Asia, Sociocultural Overviews: South Asia

Andre Beteille, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi, India

Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract
South Asia stands for seven countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. The article
discusses the overall features of Indian civilization, religion, and language; sociocultural diversity including collective
identities of caste and tribe, village organization, family, and kinship; and the important recent changes in Indian society
resulting from globalization and related factors.

Area and Population

The term South Asia has come to stand for a group of
seven countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan,
Sri Lanka, and the Maldives; and it is in that sense that it
will be used in this article. These countries differ greatly in
area and population, and in geographical aspect and location. India, with over a billion inhabitants, has the second
largest population in the world; the Maldives have a population of only a few hundred thousand people. Nepal and
Bhutan are entirely landlocked; Sri Lanka is an island in the
Indian Ocean; and the Maldives comprise a chain of more
than 1000 islands, most of them uninhabited.
The people of these countries have a shared past by which
many of their present social and cultural characteristics have
been shaped. Demographically, economically, and politically,
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are the three most important
countries of the region. Until 1947, they were one country. It
was partitioned in the same year, when India and Pakistan
became separate and independent nations. Pakistan was in turn
partitioned in 1971, leading to the creation of Bangladesh as
a separate country. The rst partition was occasioned by
differences of religion, and the second by differences of
language. In each case the partition was attended by considerable movements of population.
The Indian subcontinent, comprising India, Pakistan, and
Bangladesh, was under British rule for a long time, as was also
Sri Lanka. The two landlocked kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan
never came directly under British rule and remained relatively
isolated from the economic and political forces released by it.
Although many social and cultural changes have taken place in
the region since the end of colonial rule in the middle of the
twentieth century, large parts of it still remain economically
backward.
The subcontinent is the home of a very ancient and
distinct civilization that may be described as the pan-Indian
or the Indic civilization. This civilization had its origin in
the Indo-Gangetic plain in the second millennium BC, and
it antedates the birth of both Christianity and Islam. Its
characteristic bearers today are the Hindus. It has undergone
many changes, and its inuence has not only permeated
throughout India and its neighboring countries, but also
extended to lands beyond the seas such as Indonesia,
Cambodia, and Thailand. India is not only the home of
Hinduism, it also gave birth to Buddhism, which is the

76

ofcial religion of Bhutan and the predominant religion

of Sri Lanka.

Religion and Language

Although Hinduism has had the longest and most pervasive
inuence on society and culture in the subcontinent, Islam
too has a strong presence in it, including present-day India.
Pakistan is an Islamic country; Bangladesh has a predominantly
Muslim population; and although the Muslims are a minority
in India, they are a very large minority. The medieval phase of
Indian history was dominated by Muslim sultanates and
empires; and the Muslim population of Bangladesh, Pakistan,
and India taken together make up a considerable part of the
Muslim population of the world as a whole.
In South Asia, the divisions of religion cut across those of
state and nation, and the region as a whole may be viewed as
a mosaic of religious communities, sects, and denominations.
India provides an extreme example of coexistence of diverse
religious faiths and practices. Although the Hindus predominate in the country as a whole, there are districts in which
Sikhs, Muslims, or Christians predominate. Again, Nepal is
a predominantly Hindu country, but there are areas in which
Buddhists predominate; in Sri Lanka it is the other way around.
South Asia is the home not only of many religions but also
of innumerable languages, and, whether on the plane of
cultural values or of social identity, language is as important as
religion. Like the divisions of religion, those of language also
cut across the boundaries of state and nation. The Punjabispeaking community is divided between India and Pakistan;
the Bengali-speaking community between India and Bangladesh; and the Tamil-speaking community between India and
Sri Lanka. Sometimes, as in Sri Lanka, where the Sinhalaspeakers are predominantly Buddhist and the Tamil-speakers
predominantly Hindu, the divisions of language and religion
follow the same line. But this is not always the case. It is
common in the subcontinent, if not characteristic, for the
divisions of language and religion to cut across each other;
there are Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs among the Punjabispeakers in India and Pakistan, and Hindus and Muslims
among the Bengali-speakers in India and Bangladesh.
Because of historical and demographic reasons India has the
largest variety of languages among South Asian countries: it is
indeed the most polyglot country in the world. There are more

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 2

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.12019-7

Asia, Sociocultural Overviews: South Asia

than a dozen literary languages, divided between the IndoAryan and the Dravidian families of language. In addition,
there are numerous tribal languages and dialects belonging
to the Austro-Asiatic, the Tibeto-Burman, and other families.
In India, as in the subcontinent generally, the divisions of
language correspond more closely to geographical divisions
than do the divisions of religion; but here too, population
movements through the centuries have led to a certain dispersal
of language communities.
If the civilization of South Asia had a design, it was most
clearly visible in the Indian subcontinent until its rst partition
in 1947. Visitors to the area from far and near have been for
centuries struck by the distinctness and continuity of that
design, and have commented on its inuence on society and
culture in the different countries of the region. Despite the
changes and upheavals of the twentieth century, its distinctive
features are still visible, not only in India, but elsewhere
as well.

