Paramjit Judge - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Paramjit Judge
Sociological Bulletin, 2015
When scholars and political leaders characterised Indian society as unity in diversity, there wer... more When scholars and political leaders characterised Indian society as unity in diversity, there were simultaneous efforts in imagining India as a civilisational unity also. The consequences of this 'imagination' are before us in the form of the emergence of religious nationalism that ultimately culminated into the partition of the country. Why have I started my discussion with the issue of religious nationalism and partition? The reason is simple. Once we assume that a society like India could be characterised in terms of one caste hierarchical system, we are essentially constructing the discourse of dominant Hindu civilisational unity. Unlike class and gender hierarchies which are exist on economic and sexual bases respectively, all castes cannot be aggregated and arranged in hierarchy along one axis. Any attempt at doing so would amount to the construction of India as essentially the Hindu India. Added to this issue is the second dimension of hierarchy, which could be seen by separating Varna from caste. Srinivas (1977) points out that Varna is fixed, whereas caste is dynamic. Numerous castes comprise each Varna, the exception to which is the Brahmin caste whose caste differences remain within the caste and are unknown to others. We hardly know how to distinguish among different castes of Brahmins, because there is complete absence of knowledge about various castes among them. On the other hand, there is detailed information available about all the scheduled castes and backward classes. In other words, knowledge about castes and their place in the stratification system is predetermined by the enumerating agency. Interestingly, the enumerating agency is state and enumeration began in the nineteenth century under the British rule. Various castes and their position in the hierarchy of castes were carefully and diligently worked out by the administrators with the help of two sources, namely, the available texts and the upper caste Indian civil servants, but might not have been constructed the way Dirks (2001) puts forward in his thesis that caste was essentially a construct of the British. Therefore, caste hierarchy has been handed over to us as episteme-whose textual and empirical bases are well articulated and argued with certain basic agreements among sociologists and social anthropologists. Thus we have two systems of hierarchy within the Hindu tradition. The first is Varna hierarchy comprised by four Varnas, namely, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vashiya and Shudra. There have been differences of brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
Mapping Social Exclusion in India
The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 2010
This article explicates entrepreneurship as a means to empower the underprivileged sections, part... more This article explicates entrepreneurship as a means to empower the underprivileged sections, particularly the scheduled castes, in our society. The cases of the scheduled castes from Jalandhar and Amritsar (cities of Punjab) reveal that they have experienced social, economic and political mobility through entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial activities are, however, unevenly distributed among the rural and urban scheduled castes. It is mainly the two scheduled caste groups, namely, the Ad-dharmi and the Megh, in both the cities, who have ventured into entrepreneurship, largely by diversifying their traditional caste occupations. The Ad-dharmis have modified their skills in handling and processing the rawhides and have started leather-based industries, factories and workshops. The Meghs, who have been engaged as workers in the manufacturing of surgical instruments before migrating to these cities from Sialkot after the partition of India (1947), have excelled in sports goods and sur...
Sociological Bulletin
The debate on citizenship in the Constituent Assembly was overshadowed by the partition of India,... more The debate on citizenship in the Constituent Assembly was overshadowed by the partition of India, which created difficulties in making constitutional provision for citizenship on certain defined criteria. However, it was quite clear to most of the members of the Constituent Assembly that the criteria of citizenship could not be fixed beforehand, as it was not possible to anticipate future developments. Thus, the Constitution empowered the parliament to define citizenship from time to time in the light of changing conditions. Thus began the process of enactments revising the provisions for citizenship, which ultimately culminated into the violation of the Constitution through enactment.
International Migration Review
Dalits, Subalternity and Social Change in India, 2018
In comparison to other Indian states, Punjab is often considered free from acute caste-based ineq... more In comparison to other Indian states, Punjab is often considered free from acute caste-based inequalities and atrocities, even though the caste system exists and prevails in the structure of everyday life of the Punjabis. It has been argued that certain visible changes have occurred among the dalits, a marginalized group in Indian society. But, not all the castes among the dalits have been able to transform their social and economic conditions that could have altered their self-perception, as well as their status. More mobile castes, particularly the Ad-dharmis, have constructed their own distinct and insulated world in which the dalit and self have become coterminous. Urban dalits have undergone rapid change in their conditions, which they have transformed into political empowerment at the local level. Despite the changes however, there are certain aspects of their social life which have not undergone change. Much of this is related to the consciousness of the dalits. The existence...
