Sociology in India

Abstract

Soeiology was first introduced into the Indian Universities some forty years ago; in I9I9 in the University of Bombay (by Patrick Geddes, who was suceeeded as head of the department, in I924, by G. S. Ghurye) and in I 92 I in the University of Lucknow, where Radhakamal Mukherjee became head of a department of economics and sociology. It was also taught, in this early period, in the department of anthropology of Calcutta University. But the discipline grew very slowly thereafter. In Lueknow, sociology had only a minor place in the currieulum and until the I940'S there was no separate paper in the subject in the B.A. degree and only one paper in the M.A. degree. In Bombay, sociology had from the outset a more important place and made some advances; there were four sociology papers in the M.A. degree, and after I924 it became possible to take the degree entirely in sociology by submitting a thesis. Later changes established sociology as an independent subject for both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. The University of Bombay became, in fact, the centre of sociological studies in India, and it was there that many of the older generation of university teachers reeeived their first training. The failure to develop is to be seen, however, not only in the fact that sociology did not establish itself as an independent discipline outside Bombay, but also in the character of sociological thought and research. Mueh of the theoretical writing was devoted to presenting speculative schemes of social evolution, and it was remote from the major intelleetual controversies of the times. Empirieal research, which was on a small scale, was almost entirely descriptive and largely confined to the sphere of social work (or 'social problems' in the narrow sense). Several reasons might be adduced to account for this lack of progress; but there are two which seem partieularly important. In the first place, Indian sociology, like other disciplines, was intellectually dependent upon the British Universities, and since academic sociology in Britain itself 98