Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

Beyond Tradition and Modernity in Madras

Author(s): Milton Singer
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 13, No. 2, Special Issue on Tradition
and Modernity (Apr., 1971), pp. 160-195
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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BeyondTraditionand Modernityin
Madras
MILTON

SINGER

Universityof Chicago
INTRODUCTION

The study of the modernization of non-Western cultures has been dominated by the metaphor of the 'take-off' introduced by the economists and by
the assumption of incompatibility between 'modern' and 'traditional'
cultures. These interpretations of modernization are shared by both those
who view it as a process of diffusing Western culture and by those who
view it as an internal process of development which may requirean external
stimulus to 'trigger'the 'take-off'. On either view, modernization becomes
a problem of suddenly transforming a 'traditional' type of culture, society,
and personality into a 'modern' type. This view of modernization is
supported, and perhaps suggested, by the classical nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century social science theory of 'traditional' and 'modern'
societies as opposed types, a theory associated with the names of Marx,
Weber, Durkheim, Maine, and T6nnies, among others.
While the history of English industralization may have provided the
stimulus for some of the more influential formulations of the dichotomy,
extrapolations from this history of fixed uniform sequences of development
in the transformation of 'traditional' into 'modern' societies have not been
empirically confirmed by the later history of industrialization in Europe,
Russia, Japan, China, India, and other countries. This later history has in
particular cast doubt on the assumption that modernization is governed
by the 'inner logic' of an internal law of development according to which a
correlatedset of traditional institutions is transformedinto a set of'modern'
institutions. While it is possible to explain divergences from this 'law of
development' by invoking such items as differencesin culture, history and
economic backwardness, the emulation of early arrivals, the increasing
role of the state and of planning in development, and the differential
strengths of 'traditionalism' and 'modernism' in transitional phases,
such explanations 'save the hypothesis' at the cost of rapidly multiplying
ad hoc and 'accidental' factors.
It is not surprisingtherefore to find that the recent literatureon modernization shows a growing disaffection with the 'modern versus traditional'
160

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typology of societies and cultures and a search for new theories. At least
this typology is now increasingly recognized as a set of constructed ideal
types and not as an empirical classification of societies or a set of generalizations about them. Those who continue to use the modern-traditional
contrast at an empirical level do so by mapping the statistical distributions
of traits designated 'modern' or 'traditional' in different countries or by
making lists of such traits for a single country. The implications of such
lists and frequency distributions for a theory of modernization as a process
of social and cultural change are at best opaque.'
Although no single comprehensive alternativetheory has yet emerged to
sweep the field, it seems to me likely that such a new theory of modernization will articulate much more closely with a general theory of cultural
change than does the classical theory of 'traditional' and 'modern' societies. It will not only go beyond the 'traditionalversus modern' dichotomy
but will also transcend the bifurcations between cultural diffusion and
cultural evolution and between 'culture' and 'society'. Above all, it will be
grounded on the comparative and historical studies of literate civilizations
as well as of primitive and peasant cultures. It will look at the process of
modernization as it is envisaged by those engaged in it, in their cultural
categories, world view, and value system, as well as at the 'objective'
evidence of behavior and numerical magnitudes.
My own observations in India, and particularlyin Madras City, over an
extended period beginning in 1954, have led me to join the ranks of those
disaffected with the classical theory of 'modern' and 'traditional' societies.
The point of departure for these observations was Redfield's study of
modernization in Yucatan, which to some extent derived from and empirically supported the classical theory. After the Second World War, when
Redfield became interested in China, India, and the comparative study of
civilizations, he began to explore in collaboration with historians of
civilization the processes of cultural change in societies with literate
'Great Traditions'. I was associated with him in these explorations and
helped extend them to India. In my personal research I was particularly
interested in exploring the question of what happens to the Great Tradition of Sanskritic Hinduism in a contemporary 'heterogenetic' urban
center such as that of Madras City. In this setting, is it secularized and
replaced by a modernizing ideology or does it continue to play an important role in the modernizing process ? And if the Great Tradition is still
1 R. Bendix, 'Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered', ComparativeStudies in Society and
History, Vol. IX (1967), an excellent historical and critical review; E. Shils, 'Tradition and Liberty: Antinomy and Interdependence',Ethics, Vol. XLVIII, No. 3 (1958); E. Shils, 'Political
Development in the New States', ComparativeStudies in Society and History, II (1959-60);
B. F. Hoselitz, 'Tradition and Economic Growth', in R. Braibanti and J. J. Spengler, eds.,
Tradition, Valuesand Socio-Economic Development(Duke, 1961); S. Thrupp, 'Tradition and
Development: a Choice of Views', ComparativeStudies in Society and History, Vol. VI (1963);
S. Thrupp, 'A Skirmish with Tradition' (MS.).

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I62

MILTON SINGER

alive in the modern city does this imply, as Eric Wolf suggests, that
'perhaps there is always an interplay between traditionalizing and modernizing trends in any society?' (Wolf, 1967, p. 560). If there is such an interplay, what are its characteristic modes of operation and results?2
The detailed reports of my studies in Madras have been published
elsewhere, but I should like to draw on these studies for answers to the
above questions.3As will soon become apparent, these answers not only
confirm the fruitfulness of Redfield's approach and so say 'yes' to Wolf's
suggested possibility, at least for India: they also point to the cultural
ideology of'traditionalism'as one of the major instrumentsof modernization.
Structuraldifferentiation occurs in the process, although it does not take
the form of a linear progression through evolutionary stages of development.
It may be that India is a special case. In some respects it no doubt is distinctive. Its caste system and traditionalism are proverbial. Yet it also has
the largest parliamentary government in the world, universal suffrage, a
modern education system, an extensive network of modern media of
communication and transportation, growing industrialization, and the
first nuclear reactors in Asia. The coexistence of the traditional and the
modern in India have not produced 'the schism in the soul' predicted by
the classical theory. If India is a special case, it should be given special attention just for this reason, for it may teach us something about the process
of modernization in a historic civilization that has not been dreamed of in
the classical theory. Ronald Dore has recently written that India does not
feel the strain between tradition and modernity so acutely as Japan or
China 'partly because of the syncretic tradition of Hindu culture, partly
because a modus vivendibetween the traditional and the modern cultures
has had time to become established, and finally because India and the
West are not in political conflict' (IESS, 10: p. 407). This seems to me a
reasonable suggestion, but it presents a set of problems for inquiry, not a
set of findings. In such an inquiry we shall want to find out the nature of
this modus vivendibetween the traditional and the modern cultures, how
it has come to be established, and what its relations are to the syncretic
tradition of Hindu thought and to foreign influences. The rest of this paper
will try to answer some of these questions and will return, in conclusion,
2 E. R. Wolf, 'Understanding Civilizations', ComparativeStudies in Society and History,
Vol. IX (1967); R. Redfield, The Primitive World and Its Transformations(Cornell, 1953);
R. Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago, 1956); R. Redfield and M. Singer, 'The
Cultural Role of Cities', Economic Developmentand CulturalChange (1954).
3 M. Singer, 'The Cultural Pattern of Indian Civilization', Far Eastern Quarterly(1955);
'The Great Tradition in a Metropolitan Center: Madras', Journal of American Folklore
(1958); 'The Radha-Krishna Bhajans of Madras City' in M. Singer, ed., Krishna: Myths,
Rites and Attitudes (East-West Center Press, 1966); 'The Indian Joint Family in Modern
Industry', in M. Singer and B. S. Cohn, eds., Structureand Changein Indian Society (Aldine,
1968); M. Singer, When a Great TraditionModernizes, Studies in Madras (Praeger, forthcoming).

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to the question of whether the processes of modernization in India are

unique or can also be found in other civilizations as well.
TRADITION AND CHANGE IN INDIAN
OF SANSKRITIZATION

CIVILIZATION-THE

THEORY

Indian society and culture are not 'traditional'in the sense of the nineteenthcentury stereotype that it is dominated by unchanging traditions and immemorial customs, nor even in the sense that many characteristicinstitutions,
culture patterns, values and beliefs have persisted in spite of the numerous
changes which have occurred. The 'traditionalism' of Indian civilization
lies elsewhere-in its capacity to incorporate innovations into an expanding
and changing structureof culture and society. This capacity is reflectedin a
series of adaptive mechanisms and processes for dealing with the novel, the
foreign, the strange. The operation of these adaptive mechanisms makes
possible a kind of 'cultural metabolism' which ingests foreign cultural
bodies, segregates them, breaks them down into usable forms and eventually builds them into indigenous 'cultural protoplasm'. I should like to
relate the processes observed in the 'modernization of a Great Tradition'
in contemporary Madras to the more generic processes of change in
Indian civilization.
The most comprehensive and widely accepted anthropological theory of
social and cultural change in Indian civilization is M. N. Srinivas's theory
of Sanskritization.4In a recent article he defines this as
the process by which a 'low' caste or tribe or other group takes over the customs, ritual,
beliefs, ideology and style of life of a high and, in particular, a 'twice-born' (dwija)
caste. The Sanskritization of a group has usually the effect of improving its position
in the local caste hierarchy. It normally presupposes either an improvement in the
economic or political position of the group concerned or a higher group selfconsciousness resulting from its contact with a source of the 'Great Tradition' of Hinduism such as
a pilgrim centre or monastery or proselytizing sect.... In the case of a group external to
Hinduism, such as a tribe or immigrant ethnic body, Sanskritization resulted in drawing
it into the Hindu fold, which necessarily involved its becoming a caste having regular
relations with other local castes.

Srinivas first stated and applied this theory in his monograph on the
Coorgs of South India. Since then there have been a number of criticisms
and revisions of the theory, in which Srinivas himself has actively participated. Among the most important of these amendments are the following.
(1) More than one varna model of the life styles and rank hierarchy of
the twice-born castes is emulated in the process of Sanskritization. The
models vary with region and with the locally dominant caste.5
4 M. N. Srinivas, 'The Cohesive Role of Sankritization',in P. Mason, ed., India and Ceylon:
Unity and Diversity (Oxford, 1967); M. N. Srinivas, Social Changein ModernIndia (Berkeley,
1966); M. N. Srinivas, 'A Note On Sanskritization and Westernization', in Caste in Modern
India (Bombay, 1962); M. N. Srinivas, Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India
(Oxford, 1952).
5 See M. N. Srinivas, Social Changein Modern India, pp. 6 ff.; also the articles by Srinivas,

