NOTES AND COMMENTS - PERFORMANCE OF OUR SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL JOURNALS - SOME RESPONSES

We reproduce below extracts from some of the responses that we received on the article "The Performance of Modern Science and Technology in India: The Case of our Scientific and Technological Journals" by C.N.Krishnanand B.Viswanathan that appeared in the last issue of our Bulletin (No.11, June 1987, pp 1-19). This article was also reproduced in abridged form by The Hindu (Science Supplement, 23rd September 1987), Science Age (October 1987 issue) and Science Today (November 1987 issue). It is our hope that this-issue gets seriously debated by our science and technology community and major steps are initiated to improve the state of our scientific and technological journals.

- Editor

1. A well known information scientist writes:

I read your article on Indian Scientific and Technological journals in the latest issue of PPST Bulletin. The point of view deserves wide exposure and a reasoned debate.

There are a few conceptual errors. You seem to have mistaken two different definitions of impact factor to be the same. The journal impact factor is calculated on the references in a whole year's journal literature (approx. 4000 journals) made to articles published in the two previous years; part of these published in the earlier of the two years would have had a better chance than the other part, published in the year immediately preceding. The individual impact you have quoted from Garfield's Third World study is for a five-year period: calculated by counting all citations to papers published in a given year in the same year as well as in the four years following. There are a few other points which could be contested. But on the whole it reads well; the flow is natural and IT WILL MAKE AN IMPACT.

2. The Director of a CSIR Laboratory writes:

Thank you for drawing my attention to the paper on 'Performance of Modern Science and Technology in India: The case of our Scientific and Technological Journals" published in the PPST Bulletin of June 1987. The science and technology journals in India deserve a very serious but sympathetic look particularly because the scientific community as a whole seems to be caught in the vortex of publication - recognition relationship. So long as the science policy makers and science administrators would not explicitly state that the merit of publishing in Indian journals '.is no less than that of publishing in the foreign journals, (no matter the equation is invalid to start with), the egg and chicken story would appear as the stumbling block. We cannot imagine strengthening Indian journals and rearing them up to the international standard, if best of our contributions do not get published in these. That would happen only when a deliberate attempt is made to ensure quality printing, perfect periodicity, much wider circulation and adequate recognition of such papers in recruitments, promotions, awards etc. No doubt there is a need for very high order of restraint and sacrifice on the part of research scientists and technologists in diverting the real stuff to the Indian journals and there is an equal need on the part of professional bodies and the Government to appreciate such initiatives by instituting appropriate awards and incentives. Other suggestions are:

- The editorial board of journals should not wait for researchers to contribute articles and papers on their own but rather take initiative in soliciting such contributions from important research groups within the country.

- It would be a good idea to classify journals by constituting expert bodies in different disciplines and assign ratings which should be reviewed periodically as the quality of this or that journal moves up and up on time scale.

- Proliferation of journals must be resisted not only by professionals bodies but also, as far as possible, by the Government.

- There is a growing tendency to contribute to conferences and symposia because they provide authors the opportunity to travel abroad. Authors of outstanding papers published in the Indian journals should have avenues of obtaining financial assistance from the Government or from other professional bodies for presentation of their contributions abroad, if and when such invitation is received by the authors.

- The University Grants Commission, Universities and the Institutes of Technology should encourage Ph.D scholars to publish their work in the Indian journals.

These are some of my stray thoughts which I have expressed in the hope that you would be able to compile similar responses from others to draw up a working paper which should be put to a round table discussion.

3. A renowned Medical Scientist writes:

Thank you for sending me a copy of the PPST Bulletin. Indian scientists, particularly Fellows of the Academies, must agree to publish at least seventy percent of their important papers in Indian journals such as those published by the Indian Academy. Until and unless such an agreement comes into operation, I fear that our journals will continue to languish as they do now…

4. A renowned Chemist writes:

I have received... the PPST Bulletin No. 11. I am delighted to go through an article which describes the painful situation with regard to the practice of science in general and practice of publication of results in particular...Your article provides me with more material to push forth a point of view I have on this subject.

Let me take the opportunity to congratulate you on the marvelous job you are doing in the interest of true science and scientific spirit relevant to our country.

5. A renowned Physicist writes:

I thank you very much for taking the trouble of sending me a copy of your Bulletin. I was very much interested to read its contents and I find myself in agreement with many of the views expressed….

Publication in Indian journals has been a favorite topic of mine for more than a decade.... Against much opposition, I also laid down for a period the stipulation that all papers coming from my laboratory be published in Indian journals...

I do not think one really needs citation index to find out whether a paper is good or not or for that matter whether a journal is good or not. People had a way of deciding these questions long before such parameters came into existence. I think there is a definite way in which this assessment can be made even as a referee assesses a paper. I am quite sure that most competent experts will come to the unbiased conclusion that most of our journals are better closed down. If that happens then we would not have many journals but just a few that are roughly on par with international journals of a similar nature, barring a few glamorous ones. However I do not think our society is mature enough to take such a bold decision. Just as we have institutionalized mediocrity elsewhere, we have allowed it to happen in the field of scientific publications also and are now complaining…..

It seems to me that one should really not worry too much about impact as measured by parameters designed by others for their own situations. Take the case of G.N. Ramachandran. What happened was that he did not get citations. However by putting him on those problems. Raman enabled Ramachandran to sharpen his analytical abilities, and the training definitely paid off in later years. One has merely to see not only Ramachandran's brilliant work on various subjects but also the many students he produced. Indeed for me this is a paradigm of impact relevant to our situation. We need not really worry about external impact; rather we should be concerned about the internal impact.

I think the argument I am making has relevance to other countries also. For example, when Nature produced a special issue on science in Japan, the editor noted that many Japanese scientists complained that few outside Japan refer to their work. So the citation index for many Japan papers is rather low and yet we know that this does not tell the whole story of the growth and the development of science and technology in Japan.

I now come to the sensitive topic of publishing in Indian journals. Here I am afraid that the guiltiest ones are the best of bur scientists. I do not expect them to send their papers to journals lacking in quality. However, I don't believe the Academy journals are sub-standard. In fact it is my experience that many referees of the Academy journals take their jobs a little too seriously! This is indeed quite strange. While they themselves would not care to publish in the journal, they become very concerned about standards when the journal sends them a paper for refereeing. So I am convinced that the standard of Pramana, for example, is not at all bad. However, most good physicists dodge sending their papers there. A few occasionally send some papers rather like paying tax. The only occasion when we are able to elicit without much coercion is when we publish a felicitation volume. On such occasions people write nice reviews and send it to the Academy journals.

What does one do with such a situation? Some years ago it was suggested that if money for research comes from India, then the product of the research must appear in an Indian journal. The argument was that research arid publications are two sides of the same coin and since both are supported by Government, scientist could not accept only one and ignore the other. When this suggestion "was made there was a big furor. Cries of dictatorship etc. were raised and the idea was promptly dropped. To be fair, one can see the point of the authors also a lack of visibility. This is a point which very much weighs in the minds of all active scientists and is also linked to the possibilities of finding openings in foreign laboratories. The compulsions of international peer recognition are not easily brushed aside. At the same time, I am deeply concerned that thanks to the rising cost of journals, our students and college lecturers have no access to foreign journals. If only we can trap what is going outside, then our journals would be substantially improved and our students would be benefited since Indian journals are nowhere near being as expensive as foreign journals. In a few years there should be a visible impact. I always find that when I publish in an Indian journal I get many requests from within India, especially from small places. It is clear to me that damming the outflow will make an internal impact even though we might lose out on the citation front. But how to bell the cat? No, amount of appeals to patriotism seems to have any effect. Nor also references to famous examples like that of Homi Bhabha. When he came back from England he published most of this papers in India, particularly in the Proceedings of the Indian Academy, Landau did a similar thing in USSR. But today nobody has the time to listen to such arguments'.

I am sorry this letter is rather long and inconclusive. My objective was not to specifically answer or raise points relating to the article published in your Bulletin but just to convey to you that I have been worrying about this problem for many years and that I have not seen the light yet!

6. Finally the following is the response from a reputed senior scientist:

The issues your raises have bothered me and have in fact been bothering me since 1970. I remember the comment C.V.Raman once made about journals in India, humorous at first sight but full of serious impact - "There are two types of people who want to have Indian journals - those who are working in the forefront of science and who are fighting for priority and those who cannot get their papers accepted in any decent journal anywhere else". I think this is still true.

Raman ensured his priority for the discovery of the Raman Effect (and hence the award of the Nobel Prize) because he published in an Indian journal. One can also give many examples of cases in recent years when Indian scientists got recognition and priority only because their papers were published in India.

Probably, the majority of the papers that Indians produce do not come under the two extreme categories Raman mentions

I agree with you that all our Science and Technological activities and concerns must have roots within our country and the scientific community has to acquire an Indian identity. In my limited way, I have attempted to propagate this idea. I think a time has come when younger people have to espouse this cause and fight this battle.

NOTES AND COMMENTS - MORE ON THE ALLEGED SIMPLICITY OF INDIGENOUS TECHNOLOGY

"When we speak of colonial experience everything becomes topsy-turvy. What looks an angel in the 'mother' country looks like a demon here.

- D.R. Nagaraj, Amrita Mattu Garuda (Nectar and Eagle)

This is so from the point of view of both the colonizer and the colonized.

This short write-up purports to add a few footnotes to what Sri.A.V.Balasubramanian has written in connection with the alleged 'simplicity' of the indigenous technology in the last issue of the PPST Bulletin.

In establishing its hegemony over the colonial peoples, imperialism resorts to various types of manipulations - social, political, economic, historical (in the distortion of the past of the colonial people) and less conspicuously but equally cleverly, semantic. The invoking of the concept of 'simplicity' for denigrating the indigenous technology of the colonized people is a clear case of a semantic manipulation. As Balasubramanian has pointed out 'simplicity' has been claimed as a desirable and even necessary quality of scientific theories by many western scientists and philosophers of science. According to them simplicity not only constitutes an aesthetic virtue but also promotes and enhances the explanatory power of scientific theory and: therefore must figure in our evaluation and choice of scientific theories. Not only in science but even in technology 'simplicity' is claimed to be a guiding factor. Thus, Karl Popper while juxtaposing what he calls "Social Engineering" which he recommends, with the idea of a revolutionary and radical reconstruction of society (advocated by Marxists, for instance) which he despises, says "the social engineer or the technologist approaches institutions rationally as means that serve certain ends, and .... as a technologist he judges them wholly according to their appropriateness,1 efficiency, simplicity etc.," (1) thereby implying the simplicity is a decisive consideration in technological choice.

