Marxist sociology (A. R. Desai)
Section I | Intellectual Biography & Historical Anchoring
A. R. Desai (1915–1994) was born in Nadiad, Gujarat, his father was Ramanlal V. Desai, a famous writer. This meant Desai grew up in a home full of books and ideas. He went to college in Bombay (now Mumbai) and earned his PhD there. His teacher was G.S. Ghurye.
Even though Ghurye was his teacher, Desai thought differently. Ghurye studied India by reading ancient religious texts. Desai preferred to look at real life and politics. He used the ideas of Marxism to understand society. He didn't learn this in a classroom abroad; he learned it by being part of student protests and political groups in India.
Desai was an activist. He spent time in Bombay, a city full of factories. There, he watched how poor workers lived and how they fought for better pay. He saw that the rich factory owners and the British government often worked together to stop workers from protesting.
Because of these experiences, Desai wrote about real problems like money, power, and inequality. He believed that history moves forward because of conflicts between groups, like the fight between a farm owner and a farm worker, or a factory boss and a laborer. While other scholars looked at culture, Desai looked at class struggle.
Over the decades, Desai wrote several major works that form a clear Marxist interpretation of Indian society. His first major book, Social Background of Indian Nationalism (1948), studied how colonial economic changes created the social conditions for nationalism. He traced the rise of new classes like the Indian bourgeoisie, the middle classes, the working class and different peasant groups. He argued that nationalism was shaped by the conflicts and interests of these groups, not only by emotions or culture.
In Rural Sociology in India (1969), he studied the countryside. He examined the division of peasants into rich, middle and poor, bonded labour, and the effects of colonial land settlements like zamindari. He rejected the idea of the village as a timeless, harmonious unit. Instead, he showed how colonial policies and capitalist forces changed rural society and created new rural elites.
In Peasant Struggles in India (1979), he analysed important agrarian movements such as the Telangana struggle, the Tebhaga movement in Bengal, the Naxalbari uprising, the Bardoli satyagraha, and the Moplah rebellion. He treated these movements as expressions of deep problems like high rent, landlord oppression, debt bondage and capitalist penetration.
In State and Society in India After Independence (1974), Desai turned to the post-independence state. He argued that the new state largely represented the interests of the industrial elites and dominant rural classes. Planning, public sector expansion and the Green Revolution, he argued, strengthened capitalist development rather than moving India towards socialism.
Desai also played a major role in building a Marxist sociological tradition in India. He was involved with the journal Social Scientist, which became a key space for marxist research. In the Indian Sociological Society, he challenged approaches like Indology and structural-functionalism. He argued that these approaches focused too much on culture and ignored exploitation, class conflict and state power.
One of Desai’s strengths was his use of empirical material. He studied official labour reports, factory inspection reports, wage inquiries, revenue settlement documents and records from labour organisations like the Textile Labour Association. Although he knew these documents were written from the perspective of the state and were biased, he read them critically to extract data on landholding, tenancy, indebtedness, wages and migration. This gave his work a solid factual base.
Desai was also influenced by Marxist historians like R. Palme Dutt, P. C. Joshi and E. M. S. Namboodiripad, who analysed colonialism and class structures. Desai’s work can be seen as part of this larger Marxist effort, but with a more explicit sociological lens.
At the core of Desai’s writing was the dialectical method. He always tried to uncover contradictions: between colonial rulers and Indians, between landlords and peasants, between capitalists and workers, and between the promises of nationalism and the reality of class domination. He did not accept explanations of Indian society that relied only on cultural or civilisational narratives.
Because he wrote over a long period, Desai covered a wide historical range: from the colonial era to the early years of independence, the Green Revolution and the beginnings of liberalisation. This gave his work a long-term perspective. He could show how colonial capitalism laid the foundations for postcolonial capitalism, and how class alliances survived the transfer of power.
Section II | Social Background of Indian Nationalism
A. R. Desai's explanation of Indian nationalism is one of the clearest sociological accounts of how anti-colonial consciousness slowly developed in India. He gave this theory in his seminal work, the Social Background of Indian Nationalism (1948).
Desai does not treat nationalism as a feeling that suddenly appears because people love their country, nor does he explain it through ancient cultural unity or heroic leadership.
Instead, he treats nationalism as something that grows because society itself changes in certain ways. These changes were created by colonial rule, which reorganised the economy, produced new social classes, created tensions, and slowly generated a new political consciousness.
For Desai, nationalism is a historical process, not a spiritual awakening. It grows stage by stage, and each stage is linked to changes in the class structure. He identifies five stages through which nationalism develops — beginning as a narrow bourgeois movement and later turning into a broad mass movement.
Nationalism as a Historical Product
Desai argues that British colonial rule unintentionally created the material foundations needed for Indian nationalism. This happened because the British:
unified administration across large territories
commercialised agriculture
introduced capitalist relations and market dependence
created a national market through railways, telegraphs, and roads
brought modern law, bureaucracy, and Western education
generated new social classes such as industrialists, professionals, workers, clerks, and teachers
These changes produced common experiences, common grievances, and new forms of communication. Because of them, people in different parts of India began to see their struggles as connected. This is why nationalism emerged in the colonial period. With this background, Desai places the nationalist movement into five sociologically distinct stages.
