Question

Historical roots of Indian sociology

Answer 1

Answer:

Sociology is a “humanistic” social science even through it aims at objectivity in social observations. It has to take care of ideas and ideals, values and behaviour, aspirations and achievements, problems and predicaments of human beings in society. It cannot be seen irrespective of time and place, history and culture of societies being studied unlike the natural sciences. But sociologists have studied different human groups in particular historical circumstances and drawn generalisations about human relations from these studies.

Sociology as a humanistic science found it difficult to fit in the mould of the natural sciences, such as, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. However sociology has developed in different countries in different manner according to their culture, tradition and historical circumstances. Its development in different countries bears the imprint of particular historical experiences and cultural configurations.Indian sociologists being often trained in the West, were familiar with the basic concepts and categories of sociology as it had developed in the West.They borrowed these concepts and categories and applied them to the Indian context.

Thus, unlike their predecessors in the West, such as, during the 19th century Europe, they did not find the need to struggle hard to establish the legitimacy of sociology as a serious intellectual discipline. But this dependence over the Western pioneers of sociology made the Indian sociologists to forget that sociology in the West was an intellectual response,a cognitive response to the problems which that society was facing as aresult of industrialisation and the type of social upheavals and transformations that were taking place. Sociology emerged as an attemptto come to grips with the new situation which had emerged due to thesocial changes taking place in Western society, as mentioned earlier.In India, however, no Industrial bourgeoisie arose when sociology was introduced. As European expansion increased, knowledge about the non-European World increased and the idea emerged under the influence of Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Victorian idea of “progress” that the non-European societies represented various stages of evolution. The European societies, it was believed, had already reached the higher stages of evolutionary growth.

Thus, growth of sociology in India was largely a product of the European expansion of the world in the last three or four centuries.