27 - The Social Sciences in India

Summary

This chapter traces in outline the history of the modern social sciences in India from the late eighteenth century to the present. It begins with an account of the “discovery” of India by the European Enlightenment, which created the field of Indological studies. It then describes the practices of the modern disciplines of social knowledge in India in their relation to the institutions of governance created under British colonial rule and thereafter to the project of the Indian nationalist movement. The final section deals with the professionalization of the disciplines during the postcolonial period. The focus is on the disciplines of history, economics, sociology, social anthropology, and political science.

COLONIAL ORIGINS

The decisive event in the early institutional history of modern social knowledge in India was the founding of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta in 1784 at the initiative of William Jones (1746–1794), an official of the East India Company and a major linguist of his time. For almost a century, the Asiatic Society was the chief institution in India for encouraging, organizing, and propagating knowledge about the country’s history, philosophy, religion, language, literature, art, architecture, law, trade, and manufacture. Most European scholars who worked in India were associated with the Society. They helped to establish Indological scholarship as a specialized field in the world of modern learning.