D. P. Mukerji and A. R. Desai

Between the 1920s and 1950s, Indian sociology centred on Bombay (Ghurye) and Lucknow, where the famous 'trinity' was Radhakamal Mukerjee (founder), D.P. Mukerji and D.N. Majumdar.

D.P. Mukerji (1894-1961) was perhaps the most popular of the three, influential through his teaching, public talks, newspaper articles and radio programmes. He came to sociology through history and economics, was interested in literature, music, film, philosophy and Marxism (more as a method of analysis than a political programme), and wrote a classic *Introduction to Indian Music*.

• He believed India's distinctive feature was its social system: 'India had had society, and very little else. In fact, she had too much of it.' So an Indian sociologist's first duty was to study Indian traditions.
• He saw tradition as a living tradition: keeping links with the past while adapting to the present and evolving. A sociologist 'must be an Indian first', sharing the people's folkways, customs and traditions, and should know both 'high' and 'low' languages and cultures, from Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic to local dialects.
• Indian society, he argued, is not individualistic in the Western sense: action is oriented to group, sect or caste, not 'voluntaristic' individual choice.
• The root meaning of tradition is to transmit; its Sanskrit equivalents are parampara (succession) and aitihya (from the same root as itihas, history).
• In India, class conflict had been 'smoothed and covered by caste traditions', so Indian sociology needed to explain internal, non-economic causes of change.

Three principles of change in Indian tradition, said D.P.: shruti, smriti and anubhava. Anubhava (personal experience) is the revolutionary principle. In India, personal experience soon became collective experience, so the key principle of change was generalised anubhava, the collective experience of groups, which periodically challenged the high traditions. This was true of Muslim culture too: the Sufis stressed love and experience over holy texts.

• So anubhava and prem (experience and love) have historically been stronger agents of change than discursive reason. Popular revolts transform orthodoxy but are reabsorbed into the transformed tradition: change without a break.
• D.P. criticised unthinking borrowing from the West, including in development planning: tradition should be neither worshipped nor ignored, and modernity was needed but not to be blindly adopted.

A.R. Desai (1915-1994) was a life-long Marxist, one of the rare Indian sociologists who belonged to political parties. He studied under Ghurye at Bombay; his thesis, published in 1948 as *The Social Background of Indian Nationalism*, gave a Marxist analysis of nationalism and is his best-known work. He also wrote on peasant movements, rural sociology, modernisation, the state and human rights.

'The myth of the welfare state.' Desai identified three features of a welfare state:

• a positive state: not just keeping law and order (as in laissez-faire), but actively intervening with social policies;
• a democratic state, with multi-party elections;
• a mixed economy, where private and public enterprises co-exist: the state sector focuses on basic goods and infrastructure, private industry on consumer goods.
• He then set tests: does it ensure freedom from poverty and discrimination, and security for all? Does it reduce inequality of income and wealth? Does it put the community's needs above profit? Does it ensure stable development without booms and slumps? Does it provide employment for all?
• Examining Britain, the USA and much of Europe, he found their claims greatly exaggerated: they failed to provide minimum security for all, to reduce inequality, to prevent market swings or to end unemployment. So the welfare state was something of a myth.
• Desai also criticised communist states, insisting that political liberties and the rule of law must be upheld under any genuine socialism.

Example (new): a city that builds free hospitals but leaves most residents without clean water or steady jobs might pass one of Desai's tests while failing others.