Beyond Structural-Functional Perspective: A Critical Heart Searching For Dalit, Tribal and Gender in Indian Sociology

Abstract

Functionalism is the most outstanding Intellectual acumen of European world, but among the absolute elitist approaches ever explored by early pathfinders of sociology in comprehending the social reality worldwide. No doubt, it has been excelled as an exceptional academic perspective among all social science perspectives worldwide; however, its face value is getting redundant in the country like India, where the dominant social structures push the subalterns down and pulls them out of their established social patterns. It runs away from the realities and gets enticed with Indian dominant ideology and western methodology. The tragedy is that it does not endorse the salient reflections of cultural diversities and pluralism nurtured by the subaltern castes, tribes and gender in the Indian society. Our study reveals that going beyond the prospect of the structural-functional perspective on Indian society will definitely be an uphill task. And instead of, going right through the accounts of the early travelers’ visits, orientalist’ studies, missionary views, British officials’ ethnographic studies, indological perspective, Marxist perspective, etc on Indian society has been a critical heart searching for the subaltern people and their ethnic autonomy in Indian sociology. Addition to that, the Indological hegemony, and its related functional ideology still persist like “cultural watchdog” against any possibility of the subaltern perspective in contemporary India. Unfortunately, the authentic essence and liberating presence of the subaltern groups in Indian sociology is largely missing. Contrary to it, although, the subaltern consciousness as a liberating intellectual project has been gaining momentum but grappling with stiff oppositions. Since the dominant discourse on mainstream sociology has grudge against such development, it requires more scrutiny and debate for the sociology in India. Thus, an analytical reviews but critical history of Indian sociology has been sufficed to our purpose under the study. We have developed a resourceful analytical framework with Figure format in a comparative knowledge base for the study of Indian society in detail.