On is moulded and

shaped less by his biogenic impulses and disp'Ositions and more by his acquired

external heritage of symbols, traditi'Ons and values that extends int'O the inheritance 'Of

the entire species." (Radhakamal Mukerjee: Destiny ojCivilization: 1964: 01)

Radhakamal was very philosoppical in his appr'Oach but as per his empirical

understanding, "the key role is played by transcendent human values and value-

orientations which give order and meanings to all his adjustment to the cosmos

including himself, his society and his civilization." (Ibid: 21) according to him, 180

civilization establishes that humanity's better and more complete adaptation comes out

of the enrichment and expansion of all values, assimilated and focused with one

another.

He believes that, "the starting point from which we may begin. a psychological

study of man's growth and development is the value of attribute of his behaviour and

experience that differentiates him from any other animal. The essential of value seeking

and value experience that constitute 'humanness' is the 'natural' hieran:hy of needs and

values which the human organism itself dictates, stimulating and directing all his

activities for an ever-receding qualitative improvements. The later has a fundamental

neurological basis. He has quoted in the work of Herrick's The Evoilition of Human

Nature {I 956), 'the thing that is most distinctive about man is the pattern of his growth

and the instrumentation of it by rationally directed desire for improvement'. "Such a \

directive quality of adjustment of organism to the environment and the dimension of

human social evolution is called values which influence the course of evolution towards

greater individuality and openness of self and purposive direction of self and

environment. The qualitative improvement of man may be defined as increase in the

range and variety of values as means of better control of both self and environmental

resources for a freer, richer and more harmonious living." (Radhakamal Mukelji: 1964:

15-16) He was aware about the modern development says, it is realized that the

atomization of space-time by the machine system of modern industry means a lapse of

the inherent qualitative value of space and time and forms of rhythm, balance and

organization in ordinary human perception and process of living. He has differentiated.

between intrinsic and instrumental values. According to him, "aI1, religion and morality

are concerned with the intrinsic, and science and technology with the instrumental

values of life. The latter are divided and sub-divided as technological civilization

perfects its control over things; persons and events. The entire meaning ~nd value of

human existence gradually loss their connections with aesthetic and metaphysical

completeness, and become preoccupied with the mechanical and mathematical. Science

and technology while enormously enlarging man's practical skill to control the

occurrence of values and use of objects, events and men for the realization of values do

not enable him to apprehend the completeness of particular objects and situations in

themselves, to realize them as intrinsic values and entities with their varied

181

potentialities of life-experience." (Radhakamal Mukerji: 1964: VI) He has argued that

modern technological civilization reduces striving man to mere job, dissociated from

values and aspiratiDns, tasks and obligations. that formerly cemented the bonds of

society and provided 'Opportunities for self-discipline, self-maturation and self-

transcendence. It destroys the unity and continuity between reason and imagination,

between intrihsic and instrumental values and between the various levels of dimensions

of human adjustment and value-f4Ifillment. In the wake 'Of weakening of values with

reference tD human sDciety and civilization in mDdern period Mukeljee says that,

"human society, indeed, shows today a strange approximation to an ant-heap and bee-

hive, characterized by deadening mechanical routine, high tempo of activity and rigid

authoritarianism, or to a rat-hole and wolf-pack, marked by competitiveness.

aggressiveness and violence; and there is a wholesale inhibition of folk values,

moralities and ways 'Of life during the last three centuries. Modern distorted, civilized

goals and values promote and encourage over-organization, regimentation and

automatization, 'On one side, and organized pugnacity, greed and aggression, on the

other, these operate as formidable obstacles to man's evolutionary advance through

impeding his plasticity, creativity, sensitivity, wholeness and transcendence and

fractionalizing him along with his skills, values and aspirations into fragments." (Ibid:

VII)

Radhakamal believes that the spiritual illness is abundantiy evident in the

remarkable decline of human qualities, meanings and values, and the range and depth

of collective living and behaviour. Our growing technological age stresses goods as

instruments and rationalizes or mechanizes all phases or orders of human life. The

minute elaboration and specialization of machine and technology fractionalize human

works, life and mind into bits and fragments. Man's functionalized time-table and

regimented schedule governed by the clock constitute universal contemporary symbols

of the meaningless of his life and dissociation from the values and varieties 'Of an

intrinsically human universe.

4.2.2. Values and Civilizatioll

Contextualizing the dimension of values and civilization, Radhakamal states that

civilization is the open, self perpetuating interchange between man, values and cosmos

in theil; various dimensions and orders. It establishes an enduring harmony and' 182

wholeness of meanings, values and the strivings necessary for both the unity of the

human and person and the integralness of the social and cosmic order. The study of

civilization is fundamentally concerned with the integration and wholeness of persons-

values-and-cosl11os, and this with reference to the common defeats and fulfillments of

men and societies and in subordination to the total movement of mankind. Values and

norms are represented by knowledge, art, morality and religion. The symbolic mind of

man, his relationship with society and civilization in a value premises Mukerjee states,

"man is a value-seeking, value-fulfilling, concept-forming animal; and goals, values

and meanings are future-oriented and symbolically attached to situation through these

being invested with certain symbols of their significance in the concourse of events and

relations. Further, he forestalls the situations as antecedents to his goals, meanings and

values in the pattern of learned behaviour, the learning being also an experiment by and

through symbols. Finally once, goals, value's and meanings are categorized and

expressed by symbols, he can blend, rearrange, and manipulate them in his imagination

infinitely, and with this ceaseless inner experimentation with objects, concepts and

life's goals and situations comes greater and greater control over the natural and human

environments. (K.M. Kapadia: 1954: 71)

Mukeljee says the meaning and values of civilization are not easy to define.

Difficulties are due to the elusiveness of the triangular interchange between man,

values and nature in terms of which civilization can properly be interpreted.

"Civilization is the open, self perpetuating interchange between man, values and

cosmos in their various dimension and orders. It establishes an enduring harmony and

wholeness of meanings, values and strivings necessary for both the unity of the human

person and the integralness of the social and cosmic order." (Radhakamal Mukerjee:

1964: I) He further says civilization is value-creation and value-experience and a

system of value fulfillment. The structure of values and value-orientations and the

pattern of civilization emerging several writings later through the dynamic reciprocity

of the latent potentiality of man's inner life and its external inheritance, cannot be

anticipated from what man and civilization are today. The cycle of basic values and

virtues has been presented by Radhakamal Mukerjee in foHowing manner in his book

The Dimension of Values (1964).

183

The Cycle of Basic Values ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

II III IV V Human Dimension of Generic Moral Cardinal Life-Cycle Adaptation Values Values Virtues

Bio-physio- Self- Prudence Hope; Self-Childhood logical regulation competence;

Education of Character

Adolescence Psycho-social Self- Loyalty Love; And youth actualization Equality;

Justice

Old Age Ideal Self- Charity; Transcendent transcendence Compassion; or Cosmic Identity

Mukerjee believes that mankind has evolved a developmental pattern of human

needs., values and virtues at the- different stages of the human life-cycle. Self-

definitions, actualizations and verifications are lifted to the level of exclusive, universal

values and virtues at t1~e developmental life phases. These are deeply rooted in

evolution and unconscious processes of mind underlying the growth patterns and

securing psycho-social and cosmic adaptation. Human potentialities lies with the

awareness, utilization and transmission of values linked with the mental and social

evolution of man. Human values are enduring long-term goals that have emerged in

man's evolution direction and regulating his behavior adaptation. Endowed with a

limited number and variety of inborn behavior patterns, he can, however use his large;

sensitive and complex brain with its capacity for conceptualization, abstraction and

symbolization for defining, stabilizing and transmitting a vast range and order of

morals and values. These have come to play the crucial role in unfolding the full

possibilities of his inner life and forward-oriented, purposive control over his

environment at different dimensions. (Radhakamal Mukerjee: 1964: 16-17)

According to Radhakamal Mukerjee, "civilized man identifies the knowledge of

self with the knowledge of intrinsic and transcendent values, and of man not in his

existential nature, but in his true or essential being or cosmos-total. An appreciation of

the ontological locus and foundation of values invests these with a profound certitude

of guidance for men, societies civilizations towards perfection." (Ibid: 2) In his further 184 .

analysis en the relatienship between values and civilizatien, he has argued that, the

cenceptien 'Of the universal man, cesmic values and the unlimited community is the

transcending principle 'Of the knowledge of civilization grasped only as supra historical

reality. Civilizatien is value-creatien and value-experience. Existence, in its nature, is

the ,upholding 'Of 'value-intensity. The essential medes and instruments of these

universal principles, value and norms are represented by knowledge, art, merality and

religion. (Ibid: 09) Seme universal values like Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Love, Justice,

Freedom 'Or Harmony, Cempassion, Peace etc are the refl~ted from knowledge in

various forms.

Accerding te Radhakamal Mukerjee, man and civilization became the

foresighted guardians and trustees of cosmic evolution through the instru~entality of

values, norms and ideals. The triple emergent social realities, man, yalijes, system and

civilizatien are inseparable and interdependent. The triangle pattern 'Of man values and

civilizatien in the theery 'Of civilizatien is emergent, integral and holistic rather that

static, mechanical and fractien~1. The value orientatiens prepeunded by Radhakamal

Mukerjee abstracted from his werk Destiny of Civilization (1964) reflects that, the

orientatien 'Of values springs from three fundamental principles with their consequences

on the quality and tempo 'Of society and civilization mentioned be lew.

1. There is a human civilizatien in spite 'Of the fact that values intermingle and

interinesh. This is the hegemeny of the intrinsic, ultimate and transcendent

values over the instrumental preximate and incidental values. Values

interwoven and are juxtapesed, but, neither the superierity ner the autenomy 'Of

the intrinsic ultimate and transcendent values can be challenged by any soci·ety,

civilized and individual. The latter can not be cempletely realized but exercise

dynamic effect upen value gradation, value-judgment, generic censcience and

meral aspiratien 'Of men, secieties and civilizatiens.

2. The intrinsic, ultimate and transcendent values sub serve best the ends 'Of human

self actualizatien and self transcendence 'Orient the status-power system, and

'Order the hierarchy 'Of the instrumental goals and values 'Of groups and

institutiens and the schemata of human rights and duties and of human virtues.

The unity of structure 'Of a civilizatien is established by the unity 'Of values.

185

3. The unity of values is established in the ultimate ground of self or being. Like

the human personality, human values root themselves in an ontological source.

Human values and being are not only interrelated but identical. A civilization

that grounds and nurtures itself in the principles of metaphysics and ontology

becomes saturated with a profound feeling of harmony and serenity that silences

the turmoil of history , constantly renews the springs of adventure and

steadfastly marches towards perfection and completion.(Ibid :29-30).

Radhakamal Mukherjee, in his view on continuation of civilization and worthful life in

the society, has suggested that, full humanness and capacities require a balance between

self-regulation and self-expression, self-actualization and self-transcendence.

autonomy, individuality and order. These imply perpetual 'Striving and becoming, and

enlargement of the maturing self under the protection and guidance of the favorable

adult environment. The give-and-take between normal self and environment achieve

the individuality and openness of self though integration of the segmental functions,

niligical, mental, and emotional, at the various dimensions of human living for

successful psycho-social and spiritual adjustment. At the human dimension, then,

evolution becomes progressed and shot with value creating and value judgments in the

entire development of man as species in its variable environments is directed by value-{

system,experience and learning.

4.2.3. Values and Human Behaviour

Radhakamal Mukerjee pointed out that value has been so much dominant role in every

aspect of human behaviour that reflects the experience, goal and value judgment of the

value bearer. "With the aid of values man delays his satisfaction and fixes his mind and

behavior to distant and sometimes unrealizable goals, strivings and ideals. His value

judgment enables him to choose between alternative courses of behavior, and solve

chronic inner tensions and conflicts by accepting standards and demands that control

him from beyond. It guides him in seeking goals that are not merely adaptive to the

external bio-social situation but also to the transcendent situation or system of which he

recognizes himself as an active, integral, part. Through his value experiences he

develops a complex and elaborate system of social psychological habits, skills and

techniques, commitments and imperatives that lead him to an intricate system of future-

186

oriented and symbolic inter-personal relations and strivings that we cannot imagine

even in the case of the collective behavior patterns of the social insects."(Ibid: 17)

Values are essentially social products, and at the same time involve the

individual's assumption of certain common goals and purposes of the social milieu that

have become a part of him. Values offer easy, stable and effective guidance to him

thorough life, in spite of conflicting biological and social needs or goals and sever

inter-personal tensions. Love and procreation are profoundly affected by custom,

standard of living and the personal scale of ego-involvement and ideal satisfaction.

Appetite, love, family-raising and kinship all become cultural values for man

refashioning the raw materials of human biology, i.e. the biological and the social or

cultural values blend and fuse with one another. It is on the basis of such integration of

sex, food, play and security and life-maintenance and enhancement in general with

other social or cultural interests and values that man can drive authentic and permanent

satisfactions from them in society. Both need and fulfillment in each case are

profoundly modified by social norms.

The decline of the human character and sentiment the perversions and affiliation

correspond with the tardy maturation of his intuition and imagination. All this is

associated with acute physiological and mental imbalance and unwholesomeness and

ultimately with afarism and decline. While explaining individual role performance in

the context of values in human life Radhakamal has given the example of Philosopher

Gabriel Marcel. who emphasizes man's tragic sense of loss of being as the direct

consequences of the identification of self with human functions as worker, as trade

union member or as voter as well as vital functions in a functionalized, impersonal

universe that destroys the inner reality of life both within and outside.

4.2.4. Values: Disvalues, Un-Values or Counter Values

Mukeljee spoke about the disvalues with referring biological instincts. "Man's

excessive indulgence in sex, food, drink and drugs by which he brings about his

physical and mental break-downs are over-driven and unnatural. These may be called

'disvalues', 'unvalues' or 'counter-values' based on homeostatic and 'need-

reeducation' tendencies that are largely 'defense' rather than 'growth' mechanisms.

Certain civilizations and epochs have cultivated such biological 'disvalues'. This is

187

pathological." (Ibid: 24-25) He further states 'Disvalues' arise out of chronic inhibition

and frustration of basic needs of the self that turns to warped, covert or self-defeating

ways of gratification and fulfillment, including hyper stimulation and hyper-

gratification. These are all associated with loss and self-esteem and with neurotic fear,

anxiety and sense of guilt, and hence are pathological. Like the functions of values

similarly 'disvalues' have also its functions. In the context of functions of disvalues

Mukerjee says, 'Disvalues' do not represent a part of the inner core of the self, but

rather blockages and diminutions of its potentialities. These comprise efforts to seek

gratifications in a twisted, disgusted or convert manner in the absence of normal or

legitimate ways of fu4fillmentdue to special conditions and circumstance of past and

present life history, and are accompanied by loss of capacity for self-regulation self-

actualization and self-transcendence, anxiety and sense of guilt. Values stress the

tendencies of growth, actualization and transcendence, where as 'disvalues' stress the

reduction of tensions and homeostasis. Values are associated with fulfillment. self-

competence and joy, where as the 'disvalues' with regression, fear and loneliness. Man

creates, nurtures and achieves the polarities of values and 'disvalues', very high and

low values, harmonious and discordant values, aduIt and infantile values, that fuse into

a dialectical and dynamic unity at the highest dimension of personality development.

Mukerjee talks about the hierarchy of values keeping spiritual values in the top

of the hierarchy followed by social and biological values in a descending order, He has

identified the dimension of values and classified as follows.

I. Biological- health, fitness, efficiency, security and continuity

2. Social - wealth, status, love and justice

3. Spiritual- truth, beauty, harmony and holiness

Intrinsic, inherent and transcendent values. have supremacy over the

instrumental, extrinsic or operational values. The absolute hegemony of the former

arises from their harmony, coherence and inclusiveness appealing to man's total

reflection and experience. This refers to the quality or attribute of values. In actual

experience there are constant fusion and interpretation of the intrinsic and the

instrumental values. The instrumental values hardly become goals by themselves but

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cohere and conjugate with in'trinsic values. Mukerjee attempted to scale the values

according to his own frame of reference. One such example is represented as below.

A Dimension of Values

Social: Wealth, Status, Love, and Justice

The scale of values B

Quality of Values

Instrumental, extrinsic, operational

C Hierarchy of Values

Social integration and harmony

o Dialectical Definition of Norms

Individual vs. collective; competition vs. collective; status vs. equality; freedom vs. regulation: right vs. orders

In his attempt to conceptualize general theory of civilization, Radhakamal

Mukeljee has stated that, social values are unique in the study of social science subjects

rather than the natural science subjects. In his vievv "the concept of emergence or

transcendence demands that what is unique in human evaluation and beha\'ior. viz.

value seeking, value creation, and value fulfillment can be interpreted neither in terms

of physics and Chemistry, nor in those of biology but has to be understood as higher

dimension adaptations, individual and social." (Ibid)

He was well aware about the role of physical environment 111 the value

formation and explained that, there is a futl and dynamic interplay between the physical

environments. Man's conscious, purposeful and cumulative control of the en\ironment

and thus social heritage of values enriched, refined and deepened more and more by the

intransitives of life-truth, beauty, goodness and peace- that guide and direc: societies

and civilizations. (Ibid: 21-22) The natural science method can not open the locks to

those permanent human values and experiences associated with the stability and

continuity of a civilization rising above conflicts and contradictions of ncture and

history. The current notions of relativism and culture-boundaries of values in :ne social

science contradict the universality and transcendence of human nature and the universal

contents of the value schemata of mankind that crosses the boundaries of 5:'cce and

time.

189

4.2.5. Values: Qualitv of Life

According to Radhakamal Mukerjee, the supreme values for mankind, from the

perspective of evolution. are openness, wholeness and transcendence within man,

between man and with the cosmos/openness, wholeness and transcendence are as much

\vithin the personality as in society and in the cosmos/these are holistic, integrated

patterns of human life-sustenance and· life enhancement, the social modes of

interchange and communion which find expression in the evolutionary process.

According to him the standard of living not only stands for the fulfillment of the'

basic needs and requirements of the family but also as a symbol of class distinction or

prestige. The display of the standard of living becomes more important for man than

the standard 0 living itself. Poverty becomes intolerable not merely because of the

deprivation of the basic needs and values but also because it leads to loss or attenuation

of role, status and prestige. The scale of value satisfactions differs from stratum to

stratum and alters with social progress, and with this the criteria of security, wealth,

status, and use of leisure that are all symbolically expressed in every culture.