Accommodation of Diversity
A brief sketch of the design of the traditional civilization of the
subcontinent will be provided as an aid to the understanding of
the multitude of beliefs, practices, habits, customs, and
manners prevalent in the region to this day. The rst striking
feature of this design is the accommodation of diversity. The
rich, ethnographic record available from the middle of the
nineteenth century onward shows an endless, almost inexhaustible, variety in material culture, social arrangements, and
religious beliefs and practices. Some of the variation in material
traits, in matters such as food, dress, and habitation, may be
explained by variations in geographical environment and
natural resources. But the cultural variation is far in excess of
what would be required by variations of natural environment.
For instance, even where its basic ingredients are the same, food
might be prepared and served differently among the different
castes and communities in the same village.
Then there is the great diversity of social arrangements in
matters relating to family, marriage, descent, inheritance, residence, and so on. What needs to be stressed is not simply the
diversity of practices, but also the diversity of rules; they were
the despair of the colonial administrators of the nineteenth
century who sought to codify the laws and customs of
the subcontinent. There is nally the profusion of religious
beliefs, doctrines, rituals, customs, and usages, which have
been mentioned.
The presence of diversity has been more than a matter of
mere existence. In Indian society in particular and South Asian
societies in general, it has been sustained by law, custom, and
popular religion. Accommodation without assimilation has
been a core value of Indian civilization until modern times. It
has led to the coexistence of a large multiplicity of beliefs and
practices as well as of social groups. Adding new components
has not meant discarding old ones, and new and old components of the most heterogeneous kinds have existed cheekby-jowl to a greater extent than in other civilizations. The
Indian subcontinent has been and still largely remains a vast
mosaic of tribes, clans, castes, sects, and communities, each
with its own identity.

77

Collective Identities
The second distinctive feature of South Asian societies is the
predominance of collective identities. In the past, what counted
was not so much the individual but the group of which he was
a member by birth, and this continues to a large extent even
now. It has often been said that traditional Indian society was
a society not of individuals but of castes and communities. As
has been noted, there was a great multiplicity of groups, and
this multiplicity was a feature even of small local communities.
The members of a single village might observe different religious practices, speak more than one language, and belong to
a dozen or more different castes and subcastes.
Collective identities were maintained by delity to the
customs of ones ancestors and by rules for the regulation of
marriage. In course of time, subtle differences developed in
craft practices, dress, and ornamentation, marriage rules and
ritual observances between groups having the same origin.
Each group and subgroup maintained its distinctive style of life
and transmitted it from generation to generation. The group
preserved a sense of its own identity despite changes in its
social position. The high value placed on the accommodation
of diversity allowed and indeed encouraged each group to
retain a strong sense of its own identity.
The persistence of collective identities may be illustrated
with two examples from the subcontinent. The rst relates to
what has been called the Hindu method of tribal absorption.
In the past, tribal groups, which were relatively isolated from
the wider society sometimes established relations with that
society, discarding some old practices and acquiring some new
ones. In this way, a tribe was often transformed into a caste but,
despite a change of name and to some extent also of social
position, it preserved its old collective identity. The second
example relates to the survival of caste identities despite
changes of religion. The census reports of British India show
that in the Punjab, on both sides of the present international
frontier, the same castes, such as Ahir, Jat, and Gujjar were
present among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. When a section
of a Hindu caste embraced Islam or Sikhism, it adopted
a new religion but did not abandon its old and distinct
collective identity.

