Village And The Outside World

Introduction
The Village And The Wider Economic System
The Village And The Wider Caste And Kinship System
The Village And The Wider Religious System
The Village and the Wider Political System
Summary

Introduction

Although the village in India has a definable structure, it is not an isolated and autonomous unit. In this unit, you will be able to identify how it is traditionally a part of Indian society and civilization. Here you can see the village in relation to the outside world. This article examines in detail the process of economic interaction, with particular emphasis on the traditional jajmani system, and urbanization and industrialization in the period following the First World War. The role of caste and kinship in Indian villages is central to this unit with appropriate illustrations drawn from several village studies. In discussing socio-cultural ties, we talked about the process of universalization and parochialism. We also discussed the process of interaction between small and large traditions in Native American villages. The article also shows the political ties Indian villages had in the pre-British period. It highlights the pattern of British political relations and the political system of the contemporary period. Overall, this unit gives you a comprehensive insight into the links of Indian villages with the outside world.

The Village And The Wider Economic System

The impression that the village in pre-British India was economically self-sufficient was created by the jajmani system (division of labor by caste), payment in grain (lack of monetization) and poor communications which limited the movement of goods .

Economic Interdependence before World War-I

The fact that weekly markets existed in nearby villages in traditional India shows that people depended on cities for items that were not locally available, such as silver and gold, which were essential to weddings. The institution of weekly markets is still prevalent in rural India, although significant improvements in transportation and communications have made cities with regular markets accessible to villagers. These markets serve not only an economic purpose, but also political, recreational, and social purposes.

Again, not all artisan and service castes live in a village, especially in smaller settlements. The proportion of small settlements must have been very high during the pre-British period as large irrigation projects were undertaken across India during British rule in various parts of the country. Irrigation can serve a large number of people in a given area. Village studies have shown that certain castes provide services to a range of villages. Villages have always depended on villagers from surrounding villages. The urban population depended on village produce for their basic needs in the form of cereals, raw materials for processed foods, and handicrafts.

Economic Integration in Modern Times

The expansion of the colonial economy in India brought Indian villages into the global market for products such as jute and cotton. The availability of new economic opportunities in this century, particularly after World War I, with industrialization and urbanization made the village part of the larger economic system. The new economic opportunities differ according to the villages. Using a few case studies, we'll show you how this process worked.

i) The first comprehensive survey of an Indian village by S. C. Dube (1955) devotes an entire chapter to the nature of the coming changes in rural life, including the growing economic ties of the village of Shamirpet with the city of Hyderabad, even for groups like the washer.
ii) Mckim Marriot (1955) graphically describes the interaction between people of different villages around Kishan Garhi in Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh. He writes: “The priests, barbers, potters, carpenters, washermen and sweepers who live in Kishan Garhi go to serve the hereditary patrons in about fifteen other villages and derive about half their income from these external patrons . The traders living in Kishan Garhi regularly travel many miles from the province following their trading suggestions. The wage laborers who maintain homes in Kishan Garhi throughout the current generation have gone to work in at least twenty-five other places, including ten cities. In a three-month period, I counted forty-four different specialists who came to Kishan Garhi."
iii) In the case of Rampura in Karnataka, studied by M.N. Srinivas (1955), World War II brought more money to the Okkaliga landowning ruling caste with wartime rationing and shortages, encouraging black trade. War profits were used in various ways. When the village was electrified, two rice mills were established. Bus routes were also started which made it much easier to get in touch with Mysore City. They stood "with one leg in the village and the other in the city."
iv) In the village of Kumbapettai, located in the Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu and studied by K. Gough (1955), the migration of members of the dominant group of Brahmins to the cities for education and work and the immigration to Kumbapettai of lower castes from neighboring, less fertile areas were responsible for Kumbapettai's increased interaction with the wider economic system.
v) In the case of Yadavpur, a village on the outskirts of Delhi studied by M.S.A. Rao (1974), the growth of the Delhi metropolis has created diversified opportunities in horticulture, dairy farming, poultry farming, commerce, transportation and employment in the city.

M.S.A. Rao (1974) identified three types of urban impacts on villages in India. First, there are villages where a significant number of people have found employment in Indian cities and even overseas cities. They regularly send money to their families in the villages. Money earned from city employment is used to build fashionable houses in their villages and invested in land and industry. Grants for the establishment of educational institutions, etc. are also performed. All this increases the social prestige of their families. Thus, the urban impact is felt by such villages, even though they may not be physically located near a city or village. The second type of urban impact is found in villages, close to an industrial city. Their lands have been acquired in whole or in part. They receive an influx of migrant workers, which stimulates demand for houses and a market in the village. The third type of impact on the village is the growth of metropolitan cities. As the city expands, it sucks in the villages on the outskirts. Many villages lose their land, which is used for urban development. The inhabitants of these landless villages who receive monetary compensation can invest in land in distant places or trade or squander the money. Villagers generally look for work in the city. Villages on the outskirts of a city whose land has not yet been acquired or specially acquired are allowed to grow vegetables, dairy products and poultry. Some may look for a job in town and start commuting. In summary, it can be said that the Indian village was not economically self-sufficient even in British times. The industrialization and urbanization that began during British rule and gained momentum after independence made the village part of the wider economic network. Planned rural development has further affected the rural economy. Recent studies in sociology have focused on agrarian movements, the Bhoodan movement, land reforms, community development and the green revolution. The organization of these activities is carried out on a large scale, spread over several villages and involving many agencies.