Any exercise in mapping the current status of any social science discipline is a mammoth task, as... more Any exercise in mapping the current status of any social science discipline is a mammoth task, as it involves the normative concerns as well as the personal perceptions of the sociologist who treads this path. The focus of this paper is on certain challenges that have been posed by the present circumstances that includse globalisation as well as changes that have come about in the Indian polity and society due to other factors. explore and examine the state of sociology and its future in the country.[ Address at the Social Scientists’ Meet on Emerging Problems of Social Sciences in the Context of Globalisation. ICSSR (NW Regional Centre), Chandigarh, July 26, 2005.]
The present paper is a part of the report submitted to the University Grants Commission that fund... more The present paper is a part of the report submitted to the University Grants Commission that funded the project 'Education, Empowerment, Emigration and Entrepreneurship: A Sociological Study of Mobility among the Dalits in Punjab'. The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance provided by Bhupinder Thakur, Gurpreet Singh and Manoj Birdi as research staff. Critical comments of M Rajivlochan are gratefully acknowledged. We are grateful to the referee of this journal for giving useful comments as a result of which we have been able to improve the paper tremendously.
POLITICS AND RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA
The article examines the construction of religious identity among the Sikhs from the socio-histor... more The article examines the construction of religious identity among the Sikhs from the socio-historical perspective. It has been argued that the Sikh identity was constructed as a result of the colonial intervention in which the emphasis turned to the appearance instead of faith as such. The new identity was a product of the politics of the times and it was perpetuated in order to maintain the hegemonic domination. Sikhism, despite its egalitarian ideology, failed to create a casteless community. Discrimination and exclusion of lower castes continued. An empirical investigation into the conditions and perceptions of the lowest caste, namely Mazhabi clearly demonstrated their exclusion, whereas discourse of equality among the Sikhs is used to create a moral community. Despite the equality of worship among the Sikhs, the Mazhabis at the local level are denied the equal religious rights in the gurdwaras (Sikh temple) owned and controlled by the upper dominant castes. Roots of the exclusi...
Sociological Bulletin
This paper examines the issue of India’s development from the perspective of distributive justice... more This paper examines the issue of India’s development from the perspective of distributive justice to assess whether there has been a decline in disparities owing to the development path adopted after the independence. Basing the argument on the two documents of the Government of India which have frankly evaluated the policy of the state policy, it is shown how, despite various changes in the economy, the development process created disparities and became the source of agrarian discontent, particularly the Naxalite movement. In the preliberalisation phase characterised by mixed economy model, the major fault line was the lack of political will coupled with the apathy of administrators. In the post-liberalisation phase, the major issue was that of mal-governance. The paper explores the causes of the failure of the Indian state with regard to distributive justice.
Sociological Bulletin
In a multi-religious social formation the understanding of caste and caste hierarchy requires a d... more In a multi-religious social formation the understanding of caste and caste hierarchy requires a different theoretical and methodological approach from the conventional one. This article examines the case of Punjab society in which Sikhs and Hindus co-exist and the former claim to be an egalitarian religious community. Although caste hierarchies could be multiple in such a setting, the forces influencing dominance and change have remained same. Education and occupational changes have transformed the nature of hierarchy in Punjab owing to which the dalit assertion has increased. At the same time, the domination of Jats, though being frequently challenged, has remained the most potent element in the caste dynamics of Punjab.
Sociological Bulletin
Cet article examine la stratification sociale existante au sein des castes chez les populations n... more Cet article examine la stratification sociale existante au sein des castes chez les populations non hindous. Apres avoir defini l'ideologie et la hierarchie des castes, l'A. analyse ce systeme chez les Sikhs pour comprendre l'emergence de la notion de communalisme au Punjab au 19eme siecle et les tensions engendrees entre Sikhs et Hindous
Sociological Bulletin, 2010
The issue of Sikh identity has never been laid to rest by any section of Sikh religio-political l... more The issue of Sikh identity has never been laid to rest by any section of Sikh religio-political leadership in Punjab. Controlled by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) – a statutory body established through legislative enactment – the identity issue has been swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to another. Instead of recognising diversity in the Sikh tradition, there have been attempts to construct singular identity. Caught between political pragmatism and the extremist threat, the Akali Dal, which controls both political power in the state and the religious affairs through SGPC, has continued to take ambivalent position. This article explores the basic paradox of Sikh identity by delineating how ambivalence creates inclusion and exclusion within the Sikh community and why it remains politically functional for the Sikh leadership, which has never bothered to involve the Sikh masses in the discourse through democratic process.