First, man's adoption and evolution occur in terms of his further needs and

values and of a symbolic, harmonious environment-as-a whole that surpasses the

immediate, fractionalized surrounding or ecological habitat of the lower animals. The

latter, while showing greater adapted ness of limited ecological conditions of space and

time that man through genetic specialization, are on the way to extinction. Man is the

only creatures who. though extremely imperfect and incomplete in his bodily and

mental equipment dominates all other creatures and the charities of his defeat and

annihilation are remote except as a possible consequence of his own folly and

improvidence. Human evolution includes elements of individuality, openness, freedom,

wholeness and transcendence in fact and in imagination unknown in the animal

kingdom. These are new values which the evolutionary forces have superposed on

human life.

Contextualizing values and disvalues in human evolution, he says that, "in

human evolution man's creation of fresh values is the conquest of some disvalues. The

polarity or antinomy of values and disvalues stimulates the unending inner processes of

integration, balance and coordination in human experience. It is the tension of values

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and disvalues, perfection and survival, reason and impulse, altruism and egoism, whole

and fragment, rooted in the psycho-biology of the extremely primitive and imperfect

human animal that underlies the innumerable backslidings and defeats as well as the

cravings for an ever-expanding integrated life." (Ibid: 149)

Emphasizing human life, ci\ilization and its continuation Radhakalllal

Mukerjee has stated that, human fulfillment, the structure of values and value

orientations and the pattern of civilization, emerging several centuries later through the

dynamic reciprocity of the latent potentialities of man's inner life and its external

inheritance cannot be anticipated from \\hat man and civilizations are today. The use of

human science, tools and technology and of the goods and services these produces the

tradition of human values and satisfactions; the types of personality and the ways of

civilized living, all will, no doubt, be profoundly modified by changes in the next

centuries in man's fLlIldamental concepts of his role in the cosmos of the relations to

fellowmen and of his own nature and destiny. (Radhakamal Mukeljee: Destiny of

Civilization: 1964: 20) While talking about the intrinsic values in the context of human

evolution, Radhakamal Mukeljee opines that, the intrinsic values-are not more given.

static, transcendent goals. not in evolution on impersonal, all-engulfing alien force.

Evolution at the human dimension is directed by the intrinsic values; and intrinsic

values themselves have their imperati\eness, universality, and permanence to their

connection with cosmic absolute reality or essential nng rooted in his self-

transcendence.

According to Radhakamal rvlukeljee, values and cosmos reality comprehended

by man are the same. Just as the COSIllOS reality changes with increases in human

knowledge and appreciation, so do notions of order, beauty and goodness of

civilizations. (Ibid: 23) While explaining unity and universality of values Radhakamal

speaks about man's capacity for self-transcendence which keeps values on-going,

emergent like life and mind, into new possibilities. Values are created and re~created as

human nature and the psycho-social en\ironment, the civilization become ever richer,

Illore complete and more harmoniously interdependent. The ever growing, ever-

expanding, ever-deepening life of Illan and the ever-expanding cosmos dynamically

.. trans-act" and interpenetrate with each other. Such transactions and interpenetrations

are new adjustment, neVi expressions of order and totality of new values. The cosmos

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impinges upon human life and mind as a whole, in its unity and concord. This leads to

the high experience of the conjunction and unity of values characteristic of a

civilization. (Ibid: 24) He further emphasizes that, New modes of human experience

new relations, behaviours and values that appear at higher levels of progressive

integration should be equally called "emergent" or transcendent. (Ibid: 20)

In his observation on weakening of values in different sphere of social life he

has pointed out, "seldom is it realized that the atomization of space-time and forms of

rhythm, balance and organization in ordinary human perception and process of living.

Realizing the consequences of industrial/urban life and fast increasing density of

population and their quest for material aspirations, Radhakamal has further stated that,

mechanization, articulating and ordering space-time relations as a system of causes and

consequences and cramping space and time relatives according to the rhythm of

machine leads to a lose of man's emotional integration and equilibrium with his

surroundings. Besides this, it also upsets man's vital or physiological rhythms of

activity and rest fatigue and recuperation of body and mind. In the context of

deteriorating individual values Radhakamal has further stated that, the more the tempo

of life and work is quickened and organic periodicities nullifies by the industrial

system. The more are there mental tension, irritation and anxiety and the poorer

become the qualities of human ideas and feelings nourished by the rhythm ebb and flow

of sense and impulse, intuition and reason. Man suffers not only physically but also

spiritually be is seriously hindered is contemplation and imagination, in the movement

and opportunity for maturing and completing himself.

Apart from explaining the modern industrial urban life in the study of values,

Radhakamal has stated that, the traditional culture maintained a unity and wholeness of

life and being, determined by man's intuitiVe apprehension of the unity and continuum

of nature and his quest for intrinsic values. Ritual ceremony and after forms of religious

behaviour formerly invested man's life with meanings, significances and values in

terms of a beyond human ideology that was especially helpful is life's crises. Besides

talking unity and universality of values, Radhakamal was also concerned with the

conflicting values or the major contradictions in societies and cultures which echo the

polarities or oppositions of forces, principles and values of different dimensions of

socio-cultural living and control. "Affluent might nations now seek to build the world

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community on the basis of socio-economic systems, traditions and value that belong to

a particular epoch of a particular civilization - the contingent and finite phases and

circumstance in world history. (Ibid: 14) Keeping value in top of the ladder while

explaining human suffering in various forms Radhakamal Mukerjee has pointed out

that, "their strategies and techniques lead to exploitation, oppression and slavery. Man

reaches his highest when he thinks, feels and lives beyond humanity, When infinitude

and eternity exist in his spiritual dialectic of each Here and Now." (Ibid: 16)

Radhakamal Mukerjee has stated that, "in the human phase of cosmic evolution,

person, values and civilization are three novel "co-emergent" of the same creative

process of reciprocal interchange and interpretation. (Ibid: 19) In his ,explanation about

values and civilization, Radhakamal has considered civilization as a system of value

creation and fulfillment. In this context he has pointed out that, "the integralness and

inseparability between the individual, the social and the cosmic in the motivation-value

pattern; the progressive integration of human relations and values at the successive

dimensions of living, biological, social and cosmic, and the wandering or hierarchy of

values that compete and coalesce, face and integrate is new, emergent value creations

and fulfillments are all involved is the emergent process that is called civilization. (Ibid:

20)

It is not natural selection and survival but a complex set of values, aiding and

guiding towards his total perfection, freedom and transcendence that are instruments of

human evolution Man's capacity to judge, evaluate and regulate his behavior according

to moral values, with a clear perspective of his growth or set-back, maturation or lapse

must be recognized as the principle mechanism of his adoption to his enlarged and

refined social environment. Thus individuality or identity, openness or affinity,

integration or wholeness and transcendence or freedom that are polar essential

attributes of human nature and growth must be considered as evolutionary demands or

necessities maintaining and enhancing the adaptability of human life to its

environments. These supreme values are prior at the human dimension of evolution to

efficiency, its survival and continuity. Human history abundantly shows individuals not

at all conductive to their survival. Nations are often swept off their feet by the

revelation of, and devotion to, new truths and values for which they suffer and die.

According to Radhakamal Mukheljee, the four fundamental principles of cosmic

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evolution, VIZ. individuality, openness, and are linked with human fulfillment and

perfection.

4.3. Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1893-1984)

G. S. Ghurye, considered as one of the founders of India Sociology was a trained

Sanskrit scholar and Sanskrit was his source of strength in his sociological

interpretation of Indian reality. This discourse is an attempt to explore and examine

some of Ghurye's available sociological works and his basic concern about Indian

values. He has very strongly viewed that, the classical literary and religious works of

India are an important source of Indian values. In his ethnographic accounts on study

of tribes and castes of India, using historical, indological and statistical data, he argued,

in Indian society the Brahamanical ideas and values performed the central role in the

past and Brahmanical culture relates to the realm of Indian values. Regarding the value

concern of Ghurye, his student K.M. Kapadia states that, "as in methods, so in topics

too Ghurye keeps his eye on the contemporary events. Ghurye as a sociologist is

anxiously concerned about the turmoil and mentality of recent and contemporary

societies and rightly feels, along with prominent thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries,

for re-orientation of values. He also believes that Universities can play an important

role at this hour of crisis of the world-retreat from culture. Though Ghurye 'addresses

himself to the task as a scholar pure and simple, facing the problem of culture in the

midst of social disintegration, irrespective of its local habitat, context and solutions',

the lesson of his book, Culture and Society, should not be lost on the anxious of Indian

peoples to correct at this hour of their national reconstruction the unbalance of science

and humanities if India were not to be caught in the retreat from culture. (Kapadia:

1954: XVII)

Initially he wrote his doctoral thesis under W.H.R. Rivers and later with A.C.

Haddon from Cambridge. Ghurye succeeded Patrick Geddes -as head of the department

of sociology in Bombay University in the year 1924 and continued until his retirement.

The development of sociology and anthropology in India is enriched with Ghurye's

enormous contribution which covers a wide range of areas that includes kinship and

marriage, urbanization, religion, caste, tribal life, demography, architecture and

literature etc. Ghurye founded the Indian Sociological Society, and the year 1952

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started to publish its journal Sociological Bulletin. This became instrumental to serve as

an effective forum for interaction and exchange views among Indian sociologist and

anthropologist. Despite Ghurye's training in western institution, it is unique to observe

that, he has constantly made effort to move away from the colonial roots of sociology

in India. This reflects that, Ghurye himself was bearing the values of Indian ness in his

'vvritings. Thus, value bound Ghurye sought to focus attention on the larger national

issues and various social problems of Indian society with reference to the process of

change and transformation. Ghurye in his teaching and research never made a

difference between sociology and social anthropology. Ghurye's sociological interests

were influenced by the three eminent British sociologists of that time; they were Patrick

Geddes~ L.T. Hobhouse and W.H.R. Rivers. While staying at Cambridge, Ghurye wrote

there his papers, The Funerary Monuments of India, The Egyptian Affinities of Indian

Funerary and Magalithic Monuments, Dual organization of Society in India, and Ethnic

theory of Caste for his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of W.H.R. Rivers. These

writings were not necessarily dealing with values as a specific subject but were

instrumental to express some of the Indian values. While staying at B.U., his keen

interest in kinship dominated his lectures on social institutions which were never been

one of his areas of interest. It was in the 'year 1949 he published his paper on 'Some

Kinship Usages in Indo-Aryan Literature and later published in a book Family and Kin

in Indo-European Culture.

4.3.1. Values: Caste and Race

Ghurye's first book, Caste and Race in India, originally published in the year 1932 was

a classic on the subject and well known for the anthropological analysis of caste. Caste

was presented for the first time in his ethnic theory of caste analysis, where he went on

his Caste and Race in India to judicious account of its historical development and of the

impact of British administration and economic policy on it. During those days caste

was regarded as unique to India was shown to be a wider phenomenon with the only

difference that it was accentuated in India. Thus, Ghurye was the first Indian

sociologist who explored the inherent values that lying within the caste relations in

India. The caste rituals and practices explored by Ghurye during those days, we can

observe the similar tendency in our society even today and it seems Ghurye's analysis

very lively. The caste practices were certain rules and customs adopted by the people.

195

Ghurye observed that, "certain sacraments cannot be performed by any other caste than

the Brahmins. The most sacred literature cannot be studied by the Shudras." (G.S.

Ghurye: 1986: 14) The Indian society was broadly characterized by four Varnas in a

hierarchical arrangement i.e. Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and the Shudra with several

castes and sub-castes. Keeping Brahmins in a top ladder of the hierarchical

arrangement other three have less chances over the top most positions except few

relaxation in some parts of south India where craft communities were struggling hard to

occupy the highest position in the society. While performing religious rituals in a

temple no other caste allowed doing the job of a Brahmin and untouchables were even

not allowed to enter inside the temple. Ghurye states that, "the innermost recesses of

temples can only be approached by the Brahmins, clean shudras, and other high castes,

and patticularly the untouchables, cannot even enter the outer portions of a temple but

must keep to the court yards." (Ibid: 14) Thus it is clear from his writings that the

Hindu system is unique only in this regard, that Indian society alone classified some

groups as untouchable and unapproachable. "In other respects it only differs in the

thoroughness with which the scheme is worked out and the number of differentiated

groups.' Its peculiar Indian projection, viz. untouchability, has been a major social

problem of Indian life that eludes true solution. This is partly due to the fact that many

peopie in this country still fail to realize that untouchability cannot be wiped out so

long as caste persists. And in this context Ghurye's book as refreshing to-day as it was

in the year 1932." (Kapadia: 1954: XIV)

Ghurye's view on caste is very much important here for this reason in this

discourse considering the rule and regulation associated with caste and caste principles

is seen as one of the core values ofIndian social life during those days. However, there

have been substantial change taken place in the caste relations in Indian social life after

it's independence. In traditional Indian society, the Brahmins were the highly

privileged caste. "Brahmin never bows to anyone who is not a Brahmin, but requires

others to salute him; and when he is saluted by a member of a non-Brahmin caste he

only pronounces a benediction. Some of the lower castes carry their reverence for the

Brahmins, especially in northern India, to such extremes that they will not cross the

shadow of a Brahmin, and sometimes will not take their food without sipping water in

which the big toe of a Brahmin is dipped. The Brahmin on the other hand is so

196

conscious of his superiority that he does not condescend to bow even to the idols of

gods in a shudra's house."(Ibid: 14-5) Apati from the ritual and priestly dominance the

Brahmin were also privilege castes in different areas of activities. They were looked

upon as the masters and respected in everywhere in the country. The basic facilities

whatever available in the society in various forms has a larger share among the

Brahmins. In Bengal the amount of rent for land frequently varied with the caste of the

occupant. "Brahmin landholders of a part of the country had their lands assessed a

distinctly lower rates than those levied from other classes. Brahmins were exempted

from capital punishment, and when confined in forts, they were liberally treated than

the other class." (Ibid: 15)

Since time immemorial, Indian society was divided into numerous caste, sub-

caste and linguistic regions. Each caste and sub-caste is an ascribed status and provides

a little or no 0ppOliunity for mobility among the lower castes. Caste based occupation

was strictly hereditary and especially lower castes were not easily allowed to come out

from the clutches of unclean hereditary practices of their ancestors. Marriage as a social

institute was also governed by the caste principles where lower castes were not allowed

to marry the women from the upper caste, but no such restriction was imposed upon the

upper caste. In this regard Ghurye states, "in each linguistic area there were about two

hundred groups called castes with distinct names, birth in one of which, usually,

determined the status in society of a given individual, which were divided into about

two thousand smaller units - generally ,known as sub-castes-fixing, the limits of

marriage and effective social life and making for specific cultural tradition."(lbid: 27)

He has referred the interrelationship between marriage and family by giving some

examples. He has also defined three types of marriages, these are, endogamy, exogamy

and hypergamy. The practice of endogamy and exogamy are restricted marriage

between men and women within the caste. And the practice of hypergamy facilitated

exchange of men and women across the caste providing upward mobility to especially

lower caste.

The other important feature in Ghurye's focus on caste is based on his

understanding of race which was deeply influenced by Risley who propounded a racial

lheory on caste. Ghurye's analysis of caste and race relation is based on six

anthropometric division of caste while describing the Hindu population in India society.

197

These are Indo-Aryan, Pre-Dravida, Dravida, Western, Munda and the Mongoloid

(Ghurye: 1969: 137). The racial distribution of population on the basis of caste is an

interesting feature in Indian society. The racial composition and distribution in India is

perhaps the inter-mix of different racial groups who gradually entered into India and

settled in different parts of the country. In this regard to racial assimilation of to days

Indian population Ghurye left an interesting note by giving the example. "Believing in

the "marked divergence of type that distinguishes the'people of the eastern Punjab from

the people of western Hindustan" to account for the people of Hindustan he brings in a

second wave of Aryans with few or no women. They married aboriginal women thus

modified their original type; but a certain pride of blood remained to them, and when

they had bred females enough to serve their purposes and to establish a distinct jus

connubi they closed their ranks to all further inter-mixture of blood. When .they did this,

they became castel ike the castes of the present day." (Ibid: 121)

Ghurye's analysis regarding the casteless or plural society is one of the felt

need of our modern time where he has taken the view of the Mahatma Gandhi,

Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar and also analyzes the constitutional provision

availably for the SC, ST and other marginalized category. Ghurye was well aware about

the heterogeneous communities in India, who were different from each other in terms

of caste, race, culture and language etc. It is interesting to note that India's plural

society and ethnic character consists -of all the six racial types of population i.e. Indo-

Aryan, Pre-Dravida, Dravida, Western, Munda and the Mongoloid as mentioned by

Ghurye. He was also aware about the contentious issues that India was facing during

those days that include the problem of aggressive linguism in south (especially

Tamilnadu, Karnatak, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh), tribal assertions in north eastern

states and existing caste conflicts. In this regard Ghurye viewed that, "social structure is

an important factor. When men are divided by language, or by religion, or caste

distinctions grounded on race or on occupation, there are grounds mutual distrust and

animosity which make it hard for them to act together or for each section to recognize

equal rights in the other. Homogeneity, though it may not avert class wars, helps each

class of the community to understand the mind of the others, and creates a general

opinion in a nation." (Ibid: 407)

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4.3.2. Tribal Values

Ghurye's other book The Aborigines So-called and Their Future (1943) is an

anthropological stock that deals with British government's administration plan and

policies in tribal areas. In this book he defines the various problems and cultural traits

of the tribes providing substantial literature on tribal (in Ghurye's term aborigines or

the backward Hindus) values. He analyzes the anomalies of the British policy of

protecting the tribal peoples from the cultural impact of their neighbours especially

non-tribes, subjecting them at the same time to completely alien legal and economic

system. The result was the old process of assimilation was upset' and the people who

formed 'the imperfectly integrated classes of Hindu society' were pulled up as the

aborigines of the land with distinct problems of their own. (K.M. Kapadia: 1954: XV)

Ghurye was strongly reacted to Verrier Elwin's stands on tribal isolation theory, where

as Ghurye is in support of assimilation and integration of tribal to mainstream of Indian

society. Verrier Elwin advocated 'isolation' oftribals from the mainstream of society to

protect some of their tribal values from 'erosion and extinction' allegedly due to

contact with the advanced mainstream society. But Ghurye realized the various

problems related with the tribals and stood in the support on humanistic values, he

argued for tribal 'assimilation' and 'integration' of tribal societies with non-tribal

societies of the surrounding regions. Ghurye also viewed that, the tribal were neither

aborigines nor animists; they are largely backward Hindus and keeping them aloof from

the mainstream society not going to solve their basic problems they are facing. Hence,

they must require assimilating and integrating with the mainstream society.