The Village And The Wider Caste And Kinship System

The village consists of a vertical interdependence of castes, that is, relations between different castes. This is reflected in the Jajmani system. But these vertical ties are broken by the horizontal ties of caste and kinship, i. H relationships within the caste, extending beyond the village to other villages and even towns. Your loved ones live in different villages and you have to interact with them on different occasions like births, weddings and deaths. They can also be counted on for help when needed. In northern India, where village exogamy coexists with caste endogamy, you have to look outside the village for a companion for your son or daughter. In southern India, where village exogamy is not the rule and where marriage between a woman and her mother's brother or marriage with the mother's brother's daughter is preferred, we still have to look outside the village a spouse.

Some Ethnographic Examples

Sociologists who study Indian villages have described how villages are an integral part of the larger caste and kinship system. Oscar Lewis (1955), who studied a North Indian village, points out that Rani Khera, like other North Indian villages, is actually part of a larger inter-village network based on kinship ties. "Other villagers are very often relatives, and entire villages are classified according to kin terminology such as mother's brother's village, grandfather's village, grandmother's village, etc."

Similarly in the case of U.P. village of Kishan Garhi, Mckim Marriott (1955) noted that there were forty-six local lineage groups in Kishan Garhi, each completely separate from one another in lineage. There were no intra-village weddings within or between any of these groups. Village daughters moved and village wives moved after marriage and moved to and from more than three hundred other villages. When she did the study, she found that fifty-seven marriages connected Kishan Garhi with sixteen towns and cities. Half of the marriage ties of the groups in Kishan Garhi connected them to places more than fourteen miles apart, while 5% connected them to places more than sixty kilometers apart.

Spatial Expansion of Intra-Caste Relations

Since caste endogamy is the rule (i.e. one must marry within one's own caste), one's relatives are usually of one's own caste. Intra-caste relations and other caste matters are governed by a caste panchayat whose members belong to different villages. In pre-British India, the horizontal extent of caste ties was limited by the political boundaries of a number of petty kingdoms and poor roads and communications. With the unification of the country brought about by the British and the introduction of better roads and railways, cheaper postage and printing, relations within the castes rapidly expanded as it was easier to maintain regular contact with each other.

Caste associations were formed to work for the welfare of caste members. Educational institutions and hostels were established, and scholarships were provided to needy members of the caste. Each caste also worked to regulate the lifestyle of its members so that the attempt at caste mobility through Sanskritization could be successful.

Over the past sixty years or more, the horizontal unity of caste has increased and the strong walls that have been erected between the sub-castes have begun to crumble. This is mainly due to two factors. (i) As numbers are large in a parliamentary democracy, horizontal caste unity over a wide area provides a “vote bank” which can ensure the election of a candidate within his own caste. (ii) The need to find educated partners for one's children and the demand for dowry, especially among the upper castes, widened the endogamous circle and increased the horizontal diffusion of caste ties.

So you can easily see that the village has always had kinship and caste ties with other villages and towns. This was limited in pre-British India when communications were poor and there were small kingdoms whose borders acted as effective barriers. The horizontal spread of caste ties increased significantly during British rule, linking the village to a much larger area since independence.

The Village And The Wider Religious System

An examination of the religion of each Indian village reveals a dual process of interaction between the religious beliefs and practices of the village and Indian civilization at large. McKim Marriott, echoing Robert Redfield's (1955) concepts of "great tradition" and "little tradition", points out that certain elements of ritual and belief are contributions of village life dating back to the formation of the great spread of the Sanskrit tradition of India, while other elements represent local modifications of elements of the great tradition communicated to him below. Marriott has used the terms universalization and parochialism to refer to the two aspects of this dual process of interaction between small and large traditions. Using ethnographic details of Marriott's work, we explain these terms below.

