This presentation is on Indian contemporary sociological thinker named Akshay Ramanlal Desai. Desai alone among Indian sociologists has consistently applied Marxist methods in his treatment of Indian social structure and its processes. He is a doctrinaire Marxist. He rejects any interpretations of tradition with reference to religion, rituals and festivities. It is essentially a secular phenomenon.
2. LIFE
Akshaya Ramanlal Desai (1915-1994)
born on April 16, 1915
at Nadiad in Gujarat
died on November 12, 1994
at Baroda in Gujarat.
Influenced by his father Ramanlal Vasantlal Desai,
a well known litterateur
who inspired the youth in Gujarat in the thirties.
Desai took part in student movements in Baroda, Surat and Bombay.
3. LIFE
Graduated from the University of Bombay,
obtained a law degree and a PhD in sociology under G.S. Ghurye
from the University of Bombay in 1946.
Later on, he taught at the Bombay University
also became head of the department.
In 1947, he got married to Neeraj Desai,
She has done pioneering work in the field of women’s studies.
In 1953, he took the membership of the Trotskyites Revolutionary Socialist Party
and resigned from its membership in 1981.
4. WRITTINGS
1. Rural sociology in India
2. India’s path of development: A Marxist approach
3. Social background of Indian nationalism
4. Slum and Urbanization
5. Society in India
5. Methodology
Desai alone among Indian sociologists has consistently applied Marxist methods
in his treatment of Indian social structure and its processes. He is a doctrinaire
Marxist. He rejects any interpretations of tradition with reference to religion, rituals
and festivities. It is essentially a secular phenomenon.
6. Methodology
Its nature is economic and it originates and develops in economics. He finds it in
family, village and other social institutions. He also does not find the origin of
tradition in western culture. His studies mainly of nationalism and its social
configuration (1966), his examination of community development programs for
economic development in villages (1959), his diagnosis of the interface between
state and society in India or the relationship between polity and social structure
(1975), his treatment of urban slums and their demographic problems (1972), and
finally his study of peasant movements (1979) are all based on a Marxist method
of historical-dialectical materialism.
7. Methodology
He considers that the emerging contradictions in the Indian process of social
transformation arise mainly from the growing nexus among the capitalist
bourgeoisie, the rural petty-bourgeoisie and a state apparatus, all drawn from
similar social roots. This thwarts the aspirations of the rural and industrial working
classes by sheer of its power and of its skillful stratagems.
