Salient Features of Indian Society and Culture

What the official syllabus says

UPPCS Main Examination, General Studies I.

Salient features of Indian Society and culture.

Topics in detail

This is the base of the society section of the paper. Know the institutions of Indian society, how they are changing, and the concepts sociologists use to describe them.

Diversity and unity

• Forms of diversity: religious, linguistic, regional, ethnic, caste and tribal
• Language families of India (Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman) and the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule
• Bonds of unity: geography, shared history, pilgrimage networks, festivals, the Constitution
• Pluralism, tolerance and syncretism (Bhakti and Sufi traditions)

Caste and class

• Varna and jati; features of the caste system (hierarchy, endogamy, occupation, purity and pollution)
• Jajmani system; dominant caste (M. N. Srinivas)
• Sanskritisation, Westernisation and modernisation as processes of change
• Caste in politics and in the economy today; the rise of class divisions

Family, marriage and kinship

• Joint and nuclear families and the shift between them
• Forms of marriage; marriage laws; changes in age at marriage and choice of partner
• Kinship patterns in north and south India

Village, town and tribe

• The Indian village: social structure, panchayats, change after land reform and the Green Revolution
• Tribal society: Scheduled Tribes (Article 342), Fifth and Sixth Schedules, issues of land, forest and identity
• Rural-urban continuum and migration

Religion and culture

• Major religions of India and their contribution to culture
• Festivals, fairs and pilgrimage; the Kumbh Mela
• Material and non-material culture; tangible and intangible heritage
• Indian values: family, respect for elders, non-violence, coexistence

Social stratification and inequality

• Bases of stratification: caste, class, gender, ethnicity, region
• Untouchability and its abolition (Article 17); continuing discrimination
• Social mobility through education, migration and occupation

Social movements

• Reform and protest movements: anti-caste movements, peasant movements, tribal movements
• New social movements: environment, women, civil liberties, consumer rights

Contemporary features and change

• Impact of education, the media and technology on social life
• Changing status of women, youth and the elderly
• Secular and democratic values in a traditional society

Overlaps

The next pages of this paper take up specific issues: women, population, poverty and communalism, regionalism and secularism. Uttar Pradesh's social structure, festivals, fairs, folk dances and dialects are in General Studies V.