4.3.3. Family and Kinship Values

His other book Family and Kin in Indo-European Culture (1962) Ghurye analyzed the

patterns of relationship between brother and sister, mother-in-law, nanada (husband's

sister) and bhojai (brother's wife), cross-cousins etc. their social and psychological

implications are deduced and interpreted in the total perspective of social organization.

Before his kinship analysis, kinship was studied for long as a nomenclature of

relationship and as indicative of an earlier familial or marital pattern. In other words

Ghurye's kinship analysis in behavioural sense is nothing but a reflection of part of a

family values prevailing during those days in the society. Regarding Ghurye's

sociological approach to kinship, Malonowski viewed Ghurye has made a better 199

analysis which does not suffer from the errors of an exaggerated funotionalism. Ghurye

comparatJvely studied Hindu, Greek and Roman patterns of kinship. In his kinship

analysis Ghurye mainly drew upon the Sanskrit, Greek and Latin sources.

4.3.4. Values and the Cities

Ghurye's in his book Cities and Civilization (1962), is a comparative study on the

rising of cities and civilization world wide with its historicity. Where he mentions about

associated values in the cities of U.S.A., Britain, China, Egypt and of India with its

risings and historical significance. He made a sociological analysis and viewed that, the

growth of cities and urban centers in India were indigenous products as per its

geographical location and historical importance rather than the outcome of

geographical importance. He has interpreted the data on rising of cities available in

census records in terms agricultural hinterland, growth of population, judicial,

administrative and ~commercial networks that facilitate the process of urbanization. He

also spoke about the growth of new cities at a slower rate. In his analysis on the growth

of cities in India, Ghurye states the lack of proper plans that affected the ·extent and

strength of the urbanization process in India.

4.3.5. Religious Values

Ghurye recognized the value of Indian tradition, in his works there are many references

to the sacred as well as secular dimension of Indian heritage. In his book Gods and Men

(1962) Ghurye refers to popular deities (god/goddess) such as Shiva, Ganesha, Skanda,

Rama, Krishna and Devi and their many regional manifestations. These gods have

integrated people of diverse ethnic origins into a sacred framework. This book deals

with rich, ancient and unique type of religious values, beliefs and practices within the

Hindu fold. "The three supreme Gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva of the Brahmanic

mythology were provided with three animals, which served as their mounts or vehicles

and were described as their banner-emblems. Brahma's special animal was swan; eagle

that of Vishnu, and bull of Shiva. Of these 'Garuda', the vehicle of Vishnu came to be

represented as half-human and half-bird. Its worship led erecting shrines over it in some

parts of the country. Both the animal-deities, Bull and 'Garuda', regularly figure in

front of their masters in temples dedicated to them." (G. S. Ghurye: 1962: 03-04) There

are many sects developed centering round these Gods. Vishnu more often, has come to

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-be worshipped in-diffel'ent incarnation-idols and even in other forms ·specially installed

in Vaishnavite temples. The two most commonly worshipped incarnations of Vishnu

are Rama and Krishna. The book also reflects different incarnations of Lord Vishnu.

The numerous folk-tribal deities have been linked to the three great deities, namely,

Vishnu, Shiva and Shakti. The other important ·deity is the sun-God, receives regular

worships in different parts of the country. The practices of religious festivals in Hindu

society are purely based on .certain values associated with the great religious traditions

of different regions. Ev.ery region in India proJected its own deity to serve as the focus

of religious activities. The worship of Shakti in eastern India especially in Bengal,

Orissa and Assam, Ganesha in Maharashtra, Muruga in Tamil Nadu, Rama and Krishna

in Ayodhya and Vrindavan respectively and regions of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are

some of the examples. The 'Other example is the story 'Of Gangavatarana that based on

cet"tain believes which was told to Rama .(the incarnation 'Of Lord Vishnu) by sage

Visvamitra. The story was especiaJ.ly told to Rama to eradicate the demons. It was

Bhagiratha the famous ancestor of Rama 'Successfully brought heavenly Ganga to earth

and conducted into the sea for the purpose of salvation of his predecessors. Thus river

Ganga is considered as a sacred river. It can be understood from the above that,

according to Hindu traditions the sacred values are associated with the different places

and religious centre spread allover the country.

Ghurye's another book, Two Brahmanical Institutions Gotra and Charana

(1972), reflects about how the brahmanical values played an important role among the

Brahmins and continued to exist from the Vedic period through the institution of

"Gotra" and "Charana". Ghurye has mentioned that, anyone who is studying Vedic

literature, very soon comes to think about the word 'sakha', 'charana', and'gotra'

along with some others whose meanings are not clear.

According to Ghurye, the terms 'charana' and 'sakha', pertain more or less to

one and the same phenomenon and institutional or organizational aspect. Referring

Max Muller's work A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature has translated 'charana' by

the English word 'sect' and he specifies that 'sakha' means originally a literally work.

According to Ghurye, Max Muller has considered 'gotra' or 'kula' means a family and

not same as the 'charana'. However, the term 'charana' signifies, "an ideal succession

of teachers and pupils who learn and teach a certain branch of Veda. The 'charanas'

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were -confined to the priestly caste and were "ideal fellowship, held together by ties,

more sacred in the eyes of a Brahman than the mere ties of a blood. (G.S. Ghurye:

1972: 02) He has further explained that, members of different 'gotras' might belong to

the same 'charana'. When a member of a 'gotra' became the founder of a new

'charana' might bear the name of its founder, and thus become synonymous, but not

identical, with a 'gotra'. (Ibid) Besides these terms, the term like 'pravara' and several

other related terms have been discussed by Ghurye as per their functional imperatives

and values attached with it.

4.3.6. Values and Megalithic Accounts

Ghurye's book I and Other Exploration (J 973), Part - I gives a biographic account of

his child hood, how he pursued his education, indicates a value premises that prevailing

in the society. He also mentioned about how he seeks and continued his educational

career, and his retirement from the academic activ.ities. The Part - II deals with his other

explorations those includes exploration of megalithic accounts of India, growth of

population, sex habits of middle class people in Bombay, bilth control practices in

Bombay, untouchables and their assimilation in Hindu society and toward the-

conclusion exploration of pre-and proto-historic culture in Sind.

Apart from highlighting his biographical sketch which provides an insight into

the social values in which his career was shaped up in -this book Ghurye has attempted

to understand values through the megalithic accounts. However, much before Ghurye

the megalithic remains in different regions of the world were already pointed out by

Ferguson and some others. Most of these similarities were discussed by Ghurye are the

peculiarities of Indian specimens marking them out as a class by themselves. Ghurye's

review of the so called megalithic remains (Ghurye intended to -designate it in general

terms as Funerary Monuments in Man in India) is an attempt to describe the important

bearing on the problem of the origin of the dolmen. Ghurye found these megalithic

monuments in different parts of India and classified with his own understanding

modifications. These are:

Rock-cut Tombs: all the known examples of tombs in India are vertically cut from the

rock, and horizontally in the vertical face of the rock. For instance, an elaborate rock-

cut tomb was discovered near Calicut in Malabar. It consists of a hall cut in the rock to

202

which access is given by means of a staircase. The tombs are constructed in such a

manner and the findings of four legged pots and filled with eat1h well jammed in, by

observing this Ghurye described, "the explorer thinks that the constructors meant to

provide for their deceased relatives dwellings as comfortable as they have been

accustomed to in life". (G.S. Ghurye: 1973: 229) This reflects the men's believe in

souls.

Pure Dolmens: under this will be treated all funerary structures that are four- sided and

so closed as to have served as a resting place for the dead. (G.S. Ghurye: 1973: 234)

Besides this, Ghurye has also classified and described some other types of tombs these

are, (I) UndergroundCists, (2) Degraded Dolmens, (3) Three-sided Dolmens, (4)

Cairns or Tumuli, (5) Stone Circles, (6) Trilithons, (7) Menhirs, (8) Alignments, and (9)

Pottery Tombs~ He also deals with the modes of disposal practioes. The incineration is a

fairly well-established custom during theearIy part of the megalithic culture in India.

This book also reflects some values associated with marital life as a case study

examples of the middle class people in Bombay city. It is interesting to note that

Ghurye being a historical Indologist tried to explore the inherent meanings associated

with the megalithic remains available in India.

Ghurye's Caste and Race (1986) is umque in that sense, because of his

understanding about the origin and growth of caste through ages, caste and politics,

influence of British rule on caste, the notion of casteless, plural society and his

scholastic interpretation of caste philosophy driven Indian society which still continue

to exist in, one or other forms. Ghurye's treatment of values basically relied on the

Hindu traditions in a given scheme. In the Hindu society, paying debts to Gods in the

form of worship, and paying debts to ancestors and teachers is a part of social

obligation. The principle of Hindu life was divided into' four parts such as

Brahmacharya (student), Grihastha (house holder), Vanaprastha (anchorite) and

Sanyasa (renunciate). In the Indian domain of values there was an emphasis on the

triads of the four ends and the first three were regarded as more important. The last two

were practically merged with each other. According to Ghurye the psychological,

ethical, and technological aspects of Indian values expressed through triads. Regarding

the mental side he gave emphasis on the sacred lore declared to the Rigveda, Yajurveda

and Samveda. He also wrote on three categories of mana, budhi, ahankar and three

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qualities known as sativa, rajas and tamas. On ethical side he has mentioned about self

control (dama), charity (dana), and compassion (daya). It is believed these values are

mentioned in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishada as being the work of prajapati (supreme

God), the creator himself in relations to his pupils, Gods, Men, and Demons. It is

mentioned in Chhandogya Upanishada that, religious duty has three components

namely sacrifice (yajna), study (adhyayana) and charity (dana). On the technological

side, in the Vedic age the three steps of Vishnu and in the post-Vedic, there are three

Gods namely Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesa. Ghurye noted two interludes in the

evolution of Indian values i.e. the upanishadic quest for inner perfection, the Ashokan

policy of compassion and good will to a continuous interaction between folk and elite

groups in India which gave rise to syncretic culture. Ghurye also say's on Indian values

by referring to yatras, gambling and drinking which were popular among both folk and

elite.

4.4. Dhurjati Prasad Mukerji (1894-1962)

The contributions of D. P. Mukelji in the study of values may not be at par with the

Radhakamal Mukeljee but he has also contributed major part of the literature on values.

D.P. Mukel:ji was joined as lecturer in L.U. in Economics and Sociology in the year

1922 and adorned it for more than three decades. He retired as professor and Head of

the Department in the year 1954. Being an out standing Indian scholar he was well

known as a Marxist Sociologist. He lIses a notion of dialectics which is Marxist in

formulation to understand the Indian reality in his sociological analysis. In his book

Diversities (1958), Mukelji employed Marxism and strongly pleads for the uses of

history in social analysis.

4.4.1. Description about Values

According to Mukerji, tradition occupies an important analytic place in the practice of

Indian sociological analysis because the dialectics of class formation, class conflicts

and the structural tensions in Indian society bears the stamp of historical contexts of its

traditions and symbols. Mukelji 'strongly viewed that, Marxism help one to understand

the historical developments to human problems and its satisfactory solution. The use of

term "values" in the history of economics initially refers to how it has predominantly

reflects the value of a commodity, its use value, exchange value and its durability. This

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has been explained by D.P. Mukelji as foHows: "We all know the history of the theory

of value. Originally, that is, with the classical economists, value was both use - value

and exchange - values. But in course of time, the former began to be taken as datum

and was thus politely dismissed, and market value becomes the only value. The

argument was that as labor in its character of commanding value in the market, that is

to say, as one commodity of exchange among other commodities, alone should be

gauged."(D. P. Mukerji: 1958: 83)

D.P. Mukelji in his modern economic analysis in the context of Indian

economic theory and his prediction for classical economics and teaching he has given

importance to history and sociology. He has deeper undetstanding about the values

associated with the rationality and viewed that, the extension of rationality which has

evolved in the west and gradually influence different sphere of life. "Human rationality

was extended to politics in the American and the French revolution; it was l~sponsible

for the capitalist spirit; and it also made for its decay and the growth of scientific

socialism. In short, it served with zeal every aspect of what is known as modern history.

It is true that this type of rationality was yet confined to the west. It is equally true that

irrationality, rather than rationality, was the impulse of imperialism. Even, today,

irrationality is not dead; it is playing a rear- guard action against the forces of

rationality. Racialism, war- mongering, mass- hysteria and waves of fear are, alas, too

well- known to us." (Ibid: 79)

Besides sociology. D.P. Mukerji has located values in the economic theories

and pointed out that the first casualty was the labor theory of value, with it went the

realistic background of evaluation, viz., and the appreciation of a social relation. The

classical economist would not separate their analysis of value, which for them was a

relation and not an entity or a substance, from class relations. Mukerji was concerned

about the developing economic features of India and on going planning and

development programmes in India after its independence. He viewed that; there can be

no escape from norms and values in planning. And in the social world, the source of

mundane values is the relation between the state and the society. If the society is many

societies, composed of many strata, many groups and classes, then the state cannot

represent- all of them. It must choose. (Ibid: 89) Indian planning, in its organized

economic side, is based on the noti{)n of welfare state. "Welfare as we know, is a value.

205

it is an individual value and a social value. If the social value implicit in the concept of

welfare is dependent upon the relation between the Indian state and the Indian society.

Further, if the Indian society is really homogenous as the state homogenous, then the

welfare state is nothing more than a new phase for the old romantic notion of

democracy by which the state is the people and the people's will of the state."(lbid) He

further states that by the British rule the very basis of the Indian social economy has

been changed. The indigenous middle class interests in trade and commerce were first

supplanted by British agencies and middlemen. (D.P. Mukerji: 1942: 24)

D.P. Mukerji has very strongly viewed that we Indians have no indigenous

economic theory of our own yet. And no economic theory has yet grown out of our

objective situation. He again states that the norms and values implicit in Gandhiji's

economic views and the corresponding practices do not fully square with the historical

demands of the time. "Gandhian value huge upon traditionally fixed needs of the

immediate, and wantlessness as the fine goal, whereas everything which the Indian is

doing or expecting and which he is being made to expect by the plan, by the state, by

the market, by every agency working on him means increase of wants without limit."

(D.P. Mukerji: 1958: 101)

4.4.2. Values and Social Change

D.P. Mukerji has carefully observed about the social changes in India. Regarding the

social change along with the value change that has taken in India with the spirit of

nationalism Mukerji has the following views. "All are agreed that India entered into a

new lease of life in the nineteenth century. The spurt of vitality came from the \-vest

through various channels like commerce and trade, increased facilities for

communication, western learning, administrative unity, etc. For the first time historian

assert, can alien civilization impinged upon every detail of Indian life changed its

pattern and created new values. Thus, India's wealth ceased to become treasure; money

become capital, goods became commodities, land become a source of monopoly-rent,

and the self-sufficiency of rural economy was transformed into the interdependence of

urban and world economy. Similarly the vision of the average Indian, so long as closed

like that of the frog in the well, was enlarged. Horizons extended beyond the nucleated

village and the waHed town to the sprawling city, and from the Indian city to the spires

of Oxford and the willows on the can, the quads of the inns, the banks of the A von and 206

the Thames, up there to the lakes in the north. Education no longer centered ·in rhetoric.

and no"" included European history, politics and metaphysics. The Broad march of the

French Revolution, the finality of the American war of independence, the romance of

the Italian. and the cold ruthless realism of the German unity brought Enlightenment

into the dark rocks of the Indian mind thus for denied of any sense of history. And the

same time, western philosophy and science introduced reason into daily habits and

made Indians realize the meaninglessness of many ancient customs and prejudices.

