The Extensions of an Indian Village

Extract

A Villager in India, besides being a member of a distinguishable local community and interacting with many of its other members, has important ties of a more extensive nature, and participates in practices and understandings characteristic of wider areas. In discussions of the independence, viability and future of the Indian village it may be useful to keep the nature of these ties to the outside in mind and to consider their past history and the present trends in respect to them. So that concrete material may serve as a basis for discussion, data from Senapur, a village of Northcentral India in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh will be utilized. Senapur, as do all individual communities, presents some unique features, but we know that it is much like other villages of the region and we know that in respect to principal institutions, social structure, and most of the attributes that will be reviewed here it shares much with other villages of North India which have been described in the literature.