The Five Historical Stages of Nationalism
According to Desai, Indian nationalism was not a sudden event but a process that evolved as British colonial rule transformed India’s economic and class structure. He divides the growth of the national movement into five distinct phases, each corresponding to the rise of specific social classes and political consciousness.
Phase 1: Pre-1885 | Rise of the Intelligentsia and Social Reform
The first phase extends from the early 19th century up to the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885.
Social Base: The driving force was the newly emerged English-educated intelligentsia (lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists).
Key Characteristics: This phase was primarily social and religious, not political. Movements like the Brahmo Samaj and Prarthana Samaj tried to reform Hinduism to meet modern democratic values.
Nature of Nationalism: It was the earliest expression of a "national" outlook, but it was limited to a tiny urban elite who believed British culture was superior and hoped to "modernize" India through social reform.
Phase 2: 1885–1905 | Liberal–Moderate Nationalism
This phase begins with the founding of the Indian National Congress (INC).
Social Base: The movement was led by the Liberal Bourgeoisie and the upper-middle class.
Key Characteristics: The leadership (Moderates like Dadabhai Naoroji and Pherozeshah Mehta) adopted a policy of "prayer and petition." They did not demand independence but sought administrative reforms, Indianization of services, and civil rights within the British Empire.
Desai’s Critique: He argues that this leadership feared mass movements. They represented the interests of the emerging Indian capitalist class, which wanted to grow but was not yet ready to break ties with the British.
Phase 3: 1905–1918 | Militant Nationalism (Extremism)
This phase marks the rise of "Extremists" like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Lala Lajpat Rai.
Social Base: The movement broadened to include the lower middle class (clerks, students, shopkeepers), who were harder hit by unemployment and inflation.
Key Characteristics: This phase saw the introduction of more radical methods like Swadeshi (boycott of foreign goods) and calls for Swaraj (self-rule).
Shift: Nationalism moved from polite petitions to assertive demands. However, Desai notes that while the base widened, it still did not effectively include the vast peasant masses.
Phase 4: 1918–1934 | The Era of Mass Nationalism (Gandhian Phase)
This is the most crucial phase, coinciding with the post-WWI crisis of capitalism.
Social Base: For the first time, the peasantry, workers, and artisans joined the movement, making it a true mass struggle.
Key Characteristics: Under Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress became a mass organization. Methods like Satyagraha and non-cooperation mobilized millions.
Desai’s Marxist Analysis: Desai argues that while Gandhi mobilized the masses, the leadership remained in the hands of the industrial and landlord elite. Gandhi’s emphasis on non-violence (Ahimsa) and trusteeship acted as a "brake" on the movement, preventing the poor peasantry and workers from turning the struggle into a violent class revolution against landlords and capitalists.
Phase 5: 1934–1939 | Growing Discontent and the Rise of New Forces
In this phase, valid discontent with the "bourgeois" leadership of the Congress led to the rise of alternative movements.
Social Base: A section of the youth, workers, and peasants became disillusioned with Gandhian compromise.
Key Characteristics: This period saw the rise of two opposing forces:
The Left: The rise of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) and the Communist Party, representing the independent interests of workers and peasants (Kisan Sabhas).
Communalism: The rise of the Muslim League and communal politics, which Desai attributes to the competition for jobs and economic resources in a stagnant colonial economy.
Outcome: The national movement became a complex battleground of competing class interests; Socialists wanting a revolution, and the Congress leadership wanting a transfer of power without redistribution of land and property.
How Class Formation Shapes These Five Stages
Desai links each stage of nationalism to larger economic and social changes under colonialism. These include:
1. Creation of the Indian bourgeoisie
Industrialists, merchants, financiers, and professionals emerged due to colonial economic changes, but faced restrictions imposed by British policies.
2. Growth of the intelligentsia
English education produced lawyers, journalists, teachers, and clerks who became the ideological carriers of nationalism.
3. Agrarian transformation
Land revenue systems, landlordism, cash crops, indebtedness, and famines created deep rural distress, which fuelled mass mobilisation under Gandhi
4. Formation of the working class
Mills, plantations, and mines created a modern working class, which became active in later movements
5. Emergence of a modern public sphere
Railways, print media, courts, universities, and municipalities created a national network of communication and debate.
Thus, each stage of nationalism reflects the ways different classes responded to colonial capitalism.
Gandhi’s Role in Desai’s Framework
Desai treats Gandhi as a sociological phenomenon. Gandhi is important because he connected everyday class grievances with national politics and presented nationalism in simple moral language that ordinary people understood. Further, he also built organisational structures that allowed participation from every corner of the country.
However, Desai also argues that Gandhi’s mass politics could only emerge after the earlier stages had created the necessary social base.