Western vitality and empiricism gave lessons on the virtue of activity. Above all, India

became one from Kashmir to cape-camorin, and developed nationalism." (Ibid: 164)

Being a scholar of Marxian ideology D.P. Mukelji has not remained silence to

explore the tendencies of changes in Indian society, and given the following statement

about the Indian renaissance and national consciousness in British perception regarding

the Indian values. He was in view of revolutionary change and states that, "a

revolutionary change in the Marxist sense, poses sharper issues and offers clearer

answers that a 'natural' evolutionary change. In the usual Marxist interpretation of

revolutionary change, there is however, a tendency towards simplification in the

attempt to focus the problems with all that it means in the way of serving a broad line

of action. a certain narrowing of vision and the operation of a peculiar type of the sense

of rightness and finality which is often akin to a Puritanism of the spirit and hostile to

the philosophical temper and inquiry necessary for adequate solutions." (Ibid: 3 I)

According to Mukerji, "a very striking feature of the nineteenth century

renaissance in India was the note of nationalism. It pervaded every sphere of activity.

including the religious. Indians felt that their genius had been insulted. Some stupid

remarks had no doubt been made by some missionaries and administrators. But when

we remember that many of the India protagonists of ancient values were either

government servants, or otherwise not averse from a foreign government's patronage

and any European approved of their efforts, the springs of their new culture can be

partly traced to wounded national pride. But probably a better explanation lies in the

fear of alien values threatening the traditional ones and in the consequent in conscious

realization of the necessity for a fundamental framework of values to resist, at least to

bear; the pressure of a mechanized unification by a foreign civilization operation

through a soulless administration."(Ibid: 168)

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4.4.3. Personalities Endowed with the Values - Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru

D.P. Mukerji had in mind about the personalities endowed with the va~ues in individual

social life. Some personalities endowed with the individual values have lett a

remarkable impact on social values as a whole. He has given the example of such

persons of his conception of 'ideal type' of personalities of modern India like Rabindra

Nath Tagore, Gandhiji and Pandit Nehru. Regarding the value endowment {)f Tagore,

Mukelji states, in fact, Tagore had renounced renunciation quite early in the poetic

career, and he could not recommend it to the new man or as social poiicy. He gave a

comparative statement on value endowment with Gandhiji and Tagore "Being the son

of the Maharshi he could not minimize the imp0l1ance of truths. He would want every

young man to pursue truth in every way but preferably through rationality and science

whose spirit he understood better than Gandhiji. Truth or sat yam in his view, was one

of the three eternal values of Indian thought, (The other two being advaitan and

anantam, that is unity and infinity, and not beauty and joy); but it was not identical with

God, in the personal nature of whom he did not quite believe, say as the Christians, the

Vaishnavas, or the common Hindus do, or as Gandhi did. Yet for him truth, in a sense,

was personal, almost human."{lbid: 36) He fUl1her states that, "many characters of his

stories and novels object to traditional values (and party discipline) a human

consideration and Tagore sympathized with them. The strong note of dissent in the

Brahma movement, I (which can be traced to earlier reformist ones, and seen to the

Upanishads), was evident in his treatment of human themes in prose and poetry. In non-

violence his position was not clear. Apart from the fact that every Hindu loves peace

and is averse to conflict and heats shanty (peace) muttered in every important occasion,

he had faith in the laws of harmony."(lbid) However, Mukerjee viewed that morality is

connected with will. He has also given the example of Tagore and Gandhiji who drew

their inspiration from Indian tradition. "Tagore and Gandhi were creators in the genuine

sense and they were not the only ones. In fact, one is surprised at the number of men,

probably not of them same rank, thrown up by India in the last century or so of her

contact with the west. Yet it is not possible to dogmatic on the question as to how for

those creators drew their inspiration solely from Indian traditions and Indian values per

se. Tagore had the Upanishadic base, but those who have been influenced by him have

had no such base. For them Tagore's appeal lies in his western values covered in the

208

outer Indian garh, it is generally held that Gandhiji's strength lay In his finn

hold."(Ibid: 74)

According to Mukelji, Gandhiji was deeply and primarily concerned with the

value systems. There were other too, but they are less known. Gandhiji put his views

very sharply indeed. His writing on western or European civilization "was not merely

on the limited ground of political and economic subjectivism but on the much wider

issue of the contlict of civilizational values."(Ibid: 208) In his analysis Mukerji furth-er

emphasizes assesses that, "Nationalism as such, however, is a western value of recent

times. Gandhiji invested it with Indianess. So it cannot be confidently stated that his

creative urges came only from Indian values and traditions . .If it were so, then the

wholesale prescription of western va'lues in the post Gandhian era would not have been

possible."(lbid: 75)

This is true in the sense that no other leader knew the needs of the people better

than he did; and naturally, no other leader had been more successful than he was. it is

also held that he was steeped into Indian traditions and values, e.g., his dress, his looks-

he looked like a peasant, and above aIL his techniques, satyagraha, non- violence and

exploitation of indian mores, folk- ways, myths and symbols. This is also true, but not

wholly true. As people \\ho know him intimately have said, his will power was his

supreme quality of attraction. There are stories of his 'ruthlessness', will power, except

for personal salvation, is not quite an Indian trait; nor have many traditions been

collected by it; (shakti of tantrikism is a different thing); and resignation, renunciation,

fatalism, India's practiced values, are negations of will power, unless not to will is the

supreme example ofwilling.(Ibid: 74-5)

Concluding Gandhian views on machines and Technology Mukelji states, (a)

India has a separate norm of values with the hidden_ assumption that values determine

conduct that (b) she has a separate principle of social organization which would be

disturbed and even destroyed by large scale use of machinery for greed and profit that

(c) a proper use would presuppose certain requisite attitudes, also that (d) a type of state

would own and control large machineries of they were indispensable for defined

purposes. (Ibid: 225)

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4.4.4. Values: Planning and Development

D.P. Muketji has carefully observed the values in a developmental model of planning

and development that has undertaken during the Nehruvian era and put forwarded his

views that, "The development, according to the plan, is to be comprehensive. But little

or no assumption is made in regard to the organization of patterns of values in the

process of their evolution through the implementation of the plan. Beyond

'communities' which are neither defined nor distinguished from the famBiar Indian , types of communities, no preference is made to the institutional framework of emergent

values or to the modification of the existing framework in the light of the plan's

working on economic life. Only common obligations are emphasized."{Ibid: 36) He

further argues; at the same time, one must admit that the forces of reason are, putting up

a grand fight in the name of peace and planning, negotiation; it is more than a fight with

the back to the wall.

According to Mukelji, "motives, incentives; drives, impulses are not transmuted

111 a split second, nor do they change on their own steam. They are changed, and

changed in a time which may be short or long. The impulse behind this change is

known as revolutionary ordure- a fall tide in the affairs of men. In individual life, it is

known as faith, a faith that moves mounting in the path. If the word 'faith' is too

medieval for our taste, we can use the word 'historical understanding' for social

matters. That a particular phase is not eternal is its first article."(lbid: 56)

Mukerji was trying to align social values with the planned economic growth.

·'Thus in our development process, two systems of data are to be worked out. One is the

plan with its basic western values in experimentation, rationalism. social accounting ,

and in further western values centering in, or emerging out, of bureaucratization,

industrial ization, technology and increasing urbanization. The other is not so much the

Indian traditions as India's forces of conservation and powers of assimilation. At

present, they are not sharply opposed. If anything, the first datum is gradually

becoming ascendant. This is a bare historical fact. To transmute that fact into a value

the first requisite is to have active faith in the historicity of that fact, just as it is

necessary to actively know that individual life has an end in order to convert the

personal facts of living into social and higher values. The second requisite is social

action to push on with the plan and to push it, consciously, deliberately, collectively, 210

into the next historical phase. The value of Indian tradition lies in the ability of their

conserving forces to put a brake on hasty passage. Adjustment is the end- pr{)duct of the

dialectical connection between the two. Meanwhile is tension. And tension is not

merely interesting as a subject of research; if it leads unto a higher stage is whel'e

personality is integrated through a planned, a socially directed, collective endeavor for

historically understood ends, which means, as the author understands it, a socialist

order". (Ibid: 79) The ultimate goal of socialism is the association of persons, that is, 'Of

free individuals functioning collectively in society and coming out of it as persons.

In the context of conflicting tendencies in tradition and its continuation in the

process of planning and modern developments D. P. Mukelji has stated that, "at the

same time, one must admit that the forces of reason are putting up a grand fight in the

name of peace and planning, negotiation, it is more than a fight with the back to the

wall. Socialist reconstruction, which is the supreme stake of peace, is a fUl1her does 'of

reason in the social process." (D.P. Mukelji: 1958: 79-80) In addition to this, he argues

that, "he who has watched the history, not in a mood of contemplation but with his eyes

and ears open, can no longer deceive himself with the new religion of progress, with

the new cult of science and its dogma of value free neutrality:' (D.P. Mukerji: 1958:

80)

In his analysis on values in economics, D.P. Mukerji's first casualty was the

labor theory of value, with it went the realistic background of evaluation, viz., the

appreciation of a social relation. According to his view, "the classical economist would

not separate their analysis of value, which for them was a relation and not an entity or a

substance, from class relations." (D. P. Mukelji: 1958: 84) D. P. Mukerji states Indians

have no indigenous economic theory of our own yet. And no economic theory has yet

grown out of our objective situation. He has further added that that the norms and

values implicit in Gandhiji's economic views and the corresponding practices do not

fully square with the historical demands of the time.

Emphasizing planning in the developmental process he pointed that, "there can

be no escape from norms and values in planning. Value based development is one of

the important attribute of any progressive nation. He has carefully observed the Indian

case and mentioned that, Indian planning, in its organized economic side, is based on

the notion of welfare state. D. P. Mukerji had in mind that Indian culture is not yet so 211

disintegrated that one aspect of life is completely served from another sit is reported <to

have happened in other culture. Furdler, he had been told by people who at'e in the

know that integration.of personality is the supreme need of the age. According to D. P.

Mukelji, "if this is correct then India has some advantage of survival value." (D. P.

Mukerji: 1958: 91)

4.4.5. Values and Tradition

D.P. Mukerji was of opinion that Indian cultural heritage and cultural values lies with

its tradition. With this firm believe he has carefully tried to understand India's tradition.

He ,has given a brief account of tradition and India's adjustment with New Situation: ·'If

it means Indian traditions as they are, then the Indianness is a superfluity, because all

traditions are; in which case the specificity of Indian culture remains undefined. If

again, it suggests what has happened to India and in India then Indian culture is merely

a record of happenings. This is the way in which Indian historians understand Indian

genius, if and when thus refer to it by implication. But genius has overtones of

reference in the manner in which those happenings are recorded in the mind,

crystallized in the life-habits of man and women, and emotionally hold by them. Such

records, crystallizations and complexes have great value as conserving forces. And

India has certainly conserved a great many values, some good and others bad. The

point, however, if that is possible, is that of utilizing the forces which are foreign to

Indian traditions, e.g. technology, democracy, urbanization, bureaucratic rules etc.

Mukelji has strongly believed in traditional hold over Indian society. Therefore,

he says that, "adjustment there will certainly be. It is almost guaranteed that Indians

will not vanish as primitive tribes have done at the touch of western culture. They have

sufficient 'flexibility of that. Indian culture had assimilated tribal cultures and many of

its endogenous dissents; it had developed a Hindu-Muslim culture, and modern Indian

culture is a curious blending, Varna-Sankara. Traditionally, therefore, living in

adjustment is in India's blood, so to speak."(Ibid: 74)

Analysing the changing aspects in India that modernity has heralded, D. P.

Mukelji was agreed that Indian entered into a new lease of life in the nineteenth

century. The .tradition bound Indian society which was never before received extensive

exposure to outer world other than its own territory and neighbouring countries.

212

According to D. P. Mukerji, "the spurt of vitality came from the west through various

channels like commerce and U'ade, increased facilities for communication, western

learning, administrative unity, etc. For the first time historian assert, can. alien

civilization impinged upon every detail of Indian life changed its pattern and created

new values. (D.P. Mukerji: 1958: 164)

D.P. Mukerji was also aware that where academic and intellectual values are

involved, trust helps one to overcome limitations, aye, to transmute them into sources

of strength. He hopes and prays that he shall respond to this psychological truth of

human behavior and render his account to the university and to its economics

department to the best of his ability. "After all, academic values; and if the human

values are a piece with psychological truths, the academic values secure an order of

assurance which otherwise they would not receive or earn". (Ibid: 78) D. P. Mukerji

delving into the past history of the west because he guess that the intellectual content of

the culture of modern India is analogous to that of well known renaissance of the west.

India has been entering into modern civilization, which is essentially the western man

with his type of culture, the 'ideal type' for the Indian. He has very specifically given

the example of Tagore, Gandhiji and Nehru's value pteferences as his concept of 'ideal

type' of personaiity with referring Indian society and 'culture.

4.4.6. Values: Religion and Culture

In the context of sociology of Indian culture Mukerji says that as a social and historical

process the Indian culture represents certain common traditions that have given rise to a

number of general attitudes. "The major influences in their shaping have been

Buddhism, Islam and Western commerce and culture. It was through the assimilation

and conflict of such varying forces that Indian culture became what is today, neither

Hindu nor Islamic, neither a replica of the westet'n modes of living and thought nor a

purely Asiatic product."(D.P. Mukerji: 1942: 01) According to D.P. Mukelji, in India

the mystic tradition did play an important pali in society and that its chief exponents

were the social revolutionaries of their days. The mystic began to influence the cultural

process soon after the Aryans settled in India."(Ibid: 07) The birth of Buddhism in

Indian subcontinent has brought significant changes in socio-cultural life among the

followers of Buddhism in India and as well as far eastern Asian countries. The

Buddhist contributions to Indian culture are well known. What the Buddha did was to

213

popularize tllem among the people who had been so long debarred from their

knowledge. "Probably true, but the blunt truth about the social processes 'of Indian

culture is that Islam alone could offer a different Qutlook and a contrary set of

values."(Ibid: 11) It has been learnt from the available medieval literature on Bhakti

cult which shape up India'ssocio-cultural and religious life to a greater extent and

gives a brief account of its enthusiasms to reform the Indian society where many

religious preachers were from different background other than the Brahmin. Mukerjee

has remarkably pointed out and states that, "the majority of the medieval 'Saints in India

were non-Brahmins, non-Hindu like Kabir, Dadu, Rajjab."(Ibid: 16) The Brahmanical

orthodoxy has been gradually weaken from the grip of this ongoing Bhakti Movement

or has less significant among these non Brahmin saints. Mukelji further says that,

"Orthodoxy has a survival value, but its appreciation by the orthodoxy is not always of

the same order of intensity." (D.P. Mukerji: 1942: 53)

According to D.P. Mukelji, it is well known that at least five previous major

periods of momentous changes bearing all the signs of new life through the influence of

Vedic-Aryan, the Buddhist, the Gupta, the Harsha and Vikramaditya, and the Muslims

which include the glorious one of medieval saints and prophets of Bhakti cult. Each

such period brought about an expansion of the human spirit and intelligence, produced

critical scholarship and creative work in arts and crafts, collected disparate sects and

schools of thought into working synthesis, and begot a new type of man, encyclopedic

in range and synoptic in vision, curious to know and able to feel the whole gamut, of

experience, having a conception of the non-material tinged by the colours of the earth

and an ambition for the earth uplifted by hopes of realizing the ultra-mundane here and

now. (D.P. Mukelji: 1958: 165) Besides social values and values in economics, D. P.

Mukerji has also given importance to the academic value. "He declared that his faith is

the indivisibility of values, of academics values, is a sort of dialectical relation." (Ibid)

4.4.7. Values and Nationalism

D.P. Mukerji has attempted to explain values with referring the division of India into a

two nation i.e. India and Pakistan. He also explains how western values are influential

in India even after its independence. In this context, basically he reflects how religious

values became a driving force behind the division of India. It is quoted in the work of

D.P. Mukerji, who has stated that, "despite its religious basis Pakistan may eventually 214

understand a new resentful India under the pressure of common social dynamics and

India I far too committed to western values to change over to the so-called purely

Indian ones at once. In the process of institutionalizing political freedom, India has

already registered a running transaction with the west in various ways, of which the

adoption of the British, or Anglo-American constitutional modes and British, or Anglo-

American ideas oflaw and justice are the most important. (D.P. Mukerjee: 1958: 163)

However, India still possesses a frame-work of rural culture even our modern

values are tied up with the rural area. (D.P. Mukerjee: 1958: 194) Eastern people are

yet too deeply involved in their system and therefore, the technological impact on their

basic values is yet superficiaL Another reason may as well be that those among them

who could formulate and compare the value system are the very people who believe in

technical advance as a self evident good and therefore do not worry about the problem

at all beyond the stage of annoyance with temporary maladjustments which in their

view, a welfare state or a similar agencies, would benevolently remove sooner or later

certain economic interests in India, in particular, also seem to be for too committed to

technological advance to be anxious to study the conflict of value systems involved in

the resultant strain.( D.P. Mukeljee: 1958: 206) According to D.P. Mukerji, "the trend

towards industrialization evolves urbanization and the rule of technology. Both are

unmistakable tendencies." (D.P. Mukeljee: 1958: 60)

D.P. Mukerji has pointed out that at least five prevIOUS major periods of

momentous changes bearing all the signs of new life: the Vedic-Aryan, the Buddhist,

the Gupta, the Harsha and Vikramaditya, and the Muslims which include the glorious

one of medieval saints and prophets of Bhakti cult. Subsidiary movements are greater

in number. Each such period brought about an expansion of the human spirit and

intelligence, produced critical scholarship and creative work in arts and crafts, collected

disparate sects and schools of thought into working synthesis, and begot a new type of

man, encyclopedic in range and synoptic in vision, curious to know and able to feel the

whole gamut, of experience, having a conception of the non-material tinged by the

colours of the earth and an ambition for the earth uplifted by hopes of realizing the

ultra-mundane here and now. (D.P. Muketji: 1958: 165)

To sum up D.P. Mukerji's perception in the study of values in modern

economic analysis in the context of Indian economic theory and his prediction for 215

classical econom ics a;ld teaching in history and sociology are of unique -contributions.

He argues that, "he who has watched the history, not in a mood of contemplation but

with his eyes and ears open, can no longer deceive himself with the new religion of

progress, with the new cult of science and its dogma of value free neutrality." (Ibid: 80)

He is also realized that because of the British rule the very basis ()f the Indian social

economy has been changed. The indigenous middle class interests in trade and

commerce were first supplanted by British agencies and middlemen. The tf"end towards , industrialization evolves urbanization and the rule of technology. Both are

unmistakable tendencies. India still possesses a frame-work of rural culture even our

modern values are tied up with the rural area. D.P. Mukelji had an idea that Indian

culture is not yet so disintegrated that one aspect of life iscompleteIy "Served from

another sit is reported to have happened in other culture. Further, Mukelji had been told

by people who are in the know that integration of personality is the supreme need ofthe

age. If this is correct then India has some advantage of survival value. Regarding the

academic value, D. P. Mukelji has declared that his faith is the indivisibility of values,

of academ ics values, is a sort of dialectical relation.

4.5. Nirmal Kumar Bose (1901-1972)

Social Anthropologist Nirmal Kumar Bose is one of the Gandhian Scholars. Despite

keeping busy in political activities, he has significantly contributed to the growth of

Indian sociology. Bose was one of the pioneer Indian Social Anthropologists, who

stood with Franz-Boas position that language, race and cuJ.ture are independent and yet

historically linked variables. Bose as a functionalist very favourably responded to

Malinowski's functional approach to understand culture. In his book ,on Cultural

Anthropology (1929). he has independently taken a functional approach in .defining the

nature of culture as adaptive device organized around what he figuratively -calls 'the

Soul of Culture'. But he rejected the historicism of functionalists and -has taken a

consistent position that the proper domain of cultural anthropology is a functional study

of the process of cultural change. In his book, however, one finds a clear expression of

the 'Adaptive function of Culture' and of 'The Soul of Culture'. According to N.K.

