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Vol.I: Rs. 695; Vol.2: Rs. 695; Vol.3: Rs. 750.

In volume one, “The Realm of Ideas: Inquiry and Theory”, the Rudolphs show in detail how India allows no easy categories and no easy explanations. Examining determinants of agrarian mobilisation, the authors find that, for example, bullock capitalists — mainly in northern India — are not wealthy enough to be kulaks and see themselves as competing with lower castes in a zero-sum game. But bullock capitalists, an economic class grounded in production, are capable of effective conservative political mobilisation, as the Rudolphs noted in the early 1980s, and stand in contrast to landless labourers, a status group defined by tradition and state categories, whose potential for mobilisation is hampered by the low ratio of workers to landlords, by work-patterns which do not aggregate workers, and by vertical bonds with landlords or patrons.

India has painful surprises for the positivist social scientist, as the authors, no positivists themselves, learnt early in their careers. They repeatedly show the kinds of difference a social scientist’s methods make to the findings themselves. To start with, they show, entertainingly, how inappropriate to the rural Tamil Nadu of the 1950s were the clipboard-and-pencil interviews their research team conducted with village women. Secondly, they are illuminating on the naïve — indeed hubristic — way the American inheritance from John Locke dominated American social science for a long time, even with the result that many Americans are “tone deaf to the meaning systems of others.” The Rudolphs contrast this with the insistence of the English conservative Edmund Burke on informed particularity in studying all societies, and their account of Amar Singh’s diaries is a delight to read. So too, in a different way, is their magisterial essay on Max Weber.

Volume two bears the title “The Realm of Institutions: State Formation and Institutional Change”; here the Rudolphs provoke much thought, starting with the argument that the state in, India is not a European import but an autochthonous entity that has been known in India since the Mauryas and the Guptas, not least because those rulers maintained centralised fiscal mechanisms, bureaucracies barred from inheritance of office or estates, and military formations controlled by the ruler, not by feudal chiefs or local military entrepreneurs. Seen thus, the state in India shows remarkable continuity into and beyond its British imperial forms; they even suggest that the preservation — or creation — and maintenance of local jurisdictions under a central power are embodied today in India’s broadly federal system. The authors’ comment that the relation between central and local institutions is dialectical is intriguing, but it is not clear if they mean dialectically progressive in the sense often attributed to Hegel; they do, however, argue that the Indian state as a historically continuing entity is close to liberal conceptions of the state in that society precedes the state and limits it, and in that in India the state-society relation is largely instrumental in nature. The authors also remind us that there was nothing inevitable about the liberal form of the contemporary Indian state; had Patel — or, the authors also hold, Bose — won the arguments the Indian state would have been far more authoritarian and even fascistic than it has been or is. As it is there have been enough processes and pressures undermining India’s institutions of state, and the Rudolphs are clear, though never melodramatic, about these. They are clearly troubled by the consequent damage to public institutions and public trust in them, and to the consequences for Indians’ sense of their public space. For example, the paper on judicial review shows how difficult the position of the judiciary is; it is probably no more than an accurate reflection of the situation that no definite conclusion is reached here. The judiciary still have to navigate between “judicial self-restraint that protects the constitution and fundamental rights or judicial abdication that sacrifices both.”

The third volume “The Realm of the Public Sphere: Identity and Policy” among other things examines the many ways in which senses of identity in India manifest themselves in and shape the public space, in processes which the Rudolphs hold are consistent with Hindu ways of addressing conflict, namely, compartmentalisation, absorption, or synthesis. These processes are most obvious in respect of Indian society’s “most central and durable institution” — caste. More specifically, the Rudolphs contend — in a paper published in 1960 — that caste associations are no longer solely natural in their older sense and now show many voluntarist aspects, by participating in the formal political process and organising themselves according to the constitutional distribution of power in states, districts, sub-districts, and so on. These are very richly-textured organisations with formal structures as well as the strength given by a shared sense of culture and status. The Rudolphs do recognise that caste associations’ tendencies to regard group loyalties as overriding the public good make them a qualified asset to Indian politics, and they provide pertinent reminders that such group loyalties are significant and problematic in other countries, such as Canada and Belgium.

Other papers in this collection are on India’s relations with its neighbours and the United States, and there is a fine paper on the internal complexities and divisions within major religions — a significant counter to the idea that cultures and civilisations are balls clashing against one another in a game of spiritual billiards, with all too deadly temporal results. There are cautionary papers too, on how hatreds are invented in the contemporary public space with evidenced reminders that these are often the results of inducements and political calculations. And the remarkable Amar Singh reappears, not least because his detailed knowledge of his own world and that of the colonials shows us, lest we forget, what a racist obscenity the Empire was.

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