Subject Name Sociology

Paper Name Sociology of India

Module Name/Title Village studies in India

Pre-requisites Understanding of the institutionalization of Sociology, the role of colonialism

and the role of state.

Objectives To what extent does the ‘village’ in India play a role in creating, legitimating
and representing its identity?

Mapping the growth of sociology discipline in India, through the rich

intellectual debate on village studies.

Help students of sociology examine the way sociologists in India, engaged

with ‘India’ as a category of analysis.

It will help students understand the ‘politics’ of process of creating an image

representing the diversity of a country like India.

Keywords Sociological Reality, Investigative Modalities, Book View,

Deterritorialized

Structure of Module / Syllabus of a module (Define Topic / Sub-topic of module)

Village Studies in India Introduction

Section One: Why is the village significant in the imagination of

India?

Section Two: How does the Indian state perceive the ‘village’ and
what is the nature of its interventions with regard to it?

Section Three: How have the social scientists, especially social

anthropologists and sociologists perceived ‘Village’ in their
analysis of India?

Conclusion: Is there still relevance for Village Studies in India?

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Principal Investigator Sujata Patel Professor, Department of Sociology,

University of Hyderabad
Paper Coordinator Anurekha Chari Wagh Assistant Professor, Department of
Sociology, Savitribai Phule Pune
Univiersity
Content Writer/Author Anurekha Chari Wagh Assistant Professor, Department of
(CW) Sociology, Savitribai Phule Pune
Univiersity
Content Reviewer (CR) Anurekha Chari Wagh Assistant Professor, Department of
Sociology, Savitribai Phule Pune
Univiersity
Language Editor (LE) Erika Mascarenhas Senior English Teacher, St. Joseph
Convent High School, Pune
 

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Table of Contents: 
 
1. Introduction

2. Section One: Why is the village significant in the imagination of India?

3. Section Two: How does the Indian state perceive the ‘village’ and what
is the nature of its interventions with regard to it?

4. Section Three: How have the social scientists, especially social

anthropologists and sociologists perceived ‘Village’ in their analysis of
India?

5. Conclusion: Is there still relevance for Village Studies in India?

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Village Studies in India

Introduction

It is important to recognize that for the social scientists in India, village has been not only an
important objective empirical reality, but also a critical sociological reality, the base of a number
of methodological and theoretical conceptualizations. The genre referred to as ‘village studies’,
has given a very significant identity to sociology practiced in India, which is reflected in the vast
body of sound academic debates engaging with the ‘sociological reality of villages in India’.
Within the history of sociology in India, the decades of the 1950s and 1960s is recognized for its
stimulating, insightful and academically enriching conceptualizations referred to as ‘village
studies’, that has played an important role in establishing a sound disciplinary tradition of
enquiry. Drawing upon the works of the scholars, part of the ‘village studies’ genre and others
who have engaged with it, this module on Village studies in India deals with four broad
questions:

 One, why is the village significant in the imagination of India?

 Two, how does the Indian state perceive the ‘village’ and what is the nature of its
interventions? and

 Three, how have the social scientists, especially social anthropologists and sociologists
perceived ‘Village’ in their analysis of India?

 Four, is there still relevance for Village Studies in India?

Engaging with these questions will help students of sociology to understand:

 To what extent does the ‘village’ in India plays a role in creating, legitimating and
representing its identity?

 Mapping the growth of sociology discipline in India, through the rich intellectual debate
on village studies.

 Help students of sociology to examine the way sociologists in India, engaged with ‘India’
as a category of analysis.

 It will help students understand the ‘politics’ of process of creating an image representing
the diversity of a country like India.

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It is important to understand that engaging with the Indian state, especially its policies,
programmes and visions, specific to the village, will help us to conceptualise where and how the
village fits in the larger framework of the Indian nation. Finally, an analysis of the works of
scholars working on ‘villages’ in India, will reflect on how they have dealt with issues of caste,
kinship, gender, economy, religion, culture, power and politics structured within villages, and
what are the methodological challenges and theoretical contributions made by the scholars.
Further, it will also help us in mapping the manner in which, sociology in India, furthered and
developed. This module will have three sections each one dealing with the questions posed
above and will be followed by a concluding section, which will discuss the relevance of village
studies in India.

Section 1: Why is the village significant in the imagination of India?