Why Nationalism Expanded Beyond the Bourgeoisie
Desai explains that nationalism widened because:
peasants were distressed by rent, debt, and exploitation
workers faced harsh conditions and low wages
the intelligentsia translated these grievances into nationalist language
colonial repression increased resentment
World War II deepened social contradictions
By Stage 5, nationalism included many classes, though leadership remained bourgeois and cautious about radical change.
Critique of Cultural and Civilisational Explanations
Desai uses his model to challenge several popular views:
Ancient national unity: Pre-colonial India lacked the economic, political, and communicative unity needed for nationalism.
Spiritual explanations: Nationalism did not grow from timeless values but from modern economic and social contradictions.
Leader-focused histories: Leaders express class interests produced by structural change; they do not create movements from nothing.
Limits of the National Movement (Marxist Conclusion)
Desai argues that because the leadership was bourgeois, the movement had clear limitations:
reluctance to abolish landlordism
fear of redistribution of land
compromises with rulers and elites
focus on political freedom and independence over social revolution and redistribution of national wealth
continuation of caste and class hierarchies
Therefore, the national independence movement was bourgeois-democratic, not socialist-revolutionary.
Conclusion
Desai’s analysis transforms Indian nationalism from a story of heroic leaders into a sociological explanation grounded in class formation, economic restructuring, and historical contradictions. Nationalism begins with the bourgeoisie (Stage 1), becomes sharper as capitalist interests grow (Stage 2), turns into a mass movement under Gandhi (Stage 3), experiments with governance (Stage 4), and reaches a climax during the crisis of World War II (Stage 5).
For Desai, nationalism is a product of colonial modernisation, not an ancient sentiment. It develops through different phases because different classes respond to the pressures and possibilities created by colonial capitalism.
Section III | Caste–Class Dialectics in India
In this section, we look at how A. R. Desai understands the relationship between caste and class in India. This is one of the most important parts of his thought and also one of the most challenging, because he asks us to change how we usually think about caste.
Most of us are used to thinking of caste as a religious or cultural system: hierarchy, purity–pollution, rituals, and so on. Desai does not deny this. But he says this is only one side of the story. If we look only at this cultural side, we miss how caste is deeply tied to land, labour, and economic control. Desai argues that Caste is not just a system of beliefs and rituals. It is also a system that organises labour and controls resources.
1. Caste as a Material System, Not Just a Cultural One
There is a common belief that caste is mainly about religion and culture. For e.g.:
Indological thinkers like G. S. Ghurye stress texts, symbols, and tradition.
Louis Dumont, in Homo Hierarchicus, describes caste as a “purely ideological system” based on ideas of ritual purity and pollution.
Desai agrees that these cultural elements exist. But he argues that if we explain caste only in these terms, we miss the real forces that decide people’s life like who has land, who has to work with their hands, who can command labour, and how surplus (extra value) is taken from workers?
To understand this, we must start from an agrarian economy, because for centuries Indian society was mostly rural and agricultural. Desai argues that caste evolved historically as a system that:
allocates different kinds of labour to different groups,
fixes which castes will do which work,
controls access to land and other resources,
decides who will perform manual and menial tasks.
So caste did not grow only as a religious hierarchy. It grew as a way to organise labour and keep a stable, obedient workforce under the control of dominant caste groups.
For Desai, the strongest link between caste and class is land control. In rural India, land has been the main means of production. Those who control land also control people. For instance, many upper castes and dominant peasant castes have historically held a lot of land.
By contrast, lower castes, especially Shudras and Dalits, had little or no land. They were often landless agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, tenants-at-will (who could be evicted easily) or village service workers in the jajmani system (barbers, washermen, leather workers, etc.).
Because they did not own land, they had to depend on dominant castes for daily wages and seasonal work. This economic dependence turned into social and ritual subordination. In this way, caste and class became closely woven together.
Hereditary Occupations as a System of Labour Control
Under the caste system, each caste is traditionally tied to a particular type of work. Desai says this is a deliberate way to control labour. The jajmani system in villages shows this clearly. In a typical jajmani setup:
Dalit communities did tasks like leatherwork, sweeping, removing dead animals, and heavy agricultural labour.
Shudra artisanal castes did blacksmithing, carpentry, pottery and similar work.
Upper castes controlled land, temples, and religious authority, and received services from these groups.
This arrangement ensured that the upper and dominant castes got a regular, guaranteed flow of labour. Because each caste was “supposed” to do a fixed type of work, people could not easily shift occupations, bargain for higher wages, or escape degrading roles. Custom was not gentle. It was backed by social pressure, boycott and exclusion and sometimes direct physical violence.
Desai’s key point is that ritual beliefs serve an economic function. Purity–pollution ideas make it seem “natural” that some castes do “dirty” or “impure” work. If a group is labelled “untouchable,” it becomes:
easier to push them into degrading labour,
harder for them to protest,
easier to punish them if they rebel.
So caste ideology is not innocent. It becomes a tool for class domination.
Caste Endogamy and Social Closure
Endogamy means marrying within one’s caste. Many people think this is only about culture or honour. But Desai explains its economic role.
