Articles by Andre Beteille

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M N Srinivas maintained an unshakable belief in the unique significance of sociology for understanding the world in which we live. Anthropology provided a method, the method of intensive fieldwork, but the important thing was to understand events and activities in the broader social perspective of structure and change. Srinivas was deeply interested in change, although he believed, quite rightly, that the sociologist would not be able to make much of change if he let go of the idea of social structure.

Empowerment through the expansion of the civil, political and social rights of citizenship is a laborious and unexciting process. Empowerment through the class struggle was a different story altogether; but that story has now been played out and it offers hardly any new prospect. There is no doubt the prospect of empowerment through caste war; but that is something that will appeal only to those who have put their minds to sleep. So in the end, the Indian way of securing empowerment for the unempowered seems to be by the safe way of providing, as extensively as possible, quotas on the basis of community, caste and gender. But can the belief that quotas, no matter how extensive, can by themselves bring about a radical or even a perceptible redistribution of power be anything more than wishful thinking?

A Sociological Perspective Andre Beteille If the traditions of science are to be revitalised in India, the institutions of teaching and research in the sciences have to be renovated. There is no simple recipe for that But it is doubtful that the search for glorious antecedents in India's ancient or medieval past will provide any concrete or usable results.

Shyama Charan Dube (1922-96) Andre Beteille S C Dube was among those Indian social scientists who came into their own with the coming of independence. He did not see himself as a detached scholar. Things were on the move in India and Dube did not want his tribe, the professional social scientists, to be left behind.