Sociological Bulletin, 2015
When scholars and political leaders characterised Indian society as unity in diversity, there wer... more When scholars and political leaders characterised Indian society as unity in diversity, there were simultaneous efforts in imagining India as a civilisational unity also. The consequences of this 'imagination' are before us in the form of the emergence of religious nationalism that ultimately culminated into the partition of the country. Why have I started my discussion with the issue of religious nationalism and partition? The reason is simple. Once we assume that a society like India could be characterised in terms of one caste hierarchical system, we are essentially constructing the discourse of dominant Hindu civilisational unity. Unlike class and gender hierarchies which are exist on economic and sexual bases respectively, all castes cannot be aggregated and arranged in hierarchy along one axis. Any attempt at doing so would amount to the construction of India as essentially the Hindu India. Added to this issue is the second dimension of hierarchy, which could be seen by separating Varna from caste. Srinivas (1977) points out that Varna is fixed, whereas caste is dynamic. Numerous castes comprise each Varna, the exception to which is the Brahmin caste whose caste differences remain within the caste and are unknown to others. We hardly know how to distinguish among different castes of Brahmins, because there is complete absence of knowledge about various castes among them. On the other hand, there is detailed information available about all the scheduled castes and backward classes. In other words, knowledge about castes and their place in the stratification system is predetermined by the enumerating agency. Interestingly, the enumerating agency is state and enumeration began in the nineteenth century under the British rule. Various castes and their position in the hierarchy of castes were carefully and diligently worked out by the administrators with the help of two sources, namely, the available texts and the upper caste Indian civil servants, but might not have been constructed the way Dirks (2001) puts forward in his thesis that caste was essentially a construct of the British. Therefore, caste hierarchy has been handed over to us as episteme-whose textual and empirical bases are well articulated and argued with certain basic agreements among sociologists and social anthropologists. Thus we have two systems of hierarchy within the Hindu tradition. The first is Varna hierarchy comprised by four Varnas, namely, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vashiya and Shudra. There have been differences of brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
Mapping Social Exclusion in India
The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 2010
This article explicates entrepreneurship as a means to empower the underprivileged sections, part... more This article explicates entrepreneurship as a means to empower the underprivileged sections, particularly the scheduled castes, in our society. The cases of the scheduled castes from Jalandhar and Amritsar (cities of Punjab) reveal that they have experienced social, economic and political mobility through entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial activities are, however, unevenly distributed among the rural and urban scheduled castes. It is mainly the two scheduled caste groups, namely, the Ad-dharmi and the Megh, in both the cities, who have ventured into entrepreneurship, largely by diversifying their traditional caste occupations. The Ad-dharmis have modified their skills in handling and processing the rawhides and have started leather-based industries, factories and workshops. The Meghs, who have been engaged as workers in the manufacturing of surgical instruments before migrating to these cities from Sialkot after the partition of India (1947), have excelled in sports goods and sur...
Sociological Bulletin
The debate on citizenship in the Constituent Assembly was overshadowed by the partition of India,... more The debate on citizenship in the Constituent Assembly was overshadowed by the partition of India, which created difficulties in making constitutional provision for citizenship on certain defined criteria. However, it was quite clear to most of the members of the Constituent Assembly that the criteria of citizenship could not be fixed beforehand, as it was not possible to anticipate future developments. Thus, the Constitution empowered the parliament to define citizenship from time to time in the light of changing conditions. Thus began the process of enactments revising the provisions for citizenship, which ultimately culminated into the violation of the Constitution through enactment.
International Migration Review
Dalits, Subalternity and Social Change in India, 2018
In comparison to other Indian states, Punjab is often considered free from acute caste-based ineq... more In comparison to other Indian states, Punjab is often considered free from acute caste-based inequalities and atrocities, even though the caste system exists and prevails in the structure of everyday life of the Punjabis. It has been argued that certain visible changes have occurred among the dalits, a marginalized group in Indian society. But, not all the castes among the dalits have been able to transform their social and economic conditions that could have altered their self-perception, as well as their status. More mobile castes, particularly the Ad-dharmis, have constructed their own distinct and insulated world in which the dalit and self have become coterminous. Urban dalits have undergone rapid change in their conditions, which they have transformed into political empowerment at the local level. Despite the changes however, there are certain aspects of their social life which have not undergone change. Much of this is related to the consciousness of the dalits. The existence...