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MILTON SINGER

(2) Sanskritization is not only and perhaps not even primarily a process
of social change; it is also a process of cultural change which occurs in the
fields of language, literature, the arts, music, drama, religious law, medicine, science and philosophy.6
(3) The theory's account of the relationship of Sanskritization to
Westernization and modernization has remained obscure and unstable.
In his earlier formulation, Srinivas emphasized the manner in which
Westernization leads to a strengthening of Sanskritization by providing
improved communications and transportation. Later, influenced by the
studies of Cohn, Gould and others, he stressed the way in which upper
castes were modernizing and secularizing, while the middle and lower
castes were Sanskritizing their life styles. In his most recent statements
Srinivas is beginning to raise questions about the contradictions and
oppositions between Sanskritization and modernization. Philip Mason's
description of the overall position is both a concise summary of it and an
indication of the need for more detailed specification of the relationship:
'. .. It is clear that the two processes of Sanskritization and Westernization
are both at work, that they are often opposed but sometimes in alliance,
that here one prevails and here another, here there is revolt against one and
here against the other.'7
(4) Although Srinivas's theory of Sanskritization has proved a fruitful
and powerful explanation of how Indian civilization has been able to incorporate foreign groups and cultural products into the caste system and the
'Great Tradition' of Sanskritic Hinduism, it seems doubtful whether it can
account for all the major processes of change without radical revision. In
particular the theory seems unable to deal with those changes and social
movements that make use of paths to mobility which constitute alternatives
to Sanskritization,for example, modern political organization and administration, or conversion to Christianity and Buddhism.8 The social and
cultural mobility associated with the operation of Sanskritization in the
past has resulted, according to Srinivas, in changes in positions within the
caste system but has not brought about a significant change in the system.
The non- or de-Sanskritizing kinds of changes and the efforts of some
Rowe, Lynch and Marriott in M. Singer and B. S. Cohn, eds., Structureand Changein Indian
Society.
6 V.
Raghavan, 'Variety and Integration in the Pattern of Indian Culture', Far Eastern
Quarterly, (1956); M. Singer, ed., Traditional India, Structure and Change (1958, 1959);
J. F. Staal, 'Sanskrit and Sanskritization', Journal of Asian Studies (1963); J. A. B. van
Buitenen, 'On the Archaism of the Bhagavata Purana' in M. Singer, ed., Krishna: Myths,
Rites and Attitudes (East-West Center Press, 1966 and University of Chicago Press, 1968).
7 P. Mason, op. cit.

s F. Bailey, Caste and the Economic Frontier (Manchester, 1957); M. Orans, The Santal, A
Tribein Search of a Great Tradition(Wayne, 1965); R. Hardgrave, The Nadars of Tamilnad
(California, 1969); 0. Lynch, The Politics of Untouchability(Columbia, 1970); J. Silverberg,
ed., Social Mobility in the Caste System in India, ComparativeStudies in Society and History
(Mouton, 1969); D. F. Pocock, 'Sociologies: Urban and Rural', Contributionsto IndianSociology, Vol. 4 (1960).

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BEYOND

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groups to reject affiliation with Sanskritic Hinduism and to seek affiliation with other 'Great Traditions' raise the question of change in the
system.
TRADITION

AND INNOVATIONS

IN MADRAS

The Madras studies help to answer some of these questions, in some

respects supporting Srinivas'stheory of Sanskritization and in others going
beyond it.
These studies show that the relationship of modernization (and of
Westernization) to tradition is neither one of deep antagonism and struggle
for dominance between them nor a relationship of harmony and mutual
support. It is rather a historical process in which the new and the foreign
are culturally differentiated as such from the indigenous traditions, then
tried out in a 'neutral' area, and eventually selectively integrated into an
'essential' core of indigenous traditions, which has itself changed in order
to incorporate the new items.
In this process the chief actors are not castes or religious communities as
corporate groups but individuals and their families, generally making up a
small fraction of a caste or community. The ways in which these individuals
and families relate their modernizing activities to their castes and religious
communities is important, but this does not imply that modernization is
best studied as an activity of special castes and communities. The 'lagging
emulation' theory which sees lower and middle castes Sanskritizing their
life styles while upper castes are modernizing theirs, must be qualified by
the finding that the same family and the same individual from an upper
caste will simultaneously modernize and Sanskritize. They can do this
because they tend to compartmentalizetheir lives, following a 'modern'
model in a ritually neutralized work sphere and a 'traditional' one in their
domestic and social life. The 'Sanskritization'is not in this case the same in
aim, means, or result as it is in the case of lower castes described by
Srinivas. The upper castes do not aim to raise their ritual status through
'Sanskritization', since their status is already high. They are interested
rather in not losing ritual status as they modernize. The means they usevicarious ritualization-involves a lapse of personal ritual observance, an
acceptance of the omission, contraction and consolidation of rites as
justified in present circumstances, and a reinterpretationof traditional
norms and beliefs. The main line of reinterpretationis that modern urban
and industrial life brings and requires a shift from ritual to devotional
ecumenical religion and that the 'essential tenets' of Hinduism remain
valid and relevant in this context even if the caste system should disappear.
Whether these lines of reinterpretationoriginate with religious leaders or
with the modernizing families and individuals, they reassure the modernizers that they are still good Hindus. For most of the modernizers the

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definition of a good Hindu is Sanskritic; a few have adopted an antiSanskritic model. The possibility and plausibility of this reassurance to
those who are themselves active agents of modernization depends on
certain adaptable general features of Hinduism and of Indian society.
Some of these features are consciously recognized and appealed to, others
are not always acknowledged but operate at a level of 'cultural drift'.
Among the consciously acknowledged features is the view that Hinduism
comprises many different 'paths' to salvation and enjoins different duties
for different people according to their development and station in life.
Within this conception, the 'paths' of ritual observance, devotion, ascetic
withdrawal and meditation are all available options to those who are able
to follow them. The householder in this view, for example, can pursue his
salvation without ascetic withdrawal by doing his daily work and fulfilling
his social obligations to his family and society. An important practical
corollary of this doctrine is that there is no single authoritarian hierarchy
for the interpretation and enforcement of religious law. Pundits who
specialize in these matters of dharma sastra say there is a rank order of
'authorities', with revealed scriptures (sruti) at the top, remembered
scriptures (smriti) next, local and regional customs if they are not in conflict with the scriptures, the opinion of a learned and wise man, and
individual conscience. In practice this hierarchy permits a very wide
latitude of resort for interpretation and enforcement-to one's father and
relatives, one's guru, a caste council, the head of one's sect, local and
national leaders and officials, and public opinion. Industrial leaders, for
example, in Madras City seem not to have any difficultyin finding spiritual
authorities to assure them they are doing their moral duty and pursuing a
'path' to salvation while following a career in industry.
A second general feature of Hinduism, one that supports its doctrinal
pluralism and decentralizedauthority structure,is the notion that religious
and philosophical truths have differentlevels of validity and applicationa theoretical level and a practical level. Such doctrines as the eternally
recurring cycles of world creation and destruction, the unreality and
ephemeral nature of this world, the unimportance of the ego, are familiar
to and even believed in by many of my 'modern' Madras informants.
These leaders were not thereby prevented from leading an active practical
life or from believing in the reality of the political and economic 'progress'
which India had achieved since Independence; they are convinced that this
progress is irreversibleand that they have made personal contributions to
it through their own careers. When asked about the apparent contradictions between these convictions and the religious doctrines, they usually
reply that the religious doctrines are valid at a different 'level', a cosmic
level, so there is no conflict. These same people, however, extend and apply
other religious doctrines, such as those of fate, rebirth, duty, salvation, to

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modern fields of practical activity. Their spiritual guides support them in

both kinds of interpretation.
The extension of the doctrines of fate, rebirth, duty and salvation to
industry and to other modern innovations is more than a convenient
rationalization. At least since the Gita, these particular doctrines have
had an inherent relevance for social life and practical activity. This relevance is manifest in a third general feature of Hinduism, its scriptural
model of social organization. This model is the famous varnascheme of the
four orders of society-Brahmans, Ksatriyas, Vaisayas, and Sudras-and
the fifth order of untouchables and outcastes. Anthropologists and historians are fond of pointing out that this is a normative model and not an
accurate description of the variety and movement of local castes, ethnic
and occupational groups. Recognizing the validity of this point, M. N.
Srinivas has nevertheless emphasized that the varna model has important
validating and cohesive functions with respect to regional variations and
mobility, and that these functions are performed chiefly in the linking of
Sanskritization to the economic and political mobility of castes who
acquire wealth and power and modern education. Sanskritization is in
this case the process whereby groups outside the system are brought into it
and groups already in the system can achieve mobility within it.
In several other respects the scripturalmodel of the varnasis more 'open'
and dynamic than is usually recognized. As Max Weber and, more
recently, Louis Dumont have noted, one can escape the constraints of the
system by 'renouncing' and becoming an ascetic or a saint.9 This 'path'
presumably leads to complete withdrawal from worldly activities and
social obligations, although the example of Gandhi, as of many holy men,
shows that it can have practical effects and stimulate social change.
The system is also 'open' in the worldly sphere in permitting, even in the
scriptural formulations, members of all varnas to undertake occupations
and activities which may be auxiliary to their traditional caste occupations
or even departures from them. Historically the fields of agriculture, trade,
and government administration were 'open' areas in this sense. To these
have been added in recent times the modern professions and the whole
field of industry. While economic necessity is frequently cited as a reason
for departures from the traditional division of labor prescribed in the
varna scheme, regional variations in the interpretations of this scheme
and the difficulties of fitting new types of occupations into it are also
factors.
THE CULTURAL

METABOLISM OF AN INNOVATION

Granting that Sanskritic Hinduism has some features of flexibility built

9 L. Dumont, 'World Renunciation in Indian Religions', Contributionsto Indian Sociology,
Vol. 4 (1960). For the relation of Gandhi's asceticism to social reform see M. Singer, 'Cultural

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MILTON SINGER

in, how are these made use of in the recurrentprocesses of cultural change ?
As a first approximation we may take 'Sanskritization' to represent a
process of orthogenetic change, and Westernization and modernization to
representheterogeneticchange.lo This cannot be a finallyadequateaccount,
however, since it does not explain the interrelations between the two kinds
of processes. In particular,it leaves unclear the question whether culturally
alien innovations can be incorporated into the traditional system and how
such incorporation would change that system. We have been prevented
from giving adequate answers to these questions by the equations of the
traditional with the indigenous and of the modern with the foreign. On
this assumption modernization is wholly an heterogenetic replacement of
indigenous traditions by alien imports. Either one becomes 'modern' by
transplanting a foreign culture or one stays otherwise by clinging to an
outmoded and traditional indigenous culture. Since Indian civilization has
during its long history incorporated many foreign groups and cultural
elements while maintaining a recognizable continuity, there must be
something wrong with the equation 'modern equals foreign' and the
associated assumption that everything 'modern' in India was introduced by
Europeans.
A more adequate theory of the interrelationship between 'Sanskritization' and 'modernization', and between 'orthogenetic' and 'heterogenetic'
processes of change generally, is suggested by the study of the interactions
between the 'ritually neutral' areas and the ritually restricted areas. Some
of these interactions can be directly observed or documented in the life
histories of individuals and families over a short-run time perspective of
two or three generations. In this perspective the interactions are expressed
in the active movements of individuals and groups into cities, modern
education, the professions, government service, and industry. The conflicts encountered in these movements are masked, mitigated or resolved
by a series of adaptive strategies which usually begin with a cognitive
compartmentalizationof the conflicting spheresof activity and are followed
by mutual adjustments and modifications, the formation of new norms,
and an eventual reintegration at a new level.
From the point of view of a longer-run, diachronic perspective, it is of
interest to see whether these adjustments and adaptive strategies observed
in contemporary Madras can be translated into recurrent processes of
cultural change, and whether evidence can be found for their continued
operation in social and cultural history. I believe this can be done, and I
should now like to describe such recurrent processes in the form of a
Values in India's Economic Development', Annals (1955); L. I. and S. H. Rudolph, The
Modernityof Tradition,Part Two (Chicago, 1967); E. Erikson, Gandhi'sTruth(Norton & Co.,
1969).
10For the distinction between 'orthogenetic' and 'heterogenetic' changes see R. Redfield
and M. Singer, 'The Cultural Role of Cities'.