Bose, "every individual lives his brief span of life upon the earth. He is subject to needs

and desires which are satisfied in co-operation with groups of greater or less extent,

216

while his motivations are moulded in conformity with values and patterns which are

current in his time." (Bose: 1967: 419)

The Structure of Hindu Society (1975), wri-tten by Bose, dealt with many areas

of theoretical point of view about the nature of culture and society, and their sources of

stability and 'Change in the context of Indian sociology that reflects Indian values. He

tried to identify the organizing principles of Hindu society, the factors which ensured

its continuity for -centuries and the forces by which it was ultimately weakened. This

book written by Bose was in a sense informed by his fieldwork experience, where he

argued that, the new economic forces that were introduced during the British rule in

India have steadily eroded the traditional division of labour based on "caste. Bose also

discusses extensively about the tribes of Chota Nagpur, in which he draws heavily on

the published work of S.C. Roy. Bose, in his various insightful papers on tribes

attempted to highlight the tribal values associated with their economy, culture and

absorption of tribes into the Hindu caste system, and the roots of tribal separatist

movements. "His brief field study about tribes provided him the basic information on

how tribes follow a relatively primitive technology like Sweden cultivation for

agricultural production. He also discuses on some of the most isolated tribes of Orissa.

Bose"s career as an anthropologist virtually began with his field work among the

Juangs, when he visited there on a number of occasions. In writing about the Juangs,

Kharias and Savaras he was basing himself on observations that he had made, checked

and rechecked." (N.K. Bose: 1975: 13)

While studying tribes of Orissa, Bose had a nice experience to distinguish the

value associated with the tribal and non-tribal clothing. How the economic status

determines the clothing pattern of a poor woman in a certain value premises. He states

that, he is reminded of his experience in central Orissa in 1928, when only after

considerable difficulty, he came across an old woman who used to dress in leaves from

the jungle, just because that was the tribal custom, while all the rest had begun to wear

ordinary clothes produced by the Oriya caste of Panas. There was another woman in

the same village who was too poor to buy clothes, and therefore, wore leaves, while she

partly covered the upper part of the body with an old rag." (N.K. Bose: 1967: 176)

Bose also stated that, most tribal people, when they live by themselves, have a certain

measure of freedom and pride in their own traditions and cust'oms. Tribal women

217

dressed with leaves clearly give the picture about their low economic status and ,lack of

knowledge regarding preparation for clothes with available raw materials.

His book Culture and Society in India (1967) is an attempt to pinpoint the

cultural history 'Of Indian peninsula, in its geographical settings. He emphasizes upon

uniqueness of Indian unity in diversity, different languages belonging to northern and

southern families, cultural unity and social inequality practiced in the name of caste. He

has argued that, "India bartered for security; but the security was retained by industrial

and productive backwardness. Conquests and the increasing growth of states which

owned land, and lived 6n rent, gradually introduced new elements in the rural system of

production, until the productive organization become marked not only by its inability to

cope with famine, but also by its increasing rigidity of social inequalities and of

consequentoppression."(Ibid: 5) Explaining the continuation of India's established

cultural vatues and tradition, Bose stated that, "one of the outstanding facts of India's

educational institutions, remnants of which have survived to the present day, has been

the role occupied by her wandering mendicants, as weJl as by Brahmanical priests and

story teUers, belonging to several castes, in the dissemination of a common store of

traditions aU over the land." (Ibid: 7)

Bose's interest in the study of caste system in India was never been a neglected

areas of study. Bose was the Director of the Anthropological Survey oflndia during the

y,ear 1959-64, and in this period he has given emphasis on study of social organizations

of crafts and caste organizations in ,different parts of India. He also gave stress on the

study of modernization in castes, occupation, urbanization and changes. According to

Surjit Sinha, Bose proposes that the root of existence of the caste system is to be found

in the economic and cultural security provided by the non-competitive, hereditary,

vocation based productive organization, which operated in isolated village communiries

and were guided by a general norm of inter-ethnic cultural tolerance. According to the

fundamental structural change and even breakdown of caste system would be possible

only when the economic base of the system was qualitatively transformed.

4.5.1. Values: Indian Villages

Bose has pointed out that villages emerged based on the values associated with the

traditional occupations. "Yet we can discern several functional types of villages which

218

are not recent origin but have continued to be what they are from a distant past. Potters

villages situated at points where suitable raw material is easily available, or trading

villages situated at river·side parts from where roads radiate into the hinterland can be

of fairly early origin. Solve of these trading establishments again have succeeded, even

from the distant past, or blacksmiths producing special goods, and have thus been

converted frol11 merely trading to trading and manufacturing villages." (Ibid: 169) Bose

attempted to focus on the economic relations in the villages and occupational structure

that has gradually evolved centering on the requirements of the villagers. "The

economic organization in India, in ancient times was built up more or less in this

manner around the needs of the small, self·contained local, regional unit, namely, the

village. Each village or region, which might be formed of several villages, had its

compkment of farmers, servants, artisans, teachers and astrologers, and nobody

poached upon the preserver of another. The village councilor the king, on its behalf

saw to it that there was no infringement of rights, while, anhe same time, no one also

suffered from unemployment. Relief was sought through establishment of new vi'llage

communities, for land had not yet scarce in India."(Ibid: 219)

According to Bose. Indian villages had never been attained I 00 percent self

sufficiency. There was no village or small territory within which all the needs of the

local community could be satisfied. In something like food, clothing, houses, etc. were

managed but when it come to the metals, most villages had to look for other sources i.e.

abroad. It was also the same Case with regard to cultural activities. Bose observed that,

especially in villages social relationships are based on caste hierarchy. Again social

inequality was practiced in Indian villages along the line of caste principles. Caste is

not only the occupational division and distinct social unit. It is also a hereditary

endogamous social segregation distinct from each group. "Caste undoubtedly divided

the people of India into endogamous social groups, some of which were high and others

low. While some enjoyed privileges of education and were given a high status in

society while others were denied the same, sometimes to the extent of being suppressed

into the position of untouchables."(Ibid: 170)

Bose also carefully observed certain values associated with the caste based

hereditary occupation in different parts of the country. He has given the example of

some caste and stated that. "it is ollr purpose now to show how some of the castes

219

within the Hindu social structure have become wandering in their habits. In northern

Gujarat and neighboring areas of Saurashtra and even Rajasthan, the Gariya Lohar

blacksmith roams from one Village to another with the paraphernalia of his trade, as

well as his family and children. He encamps in one village for a period of a week or

more, only to leave it \\·hen no further work is available. In the west Bengal, in the

district of Birbhum, one may come across roving groups of brass workers who

originally came from Orissa and still continue to practice the lost wax of casting brass

grain-measures toys in the shape of horses and elephants with riders. Money-boxes of

various design, and so on. The Lambadi or Banjara caste of northern Gujarat and of

many parts of middle India, are a labouring caste who settle down in one place for as

long as work is available there." (Ibid: 171) Bose was not only a careful observer of

social-structure and social organization but also carefully analyzed the changes in

village social structure. Bose stated that, after the commercialization of Indian

agriculture during the past century and the decay of some of the rural arts and crafts, a

change has come about in the population and occupational structure ofviHage India.

4.5.2. Values and Spirituality

Explaining the economic growth and social welfare in a value premise, Bose has given

the socialistic approach and linked it with the spiritual value. He stated that "India has

been a land in which in spite of regimentation in many matters, the freedom of the

individual held to be the supreme good. Regimentation was necessary for the sake of

collective economic and social welfare; but ifit·stood in the way of the progress of the

individual, it lost all meaning. The Hitopadesha says that the individual has to be

sacri ficed for the family. The family for the village, the village for the country, but the

world it self has to be sacrificed for the sake of the soul. Definite arrangements \vere

therefore made in India for releasing the individual from all forms of social obligation

if he so desired. and actually stored in need of it. There was however one condition

attaching to that freedom: it was given only to- those who were prepared to a heavy

price for it. Heavy price in terms of that sense, he had surrender all the benefits

normally derived from collective life; he had to live upon the minimum of clothes, have

no roof over his head, and to be constantly on the move. He was to become God's

beggar:" (Ibid: 224-5)

220

Bose has revealed that some of the Iildian values were influenced by spirituality and

derived from the natural objects. For instance, "caste names were forsaken and new

names given which ended in surname like Tirtha, the Ghat of sacred river; Ashrram,

Retreat; Vana, Woodland; Aranya, Forest; Giri, Hill; Parvata, Mountain; Sagar, Ocean;

Sarasvati (the name of sacred river, also of the goddess of learning); Bharati, the

goddess of learning, and Puri, city. It is interesting to observer that many of these

names are derived from natural objects; which have no restrictive connotation." (Ibid:

7) It is very interesting to know that, the divine or spiritual value associated with social

practi'cesof the people which Bose has found out. He further states that, it was the duty

of such mendicants to wander from one pilgrimage to another, . .or from one forest or

mou~tain retreat to another, as part of ·religious discipline which they undettook for

final liberation or maksha (salvation).

4.5.3. Values: Culture and Temple Construction

Bose also attempted to identify and reflect ·the differential social values associated with

the temple constructions in different parts of India. "The temples of India are built in

accordance with canonical rules, which, of course, differ from one l:egion to another.

According to the North Indian tradition, the temple is looked upon as a symbol of the

human body. It has a caste, just as soils have on the basis oftheir·colour, smell and time

taken by seeds of the sacred sesame to germinate in it." (Ibid: 9) The technique of

construction has temple fascinated him so much that 'he learnt the many relevant temple

architecture from the master silpi Ram Maharana, Puri, Orissa whose contact made

Bose to know about traditional cannon of Orissan architecture. Finally, 'he edited an

Oriya manuscript on Si/pa Sastra.

According to Bose, beneath the outer frame of culture, there lies a body of

beliefs and sentiments which are responsible for the particular manifestation of culture.

Such a body of ideas and sentiments grow out of life's philosophy and it consequently

conditioned by the needs and aspirations of each particular age. Historical

developments bring in number of unresolved problems and if the -cultural heritage of an

age does not serve those needs, it is sure to undergo modification by those who inherit

it. Thus, culture is a perpetually unstable equilibrium with the experiences of men. Bose

has suggested some values associated with human qualities that has mentioned in

Hindu text books such as Satva, Raja, Tamas and Dharma, Artha, Karma and Moksha 221

and it may be util ized in the classification of cultures. According to Bose, there .are four

distinct categories of behavior that may be identified in any culture. These are: (1)

Vastu (Material object, (2) Kriya (Habitual Action), (3) Samhati (Social Grouping) and

(4) Tattwa (kno\vledge). The last one again may be divided into two, aCCDrding as the

knowledge is Vicharamulaka (based on experiment or criticism), or Visvasamulaka

(based on faith).

4.5.4. Caste Study

Bose's interest in the study of caste system in India appeared in his mind, when he was

working among the slums \.vith untouchables of Bolpur town under the Gandhian

Reconstruction Programme. He rejected the myth of divine origin, reincarnation and

notion of purity and pollution. Bose proposes that the root of persistence of the caste

system is to be found in the economic and cultmal security provided by the non-

competitive, hereditary, vocation based productive organization, which operated in

isolated village communities and were guided by a general norm of inter-ethnic cultural

tolerance. Bose has been quick to point out that the ideal pattern of caste based rural

society could thrive adequately, only when there was adequate ecological and

demographic space to setup new villages. He stated that, fundamental structural change

and breakdown of caste system would be possible only when the economic base of the

social system was qualitatively transformed. With this impression he initiated a series

of research on social change in traditional caste based occupation in different parts of

India and particularly in West Bengal. His study on caste changes helped him to arrive

on a general proposition that, caste based occupation as an economic system and as a

regulator of social life, is disintegrating at different rate in different regions of India.

Bose was not only interested to know the changes in caste in the rural villages, he also

equally interested to know the changes in urban centres. However, Bose was curious to

know about the kind of changes taken place to the caste system in a city like Calcutta,

which has been exposed to nearly two hundred years of modern commercial, industrial

and urban development. On the basis of a rapid survey during 1962-63, Bose arrived at

a conclusion that diverse ethnic groups, in the population of the city, have come to bear

the same relation to one another as do the castes in India as a whole. Actually, the

superstructure that cohere the caste under the old order seems instead to be re-

establishing itself in a new form. Calcutta today, is a far form being a melting pot on

222

the model of cities in the U.S.A. In Calcutta, the economy is an economy of scarcity

because there are not enough jobs to go around. Everyone clings, as dosely as

possible, to the occupation with which has ethnic group is identified and relies for

economic support on those who speak his language, or his coreligionists, or members

of his own caste and or fellow migrants from the villages or district from which he has

come. By a backwash, reliance on earlier modes of group identi'fication reinforces and

perpetuates differences between ethnic groups. (Bose: 1965 :90-105)

While studying change in caste system, Bose has emphasized upon the

consciousness or ideal model of caste as a normative system. He has given the example

and says that, the recent proliferations of politically competitive caste associations are

not indicating the strengthening of the caste system. He is of opinion that these recent

developments rather indicated deviations from the non-CO"inpetitive ascribed traditional

system towards a competitive one. In other word, the old structures being used in

various new combinations in new social meaning. Bose in his sociological analysis has

utilized the traditional categories of qualities such as Satva, Raja, Tamas and Dharma,

Artha, Karma and Moksha in the signification of cultures, but he is very critical about

textual notions of such category in the study of Indian civilization, without taking full

note of historical and social context. For instance, the Indian theory of Karma carries

only a social message of status quo. Bose observes that the notion of Karma has been

used as a doctrine of moral endeavor by Buddha at a certain turning point of history,

whereas it was utilized by the latter day Brahmins and other upper castes for the

perpetuation of status quo long ~efore the Buddha.

Besides the change-oriented study of Indian caste system, Bose has developed

an interest in the study of castes as self-regulating corporate groups, guiding the social

life of their members. When he was the Director of Anthropological Survey of India, a

number of studies on operation of caste association in different regions of India were

initiated by him. In some of these the roles of Kings, Temples, Mathas, etc. were also

brought into focus in the regulation of basic norms. Bose has observed that the

historical situation in which the classical Varna or Jati system of social order practiced

in India will not be repeated with a similar manner in modern times. He strongly

viewed, it will not suit our times, for the population of India that has increased

manifold and land per capita has diminished considerably. If we discover some values

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and social -designs in the traditional system, vvhich has relevance for the modern times,

it will be unwise not to ut·ilize them in solving oLll'-contemporary problems. As we

know the human kind today cannot be set apart by time and space. However, the

cultural history of Indian civilization presents an example of unity in diversities.

Although the inhabitation of India present diversified scenes on the basis of region,

religion, language, caste, community, race, occupation and material possessions, but

they share many common traits, customs, traditions, beliefs etc., which are handed

down generation after generation. The diversified groups were tied together by Indian

system of jajmani, in which each caste serves for another according to hereditary

positions and occupations. The inter-regional and inter-ethnic unity can be 'Seen at the

time of making pilgrimage at Dhams located in different parts of India. The Melas and

Fairs also present examples of inter-communal unity. Thus, India is well known for its

excellent example of unity in diversity. Bose has tried to identify the ongoing principles

of the human society which have ensured its continuity for centuries and which have

weakened due to external as well as internal forces of change. He brought together

approaches of ethnology, indology & social historians to build up a civilizational

approach to study Indian society.

4.6. Dhircndra Narayan Majumdar (1903 - 1960)

D.N. Majumdar. a well known social anthropologist, specialized in applied

anthropology with special interest in problems of culture has mainly contributed to

physical and social anthropology. His interest in culture change and rural studies played

a notable part to understand Indian values. He received his initial training in

anthropology in Calcutta. In the year 1928 he was appointed as lecturer in primitive

economy. "Majumdar vigorously carried out on research in both physician and -cultural

anthropology. I-Ie conducted extensive anthropological and sociological surveys of

many tribes, and caste in Bihar, M.P., Uttar Pradesh, pujarat and Bengal. He also

undertook a study of the physical growth of children in Uttar Pradesh. In cultural

anthropology his works are mainly ethnographic in character based on field work and

covered a wide area in north and west India. His major concern in cultural

anthropology was the problem of culture change. He holds the view that: "with expert

knowledge of social relationships, the sociologist can help, predict, control and direct

224

social change and speed up social progress." (T.K. Oommen & P. N. Mukheljee: 1986:

28-29)

His book Caste and Communication in an Indian Village (1958) is a well

composed anthropological work which very comprehensively deals with the values.

Though D.N. Majumdar has not used the term values in his whole range of village

study but his works reflects various social values associated with the viHage

community. This part of village study along the line of anthropological engagement

chosen from Majumdar's work, especially to reflect the empirical analysis of values.

This book is an attempt to reflect the socio-economic, political and cultural life of the

people of a village named "Mohana" through an ethnographic account. India is indeed

popularly known as a land of villages where about 70% of population lives in rural

villages.

4.6.1. Social Values in Mohana Village

The study began with the background of the village "MOHANA" which is a medium-

sized, multi-caste village in Uttar Pradesh situated about eight miles north of Lucknow

the capital city of Uttar Pradesh. It is mainly an agricultural village with rigid ·caste

distinctions and caste based profession. The village does not have any written records

but as per the genealogical evidence the Thakurs are the earliest inhabitants of this

village. As per the genealogy, a thirteen-generation chain, going back to over three

hundred years has been traced. With the help of the Thakurs of neighbouring village he

could explore the history of the village but he could not verify it due to lack of written

evidence. With the available information from the census report, field study and

government documents he mentioned the caste and sex wise demographic composition

of the Mohana village. Caste-wise land holdings, food grain production, live stocks

accounts as per animal census and educational records along with literacy rate among

different castes of Mohana village. The social organization of Mohana is a complex

cultural framework built round the traditional Hindu social system consisting of fifteen

castes, namely, Brahmin, Thakur, Ahir, Kurmi, Lohar, Barhai, Kumhar, Gadaria, Nai,

Kathik, Kalwar, Pasi, Dhobi, Chamar and Bhaksor (Majumdar: 1958: 19). Though it is

difficult to classify these fifteen castes along the values associated with traditional

varna system but hierarchically arranged as per their caste superiority and social

arrangement along the caste line. Keeping top of the hierarchy Brahmin and Thakurs 225

among the entire fifteen castes stay together in village Mohana. The traditional village

set up of Mohana village reflects the typical value associated with the Indian

community. Brahmin 'being highest in the hierarchy officiates at the religious

ceremonies of all the castes. "Their traditional, learned and priestly profession and their

consequent highest status in H1e caste and social hierarchy demand that the Brahmins

lead a very strict and pious life." (D.N. Majumdar: 1958: 20) The Thakur are the

greater influential caste not only at the top tier of the caste hierarchy but in the entire

village. They are economically and politically the most influential group in the village.

