18 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
TRADITION AS A CONSTANT
The Indian sociologists prefer 'depth analysis' of social pheno-\ mena. In this attempt they find the tradition' of their society as a f symbolic system, the most significant core of human action. The common trend is to despise empirical positivism and regard the traditional frame of knowledge (A K Saran) or tradition as the supers tructural property of the group (D P Mukherjee) or 'abstruse philosophy' (R N Saxena) or dharma (Motwani) as 'the core-content' of sociological phenomena to be understood and analysed by the sociologists. None defines tradition clearly, but they accept either Indological or social-anthropological or mystical* pHIIosoghical description of 'something" called traditionjnstead ofdescrib-ing jsociaTphenomena in terms ofsociologicaL'theoretiral c^te^ories and variables. M N Srinivas provides an apt perspective to sociologists to modernize all their intellectual and moral resources when their own society is undergoing rapid social change.2
Rigid Conformity to Group Pattern
D P Mukherjee's concept of Indian society is a derivative of what he calls the "philosophy of Indian history'^ which remained unrecorded. But it has a history of ideas (stamped on the heart of the people, as he says) exemplified in the daily conduct of its people. Indian culture^ essentially being social, has a history expressed in Indian society. The history, economics and philosophy of India had always centred in social groups. The philosophy of Indian history is essentially vertical in the sense of stressing moral elevation. It is deeply social in nature concerned mainly with the business of social living "that is, living in groups through stages of growth, until one is to be so socialized that freedom will have become co-terminous with existence and institutions turned into agencies of group."8 He pleads for a philosophical (or theoretical) approach to society.
Accordingly, the first task is to study 'social traditions' which r include folk-ways, mores, customs and traditions for the purpose of under-tt r standing Indian social system and the 'meaningfulness' in its foundation. The common concrete phenomena of our social system, as manifested through group action and tradition, are not matters of individual decision between alternatives; they have a group bias.4 It has been regulated, for ages past^ on the concept of purushartha (or the four-fold ideals of life) —dharma, artha, kama, moksha. The binding effect of socio-cultural group pattern determines the average individual's pattern of desires beyond which he hardly deviates except under extreme conditions. The group traditions are so rigidly followed that the Indian social system is basically a normative orientation of group, sect, or caste action, but not of ^volunta" ristic' individual action. "So there is no escape from traditions if you are an Indian, and additionally, an Indian sociologist9'.8
D P Mukherjee noticed a conflict between the 'voluntarism5 of the