If landowning castes began to freely marry outside their group, especially with poorer castes, land would gradually spread out and break big holdings. Endogamy stops this. It keeps property concentrated inside the caste.
Bonded Labour and the Caste–Class Nexus
Systems like begar, vetti, hali, harwahi and similar forms of tied labour were not just feudal leftovers. They were rooted in the caste–class order. Lower castes often faced:
debt bondage (loans that tied them to landlords for generations),
hereditary service obligations,
tied labour contracts (where they had to work only for one employer),
dependence on landlords for food, shelter, loans and protection.
This meant caste determined not only ritual rank but also practical freedom or unfreedom.
Colonialism and the Hardening of Caste–Class Relations
Some people imagine that British rule weakened caste. Desai argues almost the opposite: colonial policies often hardened caste and strengthened caste-based elites.
The British:
made dominant castes into legal landlords through land settlements,
fixed caste labels through census categories,
appointed upper-caste groups as local officials and intermediaries,
rewarded cooperating elites with titles, land, and influence.
As a result, caste and economic power became even more tightly linked. Ritual hierarchies were turned into formal economic hierarchies recognised by law and administration.
Why Desai’s Caste–Class Framework is Theoretically Important
Desai’s analysis of caste and class does three major things:
It shows that caste is a system that organises labour and controls surplus extraction, not just a ritual hierarchy.
It challenges purely cultural or civilisational theories of caste, including Indological and Dumontian views.
It firmly anchors the study of caste within political economy and class relations.
Section IV | Nationalism & Class Contradictions
Many liberal–nationalist historians describe Indian nationalism as a unified cultural awakening — as if Indians suddenly realised they were one civilisation. Many Indological or civilisational thinkers also believe nationalism is the natural expression of an ancient, unified culture.
Desai disagrees with both views. He says they miss the main point. Nationalism did not rise because Indians suddenly “remembered” they were one civilisation. It rose because colonial capitalism changed society in deep ways, creating new social classes, new economic interests, and new contradictions.
For Desai, nationalism grew out of specific material processes such as:
growth of the Indian bourgeoisie, middle classes and intelligentsia
expansion of railways and transport networks
spread of English education
rise of modern cities and print culture
and the growing suffering and mobilisation of peasants, workers and tribal groups
These groups were shaped by colonial policies, and since colonial rule negatively affected their interests, these groups came together to oppose the British and the national movement took shape. Nationalism, therefore, is a historical product, meaning it emerged out of the conditions created by colonial rule in India.
The Bourgeois Leadership of the National Movement
A major part of Desai’s argument is that Indian nationalism was led primarily by the Indian bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. This included:
big merchants and industrialists,
wealthy professionals,
lawyers, teachers, journalists,
upper-caste educated elites,
landlords who were upset with certain British policies.
He does not deny that peasants and workers participated. They played a huge role. But the overall control, direction, and strategy of the movement rested with the upper and middle strata.
Why did this bourgeois group take the lead?
Because British rule began to clash with their interests. For example:
Indian merchants faced heavy competition from British goods.
Early Indian industrialists wanted tariff protection.
Professionals wanted better representation in administration.
Educated Indians wanted a share in political power.
These groups needed political autonomy to protect their economic ambitions. Their goal was political freedom but not a deep social revolution. They wanted an India where they could prosper without colonial interference, not an India where land and wealth were redistributed to the poor.
This is why Desai calls the movement bourgeois-democratic: anti-colonial, yet cautious about transforming internal structures.
The Elite–Mass Dichotomy: Desai’s Key Insight
One of Desai’s most important contributions is the idea of the elite–mass dichotomy.
He shows that:
the masses : peasants, workers, lower middle classes, students participated in huge numbers,
but the leadership carefully moderated or restrained their demands.
In places like Bombay mills, Calcutta jute factories and Madras industrial centres, workers participated actively in nationalist protests. They demanded:
better wages,
shorter hours,
rights to organise.
But nationalist leadership often kept distance from radical worker struggles because:
big industrialists financed Congress,
communist and socialist groups led many labour movements, who were opposed to the mainstream nationalist movement and the Congress party
violent or militant strikes threatened social stability and Industrialist interests.
Thus, workers participated energetically, but leadership kept their class demands from becoming central to the nationalist programme.
Similarly, in rural areas, peasants Peasants joined the movement not out of patriotism but because they suffered from high rents, indebtedness, forced labour and landlord oppression.
Movements like Kheda (1918), Bardoli (1928), Eka movement, the Moplah rebellion, and later Telangana and Tebhaga, were rooted in economic suffering. Yet nationalist leaders often controlled or limited these struggles.
For example:
In Bardoli, Vallabhbhai Patel kept the movement disciplined and prevented it from turning against the landlords.
The Telangana movement which involved armed struggle and demands for land redistribution, was not supported by mainstream nationalist leadership.