But when it comes to the characterization and evaluation of the technology of the non-western societies, simplicity becomes a. vice by a peculiar twist of logic. However, the recent discussions on the notion of simplicity have convincingly shown that 'simplicity' is too problematic to be claimed as a guiding factor in the decisions concerning scientific choice. By the same logic it" follows that it cannot be invoked for the purposes of 'establishing' the inferiority of the technologies of the non- western societies. The objections against the view that in scientific theorizing 'simplicity' has an unambiguous methodological meaning and scientific practice constitutes a domain of its paradigmatic application can be classified into (1) theoretical and (2) practical. The theoretical objection pertains to the fact that there are many senses in which 'simplicity can be and has been, used; in other words there are different notions of simplicity. Mario Bunge, an eminent philosopher of science, mentions four such, notions - syntactical, semantic, epistemological and pragmatic (2). Syntactical simplicity depends on the number and structure of (a) basic predicates used in a theory, (b) the independent postulates of a theory, and (c) the rules of statement - transformation (i.e. the rules that connect theoretical concepts/statements to observational or experimental outcomes). Semantic simplicity which means economy of presuppositions depends on the number of meaning - specifiers of the basic predicates that figure in a theory. Epistemological simplicity which concerns parsimony of theoretical terms depends upon experimental proximity; that is to say, the more a theory is amenable to experimental evaluation, the more epistemologically simple it is. Pragmatic simplicity depends on factors like computational convenience, feasibility of experimental design etc. As Bunge points out "No dependable measure of any of the four kinds of simplicity is known at present" (3). That is to say, there is no criterion to decide about the relative importance of each of these distinct types of simplicity. Consequently, we will not be able to decide on objective grounds, which of the two competing theories have to be validated if one of them is simpler than the other in one sense but less simple than the other in another sense.

The practical objection concerns the fact that in actual scientific practice (a) it is impossible to decide by consensus what is simple and what is not, and (b) 'simplicity' has been blatantly violated for the sake of other considerations.

That there are no clear-cut and neutral standards to guide us in actual scientific practice as to what is simple and what is not, can be very well brought out by considering the way 'simplicity' figured in the controversy between the followers of Ptolemy and Copernicus. Copernicus and his followers argued that their theory was simpler than that of Ptolemy which, in their opinion, had become highly complex and cumbersome. But their opponents rightly thought that the Copemican theory was much less simple because it needed the radical overthrow of the then prevalent world-view. Is it not, they asked, simpler to add some computational devices and hypothetical entities in accounting for certain observations than to overthrow a whole world-view? Moreover, the Cbpernicans felt their theory to be very obviously simple even though they too resorted to techniques like 'mean sun', circles moving on circles (similar to the epicycles of Ptolemians) and other adhoc strategies such that "A comparison of the two figures representing Ptolemaic and Copemican systems does not show that one was in any obvious way simpler than the other" (4). Even if we accept the Copemican system to be in a sense simpler than the pre-Copernican one, we must also accept that the latter is simpler than the former in an equally important and more obvious sense. It is because of the simplicity of the old theory that even to-day the theory and practice of navigation and surveying start with the assumption of the old view ("Let as assume that the earth is at rest"). As Kuhn points out "Evaluated in terms of economy, the two sphere universe remains what it has always been; an extremely successful theory" (5). Further, it must be noted that what appeared to Copernicus and his followers to be only 'pitching up and stretching engaged in by Ptolemians was for their opponents 'a natural process of adaptation and ‘extension' (6). No line of demarcation between 'natural adaptation' and 'artificial patching up' could be satisfactorily drawn in terms which were neutral to the contending points of view.

No wonder, 'simplicity' does not figure substantially in the process of settling the controversies at rest. In fact, in the history of science, the norm of simplicity has been even grossly violated with the result that in more than one way the new theories would be less simple than the old ones. Such violations are due to the" fact that simplicity is not necessarily in conformity, in* fact might even conflict, with other overwhelming considerations such as concilience or extendibility; that is, the ability of a theory to encompass more domains than one in which it was originally applied. Hamilton's formulation of dynamics was preferred to Newton's because it could deal with a wider class of dynamical problems and also because it can be extended beyond dynamics (into Field Theory). Yet epistemologically and syntactically it is' more complex in terms of equations and character of concepts. Going back to the geo- centric and helio- centric controversy, t he fact that the former theory was in a sense more simple than the latter or at least no more complex than the latter could not save it from being displaced by the latter.

All this shows that science is far from being a paragon of the virtue of simplicity and 'simplicity' is highly problematic as a methodological norm in scientific evaluation. It needs no argument to say that when it comes to technological matters, it would be even more problematic. Hence, simplicity cannot be invoked to 'establish' the superiority of modern western technology by declaring it to be simple as opposed to non-modern technology which is 'cumbersome'. By the same logic, it cannot be invoked for the opposite claim (but for the same purpose of denigrating non-modern technology) that non-modern technology is simple and therefore inferior as against modern technology which is "refined" and "sophisticated". Both the contradictory characterizations of non-modern technology aimed at the same purpose of 'establishing' the inferiority of indigenous technology and superiority of western technology presuppose that the notion of simplicity is non-problematic since its role is very transparent in scientific practice. The above discussion has sought to establish the dubious character of such an assumption on both theoretical and practical grounds.

But let us, for the sake of argument,' grant that 'simplicity' is not at all a problematic and contestable notion? Let us also, overlook the perverse logic behind the claim that indigenous technology is inferior because it is simple and that it is simple because it is crude, however miserable the arguments behind such juvenile equations. But there is another more obvious and definitely more familiar sense in which modern western technology is 'simple' (of course, this is not the sense in which it is used by those who 'establish' the superiority of modern technology on the daim that it is simple). Modern western technology simplifies economic production by reducing all dimensions of economic production and activity to one and only one dimension - Profit. Undoubtedly a very clear and straightforward type of simplicity accrues from such" a reduction and the consequent simplification of the role of technology. Modem western technology is an organic part of a civilization according to whose ethos, to use Schumacher's words from a different but related context, "The totality of life can be reduced to one aspect - Profits... That is the essential idea in all its stark simplicity. The power of its appeal stems also from its simplicity. Everything is crystal clear after you have 'reduced' reality to one - one only - of its thousand aspects. You know what to do: whatever produces profit; you know what to avoid: whatever makes a loss. Not only is there an absolute clarity about aims, there is also a perfect measuring rod for success or failure - profit. Let no one befog the issue by asking whether a particular action is conductive to the wealth and well-being of society, whether it leads to moral, aesthetic or cultural enrichment - simply find out whether it pays; simply investigate whether there is any alternative that pays better. If there is, choose the alternative" (7).

But let us, for the sake of argument,' grant that 'simplicity' is not at all a problematic and contestable notion? Let us also, overlook the perverse logic behind the claim that indigenous technology is inferior because it is simple and that it is simple because it is crude, however miserable the arguments behind such juvenile equations. But there is another more obvious and definitely more familiar sense in which modern western technology is 'simple' (of course, this is not the sense in which it is used by those who 'establish' the superiority of modern technology on the daim that it is simple). Modern western technology simplifies economic production by reducing all dimensions of economic production and activity to one and only one dimension - Profit. Undoubtedly a very clear and straightforward type of simplicity accrues from such" a reduction and the consequent simplification of the role of technology. Modem western technology is an organic part of a civilization according to whose ethos, to use Schumacher's words from a different but related context, "The totality of life can be reduced to one aspect - Profits... That is the essential idea in all its stark simplicity. The power of its appeal stems also from its simplicity. Everything is crystal clear after you have 'reduced' reality to one - one only - of its thousand aspects. You know what to do: whatever produces profit; you know what to avoid: whatever makes a loss. Not only is there an absolute clarity about aims, there is also a perfect measuring rod for success or failure - profit. Let no one befog the issue by asking whether a particular action is conductive to the wealth and well-being of society, whether it leads to moral, aesthetic or cultural enrichment - simply find out whether it pays; simply investigate whether there is any alternative that pays better. If there is, choose the alternative" (7).

References

1. The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper, Vol. I. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Fifth edition (1966) p.24 (emphasis added).

2.The weight of simplicity in the Construction and Assaying of Scientific Theories by Mario Bunge, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 38 (1961).

3.1bid

4. The Birth of a New Physics by I.B. Cohen Vakils, Feffer and Simons, (1965) p.57.

5. The Copemican Revolution by Thomas Kuhn, Harvard University Press (1957) p. 37.

6.Ibid p.75

7. Schumacher on Energy (Ed) Geoffrey Kirk, Jonathan Cape Ltd. (1982) p. 37.



Author:S.G. KULKARNI

BOOK REVIEW - RICE IN ABUNDANCE FOR ALL TIMES THROUGH RICE CLONES (A POSSIBLE ONE-GRAIN RICE REVOLUTION By. Dr. R.H. Richharia (1987)*

In a world of more than 250,000 different species of flowering plants, just three grasses - rice, wheat and corn dominate as the sources of most of the food supply for human beings. All three have been objects of agricultural experimentation and exploitation by human beings for more than 6,000 years. Long before the discovery of Mendel's laws, in 1900, human ingenuity had created about 100,000 cultivated varieties of rice suited for every purpose, land and season, with about 70,000 of these varieties cultivated by farmers in India. It is remark able, and to some a very sad story, that just in the, last two decades more than half, the human population of the world has come, to depend on only a handful of these varieties for their sustenance. Obviously, the high yielding varieties of rice developed by modern techniques of plant breeding have not caused a green revolution in India in the sense wheat seems to have, since the latter has given more than projected yields in the past ten years. One of the failures of modern agricultural sciences is that the technology evolved to increase yield in plants is biased towards individual elite varieties rather than to all varieties evolved by human beings in the past 10,000 years of domestication.

We are now desperately looking for any technique that would increase yield in rice, even by a few per cent, to produce food for the increasing population. Hybrid rice, now growing in about a third of the rice growing areas in China, has about 25% yield increase over the high yielding modern cultivars thanks to the phenomenon of hybrid vigor or heterocyst. However, there are indications that these varieties may not be as successful in the more tropical conditions of India. The potential increase in yield through any breakthrough in genetic engineering with rice remains unknown and unpredicted. It is against this background that one should appreciate Dr. Richharia's recent small book of 132 pages offering "a possible one-grain rice revolution" with novel suggestions for establishing "rice gardens" that could produce 100 tonnes per hectare per year (as against about 15 tonnes per hectare for three crops through conventional techniques of rice cultivation). The romantic title of Masanobu Fukuoka's work, The One-Straw Revolution" is better adapted here for this book, written by a scientist and summarizing nearly 45 years of his research on certain fundamental and potentially useful properties of rice plants. We read a book for what it says, and often also for who says it. Richharia knows the rice plant as well as any human being can, and his experience and contributions remain unmatched by any single rice researcher in India.