The idea of village as the signifier of Indian society is a result of colonial ‘investigative
modalities’. What does the process refer to? In his book Colonialism and its Forms of
Knowledge: The British In India, Cohn defined ‘investigative modalities’ as a ‘..… definition of
a body of knowledge that is needed, the procedures by which appropriate knowledge is gathered,
its ordering and classification and how it is transferred into usable forms such as published
reports, statistical returns, historians, gazetteers, legal codes and encyclopedias’ (Cohn 1996:
5). The knowledge produced and classified facilitates control over the vast complex diverse
social, economic and political world of India. Thus village came to be represented within the
colonial social morphology and had a prime place within the theoretical and historical debates of
the day.

Thus it is important to recognize that the ‘idea’ of village in terms of its ideological character had
colonial origins. Breman (1997: 16) argues that the idea of village was institutionalized by the
colonizers as representing:

1. Archaic and primary nucleus of Indian society

2. An autonomous politico-administrative unit
3. Economically self sufficient entity
To the above were added features such as subsistence agriculture, low technology crafts and
services, timelessness of life styles and immobility of people tied to land. Such a perspective
influenced nationalist thinking and one could see national identity as a projection of ‘Village’ as
representing repository of civilizational ideals of Indian nation. Village thus became the epitome

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of India’s golden past with its suggestions of egalitarianism (overt or covert), primitive
democracy and pristine harmony (Thakur 2014).

The ‘village in national imaginations’, was the product of the British colonial rule and through
the writings of the colonial administrators that India was constructed – as the land of ‘village
republics’. India was essentialized into a land of villages, where the British colonial rulers-
imputed qualities of autonomy, stagnation and continuity to the village life in the subcontinent. It
thus helped to justify their rule over the subcontinent. The idea of village- was accepted as given,
characterizing the ‘essential’ Indian realities. It acquired the status of signifier of the authentic
native life, a social and cultural unit uncorrupted by outside influence (Mines and Yazgi 2010).

Thus it is important to recognize that at the time of independence 1947– more than 85 percent
lived in villages, majority of Indian population depended directly on the agrarian economy for
their livelihood. The nationalist movement had emphasized on the resurrection of the agrarian
economy through the Land Reforms legislations and other measures. In the popular imagination
of the people the emblematic kisan (the cultivating peasant) along with the Jawan (the soldier)
was looked upon as a source of strength and stability of the new nation. Within this the Indian
village was a central category in the popular imagining of India, by the Western rulers as also by
the native middle class elite. It was the village, its social structure and economy that signified
the native life and cultural traditions of the subcontinent. In this context one could analyse have
the nationalist leaders have perceived villages, and what this perception implies for their sense
of India?

In this module we shall discuss and analyse three important thinkers and nationalist leaders of
the freedom movement, M.K Gandhi, J. Nehru and B.R Ambedkar. Though in their perception
with regard to the village, they had divergent views, but all three of them believed that villages
are significant in Indian social life, and it is important to analyse it if one wants to understand
‘India’.

For M. K Gandhi, village represented the essential core of Indian-civilization. For him it is a site
of authenticity, where ‘real India lives and dies’. Thus for Gandhi India begins and ends in
villages. Drawing heavily from the romanticization of the village, from the colonial and
orientalist constructs of the Indian past, his idea of village was based on reformist agenda which
had an inbuilt critique of Western modernity. Gandhi believed that though political freedom
could be achieved by overthrowing the colonial rule, the real Swaraj or self- rule as Gandhi

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imagined could be achieved only by restoring the civilization strength of India through revival of
its village communities. ‘The uplift of India depended solely on the uplift of the villages (Jodhka
2002).

J. Nehru, though he recognized the significance of village, for him it represented a ‘traditional’
and ‘backward’ aspect of Indian society, which did not gel with the idea of a modern industrial
India that he hoped to build. Unlike Gandhi, Nehru did not argue for the revival of village rather
emphasized on the need to develop agriculture using technology and by changing the structure of
social relations in the agrarian economy, so as to empower and motivate the peasants (Jodhka
2002).

B.R Ambedkar, presented a Dalitist view of the village, where he argued that the village in India
represented rural civilization based on oppressive social order of caste. For Ambedkar, the
village was ‘the working plant of the Hindu social order, where one could see the Hindu social
order in operation in full swing’. The Indian village for him, did not include the untouchables
who lived outside the village in the margins, in a ghetto. Ambedkar theorized on the fragmented
nature of ‘space’, within village, where it was structured in terms of caste. For Ambedkar the life
in the village was marked by experiences of exclusion, exploitation and untouchability. Thus
Ambedkar did not celebrate the village in India, but did recognize its cultural and political
centrality in the traditional social order (Jodhka 2002).