Hierarchical Organization
The accommodation of diversity did not mean that the tribes,
clans, castes, sects, and communities that were allowed or even
encouraged to maintain their distinctive identities were all
placed on the same plane of equality. Diversity was organized
on the basis of hierarchy and not of equality, and that is the
third distinctive feature of the traditional civilization of South
Asia. It is true that all communities were allowed or even
encouraged to maintain their distinctive styles of life; but they
were not all equally esteemed. While all premodern civilizations were hierarchical to a greater or lesser extent, the principle
and practice of hierarchy were carried furthest on the Indian
subcontinent, particularly among the Hindus.
Hierarchy is not simply a matter of inequality in the
distribution of material resources or of life chances; it is above
all a system of values according to which the division of the

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Asia, Sociocultural Overviews: South Asia

world into social groups deemed to be of unequal worth is

a part of the natural scheme of things. The hierarchical
conception of society found its fullest expression in the classical
Hindu texts known as the Dharmashastra, which provided the
framework for Hindu law. Although the law has changed
radically in the direction of equality, the bias of custom is still
often in favor of hierarchy.
The Hindu caste system has been represented as the
prototype of a hierarchical social order. But hierarchy extends
beyond caste and permeates social relations and social institutions of the most diverse kinds among Hindus, Muslims,
Buddhists, and others throughout the region. Despite the
doctrine of equality characteristic of Islam, agrarian relations
and gender relations are cast in a deeply hierarchical mold in
Pakistan and to some extent also in Bangladesh.

The Village
Colonial administrators throughout the nineteenth century
saw the subcontinent as essentially a land of villages. They
have left behind memorable accounts of the unity, the selfsufciency, and the continuity of the Indian village. A large
number of village studies have been conducted in India by
professional anthropologists and others since the country
became independent in 1947. Similar studies have been
conducted in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. In
the paragraphs below there follows a brief account of the
broad social characteristics of the Indian village, many of
which may also be found in villages in the other countries
just mentioned.
In the past, the Indian village had a distinct physical identity, which became particularly prominent during oods,
famines, and other natural calamities. Most villages were
nucleated, although there were also dispersed villages,
depending in part on the terrain. The life of the village was
based on an economy of land and grain, and its rhythm was,
and to a large extent still is, governed by the annual cycle of
agricultural activities. The village also has an annual cycle of
religious ceremonies and festivals, and the two cycles are
related closely. With the development of transport and
communication in the twentieth century, and particularly since
the 1950s, the isolation of the village is becoming progressively
reduced, although not at the same pace in all parts of the
country or the region. The less-isolated villages are now
becoming urbanized, though in a highly uneven manner.
The social morphology of the village shows considerable
variation in terms of size and internal differentiation. Irrigated
villages in river valleys and close to the ancient and medieval
centers of civilization tend to have an elaborate structure; dry
villages in the remote areas tend to be smaller and simpler in
their structure. Only the latter may be described as communities of peasants. The former are often highly differentiated and
stratied. They include noncultivating landowners, owner
cultivators, cultivating tenants, sharecroppers, and agricultural
laborers, in addition to groups of families associated with
various specialized crafts and services, usually on a hereditary
or quasi-hereditary basis. Agrarian reform and the expansion of
the market are changing some of this, although many of the
older features remain.

Its relative isolation and self-sufciency and its well-knit

division of labor between agriculture, crafts, and services gave
the Indian village a certain unity. In the nineteenth century
and even later it was often described as a little republic.
But it was not a republic of equals. In the larger irrigated
villages the social boundaries between the superior, intermediate, and inferior sections of the community landowners,
tenants, agricultural laborers, priests, potters, and scavengers
were clearly maintained. If there was a certain unity in such
villages, as indeed there was, it is best described as a vertical
unity. The unity of the village has been weakened in recent
decades, but that does not mean that the inequalities have all
disappeared.
While it is true that South Asia is a land of villages, one
cannot ignore the presence of towns and cities in it. The
subcontinent has cities going back to ancient and medieval
times, and India had urban centers before most of Europe did.
In the past, towns and cities grew around places of worship, the
courts of kings and princes, and commercial and trading
centers. Colonial rule led to the creation of a new kind of city,
mainly along the coast, such as Calcutta, Madras, Colombo,
Bombay, and Karachi. In the years since the end of colonial
rule, industrialization has added to the population of existing
cities and led to the creation of new ones. The urban middle
class and the industrial working class are important factors in
the economic and political life of contemporary India.
Returning briey to the Indian village, a prominent place
was occupied in it by caste. Indeed, caste may be viewed as the
social basis of the division of labor in it, and the differentiation
and stratication in the Indian village cannot be understood
without taking caste into account.