Richharia has organized his book carefully beginning with a lucid introduction to his they is in Chapter II, and exploring the more involved applications that require some knowledge of crop production, in the subsequent chapters. The appendices clearly bring out how he has been championing, for more than 25 years, the adoption of his clonal propagation techniques for yield enhancement in certain varieties and hybrids of rice. I did find some sentences cumbersome to read, about half a dozen typesetter's spelling errors, an odd list of 48 names in 'Hindi (in a book otherwise fully written in English), and an appendix on "In vivo and in vitro clonal propagation in rice" only of peripheral interest to the theme of the book. However, these are very minor shortcomings in a book that has so much to offer, is so well documented, and clearly sets forth the importance and implications of clonal propagation in rice.

The thrust of Richharia's message is that 17 to 61% increase in yield can be obtained by clonal propagation of certain varieties, and that this technique can be exploited not only for yield increase but also for overcoming the problems of (a) sterility among hybrids and tetraploids (b) maintenance of quality in aromatic varieties of rice, and (c) submergence of seedlings during flooding. Clonal propagation also helps in the better management of ratoon crops and plants produced through tissue culture methods, and provide a degree of resistance to insects such as the stem borers and gallfly. What is this new technique of clonal propagation that is claimed to offer an alternate means of increasing yield in rice? Tillering, the ability to produce branches from the axillary buds located at the nodes, is a feature common to many grasses. All tillers derived from a main stem possess identical genetic makeup. While tiller production is considered undesirable in most major cereal crops, yield in rice is dependent upon the ability to produce a number of healthy tillers that would eventually produce panicles and grains. Primary tillers develop from the main shoot about 10 days after transplanting. Secondary and tertiary tillers develop from the primary tillers, and in about 50 to 60 days after transplanting, a single seedling in a hill could have given rise to about 25 tillers. A significant feature of tillers is that 50 to 70% of them develop panicles that produce mature grains about the same time as the panicle on the main stem thus yielding more grains per hill. Tillering capacity is a varietal characteristic, as often pointed out in this book.

What Richharia offers is a procedure to take advantage of this innate perennating capacity of the rice plant to multiply hhe genetically identical clones to obtain some 300 times more man the usual number of tillers from a single seedling during 5 to 6 months of propagation. Additionally - and this is very important - the seeds obtained from the clones, when used to raise a normal crop in the next season, produce healthier plants, offering up to 60% more yield than plants raised from seeds obtained from conventional techniques of crop production. When a seedling has produced two tillers, Richharia suggests separating them from the main stem and replanting all three individually in pots or in a plot. When each one of them has produced two tillers, the procedure is repeated usually in intervals of about 15 days. Under ideal circumstances, with three tillers (x = 3) per split, and about 8 such splits (n = 8) between February and July, as many as xn = 6561 clones can be obtained from a single seed. Tiller separation seems to enhance subsequent vigour and growth of the clone resulting in the production of more fully- filled and uniformly mature and healthier seeds capable of better yield in the next generation. Richharia is quick to point out that successful tiller production is a varietal character and that clonal propagation technique is merely a manipulation of the untapped but natural potential of the rice plant.

Richharia then proceeds to explain how ihis crucial but simple procedure of physical t separation of tillers from each other can be applied to stubble left in the field after harvest, to a whole ratoon crop, to a large field after transplanting is over, and to a nursery bed with aged seedlings. Apparently, farmers in Orissa and Madhya Pradesh have been practicing a form of clonal propagation known as beusaning or biyasi where a field with broadcast cultivation is 'ploughed' to split the tillers. Richharia further explores the possibility of applying the clonal propagation technique to improve yield and/or quality in: (1) tetraploids where 40-45% sterility is encountered but propagation of even a few seeds is worth the effort in view of the increased protein content of tetraploid grains, (2) about 300 cultivars of aromatic rice where uniformity in genetic make-up would ensure consistency in quality (and this has great export potential), and (3) seedlings obtained through tissue culture and genetic engineering techniques. Often, in science, simpler solutions have wider applicability. It is interesting to note that Richharia extends his clonal propagation technique to cultivation of plants in a closed system for extended space travel and colonization. This, I submit, is not farfetched, and the rice plant is certainly the most suitable of all cereals for this purpose by virtue of its hardiness, temperature tolerance, perennating habit and ability to grow in aquatic as well as terrestrial media.

Richharia cites examples of field trials conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Kerala, Madhya - Pradesh, Mysore, Uttar Pradesh ahd West Bengal to substantiate the claims of yield increase “through clonal propagation. Two obvious questions come to mind while reading this book: (1) What is the physiological basis for yield increase in clonal propagation? (2) Why such a promising technique is not more widely practiced, and why Richharia, himself once an occupant of key positions in rice research (Director of Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack, and Madhya Pradesh Rice Research Institute, Raipur), has not been able to convince researchers, pla'nners and farmers throughout India ?

As for the physiological basis of yield increase, the only significant finding available so far seems to be the preferential movement of nitrogen and phosphorus to grains rather than to the culms. It is known from other studies that the chemical environment of different grains within a panicle is age- dependent and that younger grains may have more of a growth hormone such as abscise acid than the older and fully mature grains. Also, seed treatment "with certain growth regulators is known to improve productivity in later stages of growth. Perhaps, clonal propagation similarly affects the chemical environment of the seeds whose beneficial effects are realized in the subsequent generation. Obviously, a great deal of research is required to "understand the effects of tiller separation on the autonomous status of the isolated tiller and the development of panicle and grains. Most examples cited in this book are of tillers grown during the long day periods of February to June. While- photosensitive varieties are suitable for this season; insensitive types would start initiating panicles even before the third split can take place. One wonders ii this is the reason why no data is available in this book as to how much more yield can be obtained when the high yielding IR varieties are propagated through clonal cultivation. Could this be a reason, then, for the lack of widespread adoption of this technique - that most of our better yielding or at least fertilizer responsive types do not have the photosensitive gene incorporated in them? Clonal propagation, as described in this book, requires about six months of constant effort to grow, manure, water, weed, protect from pests and diseases, and split and replant the tillers, periodically. Planting these tillers in July would yield grains, not for consumption, but for raising a regular crop in the next season, i.e., in the following July. Yield from this crop, sometime in November, will be the source of food. Because of this extremely long period required to raise plants through clonal propagation, a cost/benefit analysis is required for cultivation under extended field conditions in farmers' holdings.

This little book has much more to offer, than the techniques of clonal propagation. Here, Richharia has summarised some of his lorig-held views and suggestions for an "Indian Hybrid Rice" programme with less emphasis on the use of conventional cytoplasmic male sterile and fertility restorer systems . His suggestions for the use of abnormal floral structures and clustered spikelet types deserve the attention of researchers. Richharia also reveals some of his vast knowledge and appreciation of the "why" of the many practices in rice cultivation observed among the so called "tribal" populations of the country. Indeed, one hopes that he would record in greater detail these traditional techniques of cultivation lest the onslaught of modernity should wipe out knowledge built over many thousands of years.

It is with a fooling of satisfaction that one closes the cover of "Rice In Abundance for All Time Through Rice Clones" - that this most benevolent plant still holds many mysterious ways of feeding the millions.



Author:P. Dayanandan

BOOK REVIEW - ORIENTALISM By Edward W. Said (New York, Vintage, 1979)

Following the capture of the US embassy in Teheran in 1979, the mass media in the US launched an all-out war of propaganda against the Iranian revolution. Leading newspaper? and magazines carried statements to the effect that "civilization is receding" (Wall Street Journal editorial) supported by quotes from rancorous Oriental authorities one of whom says that "the disorder of the Orient is deep and endemic"; the attempt was not only to discredit and/or deny that any genuine popular revolution had taken place, expressing protest against tyranny and the desire of a people to have a life of their own. Much worse, there was an attempt to justify the torture-regime of Moheza Pahalvi by drawing upon the prevalent notions of Iranian history: "it can be argued that he was entirely in the tradition of Iranian history " (Washington Post). Even if the preceding utterances were viewed as "normal", arising out of a sense of anger at an enemy, the trend of arriving at these opinions is significant viz. to describe the political upheaval and participants in terms of known and available notions of Islam and Muslims. These notions require no support from immediate factual evidence, as they fall back on a certain collective, inherited doctrine which provides them with strength and authority, to make them appear as statements of Truth. This doctrine is what Edward Said calls "Orientalism" and his book under review attempts, among other things, to provide a historical perspective on "Orientalism" within the general history of Europe, its nature and role as one of the dimensions of the larger Western Quite significantly, this book also attempts to show how the Orientalist images diffuse into the popular culture and how the scholarly Orientalism, itself a great body of enterprise, interacts and even shapes the (foreign) 'policy making apparatus of the Western nations.

'Orientalism' is divided into three long chapters and twelve shorter sub-units. The first chapter outlines the entire field of study, indicating the dimensions of it and its philosophical and political themes. The second chapter, somewhat chronological in nature, traces the development of modern (i.e. late XVIII century onwards) Orientalism by the description of a set of devices common to the works of important poets, artists and scholars, down to the period 1870. The last chapter is largely a description of Orientalism from 1870 till the end of World’War II, whiles the very last section of this chapter, considers the present phase of the Orientalism in the US.

While "Orientalism" is a general term covering roughly all the "Asian" cultures, Said's study of the Orientalist paradigm is based mainly on the European experience of the 'Wear Orient", "The Middle East" or the Arab-speaking world, largely Islamic. Such a limitation is a matter of contingency and according to the author is brought about by the sheer volume of material to be considered even when dealing with the Arab-World. Partly because of this, this review does not attempt g the book in its entire course. Instead, the attempt here is to focus on the set of generalizations which form the basis of this book relating to the power of the cultural domination of the West and Orientalism as part of this hegemony: Specifically, our interest is to highlight the functional use of Orientalism in expansionist politics and its authority within the general Western culture in shaping its experience of the Orient. At the academic level, "Orientalism" is less preferred today than "Area Studies", sustained primarily by specialists. At the other, more general level, "Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between "the Orient" and "the Occident" (p.2). Thus, a very large mass of writers and thinkers who have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as starting point for building elaborate theories, will be accommodated in this kind of Orientalism - writers as diverse as Dante, Hugo and Marx (p.3).