Ambedkar argues, “This is the village republic of which the Hindus are so proud. What is the
position of the untouchables in this Republic? They are not merely the last but are also the
least……… in this Republic there is no place for democracy. There is no room for equality.
There is no room for liberty and there is no room for fraternity. The Indian village is a very
negation of republic. The republic is an empire of the Hindus over the untouchables, it is a kind
of colonialism of the Hindus designed to exploit the untouchables, the untouchables have no
rights… They have no right because they are outside the village republic; they are outside the
Hindu fold” (Moon 1989:23-26; cited in Jodhka 2002: 3351). Thus it was Ambedkar, who
referred to the village as a cesspool of degradation, corruption and violence. That village India
was able to continue, was because, people had no other option but to stay within the spaces of the
village (Gupta 2005).

Through the colonial encounters there was a perception of the village as representing the glorious
past of India, in post independence India, there was two major developments: one the scholars

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who questioned the myth of self-sufficient village republic, and engaged in rigorous field work
in villages, through participant observations, which was the base of the genre of village studies in
India. Two, efforts by the Indian state to deal with ‘underdevelopment’ within villages in India,
so as to make them ‘modern’, a vision to build ‘modern India’, this demanded of social scientists
including sociologists to undertake analysis of villages so as to generate data that could be used
for planning by the Indian state.

Section Two: How does the Indian state perceive the ‘village’ and what is the nature of its
interventions with regard to it?

For the newly emerging Nation states- Third World Countries- dependence of large proportions
of their populations on their stagnant agrarian economies. The primary agenda for the new
political regimes was the transformation of their ‘backward’ and ‘stagnant’ economies. Though
the strategies differed, ‘modernization’ and ‘development’ became common programmes in most
of the Third World countries, including India. In the post-independence period, the village
project became a template for nation building. Thus the village came to be the ‘laboratory of
directed cultural change’ (Dube 1992).

Thus in the post Independent India, the centrality of village in the nationalist writings was
translated into concrete programmes and policies for the rural and social change after India’s
independence from the British colonial rule in 1947. The major programmes; such as Land
Reforms, Community Development Programme, Green Revolution, Integrated Rural
Development Programme were implemented to usher in a era of development and
modernization. The need for systematic rural development come to be all the more emphasized
when the planning commission draw up the community development programmer as an
important component of the five year plan (Dube 1992). In this endeavour social scientists
played an important role. Srinivas (1975) argues that since independence the need for
information, data and facts from the rural India by the Planning Commission and departments of
Central and State government, pushed the social scientists, especially the economists,
sociologists and political scientists to go to the rural areas, the villages and gather information
scientifically. This information was important as the machineries of the government planned how
to allocate resources for development and analyse how and whether different sections of people
were benefitting from the development programmes. Breman (1997: 15-75) argues that state led
rural development was critical. According to him the discourse on ‘rural development’, that is
‘village developmentalised’, encompasses – ‘the village colonised’, ‘the village nationalized’ and
‘the village anthropologised’.

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Thakur (2014: 11-12) develops an interesting argument, where he states that the intervention of
the state through the policies of rural development has changed the empirical and conceptual
nature of village in India. It is important to realize that village studies in India have to engage
with different parameters of defining village, as the rural development discourse is changing the
very meaning of village. In India, village is employed to describe a state of either presence,
absence or as degrees of development. Thus, rural development is the medium in which village is
placed in relation to national development. What is interesting is that, the state through its policy
of rural development conceptualizes ‘village’ as a typical common ‘the village’- for the purpose
of rural development.

According to him, villages in India are structured as ‘statist’ projects of rural development, thus
focusing only on the underdevelopment/undevelopment aspect of it and obliterating its diversity
and specificity. It encourages the formation of a unified, monolithic village India- dependent on
policy initiative from the state. In this context it is important to focus on the nexus between
sociological representation of village and policy making exercise in the context of rural
development.

It is important to add the argument of Breman (1997:59), to this. According to him though the
state through its policies creates a ‘monolithic village’; we need to recognize that the village also
redefines the state. Thus the ‘state is not only present in the village but the village also penetrates
into the state’. Thus as sociologists interested in village studies, one could intervene and engage
with the changing political cultural reality of the village (Thakur 2014). The question here is how
the scholars have perceived ‘village’ in India thereby building up the intellectual debate on
village studies in India.

