Social Change in India: Processes, Factors and Movements
What this domain tests
This domain asks how Indian society has changed, and which concepts and movements explain that change. Examiners test Srinivas's concepts, the reform movements with founder and year, and factors such as technology, education and legislation.
Core rules and concepts
- Social change is alteration in social structure and relationships; cultural change alters beliefs and practices; forms include evolution, revolution and progress.
- Sanskritisation (Srinivas): a low caste adopts the ritual practices, vegetarianism, teetotalism and deities of a higher caste to claim higher status - mobility within the caste order, not against it.
- Westernisation: adoption of Western education, dress, technology and values; modernisation is broader, involving rationality and achievement orientation, so the two must not be equated.
- Dominant caste (Srinivas): a caste numerically strong and economically powerful in a locality.
- Factors: technological (Green Revolution), economic (industrialisation, liberalisation of 1991), demographic, educational, ideological and political.
Reform and protest movements
- Brahmo Samaj, 1828, Raja Ram Mohan Roy; Prarthana Samaj, 1867, Atmaram Pandurang; Arya Samaj, 1875, Dayanand Saraswati; Satyashodhak Samaj, 1873, Jyotiba Phule; Ramakrishna Mission, 1897, Vivekananda; Aligarh Movement, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.
- Anti-caste and self-respect: Mahad Satyagraha 1927 and the Poona Pact 1932 (Ambedkar); Self-Respect Movement, Periyar.
- Peasant, tribal, women's and environmental movements: Chipko 1973, Narmada Bachao Andolan.
- Legislative change: Sati abolished 1829 (Bentinck, after Ram Mohan Roy's campaign); Widow Remarriage Act 1856 (Vidyasagar); Sharda Act 1929; Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 giving daughters equal coparcenary rights.
Worked example
A shudra caste in a Maharashtra village gives up toddy-tapping, becomes vegetarian and worships Sanskritic deities. Reasoning: this is Sanskritisation, because the group seeks higher ritual rank by imitating higher castes; if instead it sent children to English-medium schools and adopted bureaucratic occupations, that would be westernisation - a change in style of life, not in ritual rank.
Traps that cost marks
- Attributing Sanskritisation to Ghurye rather than Srinivas.
- Using Sanskritisation for individual mobility - it is a group process.
- Quoting the wrong year or founder for a reform movement.
- Treating modernisation and westernisation as identical.