Page 23 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes • Mongoloids are people with medium height, high cheekbones, sparse hair, oblique height
and yellow complexion and are confined to the north-eastern fringes of India in Assam,
Nagaland and Mizo hills. Nordic Aryans came from Central Asia between 2,000 and 1,500
B.C. and settled in northern and western Punjab from where they spread to the valley of
Ganga and beyond.
• People may worship different deities but the religious scriptures—Puranas, Brahmanas, Epics
and the Vedas—knit the numerous heterogeneous groups together into one religious society
and give them the sense that their country is sacred. The worshippers may visit different
centres of pilgrimage but all have a common goal of “earning religious merit by visiting a
sacred place”.
• India fought for political freedom as one unified entity. After independence, it faced an
attack of China and three attacks of Pakistan as one nation.
• The caste system also has provided a common cultural ideology to Indians. Though it is true
that caste has created inter-caste conflicts and has also created a major social problem of
untouchability and has brought a rift between the higher and the untouchable castes, but it
is also true that the jajmani system till recently had succeeded in maintaining harmony and
co-operation among various castes in the rural areas. A significant change has taken place in
the power relations of different castes in the last few decades.
• The ‘divisions’ in the country may be dysfunctional but their values may not necessarily be
inconsistent with being a citizen of India. The disappearance of loyalties to these divisions
may not be feasible but they need not be perceived and denounced as anti-national.
• The most important aspect of culture in India has been religious diversity. For long India has
been the home of followers of all major religions of the world - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity,
Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Bahaism.
• The Hindu proportion is higher in the rural segment of the population - the national average
being 84 per cent - thus revealing the predominantly rural character of Hindu population.
• The Buddhists constitute 0.76 per cent of the country’s population. Traditionally, the Buddhists
are mainly located in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and
Tripura.
• “The Jains have favoured their concentration in the dry regions of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
The two districts in which their share is the highest in urban population are Barmer (13.4 per
cent) and Jalor (10.5 per cent)” (Aijazuddin Ahmed, 1999).
• In the twentieth century Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) put forward the most explicit
formulation of religious pluralism and announced that ‘the world as a whole will never have
and need not have a single religion’.
• The issue of religious conversion in India has always been a highly emotive issue.
• The Christian missions have been the main agency of religious conversions but their appeal
was addressed more directly to untouchables.
• Groups that converted in the mass movements may have hoped to gain a measure of freedom
from the oppressive structures of caste.
• Close socio-cultural interaction between different religious communities would never have
been possible without the spirit of religious accommodation between such communities.
• Anthropology shares the concept of syncretism with scholars of comparative religion who
have used the term at least since the ealry 1600s (often disparagingly to condemn the
adulteration of true Christian belief). Theologians continue to apply the term to religious
systems” (Lamout Lindstorm, 1996).
• Inter-religious interaction and it’s manifestation may also be seen in terms of Little and Great
Traditions. The Great Traditions of a religion, largely textual, contained in sacred scriptures
and epics may not be showing much sharing to the common masses but the sharing of Little

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