Orientalism tends to acquire a more substantial meaning when viewed with XVIII century as the starting point. Since this period, Orientalism has acquired the shape and structure of a corporate institution of the West for dealing with the Orient - "for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient". It is to be viewed as "the whole network of interests inevitably for ought to bear on .... any occasion when that peculiar entity "the Orient" was in question; so much so that "no one, writing thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism" (p.3). The notion of the existence of a distinct "Orient" as compared to "the Occident" confers on "the Orient" a certain antiquity making it as old as "the West" itself. To the extent to which the West has a history, "the Orient" also history and a tradition of thought. In fact, the imagery of the Orient can be traced back to Homer (in his Iliad) who, in turn, relies upon some earlier utterance concerning the Orient (p.20). The images become more intensified in Dante in his Divine Comedy where he describes the punishment meted out to the Prophet Mohammed in hell for having been a "falsifier" (that is, for preaching false religion) (p.68-9). The indignation felt by an eminent cleric in XI century, the success of Muslim armies in Europe was expressed by drawing upon the reserve of 'Orientalist' feelings, that they had "all the appearance of a swarm of bees, but with a heavy hand they devastated everything" (p.59).

What changes did the rapid expansion (since renaissance)-and consolidation of European Power (in XVIII) century in a large part of the Orient bring about in the European attitudes toward the Orient? It resulted in what Said calls the Orient becoming "Orientalised". With the emerging power relationship of colonialism in the East, the Orient was not only perceived to be "Oriental" in "all those ways considered commonsensical by an average XIX century European, but it could be made Oriental" (p.6). But this perception of the Oriental backwardness in general is an outcome of the hegemonistic character of European Culture, which is rooted in "the idea of European identity superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures" (p.7). What emerges out of this hegemonistic culture and its conquest of the Orient is "a complex Orient suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum,' for reconstruction in the colonial office, for theoretical illustration in anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial, and historical theses about mankind and the universe, for instances of economic and sociological theories of development, revolution, cultural personality, national or religious character" (p.8). Orientalism thus becomes not only a collection of text and information about the Orient but also a way of knowing about the Orient The authoritative position that Orientalism occupies in the Western consciousness arises from its capacity to form and sustain images, or representations of the Orient for the Occidental audience in an internally consistent fashion. To .the extent to which Orientalism fulfills this purpose, it is "a considerable dimension of modern political - intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with "our world" (p.12), or the present day West.

What is the role of Orientalist utterances (in a functional way that is)? While Said observes that Orientalism cannot be viewed as a mere structure of lies and myths calculated to benefit a certain end inspired by imperialism (p.6) he views it "more valuable as a sign of European Atlantic power over the Orient than... as a periodic discourse about the Orient (which is what, in its academic or scholarly form, it claims to be)" (p.6). Academic Orientalism is only a grid for "filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness". It is viewed mainly as a body of theory and practice, meant for achieving this end. As a Western doctrine about the Orient, it has less to do with producing a system of facts concerning the Orient, than with creation and sustenance of its images in the scholarly tradition and the general culture.

II
That much of the body of information collected on "the Orient" by way of textual studies, was put to the end of justifying colonial rule is perhaps an acceptable proposition today. What is perhaps not quite well known is the manner in which it was put to use to prepare in advance for colonial conquest. This sense, is one of the significant observations made in this book and is worth elaboration through a description of the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt.

Napoleon Bonaparte decided to invade Egypt partly because his conquests could not continue in Europe and also because he wanted to put himself across the British access to India. Also "Napolean considered Egypt a likely project precisely because he knew it tactically strategically, historically and.... textually, that something one read and knew through the writings of recent as well as classical European authorities. (For him) Egypt was a project that acquired reality in his mind, and later in his preparations for the conquest, through experiences that belong to the realm of ideas and myths culled from texts, not from empirical reality". For his Egyptian expedition, Napoleon enlisted the services of several "authorities" on Egypt, some of whom were members of the Institute d' Egypt which he had founded and which conducted studies on several topics related to Egypt. In addition, Napoleon had the benefit of reading an earlier work by one Volney, which had recounted, step by step, the obstacles to a French expeditionary force. In his opinion (he saw himself as a scientist) Muslims constituted the important obstacle, more than the British.

Once in Egypt (in the year 1798) Napoleon used a variety of Egyptian sentiments of enmity to certain sects and the newly found European concept of Equality, to wage a war against Muslims. Equipped with a team of Orientalists, "Napoleon tried to prove everywhere that he was fighting for Islam; everything he said was translated into Koranic Arabic just as the French army was urged by its command to always remember the Islamic sensibility.... When it seemed obvious to Napoleon that his force was too small to impose itself on the Egyptians, he then tried to make the local imams, rhytis and ulemas interpret the Koran in favor of the Grand Armee. This worked and soon the population of Cairo seemed to have lost its distrust of the occupiers" (p.82). Victor Hugo hailed this victorious expedition:

Sublime, he appeared to the dazzled tribes like a Mahomet of the Occident.

"But dealings with the Muslims were only part of Napoleon's project to dominate Egypt. The other part was to render it completely open, to make it totally accessible to European scrutiny.... The Institute, with its team of chemists, historians, biologists, archaeologists, surgeons and antiquarians, was the learned division of the army. Its job was no less aggressive: to put Egypt into Modern French.... Everything said, seen, and studied was to be recorded in that great collective appropriation of one country by another, the Description de Egypte, published in twenty three enormous vo(each page a square meter in size) between 1809 and 1828".

The aim of the Project, in the words of Jean-Baptiste Fourier, the Institute's Secretary, was as envisioned by Napoleon: "to offer a useful example to the Orient, and finally also to make the inhabitant's lives more pleasant, as well as to procure for them all the advantages of a perfected civilization". The appearance of the Description is in a sense the real triumph of the Napoleonic expedition*. With its appearance, the hitherto "closed" Egyptian society had been opened up while its own history and identity came to be comprehended only as part of a 'World" or European history. The conquest did the service of rendering any resistance to this onslaught absent, [thus making the Orientalist position somewhat invulnerable. Until that time, utterances concerning the Orient would be said to belong to the realm of the imagery but with the appearance of the Description, the very language of Orientalism changed radically. Its descriptive realism was upgraded and became not merely a style of representation but a language, indeed a means of creation the Islamic Orient would henceforth appear as a category denoting, the Orientalists power and neither the Islamic people as neither humans nor their history as history". What is said of Islamic people is true of any of conquered peoples (In India, the conquest had taken place earlier and the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal had been founded in 1784, well before the French Revolution).

In a direct sense, the purpose of Orientalism was political. But the interrelationship between the politics of imperialism and the culture of which Orientalism is a substantial part, goes deeper. While the political in relates to subjugation of the Orient, it is "the culture that created that interest, that acted along with brute political economic and military rationales to produce the Orient" (p.12). At the level of general culture, acquisition of an enormous quantity of Oriental information makers very little impact on alteration of the hegemony. If Europe had been ignorant of the Orient prior to conquest, the ignorance has only become more refined at the general cultural level.

III
In the post-enlightenment culture of Europe, the upgraded realism of the Orientalist discourse tended to acquire an increasingly authoritative position in matters regarding the Orient. Such authority was backed by the reality of an unresisting, subjugated Orient, which had started to diffuse into the general consciousness. Large number of writers, thinkers and administrators, who thought about Orient in different contexts, were well aware of ct of the European domination of the Orient. More than the political victory, it was the cultural hegemony, enriched by the Orientalist exercise of "producing" the Orient that contributed to the strengthening and reinforcement of the general Orientalist doctrine. Even as details of the Oriental culture flowed in, the Orientalist paradigm changed only its exteriority to suit the emerging culture of the late XVIII century Europe, moving from the free-floating Orientalism to textual isation.

While scholars re-represented the Orient in the newly acquired style of textualisation, writer’s poets and philosophers supplied the necessary colors. A large mass of creative writing of late XVm and early XIX century persistently depicts the Oriental from the ethnocentric perspective of Orientalism. Writers as diverse as Goethe, Flaubert, Scott and Dickens made use of the new exteriority of the Orientalist discourse to repeat the hegemonistic a centric view of Europe regarding the Orient and the Oriental. At another level, the Orientalist text served rival parties in philosophical discourse (for example, Voltaire's hailing of the "Ezourvedam" only to make the point that it disproved the Biblical great deluge). Or, Edward Schelegal's praise for the 'Vedantic" philosophy arose out of the concern for supplementing the perceived materialistic philosophy and way of life in the late XVIII century Europe and also because 'Vedantic" philosophy could be used as a point to downgrade "the Semitic" philosophies, to which Europe had been hostile traditionally.

The authority of Orientalism, in its imaginatively restructured form is brought out powerfully in the case of Karl Marx, who in his 1853 analysis of the British rule in India (p.153) "returned with increasing conviction to the idea that even in destroying Asia, Britain was making possible there a real social revolution".

"Now sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious, patriarchal and inoffensive social organizations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual member losing at the same time the ancient form of civilization and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that these idyllic village communities inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Orientalism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath the traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies.... England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfill its destiny a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.

Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of the crumbling world may have for our personal feelings, we have the right, in point of history, to exclaim with Goethe; "Should this torture then torment us since it brings us greater, pleasure? Were not through the rule of Timur Souls devoured without measure?".

The quotation which supports Marx's argument comes from Goethe's Westestostlcher Diwan and identifies the source of Marx's conception about Orient. That the lifeless Asia must be regenerated receptively is a piece of pure romantic even messianic Orientalism, which wins out over whatever sympathies Marx may have had towards the suffering humanity. Somehow the "vocabulary of emotion dissipated as it submitted to-the lexicographical police action of Orientalist science and even Orientalist art. An experience was dislodged by a ' dictionary definition: One can almost see that happen in Marx's Inclian essays, where what finally occurs is that something forces him to scurry back to Goethe, there to stand in his protective Orientalised Orient" (p.155).

In the later sections of the book, which cover the period roughly from mid-nineteenth century onwards up to the present times, Orientalism tends to focus almost exclusively on "the Arab World" (a term much deprecated by Said). The coverage and survey of scholars and literary figures involved is quite impressive, as also that of national traditions of scholarship. What in the earlier sections was subtle, impassioned sarcasm (see Said's account of Karl, Marx) I "upgrades" itself into abuse as the period closes in on contemporary developments (see, in particular, the vehement attack on the American academic establishment of "Area studies", expertise and its role in formulation of the US policy in the Middle East, pp.300-320). That the traditional Western scholarship in Orientalism has gradually transformed itself into offering more openly the necessary useful services for the power system is well brought out. But, the question is there an alternative to Orientalism? Said attempts to answer this question by pointing to the emergence of newer insights, concepts and methods in contemporary human sciences "that could dispense with racial, ideological, and imperialist stereotypes of the sort, provided during its historical ascendancy by Orientalism" (p.328).

