Deep India on the Eve of Great Changes: an Attempt of Ethnographic Generalization

Abstract

The article examines the concept of “deep India,” used by an ethnographer Sergey Arutynov, as a general type designating broad social groups united in different communities (castes and tribes), primarily rural population, largely guided in the organization of their everyday life by traditions, values, norms and established ideas. The author analyzes the experience of the Indian-Soviet anthropological expedition of the 1970s-1980s seeking to create a general anthropological picture of India, and such modes of “deep India” as the village, urban worlds of subalterns and nomads, the concepts of “folk”, “ordinary”, “interior”, as well as the specific concept of “tribal”. A conservative, stabilizing social strategy is what shapes the phenomenon of “deep India,” while ongoing modernization processes are associated with the creation of new technologies and new social relations. Some essential features of “deep India,” according to the author, are the tendency towards endogamy and social segmentation, the construction of a social hierarchy, local and territorial connection, as well as self-reproduction through the socialization of children in the norms and traditions of a given community, with a determined circle of possible marriage partners. “Deep India” can be used both as a designation of certain loci and as a set of conservative social practices, understanding the conventionality of this term and taking into account the changes taking place in Indian society.