Of social change in Haryana and Punjab

Surinder S. Jodhka

Over the past centuries, the binary of tradition and modern has become a popular way of constructing common sense about things and people in everyday lives across regions and countries in the contemporary world. However, they have also been a source of many philosophical debates and social scientific interrogations. Given that they are not simply categories of description and are often loaded with value and judgment, discussions around these invoke passion and criticism. They tend to carry an element of hegemonic claims. Being modern is not simply being in the present. It also requires a certain ability and culture, supposedly marked by reason, technology and a way of life or things drawn from the western enlightenment. The superiority of the 'modern' over the 'traditional' is taken for granted. 

At another level, the binary or the narrative of tradition and modern also carries with it a theory of or a perspective on social, political and economic change. Such a perspective informs state policies and global scaling of development indictors. The binary has also come to constitute the desirable common sense of the dominant and hegemonic classes. 

The perspective of the book being reviewed is thus located within this predicament of social change in the two states of northwest India, Haryana and Punjab. The editors are acutely aware of the philosophical and political questions or problems that the use of such a framing is likely to carry with it. But they show the courage to engage with it and try to open up some of the issues that mark the context of the region. While it is easy to theoretically criticise the idea of modernity, it is hardly possible to escape it. Quoting anthropologists Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge, the editors rightly contend that 'modernity is now everywhere, it is simultaneously everywhere, and it is interactively everywhere'. However, the challenge is to avoid the trap of looking at it from an evolutionist perspective, which assumes the west to be already 'modern' and countries like India to be 'traditional', and trying to "catch-up". The two anthropologists, thus, justly argue that the right thing to do is to 'study all the sites of modernity (including those of the west) on same terms' (emphasis added).

Such a framework, thus, opens up the possibilities of raising empirical questions and exploring their answers empirically, on the ground, and without a pre-given judgment. However, it would also ask critical questions, on the direction, value and politics of change, such as how do the processes of change in question expand or shrink the spheres of equality, democracy and freedom? 

Chapters presented in the book thus focus on some of the important processes underway in the region among diverse sections of populations in the region. The first section of the book is on ‘Landscapes of modernity’ with chapters on regional identities and their negotiation with the nation-sate; the making of the modern city of Chandigarh; the challenge of (Sikh) religious reforms and the education of the girl child within the community. The second section deals with questions of ‘self’ in the context of the dominant caste of Jats in Haryana and how the anxieties being produced by the processes of individualisation come in conflict with the ‘community honour’ and the position of hegemony in the rural context. These anxieties have revitalised the ‘traditional’ institution of Khap in the region. 

The third section has chapters on agriculture, which deals not only with the questions of farmers' indebtedness but also raises questions about class relations within agriculture and the persistence of bondage of the labouring classes. The next section also has chapters on rural change in relations to questions of caste, gender and housing rights of the poor. The final section of the book focuses on ‘migration, diaspora and identities’. This section has an interesting set of chapters on subjects such as ‘migrant neighbourhood, Dalit identity and adolescent same-sex sexuality.

Perhaps the first of its kind, the book deserves attention, both for its novel perspective and the wide range of themes that the contributors explore, going empirically, from the ground up.