In trying to view this critically, we shall take up a brief from H.A.R. Gibb, the British Orientalist of this*century, "surveyed" by Said. Gibb is, quoted as saying (in 1931) that the study of the Orient "for its own sake" will "assist" us to liberate ourselves from the narrow and oppressive conception which would, limit all that is significant in literature, thought, and history to our own segment of the globe" (p.256). This calls for a knowledge of the Orient "for its own sake", in diametric opposition to some of the earlier declarations (one quoted by Said is in 1899) on such knowledge and its direct usefulness to expansion of European suzerainty over "the Orient", and reflects, in Said's words (p.257), "the changed political and cultural realities of the postwar era" of Independence movements and political contests of European supremacy by the native peoples. Thus arises for the West the

"need of the Orient as something to be studied because it releases the spirit from sterile specialization, it eases the affliction of excessive parochial and nationalistic self-centeredness, it increases one's grasp of the really central issues in the study of culture. If - the Orient appears more a partner new-rising dialectic of cultural self-consciousness, it is/first, because the Orient is more of a challenge now than it was before, and second because the West is entering a relatively new phase of cultural "-- crisis, caused in part by the diminishment of Western suzerainty over the world."

The foregoing analysis is fairly accurate when applied to the system of inter-relationships between the West and the non-West today, in the post-second world war period. In *his * period of benign imperialism, the battle against "the Orient" is perhaps subtler, waged as it is with the falsely universal categories of the human sciences, which continue to emerge and which are looked up to with some hope in this book. Said sees the danger of "the Orientals" perceiving themselves as "Orientals" in contemporary world (p.322) but somehow fails in noticing the grave danger in viewing themselves through the 'universal' categories of the human sciences. To cite one example, apart from the dilettantism of developmental sociology and economics, accounts are constructed, with the aid of these, of "peasant state" as a political formation, only to enable their use in building a universal scheme of political formations that would accord the West the requisite supremacy. At another level, a set of computer men, all American could acclaim the "usefulness" of the syntax of Sanskrit language based on the system of Panini, while totally denying any merit to the host of its traditional commentators, using conceptual tools of contemporary linguistic and automata theory. The discourse of power between the West and the non- West (in the sense of Michael Foucault), does continue though the mode of assertion has changed. Thus, this book, though restricted in its appeal for action to certain types of scholarship in the West, nevertheless succeeds in powerfully challenging the classical Orientalism through a brilliant portrayal.



Author:V. Balaji

Note:

* Physically, the expedition was failure as the French army was defeated by Egyptians after the
departure of Napoleon.

SOCIOLOGY OF INDIAN SOCIETY: THE NEED FOR A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Modern sociological writings on Indian society can be traced back to earlier European, especially British, interpretations of Indian social institutions like jati, village communities etc. Though numerous observations about Indian society were made by European travellers or visitors from around 1500 A.D., systematic recording of information on India began only around the eighteenth century. European and British writings on India may be classified under three heads. Scholars like William Jones, Max Muller and other Sanskritists, Indologists or Orientalists* form one category". They were by and large concerned with ancient texts like the Vedas, Upanishuds and Dharmasastras. Missionaries who studied and interpreted ancient texts or collected information on Indian customs and practices may be included in the same category. British administrators like Munro, Mackenzie, Elphinstone, Metcalfe etc., who collected a variety of information from another category. Also falling in this category are men like Hamilton', Thornton and Colebrooke who were specially commissioned to undertake surveys and write Imperial and District Gazetteers, and Census Commissioners and officers like Risley, Hutton and O'Malley. Marx, Maine and other scholars who constructed a theoretical framework out of data and reports provided by the British administrators form the third category.

While Indologists and orientlists were generally motivated to trace the links between European culture, Indian culture and language, administrators like Munro and Metcalfe were preoccupied J with revenue settlements of various provinces that came under British rule. Their observations and conclusions were mainly aimed at defending one or the other system of land settlement introduced by the British. Scholars like Marx and Maine were interested in establishing their universal theories of social evolution cr development and found in Indian society a laboratory to test some of their hypotheses.

The organization of Indian society into innumerable jatis and the nature and characteristics of the Indian village find repeated mention in the reports of British administrators. While one can understand the European or British curiosity about jati, as it was regarded as a uniquely Indian institutional is significant that the Indian village should receive an equal attention in the reports of administrators and others. The earliest observations about the Indian village were made by District collectors and other revenue officials in the context of the British preoccupation with the revenue settlements of various provinces. The absence of private ownership of land, the multiple rights enjoyed by various groups or individuals on the agricultural produce, the periodic exchange or rotation of land among a community of owners, and the large amount of rent-free holdings called inams, maniyams or mafees attracted the attention of these early British administrators. The reports of these district revenue officials along with the proceedings of the Board of Revenue were sent to London for information and suitable policy guidelines.

The Fifth Report of the Affairs of the East India Company submitted to the House of Commons in the year 1812 is the earliest consolidation by London of various reports and observations of British officials in India* .It must be remembered that the Fifth Report as also the reports of British officials in India were meant for British policy formulations at the highest level. It is on the basis of this report that Marx and Maine drew their picture of the Indian village and constructed their theories of Oriental Despotism and the Primitive Indo-Aryan Commune respectively. Since the days of Marx and Maine the Fifth Report has been quoted any number of times and we would therefore be doing no harm quoting from it again:

"A village geographically considered, is a tract of country, some hundreds or thousands of acres of arable and waste land; politically viewed, it resembles a corporation or township Us proper establishment of officers and servants consists of the following descriptions: The Potail or head inhabitant, who has the general superintendence of the affairs of the village, settles the disputes of the inhabitants, attends tc the police, and performs the duty, already described, of collecting the revenues within his village, a duty which the situation and concerns of the people renders him best qualified to discharge; the curnum, who keeps the accounts of cultivation, and registers everything connected with it; the Talliar and Totie: the duty of the former appearing to consist, in a wider and more enlarged sphere of action, in gaining information of crimes and offenses, and in escorting and protecting persons travelling from one village to another; the province of the latter, appearing to be more immediately confined to the village, consisting, among other duties, in guarding the crops, and assisting in measuring them; the Boundary-man who preserves the limits of the village, or gives evidence respecting them, in cases of dispute; the Superintendent of the tanks and water courses who distributes the water therefore, for the purposes of agriculture; the Binhmin who .performs the village worship; the Schoolmaster who is seen teaching the children in the villages to read and write in the sand; the Calendar Brahmin or astrologer, who proclaims the lucky or unpropitious periods of sowing and threshing; the Smith and Carpenter, who manufacture the implements of agriculture and build the dwellings of the ryot; the Potman or potter; the Washerman, the Barber, the Cow-keeper, who looks after the cattle; the Doctor; the Dancing Girl, who attends at rejoicings; the Musician and the Poet. These officers and servants, generally constitute the establishment of a village; but in some parts of the country, it is of less extent, some of the duties and functions above described being united in the same person, in others, it exceeds the number of individuals which have been described.

Under this simple form of municipal government the inhabitants of the country have lived, from time immemorial. The boundaries of the villages have been but seldom altered; and though the villages themselves have been sometimes injured, and even desolated, by war, famine, and disease, the same name, the same limits and the same interests and even the same families, have continued for ages. The inhabitants give themselves no trouble about the breaking up and division of kingdoms; while the village remains entire, they care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it devolves; its internal economy remains unchanged".

Marx, while quoting the Fifth Report, takes the second para to pour scorn on Indian way of life.

"....these idyllic village communities... have always been the solid foundation of oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it... depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies this undignified, stagnatory and vegetative life.... rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindustan".

As downright condemnation of Indian life and civilization, Marx's judgment is perhaps surpassed only by lames Mill. The Fifth Report's observation that villages in India remained the same in spite of war, famine and disease came in handy for Marx to establish his thesis that more than conquering force, it is economic factors that transform society. It is rather strings that Marx did not realize that the Fifth Report's observation was motivated by a desire to build an argument that the British rule is hardly an interference with Indian way of life, that what the British had done was what had always happened in India and that political changes never concerned the average Indian. In order to emphasize his point that British free-trade and steam power brought about a social transformation in India, Marx even went to the extent of it, underplaying the role of the British tax gatherer. It is highly improbable that a scholar like Marx did not know that the British collected about 50 percent of the gross produce as revenue, thus dealing a death" blow to a number of village institutions and functions.

How far is the description of the village administration in the Fifth Report hinting at its autonomy and economic self sufficiency true? There seems to be a fair consensus among scholars that the descriptions contained in the Fifth Report, as also the earlier descriptions of Munro and Metcalfe", are too romantic to be true. It is also held that Indian nationalists use these very descriptions to serve their ideological purpose of condemning the British rule for having destroyed the self-sufficient village republics and painting the pre-colonial era as la golden age.

Srinivas (197551) in an essay on the myth and reality of Indian village argues that the Fifth Report is an oversimplification of reality. He says:

"It seems unlikely that villages were entirely indifferent to the fate of the kingdom of which they were a part. They would have had a natural preference for a 'good' king and distaste for a 'bad' one, judged by the share of the crop he collected by way of tax and the effectiveness of the protection he offered them against robbers, marauding troops etc".

Questioning the economic self-sufficiency of the Indian village, Srinivas says that an essential commodity like salt was not produced in every village nor was iron, indispensable for making agricultural implements, available in every village. About the abilities of the village communities to survive temporary disasters, Srinivas says mat it is an exaggeration and quotes Baden-Powell approvingly.

"As to the villages being unchangeable, their constitution and form has shown a progressive tendency to decay and if it had not been for modern land revenue systems trying to keep it together, it may well be doubted whether it would have survived at all" (Baden-Powell as quoted in Srinivas, 1957:52) “.

If the Fifth Report was interested in presenting a picture of stability and stagnation of Indian 'village in order to show that the British rule after all was no serious interference in the Indian way of life, Baden-Powell was clearly interested in upholding the Zamindari and Ryotwari systems introduced by the British and hence talked about the tendency of Indian villages to decay.

