Changing brahmans: association and Elites among the kanya-kubjas of North India
- Chicago University of Chicago Press 1970
- 251p.
This book has two interrelated purposes. Based on available documentary and field data, it seeks to present a microsociological account of Kanya-Kubja Brahman caste associations. The second purpose is wider; for it relates to the problem of studying social change in a complex and diversified society, especially where tra- dition and modernity confront and compete in social reality. I have attempted to answer these questions: What is the relation- ship between the modern organizational and the traditional socio- cultural bases of Kanya-Kubja behavior? And, how do the pro- cesses of social change operate on the supposed dichotomy of tradition and modernity under the Indian situation? My approach is social-anthropological, seeking to see how far its concepts and techniques can be used in the analysis of social change in caste associations. Whenever necessary, I have turned to the other social sciences-especially sociology—for useful conceptual differentiations; but, as should be clear from textual discussions, I have avoided their “wholesale transportation." Thus, I have tried to be cautious about the wide-rather sweeping—ambience accorded to "caste and kinship" under so- cial anthropological emphasis, and about the relative polarities and rigidities in the use of such sociological concepts as “ascrip- tion," "voluntary organization,” and “achievement." Yet the analytical implications of such concepts, as I note in the Introduc- tion, are found to be helpful for explaining the organization of Kanya-Kubja caste associations (the sabhas)—a dynamic meet- ing ground of institutionalized and “organizational" (bureau- cratic) behavior. The study also tries to indicate the usefulness of such "adapted" conceptual tools beyond the sabha contexts. My contact with the Kanya-Kubja Brahmans started in 1957, when I was an anthropology teacher at Kanya-Kubja College My interest in their social organization was aroused in 1958 by the behavioral patterns of Kanya-Kubja colleagues and students. With candor the latter introduced me to their own caste group. My teaching assignments at the college lasted until the fall of the data col- 1963; and during this period I continued, off and on, lection on the caste group through the help of my Kanya-Kubja friends. The topics of my inquiry varied from hierarchy and hy- pergamy to family rituals. Between January 1965 and June 1966 I approached Kanya-Kubja Brahmans with a systematic and more intensive field program, including the problem of their caste associations. The substantive field material upon which this study is based was collected during this period in Lucknow and Kanpur. Living in Lucknow, I made frequent trips to Kanpur and several to the Fatehgarh-Farrukhabad (Kannauj) and Hardoi areas. About eighty-two prestigious Kanya-Kubja families were intensively studied through prolonged and repeated observations and inter- views. Often a single interview lasted for several hours. I now ob- served Kanya-Kubja Brahmans beyond the confines of the col- lege, which became so familiar during the 1957–63 period. As Brahmans and as officers, businessmen, contractors, priests, and clerks, and such, Kanya-Kubjas were found to confront and re- solve dilemmas of sociocultural change. Incentives and constraints of their adaptive relationships appeared in varied empirical situ- ations. In matters ranging from a daughter's marriage to a son's employment, they exhibited capacities to manipulate value param- eters and caste and kin resources on the one hand, and economic and organizational influences, on the other. As pragmatists as well as traditionalists, they handled the effects of modernization in various ways.