Peasant participation was widespread, but the leadership ensured that radical agrarian demands like rent reduction, land distribution or abolition of landlordism remained restrained because nationalist leaders needed support from landlords and dominant peasant castes.
Thus, acccording to Desai, nationalist leaders used mass energy but carefully avoided supporting demands that would upset the elites supporting the national movement and the Congress party.
Nationalist Ideology as a Mediator of Class Interests
Desai gives a fresh interpretation of nationalist symbols like Swaraj, Swadeshi, boycott, non-cooperation. He says these symbols served to bridge class differences.
Take Swadeshi. On the surface, it appears as a patriotic call to use Indian goods. But Desai argues it also supported Indian industrialists, because:
boycotting British cloth increased demand for Indian textiles,
indigenous industries gained protection without formal tariffs.
Similarly, Swaraj united people against colonial rule, but it also hid internal inequalities, swadeshi factories made profits for the industrialists but had little to offer to the Indian workers working in those factories, they still were being exploited by the elite, but this time instead of British, the exploitation was being done by Indian nationalist industrialists
Tribal Groups and Limited Inclusion
Desai notes that tribal struggles often had a different focus. Tribals faced:
land loss,
restrictive forest policies,
forced labour,
exploitation by contractors and moneylenders.
Movements like the Santhal rebellion, Bhil revolts, and Munda Ulgulan were responses to colonial penetration and capitalist expansion rather than expressions of nationalist awakening.
Mainstream nationalist leadership did not incorporate tribal demands strongly because the tribals did not form a part of the nationalist alliance under the leadership of the Congress.
Continuities Between Colonial and Postcolonial India
Desai argues that many class alliances built during the nationalist period continued after independence:
landlords were compensated, not dispossessed,
the Indian bourgeoisie influenced industrial policy,
upper castes dominated bureaucracy and key institutions,
peasant radicalism was contained,
capitalist development advanced without major redistribution.
Thus, political independence did not create a social revolution.
Section V | Colonial Land Relations & Industrial Class Formation
British land revenue systems like zamindari, ryotwari and mahalwari were not just administrative schemes. They were mechanisms to create new classes.
Their main aims were to extract as much revenue as possible, to stabilize British rule and to create loyal local allies among Indian elites who would help maintain order.
Before British rule, agrarian relations often had some flexibility and were based on customs. Under colonial rule, land settlements were given a legal and rigid form with written contracts that were legally enforceable.
This changed the countryside by concentrating land in the hands of elites and making peasants more dependent and vulnerable. This created new agrarian classes: landlords, rich peasants, poor peasants, and landless labourers.
Desai insists this structure is historically produced by colonial land policies and market pressures, not some timeless rural pattern. Later peasant movements, caste politics and even regional party formations are built upon this class structure.
Plantation Economy: “Colonial Capitalism in Pure Form”
Plantations of tea in Assam, coffee in Karnataka, rubber in Kerala, and others were a more direct form of capitalist agriculture.
On plantations:
Workers were often migrants, recruited through contractors under coercive conditions.
Many came from tribal communities displaced from forests.
Others were indentured labourers bound by contract.
The labour regime included very low wages, harsh discipline and punishment and little or no rights or bargaining power. Desai called plantations “colonial capitalism in its pure form” because there was:
no protective cover of village customs,
no jajmani system,
just complete control of labour by capital under state protection
Industrial Centres and the Birth of the Working Class
Colonial industries — especially textiles, jute, coal and steel — gave rise to India’s first modern industrial working class but worked for long hours in poor conditions with low wages. Some examples include:
In Bombay textile mills, workers were recruited from particular castes and regions (often from the Deccan, Konkan, etc.). This made it easier to control them and reduced chances of cross-regional unity.
In Calcutta jute mills, many workers came as migrants from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. They lived in overcrowded bastis with poor sanitation and no local support.
In coal mines like Jharia, tribal and lower-caste workers did extremely dangerous underground work, often without safety measures.
Whenever workers tried to organise strikes, the colonial state intervened. Laws like the Trade Disputes Act (1929) restricted the right to strike. Police were sent to break picket lines, arrest leaders, and maintain “order.” For Desai, this shows that the state was not neutral; it actively took the side of the industrialists against the workers.
Indian Bourgeoisie and the National Movement
As Indian Landlords and Industrialists gradually grew under colonial conditions and later under nationalist protection, they:
demanded tariff protection,
sought influence in legislative bodies and policy decisions,
gave financial and political support to the Congress.
Desai argues that this made the national movement more moderate in its economic demands. Indian capitalists were anti-colonial, but they did not want radical changes that would threaten private property or their control over labour.
Continuities After Independence
Finally, Desai shows that many patterns of colonial industrialisation survived into the post-independence period:
The independent state promoted big industry and often protected large business houses.
Trade unions faced new pressures and began to weaken.
Industrial relations remained unequal, with employers and the state often on the same side.
For Desai, this continuity confirms a central point: political freedom did not automatically change the class structure and lives of the common people.
Section VI | The Postcolonial State: Freedom Without Social Revolution
In his later work, i.e. State and Society in India (1975) Desai claimed that the Independence in 1947 was a bourgeois democratic revolution, not a social revolution.