Dumont (1966) says that the Fifth Report and the descriptions by Metcalfe and Elphinstone actually refer to the village community as a political society. Admitting that there is some truth in the descriptions by Elphinstone or Meltcalfe, Dumont says that there is an element of idealization in the supposed political independence of village communities. Even if one agrees with Srinivas and Dumont, there still remains the question as to why our villages appeared as republics to the British administrators and others. For instance, William Adam, a Baptist missionary who surveyed the system of indigenous education in Bengal around 1830 remarked that there were about one lakh schools in the Province. It can be argued today that Adam did not make a proper survey or that he was exaggerating. But is it not sociologically significant that Adam talks about one lakh schools in Bengal Province? Adam must have been struck by the widespread nature of the indigenous education in contrast to what had obtained in England then. Similarly, it can be argued that when British administrators described Indian villages as republics they must have done so by contrasting the Indian village with the village in England or Europe.

What did the British administrators actually see in the Indian village that made them describe H as a republic? One of the earliest and most detailed records of the institutional structure of the Indian village is a detailed survey of about 2000 villages in the Chingleput district of Tamilnadu conducted in the 1760's . The survey records the total land belonging to each village and its utilization including the details of muniyams etc The more important part of the survey, however, concerns the details of deductions made, from the total agricultural produce of the village for maintenance of various institutions of the village as well as institutions and offices outside the village. In each village deductions were made on the average out of about 50 items, ranging from temples and irrigation works to water pandals and flower gardens. A number of village functionaries like Talliar, Karnam, Corn-measurer, Barber, Washerman, Panjangam Brahmin, Purohit, Cow keeper. Carpenter, Blacksmith, Doctor, Snake Doctor, School Teacher, Potter, Devadasi, Valluvan etc. were provided for from the total agricultural produce. Apart from these village institutions and functionaries, great temples outside the village and some offices and functions of the judicial administrative kind belonging to the larger locality around the village also got a share from the village produce. Chief among the offices or functions outside' the village were the great temples, the Brahmin scholar, Palegar, Deshmukh, Tookery, Canoonco etc.

Taking eight villages at random, Dharampal has recently presented the data of the actual deductions made for each item or function out of 100 kalams of agricultural produce. Out of 8 Villages considered, 4 belong to the Ponnery area and 4 belong to Carangooly area. AH the eight villages have 600 cawnies or more of cultivable land. The data is summarized in Table -1.

When we analyze the data for these 8 villages we find that great temples outside the village received between 2 and 5 percent of the gross agricultural produce of each village. The Brahmin scholar outside the village received about 0.5 percent of the produce. The Poligar,
who is the area militia chief received about 25 to 4 percent, while the Tookery about 2.5 to 3 percent of the produce. The average deduction made in respect of the Deshmukh, which is a political office of the region is 1.5 to 2 percent. In all about 10 - l4 percent of the total agricultural produce of the village was allocated to support religious, cultural and wider political institutions and functions.

When one considers the deductions made for the infrastructure of the village, we find that irrigation received the maximum, about 3 to 4 percent of the gross produce. Karnam, who was the registrar of the village, received about 2.5 to 3percent, It may be pointed out that the deductions for Karnam could have been shared by a number of persons as the job of the Karnam required maintaining a sort of secretariat of, the village. The Talliar who was generally from Paraiah jati received about 1.5 percent of the produce. The carpenter and blacksmith were" together allocated on an average 1.7 percent of the produce. The barber and washerman received 0.5 to 1 percent each. As against these deductions made for functions performed by lower jatis, the Purohit and Panjangam Brahmin received on an average only about 0.25 percent of the produce. Even the Valluvan (astrologer from lower jatis) received a little more than the Panjangam Brahmin. The Devadasi received an allocation of about 0.25 percent and the flower garden, water panda) etc., received about 012 to 0.25 percent each. Interestingly/among the village temples that received allocations, the Amman temple and Dhararnaraja temple belonging to the lower jatis received about percent while Eswaran, Perumal and Ganesha temples of the higher jatis received only 0.5 percent. In all about 20 to 25 percent of the total agricultural produce was allocated for various functions, institutions' and individuals within the village. Adding the deductions made for institutions/functions outside the village, the total amount deducted from produce ranged between 30 and 40 percent.

The picture one gets from the Chingleput data is one of relatively autonomous localities or villages which managed their own affairs by a complex system of allocation of resources. That these villages were not completely isolated or cut off from the wider society or polity comes out clearly from the allocations made for institutions, functions etc. outside the -village. That every function was taken care of-and every individual provided for reminds one of the functions supposed to be performed by a modern welfare state.

In the light of the data from Chinglcput one would naturally look for corroborative evidence from other parts of India. According to John Malcolm, a major British military commander and later governor of Bombay Presidency, the dcductions: made for such purposes in the villages of Malwa region was about .25 percent. We have a lot of data from early British records pertaining to Bengal during 1765-1790 about the nature and extent of revenue assignments to religious, cultural institutions and for administrative-economic functions. According to this data, there were two categories of assignments called Chakeram Zameen and Bazee Zameen, implying that the recipients of the former were engaged in administrative functions and the latter, in religious cultural functions. Around 1777 in the Nuddcah district of Bengal a total of 96,827 Beeghas of land was assigned as Chakeram Zameen. Out of this about 15,000 Beeghas were assigned to Turrufdars and Karmacharis; 7,488 Beeghas for village Pykes about 15,000 Beeghas for village accountants; 8,000 Beeghas for Sudder officers 7,500 Beeghas for officers of Pergunnah cutcheries'. Bazee Zameen assignments in the district of Rajashahi in 1777 amounted to 4,29,149 Beeghas Of these 80,900 Beeghas was for temples and 2,80,520 Beeghas for learned individuals. The Collector of Rungpore reported in 1789 that over 24,000 persons held Bazee Zameen assignments in his district. Similarly, the Collector of Beerbohm estimated that the resumptions that would-be allowed under the new British regulations would affect over 10,000 persons in1 his district. According to H.J. Prinsep, a major authority on land resumptions, the district of Burdwan alone had received over 72,000 applications for registration and 'confirmation of Bazee Zameen around 1780. Regarding the extent of these assignments, the President of the Board of Revenue in Bengal in 1789, Sir John Shore, stated that the total produce of these alienated lands, estimated at over Rs.2.5 crores, was almost one-third of the gross produce, which was estimated at about Rs.8 crores.

A very similar picture emerges from the British accounts of the Rajasthan area around 1818- 1830.. According to Captain Stewart, political agent at Jaipur in 1818, out of the total revenue of the state, estimated at Rs.6530,216, the religious and charitable assignments amounted to Rs.10,10,492. In addition Tunkhadars got Rs.11, 93,889 and Jafreerdars Rs.17,11,446. The revenue receipts of the exchequer (khalsa) was thus only Rs.26,11,389. The position in the Madras presidency was not very different even after a period of disorganisation and dispossession between 1750 and 1800. As late as 1807, Thomas Munro, as Collector, reported to the Board of Revenue that over 30-40 percent of the land in Ceded districts (the present day Bellary, Anantapur and Cuddappah) camejunder the category of revenue-free assignments called inams. An idea of the number of persons to whom these hams were assigned may be had from the settlements made by the name commission of the Madras Presidency. By 1369 the Commission has settled a total of 3,67,427 inams. The recipients of the inams included religious institutions, public utilities like chattrams, schools etc., individual functionaries like the Poligar and the Brahmin.

The revenue free assignments, variously called as inams, mafees etc. must have had the sanction of long standing custom, or convention and no ruler could ordinarily cancel them. In Bengal and Bihar areas, which were under Muslim rule for a long time, more than 90 percent of the assignments were in the name of Hindu institutions. It is thus clear that the Indian village was basically a self-regulating community with an infrastructure of services and amenities along with a measure of political autonomy. Though we do not yet have a clear picture of the actual linkages that existed between the village and the wider society/polity, it is beyond doubt that the Indian village did contribute to the larger society in terms of both material and human resources. That a certain sense of cultural unity based on very ancient traditions and norms existed is well indicated by institutions and structures like temples, chatrams receiving scal support from various regions of India. As Dharampal says (1986:138)

"....the available data seems to suggest the kind of society and polity that (in recent times) Mahatma Gandhi tried to spell out in his concept of Oceanic circles, where the innermost circle retained the utmost autonomy and extended to the outer circles fiscal and other support required to perform such of those functions that could not be performed at the local level".

II
In order to understand the European formulations on Indian Society it may not be totally out of place here to have a look at the British society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is generally held that the Norman Conquest consolidated feudalism in England in the mid-eleventh century. The main consequence of the conquest was that the people of the conquered areas were deprived of their land and other natural resources and around 95 percent of the resources were appropriated by the Normans. This 95 percent was distributed in roughly the following proportion:25 percent to the King, 25 percent to the established church and 50 percent amongst the followers of the conquerors. These followers in due course came to be known as the nobility and aristocracy in England and of Wales, Ireland and Scotland too. The original inhabitants of England, estimated at about 1.5 million in the mid-eleventh century were mostly reduced to the status of serfs and villains’. For instance Gregory King's analysis of the incomes of English families in the late 17th century illustrates the manner in which the resources were concentrated and controlled at that time (the data is presented in Table II). A look at the distribution of land and resources in the next century (see Table III and IV) suggests that though the British society underwent several changes in the following centuries, the property right of the nobility and aristocracy as also the hierarchical structure of wealth and power more or less remained intact as late as 1873.

