by Archishman Raju One meets Death and confesses Life, Wise and free, Self dead, self risen as World-soul! Brajendranath Seal, The Quest Eternal The great diversity of human language, religion, dress and culture that has always been a feature of the Indian setting is now coming into a modern democratic era. The ability of our people to express themselves in a new and higher stage of Indian unity and taking part in our present world transformation will require a scientific understanding of Indian society. Indian modernity requires a new revolutionary social science. This social science will have its basis not in the various posturing creations of academic fashion, which continue to be completely dominated by the West, but in a new democratic effort based in the people. We are discussing this effort 75 years after India has gained independence. In those 75 years, the biggest transformation has been the freeing of Asian and African nations. Furthermore, the economic rise of Asia, most prominently China, has shown the possibility of modernization without war and colonialism. It has come alongside the democratic transformation of the people of Asia. This time, therefore, requires, as Mulk Raj Anand said, the theorizing of a modern Indian civilization. This theorizing takes place in the midst of a difficult ideological atmosphere. The past 40 years in India have seen a shift away from the ideological consensus built around the Indian freedom struggle. Instead, sectarian politics has come to dominate and history has become a tool of opportunistic politics. Indian history requires scientific study furnishing us with a renewal of our consciousness and providing us with a weapon of struggle for the freedom of the masses of Indians. Furthermore, the economic rise of India has come alongside a growing disparity and the erosion of cultural values, particularly among the middle-classes of Indian society. This has created the conditions for the presence of a westernized elite class of intellectuals, that now looks to America rather than Britain and is totally consumed by the post-modernist philosophical outlook of American academia. This elite class is increasingly becoming narcissistic with little moral direction and little to no connection with the masses of people. Nevertheless, the modernization of Indian society, the increasing democratic possibilities, the rising alliance and understanding between the darker nations, the political crisis in the West, the receding nature of American hegemonic control, and the rise of alternatives to the dollar-dominated international economic system creates the conditions for a new revolutionary social science in India. This new revolutionary social science must return to the source, and be accountable to the people. In a time when Truth has been attacked, it must make the concept of Truth and the discovery of Truth as central. It must deal with ideas that can liberate the masses of people, and these ideas must be taken among the masses of people. One part of this effort is to revive and understand the theoretical understanding and philosophical frameworks of the founders of modern Indian social science. Historical antecedents One central figure is the founder of Indian sociology, Brajendranath Seal. A contemporary of Rabindranath Tagore, Seal was influenced by the Brahmo Samaj and the general landscape of Bengali society in the second half of the 19th century. In his early years, Seal looked to “fuse into one, three essential elements, the pure monism of the Vedanta, the dialectics of the Absolute idea of Hegel and the Gospel of Equality, Liberty and Fraternity of the French Revolution”. Later, Seal critiqued the Hegelian view of history with a view to expand it, “Hegel’s view of historic development as a unilinear series, a position to which his dialectic of the categories commits him, can no longer be maintained…At the same time, the recognition of the diverse origins and independent developments of the separate culture-histories is not inconsistent with the assertion of an immanent world-movement, in which they all participate, each in its own degree and extent; and it is the business of Dialectic to trace the outlines of this cosmic movement.” Seal attempted to formulate this new philosophy of history with the comparative method. He did a comparative investigation of civilizations from a stand-point of equality rather than hierarchy. Seal argued that there was need for “a true Philosophy of Universal History” so as to “not give us mere European side-views of Humanity for the world’s panorama”. He believed that, properly formulated, the new historic and comparative method would set the basis of a new sociology. At the first Universal Races Congress of 1911, Seal argued for a scientific view of race away from the unscientific claims of white supremacy. He argued that Science must be lifted from the physical and biological plane to the sociological and historical platform. He argued against biological definitions of racial types. He was joined on this platform by W.E.B Du Bois who not only conducted a scientific study of American society–paying particular attention to the central contradiction of race in American society but, in doing so, set the foundations for modern sociology. Therefore, Seal was part of a world effort on the part of darker humanity for the scientific study of human civilizations, and so is a predecessor of a revolutionary social science in India today. He argued