“Tradition and modernity co-exist in contemporary Indian society’. (1997)
Classical modernisation theory treated tradition and modernity as rungs on one ladder: Daniel Lerner and Talcott Parsons assumed that as one rose the other fell. The statement denies that zero-sum premise and asserts simultaneity. It is substantially correct, but “co-exist” is too mild a verb — in India the two do not merely share a society, they inhabit the same institutions and often the same person.
Interpreting the claim
Co-existence can mean three different things, and only the third is sociologically interesting: that the two occupy separate sectors; that they alternate by situation; or that they interpenetrate, each becoming the medium of the other. The Indian evidence points to the third.
The case for the statement
- Compartmentalisation. Milton Singer (When a Great Tradition Modernizes, 1972) found that Madras industrialists did not choose between ritual and rational enterprise. They partitioned their lives — modern in the office, orthodox in the household shrine — resolving the contradiction by sequestering it.
- Tradition as a modern resource. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (The Modernity of Tradition, 1967) argued from Indian political material that caste associations, vernacular publics and religious idioms were the vehicles that carried mass democracy, not obstacles to it. Tradition was adaptive; the dichotomy was a Western analytic artefact.
- Adaptive change. Yogendra Singh (Modernization of Indian Tradition, 1973) showed modernisation entering at the structural and elite level while the micro-structures of caste, kinship and village absorbed modern functions rather than dissolving.
- Contemporary illustration. S. Shakthi‘s study of the Indian technology profession (South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2023) documents a “corporate Brahminism” in which a meritocratic, globally integrated industry reproduces caste in recruitment networks and workplace sociality. Matrimonial platforms marry algorithmic search to sub-caste filters; the central PRASHAD scheme has sanctioned 48 pilgrimage-infrastructure projects across 27 States and Union Territories, turning devotion into planned tourism.
The case against
- It can conceal domination. Co-existence describes an arrangement without asking on whose terms. For A. R. Desai, the survival of caste inside industrial capitalism is not equilibrium but a cheap disciplining of labour; for B. R. Ambedkar, what “co-exists” with modern citizenship is graded inequality.
- The terms are blunt. If everything modern turns out to be traditionally carried and everything traditional modernly organised, the pair loses discriminating power. S. N. Eisenstadt‘s multiple modernities is the better formulation: what exists is an Indian modernity, not two things side by side.
- The co-existence is unequal in law. In Supriyo v Union of India (17 October 2023) the Supreme Court declined to read same-sex marriage into the law, leaving it to Parliament — modern constitutional reasoning halting at the threshold of a traditional institution.
Conclusion
The statement is right and insufficient. Ashis Nandy‘s position is the sharper one: what confronts modernity in India is not an inert past but a living critical tradition with its own standards of judgement. The defensible formulation is therefore not co-existence but mutual constitution — Indian modernity is built out of traditional materials, and Indian tradition survives because it has learned to speak modern.