Contributions to Indian Sociology

Through an exploration of the concepts that inform one’s conduct in everyday life, this article seeks to make manifest the performative code that lies at the heart of Barelwiyat. To ‘be’ a Barelwi, it is necessary to owe allegiance to a particular worldview in a way that one’s faith is inscribed onto one’s self, both within and without. An ineluctable relationship is thus forged between ‘doing’ and ‘being’, wherein both affirmation and denunciation become incumbent upon those who claim to be Barelwi. These practices, considered essential and public in nature, enable and necessitate the existence of a shared idiom, facilitating the decryption of bodily enactments and kinesthetics, and allowing them to be judged by the moral community at large. I draw upon my own experience of growing up in an avowedly Barelwi household, as well as ethnographic research carried out in Bareilly to bring forth this dimension of faith.

This article examines the changing dynamics of development in India, focusing on partnerships between civil society organisations (CSOs)¹ and the state in the area of rural health. Drawing on ethnographic perspectives of CSO work, we examine the shifting meaning of these partnerships for the institutions involved and how they function given their differing institutional cultures and values. We argue that the adoption by the state of a global language of rights and its efforts to integrate civil society language, practices and representatives in the policy and implementation of health programmes point to collaborationist models which support the creation of an ‘activist’ state, as they simultaneously strengthen as well as weaken the role of CSOs as mediators in development.

This article examines the contemporary significance of caste as a dimension of social stratification in Pakistani Punjab, using rural housing as a vantage point. Work on the interplay of class and kinship group, mediated by status hierarchy between agricultural and non-agricultural castes, serves as a point of departure. The organisation of the system of private property in rural land, based on the colonial village record and land alienation laws, is actively used to maintain class power and status hierarchy between kinship groups. Post-independence reforms sustained caste disadvantage, which is particularly conspicuous with regard to housing. The Five Marla Scheme was an exceptional intervention, rooted in populist electoral politics of the 1970s, which provided residential land to rural workers belonging to non-agricultural castes. This significant but dormant and largely undocumented intervention is examined through the case study of a large village in Okara district. We argue for a re-engagement with caste as a valid category for the understanding of class and citizenship in Pakistani Punjab.

This article examines the agnatic notion and the organisation of local groups among the Muduga of Attappady in Kerala. Ethnographic evidence shows that the actual practices of the Muduga deviate from an ideal patrilineal type, exhibiting bilateral tendencies which are not characteristic of a strong patrilineal system, thereby making the Muduga case appear to fall between the African and Melanesian type. In the understanding of kin groups, there is a need to differentiate between social groups and cultural categories. The nature of Muduga kinship can be understood only by meaningfully linking ideal and actual behaviour through the interrelationship between structural premises and practice.