Universalisation

Marriott (1955) cites the Raksha Bandhan festival as an example of upward universalization. This festival coincides and merges in Kishan Garhi with the festival known regionally as Saluno, a festival which marks the end of that fortnight when most young women return to visit their parents and siblings. On Saluno Day, many husbands come to their 'wives' villages to take them back. Before returning with their husbands, both the wives and their maiden sisters express their devotion to their brothers by placing young shoots of barley, the local sacred grain, on their brothers' heads and ears. Since brothers cannot take anything from their sisters as a free gift, they give money back. On the same day, alongside the Saluno ceremony, the Rakhi Bandhan ceremony also takes place. The priests of the Brahmanical house of Kishan Garhi go to each patron and tie a multicolored thread with tassels around his wrist. He also pronounces a blessing and is rewarded with some money by his patron, as it is considered ungodly to accept anything from a priest for nothing. A close parallel can be observed between the Brahmanical binding festival and the family festival of Saluno. It is possible that Charm Tieing has its roots in a "small traditional party" like Saluno. The priests' wire charms are now factory produced and sold by a local caste group called the Jogis. Some sisters of Kishan Garhi have now started tying these wire charms on their brothers' wrists. These thread charms are also useful for sending letters to siblings who live far away in towns and villages.

Parochialisation

The parochialism or downward spread of elements from the "great tradition" to the "little tradition" and the transformation or modification it undergoes can be seen in the Kuhnahr worship festival celebrated in Kishan Garhi . This festival is explained by a story from the Sanskrit book Bhagavata Purana of the tenth century AD. The story tells of the adventures of Krishna with his fellow cowherds on a hill called Gobardhan. In this story, Krishna commands the cowherds of Braj to worship the nearby hill instead of such great but distant gods as Indra. Indra, the god of rain, becomes enraged at the apostasy of his worshipers and sends violent storms of rain to destroy the cowherds and their cows. Krishna lifts the mound on his finger to give them shelter and all are saved. A ceremony is performed every year at the current hill of Gobardhan in Mathura district. In Kishan Garhi, the celebration of this festival took on intimate details not mentioned in Sanskrit myth. Instead of accepting the meaning of 'nursing cow' (Go + vardhana), they explain it as Gobar + dhan, or 'wealth in cow manure'. Therefore, the women and children of each household build a small "mound" of cow dung with straw and cotton on top to represent the "trees". Small models of a cowboy and cows are made from excrement and placed on the hill. In the evening, all the agnates of each family worship him together by placing a lamp on it and wrapping a thread around his "trees" and shouting "Gobardhan Baba ki jai", "Long live grandfather the wealth of the dung of cow". The next morning, members of the weaver caste are paid to sing a Cowdung Wealth song, after which the mound and patterns are broken up to be used as daily fuel. But some of the cow dung is saved, dried and stored until the Holi festival, where it will be used for the annual village fire.

This case is presented as an example of adding local details to the Sanskrit festival. Marriott admits that since universalization and parochialism have been going on for so long, we are generally unable to trace the course of either process with certainty, or to decide whether a given contemporary configuration of religious content is the result of one and not also the other is the result of the other of these two processes. But the important point to remember is that there was an exchange between the village traditions and the national tradition regarding the observance of festivals, showing that the village was not self-sufficient in this way.

More Examples of Interaction between Great and Little Traditions

MN Srinivas' (1950) concept of Sanskritization also demonstrates the interaction between religion at the local level and all Indian Hinduism which is Sanskrit. Sanskrit elements are spread from upper castes to lower castes. The spread of theological ideas in Sanskrit increased during British rule and later, due to the development of communication and the spread of literacy. Western technology—railroads, the press, radio, movies, and now television—have helped spread Sanskritization. They popularized the epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata and other religious stories about the life of saints like Mira, Tulsidas etc. and makes the village part of the larger universe.

An important aspect of the Sanskritization process is the identification of a local god or goddess with a deity from the Hindu pantheon. Thus, among the Coorgs, Ketrapa is identified with the Vedic deity Kshetrapala, while the local Cobra deity is identified with Subramanya or Skanda, the warrior son of Shiva. This helped the Coorg religious community to assimilate into the wider Hindu religious community. Besides festivals and deities, another important aspect of the religion of the village community is pilgrimage. The pilgrimage centers have attracted people from distant places in India.

Thus, in Kishan Garhi, Marriott (1955) recorded the names of more than fifty places where villagers had made pilgrimages. In traditional India, temple towns and holy cities such as Gaya, Mathura, Ajmer, Varanasi, Puri, Tirupathi and Amritsar attracted pilgrims even though the roads were very bad and unsafe. Thus, we see a continuous interaction between the small and the large tradition in the religion of the village.

The Village and the Wider Political System

Indian villages had been described by British administrators in the early 19th century as "little republics" with their simple form of self-government and almost no interference from higher political authority other than claiming a share of the proceeds of the country and the requirement of young men in it to serve in wars. Villages functioned normally regardless of who sat on the throne in the kingdoms to which they territorially belonged. They were also described as being economically self-sufficient and having almost everything they wanted in them. This description of Indian villages is too simplistic. Yet it influenced the opinions of important scholars like Karl Marx and Henry Maine, and Indian nationalists like Mahatma Gandhi. It was only after gaining independence that some social anthropologists who carried out intensive field studies of Indian villages began to question the conventional description of the Indian village. Based on their findings, they demonstrated that the Indian village was part of the larger society and civilization and not the "small republics" as described by British administrators.

