Stressing the variations in meaning of modernity and tradition, this work shows how in India traditional structures and norms have been adapted or transformed to serve the needs of a modernizing society. The persistence of traditional features within modernity, it suggests, answers a need of the human condition. Three areas of Indian life are analyzed: social stratification, charismatic leadership, and law. The authors question whether objective historical conditions, such as advanced industrialization, urbanization, or literacy, are requisites for political modernization.

Unlike the West, India presents a fascinating example of a society where the pre-modern continues to co-exist with the modern. Modernity in Indian Social Theory explores the social variance between India and the West to show how it impacted their respective trajectories of modernity. A. Raghuramaraju argues that modernity in the West involved disinheriting the pre-modern, and temporal ordering of the traditional and modern. It was ruthlessly implemented through programmes of industrialization, nationalism, and secularism. This book underscores that India did not merely the Western model of modernity or experience a temporal ordering of society. It situates this sociological complexity in the context of the debates on social theory. The author critically examines various discourses on modernity in India, including Partha Chatterjee’s account of Indian nationalism; Javeed Alam’s reading of Indian secularism; the use of the term pluralism by some Indian social scientists; and Gopal Guru’s emphasis on the lived Dalit experience. He also engages with the readings on key thinkers including Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi, and Ambedkar.

This anthology documents the search of Indian intellectuals, politicians, and writers to forge a cultural identity despite and because of colonialism. The first part brings together major voices in India's struggle against colonialism; the second presents interpretive essays on the legacy of the great nationalist leaders; modernization and its discontents; the communal, ethnic, and interfaith relationships; and the future course of life in post-colonial India. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This volume is primarily a self-presentation of Indian sociologists and their recent theoretical and empirical research endeavors. It provides an opportunity for diagnosing what Indian sociologists have identified as the most important issues for various social communities. The book also helps reproduce the idiomatic interpretation of modernization in the colonial and postcolonial contexts. And, last but not least, it offers a convenient point of departure for reflection on Western Europe and its international role-modeling function. The book offers an excellent review of universality, rationality, and diversity in post-colonial India, demonstrating that it makes sense to translate the Western world of modernization into the categories and images of Indian capitalist modernization. By approaching the determinants, mechanisms, and consequences of this translation so comprehensively and insightfully, it directs attention towards European modernization rationale and helps take stock of European sociological achievements.