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BEYOND

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sequence of hypothetical phases and also give some cultural-historical

evidence for their operation.
1. Enclavementof Foreign Imports
Items new to the culture-whether artifacts, activities, styles of life, or
people-are perceived as new or foreign, named accordingly, and segregated ecologically in a special 'enclave' with an appropriate symbolic
designation. The early settlement of Europeans in Madras was within the
Fort St. George area and in a segregated quarter outside the Fort called
'White town'. The Indian settlement in another area just to the north was
called 'Black town'. These were of course English designations, and to an
extent European originated. The Indian prototype for this in the form of
segregated streets and quarters for different caste and occupational
groups is well known. The graphic description in the Tamil epic, the
Silappatikdram,of the ancient city of Puhar, a port city probably located
not very far from modern Madras and Pondichery, includes both kinds of
segregation, the foreign enclaves and the indigenous clustering of occupational and status groups, within a single passage:11
The riches of the Puhar shipownersmade the kings of farawaylands envious. The
most costly merchandise,the rarestforeignproduce,reachedthecityby sea andcaravans.
The city spreadwide, vast as the capitalof the northernKuru-beyond the Gandhara
country-where dwell sages famous for their asceticism.
The sunshine lighted up the open terraces,the harbor docks, the towers with their
loopholes like the eyes of deer. In various quartersof the city the homes of wealthy
Greekswere seen. Near the harborseamenfrom far-offlands appearedat home. In the
street hawkers were selling unguents, bath powders, cooling oils, flowers, perfume,
incense.Weaversbroughttheirfine silks and all kinds of fabricsmade of wool or cotton.
There were special streetsfor merchantsof coral, sandalwood,myrrh,jewelry,faultless
pearls, pure gold, and preciousgems.
Each trade had its own street in the workers'quarterof the city.
At the center of the city were the wide royal street, the street of temple cars, the
bazaar,and the main street,whererich merchantshad theirmansionswith high towers.
Therewas a streetfor priests,one for doctors,one for astrologers,one for peasants.In a
wide passagelived the craftsmenwho pierce gems and pearlsfor the jewelers.Nearby
were those who make trinketsout of polished nacre and sea shells. In anotherquarter
lived the coachmen,bards,dancers,astronomers,clowns, prostitutes,actresses,florists,
betel-sellers,servants,oboe players,drummers,jugglers,and acrobats.
In wide fields near the town were encampedhorsemenand their swift mounts, war
elephants, chariot drivers, soldiers fearful to look upon. Near these were palaces of
knights and princes. Between the quartersof the workersand the nobles lay an open
square,largeas a battlefieldwheretwo greatarmiesmight have met. There,underrows
of trees, the sheds of a marketwere set up. The hagglingof buyersand sellerscould be
heard there all day long.
The loverscrossedthe main street,with its warehousesof merchandisefrom overseas.
11Silappatikaram(the Ankle Bracelet)by Prince Ilango Adigal, tr. by A. Danielou (London,
1967). A. K. Ramanujan has suggested that Puhar and Madurai as described in the Silappatikaram are literary representations of 'heterogenetic' and 'orthogenetic' cities respectively.
See his paper 'Toward an Anthology of City Images' (MS., 1969).
D

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Then they came to the low-lyingquartersnear the sea, whereflags, raisedhigh toward
the sky, seemed to be saying: 'On these stretchesof white sand can be found the goods
that foreignmerchants,leavingtheirown countriesto stay among us, have broughthere
in great ships.'
Near the shore lighthouseshad been built to show ships the way to the harbor.Far
away one could see the tiny lights of the fishingboats layingtheir nets in the deep sea.
All night lamps were burning,the lamps of foreignerswho talk strangetongues,and the
lamps of the guards who watch over precious cargoes near the docks. Borderedby
rows of aloes, the seashorewas more enchantingeven than the fields with their lotus
ponds and streams.The lamps gave such abundantlight that one could have found a
single mustardseed had it fallen on the clear sand, spreadevenly like fine flour [p. 30].

2. Ritual Neutralizationof Foreign Enclaves

For various reasons of curiosity or economic interest, individual groups
of the indigenous population associate themselves with the foreigners and
foreign imports, as interpreters, brokers, servants, traders, and in other
capacities. This association brings them into close contact with the innovations and innovators and gives them the opportunity for direct observation, emulation and production of the new products and styles. At first the
terms of association are presumed to be influenced by the social code of
the foreign group, however deviant it may be from the traditional code.
Those who associate themselves with the innovations and innovating
groups do so at their own risk, and that risk may include ostracism by
their own social group and other severe sanctions. The early servants of
the East India Company and converts to Christianity probably found
themselves in an uncomfortable, marginal position.
As the number of the indigenous population that is economically and
socially dependent on the innovations increases, the new products are
accepted and used by a larger group, and those closely associated with
their introduction prosper and strengthen their conformity to traditional
norms in the domestic and religious sphere, there is a tendency for social
attitudes towards the innovators and their associates to relax and for
the particular innovational sphere to be seen as a 'neutral' area where
scriptural and customary norms need not apply with the same rigor as
they do in 'traditional' spheres. In the 'neutral area' the cultural differences
between the foreign and the indigenous tend to become reduced and new
cultural norms to arise.
Industrial technology, industrial enterprise and industrial employments
have been undergoing just such a process of 'neutralization' during the
last hundred years. The modern professions of law, medicine, teaching,
and the clerical and supervisory office work connected with government
administration probably went through a similar process almost a hundred
years earlier.
The recognition that some fields of activity are not the monopolistic
preserve of any particular caste or religious group creates 'ritually neutral'

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public areas open to all castes. The 'ritual neutrality' of such areas derives
from three different sources.
(a) The fact that the field of activity may be so recent an innovation that
there has not been time to determine its relations to the traditional social
code. This is true, for example, of television and electronic equipment, the
manufacture, sale and use of which is too recent to have received social
and cultural definition.
(b) The fact that different castes and groups with different norms of
conduct interact in these public areas without severe social sanctions. It
is not simply the intercaste mixing that is decisive but the social recognition
that such mixing will not incur heavy social sanctions. In many villages
today a member of a clean caste cannot enter an untouchable settlement
without being heavily polluted, and an untouchable cannot enter a
Brahman street without being beaten. Yet on buses, street cars, shops, in
offices and plants, theatres and movie houses, political gatherings, members of these same castes mix freely, incurring only a mild form of pollution or hostility, if any.
(c) As new techniques, products, and social relations are introduced and
developed in these 'ritually neutral' public areas in relative freedom from
the rigors of the traditional code, new norms governing such innovations
also emerge in these areas. In this way new standards of speech, dress,
diet, belief and conduct very different from the traditional standards are
formed and become accepted in the 'neutral' areas, without necessarily
bsing accepted in other areas of domestic and social life.
An individual's daily passage between 'ritually neutral' public areas and
private domestic areas subject to traditional ritual restrictions does not
result in traumatic and schizophrenic emotional reactions or lead to a
dominance in his life of the public area over the private, or conversely. It
results instead in an adaptive modus vivendithat I call 'compartmentalization'. He mentally categorizes the two areas as socially and culturally
different in behavior, belief and norms. This reduces direct conflicts
between the areas and provides the time and opportunity to try out innovations and develop adjustmentsin the religious and domestic sphere through
vicarious ritualization and restructuringof observances and beliefs.
While the growth of urban centers and of industry has expanded the
areas of 'ritual neutrality', such areas also exist on a smaller scale in
village and small town life-in agriculturalwork teams, in shops, bazaars,
in public festivals and processions. In fact one can discern the basic
matrix of 'ritual neutrality' in the mildly impure 'normal ritual status' in
which every Hindu, according to Srinivas, finds himself as he goes about
his daily affairs.12Urbanization and industrialization have brought the
12 For M. N. Srinivas's account of 'normal ritual status' see his Social
Change in Modern
India, p. 121 and the Coorg study, pp. 106-7.

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Hindu into new arenas where he can conduct these affairs with new
materials and techniques. He is able to maintain 'a normal ritual status' in
the conduct of his affairs because those new arenas, materials and techniques have been socially recognized as areas of 'ritual neutrality'.
Orthogenetic and heterogenetic innovations. Not all innovations in
Indian society and culture have entered the system through the 'ritually
neutral' areas. Many innovations and changes have been made within the
family, hereditary occupation, caste organization, or religious sect. These
innovations, however, are seen as minor changes within a long-established
structure of accepted cultural traditions. They are 'orthogenetic' changes
which attract little attention, except appreciation for unusual performance.
The innovations which originate in the 'ritually neutral' areas, on the other
hand, frequently appear to be alien to and in conflict with cultural traditions, and they require special treatment and selection before they can be
reconciled or absorbed. They are the 'heterogenetic'changes perceived and
regarded as culturally 'foreign' or 'strange', calling for special adaptive
reactions and strategies. Enclavement, ritual neutralization and compartmentalization are some of the adaptive strategies which have been developed in Indian civilization for introducing 'heterogenetic' innovations.
In the later phases of this process, which we shall describe, are found the
strategies for incorporating 'orthogenetic' innovations.
3. Foreign Imports Become a Typological Option in the Culture
When an innovation along with its associated sphere is 'neutralized' it
becomes available to a much larger group of the indigenous population
both as potential producers and as consumers. This extended availability
does not yet mean assimilation of the innovation and the innovating group
into the indigenous culture and society. It marks rather an intermediate
step in this direction and is distinguished by classification of the import as a
stylistic or typological variant among a set of options. Western-style
clothes now manufactured and worn by Indians are still referred to as
'European dress', modern medicine taught and practiced by Indians is
designated as 'allopathic' or 'modern' medicine in contrast with the
'homeopathic', 'ayurvedic', 'yunani', and 'siddha' systems, which are all
included in the category of 'indigenous Indian medicine'. Systems of
dance, music, astrology, law, philosophy have all been introduced in this
way, and have in many cases retained their diacritical class names to
designate variant styles long after all ties of foreign origin have disappeared.
Several features of this phase of innovation are especially noteworthy.
The specific groups and historical contexts associated with the innovations
are subordinated to a conception of them as cultural types and styles. As
such they are dissociated from racial, ethnic, religious affiliation or historic

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origins and become available options to anyone in the society who is

willing and able to use them. The adjective 'European' applied to dress,
cuisine, medicine, science, or education in India, now refers to cultural
styles followed by 'modern' Indians; the materials, techniques and personnel involved in their production are often all Indian. When Europeanowned and managed firms were 'Indianized' after Independence, the
Indian owners and managers who took them over continued many of
their predecessors' practices-the use of the English language, Europeanstyle clothes, and industrial organization-because they believed that these
were still functionally useful cultural styles.
A particularly striking cultural-historical example of this process of
stylistic 'typologizing' of foreigners and of foreign innovations is the word
yavana. This has been documented in the history of Tamil language and
literature by Kamil Zvelebil, whose conclusions I shall summarize.13
About three dozen references to Yavanas occur in old and medieval
Tamil literature. Zvelebil finds that in the earliest Tamil texts
the Yavanas are traderscoming by sea from the West;slightly later,they are soldiers,
bodyguardsand guardiansemployedby Tamil kings; still later, some Yavanas settled
down in the South,mostly as craftsmenand traders,and in some aspectstheirhandiwork
and craftsmanshipseem to have been superiorto native craftsmanship(this concerns
mainlysome kinds of lampsand earrings).Ethnically,the termyavanarreferredprobably
to Greeks,Syrians,Jews,SouthernArabiansand EastAfricans,Romansand Byzantines;
later it coversalso earlyArabsand Muslims(cf. the relatedtermconakan,conakarused
for some Muslim communities, especially in Eastern Ceylon). One thing is certain:
yavanarcame to denote all aliens coming to South India from the West, and the adjective yavanameans 'foreign,alien/Western',just as the termcinar'The Chinese'was used
(in a somewhatmore limited sense) for all aliens coming from the East.

