UPSC Mains 2014 Sociology Optional Question Papers with Model Answers

All 56 questions of the 2014 Civil Services Main Examination, Sociology Paper I and Sociology Paper II, with marks and a suggested time per part. Solve each part on paper first, then open the model answer, or send it to answer-writing practice for evaluation.

UPSC Mains 2014 Sociology Paper I

Question 1 (50 marks)

Q1(a) · Sociology as Science · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Fact, Value, Objectivity and Non-positivist Methodologies
How is objectivity different from value neutrality? Discuss with reference to Weber's views on methodology.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
किस प्रकार वस्तुनिष्ठता मूल्य तटस्थता से भिन्न है? प्रणाली विज्ञान पर वेबर के विचारों के संदर्भ में विवेचना कीजिये।
Practise this question Sociology as Science notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(a)
Approach: Define objectivity and value neutrality, then use Weber's value relevance, value freedom and ideal types to show how they differ and relate, with an Indian example.
Objectivity is a property of knowledge: findings are valid for anyone who accepts the method, whatever their personal values. Value neutrality is a stance of the researcher: abstaining from judgements of good and bad in analysis and teaching.
For Weber the two are related but not the same. He accepted that values enter research through value relevance, since a topic is chosen for its cultural significance. So objectivity cannot mean value-free knowledge from nowhere; it means that, within the chosen viewpoint, conclusions are reached by rules others can check, using clear ideal types and causal adequacy. Value neutrality (value freedom) is the discipline he demanded in analysis and in the lecture hall, as in 'Science as a Vocation' (1917).
Thus research can be objective without being free of values in its origin. A scholar may study manual scavenging in India because she values dignity, yet report verified, checkable findings.
Objectivity is the goal; value neutrality is one of the means.
Q1(b) · Sociology: The Discipline · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Modernity, Social Change in Europe and the Emergence of Sociology
How did the emergence of industrial society change the family life in Western Europe?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पश्चिमी यूरोप में औद्योगिक समाज के आविर्भाव ने किस प्रकार पारिवारिक जीवन को परिवर्तित कर दिया?
Practise this question Sociology: The Discipline notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(b)
Approach: Explain the change in family life with the industrial society debate: Parsons' isolated nuclear family, its revision by Laslett and Anderson, Young and Willmott's stages, and changes in roles; add a brief Indian contrast.
Industrialisation separated work from home and changed the structure and functions of the Western European family.
Structure: Talcott Parsons argued that industry needs a geographically and socially mobile workforce, so the isolated nuclear family replaced extended kin. Peter Laslett, however, showed that small nuclear households were already common in pre-industrial England, and Michael Anderson's study of Preston (1971) found that early industrial workers relied on extended kin for housing and jobs.
Functions: production moved to factories; schools and the state took over education and welfare, leaving the family with socialisation and emotional support.
Roles: the male-breadwinner and female-homemaker model spread; Young and Willmott later traced a move towards the symmetrical family. Child labour gave way to childhood as a protected stage.
In India, Milton Singer found that Madras industrialists kept joint family ties, showing that industrialisation does not have one effect on family.
Thus industrial society reshaped the family, but less uniformly than Parsons claimed.
Q1(c) · Sociology: The Discipline · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Scope of Sociology and Comparison with Other Social Sciences
How is sociological approach to human actions different from that of psychological approach?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मानव क्रियाओं का समाजशास्त्रीय उपागम मनोवैज्ञानिक उपागम से किस प्रकार भिन्न है?
Practise this question Sociology: The Discipline notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(c)
Approach: Distinguish the two approaches by level of analysis, unit, explanatory variables and method, using Durkheim's Suicide as the classic case, Mead and social psychology as a bridge, and an Indian example.