What does this mean?
Political power shifted from British rulers to Indian leaders.
But the lives of the common people did not change because the rich still exploited the poor
According to Desai, this happened because the leadership of the national movement came mainly from propertied classes, industrial bourgeoisie, landlords and rich peasants and English-educated professionals and bureaucrats. These groups truly wanted to end colonial rule. But at the same time, they did not want a deep internal upheaval that would radically redistribute land and wealth or place power in the hands of workers and landless peasants.
Therefore, after independence:
Zamindars were not simply removed; many were compensated.
In many states, large landlords were replaced not by landless labourers but by rich peasants and dominant castes who gained from land reforms.
Industrial capitalists, who had supported the national movement, now became powerful partners in policy-making.
The bureaucracy, police, courts, and administrative structures largely continued from the colonial period, keeping their old logic of control.
Planning as a Form of Managed Capitalism
After independence, India adopted a system of planned development:
Five-Year Plans,
Planning Commission,
large public sector,
big dams and steel plants,
heavy industry, infrastructure, etc.
This was often spoken of as a move towards a “socialistic pattern of society.” Desai, however, sees planning differently. He argues that planning in India was not aimed at abolishing capitalism. Instead, it aimed to manage the growth of capitalism by the state acting as
In his view:
The public sector dominated key industries like steel, power, mining, transport and heavy engineering.
But instead of transforming society, these sectors often absorbed the costs and risks of industrialisation.
Meanwhile, private capital enjoyed many benefits: protected markets, infrastructure, credit, and technology.
For instance, the industrial licensing system shows how this worked in real life:
Licenses restricted entry into many industries, this protected big business houses like Tatas, Birlas, Sarabhais, Bajajs, and others from competition by new entrants
The state gave them cheap loans, subsidies and tariff protection.
The public sector built roads, power stations, steel plants and provided inputs at subsidised rates. Thus the industrialists could take advantage of the infrastructure that was being built by public money.
In this arrangement the government creates a safe environment where private capital can grow without facing too much competition or radical redistribution, while enjoying the benefits of public sector led infrastructure development.
The Green Revolution: Growth With Inequality
Desai gives special attention to the Green Revolution, because it reshaped rural India. He agrees that the Green Revolution increased agricultural output and reduced food shortages in many regions. But he also points out its class and caste consequences.
Green Revolution technology; high-yielding varieties (HYVs), fertilisers, tube wells, tractors, improved seeds, required capital and access. Typically, those who could benefit were larger landowners and those with access to irrigation and institutional credit.
The state supported them through:
agricultural credit from banks and cooperatives,
subsidies on fertilisers and machinery,
agricultural universities and extension services,
procurement at Minimum Support Prices (MSP),
As a result a new class of agrarian capitalists came up. They gained strong political power through cooperatives, mandi committees, panchayats and regional parties.
On the other hand:
Small and marginal farmers,
sharecroppers,
and landless labourers — often Dalits, Adivasis and lower OBCs — did not benefit in the same way.
Many of them faced displacement due to mechanisation or continued in low-paid agricultural labour.
Desai sees the Green Revolution as a capitalist restructuring of agriculture. It brought technological change, but not social justice. Old caste–class hierarchies were not destroyed; they were reproduced in more commercial forms.
State Ideology: Development, Welfare and Modernisation
The Indian state presents itself as secular, welfare-oriented, modernising and committed to “development” for all. Desai does not dismiss these claims, but he asks: what do they actually do in practice? He argues that the ideology of development often hides:
the displacement and suffering of peasants, tribals and workers,
the protection of elite and corporate interests.
Some examples he points to:
Large dams displacing thousands of tribal families without proper rehabilitation.
Land acquisition for industrial projects that benefits companies and urban elites more than the local communities.
Welfare schemes that provide some relief but do not alter the basic structure of inequality, i.e. the rich owned the land and the industries, while the poor worked to generate a profit for them.
Thus political slogans like “Garibi Hatao” giving symbolic assurance to the poor, while ensuring that radical demands like land redistribution that could actually make a difference were kept aside.
Section VII | Methodological Contributions
A. R. Desai’s method occupies a special place in Indian sociology. Earlier traditions, like Indology, mainly used classical texts and civilisational ideas to understand India. The structural-functionalist school focused on social order, harmony and integration. Desai takes a very different route. He stands firmly in the Marxist, historical–materialist tradition.
For Desai, Indian society can only be understood if we look at its material foundations, such as:
land relations,
class structures,
how surplus is extracted from workers and peasants,
how labour is organised,
and what role the state plays in maintaining dominance.
He believes sociology should not just describe customs or repeat what texts say. It must be analytical and historical. This makes his method sharp, political and critical.
Desai strongly rejects the idea of “value-neutral sociology.” He thinks no sociologist is ever truly neutral. Every framework carries hidden values and assumptions. If a sociologist claims to be neutral and just “objective,” Desai suspects that they are actually supporting the existing order without admitting it.
