Page 275 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes The changes that have occurred in the Indian village community have resulted in its more effective
integration with the wider economic, political, educational and religious systems. The vast
improvement in rural communications that has taken place in the last few decades, especially since
World War II, the introduction of universal adult franchise and self-government at various levels
from the national to the village, the abolition of Untouchability, the increased popularity of education
among rural folk, and the Community Development Program—all these are changing the aspirations
and attitudes of villagers. The desire for education and for a “decent life” is widespread and vast
numbers of people are no longer content to live as their ancestors lived. Villages in India today are
very far indeed from the harmonious and cooperative little republics that some imagine them to be;
it would be more accurate to describe them as arenas of conflict between high castes and Untouchables,
landlords and tenants, “conservatives” and “progressives” and finally, between rival factions.
Everywhere social life is freer than before, as pollution ideas have lost some of their force. Secularization
and politicization are on the increase and villagers ask for wells, roads, schools, hospitals and electricity.
It is easy, however, to exaggerate the increase in the secularization of village life. It is true that the
unit of endogamy has widened somewhat, but this is more true of the higher castes than of others.
The widening is, moreover, along traditional lines; a crude way describing the situation would be
that while barriers between sub-sub-subcastes or subcastes are beginning to break down, marriages
spanning wide structural or cultural gaps are rare. That is, Peasants are not marrying Shepherds or
Smiths or Potters, but different Peasant subcastes speaking the same language are coming together.
(However, alliances involving structural and cultural leaps occur occasionally among the new elite
in the big cities.) Inter-dining among castes is slightly more liberal than before, but only slightly. All
the “touchable” castes will unite against Harijans who want to exercise their constitutional right of
entering temples and drawing water from village wells.
The processes which have affected caste and the village community have also affected the family
system. This has happened at all levels and in every section of the society, but more particularly
among the Westernized elite, that is, the upper castes living in the larger towns and cities. The
traditional system of joint families assumed the existence of a sufficient quantity of arable land and a
lack of spatial mobility and diversity of occupations . The idea of selling land in the open market,
which became popular during British rule, also contributed to the mobility of people. The development
of communications, the growth of urbanization and industrialization, and the prestige of a regular
cash income from employment in an office, factory or the administration, dispersed kin groups from
their natal villages and towns. Yet it would be a gross oversimplification to suggest that the Indian
family system has changed or is changing from the joint to the nuclear type. The process is extremely
complicated, and there are not enough studies of changes in family patterns in different regions and
sections of the society. Enumeration of the size of households or even their kinship composition is
not enough, as an urban household may be perfectly nuclear in composition while kinship duties,
obligations and privileges overflow it in many important ways. Many an urban household is only
the “satellite” of a dominant kin group living in a village or town several hundred miles away. The
Indian family system, like caste, is resilient, and has shown great adaptability to modern forces. It is
still true, however, that significant changes have taken place in the family system of the Hindus, and
these processes are not clearly discernible among the new elite groups. It is among them that there is
great spatial mobility, and members who establish separate households in the large cities certainly
live in a cultural and social environment significantly different from that obtaining in a traditional
joint family in a small town or village. The urban household often lacks those elders who not only are
tradition-bound but also have knowledge of the complex rituals to be performed at festivals and
other occasions. Their mere presence exercises a moral influence in favour of tradition—as was vouched
for by my Andhra Brahmin Communist informant, who said that he changed into pure clothes at
meals “because of his grandmother”. The education of women has produced a situation in which
young girls do not have the time to learn rituals from their mothers or grandmothers, and the small
households in big cities frequently lack the old women who have the knowhow and the leisure. The
educated wife has less of the traditional culture to pass on to her children, even should she want to.
Still more significant is the fact that elite households have become articulators of the values of a
highly competitive educational and employment system. Getting children admitted to good schools,

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