In later medieval Tamil literature references are frequent to yavana

artisans, villages (yavanaceri), and works of art. The term ceri implies,
according to Zvelebil, that these villages were outside the Tamil village or
town proper. The same term ceri is still used in Tamilnad to refer to
villages and settlements of untouchables, as well as in a more generic sense.
The yavana craftsmen who settled in these villages worked in woodengraving, wood carving, carpentry, sculpture.
But just as the meaning of yavana referring to people was generalized
and extended to any type of foreigner from the West, so the references to
yavana works of art and craftsman were generalized and extended to any
yavana style of art and craft whether made by foreigners or by Indians.
Zvelebil notes that
some types of productsare mentionedso often and in sucha stereotypedmanner,that it
seemsthat the termyavanarefersnot to theirorigin('madeby Yavanas')but to the type,
13 The materialon Yavanashas beenkindlymadeavailableto me
by mycolleague,Kamil
Zvelebil. See also his article on 'The Yavanas in Old Tamil Literature', CharisteriaOrientalia

(Prague,1956).A. K. Ramanujanhas calledmy attentionto a linguisticprocesssimilarto

'ritualneutralization'
whichis also called'neutralization'.
He believesthatlinguisticneutrali-

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to the model-that is the term is used typologically: this concerns especially the two
items yavana (pavaiyanai) vilakku, 'the Yavana lamp (held by, or adorned by, or in the
shape of, a statue)', and yavanap plai 'Yavana chest, box'. Also, the term yavanak kaivinai 'yavana craftsmanship' is almost a clich6 in early Tamil medieval texts. It just seems
to refer to foreign, Yavana-like and/or foreign-like handiwork, craftsmanship.

4. The Foreign InnovationEnters the Sphere of the Indigenous

Typologizing of foreign groups and imports marks an acceptance of them
as optional variants of indigenous groups and products but does not yet
mean their acceptance as parts of the indigenous culture and society. Such
'indigenization' takes place in the succeeding phases of incorporation. In
these phases the innovation is recognized as 'modern' but its foreign origins
are forgotten or ignored. The ecological or symbolic foreign enclavement is
dropped or loses its charge, leaving the innovation to mix freely in the
indigenous culture and society, both 'modern' and 'traditional'. Foreign
loan-words such as 'thanks', 'hotel', 'station', enter colloquial speech and
are used without any self-consciousness about their foreign origin except
on the part of the specialist in language. A great many literary and social
forms, techniques and technical products, which may have been foreign in
origin, are now accepted as 'modern' and indigenous. The use of sewing
machines, wrist watches, radios, telephones, bicycles and automobiles;
eating from plates on tables while sitting on chairs; working for a college
degree in a 'modern' subject-all these are now recognized as parts of a
'modern culture' that is produced as well as consumed by Indians. Sometimes a special class of people is associated with these items as a 'modern'
class because it follows a style of life which uses the 'modern' items or
because it has the adaptability and desire to do so. These are frequently the
better educated and well-to-do groups living in urban centers, but one can
find general recognition of the prestige and value of 'modern culture' in
the scale of dowries offered to the different kinds of professions (the civil
service and modern medicine get the highest) and in the popularity of
wrist watches, transistor radios, and bicycles as wedding gifts even among
poor villagers.
'Modern culture' is not confined to any one class but may be found
distributed unequally among members of the same family, caste, or village.
Children in college tend to be more 'modern' than their parents, and husbands more than their wives.
Brahmans have the reputation in Tamilnad of being very 'modern' and
'adaptable' because they have acquired modern education and have gone
into the professions, business, and industry, although they are also regarded
as representatives of Sanskritic Hinduism and the 'great tradition'.
zation plays an analogously important role in the formation of new colloquial standards of
speech from literary and colloquial Tamil. See his paper 'The Structure of Variation: a
Study in Caste Dialects', esp. pp. 470-2 in M. Singer and B. S. Cohn, eds., Structure and
Change in Indian Society.

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Modern and indigenous.Modernity, then, is a permanent layer or dimension of indigenous culture and not simply a collection of recent foreign
imports or the fashionable life-style of a privileged class. When an innovation has entered this layer, it is no longer associated with strange and
foreign groups nor is it segregated from the rest of the indigenous culture.
It may be recognized for its functional or esthetic value as an innovation
and acquire prestige and status on that account. In any case it is differentiated from the traditional culture, from which it may be a departure and
to which it may also offer a challenge. This challenge is usually not very
deep or threatening, because when it has reached this phase, the innovation of foreign origin has been desegregated, neutralized, and appears as a
freely available variant in the culture. Such innovations ('heterogenetic')
are hardly distinguishable from the innovations of local origin ('orthogenetic') except to the historians of culture. When an hereditary image-maker
in contemporary Madras finds and uses a finer grade of sand than his
father used, when members of a Brahman family go into agriculture and
trade, when a musician improvises on a classical raga, or a Sanskrit scholar
writes and produces a play in Sanskrit, these are orthogenetic innovations.
They may even be admired and desired for their originality, workmanship,
resourcefulness, and taste, just as some of the heterogenetic innovations
are. But the orthogenetic innovations have a differentpoint of origin and a
differentcareerfrom the heterogenetic. Let us note some of these significant
differencesbetween a foreign innovation and an indigenous innovation.
Because an indigenous innovation emerges within the system and is not
associated with the alien and strange, it is not regarded as a threat to
tradition and requiresno special segregation and neutralization.It is permitted to develop on its own merits or demerits, so to speak; its eventual
acceptance or rejection is not posed as a dilemma of either accepting or
rejecting all the basic institutions, values, and beliefs of the traditional
system. On the contrary, the cultural presumption is that the acceptance of
such innovations will not change the traditional system in any essentialway;
they represent merely varying manifestations of the system. This presumption is given metaphysical expression in Sankara's Vedanta philosophy of
causation, which regards the cause as unchangeable, giving only an
appearance of suffering change:14
... The clay is spoken of as the only reality in all its transformations as the pot, the jug
or the plate. It is said that though there are so many diversities of appearance that one is
called the plate, the other the pot, and the other the jug, yet these are only empty distinctions of name and form, for the only thing real in them is the earth which in its essence
remains ever the same whether you call it the pot, plate, or jug ... all the various modes
in which the clay appear are mere appearances, unreal, indefinable, and so illusory....
14 S. Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy (Cambridge, 1922). I am indebted to F.
Staal for this referenceto the Sankara theory. See also his article on Sanskrit and Sanskritization, p. 269.

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So in all world-phenomena the one truth is being, the Brahman, and all the phenomena
that are being imposed on it are but illusory forms and names [Dasgupta: 53, 468].

The lady from contemporary Madras who insists that her sari is essentially a 'traditional' one although it is made of modern material (nylon)
and in the 'modern' colors of pink and beige is echoing, perhaps unknowingly, Sankara's philosophy of causation. That nylon happens to be a
recent foreign import and the colors are an indigenous departure from
the dark-greens, reds, and browns of the traditional South Indian sari
does not matter in this philosophy. Both kinds of change are merely
varying 'appearances' of an unchanging eternal tradition.
5. The Foreign Import Becomes 'Traditional'
By the time a foreign import (or heterogenetic innovation) has entered the
layer of the 'modern' and the 'indigenous' culture where it is no longer
distinguished from an orthogenetic innovation, it may be said to have been
'accepted' and 'incorporated' into the culture. Yet this does not represent
complete acceptance. That comes when the import is no longer regarded
as simply 'modern' but also as 'traditional'. It may sound paradoxical to
speak of a foreign import becoming 'traditional', but this is precisely what
happens in the final phase of incorporation. In this respect there is an
asymmetry between the curves of the orthogenetic and heterogenetic
innovations although both kinds may end up as 'traditional'. The heterogenetic innovation follows a career, when accepted, from the foreign and
recent to the modern, indigenous, and traditional. The orthogenetic
innovation, on the other hand, follows a path from the indigenous traditional to the indigenous modern and back to the traditional.
For a foreign import or group to enter the hallowed realm of the 'traditional' it must become old, it must conform to customary or scriptural
norms, and it must have an origin myth in which it is linked to a great
traditional set of ancestors or precedents. These three requirements for
traditional status are closely interrelated but they are not identical. To
become old and ancient is to persist for many generations. A family, its
property, an institution, an artifact which has so persisted is called 'traditional' (parampmaraiydna
fromparamparai,'generation').Such an old family
also acquires a reputation for solidity and integrity. Its customs will be
considered 'civilized' and educated in 'traditional culture'-(palandkarlkam). In the sense of social customs and social institutions, 'traditional
culture' (palampanpu),connotes that it is good and moral because it is old
and traditional. When a family's genealogy can be traced to the deities,
sages, kings and cultural heroes of the epics and puranas, it has established
its claims both to antiquity and moral righteousness. One need not,
however, furnish a complete and scientific family history in order to
establish these claims. Professional genealogists and bards are usually able

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to connect the four or five generations of a family's rememberedgenealogy

to the epic and puranic dynasties. Sometimes these genealogists and their
families have maintained oral and written records of family genealogies
from generation to generation (Shah and Shroff). But it does not really
matter whether the reconstructed genealogies that intervene between
living memory and those in the scriptures are 'scientific'. The important
thing is to have one's claim to an ancient affiliation socially recognized in
the present, since such recognition is one of the major ways to validate
one's present status, change in status, or status aspirations.15
Not only families, but also castes, tribes, villages and towns, temples,
sects, and maths have genealogies which go back to ancient scriptural
origins. Artifacts and aspects of civilization such as the dance, drama,
music, have their scriptural genealogies to validate their status as 'traditional' arts and crafts. Westerners are sometimes astonished and amused
by the efforts of Indian 'traditionalists' to find evidence in the Vedas and
other scriptures for the airplane or nuclear fission or fusion. This is not
really different in form and principle from the process of incorporating
foreign groups into the caste system or raising the status of a lower caste
through Sanskritization. The origin myth gives the foreign group or
innovation a local habitation and name within the structure of an Indian
great tradition. By so doing, its present acceptance into the society is
culturally validated. For to deny the alleged novelty of an innovation by
asserting its antiquity is to recognize and accept it as an integral part of the
indigenous culture. Archaization is in this case also a form of modernization.
Plus Cachange.... During the last two hundred years traditional Indian
arts and crafts, social institutions, religious practices and beliefs have
undergone widespread and profound changes-in materials, techniques,
methods of training, design, name, use and status. Yet most of my Madras
informants do not look upon these changes as a process of 'modernization'
which transforms items of traditional culture into items of a modern
culture. They see some of these changes as leading to neglect, corruption,
even destruction and disappearance of tradition but not to 'modernizing'
transformations. The traditionally minded among them participate in
efforts to reconstruct, revive and restore the fading cultural traditions, but
they certainly do not regard this as an effort at 'modernization'.
15For a field study of how a living caste of genealogists and mythographersrecords genealogies and relates them to mythical ancestors see A. M. Shah and R. G. Shroff, The Vahivanca
Barots of Gujerat, and Foreword by M. N. Srinivas in M. Singer, ed., TraditionalIndia,
Structure and Change (American Folklore Society, Philadelphia, 1959). See also M. Weber,
The Religion of India, pp. 9-11; S. Sinha, 'State Formation and Rajput Myth in Tribal Central
India', Man in India, Vol. 42 (1962); J. T. Hitchcock, 'The Idea of the Martial Rajput' in
TraditionalIndia; S. Hivale, The Pardhansof the UpperNarbada Valley(Oxford, 1946); B. S.
Cohn, 'The Pasts of an Indian Village', ComparativeStudies in Society and History, Vol. III
(1961); C. von Furer-Haimendorf,'The Historical Value of Indian Bardic Literature',in C. H.
Philips, ed., Historians of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon (Oxford, 1961).