So, for him, the real task of sociology is not simply to describe caste, rituals, or customs, but to uncover the structural inequalities that shape people’s lives.
At the centre of his method is the dialectical approach, taken from Marx, Engels, Lenin and the wider Marxist tradition. Dialectics means looking for contradictions in society, not just surface disagreements, but deep structural tensions between:
economic forces,
classes,
and institutions.
Desai applies this systematically. He studies:
the contradiction between colonial capitalism and semi-feudal agrarian relations,
the tension between mass militancy and bourgeois leadership within the nationalist movement,
the struggle between workers and industrial capital,
and the contradictions in a postcolonial state that speaks of socialism but operates within capitalist limits.
Instead of seeing Indian society as a stable system that naturally maintains order, Desai presents it as dynamic, full of conflict and constantly changing through structural transformations.
One of Desai’s most important methodological contributions is his mapping of class formation, especially in agriculture like landlords, rich peasants, poor peasants, tenants, sharecroppers, landless labourers etc. Long before “agrarian political economy” became a fashionable subfield, Desai was already drawing a clear class map.
Later scholars such as Daniel Thorner, D. N. Dhanagare and A. R. Vasavi built on this kind of political economic analysis of rural India. Desai’s method provided a foundation for their work.
Another key feature of Desai’s method is his use of historical and official documents. He did not rely only on abstract theory. He worked with revenue records, colonial administrative reports, land-settlement documents, census volumes etc.
With these sources, he could track long-term structural changes, such as:
how landownership patterns shifted,
how labour markets evolved,
how wages rose or fell,
how the state enforced new systems of control and extraction.
He then combined these documents with contemporary empirical studies. Although he was not a field ethnographer like M. N. Srinivas or S. C. Dube, he closely read village studies, tribal studies, labour studies and peasant movement case studies written by others. He used them as supporting evidence to test and illustrate the larger structural patterns he had identified.
So his method sits at the intersection of:
archival history,
political economy,
and sociological analysis.
This makes his work both historically deep and analytically strong. This also explains why Desai rejected the Indological view of Indian society. He argued that if we study caste and kinship only through scriptures, we ignore what really shapes everyday life:
who owns land,
who does the labour,
who takes the surplus,
and who holds political power.
Similarly, he rejected structural-functionalism’s emphasis on social harmony and integration. He believed such theories hide the violence and exploitation present in institutions like caste, landlordism and labour relations.
Another important element of Desai’s method is his use of ideology critique. He does not simply accept: nationalist claims, Gandhian language, or developmental slogans. Instead, he compares their claims with the ground reality of exploitation, power and state policies, this allows him to show internal contradictions, such as:
the state claims equality but helps industrialists become even more powerful
nationalism speaks of unity but hides class divisions, with the demands of the rich and powerful overpowering the needs of the poor
development promises prosperity but often produces displacement and insecurity.
Desai’s methodological approach influenced many radical scholars who often drew from Desai’s insistence on class relations and material structures as the base of sociological explanation.
Desai followed the principle of 'Praxis,' which means bridging the gap between thinking (theory) and real-world action (practice). For him, sociology was not just about sitting in a university and writing books for other scholars; it was about using knowledge to help change society. He was an activist and believed that a sociologist should be actively involved in the struggles of the people, he was deeply involved in civil liberties movements and labour unions. He saw his research as a tool to help activists, workers, and peasants understand the system so they could fight against injustice more effectively.
Finally, Desai contributed institutionally by helping to establish Marxist sociology in India. Through his involvement in academic networks, reading groups, and journals like Social Scientist, he helped make political economy and marxism a central pillar of Indian sociology. This challenged the earlier dominance of culturalist and structural-functionalist approaches.
Section VIII | Critiques & Contemporary Reassessments
A. R. Desai is an important figure in Indian sociology, but many later scholars have criticised his work and tried to rethink it.
One major criticism is that Desai is “economistic.” This means that he tries to explain almost everything in Indian society mainly through economics and class relations. In his work, caste, family, religion, nationalism and identity are often read as expressions of relations of production and surplus extraction.
Critics, like the sociologist André Béteille, agree that class and economic power are very important, but they say that these alone cannot capture the full complexity of social life in India. In Desai’s writing, caste often appears mainly as an ideological cover for class relations, and religion appears mainly as a tool of domination. Scholars who work with cultural, symbolic or ethnographic approaches say that this way of thinking makes culture and meaning look flat and one-dimensional. They argue that Desai’s framework leaves little space for cultural processes and political processes that are not fully reducible to class.
Dalit and Ambedkarite Critique
A sharper critique comes from Dalit and Ambedkarite scholars. They say that Desai does not give enough weight to the specific and independent power of caste. They point out that caste existed long before capitalism arrived and that caste continues to shape social life even when people’s class positions change. For them, humiliation, untouchability, segregation, purity–pollution rules, ritual exclusion and caste violence cannot be fully explained as just another form of class exploitation.
