Dominance and state power in modern India: decline of a social order
- Delhi Oxford University Press 1989
- 555p.
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