Psychology explains human action by the individual's mind, personality, motives, emotions and perception. The sociological approach explains it by the social context: groups, norms, roles, institutions and structure.
Durkheim's case: in Suicide (1897) he argued that suicide rates are social facts that vary with social integration and regulation, giving egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic types. Individual psychology can explain why one person commits suicide, not why rates differ between groups.
Method: psychology often uses experiments and tests on individuals; sociology uses surveys, comparative and historical data and fieldwork on groups.
Bridge: Weber's interpretive sociology studies the meaning of action, and Mead's and Cooley's work on the social self forms social psychology.
Indian example: farmer suicides may be explained by a psychologist through depression, while sociologists point to debt, crop failure and changing agrarian relations.
Thus the two are complementary, but sociology explains action through social structure.
Q1(d) · Research Methods and Analysis · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Techniques of Data Collection
In what way biographies could be used to study social life?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
किस प्रकार जीवनियाँ सामाजिक जीवन के अध्ययन के लिए उपयोग की जा सकती हैं?
Practise this question Research Methods and Analysis notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(d)
Approach: Define the biographical or life-history method (Thomas and Znaniecki, Mills), show how biographies reveal social life with Indian examples such as Dalit autobiographies, and note limits.
Biographies, autobiographies and life histories are personal documents that trace an individual’s life over time. C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination (1959) is the ability to grasp the intersection of biography and history, which is why personal lives illuminate social structure.
Uses: first, they show how social change is experienced; Thomas and Znaniecki’s The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918–20) used letters and a life history to study migration and disorganisation.
Second, they give voice to the marginalised: Dalit autobiographies such as Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan (1997) and Bama’s Karukku (1992) reveal the lived humiliation of caste that statistics cannot capture. Third, they trace careers, mobility and identity formation, such as first-generation learners or migrant workers. Fourth, they generate hypotheses for wider study, and Oscar Lewis’s family life histories in The Children of Sánchez (1961) shaped debates on poverty.
Limits: memory is selective, accounts may be self-justifying, and one life may not represent a group, so biographies are best checked against other sources.
Q1(e) · Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Robert K. Merton: Functions, Conformity and Deviance, Reference Groups
How can we use reference group theory to understand fashion in society?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समाज में फैशन को समझने के लिए हम संदर्भ-समूह सिद्धान्त का किस प्रकार उपयोग कर सकते हैं?
Practise this question Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(e)
Approach: Explain reference group, relative deprivation and anticipatory socialisation, then apply them to how fashion spreads (trickle-down and trickle-across) in India.
Robert K. Merton defined a reference group as a group whose values and standards a person takes as a frame for evaluating himself, whether or not he is a member. Non-membership reference groups lead to anticipatory socialisation, adopting the values of a group one hopes to join.
Fashion is a clear case. People dress to resemble those they look up to: film stars, cricketers, social-media influencers or the urban upper middle class. Georg Simmel's analysis of fashion as imitation by lower strata and differentiation by elites fits with this. When a style spreads widely, elites drop it and move to a new one.
In India, small-town youth copying Bollywood looks, brides adopting North Indian lehengas in the South, and office workers taking up corporate attire show anticipatory socialisation. Relative deprivation also appears when people feel left behind for not affording branded goods.
So reference group theory explains why fashions spread, change and mark status, though today trends also move from the street and subcultures upward.