TABLE - II

A SCHEME OF THE INCOME OF THE SEVERAL FAMILIES OF ENGLAND: CALCULATED1 FOR THE YEAR 1688:

Number of Families	Banks, Degrees, Titles and Qualifications	Average yearly Income per Family (£)
160	Temporal Lords	2,800
26	Spiritual Lords	1,300
800	Baronets	880
600	Knights	650
3,000	Squires	480
12,000	Gentleman	280
5,000	Persons in Office	240
5,000	Persons in Office	120
2,000	Merchants and Traders by Sea	400
8,000	Merchants and Traders by Land	200
10,000	Persons in the Law	140
2,000	Clergymen	60
8,000	Clergymen	45
40,000	Freeholders	84
140,000	Freeholders	50
150,000	Farmers	44
16,000	Persons in Science and Liberal Arts	60
40,000	Shop keepers and Tradesmen	45
60,000	Artisans and Handicrafts	40
5,000	Naval Officers	80
4,000	Military Officers	60
-----------		-----------
511,586		67
-----------		-----------
50,000	Common Seamon	20
364,000	Labouring People and Out Servants	15
400,000	Cottagers and Paupers	6.5
35,000	Common Soldiers	14
-----------		-----------
849,000	Families + Vagrants(30,000) Persons	10.5
-----------		-----------
511,586	Increasing the Wealth of the Kingdom	67
849,000	Decreasing the Wealth of the Kingdom	10.5
--------------		-----------
1,360,586	Familes      Net Totals	32
--------------		-----------
Source: Gregory King Esq: Natural and Political Observations and Conclusions upon the State and Condition of England (pp 73)

TABLE - III

A SCHEME OF INCOME OF THE SEVERAL FAMILIES OF ENGLAND (C.1B12)

	No. of Families	Average Annual Computed share of incomer per family
THE FIRST
Temporal Lords	516	10,000
Spiritual Lords (Archbishops and Bishops)	48	5,010
Baronets	861	3,510
Knights and Esquires	11,000	2,000
Gentlemen and Ladies Living on Incomes	35,000	800
Eminent Bankers and Merchants	3,500	2,600
	--------------
In all	50,925
	--------------
THE SECOND
Higher Civil and Military Servants	50,080	200
Eminant Clergymen	1,500	720
Lesser Clergymen	17,500	200
Judges, Barristers, Attorneys etc.	19,000	400
Physicians, Surgeons, Apethecaries	18,000	300
Artists, Sculptors, Engravers	5,000	280
Freeholders of land of the bettor sort	70,000	275
Leeser Merchants	22,800	805
Engineers, Surveyors, Master Builders	8,700	300
Owners of ships, various manufacturers	54,150	600
University Teachers	874	600
	--------------
In all	2,68,404
	--------------
THE THIRD
Lesser Freeholders and Farmers	4,90,000	100
Minor Manufactures like Tailors Milliners etc.	43,750	180
Shopkeepers and Retail Tradesmen	1,40,000	200
Clerks and Shopmen	95,000	70
Inn-Keepers and Publications	87,500	100
School-owners and Teachers employing some capital	35,000	204
Dissending Clergymen	5,000	100
Actors in Teachers etc.	875	200
	--------------
	8,97,125
	--------------
THE FOURTH
Half pay Officers	6,500	100
Common Soldiers	2,80,000	35
Seaman and Marine	1,71,540	42
Army Pensioners in Homes etc.	42,000	15
Labouring People in Agriculture Mining etc. (including earnings of the females)	7,42,151	45
Aquatic labourers in the Merchants	1,80,000	45
Umberlla and Parasol Makers, Lace Workers, launderers etc.	70,000	50
Artisans, Machanics, labourers in Manufactories, building works etc.	10,21,974	48
Hawkers, Pelders, etc	1,400	45
Persons in prison for debt	3,500	30
Paupers, producing from their own labour in Miscellaneous employments	3,87,100	10
	--------------
In all	28,99,100
	--------------
Source: Patrick Colquhons: Treatise on the population, wealth, power and Resources of the British Empire in every quarter of the World (1814).

TABLE - IV

LAND OWNERSHIP IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 1873

Number of Owners	Class	Extent in Acres
400	Peers and Peeresses	5,728,979
1,288	Great Landowners	8,497,699
2,529	Squires	4,319,271
9,585	Great Yeomen	4,782,627
24,412	Lesser Yeomen	4,144,272
217,049	Small Proprietors	3,931,806
703,289	Cottagers	151,148
14,459	Public: The Crown, Barracks:	165,427
	Bodies: Convict, Prisons:
	: Lighthouses & c :
	: Religious, Educational :	947,655
	: Philanthropic & c. :
	Commercial and Miscellaneous	330,466
	Waste: Commercial and Miscellaneous	1,524,264
973,011	Total	31,523,974
Source: John Bateman: The Great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland 7883 (p.515).

After some 120 years, i.e. in 1812, the hierarchical relationships of this society had changed only marginally- A contemporary' analysis presented the picture presented in Table (II under four categories. Even later in 1873, the same pattern persists as can be seen from an analysis of land ownership in Britain and Ireland, in 1873 presented in Table IV above.

As may be seen from the above data, the aristocracy in England from the time of Norman conquest was] mainly preoccupied with preserving and extending its property and consequently all English norms arid institutions lhat were framed from time to time preserved this institution of private property. The primacy of private property as well as the wealth-based and power-graded hierarchical order, in its train, led to a scries of coercive laws which governed the rates of wages of artisans and laborers as well as the movement, especially of the latter, away from their habitual place of residence. Even while serfdom and villienage were disappearing, receiving and paying wages above the fixed rate was made a cognizable offense in the sixteenth century itself. Such fixing of wages continued till the early eighteenth century when the market forces took its place. In King's data given above (Table I), 849,000 families of common seamen, laboring people, cottagers etc., whose average income was 10, were considered as decreasing the wealth of the kingdom and 511,586 families with an average income of 67 were considered as increasing the wealth of the kingdom. The logic is strange and funny. You first fix the wages of some categories low and then argue that since their incomes are low they contribute nothing to the wealth of the Kingdom. This was raised to the status of a theoretical principle by Adam Smith who argued that the labourer was not Worth more than his hire and it was wrong therefore to pay the laborer more than what was needed for his subsistence, and the less the sum on which he was hired the better it was for the economy.

If we compare the above data with the Chingleput data presented earlier, it seems that at a gross level Indian society of pre- British era was more egalitarian than British society of the corresponding period. Further, the British social hierarchy based on wealth and power has been as rigid, if not more, than the so-called caste hierarchy of India. In this context one really wonders if the European or British hostility to and condemnation of, caste an institution were because of reasons other than it being a hierarchy of statuses and positions or a system of social inequalities. It seems more likely that the British opposition to caste as an institution was because of it being a major obstacle in their way to atomize Indian society.

III
Whatever data one may collect; about the fiscal and political structure of the Indian village, discussion of these communities cannot be complete without facing the question of caste or jati. It was the rigid hierarchical jatis system that supposedly bound the village society in its vice-like grip and classified the crass inequalities in a theoretically unshakable frame. Breaking the jatis system and thereby releasing the forces of progressive egalitarianism then became the major argument in favor of the destruction of Indian social structure, and made this destruction look like an act of civilizing grace even to someone like Marx. Support of an obnoxiously in egalitarian jati system remains even today the main charge leveled by scholars, politicians and the enlightened laymen, against the traditional social and political structure of India. It is difficult to discuss objectively a phenomenon that has generated so much righteous indignation and civilizing zeal amongst foreigners and the educated Indians alike over such a long period. But let us at least put together what the scholars have been discovering about this peculiar system of India.

The phenomenon of the division of Indian society into innumerable jatis has been much discussed, researched and theorized about. While the theories themselves differ a great deal in tracing the origin and development, or in describing the structure and function, of jatis, the fact that for centuries the Indian people belonged to, and continue to belong to, jatis is undisputed. It is also an accepted fact that in the course of our history, a number of jatis were born both by a process of fission and fusion. It is also likely that a few jatis disappeared altogether, while some took new names. It is generally accepted that the origin of the jati system is hidden in pre-history. The attempts by ideologists to trace the origin of jati to varna has become discredited since the emergence of empirical sociology. It is now generally accepted that varna and jati are different. Many have expressed doubts whether the varna model or theory is useful at all in understanding the reality of jatis. It is said, for instance, that there are no Kshatriyas in a majority of villages an&Vaisyas are conspicuous by their absence in many part of India. It is also a well known fact that most of the Hindu rajas were Sudras.

It is now realised that there are a number of jatis which may not find a place in the varna scheme. Modem sociologists are agreed that varna is a general frame of reference or theory or ideology that orders Hindu society in a particular way. It is widely held that this theorisation or attempt at ordering Hindu society was undertaken by higher jatis, especially the Brahmins. Hence the model or theory found in, for example, Mariusamhita, is basically a Brahmanical model that may never have operated at the level of a village or a region. Most of the earlier theories about jati based on analyses of Manu and other law givers were therefore attempts at understanding the phenomenon of jatis from the top. It may be interesting to speculate whether the Western fascination with Brahmanical texts was the consequence of the European social reality itself being a linear hierarchy. In this context, it is pertinent to note that in 1815 when London had begun discouraging the translation and publication of Indian works, only the re-publication of "Institutes of Manu" was approved, as the Public Dispatch to Bengal of 63.1815 declared:

"After the most attentive consideration we have been enabled to give as to the merits and utility of the works mentioned in the paragraph under reply, there is only one," the "Institutes of Manu", that appears to be of the description to which our former orders our patronage should be confirmed, viz. to works of real utility and of moderate expenses. We must therefore strictly enjoin you to confine your future patronage of literary works to such as shall be entirely of the description above mentioned".

While it can be seen from the above that the British ruler? Considered Manu's Dharmasastra a work of real utility, among Indian scholars and in schools of higher learning where Indian law was taught Manu's Dharmasastra did not seem to have enjoyed the status of sole authority. According to Adam, in all the 19 schools of higher learning of five districts of Bengal where law was taught, the main text used was that by Raghunandana, and Manu and the Mitakshara, (the commentary of Vijnancswara on Yajmvalkya Swriti) were known only by name.

What the British Census operation did in the early years of this century in fixing the social rank of different jatis has been well documented. Though the publication of his work Tribes and Castes of Bengal in 1891 had, resulted in a lot of quarrel between Kayasthas and Vaidyas, Risely went ahead and provided a classification according to social rank in 1901 Census that rekindled enmities. As Rajat Kanta Ray (1984:43) observes:

"The immediate occasion for the outbreak of caste antagonisms on a large scale at the beginning" of the twentieth century was the use of Census operations of 1901 by the British government to fix the social rank of different castes. An elaborate list of caste precedence, drawn up by Sir Herbert Risely, was submitted to committees of Indian gentlemen for scrutiny and1 criticism. An extraordinary amount of ill-feeling and jealousy characterized the debates of these committees, which in more than one instance failed to reach a decision. This use by government of census operations to fix caste rank" was an extraordinary exercise of official power",

Now, what are jatis? Sociologists have listed several characteristics of jatis or the jatis system. Broadly jatis are considered closed kindred, endogamous groupings, generally following a hereditary calling". Some principles of hierarchy such as superior-inferior, pure-impure,
auspicious-inauspicious or clear-unclear are said to be at the basis of the jatis system. This view finds it’s most rigorous exposition Jin Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus. What is therefore described as the jati system is the inter-relationship between jatis supposedly governed by the principle of hierarchy. It is claimed that this hierarchical arrangement of jatis can be found in every village or locality, though it is also conceded that in the middle regions of the hierarchy there is a lot of ambiguity about the relative ranking of jatis. In other words, except for the top (Brahmin) and the bottom (Pariah) position which are accepted everywhere, there is dispute about the relative superiority or inferiority of other jatis.

