D.P. Mukerji and the Middle Class in India

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand Dhurjati Prasad Mukerji's ideas about the origin and composition of the Indian middle class, his critical evaluation of its modernising role in pre- and post-independent India. For Mukerji, the failure of this class to develop an integrated personality, combining potentialities of both Indian tradition (representing sociality) and western modernity (representing individualism), explains its failure to be a true agent of modernisation in India. He suggests that awareness on the part of westernised alienated middle-class Indian intellectuals of the need for exploring the vitality of indigenous culture would eventually connect them with the common Indians, who live by tradition. Only a dealienated middle class with integrated personality can bring about changes in the lives of majority of people - a must for remaking totality of society.