Section Three: How have the social scientists, especially social anthropologists and
sociologists perceived ‘Village’ in their analysis of India?

For social scientists village became a convenient methodological entry point into the social,
cultural and economic life of the nation. It came to represent India in a microcosm- an
‘invaluable observation centre’ where one could see, observe and participate. Based on such
participant observation, reflect and theorise. Beteille (1966, 1974), while analyzing the
intellectual tradition of village studies in India, argues that the importance of the village within
Indian civilization is to be understood not simply in demographic but also normative terms. The

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village was not merely a place where people lived; it had a design in which were reflected the
basic values of Indian civilization. A large number of village studies were carried out by social
anthropologists during the 1950s and 1960s which tried to understand the fundamental nature of
social relations in the Indian society. According to Beteille the two important focuses of village
studies include; one documenting the nature of traditional social life of the non-western world
and two, the concern in the social sciences for the agenda of development study the ‘real;’ India,
its social organization, and cultural life (Beteille 1966, 1974, 2006).

An important issue to be dealt with is the question; whether a village in India has a ‘sociological
reality’? Sharma (1969) based upon the debate between Louis Dumont and David Pocock and F
G Bailey in the Contributions to Indian Sociology, discussed the critical question whether village
in India has a sociological reality. According to Sharma, both Dumont and Pocock deny
‘sociological reality’ to the village in India. According to them, the primary factor of social
organization is kinship and caste, and not the village. Sharma counters that by drawing upon the
works by sociologists S.C Dube and M.N Srinivas and argues that despite multiple group
membership of the people, a village in India has its distinct entity and we cannot deny
sociological reality. What does one mean by sociological reality? It is an abstract idea in the
mind of the sociologist, which is formulated on the basis of one’s observations of the whole
complex of social relationships that exist in a unit such as village (Sharma 1999: pp 1351).

In post independence India, one of the earliest push towards village studies was the demand of
planning machinery for data on the villages for the purposes of designing development
programmes. Srinivas (1975) argues that the focus of these studies were the economic lives of
the people- so as to document the imminent economic problems of the rural people. The
economics and material well being of the village became the focus of village studies undertaken.
By the 1950s the minimum of basic knowledge had been accumulated, at any rate, to attempt
estimating the national income of rural India with reasonable precision, to formulate plans and
programmes for India’s rural development, and to sponsor studies on an all-India scale for the
planned development of India. It was unfortunate that the economists have ignored socio-
cultural matrix of village community and the sociologists and social anthropologists have
ignored the economic and class matrixes while conducting village studies. According to Srinivas
this mechanical exclusion of one or the other aspect of social reality and dichotomizing of social
world of village life has created a peculiar distortion in our comprehension of rural social
structure and rural social change (1975).

The earliest village studies in India, were done by agricultural economists, which included
scholars like H H Mann and Gilbert Slater (Hockings 1999). Srinivas (1975) argues that it was

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the work of W.H.Wiser and Charlotte Wiser, on the ‘Hindu Jajmani System’ (1936, Lucknow)
and ‘Behind the Mud Walls’ (1960), which was very important. Why? The reason is that they
used participant observation and spend years in the village, Karimpur, to gather insights farmed
within larger macro framework. For Srinivas, such work presented ‘a picture of the village life in
the subcontinent, the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm’ (1975:1387).

The period around 1950 was very significant from the point of view of village studies in India,
where the focus was to select one village and examine and analyse it. S. C. Dube was engaged in
the study of two Deccan villages Dewara and Shamirpet, M.N Srinivas was engaged in the study
of Rampura in Mysore and had completed the study of Religion and Society Among the Coorgs
of South India. David G. Mandelbaum was engaged in the Kota village of the Nilgiri Hills,
Morris E .Opler in the village of Senapur in the Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Kathleen Gough in the
village of Kumbapettao in the Tanjor district of Madras state, Mckim Marriott in the village of
Kishan Garhi in Utter Pradesh, F.G Bailey in the village of Bisipara and Bolscoopa in the hills of
Orissa, Alan R. Beads in the village Hattarahalli in the Mysore state, G.Morris Carstairs in the
village of the former state of Udaipur, Marian W. Smith in some Punjab village, Jyotirmoyee
Sharma in a village in West Bengal, W.H Newell in a Gaddi village in Himalayas, Eric J. Miller
in the countryside in north Kerala and Colin Rosser in the remote village of Malana in the far-off
Kula valley of the Himalayas (Jodhka 2012, Singh 2009, Shah 2005, Rao 1974).