That the jatis were also arranged in different ways, without reference tovarnas is seldom taken serious note of. For example, the division of jatis into right-hand (Balagai) and left-hand (Yedagai) with jatis placed in between as Madyasthas has not been pToperiy understood. According to many British reports the Balagai jatis seemed to have consisted largely of the peasantry and those clearly linked with agriculture, while he Yedagai jatis seemed largely to have consisted of people following various crafts and trades. It was often the case that in many "disputes between the balagai and Yedagai divisions, the Paraiahs and Chakkiliars took leading role on behalf of the respective divisions.

In the Baramahal records an estimate is available of the probable number of cultivators, tradesmen, etc., in the BaJagai, Yedagai and Madyastha jatis. Out of a total population of six lakhs made up of 116lahs, the Madyasthas formed a majority, of 66 jatis with 2,29,642 persons. The Batagai jatte numbered 39 with a population of 1,83,763 and the Yedagai had 11 jatis with a population of 1,86,595. It was also estimated that among Paraiahs who numbered 65,075 there were 32,474 cultivators 36,478 tradesmen and 5433 independents (apparently these are not mutually exclusive categories and cultivators could also be tradesmen). It appears from the British records that there were many disputes between the Balagai and Yedagai jatis. While the significance of the Balagai - Yedagai division and the role of Madyasthas need to be properly understood, the fact that there were such divisions clearly indicates that the jati system was not necessarily a linear hierarchy.

The Balagai - Yedagai division also suggests that jatis combining themselves in a power struggle need not b.1 viewed as a Irecent phenomenon. It seems that jatis have always played a political role in so far as they are cohesive groups giving protection and security to their members. Therefore, the so called politicization of jatis need not be taken as the consequence of the introduction of elections or the democratic process in general. It may on the other hand be that having been used to mobilization of their members for political or power struggle jatis have responded to the introduction of the democratic process in a similar way. Thus, by considering politicization of jatis as a recent change in the caste system, sociologists have failed to appreciate the political nature of jati organization. It was perhaps this characteristic of the jatis to mobilize its members that made the British rulers so inimical to this institution. The European or British criticism of jatis, could not have been based on the principle of equality, for equality as an ideology is quite recent in origin and popularity within the Western society itself.

Another aspect that deserves mention here, but which is often ignored in discussion of jatU is the fact that there were a number of Sampradayas with their followers drawn from various jatis. That one retained one's jati even while belonging to a sampradaya like Veerasaivism which questioned notions of purity- impurity suggests that jatis may continue to exist even in sampradayas that proclaim the spiritual equality of all. Some interesting questions arise in the context of Veerasaivism, or even Buddhism. The commonly held view that though both wanted to abolish jatis, they could not succeed because of the power of the jati system needs reexamination. May be the Buddha and Basava were not against jatis themselves though they questioned the varna system of ordering jatis. Put differently, the fight, if ever, was against a particular arrangement of, or relationship between jatis.

This brings us to a crucial question. How were the jatis related at the level of village or locality? It is held that while jati was a segmental division of society there was also interdependence of jatis at the village or locality. This interrelationship between jatis has been called the jajmani system. Ever since Wiser's 'discovery' of the system in a village in 1930, a number of sociologists have commented upon it. For some scholars like Beidelman the system is merely a rationalization of the economic exploitation of the lower jatis. For others the essential features of the system is that it is fundamentally religious in nature and perhaps a substitute of sacrificial pattern. ThusLannoy considers the jajmani system to be nothing but a degraded imitation by the peasant jatis of the royal style in which the Kshatriya-king patronized a priest. According to him (Lannoy 1971:157-8).

"... the Jajmani system first appeared in the period when Vedic sacrifice was abandoned as the primary religious rite of the Hindus - that it was a substitution for sacrifice, on another more functional level rather in the same way as purification rites spread beyond the sacrificial domain to include the entire gamut of social regulation. Jajman came to mean all the basic reciprocal relations of patronage, not merely that between Kshatriya and Brahman, it is a privilege and responsibility for a family to patronize not only the domestic priest, but also all other specialists in the village. The system ensures the service of specialists and their subsistence; in exchange they receive annual gifts of products from the soil - a fixed portion of the crops".

For Dumont (1980:105) to the system is basically religious though with a richer content than suggested by Lannoy. According to him the system is designed to satisfy the need of everyone who enters into the system of jajmani relationships. It is a "sort of co-operative where the main, aim is to ensure the subsistence of everyone in accordance with social function, almost to the extent of sharing out the produce of each piece of land". Therefore, argues Dumont, the jajmani system in which each is assigned his place, is fundamentally religious and not economic. Srinivas, on the other hand considers the jajmani system to be essentially an economic relationship between jajman and kamin jatis. Writing on Indian social structure in the Gazetteer of India he states: 'Though primarily an economic or ritual tie, it has a tendency to spread to other fields and become a patron-client relationship". (Srinivas 1982:14). Thus two broad positions are taken on the jajmani system. One which describes it as a religious, ritualistic tie that ensures the subsistence of every jati, and the other, which considers the jajmani as a rationalization of exploitative economic relationship. But both are agreed that the relationship is one of patron-client or master-servant or jajman - kamin.

In the light of the data from Chingleput discussed earlier about the deductions made for various functions and individuals from the total agricultural produce of the village, one is tempted to question these views on jajmani system. If each village provided for a number of functions like irrigation, temples, chatrams, education, police and so on, why not regard the arrangement as politico-economic-administrative rather than religious- ritualistic? That they system was not merely religious or ritualistic can be seen from the variety of individuals, functions and institutions for which allocations were made. Further, the allocations made were not token or symbolic, but quite substantial. Nor were the allocations in the nature of mere subsistence allowance. That the agricultural produce, or the land-tax, or both allocated to a person or function was not related to the ritual status of the person or function can be seen from the fact that the purohit often received less than the barber or washerman. It also does not seem to be the case that the non-cultivating or servicing jatis lived at the mercy of the peasant. On the other hand, these jatis seem to have received their share in the produce as a matter of right. (In fact, according to records, a substantial part of these deductions were made even before the produce was shared between the king and the cultivators). Apart from such deductions, many functionaries had maniyam lands. Even jatis often classed as untouchable had maniyams assigned to them.

Thus what is presented as jajmani system by sociologists seems a caricature of what had actually obtained only 200 years ago. Simply because it was called jajmani in some parts of India one need not associate it with ritual gifts offered to the priest at the vedic ritual. Nor is it indicative of the Kshatriya's role assumed by peasant jatis. It may however be added that by and large the peasant jatis seem to have wielded effective political power. That must be so given the nature of our village, with one or two jatis engaged in agriculture constituting 50 percent or more of the households and other jatis numbering 15-20 on an average, providing other crafts and services. According to the Dutch missionary Ziegenbalg who was in South India in the 17th and early 18th century, the status of a Vellala or the peasant was so high that:

"Even if one be bom a Brahmin, the person is by no means considered to be of as great excellence, as when born a Vellalar; neither the King's splendor nor the Merchant's nor the Brahmin's is to be compared with the Vellalar's excellence".

The concept of dominant caste developed by Srinivas thus seems to be stating the obvious in a way. The non-cultivating jatis, numbering only a few households each in a village could have only provided checks and balances to the power of the peasant jatis. It is very likely that the non-cultivating jatis sometimes came together to check the peasant jatis or a particular jati mobilised its own jatis members from neighboring villages to protest ill-treatment or injustice. Thus what is called horizontal solidarity of jatis must have existed even in earlier times. There are several instances of barbers or washer men refusing their services to a family or jati as a protest against injustice. There may have been several ways of protesting against injustice as also ways and means of resolving such conflicts and clashes between jatis.

Untouchability or a form of communal slavery is said to be intrinsic to the jati system. While we make no attempt to defend it or explain it away, it seems necessary to raise some questions about the phenomenon of untouchability and untouchables'. First and foremost, who are the Untouchables? Are they the descendants of chandais or the outcastes mentioned in the dharmasastras? If so, how did the outcastes form themselves into jatis and how do we explain their large numbers today? Secondly, did the untouchables suffer economic deprivation as much as is generally claimed? It is a well known fact that Mahars and Chamats were soldiers. Similarly Paraiahs were landowners and cultivators even around 1830. There is also evidence to the effect that Paraiahs were expert weavers. Paraiahs and Mahars also assumed the important village offices of the policeman, boundaryman, corn measurer etc. According to the early 19th century report on Mirasi Right by F.W.Ellis:

"In Tondamandalam the Paraiyar, especially affect to consider them as the real proprietors of the soil. The villeins possess established rights and privileges of which they cannot be deprived which constitute their Mirasi... First the Paracheri... Secondly, they are entitled to a share in the produce of every crop.... Thirdly, they hold the inferior offices of the village as Talaiyari, Vcttiyan, Combucattu, Alavucareu, Totti, etc. for which they are allowed manyams and sotuntrums from those above mentioned".

If this was the status of Paraiahs and other supposedly untouchable jatis even in the early 19th century, then how "do we explain their, present status? It would be interesting to investigate the process through which the Paraiahs from being artisans, soldiers, weavers and real proprietors of fhe soil in the 19th century deteriorated to being outcaste landless agricultural labourers by the early 20th century.

The foregoing discussion touches. upon only a few issues such as the political economy of the Indian village and the jati system. Our aim has been to discuss the nature of modern sociological writings on Indian society keeping a few such areas in focus. It seems clear that there is a need for a fresh investigation and understanding on various aspects of Indian society. It is our hope that our sociologists and scholars would take up such a task that would help us to arrive at a new perspective on Indian society.

References

1. Baden-Powell (1972) Indian Village Community Delhi Cosme Publications

2. Dumont, Louis (1966) "The Village Conrctunity from Munro to Maine" Contributions to Indian Sociology 9:67-89.

3. Dumont, Louis (1980) "Homo Hierarchjcus (Complete Revised English Edition) Chicago, University of Chicago.

4. Dharanpal (1986) "Some aspects of earlier Indian Society and Polity – II New Quest 57:T33t146.

5. Lannoy, Richard (1971) The Speaking Tree London, Oxford University Press

6. Mukherjee, Ramakrishna (1979) Sociology of Indian Sociology Bombay, Allied Publishers.

7. Ray, Rajat Kanta (1984) Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal: 1875 - 1927, Delhi, Oxford University Press.

8. Srinivas MN (1975) "The Indian Village : Myth and Reality" In Beattie JHM Leinhardt RGj (Ed) Studies in Social Anthropology, Oxford, The Clarendon Press : 4"i-85.

9. Srinivas MN (1982) India : Social Structure Delhi, Hindustan



Author:G. Sivaramakrishnan

Note:

* Chingleput-data as also the other data about Bengal, Bihar etc are from the archival material collected by Dharampal in the last two decades. Exact references of the sources etc can be had from the PPST Foundation.