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This attitude creates a seeming mystery about the process of cultural

modernization and is very often misinterpreted as a denial of real change
and innovation. The mystery is quickly cleared up if we recall that it is
people who 'modernize' and not depersonalized cultural artifacts. Individuals, families, communities can and do 'modernize' by entering modern
occupations, using modern artifacts or adopting a modern life style. These
individuals or groups are considered 'modern' (murpokku)(etymology: mur
'forward' plus pokku 'movement') in the sense of being psychologically
adaptable or progressive. Modern occupations, artifacts and life styles are
not the outcome of a linear transformation of traditional occupations,
artifacts and life-styles. They are produced by orthogenetic or heterogenetic innovations, that is, by the endless variety of 'unessential' modifications
in a substratum of cultural traditions, by the recurrent novelties in the
births and declines of such traditions through the ages, as in the 'eternal
renewal' of life in the green shoot of rice and in the new-born infant,16
and by the acceptance into the culture of neutralized and desegregated
foreign imports.
Consistently with this view, one can classify most items in the cultural
universe as either 'modern'(putunikarikam)or 'traditional'(palandkarTkam,
palampapnu), some items as mixtures of both (e.g. the pink nylon sari),
and some as neither 'modern' nor 'traditional' (e.g., television), because
they are such recent innovations (puttamputiya,paccaipputiya) ('brand
new, green, fresh-new') they have not yet been processed and classified.
From this view it is also possible to see modernization as a process of incorporating innovations into the indigenous culture, while denying that it is a
process which automatically transforms corresponding items in the
'traditional culture' into items of 'modern culture'.
This is a world view which recognizes innovation and novelty in many
forms yet looks on modernization as a cultural process which turns the
new into something old, i.e. as a form of 'traditionalization', and not as a
cultural process which makes something new out of that which is old. It
seems likely that this asymmetry in the conception of modernization is
based on the observation of growth and aging in nature. Young plants,
animals and infants do grow old, but old ones do not 'grow young! At the
same time this world view recognizes that culture is differentfrom nature,
that it can be acquired by man as a member of society in each generation.
People are not considered 'modern' or 'traditional' in culture because of
racial or even ethnic criteria but because of their life styles and of the
16 In Tamil putitu 'that which is new or wonderful' also refers to the first sheaves of a
rice crop; putitu dkkutal means 'to modernize, to make new'. Putumai, putivatu, putai are
words for 'newness, novelty', 'anything new', 'novelty', respectively. Putuppalakkam,'new
habit, usage, fashion', does not mean a renovated old habit or usage but that something not
previously habitual or a matter of usage has become so. To 'traditionalize', 'to make old', is
expressed by panmai dkkutal, palamai dkkutal. Linguistic information from K. Zvelebil and
A DravidianEtymological Dictionary by Burrow and Emeneau.

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artifacts they use. Psychological differences in dispositions to adapt to

change and to learn new things are recognized among individuals and
groups, but these differences are not necessarily linked to biological traits.
They are accepted as observed differences in psychological adaptability.
Even the most traditional-minded can learn 'modern' ways if they are
adaptable. They may explain their psychological abilities in terms of biological inheritance (e.g. Brahmans) but they are also widely considered
by non-Brahmans to be very adaptable to modern conditions.
NEW MODEL FOR A GREAT TRADITION

The different phases which have been described in the incorporation of a

foreign innovation into a traditional society and culture represent the
'normal' cultural metabolism involved. Not every import or innovation
goes through every phase. Some may be rejected or arrested at a particular
phase, some may skip phases and be directly archaized.
Some foreign imports or groups may meet with extreme resistance and
hostility because they become symbols of threats to the indigenous society
and culture. The alleged lard-greasedcartridges of the 1857 mutiny and the
more recent vegetable cooking-fats, such as Dalda, are symbols of this
kind, and for a short period may became targets for xenophobic emotions.
Items of traditional culture may similarly become symbols of an indigenous
'great tradition' and of 'little traditions', and rallying points for movements
of cultural nationalism. Gandhi's use of the spinning wheel and the movements for cow protection and for reviving indigenous medicine are examples of such symbols and movements.
The process of selecting symbols of a tradition and of an anti-tradition
is a highly selective and creative one. Much of it goes on at the unconscious
level of 'cultural drift' that pushes the growth of cultural traditions in one
direction rather than another. Some of it, however, is a product of deliberate planning and 'cultural policy' by 'cultural policy makers'.17
The success of a cultural policy that aims to revive or restore selected
indigenous traditions is not always easy to evaluate. Gandhi's campaign
for weaving hand-spun Khadi, for example, did not succeed in replacing
factory looms with the ancient spinning wheel. Yet it does seem to have
succeeded in dramatizing concern for cottage industries and village underemployment, while providing a symbol for a self-respecting cultural identity in a successful mass political movement. From this point of view one
might argue that the charkha really articulated in an archaic idiom the
voice of Congress and of the sewing machine.
Many of the revivalist and restorationist movements and their associated
17 On 'cultural policy' and 'cultural policy makers' see M. Singer, 'The Cultural Pattern of
Indian Civilization', p. 30, TraditionalIndia, IX, XVII-XVIII, pp. 141 ff; M. Marriott, 'Cultural Policy in the New States', in C. Geertz, ed., Old Societies and New States (1963); R.
Redfield, The Little Community(Chicago, 1955), pp. 106-8.

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symbols turn out to have this Janus-faced character-'traditional' from

a front view and 'modern' from a back view. In this respect their 'traditional' face serves the same function as the archaizing of a modern innovation-it puts a seal of legitimacy and acceptance on an imported foreign
institution or product, just as the lion-headed capital from an Asoka
pillar was chosen to be the official seal and emblem of a modern democratic
government in independent twentieth-century India.
Cultural movements and policies which select or reject specific items of
foreign and indigenous cultures around which to build a cultural identity
for a modernization program are not confined in India to the movement for
cultural nationalism and political independence. Such movements have
been organized by tribes, castes, religious communities and sects, and
political and linguistic groups, as vehicles of change. In general, these
movements aim to validate an actual or proposed change by claiming
great antiquityfor the proposal, a biological or spiritualline of genealogical
descent from the ancestral origins, and conformity to accepted cultural
norms and values. In practical effect, this mode of 'traditionalizating'
validation implies that the proposal for change is restorationist, that is,
that it aims to restore an original status which has for some reason been
lost or forgotten.
A particularly interesting example of such a cultural movement is the
Dravidianmovement in Tamilnad,which not only has all the characteristics
of other movements which seek to validate modernizing changes with
archaic models, but in addition attempts to construct an alternative model
of a 'Great Tradition'. This model depicts a Dravidian civilization with a
complete culture that preceded the Aryan civilization of Sanskritic
Hinduism. The Dravidian culture, in this model, is independent of the
Aryan and self-sufficientand differentin language, literature, architecture,
sculpture, dance, music, religion, philosophy and social structure. Sanskritic Hinduism is representedas a foreign intrusion into India and especially into South India, where it was brought by its Brahman custodians and
imposed on the indigenous Dravidian culture and population. The practical policy of the Dravidian movement is to 'de-Sanskritize' and 'deBrahmanize' South Indian culture and society by restoring the original
Dravidian civilization. This restoration program has included attempts to
remove Sanskrit, Hindi and other 'foreign' elements from Tamil language
and literature, smashing of idols and images, simplifying rites and ceremonies by not using Brahman priests and rituals, reinterpreting the Ramayana, the Puranas, and the Vedas to reveal the 'oppression' and 'calumny'
of the Dravidians, and attacks on Brahmans and the 'superstitious' beliefs
and practices of Sanskritic Hinduism. On the social side, the movement
has advocated later age of marriageand widow remarriage;a quota system
for Brahmans in education, government administration and politics; the

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rejection of the varnaclassification, and the use of Tamil as the medium of

instruction in schools and universities.
While the Dravidian movement has found support for its reinterpretations of South Indian history in the rediscovery and translations of such
ancient Tamil classics as the Silappatikaram,the Tolkappiyam,the Sangam
Anthologies,and the Tirukkural,its significance does not lie in its contributions to Tamil or comparative Dravidian studies. These studies, which
were given a great impetus in the nineteenth century by such Western
scholars as Beschi, Caldwell and Pope, as well as by some Brahman and
non-Brahman scholars, are now becoming a part of the world of international scholarship and culture, in the same way in which Sanskritlanguage
and literature, or Latin and Greek, have been made available to a world
audience. The significance of the Dravidian movement lies rather in its
use of such studies and of the modern techniques of propaganda and political organization to propagate a cultural ideology and model of a Dravidian
Great Tradition, and to make it the cultural basis for a successful political
party, the Dravidian Progressive Federation, D.M.K., which is now in
power in Tamilnad.
Although the cultural ideology of the Dravidian movement has declared
Brahmans and various aspects of Sanskritic Hinduism 'the foreign enemy',
it nevertheless incorporates many foreign imports. E. V. Ramaswami
Naicker, the founding father of the Dravidian movement, described in an
interview a trip to Europe in the early 1930s as the source of many of his
ideas and organizational techniques. On this trip, he said, he discovered
Lenin's communism, Mussolini's fascism, Bertrand Russell's rationalism,
and Robert Ingersoll's atheism; and in each of these he found something
useful. In view of this acknowledgment, it is perhaps understandable why
he chose the colors black and red for the flag of his party, the Dravidian
Federation (D.K.), and for his own station wagon, especially since these
colors also have significance in Tamil culture. It is also clear by now,
although perhaps not transparently so, why this radical innovator should
have become the leader of a restorationist movement.
As a cultural phenomenon the Dravidian movement has followed a
pattern familiar from the wider cultural history of India and of many
other countries. Archeological, historical, linguistic and literary studies
inspire a vision of a 'classical golden age'. The post-classical 'middle
period' intervening between the golden age and the present is viewed as a
decline brought in by foreign intrusion. A 'renaissance' aiming to rediscover and emulate the classics of the 'golden age' generally also becomes a
vehicle for 'purification' of and repression of the 'degraded' traditions of
the middle period and for modernizing reforms.
This pattern is approximated by the view of Tamil cultural history
which has been accepted by the ideology of the Dravidian movement.

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According to Zvelebil, a scheme of five ages is envisaged in this ideology.