Question 2 (50 marks)

Q2(a) · Research Methods and Analysis · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Techniques of Data Collection
Which research technique would be most suitable for the study of consumer behaviour and its social correlates? Explain.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
उपभोक्ता व्यवहार और इसके सामाजिक सहसम्बन्धों के अध्ययन के लिए कौन-सी अनुसंधान तकनीक सर्वाधिक उचित होगी? स्पष्ट कीजिये।
Practise this question Research Methods and Analysis notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(a)
Approach: State that consumer behaviour has economic, social and cultural correlates (Veblen, Bourdieu), argue for a mixed-method design with a stratified survey as backbone plus qualitative techniques, explain each with Indian examples, and justify the choice.
Consumer behaviour is not only an economic choice; sociologists see it as shaped by class, caste, gender, age, region and status. Thorstein Veblen’s idea of conspicuous consumption (The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899) and Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979), which linked taste to class and cultural capital, show that consumption marks social position. Studying it therefore needs both measurement of patterns and understanding of meanings.
The backbone: a sample survey. To find how consumption varies with social correlates, a stratified random sample of households across income, caste, rural-urban location and region, with a structured schedule on spending, brands and purchase decisions, allows cross-tabulation and testing of hypotheses such as ‘education raises spending on health and schooling’. The Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2022–23 shows the value of such data. Bourdieu himself combined a large survey with interviews.
Qualitative techniques for meaning: in-depth interviews and focus groups reveal why people buy, for example why weddings involve heavy spending on gold and display, or how aspirational middle-class families choose English-medium schools; Leela Fernandes’ India’s New Middle Class (2006) discussed consumption as a marker of new middle-class identity. Participant observation in malls, weekly haats and kirana shops shows actual behaviour rather than reported behaviour. Content analysis of advertisements shows how gender and status are sold.
Flow chart: Exploratory interviews and FGDs → questionnaire design → stratified household survey → statistical correlates → follow-up interviews and observation → explanation.
Digital data: online purchase records and social media trends now add large-scale behavioural data, though with problems of privacy and representativeness.
Hence no single technique suffices: a mixed-method design with a representative survey for social correlates and qualitative techniques for meanings is most suitable, giving both reliability and validity.
Q2(b) · Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Karl Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle
Identify the similarities and differences between Marx's theory of 'alienation' and Durkheim's theory of 'anomie'.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मार्क्स की 'विसम्बन्धन' (एलिनेशन) की थियोरी और दुर्खीम की 'असम्बन्धिता' (ऐनोमी) की थियोरी के बीच समानताओं एवं असमानताओं को इंगित कीजिये।
Practise this question Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(b)
Approach: Define both concepts with their sources, then set out the similarities and the differences (cause, view of human nature, scope, remedy), using a comparison flow chart line and Indian examples.
Marx’s alienation (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 1844) is the estrangement of workers from product, process, species-being and fellow humans under capitalism. Durkheim’s anomie (The Division of Labour in Society, 1893; Suicide, 1897) is a state of normlessness, when social regulation of desires and relations breaks down.
Similarities: both diagnose the malaise of modern industrial society; both are structural, rooted in society, not in individual psychology; both arise from the division of labour and rapid economic change; and both criticise the utilitarian view that free markets produce harmony.
Differences: (i) cause: for Marx, private property and capitalist relations of production; for Durkheim, weak moral regulation in periods of rapid change; (ii) human nature: Marx saw humans as creative beings frustrated by capitalism, while Durkheim saw desires as limitless and needing restraint by society, a contrast Steven Lukes (1967) drew; (iii) status: alienation is built into capitalism, while anomie is an abnormal, temporary form of the division of labour; (iv) remedy: Marx proposed revolution and communism, Durkheim moral regulation through occupational groups and moral education.
Flow chart: Marx: private property → loss of control → alienation → revolution; Durkheim: rapid change → deregulation → anomie → occupational groups
Indian examples: gig riders under algorithms show alienation, while migrants in fast-growing cities and the stresses behind farmer suicides are often read as anomie; the two often occur together.
Conclusion: Merton later linked anomie to blocked opportunities, bringing the two close; together they offer complementary views of discontent.
Q2(c) · Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Robert K. Merton: Functions, Conformity and Deviance, Reference Groups
How could one use Merton's concept of deviance to understand the traffic problem in urban India?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
नगरीय भारत में यातायात की समस्या को समझने के लिए किस प्रकार मर्टन की विसामान्यता (डेविएंस) की संकल्पना का उपयोग किया जा सकता है?
Practise this question Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(c)
Approach: Apply Merton's strain theory and modes of adaptation to urban traffic behaviour in India, with examples, and note what it misses.
Robert K. Merton explained deviance as a response to strain between culturally emphasised goals and the institutionalised means to reach them. When goals are stressed more than means, norms weaken (anomie).
In urban India, the goal is speed: reaching office, school or a delivery on time. The legitimate means, roads, signals and public transport, are inadequate and congested. Many drivers therefore choose innovation: jumping signals, driving on the wrong side, using footpaths or bribing traffic police.
Ritualism appears in drivers who stop at signals even when the system has broken down, or officials who issue challans mechanically without improving traffic. Retreatism appears in those who give up driving or commuting altogether; rebellion in citizen movements demanding cycle lanes and pedestrian rights.
Merton's approach shows that traffic indiscipline is structurally produced, not merely individual bad behaviour. But it misses weak enforcement, the labelling of some road users and cultural norms. The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 2019 raised penalties, but better means are equally needed.

Question 3 (50 marks)