Thakur castes are so much dominant that all the other castes including Brahmin seek

help to settle H1eir con£1icts and disputes. The Mohana village structure was constitu{,ed

of caste based occupational arrangement for the smooth functioning and

interdependence among the villagers. There were Kurn1i (agriculturist), Gadaria (sheep

herding caste), Lohar (black smithy), Kumhar (potter) and Kathik (professional

danoer), Nai (barber), Dhobi (washer men) and some other caste people living in the

village Mohana. According to D.N. Majumdar 'caste is the prescriber and traditional

regulator of social relations in Mohana village with having no much difference like any

other parts of India. The caste system has a stronger hold in the rural areas than in

cities. He attempted to verify the exact nature and extent of the hold of caste in

determining the codes of conduct, how far the centuries old codes actuallyconttol the

day to day modes of behaviour. He also wanted to explore whether there has change in

tradition, a'ltered economic relationship among the different castes in a changing

political set-up. His important findings reflects that, "the dominance of Thakur group

has now began to be shaken up, ever since the legal removal of its economic pi'ilar, the

zamindari system, which was the strong medium through which it heid the various

other castes in a position of economic subordination, wrongly interpreted as integration.

Thakurs, even though they are no more the village landlords and no position to offer

patronage to other castes by way of awarding any free-of-tax land, are still the most

influential group in the village. With their wide money lending business, they still are a

powerful group."(Ibid: 36) Explaining the Thakur influence, their dominance and inter-

caste relations among the different caste in the village has been very systematically

analyzed by Majumdar. For instance, at the birth of a Thakur child the Brahmin is

called to note the time of birth and prepare the lanmapatri (horoscope) of the child. In

226

return, the Brahmin gets the Neg (payment) of one rupee if a boy is born and 50 Neg

(payment) if a girl is born. Lohar supply a knife at the birth of a Thakur chitd. In return,

he was given from two and a half to five seers of grain and was also awarded some

jagir (a piece of free land) by the Thakur. Kumhar do not go at the birth of a child in a

Thakur's family, as there is no work for the Kumhar for this occasion but attend the

feast only after invitation. The Kumhar, being the lowest in the hierarchy, do not seat

with the Thakur in the same line, but a little distance. away from th.e Thakur. Both the

Nai and the Nain have lot of work to do at the birth of a Thakur child and caHed upon

to perform their work. The Nain attends to th'e expectant mother during confinement,

and, after child birth, from chhati to barha, she massages the body of the mother v.'ith til

or mustard oil. She applies ubtan (consisting of wheat flour, haldi [turmeric] and

mustard oil), which is used instead of soap in the village, on the body of the mother and

child at ceremonial bath on chhati. The Nain also plasters the floor of the house with

cow dung and yellow clay and the walls with chikni mitti and cleans the Saur (place

where the child is born). In return for all this work, the Nain gets four panseri (kachchi)

or eight seers at the birth of a boy and three panseri or six seers of grain at the birth of a

girl. The Pasi are called at the birth of Thakur child to carry the news and are provided

with food. The Pasi used to demand gift or neg, which is given according to the status

of the Thakur. The Dhobi do the same type of work as they do at the birth of the Thakur

child. The clothes of the mother and the child from the birth to the last nahan (bath) are

washed by the Dhobi. For this work and for: washing clothes at different intervals, a

Dhobi is given six panseri of coarse grain at the birth of a male child and three panseri

at the birth of the female child.

However, at the time of delivery the Bhaksorin (Bhaksor's wife) is called at the

birth at the child to help in delivery. She also cut the umbilical cord and cleans the dirty

clothes after child birth. She massages the mother for four or five days after childbirth

and till the Nain takes over. She also gives the first nahan (bath) to the mother. For this

work she is given four to five panseri (about ten to eight seers) of coarse grain and food

on the birth of a boy and half this much of a grain if a girl is born (Majumdar: 1958: 36-

39).

Similarly the inter-caste dependence and inter-caste relations among the other

castes are seen in different occasions like marriage,'death etc. Apart from Brahmin and

227

Thakur caste the relationship among the other castes are not dominant like the Brahmin

and the Thakurs. The Ahir regard the Pasi as untouchables, and so the Pasi avoid going

to the Ahir in times of need. Ahir and Nai do not move very freely with each other, "stiH

there do not exist ill-feelings between these two caste-groups. At the marriage of an

Ahir boy, a Nai applies oil and massages the body of the groom. On the bride's side, a

, Nain applies oil on her and massages her, and in return she gets ten seers of grain. The

Nais refuse to accept cooked food from the Ahir, but they accept water from them and

share their smoking chi lams together. The Lohar and Kumhar communities are almost

on the same level of the social hierarchy and they are very co-operative to each other

and maintain a friendly term. Lohar ,communities also maintain good relationship with

Nai and Pasi and so do the Pasi and the people of Nai communities. The Kumhar

considered as superior to Nai but the Nai do not accept it. Though there have been

differences between the Nai and the Kumhar but they maintain cordial relations with

each other. The Gadaria and Kumhar maintain reciprocal relationships. Both the caste-

group attends each other's importantceremonies with certain restrictions. The Kumhar

consider themselves as equal to the Kurmi but the Kurmi claim their superiority over

the Kumhar and they do not attend each other's funeral rites. The Kumhar and Pasi are

good friends. The Pasi are consi'dered lower than the Kurmi. The Nai consider Pasi as

very inferior group and do not accept food or water from them. However, the contact

between these two groups take place only at the ceremonies like marriage or funeral

rites when each performs the various services assigned to it by tradition and custom.

Dhobi wash the clothes of lower caste people including upper caste and considered

equal to the Chamar and Bhaksor. Chamar being the lowest ladder in the social

hierarchy looked down upon all the other castes. Apart from this caste interdependence

and relationships D.N. Majumdar does not fail to observe the changing pattern and

changing social relationships among the different castes. He pointed out that, the lower

caste people were urged on to rise by their leaders urged on to rise on the social ladder.

In the case of age and sex distinctions, age expects and does receive more

respect than youth, both among men and women. Age does create inaccessible barrier

between them. For instance, the old and young and even children for some matter,

move very freely with one another. They sit and talk, joke and laugh together. Though

women are considered as inferior to men, but age gives much respect to women, and

228

even the head of a family, if he happens to be younger than a woman in the family,

cannot overlook ,her wishes in many cases. The opinion of old women is generally

accepted in all matters affecting the family.

The group formation among the different castes in Mohana village is purely

based on kinship relations. In the 'Study of the judicial system of the village Mohana,

Majumdar reveals that every caste has its own panchayat, or biradari, though thi~ is not

as fully recogriized among high caste as it is among the lower castes. The area under

the jurisdiction of a biradari is known as javar and several villages are included in one

javar. All the caste-panchayats are more or less similar in structure and in the powers

they wield. (Ibid: 93) The meetings are gene1"ally held in the evening, so that all the

members can attend them. The cases taken up by the caste panchayats deal with

different ranges from different matters that includes family quarrels, disputes over land

affairs, illegal sexual intimacy, and other incident which would lower the reputation of

the whole caste. And the person, when proved gUilty, is no longer regarded as a

member of the caste, but he can retrieve his lost position by paying the fine imposed on

him by the panchayat. A man who for some reason or other has been imprisoned is also

treated as an outcaste, and on his release from prison must pay a fine' or arrange a feast

to reinstate him self in his community. The judgment of a caste-panchayats is normally

binding, and great ,is the respect paid to this judiciary board, especially to its head.

The religion plays a vital part in the village life and many people are guided by

religious values. The God'S and Goddess worshipped in the village are Shivji (also

known as Shankarji), Bhooian Devi, Durga Devi, Seetla Maharani, Kali Devi, Sati

Maharani, Hanumanji alias Mahavilji, Jagan Nathji and the sun-god. Apart from the

religious practice, a considerable number of the villagers, particularly the low-caste

people, believe in the existence of spirits and ghosts. Explaining the village Efe and

value system, it is abstracted in the work ofD. N. Majumdar (l958). "An Indian village

is not a way of life, it is also a concept - it is a constellation of values and so long as

our value system does not change, or change lowly and not abruptly, the village will

retain its identity, and so it has done till today. The continuity that one finds in other

parts between rural and urban living - a 'continuum', as a noted anthropo,logist has

described it - does not necessarily exist between villages and towns in India. There are

two distinct constellations of values and there are sharp dividing lines between the two

229

levels of living and experIence. Even Villages "Situated outskit1S of towns have

maintained the value system, and thus our villages do not become township. Even

villages of 5,000 inhabitants or more, which the Indian census defines as 'ur-ban', retain

the rural value system and differ from citi,es and towns, a fact even causal observes will

fail not to notice. We see in Mohana people who have an adequate knowledge of and

contact with towns; they are the know-all in the village, and in many matters they have

special prestige, status in the village. People listen to them, admire them for their

experience, and receive assistance and advice when they need the same, but they regard

the village as distinct and socially distant from the town." (Ibid: 329)

4.6.2. Values and Criminal Behaviour

D. N. Majumdar in his book Criminal Tribes '(l 949) has attempted to explore the social

and economic life of some of the principal criminal tribes and caste that reflects mainly

the negative values that has been associated with different castes and tribes who are

scattered all over India. These tribes consciously and deliberately subject them to a

strict and systematic course of education and training in crime. The moral background

for commission of crime is strengthened by the conviction installed in them from their

childhood that it is their birth right and sacred duty to earn their livelihood by

committing anti-social acts even though by doing so they put society to great

inconvenience and hardship. He attempted to analyze why the criminal tribe continues

its course of crime for generations and how its younger members are initiated into a life

of crime and grow into fuH fledged criminals. While describing such criminal actions

he states that, "some of the factors in the environment which are responsible for their

criminal career are ,their poverty, general low standard of life and culture, the absence

of any thing approaching moral or civic consciousness in them and finally their mode

of life which releases them from all such obligations as settled life in a place imposes.

These are enough to turn even ordinary people with normal instincts into criminals."

(Majumdar: 1949:40)

4.6.3. Values: Race and Culture

D.N. Majumdar in his book Races and Culture of India (1994) attempted to explore the

races and culture in India from historical perspective. Like a historical anthropologist

he attempted to know the racial background and cultural life, growth of culture in India

230

from the available prehistoric canvas with reference to role of different races in its

geographical settings. What ever the values known as Indian today are not purely an

Indian origin but it is the mixture of different cultural background of different races that

has groomed in Indian soil and played vital role in value formation. Majumdar believes

there is no recipe for the solution of racial problems. The only solution which is

pertinent and may be of value in the context of our present-day political relations

between countries and nations is to increase our understanding of races, to know.what

are scientific facts about race and what are pseudo-scientific, and to popularize the

former, and restrict the people of the later. In the context of the erosion of purely Indian

values, D.N. Majumdar states, contact with civilization has disorganized and

disintegrated primitive life anywhere and the primitive people in India have been

detribalized to an appreciable extent in recent times. With the weakening of the tribal

authority and religious sanctions, the effects of contacts have been more disruptive than

is imagined today. He stresses from the archeological accounts that India is one of

home land of the primitive human species. He further says, "since 1836, when Falconer

and Cautley found the first fossil primate in the sub-Himalayan formations near the

Siwalik hills, India has many a time figured prominently as a land where man might

have emerged from an ancestral Siwalik ape." (D.N. Majumdar: 1944: 23) The racial

status of the ancient human remains in India is not easy .to decipher, there is not easy to

slightest doubt that the various finds in Mahenjodaro and Harappa indicate a number of

racial type. He believes that the prehistoric findings at Maski, Mysore and other centres

in peninsular India tell the cultural history of the Deccan during the last 3000 years or

more. Regarding the racial trait in relation to culture he states that, "there are people

again who believe in blends, combinations and homogeneity; and want the 'melting

pot' process to solve racial and cultural conflicts. There are also those who believe in

diversity, in heterogeneity, in a plural society based on common participation between

alien groups, each living its own life and standards with freedom of worship, speech.

food and dress, values and ideals." (Ibid: 44)

In order to identify the racial groups 111 Indian society, he has adopted the

technique of distribution of blood groups to test the interrelation of racial groups which

is genetic in character transmissible by heredity and follows Mendelian laws of

inheritance to describe racial elements that being seen in different parts of India. He

231

found the four major blood groups i.e. 0, A, Band AB in his anthropometric analysis

of racial elements on the basis of blood groups. Majumdar's anthropological analysis

clearly gives a picture of social values that associated with th~ primitive men. "A

primitive man is subject to the powers of nature, to its wealth, its flora and fauna, to the

hills and valleys, rivers and forests. He develops a code 'Of social life based on his

interpretation of his environing conditions. His toois are those which he can shape well

from the materials available, and his interest in his environment is that of 'survival in

health and vigour' and not the gain or profit which is efforts and application may bring

forth." (D.N. Majumdar: 1958: 109) A sort of social equality was practiced in primitive

culture which appears sometimes atomitistic. The desire for food production does not

ordinarily extend beyond meeting the primary needs of the group, family or collection

or-families, and thus competition is not much evident in primitive society. Explaining

conflicting values among the primitive men, Majumdar has pointed out that, yet clash

of interests between groups and friction among individuals do takes place and even

hunting groups are 'known to partition the hunting area among families, or distribute the

plants among the various families constituting the social group which may lead to

extinction or to transition to other types of economy. Mohua being a free crop in many

tribal areas in India, many tribal people make a kind of beverage and also use the

flowers for preparing cake. The surplus produces are spent in feasts and festivities. In

primitive society there is some kind of adjustment between material needs and the

potentialities of the environment. Four factors enter into this kind of adjustment: (l) the

size of the social group (2) the material needs of the group (3) the resources available,

and (4) the degree of skill which the resources are tapped and exploited. (Ibid: 110)

Describing the values associated with the tribal leadership, Majumdar states

that. in most of primitive societies leaders are those who possess property or wealth.

Sometimes they are often without them. A leader is one who can entertain the most,

expected to lead their people out of harm's way, to warn them to new means of control

of food supply, and to organize methods of exploiting the resources of the habitat.

Apart from this he has exclusively written about the racial element in caste structure in

Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, BastaI' region (now in Chhatishgarh State) and the tribes of

north-east India. D.N. Majumdar has attempted to evaluate one of the major social

values in Indian society like social distance between castes on the basis of existing

232

differentiation. Social distance has been studied in the context of pollution which limits

the approach of the lower castes t'O the l'Ower castes. When a Brahmin received a gift

from another Brahmin, he had to acknowledge it in a loud v'Oice, from a

RajnyalKshatriya in a gentle voice, from a voice a whisper, and a sudra in his own

mind, indicating the pollution involved in accepting gifts from the last category.

Briefly summarizing, the caste in India is a composite racial structure r.epresented by

ethnic/racial stocks widely distributed in India-from early prehistoric times. Hypergamy

brought into existence a large number of mixed -castes whose status was both clean as

well as unclean, and the artisan castes of today form the intermediate layer between the

higher castes and the tribes.

4.7. A.K. Saran

A.K. Saran is one among the extremely rare intellectuals of our age, who have all along

propagated the ideas and ideals of traditional thought and-culture. His thinking has been

deeply inspired by Anand K. Coomaraswamy. A.K. Saran was the worthy student of

W'Orthy teacher D.P. Mukerji and later became his coUeague in Lucknow University.

Inspired by the writings of D.P. Mukelji, Saran takes on a logically more extreme

standpoint on the theoretic formulation of sociology. As one of the foremost critics of

modernity and modern scientific mode of thinking, A.K. Saran has endeavoured to

expose the major limitations, irresolvable contradictions and ultimate futility of the

social sciences which is currently in vague.

4.7.1. Values: Religion, Tradition and Modernity

A.K. Saran in his work concerned with the religious and moral values in a very

scholastic manner. His whole r~nge of perception regarding values is of theoretical and

very philosophical in nature and especially based on Hindu Scriptures. Though his

orientation to values has been drawn from the Hindu scriptures, he is not a critique to

any other religion. In his work, Traditional Vision of Man (1996), Sarari argues that,

"today we are living at this critical moment of history when the modern view of man,

now spread al over the continents, has created humanity which has become a danger to

global survival." (A.K.Saran: Traditional Vision of Man: 1996: 55)

He has tried to focus on spiritual crisis among the people and says, to the extent

that the din of modern life reveals to an ever greater extent the hollow nature 'Of that life

233

and the danger for the whole earth of man cut off from his spiritual toots become ever

more 'evident, the truth of the traditional vision of man basedQn the Divine origin of the

human state is being taken seriously once again even in non- traditional circles at least

by those who are aware of the various dimensions of the present human crisis. It is the

paranoiac consciousness of "modern" man that in its various expressions, gross and

stable, determines the contours of cultural values and the quality of fife under the

impact of 'modern' science and technology in the west. Contemporary western

consciousness is a major shaping force in contemporary India where, its workings have

been twisted in various complicated ways by the essentially colonial of satellite

relationship with the west that India has "-chosen" to retain. A study of the impact of

sci:ence and technology on cultural values and the quality of life wiH largely be a 'study

in the twisting and windings ofth'e EUi"o-American paranoia working in India and ,other

countries round the globe. (Ibid: ii) Again in his forward notes of the book Traditional

Vision of Man (1996), Saran says, "the very activities of modern man, may his very

existence, threatens the web 'Of life on earth . We are acting as if we are the last

generation of humanity on earth, participating with feverish pitch in an endle'ss but

futile activity which in the name of alleviating human civilization but also endangering

the whole fabric of life which suppotts us as living beings here on earth." (A.K. Saran:

Illumination: 1996: 19)

Saran was the careful observer of tradition and he has derived the principles of

human ordering and social organization from tradition. The context of Saran's work is

provided with the sharp divergence between traditional and modern way of thinking.

