(a) According to Mead the idea of self develops when the individual becomes self-conscious. Explain. (20 marks) (b) Analyse the…

Development of Self and Self-Consciousness in Mead

George Herbert Mead posited that the human self is not an innate biological substance, but a reflexive social process that emerges through social interaction and communication. While Charles Horton Cooley’s concept of the "looking-glass self" explained self-conception through imagined perceptions of others, Mead provided the precise cognitive and behavioral mechanism: the deployment of "significant symbols" (gestures and language with shared meaning) that allow an individual to take the role of the other and become an object to oneself.

Mead outlined this evolution through three sequential stages: The preparatory stage involves mindless imitation of adult behavior without symbolic comprehension. The play stage marks the beginning of true role-taking, where the child adopts the roles of specific, significant others (such as a parent or teacher) one at a time. The game stage requires the child to internalize the roles of all other participants simultaneously under generalized rules, culminating in the formation of the "generalized other"—the organized community’s collective values and expectations.

Self-consciousness is sustained through the internal dialectic between the "Me" and the "I". The "Me" is the socialized self containing the internalized attitudes of the generalized other, while the "I" is the spontaneous, active, and creative response to those expectations. The self develops precisely when the biological organism internalizes this social dialogue, achieving self-consciousness through continuous role-taking.

Transition from Ideology to Identity Politics in India

Post-independence Indian politics has witnessed a structural shift from programmatic, ideology-based competition to ascriptive identity politics. During the 1950s to 1970s, political contestation was organized primarily around universalist secular-nationalist, socialist, and communist ideologies. The dominant "Congress system" conceptualized by Rajni Kothari, along with ideological alternatives like the CPI and socialist parties, framed governance around modernization, planned development, and class-based redistribution.

From the late 1980s onward, this ideological consensus yielded to identity mobilization based on caste, religion, and ethnicity. Key drivers of this transition included: The implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations, which catalyzed backward-caste (OBC) political consciousness and spawned caste-based parties like the SP, BSP, and RJD; The rise of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement (Mandir politics), which mobilized religious majoritarianism as an electoral force; The organizational decline of the Congress party, creating a vacuum filled by regional and caste assertions; Economic liberalization, which generated cultural anxieties while shrinking state employment, turning electoral politics into competitive populism for reservations and symbolic recognition over structural class reforms.

Coexistence of Little and Great Traditions in Contemporary India

Robert Redfield conceptualized the Great Tradition as reflective, textual, and Sanskritic, and the Little Tradition as oral, localized, and unwritten. In India, as Milton Singer and McKim Marriott demonstrated, these traditions do not exist in binary isolation but in continuous mutual interaction through parochialization and universalization. Singer highlighted "compartmentalization" and modern "cultural performances" as mechanisms through which contemporary Indians maintain traditional identities alongside modern urban life.

In contemporary Indian society, this coexistence is visible in pilgrimage centers like Tirupati and Sabarimala, where local folk myths, indigenous votive practices, and non-Brahminical rites operate within Sanskritic temple rituals. Popular culture and cinema regularly syncretize folk melodies and vernacular themes with pan-Indian classical motifs. Similarly, regional and tribal festivals, such as Telangana’s Medaram Jatara and Nagaland’s Hornbill Festival, receive formal state patronage and national visibility, seamlessly integrating local sacred traditions into the broader institutional fabric of modern India.

These socio-political dynamics underscore the continuous tension between agency and structure: from Mead’s active self negotiating internalized social norms, to identity politics using ascriptive structures for political agency, to cultural traditions continually renegotiating modernity through syncretic accommodation.