(1) A classical 'golden age' of the Sangam period.
(2) A 'dark age' following under the influence of Aryan Buddhism and
Jainism.
(3) An age of inimical Aryanization beginning with the bhakti movements
of the Pallava period. Kamban's translation of the Rdmayana is
given as a typical representativeof the literature of this age.
(4) An age of decadence and ruin that is brought on in the late medieval
period by over-all Sanskritization and 'corruption' of Tamil language
and literature.
A
Tamil 'renaissance' and restoration of the 'golden age' models that
(5)
begin about the eighteenth century.
Although the Dravidian movement suggests that the rejection of a
foreign import involves processes of cultural metabolism similar to those
involved in the acceptance of such an import, it nevetheless represents an
extreme case of the process, since the 'foreign import' that is being rejected
is not a recent innovation but the long-established great tradition of
Sanskritic Hinduism. Within the Dravidian ideology, the justification for
the rejection is in the argument that this is necessary to restore the 'pure'
Tamil great tradition which has been 'corrupted' by foreign influences.
Practically, such a restoration would involve the re-evaluation and elimination of an entire linguistic, literary, and cultural heritage in Tamil which
begins with the bhakti literature of the sixth and seventh centuries, and
which has undergone much creative development since. Whatever the
merits of this view of Tamil cultural history, it cannot be taken as an accurate historical account of the nature of and development of Sanskritic
Hinduism in South India. It represents rather a cultural ideology whose
function and meaning is to be found in contemporary political, economic
and social conflicts, not in historical precedent. The portrait painted
of Sanskritic Hinduism by the Dravidian movement is a very simplified
one in which a few elements are highlighted to symbolize the whole
tradition.18
Cultural differences among peoples are not absolute facts of nature or
biology but derive their importance from the manner in which they are
perceived, evaluated, symbolized and acted upon. They are, in other
words, themselves cultural facts, expressions of world views and values,
shot through with the subjectivity, relativity and volatility of such facts.
This anthropological dictum applies to the 'Aryan-Dravidian' opposition.
18 For a
history of the Dravidian movement see R. L. Hardgrave, Jr., The DravidianMovement (Bombay, 1965); E. F. Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India (Berkeley,
1969), esp. Chap. 8; L. Rudolph, 'Urban Life and Populist Radicalism; Dravidian Politics
in Madras',Journalof Asian Studies (1961); R. Hardgrave,'Religion, Politics and the D.M.K',
in D. E. Smith, ed., South Asian Politics and Religion (Princeton, 1966); K. Zvelebil, The
Smile of Murugan,A History of TamilLiterature,(M.S.) esp. Chap. 18, 'Tamil Renaissance'.

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The Sanskritic tradition at first came into South India from the North in a
gradual and limited way. As early as the third and fourth centuries A.D.,
during the Sangam Period, clear distinctions were already being made,
according to Zvelebil, between vata, 'northern, Aryan, Sanskritic' and
ten 'southern, Dravidian, Tamil'. These distinctions were not, however,
conceived as antagonistic. But with the massive Sanskritization of Tamil
culture during the Pallava period and later, the 'Aryan-Dravidian'
distinction expresses hostility and opposition to various aspects of Brahmanism and Sanskritic Hinduism.19
In historical Tamil linguistics and literature the distinction between
'indigenous culture' and 'foreign culture' was expressed in Old Tamil,
according to Zvelebil, by the contrastive pair of terms akam and puram.
This pair of terms, which is also of basic importance in the ancient Tamil
poetics of the Tolkappiyam, links the cultural difference between the
'indigenous' and 'foreign' to the difference between what is 'inside' and
belongs to the family, household, and village, and what is 'outside' and
belongs to a 'public' world. In the field of ancient classical Tamil poetics
the akam-puram contrast representsa classification of two kinds of poetry,
love poetry of an ideal 'interior landscape, and 'public' poetry 'placed in a
real society and given a context of real history' (A. K. Ramanujan, The
InteriorLandscape, p. 101.)20
This ancient contrast seems to attach no great importance to the difference between a foreigner or strange object which comes from another
village or province and one which comes from another country. Both are
'foreign' in the sense that they do not belong to the 'inner world' of my kin
and household. The distinction between the two kinds of foreigners, on the
other hand, is sharplydrawn in medieval and modern Tamil and is probably
related to cultural and political nationalism. In modern Tamil the distinction between 'indigenous culture' and 'foreign culture' is expressed by the
pair of terms contam, 'what is ours, our own' (from a Sanskrit loan word
svanta-) and ayal, 'alien, foreign', 'what does not belong to us' (a Dravidian
word). On the surface this seems similiar to the ancient usage, but ayal
refers to the sum total of non-Tamilfeatures, so the line between 'indigenous' and 'foreign' is now drawn at the level of an entire culture-Tamil
versus non-Tamil, Dravidian versus non-Dravidian, Indian versus nonIndian, rather than at the level of family, household, and village. The older
usage is continued in such words as ariydtavan, 'he who is not known by
the village', 'stranger', and in the compartmentalizing tendencies of
19K. Zvelebil, personal communication; for another interpretation, see A. L. Basham,
'Some reflections on Dravidians and Aryans', Bulletin of the Institute of TraditionalCultures
(Madras, 1963).
20 The information on historical Tamil
usage has been obtained from K. Zvelebil. For ancient
Tamil poetry and poetics see A. K. Ramanujan, The InteriorLandscape(Bloomington, 1967),
and K. Zwelebil, op. cit.

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modern Madras, but this usage has been overshadowedby those expressions
that connote regional and national great traditional cultures.
While the ancient Tamil contrast between 'one's own culture' and 'alien,
foreign culture', in terms of akam and puram seems much closer to the
outlook of a 'primitive' or 'folk' mentality, in other respects it was more
universalistic than the later distinctions, as the following remarkable
puram poem testifies:
Kaniyar Pfnkunran
Everytown's a home town,
everyman a kinsman.
Good and evil do not come
from others;
pain and relief of pain
come of themselves
Dying is not new.
We do not rejoice
that living is sweet,
nor in anger
call it bitter.
Wise men
have shown that lives
are but logs in a raft
rushingin a torrent
sounding over rocks
after a lightningstorm.
So
we're not amazedby greatmen
we do not scorn the little.
Genre:Potuviyal
Theme:Porupmorikkanci
Translation:A. K. Ramanujan
IS INDIA'S MODERNIZATION UNIQUE?

The account I have sketched of the adaptive mechanisms that India has
developed for incorporating or rejectinginnovations would tend to support
those who characterize India as essentially 'traditionalistic'. The usual
connotations of this characterization, however, are not supported by this
account. The 'traditionalism' of Indian civilization is not opposed to
innovation and change, to modernity, to the foreign and the strange.
'Traditional' India is not a monolithic and immovable accumulation of
immemorial customs and beliefs blocking the road to progress. India's
'traditionalism'is rathera built-in adaptive mechanismfor making changes.
Essentially it is a series of processes for incorporating into the culture and
validating innovations. These processes include enclavement, neutralization, compartmentalization,vicarious ritualization, typological stylization,

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reinterpretation, archaization, and, undoubtedly, others. The validation

culminates when a change can be related to the 'traditional' layer of the
culture. This requirement does not really impose a very narrow constraint
on the innovating process. The 'traditional layer' contains such a rich
reservoir of oral and written myth, legends, histories and genealogies that
the professional genealogists and mythographers, as well as the amateur
ones, have no difficulty in finding ancient precedents for modern change.
Since, moreover, there is no single 'official' definition and interpretation of
'the tradition', ample latitude exists for commentators and interpretersto
adapt it to changing needs and circumstances.
This fluidity and relativity in the definition of 'tradition' is given philosophic sanction in Indian systems of thought whether or not they acknowledge the reality of novelty and change. Even Sankara's advaita vedanta,
whose doctrine of causation recognizes change only as illusory appearances
of an unchanging Being, allows for several different 'paths' to truth and
salvation, as well as for choice among these 'paths' according to individual
temperamentand capacity, education, degree of spiritual development and
other factors. Other systems of thought, such as that of the Srakhya
school, developed a theory of causation (the Parindma) which holds that
'the effect is a product of a real change in the cause through the action and
combination of the elements of diversity in it'.21

A contemporary Indian scholar writing on Indian theories of knowledge

denies that these theories elevate memory as the only valid or most important form of cognition: 'Most thinkers hold that novelty should also be
regarded as a necessary character of knowledge worthy of the name. So
memory (which is a reproduction of knowledge acquired in the past
through perception or any other sources) is not regarded as a separate
kind of valid cognition.' Other thinkers regard memory as a substantive
source of knowledge about 'the pastness of an experience or its objectinformation which could not be obtained from any other source without
its aid'.22
Given this variety and flexibility in Indian conceptions of 'tradition',
one can see how easy it would be for Indians to accept all sorts of innovations and changes by 'traditionalizing' them. One looks for these changes
not in a self-conscious ideology of 'progress' and innovation but in the
ways in which 'structural amnesia' and 'patterned memory' operate to
select from the rich storehouse of 'tradition' each group's or each cultural
product's genealogical links to its remote ancestors. In this process 'traditionalization' is not simply a blind handing-down of meaningless and
21
Dasgupta, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 53, 466-8. For a contemporary Madras interpretation of
advaita vedanta in terms of the different 'paths' see V. Raghavan, 'Some Leading Ideas of
Hindu Thought', The VedantaKesari (Madras, 1955), quoted in TraditionalIndia, p. 146.
22 D. M. Datta,
'Epistemological Methods in Indian Philosophy', in C. E. Moore, ed.,
The Indian Mind (East-West Center Press, Honolulu, 1967), pp. 119-20.

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functionless 'survivals'but rather a creative incorporation of contemporary

events and innovations into the living and changing structureof tradition.
It is often said that the flexibility I have been describing exists in Indian
civilization at the level of tolerance for a wide range of beliefs but is not
to be found at the level of conduct, which is rigidly prescribed and proscribed. This distinction, which has played so important a part in the
Western liberal tradition, does not quite describe the Indian situation.
For the question is not the actual behavior of some individual or group, but
the normative structure within which the behavior occurs. At the level of
Indian civilization's normative structure, its culture, the variety of alternative 'paths' of conduct is as great as the variety of systems of 'thought'.
The flexibility in interpreting and applying these normative structuresto
individuals and groups in particular circumstances is equally great in the
two cases. When a group wishes to change its position in the structure,
it must change not only its own and others' behavior but its 'thought' as
well. Frequently it may be more difficult to change its 'thought' than its
behavior. One of the general psychological mechanisms involved in such
changes is the acting out of some role with which the actor has identified
in order to change his own and others' beliefs, attitudes, and sentiments.
In Srinivas's 'Sanskritization', the identification is with a claimed position
in the varnastructureand the 'acting out' includes a set of beliefs as well as
behavior. In the Dravidian movement, the identification is with a whole
Tamil 'Great Tradition' and the 'acting out' includes the disestablishment
of the old 'Great Tradition' of Sanskritic Hinduism as well as the restoration of the Dravidian traditions. In the Radha-Krishna bhajans, the identification is with Krishna and the milkmaid gopis of the BhagavataPurana
and the acting out is the singing and dancing which represent Krishna's
'sports' with the milkmaids. In all these cases the success of the identification and of the acting out can be measured only by the actor's subjective
conviction that he has attained the state he is seeking and by social recognition of that attainment.
These identifications with and 'acting out' of social roles not only operate at the levels of both 'thought' and conduct; they also simultaneously
express an individual's decision to affirm some aspect of his cultural
traditions, through the selection of myths and rituals which are the vehicles
of the identification and the acting out, and to change another aspect of it
by giving the myth and ritual a contemporary relevance. This dual set of
tensions between affirmation and innovation, between thought and behavior, was eloquently expressed in the following description which a
Krishna devotee in Madras gave me of his search for salvation and
brotherhood in the Radha-Krishna bhajans:23
23 M. Singer, 'The Radha-Krishna Bhajans of Madras City', in Krishna:Myths, Rites and
Attitudes (East-West Press, 1966 and University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 126-7.