The modern endeavour is to help man maximize his satisfaction with the help of

science, technology and social engineering. It pays scant attention to the personal moral

law or the spiritual seeking of man. While talking about the uadition with referring

modernity, Saran says that, "one way to think beyond the modernity -tradition

dichotomy is to go deeper and deeper into the nature and inner telos of modernity.

What we have in mind here is not the modernity of tradition or "the traditionality of

modernity" nor would it do to quantify the problem and posit a continuum of tradition

and modernity." (Ibid: 115)

In the present age tradition is generally considered to be something antithetical

to human progress and development. According to Saran, in its true sense tradition is

234

neither old nor .new and neither modern nor anti-modern. It is eternal, universal and

sacred. Explaining the material progress in the modern world in the wake of

development in Science and Technology contrary to the ignorance of tradition at the

global level, Saran gives emphasis on changing world and worried that, in the current

juncture of modern world the situation has led to major and minor wars, proliferation of

nuclear and strategic weapons, mad race for military, political and economic supremacy

ever wasteful consumption, mindless exploitation of nature and dreadful pollution and,

at the individual level it promotes egotism, restlessness, uncertainty, selfishness and

unhappiness. Endowed with the values and personality Saran himself living a life of

austere simplicity is a subtle, profound and dedicated seeker of truth. In this critical

juncture of world civilization, in search of world peace Saran argues and .suggests that,

for world peace it is not enough to institute a techno-industrial order, what is needed is

the spiritualization of man. Saran envisages the primordial source as identity of being,

knowing and Goodness or Satchit and Anand; he presupposes that this internal

necessity is present in or coincides with a capacity within us which we may call self-

consciousness or innate awareness of our transcendent purpose or end (telos). (A. K.

Saran: Traditional Thought: 1996: xii-xiv)

In the context of the value premises Saran has quoted in the inaugural address

delivered by D.P. Mukelji's in the University of Aligarh (A.U.) to understand

modernity emphasizing modern economy that has spread in different parts of the world

in the context of value premises. "Modern definition of economics is closed,

deliberately closed, because it avoids norms and values, all in the name of logical

analysis. If equilibrium could be just equilibrium, then there should have been no

search for equiIibrium."(Y. Atal: 1993: 120)

4.7.2. Values: Science and Technology

Saran is well aware that the development of technology has greater impact on any

society and its culture. "Saran began with technology, for technology is the key to the

understanding of modern man and his civilization - it represents not only his most

valunted achievement, but his highest aspirations for a better social ordeL This

kingdom-to-come may be based on neotechnic, biotechnic or cybernetic principles -

modern thinkers are not clear about this. But if there is one idea on which there is

complete accord in this age of deep discords and violent disagreements, it is that 235

technology - under which psycho social techniques of controlling human behaviour are

also included - and technology alone can save man." (Ibid: 121)

Saran considers human needs as the determinant of changes in the technological

order. Science and technology form part of systems of knowledge that man, at different

times in history has inherited. Modern science and technology are part of the 'modern'

system of knowledge. According to Saran, "technical activity is the most primitive

activity of man, there is the technique of hunting, of food gathering, fishing; and later

of weapons, clothing and bUilding. And there we face a mystery."(A.K. Saran: The

Marxian Theory of Social Change: A Logico Philosophical Critique: 2000: 6) Culture

determine the way in which individuals identify and recognize one another within their

own social sphere of action and the ,traditional cultures and value system on them

constitute the factor for social harmony, and give a special cultural identity to the

members of community which, in itself is one of the needs for endogenous

development. Saran has further argued that, '''the <technological advancement in relation

to human being and their soci·al existence may give an impression that after all it is

materialism a "high standard of living" ~hat controls modern technology and hence the

"Villain" or the "Hero" of the pi'ece is materialism." (Saran: Traditional Vision of Man:

1998: 31) He shows that the social order is founded on the ideas of an emancipated

will. Saran writes in a philosophkalmanner, '''Indeed the world is not a kind of wri,ting

I'egible or illegible to be l:ead, deciphered. The world is a symbol of transcendent

Reality Measured out from the Immeasurable Resting on the oceanic "ground" of

Inexhaustible Residues." (Saran: 1'996: xxiii) Suggesting the preference to the

contemporary social values Saran says that, society highly values its normal man. It

educates children to love themselves and to become absurd and thus to be normal.

(A.K. Saran: Traditional Thought: 1996: 194)

Defining the impact of science and technology upon the Asian people, Saran

has stated that, in exploring the impact of science' and technology on the quality of life

and cultural values of Asian peoples. It would be of great values to see the ways in

which the unities and harmonies inherited by us have been undermined and forgotten,

and how the quality of life is deteriorating under the impact of the above unresolved

and what is worse, often falsely resolved antithesis. From the traditional stand point the

question of the relationship between tradition and our times is not one of continuity, or

236

discontinuity, for continuity itself has a different meaning in a creatioqal and anclie

universe of discourse. It is really a matter of forgetting and perversion of tradition. It

would therefore be not only "fascinating" but perhaps highly enlighten to see how and

in what forms traditional insights, institutions and thought ways survive and come up in

contemporary consciousness, how they still influence and inform the quality of life and

complicate our cultural values.

4.7.3. Values and Religious Life

Explaining the value of life as per the Hindu Scripture Saran states that, "In the Hindu

tradition man has a five fold constitution, each order being called a kosa, sheath or

envelope, the Beatific envelope (anantamaya kosa), the vital envelope (pranamaya

kosa). These are hierarchically organised orders, the first and the highest, the beatific

envelope (anandamaya kosa) is however discontinuous with the rest. It is really

transcendent and corresponds, in some ways, to moksha in the hierarchy of cardinal

ends of human life .Its conclusion in the constitution of man signifies the mastry of

man". (A.K. Saran: Takamari Lectures, The Crisis of Mankind: 1999: 35)

Saran's understandings on religious values have basically derived from Sanskrit

literature of Vedas and Upanishads. He opines in the transcendental quiescent Brahman

(paramatma) or paramsiva there is sabda, artha, nor prataya. There is therefore neither

name nor form. In this infinite calm there arises a metaphysical point of stress or Bindu

or Ghaibhuta-sakti, which stirs for (prasarati) as the multiple forces of the universe .In

this infinite calm there arises a metaphysical point of stress, Bindu, or Ghanibhuta-

sakti, which stir forth as the mUltiple forces of the universe. These energizing, as the

cause of and as of sivatma is the world experience with its duality of subject and object.

This energizing is the cause and as of Jivatma is the world experience with its duality of

subject and object. This play of sakti takes place in either of consciousness in such a

way that the latter is neither effaced nor affected when the second condition appears

which last that of both transcendence and immanence. This is creation or (sristi). (A.K.

Saran: Traditional Thought: 1996) In addition to this Saran has further argued that, in

the beginning God gave to every people a cup of clay, and from this cup they drink

their life. "Vincit ominio veritas: one ought to add; vincit omnia sanctitas, truth and

holiness; a[1 values are in these two terms; all that we most love and all that we must

be." (Ibid: 65)

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In the context of contemporary world order with reference to human values, Saran says,

"man is in the deepest misery today and the irony is that essentially it all follows -even

flows from the "grandeur" of modern man and his civilization .We are neck-deep in

troubles and difficulties grave and far reaching the destruction and manipulation of

environment proceeding first towards catastrophic ecological disturbance; a wholly

destructive exploitation of resources in which all the world -West and East (or North

and south) but asymmetrically is participating actively and almost freely ,each world in

its own worst way. Above all the unprecedented predicament of modern man who

became instmmental chooses to live under the ever-darkening shadow of nuclear

holocaust. We are fated to live ever precariously innocent victims of the idiosyncrasies

of the ruling Mustafa Munds. At another level, there is the profound poignant problem

of legalized abortion bringing us face to face with our willful failure to hear the cry of

the urban dwellers. Indeed, in the name of the scientific civilization, in the name of

progress, in the name of divine right of 'scientific and technological advance, in the

name of irreversibility of modernization, we have cultivated an indifference to the fate

of future generations. Indifference is required by our ev·er more powerful preparedness

for nuclear destruction of the whole world complimented by the on going industrial-

economic destruction of our environment at every level. And this indifference to our

own future represents, with devastating irony, the 'consumption of a time glorifying

civilization founded on the ideology of the Golden future.

For Saran truth is inseparable from reality and it is independent of acceptance

by everybody. He also believes that the keys of knowledge are the gifts of divine love.

Professor Saran realizes that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the

disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value, yet

the fact remains that Saran has no sympathy for the current of European civilization and

do not understand its goal.

4.8. Ramkrishna Mukherjee (b. 1919)

The subject "value" is one of the important areas of interest for Ramkrishna Mukherjee.

In the value analysis he made two important observations. Firstly he says that

emphatically the facts were important. The second thing he had communicated was his

strong disagreement with the primary given to 'cultural values', rather than to structure

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in American sociology. In three and a half decades since then, Ramkrishna has

traversed a long way in conceptualizing values, in dealing with valuational aspects of

va·lue, accommodation in clarifying the relationship between culture, culture product,

social process and change and proposing the inductive inferential methodology of

society and change. (For more details see Ramkrishna Mukherjee, 1983: 12)

4.8.1. Description about Values

Initially Mukherjee was a Marxists but the methods he adopted In his later works

changes towards both Marxian and Weberian Sociology. Ramkrishna, in his book

Sociology of Indian Sociology (1979), attempted to classify some of the pioneer Indian

Sociologi'st like A.K. Coomaraswamy, B.N. Seal, B.K. Sarkar, G.S. Ghurye, D.P.

Mukerji, Radhakamal Mukerjee, S.V. Katker, B.N. Dun and K.P. Chattopadhya about

their engagement with value preferences,theoretical approaches and methodological

orientation in .their studies. The uniqueness in his engagement with values i"s that, he not

only systematicaHy explained values and valuation of value based objects in social

science research but also attempted to analyze the theoretical and methodological

orientations of different Indian sociologists in a value frame work. Ramkrishna

Mukheljee very comprehensively discussed about {he value in the context of social

science research. In a conversation with Partha Natha Mukherji, when Ramkrishna

Mukherjee was asked how is value related to positivism? In a reply Ramkrishna "says

when you consider value as a variable, you cannot be a positivist. Value is confounded

with information and that makes your data.

Ramkrishna Mukherjee attempted to carry forward his teacher D.P. Mukerji's

legacy of Marxist approach to relocate Indian social reality. For his contribution to

social science knowledge, it may not be wrong to count him among the personalities

like, Radhakamal Mukerjee, G.S. Ghurye and D.P. Mukerji in the history and

philosophy of social science in India. Taking into account the importance of the values

in relation to culture, Ramkrishna has given the example, "the International Culture of

Development (1979) has defined culture as 'an aggregate of values and traditions which

is deeply linked to everyday life of the people, and in that sense, it is a matrix of

perception which allows one to apprehend the world.' He has broadly spoken about

four cardinal human values that applicable to all humans, namely, survival, security,

prosperity, and progress. "The cardinal valuation of human kind is differently 239

interpreted in the content of what is appropriate or inappropriate, desirable or

detestable, good or bad for humankind. These are ordinal valuation with reference to

how (and not why) to survive, be secured in life, ensure material prosperity, and

progress," (Ramkrishna Mukherjee: 1991: 13)

According to him, when we talk of value we say it cannot be measured. Here

you bring value to its ultimate meaning which is that, either I desire to have a thing or

detest having it. So this desirability and anti-desirability are two dimensions of a thing,

each of which can be quantified in terms of the degree of desirability and

undesirability. These two things can be put in some kind of a relationship. Value

Freedom- Value freedom is a commitment on the part of the scientist to the pursuit of

scientific truth independent of ethical self-reflection and personal subjective elements.

Scientific knowledge is different from all other forms of knowledge since it is

verifiable and hence universally true. (Ibid)

Mukherjee states, social science is not value-free. Interests with reference to

each science determine the social context of science. Natural science is characterized

by technical cognitive interests, historical-hermeneutic sciences by practical interests

and social science vs. emancipatory cognitive interests. The crisis of values in different

parts of the globe well observed by Ramkrishna Mukherjee and according to him the

world of today appears to present sharply contrasting pictures: one of frustrating

pessimisri1, the other of buoyant optimism. Never before has crisis been so acutely

manifested in the life of the people in virtually all parts of the globe. Its expression may

be different in different societies: economic and political in the "developing" societies;

ideological in the most ideologically structured "developed" societies; or social and

cultural in the most economically prosperous "developed" societies. In respect of the

physical environment and ecology, the crisis has also attained a world dimension. Apart

frol11 the energy crisis, which has international repercussions, it has led to a questioning

of the "limits to growth" irrespective of inter-societal variations.

4.8.2. Values: Modernity, Science and Technology

According to Ramkrishna Mukheljee, science consolidates knowledge, and technology

applies the body .of knowledge for one purpose or another. Obviously, this purpose is

not value-free: we must regard it as "desirable" or "undesirable", "good" or "bad". That

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is, we assign distinct value significance to scientific and technological development

with reference to their diverse aspects considered as good or bad. The role of value in

science and technology is thus multifaceted. He further says that, from two

Diametrically opposed viewpoints any consideration of value in science and technology

appear to be redundant. One of them is that man, in order to be happy, should eschew

science and technology, and be in communion with nature. The other is that man, and

be happy, in order to be happy, should have the means to release all his potential energy

which requires the utmost development of science and technology. Thus, the first

viewpoint seems to negate science and technology, and so also their relevance to

values, while the second viewpoint simply equates them with what is valuable. But the

appearance is deceptive or inconsequential. With the value preferences Ram krishna

Mukhetjee has given one example i.e. international organization the United Nation and

the United Nations EDucation and Socio-Cultural Organization (UNESCO) tend to

arrive at a consensus on the minimally desired goals which automatically require

scientific and technological development. Their main goa·ls ate that men should enjoy

good health, adequate nutrition, education, shelter, and so on. Even a consensus is

attained among the members of the U.N. on the desired goals, the perennial question

remains centering on the question what will happen after attaining minimal targets?

And how to attain these goals remains relevant. "Value in this context may be so

different that one person may believe that "capitalism springs eternal in the human

breast" while another may consider that "proletariat of the world should unite".

Obviously, the role of value in scientific and technological development cannot be

standardized in this manner, especially because development should be regarded as a

never ending process in human existence."

Ramkrishna Mukheljee has critically analyzed the value associated with the

scientitic and technological development in modern world with referring to its uneven

acceptance in western countries and third world developing countries. He states that,

any value significance imposed upon scientific and technological development would

be impractical and even injurious to the people concerned. The concept of

"modernization'·, which is fashionable these days, represents one such valuation. Its

proponents clearly regard the dominant value system of west Europe and North

America as playing the deciding role in the concept of "modernization", in which the

241

principal components are the characteristics of scientific of scientific and technological

development pursued and achieved in this Atlantic region. But the imitative and non-

contextual applications of the concept of "modernization" and its particular "blue print"

of scientific and technological development have not benefited the "developing"

societies.

According to Mukherjee, in most of'the societies in Third World countries, the

"modernization ideals" have led to the prosperity of the· imported and the indigenous

elites resulting in misery for the masses. The achievements ·of the first United Nations

Development Decade, which was geared to these ideals, have not only spread to the

masses, but the spectra of an acute crisis in these societies now haunt the world.

Keeping in view the previous achievement, the Second United Nation Development

Decade has emphasizes for the eradication of poverty and inequality in the

"developing" societies. According to Ramkrishna, the influential and distinctively

articulate sectors of the people in these societies do not subscribe to the encapsulated

"modernization ideals" to bring about the social andlor national revolutions. In these

conditions, neither a minimally agreed nor an enforced value significance of scientific

and technological development will serve humanity. The role of value in this context

must be specific to the people and the society concerned. Hence, in the present state of

our knowledge in theory and action, we cannot speak of one or the only role of value in

. _ sci~ntific and !ech!1010gicald~vel()pment. .1t has to be a matter of diagnosis in a place-

time-object-bound field in which there is diversity of possible value significance.

4.8.3. Values and Valuation

In his valuation in social science Ramkrishna says, if we examine the role of value in

science and technology in its substantive details, we do not encounter a random

situation. The views on social development may appear to be polar-opposites in

extreme situations, but the difference among them are matters of emphasis and not the

negation of either the material or the spiritual aspects of peace, progress, and prosperity

of humanity. At one end of the scale, the material basis of society denotes a particular

form social existence which, in its turn, evolves a specific kind of social consciousness

and upholds the spiritual basis of society. At the other end the spiritual basis of society

denotes a particular form of social consciousness which, in its turn, evolves a specific

kind of social existence and upholds the material basis of society. In neither case is the 242

need for scientific and technological development ignored. Only the role of value in

each context assumes a distinctly different character, of which theex"treme

manifestation is recorded by either of the viewpoints we have stated. (Hanumanth Rao,

C. H and Joshi, P. C: 1980: 460)

He further states, to ascertain the respective bases of emergen<;e of different

valuations, we need not consider the multi-dimensionality of values in scientific and

technological development to be indiscriminate or indeterminate: the valuations can be

systematized into a constellation. Furthermore, the forms of expression and execution

of the different valuations are not incoherent. They can be identified, with reference to

the nature and extent of differences in the valuations, while appraising the dynamics of

a society. For no society in the world is insular and self-contained. (Ibid) .

He is in opening of examining systematically the distinctions and the

interrelations among the differential valuations at any level of comprehension and

execution of science and technology keeping in view the place-time-object dimension.