Q3(a) · Stratification and Mobility · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Dimensions of Stratification: Class, Status, Gender, Ethnicity and Race
What do you understand by gender? How does it shape 'male' identity?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
लिंग (जेंडर) से आप क्या समझते हैं? यह किस प्रकार 'पुरुष' की पहचान को आकृति प्रदान करती है?
Practise this question Stratification and Mobility notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(a)
Approach: Define gender as distinct from sex (Oakley), explain how gender is constructed through socialisation and institutions, then show how it shapes male identity (Connell's hegemonic masculinity, Indian examples of 'mard', son preference, honour), noting its costs and changes.
Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours and identities that a society considers appropriate for men and women, as distinct from biological sex. Ann Oakley (Sex, Gender and Society, 1972) established this distinction, and Simone de Beauvoir's idea that one becomes a woman applies equally to becoming a man.
Gender is produced through socialisation in family, school, peer groups, religion and media, and is reinforced by institutions such as the gendered division of labour. Candace West and Don Zimmerman (1987) showed it is continually 'done' in everyday interaction, and Judith Butler (1990) called it performative.
Shaping male identity: R.W. Connell (Gender and Power, 1987; Masculinities, 1995) described hegemonic masculinity, the culturally dominant ideal of manhood based on strength, control, heterosexuality and breadwinning, against which subordinate and marginalised masculinities are ranked. Boys learn to suppress emotion, take risks and assert authority over women.
In India, the ideal of the 'mard' as protector and provider, son preference, the son's role in lighting the funeral pyre and continuing the lineage, and family honour (izzat) shape masculinity. These ideals legitimise control over women's mobility and marriage, sometimes through honour crimes.
Masculinity also harms men: pressure to be the sole earner, suppression of emotions and risky behaviour; NCRB data show men form the majority of recorded suicides. Unemployed young men may experience a crisis of masculinity.
Flow chart: Gender norms → socialisation (family, school, media) → hegemonic masculinity (provider, protector, control) → privileges for men + costs to men and women.
Male identity is thus a social product, not a biological given, and is changing with women's education, shared parenting and campaigns for gender equality.
Q3(b) · Stratification and Mobility · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Theories of Stratification: Functionalist, Marxist and Weberian
"According to Max Weber, 'class' and 'status' are two different dimensions of power." Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
"मैक्स वेबर के अनुसार, 'वर्ग' तथा 'प्रस्थिति' शक्ति के दो विभिन्न आयाम हैं।" विवेचना कीजिये।
Practise this question Stratification and Mobility notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(b)
Approach: Explain Weber's view of power and its distribution, define class and status as separate dimensions with how they differ and interact, add party, illustrate with Indian examples, and evaluate.
Max Weber defined power as the chance of a person or group to realise their will in social action even against the resistance of others. In 'Class, Status, Party' he argued that power is distributed through three orders, the economic, the social and the legal-political, so inequality cannot be reduced to economics as Marx did.
Class is the economic dimension: people in the same class situation share similar life chances in the market, based on property or skills. Status is the social dimension: a typical component of life fate determined by a specific social estimation of honour, expressed in a style of life, in restrictions on social intercourse and in endogamy. Status groups are communities.
Differences: class is rooted in production and acquisition of goods; status in their consumption through lifestyles. Class is relatively open; status groups practise closure, and caste is the extreme case where status distinctions are backed by ritual sanctions.
Interaction: property can become a status qualification over time, but Weber noted it is not always recognised as such; the newly rich are often looked down upon by old status groups. In times of economic transformation class comes forward; in stable times status dominates. Party, the third dimension, is oriented to acquiring power and may represent class or status interests.
Flow chart: Power → class (market, production) | status (honour, consumption) | party (organised influence) → combined life chances.
Indian examples: Srinivas's dominant caste combines all three; Béteille's Sripuram showed Brahmins losing land and political power to non-Brahmins while keeping ritual status. Critics note that Weber left the relation between the dimensions vague, but his distinction remains basic to understanding caste and class in India.
Q3(c) · Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Robert K. Merton: Functions, Conformity and Deviance, Reference Groups
Using Merton's concepts of 'manifest' and 'latent' functions, explain the persistence of corruption in Indian society.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मर्टन के 'अभिव्यक्त' और 'अव्यक्त' प्रकार्यों की संकल्पनाओं का उपयोग करते हुए भारतीय समाज में भ्रष्टाचार के स्थायित्व को स्पष्ट कीजिये।
Practise this question Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(c)
Approach: Define manifest and latent functions, show how corruption serves latent functions for different groups (following Merton's political machine), and conclude that reform needs functional alternatives.
Robert K. Merton distinguished manifest functions (intended and recognised) from latent functions (unintended and unrecognised). He used this to explain why socially disapproved structures persist: they meet needs that legitimate structures fail to meet. His example was the American political machine, which, despite corruption, gave the poor help and access, and gave business quick favours.
Corruption in India can be read the same way. Its manifest aims are private gain. Its latent functions, for different groups, include: speeding up slow bureaucratic procedures ('speed money'); giving poor citizens access to services through middlemen; giving business predictable deals and licences; and financing election campaigns.
Since corruption performs these functions, campaigns that only punish it fail. Merton's lesson is that persistence ends only when functional alternatives exist: online services and direct benefit transfers that cut out intermediaries, the Right to Information Act 2005, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act 2013, and transparent electoral funding.
Critics warn that such analysis may seem to justify corruption, but Merton's aim was to explain, not approve.