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BEYOND TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN MADRAS 187

The relation between devotees as one of complete equality is only their ideal. They
wish to make it a matterof fact and a reality.But, at the same time, it does not replace
the traditionalrespect of sons for fathers, of young for old, of the less devout for the
more devout, of the lowercastesfor the highercastes,and so forth. Devotees fall at each
other'sfeet and takethe dustof the feet of eachotherand placeit on theirheads,embrace
each other, and do other such things. It needs constantpracticeof these things so that
they may become perfectequals.In actuallife, the equalityhas not yet been achievedor
realized.It is only the ideal and devoteeswish to reachthis ideal sooner or later. It has
not yet come, as I have said before.Fathersdo think that they are superiorto theirsons,
the elders do think that they are superiorto youngsters,the more devout do think that
they are superiorto the less devout, the high-castedevotee thinks that he is superiorto
the low-castedevotee, and so forth. Thus they thinkone way and do anotherway when
they exhibit equalityor expressdemocraticsentiments.Thereis no correlationbetween
their mindand body.They do not act alike. They think one thing and do anotherthing.
When by constant practice,their minds imbibe equality as their bodies expressit, the
ideal is reachedby the harmonybetweenthe mind and the body. The two then act alike
and there is correlationbetweenthem. Till then thereis no talk of completeequalityas
the body expressesequalityand the mind does not. Whatthe body expressesis thus only
a gestureof the ideal to be attainedand constantgestureof this kind will bringabout the
ideal in its own good time. The body expressingequality and the mind expressing
inequalityproduceinsincerityin a person, a great sin in a devotee.

India's traditionalizing 'cultural metabolism' is probably not unique,

although it may have a distinctive rate and style. The comparative cultural
study of how different societies deal with innovation and change is too
underdeveloped to permit precise comparisons. The old dichotomy of
'traditional' and 'modern' societies, and the alleged linear laws of development which inexorably transform 'traditional' into 'modern' types of
society, have not been supported by the highly differentiated picture
beginning to emerge from recent research. In particular, this theory has
not been able to give an adequate explanation of the mixtures of 'tradition'
and 'modernity' which are to be found in India, Indonesia, Japan, China
and many other countries. To place these cases on a linear graph of 'transition' to modernity is a plausible interpretation consistent with the general
theory. But this requires the addition of so many special variables, taking
account of differencesin history, culture, leadership, degree of underdevelopment, etc., to account for the differencesin degree of 'transition', that a
simpler theory seems called for. The 'transition' interpretation, moreover,
does not take seriously the possibility that the mixture of 'tradition' and
'modernity' may reflect important long-run interactions and adjustments,
that it may be a 'permanent transition' as Geertz suggests in the case
of Indonesia, and not simply a prelude to 'take-off' or a mismanaged

modernization program.24
The Indian case points to an alternative possible interpretation which
should be further explored, especially as societies with 'Great Traditions'
24 C.

Geertz, The Social History of an Indonesian Town (M.I.T. Press, 1965), esp. p. 152.

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modernize. Perhaps such exploration will reveal, as I believe it does in the

case of India, that the cultural problem which modernization presents to
these societies is neither one of blindly imitating some Western model of
development nor one of reaching through internal transformations the
'modern' rung on a universal ladder of social evolution. The problem is of
the same general kind that these societies have had to solve again and
again in their history in order to survive and maintain any culture at all,
namely, how to adapt to change and innovation, whether it originates
abroad or inside the country. If the process of modernization is studied
comparatively in terms of strategies which differentcultures and civilizations have developed to cope with change, we shall see that modernization
does not pose a new dilemma of either rejecting one's 'traditional' culture
as a whole in order to replace it by 'modern culture' or rejecting 'modern
culture' in its entirety in order to preserve one's traditions. The problem
faced by these 'traditional' societies is how to continue their 'normal
cultural metabolism', that is, how to continue converting the 'raw' and
'uncooked' events of history into 'cooked' and assimilable 'cultural
traditions'.
The application of this approach to the modernization of cultural
traditions in India suggests that the processes of cultural intake and assimilation operate with artifacts, technical processes, idea systems and social
institutions, as well as with social groups. Innovations in these fields are
introduced into the system, tried and tested, accepted or rejected in somewhat the same manner as are human newcomers. While there are many
differencesof detail in the process, dependingon whetherthe innovation has
been brought in by members of a particular foreign group or has been
introduced by 'natives' who have travelled and studied abroad, whether it
has originated within the indigenous culture, in what cultural field the
innovation occurs, etc., the reactions to and eventual selection and incorporation of an innovation probably follow the sequence of phases which I
have outlined.
One writerwho makes some interesting comparative observations on the
process of cultural innovation, especially in the economic field, is Max
Weber. I do not now refer to Weber's well-known theory of how the
'Protestant Ethic' was converted into a 'this-worldly asceticism' and so
became a motive force for technical and economic innovation. The Protestant Ethic, is in any case, supposedly absent in India, according to Weber.
I have in mind rather his more marginal discussion of how 'guest people'
and 'pariah people' may be sources of economic innovation.25
Weber's discussion is a suggestive one and provides a good starting point
for an analysis of the sources and phases of cultural innovation, especially
25 M. Weber, The Religion of India (The Free Press, 1958), esp. pp. 11-20; see also his
The Sociology of Religion (Beacon Press, 1963), pp. 108-17, on the Jews as a 'pariah people'.

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if considered in the more general context of institutionalized hospitality to

strangers and cultural attitudes towards the new and strange. Weber's
treatment unfortunately is brief and emphasizes rather the low ritual
status occupied by 'guest' and 'pariah' peoples and some of the transitional
stages by which groups outside the caste system are brought into the system
by conforming to its norms or by which low-caste groups rise in the rank
order by emulating the higher castes. Although he describes these groups
as providing indispensable trade, services, crafts and industry which the
local population cannot or will not provide, he does not stress their role as
importers and innovators, nor does he trace the career and assimilation of
the innovations within the system. His analysis concentrates on the
'enclavement' phase of innovation and restricts that primarily to the
acquisition of a particular ritual status in the caste system. Weber limited
his analysis so narrowly because of his assumption that 'Hinduism is
primarily ritualism' and his interpretation of this ritualism in terms of
unconditional and unchanging ritual obligations (dharma) inherited by
each caste. This assumption is also the source of his characterizationof the
'inner spirit' of the entire Hindu system in terms of a 'ritual law' in which
'every change of occupation, every change in work technique, may result
in ritual degradation' and which is 'certainly not capable of giving birth
to economic and technical revolutions from within itself or even of facilitating the first germination of capitalism in its midst'.26
In spite of this unrealistically rigid conception of Hinduism and the
caste system, Weber in passing also cites evidence, drawn chiefly from the
Census reports, of the adaptability and mobility of different groups as
well as of the system as a whole. Ritual barriers,he finds, have not stopped
everyday economic transactions in the past:
the law of caste has proved just as elastic in the face of the necessities of the concentration of labor in workshops as it did in the face of a need for concentration of labor and
service in the noble household. All domestic servants required by the upper castes were
ritually clean, as we have seen. The principle, 'the artisan's hand is always clean in his
occupation', is a similar concession to the necessity of being allowed to have fixtures
made or repair work done, personal services or other work accomplished, by wage
workers or by itinerants not belonging to the household. Likewise, the workshop was
recognized as 'clean'. Hence no ritual factor would have stood in the way of jointly using
different castes in the same large workroom, just as the ban upon interest during the
Middle Ages (in Europe), as such, hindered little the development of industrial capital,
which did not even emerge in the form of investment for fixed interest.27

He finds contemporary trends destructive of the ritual system:

Today the Hindu caste order is profoundly shaken. Especially in the district of
Calcutta, old Europe's major gateway to India, many norms have practically lost
26 M.
Weber, The Religion of India, p. 112.
27 Ibid. pp. 111-12. On the relation of European medieval
religious law to the taking of
interest, see B. Nelson, The Idea of Usury, From Tribal Brotherhoodto UniversalOtherhood,
second ed. (University of Chicago Press, 1969).

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their force. The railroads, the taverns, the changing occupational stratification,the
concentrationof labor through importedindustry,colleges, etc., have all contributed
their part. The 'commutersto London', that is, those who studied in Europe and
maintainedvoluntarysocial intercoursewith Europeans,were outcastesup to the last
generation;but more and more this patternis disappearing.And it has been impossible
to introducecaste coaches on the railroadsin the fashion of the Americanrailroadcars
or station waiting room which segregate'white' from 'colored'in the southernstates.
All caste relationshave been shaken,and the stratumof intellectualsbredby the English
are here, as elsewhere,bearersof a specificnationalism.They will greatly strengthen
this slow and irresistibleprocess.For the time being, however,the caste structurestill
stands quite firmly.28

Such departures from the 'ritual law' Weber saw only as temporary
European intrusions into the Hindu system. This system and the 'Hindu
character' he thought would reassert themselves when the Europeans
withdrew:
When, today, the penetrationof Indian society by capitalisticinterestsis alreadyso
extensive that they can no longer be eliminated,it is still possible for some eminent
English students of the land to argue on good grounds that the removal of the thin
conqueringstrataof Europeansand the Pax Britannicaenforcedby them would open
wide the life and death struggle of inimical castes, confessions, and tribes; the old
feudal robberromanticismof the Indian MiddleAges would again breakforth.29

Weber obviously was not able to reconcile the evidence of change of the
system with his conception of it as governed by a fundamental 'ritual law'
which prevents change. He concluded, contrary to the evidence he himself
presented, that because the system had great adaptive and assimilative
powers, the result of this adaptation and assimilation did not change the
system but continued to express its unchanging 'spirit'. While he recognized 'traditionalization' and 'archaization' as forms of legitimation, he
does not seem to have appreciatedtheir roles as sources of change. In particular he underestimatedthe extent to which changes originating outside
the system ('heterogenetic' changes) are selectively incorporated into it
through the mechanisms of compartmentalization and neutralization. His
discussion of the role of the Jews as a 'pariah people' in the economic life
of Europe should have alerted him to the importance of these mechanisms
as the proving ground for innovation and for the formation of new cultural
norms within the system. He was not led to this insight because he saw the
compartmentalization only in terms of a 'double standard of morals' as
between strangersand one's own community, rather than as an encounter
between differentcultural standards, an encounter which is not 'ethically
indifferent'but which graduallyneutralizesand reduces the differencesand
may even produce an integration of the alien and the indigenous standards
into a new positive ethical code or ecumenical religion.
The degree of conflict between these differentcultural standards depends
28

Weber, The Religion of India, p. 30.

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29

Ibid. p. 325.