for the idea of humanity coming together in an organic whole passing through stages of history with each civilization making its distinctive contribution. Brajendranath Seal had several students and three particularly stand out: Benoy Kumar Sarkar, Radhakamal Mukherjee and P. C. Mahalanobis. All three made immense contributions to the development of sociology which must be studied. Sarkar, influenced by Seal, argued for a positive approach to Indian society, by which he meant a scientific approach; an approach that rejected a narrow view of India as a spiritual society little concerned with problems of material existence and properly appreciated the materialist and scientific dimensions of Indian history and society. Further Sarkar realized that the coming together of humanity required a critique of European social philosophy. The darker peoples, he argued, were in a process of formulating a “Critique of Occidental Reason”. Said another way, Sarkar formulated a critique of white-supremacist logic as it operated in European social science. “The futurists of Young Asia”, he wrote, “are looking forward to that spiritual re-birth of the world.” which would require a moral and psychological revolution in Western Society. Radhakamal Mukherjee was a close friend and compatriot of Sarkar who worked on history, economics and sociology. His early “Democracies of the East” applied Seal’s comparative approach to the question of democracy. Mukherjee believed that Indian and Asian traditions held a political tradition which could be the basis of a new form of democracy and rescue democracy. It would carry the state “on the wings of the Individual’s desires and feelings to those humanistic ideals which the world associates with the East, and which will more and more govern the politics of the future.” It is important to understand that this intellectual renaissance in social sciences was part of an epistemological break with European social science and was made possible by the Indian freedom struggle. As Mukherjee wrote, it was the ideas of 1905 and contact with the common masses of people as well as the expectation of political struggle that shaped his thinking and practice. The articulation of these sociological ideas entered into the early Indian state after independence particularly through P. C. Mahalanobis, the youngest of the three, who contributed to the empirical study of Indian society by working out the proper statistical techniques to study Indian society. He headed the most ambitious program to conduct large scale sample surveys of Indian society, and inspired survey techniques around the world. His surveys allowed for the planning and democratic programs of the Indian state in its early years. Finally, the scientific study of Indian society with its complexity required the formulation of a new methodology. The thinker who most contributed to this methodology is D. D. Kosambi. Kosambi stressed the need of “combined methods” for a study of Indian society, pointed out the long survivals in Indian society and the phenomena of mutual acculturation that allowed the existence of pre-modern forms in modern society. He particularly stressed the need for a democratic social science that would be based in the Indian poor. The concepts he developed in his study of Indian history provide a methodology for making sense of seemingly incoherent phenomena. Future Visions This brief survey of Indian social science is part of a larger project for a new revolutionary social science of Indian society. The ultimate test of this social science will be in practice but the need for theoretical foundations must not be underestimated. The social sciences in the West are now either in the camp of neo-positivism or post-modernism. The associated practice is either that of technocracy or identity politics. The influence of both these trends is starkly visible in Indian intellectual circles. Instead, a new revolutionary social science in India must join itself in the efforts of the people of the world to fight for Truth and ideological clarity. As its antecedents, it must base itself in a scientific approach and have a vision for the future. While this approach will recognize the contributions of the radical wing of the European enlightenment, it will not be limited by them. It must not fall into the trap of economic determinism or the importation of concepts that do not fit the reality of the Indian situation. It must move beyond the idea of liberal individualism to a more complete understanding of the human being. It must recognize the Indian freedom struggle as a revolutionary struggle with its associated artistic, literary, spiritual and intellectual renaissance. However, while it must be uniquely Indian in its approach, it must seek to join with the world and fight for a higher stage of human existence. Doing this will require a critique of the West and an appreciation of the sociological tradition founded by darker humanity led by W.E.B. Du Bois. Finally, this new revolutionary social science must be accountable to the people. It must set a basis for a practice and a democratic program for the people. Its test will be Gandhi’s talisman: the face of the poorest of the poor in Indian society. Archishman Raju is an editor of Vishwabandhu and a member of the Intercivilizational Dialogue Project and the Gandhi Global Family.
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January 2025
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