Writers such as Gail Omvedt, Kancha Ilaiah and many other Dalit thinkers say that Desai does not capture the psychological, cultural and embodied aspects of caste oppression. They also note that even when Dalits gain education, land or professional jobs, discrimination does not automatically disappear. So they argue that caste often acts as an independent structure of power and cannot be simply folded into class.
Feminist Critique
Feminist scholars add another strong line of criticism. They point out that Desai does not sufficiently address the exploitation of women. Feminist Marxists accept that class analysis is important, but they insist that patriarchy is a separate and powerful structure.
They highlight unpaid domestic labour,
gendered divisions of agricultural work,
dowry,
inheritance patterns,
restrictions on women’s mobility
and everyday violence.
In many rural areas, women form a large share of landless labourers, do the hardest agricultural tasks for lower wages, and at the same time perform unpaid work inside the household that reproduces the labour force. Because Desai’s method is centred on who owns land and who controls the means of production, this unpaid and gendered labour often disappears from his analysis.
Scholars such as Maria Mies, Uma Chakravarti, Leela Dube and Nandini Sundar argue that to understand rural society properly, you must treat patriarchy as an independent structure of oppression and not only as a side-effect of class.
Ethnographers’ Critique
Ethnographers and anthropologists criticise Desai for relying very heavily on archival and statistical sources. They appreciate the depth of his historical work, but they say that such a method can miss the fine details of everyday life. They argue that his categories like “landlord,” “rich peasant” or “labourer” sometimes treat these groups as if they were uniform and the same everywhere. In reality, there are important differences created by region, sub-caste, kinship strategies, local history and village-level politics.
Peasants and workers make decisions not only because of class interests but also because of moral norms, ideas of honour, ritual concerns and local alliances. Sociologists from the Delhi and Bombay schools point out that Desai’s macro-structural view can overlook micro-level processes and the active choices, or “agency,” of ordinary people.
Subaltern Critique
Another important critique comes from the Subaltern Studies school. Historians such as Ranajit Guha, David Hardiman and Gyanendra Pandey accept that exploitation, rent, revenue and debt are major factors, but they say that Desai explains peasant and tribal uprisings mainly through economic pressure. They argue that many movements were also shaped by cultural idioms, religious symbols, kinship and clan loyalties and local cosmologies.
For example, tribal uprisings often involved millenarian beliefs (visions of a coming just order) and charismatic leaders who mobilised people through ritual, prophecy and sacred language. Subaltern historians say that if you focus only on class and economic exploitation, you do not fully understand the “Peasant Consciousness”, i.e. the motives and thinking of peasants and tribals. In their view, Desai’s framework does not give enough importance to these symbolic and cultural dimensions.
Postcolonial Critique
Postcolonial theorists raise a different kind of criticism against Desai. Scholars like Partha Chatterjee and Dipesh Chakrabarty argue that Desai’s Marxist method is shaped by European ideas about how history moves forward. These European ideas, often called Enlightenment or Eurocentric ideas, assume that every society goes through the same fixed sequence of stages: first feudalism, then capitalism, and finally socialism. According to these scholars, Desai sometimes writes as if India must follow this same path.
They say this is a problem because India is not one single cultural or historical story. India contains many languages, religions, regions and ways of living, which create many different forms of modern life. These cannot be neatly fitted into a single European-style timeline. Postcolonial scholars also point out that nationalism in India did not only express class interests; it also created new cultural identities and political feelings that cannot be entirely reduced to economic structures.
Development Sociology Critique
Scholars of development sociology criticise Desai’s picture of the Indian state as an alliance fully committed to serving the industrialists and landlords. They do not deny that the state often protects elite interests, but they say that his view does not capture the internal complexity of the state.
They point to the expansion of welfare measures, reservation policies, the rise of regional parties, the growth of Panchayati Raj institutions and the role of reformist bureaucrats and NGOs. They argue that these developments show that the state has internal contradictions, regional variations and spaces where pro-poor or rights-based policies can emerge.
From their perspective, Desai’s emphasis on continuity between colonial and postcolonial state structures underplays these important changes and tensions.
Contemporary Assessments
At the same time, many contemporary scholars continue to value Desai’s work very highly. They recognise that he was among the first to place class at the centre of Indian sociology and to provide a systematic historical-materialist framework for understanding nationalism, state formation, agrarian change, labour struggles and capitalist development.
His analysis of bonded labour, uneven development, industrial exploitation, landlord–bourgeois alliances and the ideological role of the state still offers a powerful lens for examining current issues such as neoliberal reforms, corporate–state relations, land acquisition conflicts, the gig economy and the informalisation of labour.
Today, instead of rejecting Desai, many scholars try to combine his insights with other perspectives. They retain his focus on class and political economy but also bring in caste, gender, ethnicity, ecology and identity. This more “intersectional” approach allows them to keep the structural clarity of Desai’s analysis while filling in the parts he ignored or treated as secondary. In this way, his work remains a starting point or baseline, not because it is complete or perfect, but because it provides a strong foundation on which a more complete analysis can be built.
