India/western Sociology

[dhu]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Between this approach and Kosambi’s there are close parallels. Kosambi begins his treatise on The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India with the statement that India displays “diversity and unity at the same time.” And he deploys the notion of syncretism in Indian civilization in explicating the absorption of peripheral tribal groups into the mainstream, “their merger into general agrarian society,” in terms of the accommodation of their religious belief systems within the Brahmanic scheme of things. <b>He saw a “process of syncretism” in the absorption of “primitive deities,” a “mechanism of acculturation, a clear give and take,” which allowed “Indian society to be formed out of many diverse and even discordant elements”</b> (chapter 7).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

This means that "sanskritization theory" is just a theological assumption about a supposedly errant cultural diversity. It is not uncommon for indian nuclear scientists to perform puja to their kula devatas, narrate Ramayana, and perform whole other array of activities. Believers and seculars are unable to digest these instances and hence the omnipresetnt charges of an underlying "hypocrisy", "munafiq" in Indian traditions. "Hypocrisy" is the most serious charge leveled by the believer/secular for it militates against their belief that 'Beliefs should be congruent to Actions'.