(a) Critically examine Yogendra Singh's thesis on 'Modernisation of Indian Tradition'. (20 marks) (b) Discuss the material basis…

(a) Yogendra Singh's thesis on modernisation of Indian tradition: a critical examination

In Modernization of Indian Tradition: A Systemic Study of Social Change (1973), Yogendra Singh rejects a simple tradition-versus-modernity binary.

• Tradition: pre-modern India was organised around four value themes, hierarchy, holism, continuity and transcendence, embodied in caste, the joint family and the village, with Great and Little traditions at the cultural level.
• Sources of change: orthogenetic (internal: Buddhism, Bhakti, Sanskritisation) and heterogenetic (external: Islam, British rule). Internal change was reformist; modernisation began mainly with Western contact, through law, bureaucracy, education, industry and nationalism.
• Levels: cultural and structural modernisation need not move together; macro structures such as law, bureaucracy and industry changed more than micro structures such as caste and family.
• Conclusion: tradition adapts and coexists with modern elements, so institutional form may persist while substance changes, and he expected democracy to absorb the resulting tensions.

Strengths:

• It escapes Western convergence models and joins structural-functional and historical approaches.
• It explains persistence: caste turned into political associations (Rajni Kothari), and only about 5 per cent of marriages cross caste lines (IHDS, 2011-12) amid rapid cultural change.

Criticisms:

• Marxist readings, such as A.R. Desai's view of colonial change as capitalist development, find class, property and state power under-weighted.
• Dipankar Gupta (Mistaken Modernity, 2000) argues that India took up technology and consumption without internalising universalism and equality.
• Modernisation remains a Western-derived end point, "Indian tradition" is over-systematised and Hindu-centred, and Dalit, Adivasi and women's experience fit poorly into the Great-Little tradition scheme.
• The four value themes are ideal types that are hard to test.

The thesis remains a valuable bridge between culture and structure, but needs political economy and subaltern perspectives to show who gains from modernisation.

(b) Material basis of patriarchy as an ideological system

Patriarchy is an ideology that naturalises male authority, but it is anchored in control over property, labour and reproduction, so ideas alone do not dissolve it.

• Theory: Engels (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884) tied patriarchy to private property and patrilineal inheritance; Heidi Hartmann (1979) located its material base in men's control over women's labour power; Christine Delphy (The Main Enemy, 1977) saw a domestic mode of production extracting unpaid household labour.
• Property: land passes through sons in patrilineal, patrilocal families, while daughters receive dowry, whose extreme is the dowry death (Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita section 80; IPC 304B). Bina Agarwal (A Field of One's Own, 1994) shows that the gender gap in land control shapes women's bargaining power; women hold about 14 per cent of operational holdings (Agriculture Census 2015-16), though daughters are coparceners by birth (Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005; Vineeta Sharma, 2020).
• Labour: the Time Use Survey 2024 found 81.5 per cent of females but 27.1 per cent of males (aged 6+) doing unpaid domestic work, and PLFS 2025 put labour force participation (15+) at 40.0 per cent for women and 79.1 per cent for men, so unpaid care keeps women dependent.
• Reproduction and sexuality: Uma Chakravarti (1993) argues that Brahmanical patriarchy controls upper-caste women's sexuality to preserve caste endogamy, while lower-caste women's labour and bodies are exploited; Leela Dube's "seed and earth" symbolism naturalises this, and son preference shows in a sex ratio at birth of 929 girls per 1,000 boys (NFHS-5).
• Ideology: pativrata, honour and "good woman" norms present material control as duty and virtue, so women often consent.

Property alone does not end patriarchy, as the land gap persists after legal reform, and radical feminists place its root in sexuality and reproduction; material and ideological supports reinforce each other.

(c) Forms of untouchability in India

Article 17 abolishes untouchability and forbids its practice in any form; the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 punish it. It survives in several forms:

• Ritual: denial of temple entry and separate worship spaces.
• Commensal: bans on inter-dining and entering homes, separate utensils in tea shops, separate rows at school mid-day meals.
• Resources: exclusion from water sources and public roads; a 565-village survey (Shah and others, Untouchability in Rural India, 2006) found temple entry denied in over half and water access in nearly half.
• Residential and political: segregated Dalit hamlets, bans on marriage processions, separate queues at polling booths.
• Occupational: hereditary stigmatised work such as manual scavenging (prohibited by the 2013 Act) and carcass removal.
• Contemporary: lower callbacks for Dalit-named job applicants in private firms (Thorat and Attewell, 2007); IHDS-II (2011-12) found 27 per cent of households admitting to practising untouchability.