Dominance and state power in modern India: decline of a social order

Dominance and State Power in
Modern India
Decline of a Social Order (two volumes)
Editors: Francine R. Frankel, M. S. A. Rao
In these two volumes, scholars of political
science, sociology and history adopt a
common set of concepts to analyse patterns of
change in the ideological and structural
foundations of dominance in India from the
colonial period to the mid-1980s. Departing
from modernization theories, these scholars
set out an interactional framework of society-
state relations where caste, class, ethnicity and
dominance are treated as structures and
processes, interacting with each other and with
increasingly powerful state institutions.
These comparative studies provide an
explanation of how state policies undermine
the religious legitimacy of the hierarchical
social order and, at the same time, facilitate the
manipulation of linguistic, communal, caste
and ethnic loyalties to diffuse class
polarization. The analyses show that
subordinate low caste-cum-class groups are
mounting increasingly militant challenges to
the hold of the upper castes and classes over
state institutions which have provided the
most important avenue of social mobility in
modern India.
FRANCINE R. FRANKEL is Professor of Political
Science and South Asia Regional Studies at the
University of Pennsylvania.
The late M. S. A. Rao was Professor of
Sociology and Chairman of the Department of
Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics