Srushti Jayant DeshmukhAIR 5 · CSE 2018 · 234 wordsTheir whole copy
Opening
The Village and rural India was specially predominant in the British colonial times when studies on Indian society were commissioned.
Body · points and prose
Scholars like Metcalfe, saw Indian village as atomistic, close, monolithic and little republics. A highly static view was taken and village were considered as
units of self sufficiency. As also depicted in Marx's Asian Mode of Production.
Many studies and scholars as well as intellectuals commented on village entity. While Gandhiji saw where villages as real Indian masses reside, and as pure units, Ambedkar saw villages as sink of localism and dens of ignorance and communalism.
JC Kumarappa in his 1931 study busted the myth of static villages by explaining migration for jobs and marriage.
Andre Beteille, in study of Sripuram village remarked that as long as living memory goes, there is no reason to belive that Indian villages were self sufficient at least economically.
Srinivas study of Rampura unearthed dynamism in caste system by explaining Sanskritisation for caste mobility. Besides the concept of dominant caste explained the consequence of democratic transition due to numerical strengths for castes like Yadav, Kurmi, Vokkalingas.
Oscar Lewis in comparison of Indian Ranikhera with Tepostalan village of Mexico argued that India has Rural Cosmopolitanism as single village has ties across 400 villages for kin and economic relation.
Close · a summary
Thus colonial administrators perspective of a static village and caste entrenchment were critiqued and perspectives based on field study were proposed.