Scholars in India who have done commendable theorizations on Villages include M.N Srinivas,
S C Dube, Yogesh Atal and Ramakrishna Mukerjee. These have highlighted the need for
methodological, scientific and extensive study of Agrarian India, experiencing transformation
under the impact of directed social change ushered in by the Government since Independence.
As far as village studies are concerned the year 1955 was extremely important with immense
significance for Indian anthropology and sociology, when seminal books on Indian villages were
published. It included S.C Dube’s Indian Village, D.N Majumdar (ed), Rural Profiles, M.
Marriot’s (ed) volume on Village India and M. N Srinivas (ed) India’s Villages (Beteille 1974,
Hockings 1999).

M. N Srinivas’ works on villages focuses on the idea that; as villages represented the
‘microcosm’, by studying a village, one could generalize about the ‘social processes and
problems to be found occurring in greater parts of India. Srinivas (1975) generally, warns
sociologists against the assumptions that what is written is true and the older the manuscript, the
more true its contents. For Srinivas, Indology can develop only if along with ‘book view’ of
India, comprehensive study of contemporary Indian reality is carried out through field view. He
strongly argues for scientific, empirical village studies to correct the ‘book view’ and ‘upper-

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caste-view’ of many phenomenon of Indian society (1975). Srinivas, while reflecting on field
work, especially participant observation argued that social sciences in India, does not have a
strong field work tradition and this reflects on its growth and development. Such a perspective
has a number of impacts: one has alienated social scientists from grassroots reality and two,
made them ignorant about the complex interaction of economic, political and social forces at
local levels. This had made the ‘educated elites’ of India, who generally make up the class of
social scientists regard the ‘peasant as ignorant, tradition-bound and resistant to progress
(Srinivas 1975: 1389). Gupta (2005) argues that social anthropology was challenged of its
‘romanticised’ notions of village in India, especially with the institutionalization of ‘field view’
perspective.

S.C Dube on village studies in India, justifies for the change in focus of the Social
Anthropologists from tribal studies to village studies by arguing that there is a need for a clear
conceptual framework for studying both the structural matrix of the Village community and the
change it is experiencing. For Dube, a systematic study of village communities will provide the
requisite background data from which more purposeful planning can emerge. Dube argues that
S.C Dube in his seminal work Indian Village 1955, by presenting the physical, demographic and
historical details and linking it to the social, economic, caste, political, ritual structures to the
ethos and ambience, is able to provide a vivid portrait of the village (Dube 2007: 497). For
Yogesh Atal, the two questions that were his main concern, include one the issue of
representativeness of a village- can a village represent the whole nation? And two, the challenges
faced in developing a conceptual framework of a village. In situations where a village in the
neighbourhood of Delhi is compared with a village in Tamil Nadu, the utility of such a
comparision is uncertain and representativeness of the compared villages is very much open to
question. Further one also needs to recognize that provinces are organized for administrative
purposes and their boundaries are defined mainly geographically- but cultural boundaries do not
necessarily coincide with the geographical (Atal 1993). Thus one has to work towards
developing Indian Village as a conceptual category. Ramakrishna Mukherjee, had a very
different approach to village studies. Mukherjee provides a historical evolution of village studies
in India. He focuses on rural discontent over poverty and squalor– forced the British government
to take into consideration the agrarian crisis- appointed the first Royal Commission on
Agriculture 1926. According to him, ‘Village studies’ should be used to collect data to
understand rural life for better administration purposes (Mukherjee, 1981).

In the year 1957 important works include F.G Bailey’s (1957) caste and the Economic frontier,
Ramakrishna Mukherjee’s (1957) The Dynamics of Rural Society, analysis using a historical
perspective and Morris G. Carters’(1957) The Twice Born : A study of a community of high caste
Hindus. Further the year of 1958 saw the publication of three remarkable village studies: S C

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Dube’s (1958) India’s Changing Villages was the first full length study of the impact of planned
economic development and directed social change on an Indian village. Second, D. N.
Majumdar’s (1958) Caste and Communication in an Indian Village is baseline study seeking to
provide the benchmark data on rural progress and social awareness. Third , Oscar Lewis’s (1958)
Village Life in North India this was the study seeking some understanding of those aspect of
village life which would be germen to the problems facing the community development projects
and the program evaluation organization (Jodhka 2012, Singh 2009, Shah 2005, Atal 1993,Rao
1974).

