COMMENTARY

In Pursuit of Modernity
Shachinder Arya

This article uses personal history

to interrogate modernity. Is
modernity a polar opposite of
tradition? Or do they work in
tandem? And in what ways?

Shachinder Arya (shachinderarya@gmail.

com) is a research scholar, Central Institute
of Education, Department of Education,
University of Delhi.
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

april 9, 2016

et me begin with a simple question,

who am I?
I have been living in Delhi since
childhood. While travelling in metro trains
and state transport buses as a daily commuter, I have noticed youngsters, wearing T-shirts with the logo, Who Am I? I
find the logo very interesting. With subaltern voices claiming their identities, the
question posed in the logo seems a sociological onemore than a philosophical
quest. My interest, though, is in the possible answers. I have mine. That is one
answer, not the only. For this quest, I need
to know myself. Those who know themselves, know the outside world better.
My father was born in the Bahraich
District of Uttar Pradesh (UP). The states

vol lI no 15

ruling party, the Samajwadi Party,

projects UP as Ummeedon ka Pradesh
(the state of hopes). Three decades ago,
though, my dadi (grandmother) wanted
to send my father to a location very far
from his home district. This was first
ever migration from my paternal family
for education. In the frame of gender
studies this was a migration of a male
from Bahraich. How did this migration
shape hisand the later generations
psyche and the aspiration? Before answering this, allow me first to deconstruct this social construction of reality
and we can then see the fragments
of modernity.
Caste and Profession
After reading Charles Darwins The Origin of Species, Herbert Spencer coined
the phrase Survival of the fittest. The
phrase that originated from evolutionary
theory. My fathers migration to another
state, for education, was an evolution for
19

COMMENTARY

my paternal family: it meant joining the

ranks of the fittest.
On the surface, for our grandparents,
this was the first step towards surviving
poverty. The story starts from the fact that
they held no agricultural land. We belong
to the Patwa community. For generations
my family members earned livelihood
by thread weaving. They sold cosmetics
and accessories such as earrings and
necklaces for women. They also sold hosiery products for children (Singh 2005:
114750). Even today, members of the
community travel across villages on
their cycles or by foot to sell their wares.
They visit weekly markets organised by
local bodies, in search of customers.
Traditionally, and going by all sociology
books, caste determines occupation. But my
grandfather chose another path. He was
self-proclaimed halwai (a sweet maker).
He would regularly make jalebis and pedas
during melas (fairs held near village
temples and mosques) and Moharram
julus (procession). This was his first break
with caste tradition. He countered the
homogeneity of community and evoked
the possibility of increasing earnings.
But what was the response from those
who had worked as halwais for generations? Did they welcome him to the
profession? Were they able to distinguish
between the halwai by inheritance (defined by the caste system) and the halwai
from outside the caste (like my grandfather)? If yes, such responses can be
considered modern as well as traditional.
My grandfather chose a profession
that was outside the customs of caste, but
he stuck to caste when it came to finding
partners for his children and arranging
their weddings. I always try to fit my
grandfather in the box of M N Srinivass
great theory of sanskritisation. But have
always failed. How do we slot him?
There is another thought that tugged
me when I looked for answers. Among
my grandfathers children, only my father
went outside the village boundary for
studies. But where exactly is the process
of change here?
A Profession Outside Caste
I assume some important links are still
missing. We need to understand the
cause and impacts of education. This
20

will help to gain insight into what happened when my father went through the
full circle of education.
My father studied Vedas, Upanishads
and other aarshgranths, Vedic texts, at
Antarraashtriya Updeshak Vidyalaya run
by Arya Samaj at Tankarathe birthplace of Swami Dayanand Saraswati
who founded Arya Samaj in 1875. His
learning helped him secure the highlydignified post of a purohit at an Arya
Samaj temple in Delhi. This was the profession he chose for livelihood to raise
and support his family.
Here, for a minute let us recall Michael
Apple who underlined the fact that
knowledge and power are interconnected.
In the context of India, people from
upper castes represent power. They
control knowledge. But Apples theories
cannot help us understand the Arya
Samaj, which was created by Dayanand
Saraswati, who questioned the supremacy
of caste by birth.
I made this point to problematise the
links between education and knowledge
and caste and tradition. In villages, religious books are controlled by a specific
castefor example, Brahmins control
matters related to Hindu religious texts.
Nobody else is allowed to perform
sacred ritual practices such as those
during marriages and deaths. So in my
fathers case, it was next to impossible to
practise as a purohit going by his caste.
But, when he decided to move to Tankara,
not only did he read all those books, but
also started practising as a purohit.
From this vantage point, can I then
make a point that though the books my
father was reading were traditional,
they had a radical effect because they
empowered him to become a purohit,
going against caste strictures?
However beyond this are non-linear
conditions, where we cannot trace the
process of being modern. From the profession my grandfather chose to the one
my father chosegoing against castedesignated strictureswhat are the
similarities we observe? Did they create
a diluted sense of modernity in our
minds or did they do something else?
Here, the binary of tradition and
modern and the dichotomy of rural
and urban do not help much. This is

the point we need to ask ourselves: can

we really know about modernity or
are we left with a fait accompli of just
its facade?
A Place We Never Left
For those who relate social mobility as
a prime characteristic of the modern
society, this could be engaging. My
mother, after marrying my father, moved
to Delhi in the 1980s. There are two
stereotypical ways to read or spilt
her life. One is a traditional practice
where, in patriarchal society, a girl
goes to her husbands house after their
marriage. Second, is a modern phenomenon: my fathers migration starts
from obtaining education to availing a
job opportunity. All these make a blend
of tradition and modernity. The tradition redefines itself with the help of
modernity. And modernity accepts this
for its universal applicability. In this
sense, it also becomes the vantage point
where, as we just saw, the migration of
a male matters.
But the question remains unsolved.
What kind of modernity was this? How
should a sociologist theorise all this?
Here, Satish Deshpande (2004: 47) helps
us continue. He suggests:
We must keep in mind that, the two terms
almost always work in tandem, although
they may not be readily visible. So, if we see
one of them at work, we must search carefully
for the (usually compensating) moves made
by the other.

But the complexity of this process

continues to grow. In short, the answer
pertains to my fathers childhood home.
As we inherit the memory of our ancestral
villages from our parents we are half
urban, half rural. Like our parents, we
all have the same psyche towards home.
We never leave that space emotionally
and mentally, till now. We live both places
at same time and space. We all have two
homes. One is invisible, it is in our
minds, while the second is physically
visible, here in Delhi.
References
Deshpande, Satish (2004): Contemporary India,
Penguin India.
Singh, K S (2005): People of India: Uttar Pradesh,
Volume XLII, Part Three, Anthropological Survey
of India/Manohar Publications.

april 9, 2016

vol lI no 15

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