Colonial Modernity and Methodological Nationalism: The Structuring of Sociological Traditions of India

This article traces traditions of sociological thinking in India and suggests that in order to write the disciplines’ history, it is important to identify the episteme that governs these traditions. It suggests that there are two broad epistemes that have defined sociology as a discipline in India—colonial modernity and methodological nationalism—and it argues that they organise theories, perspectives, methodologies and methods, teaching and research practices of the discipline. The history of the imprint of these epistemes is investigated at four levels: first, in the way one or both defined the discipline’s identity and, thus, organised its characteristic mode of thinking methodologically; second, in the way this identity defined its theoretical direction and the theories that it borrowed, adapted to and reframed; third, in the way the first two organised its professional orientation and made it choose its identity as an academic discipline whose main role is restricted to teaching and research within academic institutions at an expense of a public orientation; and fourth, the way the aforementioned three defined its geographical compass, limiting its queries to national concerns wherein the macro became reduced to the micro abjuring discussions on global debates. This article suggests that today there is a crisis in the received epistemes, and in this context, it becomes imperative to take command to define a new episteme which intersects the local, regional, national and global concerns, is theoretical and methodologically eclectic and is comparative in nature.