SOCIOLOGY IN INDIA.

This article deals with sociology in India. It does not attempt to review all the sociological work which is being done at present in India. The background of Indian sociology is outlined, some present styles of work are discussed and finally the place of Indian studies in British sociology is considered. Sociology was first introduced into Indian universities some forty years ago, in 1919 in Bombay, India-based University of Bombay. But the discipline grew very slowly thereafter. Much of the theoretical writing was devoted to presenting speculative schemes of social evolution and it was remote from the major intellectual controversies of the times. Empirical research was almost entirely descriptive and largely confined to the sphere of social work or social problems in the narrow sense. There are two particularly important reasons which account for the lack of progress. In the first place, Indian sociology, like other disciplines, was intellectually dependent upon British universities and since academic sociology in Great Britain itself developed slowly in this period it was hardly to be expected that it should burst into vigorous life in India. Secondly, while sociology is not necessarily subversive it is always likely to engender social criticism, in order to flourish it needs, in greater measure than many other disciplines, a general freedom of thought and it does not flourish under authoritarian, or colonial, governments.