Caste
Caste is an institution of great antiquity, and it has shown
resilience in the face of the economic and political changes of
the twentieth century. In its origin and fullest development, it is
an institution of the Hindus, but near analogs of the Hindu
caste system may be found among Sikhs, Muslims, and
Christians on the subcontinent and among Buddhists in
Sri Lanka; and it is of course very important in the predominantly Hindu population of Nepal. On the doctrinal plane,
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam are different from each other;
on the plane of everyday life at the local level, social divisions
among Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists act in broadly similar
ways in most parts of South Asia.
The caste, the subcaste, and even the subsubcaste, to each of
which the term jati may be applied, maintained its identity and
continuity through the regulation of marriage. The most
general rule was the rule of endogamy, and among Hindus this
was supplemented by the rule of hypergamy. In the past, Hindu
law prohibited intercaste marriage except under very, specic
conditions; the law has now changed, but the bias of custom is
still in favor of endogamy among the Hindus, and to some
extent also among the others.
Every caste or jati was in principle associated with a specic
occupation, although agriculture was open to most if not all
castes. The association between caste and occupation was
stronger among the Hindus than among the others, but from

Asia, Sociocultural Overviews: South Asia

the end of the nineteenth century, it began to weaken even

among the former. A very important factor behind the weakening of the association has been the emergence, since the
middle of the nineteenth century, of a large and increasing
number of occupations that are caste-free in the sense that
they have grown outside the framework of the old division of
labor based on caste.
The different castes are socially ranked; indeed, it is in the
caste system that the principle of social ranking nds its
most extreme and elaborate expression. In South Asia, castes
are ranked among all religious groups, but the ranking is not
as rigid or as exhaustive among the non-Hindus, as it is
among the Hindus. Caste ranking among the Hindus was
expressed in the idiom of purity and pollution, but that
idiom is now less pervasive than before, and new criteria of
social ranking, having little to do with caste in the traditional
sense, are becoming increasingly salient, particularly in the
urban areas.

79

household is secure against intrusion by cousins, uncles, aunts,

nephews, nieces, and grandparents.
In discussing caste, kinship, and family it is impossible to
ignore the subject of gender, although only a passing reference
to it is possible here. Despite variations according to language,
religion, and caste, and between patrilineal and matrilineal
communities, women have since time immemorial occupied
a subordinate position in South Asian societies. Polygamy was
sanctioned by law among both Hindus and Muslims. In India,
it is now prohibited by law among Hindus but not among
Muslims; it is permitted by law in Pakistan, and attempts to
regulate polygamy by law have had little success among
Muslims. The position of women is changing in all countries
and among all communities in South Asia, although the
change is highly uneven. Here, more important than the variations of language, religion and caste are those that arise from
education, occupation, and income.

New Institutions and Classes

Family, Kinship, and Marriage
Given the great signicance of the rules regulating marriage and
in particular the rule of endogamy, it is not surprising that there
is a close association between caste and kinship. Through
repeated intermarriage from generation to generation, all the
members of the local section of a caste or subcaste become
related to each other by real or putative ties of kinship. This is
generally true of all the major religious and linguistic divisions
of South Asian society.
Much has been written about the prevalence of the joint
family in the subcontinent and the changes it is undergoing as
a result of urbanization, industrialization, and modernization.
The Hindu undivided family had certain legal characteristics
peculiar to itself, and some of these are still recognized
by the law in India. One important feature of the family in
the subcontinent, whether among Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, or
Christians, is that marriages are still to a large extent arranged
by parents and older relatives, and the new couple generally
lives in the parental home immediately after marriage, even
though it may set up a separate household after one or more
children are born.
Reference has already been made to wide variations in the
rules of descent, inheritance, and marriage across the many
and diverse communities that inhabit the region. But through
all these variations, kinship has a signicant place in social
life everywhere and among all communities. Relatives are
numerous and various, and the obligations of kinship are
cherished and cannot be denied easily. The rules of endogamy
act against the formation of real ties of kinship between
members of different castes; but they do not prevent the
formation of ctive ties of kinship between them. The idiom of
kinship is used extensively in interpersonal relations across
castes and communities in villages throughout the region.
Changes are undoubtedly taking place in the size and
composition of the household, particularly in the rapidly
growing cities. But even where nuclear households outnumber
extended ones, the matrix of kinship within which they operate
gives them a different character from their counterparts in the
West. The boundaries between households are porous, and no

