Introducing Society 1 · Section 4

This question of what to focus in society is indeed central to sociology. We can take Satyajit Ray’s comments further and wonder whether his depiction of the village is romantic. It would be interesting to contrast this with a sociologist’s account of the Dalit in the village below. The first time I saw him, he was sitting on the dusty road in front of one of the small thatch- roofed tea shops in the village with his glass and saucer placed conspicuously beside him— a silent signal to the shopkeeper that an Untouchable wanted to buy some tea.

Muli was a gaunt forty- year-old with betel-blackened teeth who wore his long hair swept back (Freeman ). A quote from Amartya Sen perhaps illustrates well how inequality is central to differences among societies. Some Indians are rich; most are not. Some are very well educated; others are illiterate.

Some lead easy lives of luxury; others toil hard for little reward. Some are politically powerful; others cannot influence anything. Some have great opportunities for advancement in life: others lack them altogether. Some are treated with respect by the police; others are treated like dirt.

These are different kinds of inequality, and each of them requires serious attention (Sen : - ). III PLURALITIES AND INEQUALITIES AMONG SOCIETIES In the contemporary world we belong, in a sense, to more than one ‘society’. When amidst foreigners reference to ‘our society’ may mean ‘Indian society’, but when amongst fellow Indians we may use the term ‘our society’ to denote a linguistic or ethnic community, a religious or caste or tribal society. This diversity makes deciding which ‘society’ we are talking about difficult.

But perhaps this difficulty of mapping society is not confined to sociologists alone as the comment below will show. While reflecting on what to focus on in his films, the great Indian film maker Satyajit Ray wondered: What should you put in your films? What can you leave out? Would you leave the city behind and go to the village where cows graze in the endless fields and the shepherd plays the flute?

You can make a film here that would be pure and fresh and have the delicate rhythm of a boatman’s song. Or would you rather go back in time-way back to the Epics, where the gods and demons took sides in the great battle where brothers killed brothers… Or would you rather stay where you are, right in the present, in the heart of this monstrous, teeming, bewildering city, and try to orchestrate its dizzying contrasts of sight and sound and milieu?