Written as a tribute to the contributions of Dipankar Gupta to the study of Indian society and the discipline of sociology in India, this festschrift volume brings together essays of some of the best-known scholars in the social sciences. Some of these essays are based on rich empirical work, while others explore conceptual domains of the contemporary processes of social change. Still others provide critical commentaries on the functioning of the Indian state and its various administrative organs. Woven around the themes of modernity, identity, and citizenship, the volume explores the dynamics ... More

Written as a tribute to the contributions of Dipankar Gupta to the study of Indian society and the discipline of sociology in India, this festschrift volume brings together essays of some of the best-known scholars in the social sciences. Some of these essays are based on rich empirical work, while others explore conceptual domains of the contemporary processes of social change. Still others provide critical commentaries on the functioning of the Indian state and its various administrative organs. Woven around the themes of modernity, identity, and citizenship, the volume explores the dynamics of democratic politics and changing social order of Indian society. The Western idea of modernity had been a source of fascination for a large majority of the nationalist leadership and the newly emergent middle classes of India at the time of its independence in 1947. It was perhaps relatively easier to frame a ‘modern’ Constitution after extensive deliberations with a wide range of interests and opinions. However, institutionalization of an organizational framework where there is a healthy democratic political system and a culture of social relations informed by the modern idea of citizenship has been much more difficult. While, on the one hand, these emergent complexities of the Indian experience raise some very important practical/political questions, on the other, the process of change and churning that Indian society has been undergoing over the last five or six decades also throw-up a fascinating set of questions for the social scientists to engage with. The scholarship of Dipankar Gupta and of those who have contributed to this volume is a good example of this engagement.