The rst impediment against attempting a concise account

of society and culture in South Asia arises from the problem of
variation; the second impediment arises from the problem of
change. Two important developments in the subcontinent
since the middle of the nineteenth century have to be noted.
These are, rst, the growth of open and secular institutions such
as schools, colleges, universities, libraries, laboratories, hospitals, law courts, and newspapers; and, second, the emergence of
a new middle class based on a new educational system and
a new occupational system. These two related developments
have taken place everywhere, but most conspicuously in India
where they are now a signicant feature of the social and
cultural landscape.
Open and secular institutions are sustained by norms and
values that are very different from the norms and values by
which the traditional institutions of South Asian societies have
been sustained. The new institutions are often at odds with the
old ones, which exert various kinds of pressures on them and
sometimes threaten their very survival. At the same time, and
particularly in a country like India, they have grown to an
extent that makes it difcult to dispense with them or to devise
alternatives to them that are fully in harmony with the institutions of the past. As a result, the conict of norms and values
has become endemic in these societies.
The new middle class is both the creation and the creator of
the open and secular institutions just referred to. The origins of
the Indian middle class go back to the rst half of the nineteenth century. Its rst beginnings took place in the presidency
capitals of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras in each of which
a new university was established in 1857. The graduates of
these universities and of the others which came up in course of
time became administrators, managers, lawyers, doctors,
scientists, teachers, and clerks. The Indian middle class is now
very large, at well over 100 million persons. Although it is still
a relatively small proportion of the population of the country,
it is among the largest and the most differentiated of the middle
classes in the world.
The emergence of a new and increasingly dynamic middle
class has not led to the effacement of the old identities and

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Asia, Sociocultural Overviews: South Asia

distinctions based on language, religion, and caste. Those still

remain, although they are now coming to be organized in
a different way. The middle class in turn is differentiated not
only in terms of occupation, income, and education, but also in
terms of language, religion, and caste. Caste and class reinforce
each other in some respects and cut across each other in others.
While there is some individual mobility, it does not lead to the
equal distribution of all castes and communities among the
different economic strata. The social mosaic is, thus, becoming
in some sense even more complex than in the past.

Media, Movements, and Modernity

Since the turn of the millennium, South Asia has rapidly
appeared as a prominent region in a globalizing world. The
Indian economy, during the decades after independence largely
restricted by state control, has been liberalized and this has
strongly inuenced not only trade and industry, but also social
and cultural aspects of society. A wide range of foreign
consumer goods are now available for those that can afford
them, and members of an urban middle class are attracted by
job opportunities in multinational companies or new domestic
enterprises producing for the global market. Thus, the social
and cultural environment of the middle class is not conned to
postcolonial institutions in the South Asian social landscapes.
The horizon of expectations, not least regarding matters of
education and occupation, extends far outside the region.
This is of course a reality more accessible for wealthier
sections of urban India and particularly for people in cities
which have emerged as hubs of the global Information Technology industry, such as Bangalore and Hyderabad than for
that vast majority of the population which is still outside this
world of new possibilities. But also for the less fortunate,
modern consumer goods, proper education, and successful
occupational careers have become visions to struggle for. One
reason for this is the enormous growth of mass media and
other communication technologies through which images and
knowledge of emergent life styles are disseminated.
Only a few decades ago, newspapers and television were
media relevant mostly for a privileged, often English-speaking,
middle class; while domestic lm industries produced escapist
entertainment for poor mass audiences. Today this cleavage has
decreased. Daily newspapers and regional television channels
are available in vernacular languages and popularized forms;
simultaneously, the lm industry in India popularly known
as Bollywood is increasingly producing movies in order to
attract the growing middle class and even a global audience,
beside village India. The mobile phone has rapidly become
a technical commodity in mass use.
While, in some sense, the cultural rift (between urban and
rural, or modernity and tradition) within South Asia has

diminished, social and economic differences have not. Much

due to the inuence of mass media, inequalities have rather
become more visible and not least contested. Later decades has
seen a rise of social movements and new political formations,
which have changed the complexion of politics. In India,
Hindu nationalism, low caste (Dalit) mobilization, environmentalism, anticorruption campaigns, and various regional
movements have been on a steady rise, and at times agitations
on specic issues have escalated in violence. Also this development could be interpreted as a sign of a how South Asia is
transforming toward universal forms of norms and discourses.
However, it could also be argued that certain traditional social
and cultural aspects still prevail, for example the importance of
family relations, religion, and the privileges of caste even if in
modied forms. Thus South Asia accommodates its own forms
of hybrid modernities.

See also: Area and International Studies: Cultural Studies;

Caste; Colonization and Colonialism, History of; Communalism.

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