T. Scarlet Epstein’s (1962) Economic and Social Change in South India was important study
using economic anthropological study of the peasant community (Hockings 1999). Other
important works include Alan R. Beals’s (1962) Gopalpur and Y. B. Damale and Iravati Karve’s
(1963) Group Relations in Village Community. The year 1965 witnessed the publication of some
significant village studies which broke new ground in the field of exposed new potential and
possibilities of Indian village studies by exploring newer horizon. These are Andre Bêteille’s
(1965) “caste, class and power’’, T.N.Madan’s (1965) “Family and Kinship’’. In 1969
important volume “Rural sociology in India” edited by A.R. Desai (1969) was published. In
1970 there are five books that engaged with the debate on village studies in India. It included
works such as M.S.A. Rao’s (1970) “Urbanization and Social Change –a study of a Rural
Community on a Metropolitan Fringe” K. Ishwaren’s (1970) edited volume “Change and
Continuity in Indian’s Village”, Y. M. Sirsikar’s (1970) ‘The Rural Elite in a Developing Society
–A Study in Political Sociology’, David G. Mandelbaum’s (1970) “society in Indian” and Louis
Dumont’s (1970) “Homo Hierarchicus” (Jodhka 2012, Singh 2009, Shah 2005, Atal 1993, Rao
1974).

The aim for presenting a limited chronological order of village studies in India, is to highlight
that in the decades of 1950s to early 1970s, the focus of sociologists and social anthropologists
was on villages and through the genre of; village studies in India’, a rich intellectual heritage was
being built up. Since mid 1970s the focus on villages was lost. It was as if in the words of
scholars like Diane P. Mines and Nicolas Yazgi (2010) “villages are desperately lost objects in
anthropology of India, due to history of ideas beginning with Dumont but continuing through
contemporary theoretical concerns that emphasis the deterritorialization that accompanies
broader cultural flows, it has become tantamount to taboo to write about village as such even
though, the vast majority of Indian population still has powerful links to villages, either as their
primary locus of action, or through more widely embedded nexuses of practices and
representations”. Thus the question is, are village studies still relevant in India?

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Conclusion: Is there still relevance for Village Studies in India?

Increasingly there is a debate with regard to the relevance of village studies in India. Gupta
(2005) in his analysis argues strongly that in recent times there is withering of the village.
According to him “the village is no longer a site where futures can be planned’ and further ‘the
village is shrinking as a sociological reality, though it still exists as a geographical space. For
Gupta, one can observe the declining importance of the village in India’s national culture and
also in contemporary political debates in the country do not have a rural character at all. Such a
lack of focus reflects an idea that ‘though the majority of Indians live in villages, the village
leaves little impression upon the national culture today”. Further this change in the shift of focus
on villages can be observed in all forms of village life. Additionally, Gupta argues that the
implementation of Panchayati Raj and the provision for the participation of women in the local
self-governing bodies has certainly affected the nature of leadership, pattern of group dynamics
and factionalism in the village social structure. It is thus important to examine the processes by
which villagers are leaving their agrarian pasts for an uncertain non-agrarian present.
Singh (2009) observes this fact in a similar manner that “the traditional notion of village studies
as being a study of the one end of the rural-urban continuum has now increasingly become
unviable due to the rapid change in the rural economy, and the forces of migration, information
revolution, and the globalization taking place. In most Indian villages the need for new
innovation, mixes of theoretical paradigms, methods of research, and conceptual categories has
never been as imperative as it is now”. Notwithstanding, Shah (2005) still has enthusiasm and
faith in village studies when he writes “the rural sector is of course shrinking, but is still quite
huge and occupies a crucial place in the national economy, polity and society. It is also changing
in many respects. We need to understand the reality of both continuity and change’.
In conclusion one could argue that that we need an interdisciplinary research on villages in India,
where the focus would not only be of application but also of theorization. Further, as Thakur
(2004), argues we should recognize that the vernacular literature – represented in the form of
poetry, short stories, novels and other genre, has engaged with the rich diversity and complexity
defining villages in India. It is quite surprising that professional sociologists and/or historians
have not dealt with this literature in their conceptualizations.

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