Assignment on Social structure of INDIA

Submitted by: Siraj Haider

Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics

India''s social structure is a unique blend of diverse religions,cultures,and racial groups.Historically, India has been a hospitableland to numerous immigrants and hence fell an easy prey to invaders from distant parts of Asia and Europe. The cultural patterns of these alien settlers have, over the past many centuries, been interwoven with the native culture to produce India''s glorious cultural heritage. The uniqeness of Indian social structure lies in it''s unity amidst diversity.The population of India is racially diverse combining elementdnof six main racial types viz,the Nagrito the proto Australoid ,the Mongoloid, the Mediterranean, the western Brachycephals and the Nordic. All the great religion of the world,viz, the Hindus ,the Muslims, the Christians, etc,are found here. There are 18 major literary languages, apart from numerous other languages and dialects. There is striking diversity between various communities and groups in kinships and marriages rites,customs, inheritance and modes of living. Diversity is also seen in the pattern of rural as well as urban settlements, community life, cultural and social behaviour as also in the institutional framework.

The ethnic and linguistic diversity of India is proverbial and rivals the diversity of continental Europe which is not a single nation-State like India. India contains a large number of different regional, social, and economic groups, each with distinctive or dissimilar customs and cultural practices. Region-wise, differences between social structures of Indias north and south are marked, especially with respect to kinship systems and family relationships. Religious differences are pervasive through out the country. There is the Hindu majority and the large Muslim minority or second majority. There are other Indian groupsBuddhists, Christians, Jains, Jews, Parsis, Sikhs, and practitioners of tribal religionsand hundreds of sub-religions or religious communities within larger communities like the Arya Samajis, Sanatanis among the Hindus; Shias and Sunnis among the

Muslims; Monas and Keshdharis among Sikhs and hundreds of other castes, subcastes, communities, vegetarians and non-vegetarians from each religion. Each group is proud of its faith and very sure of its superiority over other faiths. A highly noticeable feature of Indias social structure is highly inequitable division of the nations wealth. Access to wealth and power varies sharply. Extreme differences in socio-economic status are glaringly visible among the smallest village communities to metropolitan cities and mega-towns. The poor and the rich live side by side in urban and rural areas. Prosperous, well-fed, perfumed men or women in chauffeured luxury cars passing and even living in narrow streets with poor, starving, ill-nourished, ill-clad or even half-naked men, women, children dwelling on their pavements and bathing in dirty water of its flowing or even clogged drains are common sights. Contrasting extreme poverty and enormous wealth and obvious class distinctions are egregiously visible in almost every settlement in India. Indian city dwellers are often nostalgic about simple village life, but Indian villages have been losing both simplicity and gaiety of life and are boiling in the caste cauldron of petty rivalries. They are afflicted with addiction to all kinds of drugs like alcohol, opium and heroin. Roads, television and mobile phones are now changing the village scene though dirt, squalor and disease still vitiate rural India. Indian village life is neither simple nor inviting. That is why no villager who has come to the city goes back. According to sociologists: Each village is connected through a variety of crucial horizontal linkages with other villages and with urban areas both near and far. Most villages are characterized by a multiplicity of economic, caste, kinship, occupational, and even religious groups linked vertically within each settlement. Factionalism is a typical feature of village politics. In one

of the first of the modern anthropologi-cal studies of Indian village life, anthropologist Oscar Lewis called this complexity rural cosmopolitanism. Typical Indian villages have clustered dwelling patterns built very close to one another. Sociologists call them nucleated settlements, with small and narrow lanes for passage of people and sometimes carts. Village fields surround these settlements. On the hills of central, eastern, and far northern India, dwellings are more spread out. In wet States of West Bengal and Kerala, houses are a little dispersed; in Kerala, some villages merge into the next village and visitor are not able to see divisions between such villages. In northern and central India, neighbourhood boundaries can be vague. Houses of Dalits are ordinarily situated on outskirts of nucleated settlements. Distinct Dalit hamlets, however, are rare. Contrastingly, in the south, where socio-economic divisions and caste pollution observances tend to be stronger than in the north, Dalit hamlets are set at a little distance from other caste neighbourhoods. Bigger landowners do not cultivate lands but hire tenant farmers to do this work. Artisans in pottery, wood, cloth, metal, and leather, although diminishing, continue to eke out their existence in contemporary Indian villages like centuries past. Religious observances and weddings are occasions for members of various castes to provide customary ritual goods and services. Accelerating urbanization is fast transforming Indian society. More than 26 per cent of the countrys population is urban. Indias larger cities have been growing at twice the rate of smaller towns and villages. About half of the increase is the result of rural-urban migration, as villagers seek better lives for themselves in the cities Most Indian cities are densely populated. New Delhi, for example, had 6,352 people per square kilometre in 1991. Congestion, noise, traffic jams, air pollution,

grossly inadequate housing, transportation, sewerage, electric power, water supplies, schools, hospitals and major shortages of key necessities characterize urban life. Slums and pavement dwellers constantly multiply so also trucks, buses, cars, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles, and scooters, spewing uncontrolled fumes, all surging in haphazard patterns along with jaywalking pedestrians and cattle