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in part on how the parties to the encounter perceive and react to the differences. Ecological enclavement of a foreign group or of foreign-returned
'natives' is one expression of such perception and reaction and may be
linked to a deliberate cultural policy towards foreigners. European colonial
powers in Asia, for example, frequently did create enclaves for Europeans
even where there was no need for extra-territoriality. In Indonesia, as
Geertz has shown, the 'dual economy' and the 'dual society' were, in
part, creations of Dutch policy. The neutralization of the conflicts in
cultural standardsencountered in these enclaves and the cognitive compartmentalizing which reduce the conflicts for the participants may develop in
partial independence of any deliberate cultural policy. This seems to have
been true of the bazaar area of Modjokuto, the Indonesian town studied
by Geertz, as it was of the industrial plants in and around Madras City
(Geertz, 1963: 139).30
Judging from the Madras example, as well as from other recent studies
by cultural anthropologists, cultural geographers, and cultural historians
(such as Clifford Geertz, Paul Wheatley, T. G. McGee and Rhoads
Murphey), the cultural processes associated with Westernization and
modernization are neither unilateral diffusions of elements of Western
culture into 'traditional' societies nor do they originate with European
colonialism. They are processes endemic in the history of these societies
30 C.
Geertz, AgriculturalInvolution(Berkeley, 1963), esp. p. 61; and The Social History of
an IndonesianTown(M.I.T. Press, 1965), esp. p. 54; C. Geertz, Peddlers and Princes (Chicago,
1933), p. 139. In this passage Geertz uses 'compartmentalized'and 'compartmentalization'to
refer to three processes which I have called 'enclavement' (the 'sharp social and cultural
segregation of both traders and trading'), 'ritual neutralization' (trading develops as 'an
interstitial pursuit, one to which the values of the wider society are held by common agreement
not to apply'), and 'compartmentalization' in the sense that 'the nearly total insulation of
commercial behavior from the general nexus of cultural activities' provides 'a preservefor the
exercise of economic rationality independently of non-economic constraints'. Geertz also sees
a normative ethical code developing from the combined operation of these processes, at least
in the situation of the bazaar economy if not at the level of more complex industrial organization.
Geertz's development of the 'compartmentalization'theory is, so far as I know, independent
of mine. My own interest in this concept was first aroused by the widely noted observation of
'modern' Indians adhering to 'traditional' practices and beliefs, and the usual interpretations
of this as somehow paradoxical, anomalous and contradictory. When I found that most
Indians I met did not experiencethis coexistence of the 'modern' and 'traditional' as a cultural
contradiction or even a conflict, it seemed to me that the compartmentalizationtheory offered
a better explanation than the theory of 'modern' and 'traditional' societies as mutually
exclusive types with mixed cases interpreted as 'transitional' from the 'traditional' to the
'modern'.
The 'compartmentalization' theory is implicit in Edward Shils's study of The Intellectual
Between Traditionand Modernity: The Indian Situation, ComparativeStudies in Society and
History SupplementI (Mouton, 1961); R. S. Khare has applied it explicitly to an analysis of
the home-office adjustments of Kanya-Kubja Brahmans (see CSSH, Vol. XIII (1971)).
An extended effort to apply the classical dichotomous theory of 'moder' and 'traditional'
societies to India will be found in G. Myrdal, The Asian Drama (Random House, 1968), esp.
Vol. I, Prologue and Part I. On the psychology of compartmentalization see A. Inkeles,
'Making Modern Men', The AmericanJournalof Sociology, 75 (1969). See also: T. G. McGee,
The Southeast Asian City (Praeger, 1967), and R. Murphey, 'Traditionalismand Colonialism;
Changing Urban Roles in Asia', Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXIX, No. 1 (November,
1969).

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and represent a kind of 'cultural metabolism' which regulates for each

society a distinctive balance between cultural continuity and cultural
innovation.
When the author first became interestedin Madras City in 1954, it was in
the context of a general theory of the cultural role of cities in the comparative history of civilizations. Madras appeared at that time to be playing the
'heterogenetic' role of a former colonial city, that is, it seemed to be
serving as a 'headlink' for Westernization and modernization through its
commercial, administrative, educational, and transportational functions.
The research question which interested me then was how to relate contemporary and limited field observations in Madras City to the wider context
of Indian civilization. I formulated the question in the short-hand operational form of'what happens to the Great Tradition of SanskriticHinduism
in a metropolitan center'.
It was something of a surpriseto find, on greaterfamiliaritywith Madras,
a good deal of'Sanskritic Hinduism' alive in this 'heterogeneticcenter' and
also many movements for cultural revival and restoration. This was not a
complete surprise,since in the 1954 paper on 'The Cultural Role of Cities',
Robert Redfield and the author had concluded that 'the progressive spirit
of Asia and Africa is not simply a decision to walk the road of progressive
convictions that we have traversed, but rather in significant part an effort
of the so-called "backward" peoples to recover from their disruptive
encounters with the West by returningto the sacred centers of their indigenous civilizations'. The paper also suggested that these encounters be
viewed not as cases of'simple diffusion or spread of urban influence from a
city', but rather as 'a cultural interaction which takes place against a
background of ancient civilization with its own complex and changing
pattern of urbanization now coming into contact with a newer and different
civilization and giving rise to results that conform to neither'.
As we take a fresh look at these former 'colonial cities' in this perspective of cultural history, we shall find further evidence in them, I believe,
not only of efforts in the post-colonial period to recover the 'orthogenetic'
'great traditions' but also of efforts to continue the ancient 'heterogenetic'
roles as harbors for foreign imports and indigenous innovations, for heresy
and reform. Both these roles will be found in Madras today and in the
past. Their operation and interrelationship can best be understood as a
sequence of phases in the selection and incorporation of foreign and
domestic innovations into the 'modern' and 'traditional' cultural layers of
an indigenous civilization.
As modes of adaptation to foreigners and to foreign imports, enclavement and the associated adaptive strategies have been practiced in all these
civilizations for many hundreds of years before the coming of European
colonialism. The Europeans, and later the Americans, brought in products,

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peoples, and national flags new to those civilizations. They also brought
out many new to the West. And this kind of exchange of cultural 'novelties'
has been going on for a long time, as the ancient references to Europe's
'luxury trade' with the orient indicate. This trade has left its own record in
the many loan words in European languages for pepper, cinnamon,
nutmeg, cloves, gold, diamonds, pearls, precious stones, ivory, silks, and
cottons. The record continues to grow with the entry into English of such
words as sitar, tabla, yoga, swami, ashram, ahimsa, satyagraha, and many
others. The cultural processes for dealing with the reception and assimilation of these 'novelties' within each civilization have also been developed
as distinctive aspects of its own historic growth and transformations. To
assume that these processes originate with the 'modern' European intrusions is simply 'temporal ethnocentrism'.31
J. H. Plumb, the historian, has recently published a set of lectures on
The Death of the Past in which Comte's law of intellectual progress is
brought up to date with great eloquence, erudition, and sophistication.32
The progress of rationalism and science, argues Plumb, has made obsolete
the religious-metaphysical interpretations of the past as a sanction for the
present or as a source for divining a millenial manifest or hidden destiny.
Men and women today are not conditioned in their daily lives to a world that is
tied to an imperceptiblychangingpast, in which the patternsof work, the relationship
betweenfathersand children,or even betweenthe social classes, possess the sanctityof
tradition. Life is change, uncertainty,and only the presentcan have validityand that,
maybe, not for long. The consequence, of course, is to accept a similar attitude in
ideas of conduct, in the concepts of social structureor family life. They can be judged
by what they do, but lack validitybecausethey have been. So we arewitnessingthe dissolution of the conditionswhich tied man to his past and gave him his Janusface [Plumb
pp. 58-9].

The past is dead, long live the present! And scientific history, 'which
(is)... so deeply concerned with the past, has, in a sense, helped to destroy
it as a social force, as a synthesizing and comprehensive statement of
human destiny' (p. 136).
But the scientific historian can no more than Comte give up his saving
remnant of a religious-metaphysical view of man's past and future,
albeit a universal and rationalistic 'religion of humanity'.
Any historianwho is not blindly prejudicedcannot but admit that the ordinaryman
and woman, unless they should be caughtup in a murderousfield of war, are capableof
securing a richer life than their ancestors. (There is more food in the world, more oppor31 Sylvia Thrupp has introduced the phrase 'temporal ethnocentrism' in this sense. See her
'A Skirmish with Tradition' (MS.). On the luxury trade with the orient see R. M. Wheeler,
Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers (London, Bell, 1954); and P. Wheatley, The Golden
Khersonese(University of Malaya Press, 1961); M. Singer, 'Passage to More than India: A
Sketch of Changing European and American Images of India', in Language and Areas:
Studies Presented to George V. Bobrinskoy(Chicago, 1967).
32J. H. Plumb, The Death of the Past (Boston, 1970).

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tunity of advancement,greaterareasof libertyin ideas and in living than the worldhas

ever known: art, music, literaturecan be enjoyedby tens of millions,not tens of thousands. This has been achievednot by clingingto conservativetraditionor by relyingon
instinct or emotion, but by the applicationof human ingenuity,no matter what the
underlyingmotive might be.) The great extension of rationalismhas been a cause and
a consequenceof this development.In field afterfield,rationalismhas provedits worth.
It still has vast areasleft to conquerin politics and social organizationwhichmay prove
beyond its capacity,owing to the aggressiveinstinctsbuilt so deeplyinto man's nature.
Nevertheless,the historianmust stressthe success,as well as point out the failure.Here
is a message of the past which is as clear, but far more true, than the message wrung
from it by our ancestors.The past can be used to sanctifynot authoritynor morality
but those qualitiesof the humanmind which have raisedus from the forest and swamp
to the city, to build a qualifiedconfidencein man's capacity to order his life and to
stress the virtues of intellect, of rational behavior.And this past is neitherpagan nor
Christian,it belongsto no nation and no class, it is universal;it is humanin the widest
sense of that term [Plumb,pp. 140-1].

If the analysis of the 'traditionalization' of innovations in India has any

validity, then Plumb's announcement of the death of the past may be premature and exaggerated. For this analysis suggests that life is always
'change and uncertainty' and that it derives meaning and validity not from
'scientific history' but from the cultural philosophy-the world view and
value system-of a society. The fact that one society's cultural philosophy
bestows meaning and validity on incessant change and the present, and
another's bestows it on the traditional past, does not enable us easily to
decide which is the 'scientifically true' cultural philosophy. It may be as
great a myth for one society to assume that it can get along without any
traditions, except 'the tradition of the new', as it is for another to assume
that all change is eternal recurrenceof an ancestral past.
Myths or no, these two contrasting cultural philosophies lead to contrasting attitudes towards modernization. The interesting comparative
cultural problem is not especially the nature of these contrasts in cultural
philosophy or in attitudes toward modernization but the complementary
questions: how does a society with a 'traditionalistic' cultural philosophy
deal with change and innovation? And, how does a society whose cultural
philosophy attaches supreme value to 'progress' deal with tradition? The
answers to these questions will probably show greater affinity between the
'traditionalistic' and 'progressive' cultural philosophies at the living,
contextual level than is apparent at the textual level. For India, at least,
this contextual approach suggests that its traditionalistic cultural philosophy, which Weber has called the 'theodicy of the caste system', is capable
of becoming a 'theodicy' for a changing industrial system.
For Madras industrial leaders this 'great transformation' is taking
place within two or three generations as they assimilate their innovative
industrial roles to the 'traditional' structures of joint family, caste, ritual
and belief. They do this not by rejectingthe existence and value of novelty

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or their cultural traditions but by making a series of adaptive adjustments

both in industry and in the 'traditional' structures. In the long-run cosmic
time-perspective of Hindu cosmology these innovations and adjustments
may look like the ephemeral 'appearances' of an absolute reality, or the
recurring 'disorders' of a Kali age. In the short-run time-perspective of
human life and cultural history, however, these changes are very 'real' and
'progressive' even to a devout Hindu. To 'traditionalize' them is to seek
legitimacy and meaning for them in an accepted world view and value
system.

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