Concurrently, it should ascertain their actual influence and affect any society from an

empirical appreciation of the social dynamism. Such an interaction between "theory"

and "empiricism" should reveal unequivocally the relevance and the relative efficiently

of particular valuations to depict the social reality. Hence the process should prove the

inconsequential character of some value standpoints, and the decisive efficiency of

particular valuations in terms of their sequential cause-effect relations in the set. -

(Hanumanth Rao, C.H. and Joshi P.c. 1980: 460-461)

4.8.4. Values: Quality of Life

In his discussion on values of human life, Ramkrishna viewed that, generally all people

have the same outlook to their life. They want (1) men to survive, (2) have security in

life, (3) aspire for material prosperity in order to ensure survival and security and lead a

wholesome life, and (4) strive for mental progress in order to unfold the potentialities

of each human. According to Ramkrishna these four are cardinal valuations for

humankind, with which the idealist philosophers are no less concerned than the

materialist philosophers. For example, Shankara preached that the world and this

human life are illusion (maya), but to preach this doctrine he built monasteries at four

corners of his society (which was Bharat in his times) and thus became concerned with

243

the issues of the survival, material security, material prosperity and mental progress of

his disciples and devotees. This is clearly noticeable today from the role of

Shankaracharyas of these four monasteries. (Ramkrishna Mukherjee: 1993: 136) To

substantiate his views, he has given another example, "Yagnavalkya declared that the

Supreme Being is the truth (iti) and all manifestations of the world are 'neither this nor

that' (neti ueti). However, he had amassed so much wealth while preaching this

unworldly outlook that in his old age he wished to divide his property between two

wives. Similar ,examples of the universal validity of the four cardinal values for human

existence may be cited with reference to other idealist philosophers from India and

elsewhere." (Ibid) ~;

Ramkrishna has considered survival, security, prosperity and progFess as the

four cardinal values which are encountered by every human in all places, at all times,

and with respect to every ,gtoup of people. The individual translate the cardinal

valuation of life into different ordinal valuations in accordance with their subjective

appreciation of life. Following this, they wish to mould society and operate it according

to their tespective ordinal valuation. (Ibid: 1993: 136-137, Ramkrishna Mukherjee

refers cardinal valuation as most impottant and ordinal valuation and ordinal valuation

as relating to order in a series) The people also appear to be value-free and as

concemed with the empirical reality alone. But the manner in which they appreciate

reality is value--loaded. This valuation emerges from their culture which defined by

E.B. Tylor that," culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,

morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a

member of society.

4.8.5. Conflicting Values and Valuation

Mukerjee also aware about the conflicting values and in this context of value conflict

Mukherjee says, "history has shown that a powerful valuation of the masses, contrary

to the dominant ordinal valuation of elite, may lead to civil war in the attempt of

humans to realize the cardinal values, under either of these two circumstances,

sociology in the context of social science enters into the ordinal value space constructed

by the scholars on the one side, in terms of what the people need, and, on the other, in

terms of what the people themselves declare to be what they want to have or to get rid

of. (Ibid: 138) With referring these two value spaces Mukherjee says, it require 244

systematic exploration on an inductive base of the social space of the elite and the

masses so as to ascertain the points at which the elite and the masses so as to ascertain

the points at which the elite's valuation of what the people need is in conjuncture or

disjuncture with the people actually want.

Mukherjee emphasizes on knowledge and viewed that, knowledge can proceed

only this far because, in the ultimate analysis, it forms an asymptotic relation with

reality. It may very closely explicate reality, but never fully and finally. Therefore,

science can evermore reduce the gap between the ordinal valuations and the cardinal

valuation of humankind, but can never reduce the gap to zero. Any attempt in that

respect would lead to what is called nirvana in Buddhist beatitude, despite variable

interpretations of that concept by different schools of Buddhism. At the state of

nirvana, subjectivism disappears because Ego (or the person) forfeits its identity,

objectivism becomes redundant to the accumulation of knowledge by Ego, and,

correspondingly, empiricism forfeits its role in scientific investigation. (Ibid: 139)

4.8.6. Values and Development

Mukeljee located the importance of values in developmental process. To explain the

values in relation to development it is quoted in the work of Ramkrishna Mukherjee,

who viewed that, "from this perspective, the role of value in science and technology

attains a crucial importance: whether science and technology are at all desirable for the

development of human society; whether some of their characteristics are good for the

progress of humanity, while others are bad; and what extent the "good" characteristics

should be pursued to harmonize the social development of mankind with nature."

(Ramkrishna Mukherjee: 1975: 14-15) Giving emphasis on the role of science &

technology in relation to value and development, he further states that, science

consolidates knowledge, and technology applies the body of knowledge for one

purpose or another. Obviously, for this purpose, whatever it is, cannot be value-free: we

must regard it as "desirable" or "undesirable", "good" or "bad". That is, we assign

distinct value significance to scientific and technological development with reference to

their diverse aspects considered as bad. The role of value in science and technology is

thus multifaceted. Value in social development may vary in many ways.

245

Ramkrishna Mukherjee has given the example of nutritive variations closely associated

with food habits and says that, "the developmental attributes and indicators must be

culture specific in both intra-society and inter-society context. Nutritive variation is

closely associated with the peoples' food habits in which values are ingrained for

different groups of people in the same society and between societies. In India the

Kashmiri Brahmins are meat eaters, the saraswat Brahmins of Maharashtra are fish-

eaters, the Bengali Brahmins are definitely fish eaters (and also mostly meat eaters), "

while the south Indian Brahmins are scrupulously vegetarians." CRamkrishna

Mukheljee: ·1979: 92-93) He also says the situation is the same regarding the peoples'

appreciation of the facts of opulence, security, recreation, leisure, and even education,

health, shelter, and other apparently less variable subject-categories of development.

The 1'eason for discussing this is to locate the importance of values in policy \

formulation for social development. For instance, if it is attempted to engage people in

income generating activities in south Indian vegetarian Brahmin dominated areas the

occupation of poultry or -fishery may not run successfully for its obvious reason of

different values.

4.8.7. Values in Social Science Research

However, the concern with values, have remained ingrained in the appraisal of social

reality and the induction of social change - values defined, contextually, in an objective

manner and for empiricalconsidetation as the nature and extent of a person's desire to

retain or obtain certain life resources and detestation of certain other resomces. For a

while it may have appeared that only from a value-free perspective could society be

understood objectively. Increasingly, however it became clear that society represents a

virtually infinite but enumerable field of a variation in the items of information.

Selection of information therefore is inherent to the understanding of society, while any

selection must be governed by one's value preference. Nothing is perceived, no

observation is made without a purpose-implied or explicated, conscience or

unconsciences. (Ramkrishna Mukherjee: 1983: 330) Keeping in view the values of life,

in valuation of social science research Mukherjee states, while the orientation to

research shifted from an ethically normative to an objective (assumed be value-free)

basis, the understanding of society and the inducement of social change rested, as

before, on value premises. (Ibid: 33) He fUlther viewed, valuation in social science has

246

usually held constant by assuming a universally applicable value-load, such as by

depicting the society as being (of Becoming) rational, harmonious, wholesome,

progressive, and thus, wholesome and, therefore, progressive. (Ibid) It is found with

respect to the concept of "social development", which integrates all social science

subjects, that the value-acceptors stress one or another set of complementary behavior

patterns as of prime importance in holding society together as a product, and one or

another set of behavior patterns to· denote the prime movers of change. (Ibid: 24)

Afterwards, a scholar may infer on the social processes operating within and across the

collectivities which he or she has selected (i.e., valued) to represent the structure.

However, the enumeration and analysi's of these processes will also reflect the value

performance of the scholar. Thus, on his or her value-base, a scholar explains 'social

reality, and points to what the society is likely to be (or should be) in the future

perspective. Ramkrishna Mukherjee: 1983: 24)

The subject value being one of the important areas of interest Ramkrishna

Mukherjee in his value analysis has made two important observations. In three and a

half decades since then, he has traversed a long way in conceptualizing values, in

dealing with valuational aspects of value, accommodation in clarifying the relationship

between culture, culture product,social process and change and proposing the inductive

inferential methodology of society and change. He has not only made systematic

explanation of values in human life and valuation of value based objects in social

science research but also attempted to analyze the theoretical and methodological

orientations of different Indian sociologists in a value frame work. He pointed out that

science consolidates knowledge, and technology applies the body of knowledge for

different purpose. The role of value in science and technology is multifaceted and

cannot be standardized in this manner, especially because 'CIevelopment should be

regarded as a never ending process in human existence.

In his critical analysis of values associated with the scientific and technological

development in modern world with reference to its uneven acceptance in western

countries and third world developing countries, Ramkrishna Mukheljee very

comprehensively discussed about the role of values in the context of social science

research. When he was being asked by sociologist Partha Natha Mukherji, how is value

related to positivism? He replied when you consider value as a variable, you cannot be

247

a positivist. Value is confounded with information and that makes your ,data. The role

of value in this context must be specific to the people and the 'society concerned. He

emphasizes on cardinal and ordinal valuation of life. Keeping in view the values of life,

in valuation of social science research Mukherjee states, while the orientation to

research shifted from an ethically normative to an objective basis, the .understanding of

society and the inducement of social change rested, as before, on value premises.

4.9. Conclusion

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy concerns with the associated values of religion, arts, crafts

and philosophy of life and says Indian mind differs most from the average mind of

modern European view of philosophy of life. With reference to Brahmin values he

spoke about the status of Indian Women. Most of his works are deals with the arts,

crafts and aesthetic values. From the dance of Shiva, he reveals religious and aesthetics

values. He was concern with the functional values of arts and sculpture, songs and

music that has developed through the different stages of history. While studying the

Buddhist, Jain and Rajput paintings he revealed the inherent meaning and values

associated with it. He also dealt with the issues of nationalism and ideology.

Radhakamal Mukeljee states that values are der.ived from life, from

environment, from self, society and culture, and beyond all, from the ideal,

transcendent dimension of human existence and experience. He argued that the

beginning of a psychological study of man's growth and development is the value of

attribute of his behaviour and experience which differentiates him from other animal.

His study of civilization fundamentally concerned with the integration and wholeness

of persons-values-and-cosmos with reference to the fulfillments of men and societies

and its subordination to the total movement of mankind. Values and norms are

represented by knowledge, art, morality and religion. By nature man is a value-seeking,

value-fulfilling, concept-forming animal. Goals, values and meanings are future-

oriented and symbolically attached to situation through these being invested with

certain symbols of their significance in the concourse of events and relations. He

believes that mankind has evolved a developmental pattern of human needs, values and

virtues at the different stages of the human life-cycle. Values are essentially social

products, and at the same time involve the individual's assumption of certain common

248

goals and purposes of the social mi lieu that have become a part of him. He spoke about

the disvalues with referring biological instincts. The excessive indulgence in sex, food,

drink and drugs brings about physical and mental break downs are over driven and

unnatural. He called these as 'disvalues', 'unvalues' or 'counter-values' based on

homeostatic and 'need-reeducation' tendencies that are largely 'defense' rather than

'growth' mechanisms. Certain civilizations and epochs have cultivated such biological

'disvalues' .

Ghurye viewed that the classical literary and religious works of India are an

important source of Indian values. His 'ethnographic sketch on tribes and castes of

India, using historical, indo logical and statistical data, he argued, in Indian society the

Brahamanical ideas and values performed the central role in the past and Brahmanical

culture relates to the realm of Indian values. His contribution covers a wide range of

areas that includes family, marriage and kinship, urbanization, religion, caste, tribal

life, demography, architecture and literature etc. enriched with development of

sociology and anthropology in India. Ghurye's kinship analysis in behavioural sense is

nothing but a reflection of part of a family values prevailing during those days in the

society. He is concern with British government's administration plan and policies in

tribal areas and defines the various problems and cultural traits of the tribes providing

substantial literature on tribal values. His comparative study on the rising of cities and

civilization world wide with its historicity mentions about associated values in the cities

of U.S.A., Britain, China, and Egypt and of India with its historical significance. To

understand religious values he refers to popular deities (god/goddess) such as Shiva.

Ganesha, Skanda, Rama, Krishna and Devi and their many regional manifestations. He

also attempted to understand values through the megalithic accounts.

Besides dealing with values in sociology, D.P. Mukelji has located values in the

study of economic theories and pointed out that, in economics the first casualty was the

labor theory of value, with it went the realistic background of evaluation, and the

appreciation of a social relation. The classical economist would not separate their

analysis of value, which for them was a relation and not an entity or a substance, from

class relations. In his concern about the developing economic features of India and on

going planning and development programmes in after its independence, he viewed

there can be no escape from norms and values in planning. And in the social world, the

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source of mundane values is the relation between the state and the society. India has a

separate norm of values with the hidden assumption that values determine conduct. He

says India's cultural heritage and cultural values rooted in its tradition. The value of

Indian tradition lies in the ability of their conserving forces to put a brake on hasty

passage. Adjustment is the end-product of the dialectical connection between the t\\o.

Analysing the social change along with the value change that has taken place in India

with the spirit of nationalism Mukelji has viewed that India entered into a new lease of

life in the nineteenth century. The spurt of vitality came from the west through various

channels lik~ commerce and trade, inereased facilities for communication, western

learning, administrative unity, etc. For the first time historian assert, can alien

civilization impinged upon every detail of Indian life changed its pattern and created

new values.

Nirmal Kumar Bose dealt with many areas on theoretical view about the nature

of culture and society, and their sources of stability and change in the context of Indian

sociology that reflects Indian values. He has tried to identify the organizing principles

of Hindu society, the factors which ensured its continuity for centuries and the forces

by which it was ultimately weakened. In his various insightful papers on tribes he has

attempted to highlight the tribal values associated with their economy, culture and

absorption of tribes into the Hindu caste system, and the roots of tribal separatist

movements. He also discllses on some of the must isolated tribes of Orissa. In his

writing about the Juangs, Kharias and Savaras he was basing himself on observations

he had made. He has pointed out that villages are emerges based on the values

associated with the traditional occupations and Indian villages were never been attained

100 percent self-sufficiency. He has carefully observed certain values associated with

the caste based hereditary occupation in different parts of the country and some of the

Indian values were influenced by spirituality and derived from the natural objects. He

has attempted to identify and reflect the differential social values associated with the

temple constructions in different parts of India. Drawing from the Hindu text books he

has mentioned some values are associated with human qualities such as Satva, Raja,

Tamas and Dharma, Artha, Karma and Moksha and it may be utilized in the

classification of cultures. He has mentioned four distinct categories of behavior that

may be identified in any culture. These are: (\) Vastu (Material object), (2) Kriya

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(Habitual Action), (3) Samhati (Social Grouping) and (4) Tattwa (Knowledge). The last

one again may be divided into two, according as the knowledge is Vicharamulaka

(based on experiment or criticism), or Visvasamulaka (based on faith).

Dhirendra Narayan Majumdar's studies is very much relevant to understand

tribal values through his extensive anthropological and sociological surveys of many

tribes, and caste in Bihar, M.P., Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Bengal. Though he has not

used the term values in his whole range of village study but his works reflects various

social values associated with the village community. His study on "Mohana~' village

along the line of anthropological engagement especially reflects the empirical analysis

of values referring the socio-economic, political and cultural life of the people through

an ethnographic account. He says religion plays a vital part in the village life and many

people are guided by religious values. An Indian village is not a way of life, it is also a

concept - it is a constellation of values and so long as our value system does not

change, or change lowly and not abruptly, the village will retain its identity, and so it

has done till today. He attempted to explore the social and economic life of some of the

principal criminal tribes and caste that retlects mainly the negative values that has been

associated with different castes and tribes who are scattered all over India. These tribes

consciously and deliberately subject them to a strict and systematic course of education

and training in crime. He states that some of the factors like poverty, general low

standard of life and culture, the absence of any thing approaching moral or civic

consciousness in them and finally their mode of life which releases them from all such

obligations as settled life in a place imposes for their criminal career. He argues that

what ever the values known as Indian today are not purely an Indian origin but it is the

mixture of different cultural background of different races that has groomed in Indian

soil and played vital role in value formation. Regarding the erosion of purely Indian

values, he states that contact with other civilization has disorganized and disintegrated

primitive life anywhere and the primitive people in India have been detribalized to an

appreciable extent in recent times.

AX. Saran's concerned with the religious and moral values. His perception

regarding values is of theoretical and philosophical in nature and based on Hindu

Scriptures. He suggested a study of the impact of science and technology on cultural

values and the quality of life will largely be a study in the twisting and windings of the

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Euro-American paranoia working in India and other countries round the globe. He has

pointed out modern definition of economics is deliberately closed because it avoids

norms and values in,the name of logical analysis. Culture determines the way in which

individuals identify and recognize one another within their own social sphere of action.

The traditional cultures and value system on them constitute the factor for social

harmony, and give a special cultural identity to the members of community needs for

endogenous development. He says that 'society highly values its normal man. It

educates children to love themselves and to become absurd and thus to be normal.

Explaining the impact of sci,ence and technology on the quality of life and cultural

values, it would be of great values to see the ways in which the unities and harmonies

inherited by us have been undermined and forgotten, and how the quality of life is

deteriorating under the impact of the science and technology. Saran says in the Hindu

tradition man has a five fold constitution, each order being called a kosa, sheath or

envelope, the Beatific envelope (anantamaya kosa), the vital envelope (pranamaya

kosa). These are hierarchically organized orders, the first and the highest, the beatific,

envelope (anandamaya kosa) is however discontinuous with the rest. It is really

transcendent and corresponds, in some ways, to moksha in the hierarchy of cardinal

ends of human life. Saran's understandings on religious values have basically derived

from the Sanskrit literature i.e. Vedas and Upanishads.

In the study of sociology Ramkrishna Mukherjee has classified some of the

pioneer Indian Scholars like A.K. Coomaraswamy, B.N. Seal, B.K. Sarkar, G.S.

Ghurye, D.P. Mukelji, Radhakamal Mukerjee, S.V. Katker, B.N. Dutt and K.P.

Chattopadhya in a value frame and explain about their engagement with value

preferences, theoretical approaches and methodological orientation in their studies. He

has not only systematically explained values and valuation of value based objects in

social science research but also attempted to analyze the theoretical and methodological

orientations of different Indian sociologists in a value framework. He has broadly

spoken about four cardinal human values that applicable to all humans, namely,

survival, security, prosperity, and progress. He states, social science is not value-free.

Interests with reference to each science determine the social context of science. Besides

this, he has critically analyzed the value associated with the scientific and technological

development in modern world with referring to its uneven acceptance in western

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countries and third world developing countries. According to him tire role of value in

science and technology is multifaceted and cannot be standardized because

development should be regarded as a never ending process in human existence. In his

valuation in social science he says, if we examine the role of value in science and

technology in its substantive details, we do not encounter a random situation.

Explaining values of human life, Ramkrishna viewed that, generally all people have the

same outlook to their life. They want (1) men to survive, (2) have security in life, (3)

aspire for material prosperity in order to ensure survival and security and lead a

wholesome life, and (4) strive for mental progress in order to unfold the potentialities

of each human.

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