Chronicles of our time

Over the past thirty-three years, André Béteille, one of India's most eminent sociologists, has written a series of articles for the editorial page of the Times of India. Encapsulating the complexities of academic discourse within the concise framework of a newspaper article, these writings provide a telling commentary on the social, political and economic life of India in the eventful decades of the later twentieth century. Collected and published in book form for the first time, Béteille's views on post-Nehruvian India will be of interest to general readers and social scientists alike.

Chronicles of Our Time begins with the subject of the individual's quest for identity, in articles that describe the ways in which intellectuals relate to ideologies within the framework of academia. The focus then shifts to social justice, and Béteille outlines the contradictions inherent in the Indian context between the ideal of equality and the practice of inequality. A subsequent section is devoted to caste, tribe and religion, three aspects that continue to constitute the morphology of Indian society in spite of legal, political and secularist interventions. In the sections that follow, Béteille examines contentious issues like reservations and affirmative action; political, economic and legal empowerment; the destabilization of institutions in contemporary India; and the question of modernization with its perceived threat to traditional values.