The Village in Pre-British India

To say that in pre-British India (i.e. covering roughly the period immediately before the consolidation of British rule in India) the village was politically autonomous, except that it paid taxes to the local chief or king and provided him with young men for his wars is wrong. . The relationship between the king and his subjects was complex. The king performed various duties towards his subjects. He built roads, cisterns and irrigation canals. He also built temples and donated land to pious and learned Brahmins. He was the head of all the caste panchayats and the caste rank disputes between them were finally settled by him. This function was not limited to Hindu rulers, Mughal kings and feudal lords also resolved matters involving a caste.

Villages in pre-British India were not passive in their relationship to the state (usually the princely states, also known as native states). They were certainly concerned about who was on the throne. They would rather have a king to protect them from lawbreakers and marauding troops. If the king or chief belonged to a locally dominant caste, his caste mates would come to his aid in a crisis. The villages were not helpless in their relationship with the rulers. Villagers could rebel and support a rival to the throne (see the example of the Dimasa ruler in Cachar, given in Section 17.5 of Unit 17 in Block 5 of the First Sociology Elective). Collective flight was another sanction available to villagers against oppression.

The ruler was very often the loser when such collective escapes occurred. With land available for settlement when labor was scarce, a ruler would struggle to cultivate his land and lose income. Therefore, the relationship between the village and the ruler was complex and it is incorrect to describe the village of pre-British India as a "small republic". However, it should be noted that due to the lack of roads and poor communications, the village enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy as well as discretion from higher levels of the political system. The kings left the villagers to govern themselves from day to day. The village panchayat, composed mainly of the ruling caste, exercised authority in local affairs, mediated inter-caste disputes, and maintained public order in the village.

The Village in British India

British rule changed the relationship between village and ruler. The political conquest was followed by the development of communication. This allowed the British to establish an efficient administration. Government officials such as police, tax officials and others came to the village. The British established a system of courts. Major criminal disputes and offenses had to be resolved in court. This greatly reduced the power of the village panchayat.

The Village in Contemporary India

Since independence, the introduction of parliamentary democracy and adult suffrage has further integrated the village into the wider political system. Villagers elect not only members of local bodies such as the Gram Panchayat, but also members of the state legislature and parliament. Regional and national political parties are active in the village, making propaganda and mobilizing support for their parties. Government policies and programs such as community development programs affect the village. Although the village is a political entity with an elected panchayat that handles day-to-day administration, it is part of the district or zilla, which is part of the state. The state is part of the Union of India. There is interaction between these different levels of the political system.

Summary

In this unit we have discussed that while the village has a definable structure and is a clear entity to the villagers themselves, it is also a subsystem within the larger political, economic, social and religious system in which it exists. In pre-British India, the absence of roads and poor communications limited interaction between villages and between towns and cities. Still, the interaction was there. Also traditionally the village was not economically self-sufficient. Essential items such as salt, kerosene, metals, sugar cane, etc. they were not produced in most villages and for this they had to visit weekly markets and towns. Again, not all villages had the necessary caste of artisans and service providers, and there was interdependence between villages for this purpose. The industrialization and urbanization of this century, especially since independence, made the village part of the larger economic network.

Socially too, the village has never been an isolated entity. Kinship and caste ties extended beyond the village. This is even truer in the North, where village exogamy is practiced. With the unification of the country under British rule, the barriers to the horizontal spread of caste bands were removed. The building of roads and railroads, cheap stamps, and printing helped members of a widely dispersed caste keep in touch. Since independence, the importance of voting to get one's candidate elected has further increased the horizontal unity of caste.

As for village religion, there is a continuous interaction between the local minor tradition and the major tradition of Indian civilization through the double process of universalization and parochialization. Politically, although the king was willing to allow the villagers to govern themselves in day-to-day affairs, the payment of a significant portion of the proceeds was a symbol of the village's dependence on the king. Also, the king performed various duties towards the villagers. The British brought most of the country under their rule.

With the introduction of a unified law and centralized administration, the village became part of the larger political system of the country. The introduction of parliamentary democracy and adult suffrage further integrated the village with the different levels of the political system. Thus we see an integration and continuity between the village and the larger units of Indian society. This is very visible today, but it also existed to a limited extent in traditional India. To fully understand a village it is not enough to study its internal structure and organization, but it is also necessary to study its relationship with the wider Indian society. It is equally true that to understand the wider Indian society it is necessary to study its parts. Village communities make up the bulk of Indian society as the vast majority of Indians live in villages.