Cultural Diversity and Social Discontent : Anthropological Studies on Contemporary India

Contents: Introduction: Cultural diversity, discontent, and anthropology. I. Disciplinary issues and perspectives: 1. Indian sociology and the cultural other. 2. Social description and social change: from function to critical cultural significance. 3. Dumontian sociology and since: challenges facing South Asian anthropology. 4. The other\'s double--the anthropologist\'s bracketed self: notes on cultural representation and privileged discourse. II. Conflicted self, others, violence, and justice: 5. The body, sensoria, and self of the powerless: remembering/\'Re-membering\' Indian untouchable women. 6. Elusive social justice, distant human rights: untouchable women\'s struggles and dilemmas in changing India. 7. The cultural politics of violence and human rights: contending Indian traditions, narratives, and the state. 8. Hindu cultural reasoning under challenge: politicizing traditions, modern commentaries, and social mistrust. References. About the author. Index.

"India, a land of enormous complexity and cultural diversity, is in a state of constant flux. Its social reality is changing rapidly as cultural certainties are increasingly questioned by diverse communities and historical forces. In this theoretically reflexive and insightful work. Professor Khare explores the conceptual and ethnographic issues that tumultuous India poses to modern anthropology and sociology. Without reading either too much or too little into caste and religious conflicts, he explicates the cultural sensibilities, roles, presence and limitations of the ordinary Indian and reveals the adaptive strategies of the many \'others\' that constitute India from within.

"The first part of the book evaluates the relative strengths and weaknesses of the approaches, concepts and explanations exployed by renowned anthropologists such as M.N. Srinivas, Louis Dumont and McKim Marriott to study India. The second part uses ethnographic strategies and narrative analyses as descriptive and discursive tools to explore Indian cultural reasoning patterns within everyday life and under conditions of social injustice, mistrust, and religious and political conflicts. The issues discussed include Dalit women\'s social struggle and the status of female infanticide, the Deorala sati, the Bhopal gas disaster, the changing nature of Indian communal violence, and the Ayodhya temple-mosque conflict. Carefully designed field encounters help reveal how people locally debate and interrelate regional and national issues. The author concludes that the intensifying forces of status and gender inequalities, social injustice, retaliatory violence, and elusive human rights are challenging the otherwise resilient Hindu cultural reasoning.

"The book is firmly grounded in current social reality and emphasizes a conceptual approach suitable to Indian cultural diversity and historical complexity. Finding any particular theoretical schemes insufficient, Professor Khare conceptualizes contemporary Indian issues by being in dialogue with local groups and communities, and by analyzing diverse regional studies. The eloquent portrait of contemporary India that this book constitutes will attract a very wide readership, particularly in the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, history, religious studies, political science, and women\'s studies."

[R.S. Khare is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia, U.S.A.]