Any exercise in mapping the current status of any social science discipline is a mammoth task, as... more Any exercise in mapping the current status of any social science discipline is a mammoth task, as it involves the normative concerns as well as the personal perceptions of the sociologist who treads this path. The focus of this paper is on certain challenges that have been posed by the present circumstances that includse globalisation as well as changes that have come about in the Indian polity and society due to other factors. explore and examine the state of sociology and its future in the country.[ Address at the Social Scientists’ Meet on Emerging Problems of Social Sciences in the Context of Globalisation. ICSSR (NW Regional Centre), Chandigarh, July 26, 2005.]
The present paper is a part of the report submitted to the University Grants Commission that fund... more The present paper is a part of the report submitted to the University Grants Commission that funded the project 'Education, Empowerment, Emigration and Entrepreneurship: A Sociological Study of Mobility among the Dalits in Punjab'. The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance provided by Bhupinder Thakur, Gurpreet Singh and Manoj Birdi as research staff. Critical comments of M Rajivlochan are gratefully acknowledged. We are grateful to the referee of this journal for giving useful comments as a result of which we have been able to improve the paper tremendously.
POLITICS AND RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA
The article examines the construction of religious identity among the Sikhs from the socio-histor... more The article examines the construction of religious identity among the Sikhs from the socio-historical perspective. It has been argued that the Sikh identity was constructed as a result of the colonial intervention in which the emphasis turned to the appearance instead of faith as such. The new identity was a product of the politics of the times and it was perpetuated in order to maintain the hegemonic domination. Sikhism, despite its egalitarian ideology, failed to create a casteless community. Discrimination and exclusion of lower castes continued. An empirical investigation into the conditions and perceptions of the lowest caste, namely Mazhabi clearly demonstrated their exclusion, whereas discourse of equality among the Sikhs is used to create a moral community. Despite the equality of worship among the Sikhs, the Mazhabis at the local level are denied the equal religious rights in the gurdwaras (Sikh temple) owned and controlled by the upper dominant castes. Roots of the exclusi...
Sociological Bulletin
This paper examines the issue of India’s development from the perspective of distributive justice... more This paper examines the issue of India’s development from the perspective of distributive justice to assess whether there has been a decline in disparities owing to the development path adopted after the independence. Basing the argument on the two documents of the Government of India which have frankly evaluated the policy of the state policy, it is shown how, despite various changes in the economy, the development process created disparities and became the source of agrarian discontent, particularly the Naxalite movement. In the preliberalisation phase characterised by mixed economy model, the major fault line was the lack of political will coupled with the apathy of administrators. In the post-liberalisation phase, the major issue was that of mal-governance. The paper explores the causes of the failure of the Indian state with regard to distributive justice.
Sociological Bulletin
In a multi-religious social formation the understanding of caste and caste hierarchy requires a d... more In a multi-religious social formation the understanding of caste and caste hierarchy requires a different theoretical and methodological approach from the conventional one. This article examines the case of Punjab society in which Sikhs and Hindus co-exist and the former claim to be an egalitarian religious community. Although caste hierarchies could be multiple in such a setting, the forces influencing dominance and change have remained same. Education and occupational changes have transformed the nature of hierarchy in Punjab owing to which the dalit assertion has increased. At the same time, the domination of Jats, though being frequently challenged, has remained the most potent element in the caste dynamics of Punjab.
Sociological Bulletin
Cet article examine la stratification sociale existante au sein des castes chez les populations n... more Cet article examine la stratification sociale existante au sein des castes chez les populations non hindous. Apres avoir defini l'ideologie et la hierarchie des castes, l'A. analyse ce systeme chez les Sikhs pour comprendre l'emergence de la notion de communalisme au Punjab au 19eme siecle et les tensions engendrees entre Sikhs et Hindous
Sociological Bulletin, 2010
The issue of Sikh identity has never been laid to rest by any section of Sikh religio-political l... more The issue of Sikh identity has never been laid to rest by any section of Sikh religio-political leadership in Punjab. Controlled by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) – a statutory body established through legislative enactment – the identity issue has been swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to another. Instead of recognising diversity in the Sikh tradition, there have been attempts to construct singular identity. Caught between political pragmatism and the extremist threat, the Akali Dal, which controls both political power in the state and the religious affairs through SGPC, has continued to take ambivalent position. This article explores the basic paradox of Sikh identity by delineating how ambivalence creates inclusion and exclusion within the Sikh community and why it remains politically functional for the Sikh leadership, which has never bothered to involve the Sikh masses in the discourse through democratic process.