Question 4 (50 marks)

Q4(a) · Sociological Thinkers: Max Weber · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Max Weber: Authority and Bureaucracy
How does Weber use the notion of 'ideal types' in his theory of bureaucracy?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
वेबर अधिकारी-तन्त्र की अपनी थियोरी में 'आदर्श प्रकारों' की धारणा का किस प्रकार उपयोग करता है?
Practise this question Sociological Thinkers: Max Weber notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(a)
Approach: Explain Weber's method of ideal types, then show how he built the ideal type of bureaucracy, its features and uses, and conclude with its criticism and Indian relevance.
For Max Weber, sociology must understand social action and explain it causally. His main tool was the ideal type: an analytical construct formed by the one-sided accentuation of selected features of reality into a logically consistent model. It is not an average or a moral ideal; it is a yardstick against which real cases are compared.
Weber's bureaucracy, set out in Economy and Society, is the clearest example. He drew together features of the Prussian state, modern armies, the Church and large firms, and exaggerated them into a pure type: (1) fixed official jurisdictions governed by rules; (2) a hierarchy of offices; (3) management based on written documents (files); (4) trained, expert officials; (5) full-time salaried careers with promotion by seniority or merit; (6) separation of office from personal property; and (7) impersonal application of rules.
Flow chart: concrete bureaucracies → accentuation of rational features → pure model → comparison with real cases → explanation of deviation.
The ideal type serves three purposes. It links bureaucracy to legal-rational authority, it allows comparison with patrimonial administrations, and it shows the technical superiority of bureaucracy, as precise and calculable as a machine compared with non-mechanical modes of production.
Using the type, one can measure how far a real administration deviates. In India, the IAS is formally Weberian, recruited by open competition, but studies of administration point to political transfers, caste networks and discretion, which depart from the model.
Critics such as Merton (dysfunctions and goal displacement), Gouldner (his study of a gypsum plant showing different patterns of bureaucracy) and Blau (informal organisation) argued that Weber ignored the informal side. Yet this criticism itself uses Weber's ideal type as the benchmark, which shows its value.
Q4(b) · Sociology as Science · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Fact, Value, Objectivity and Non-positivist Methodologies
In what way 'interpretative' method is different from 'positivist' approach in the study of social phenomena?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक प्रघटना के अध्ययन में किस प्रकार 'व्याख्यात्मक' विधि 'प्रत्यक्षवादी' उपागम से भिन्न है?
Practise this question Sociology as Science notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)
Approach: Compare the two approaches point by point (ontology, epistemology, aim, methods, data, role of researcher, strengths and weaknesses) with thinkers and Indian studies, and conclude with their complementarity.
The positivist approach, from Comte and Durkheim, models sociology on natural science, while the interpretative method, from Weber, Dilthey, Schutz, Mead and Blumer, holds that social life consists of meanings that must be understood. They differ on several counts.
Flow chart: a 2 × 2 view: positivism = external reality + explanation by laws; interpretivism = constructed reality + understanding of meaning.
On ontology, positivism treats society as an objective reality external to individuals, social facts as things; interpretivism sees it as built through actors' meanings and interaction. On epistemology, positivism trusts observation and measurement; interpretivism relies on verstehen, empathetic understanding of the actor's view.
On aims, positivism seeks causal laws and prediction, as in Durkheim's Suicide; interpretivism seeks understanding of meanings, as in Weber's account of the Protestant calling or Goffman's dramaturgy. On methods, positivism uses surveys, structured questionnaires, official statistics and experiments; interpretivism uses participant observation, unstructured interviews, life histories and documents.
On the researcher's role, positivism demands a detached, value-neutral observer; interpretivism accepts the researcher as part of the setting and stresses reflexivity. On strengths, positivism gives reliability and generalisation, interpretivism validity and depth; their weaknesses are the reverse.
In India, NFHS-5 (2019–21) and the National Sample Survey represent the positivist approach, while Srinivas's The Remembered Village (1976) on Rampura and S.C. Dube's study of Shamirpet represent the interpretative one. Srinivas's field view of caste versus the book view expresses the same divide.
Weber himself joined the two by combining interpretive understanding with causal explanation, and present-day research uses triangulation and mixed methods. The approaches are thus different but complementary.
Q4(c) · Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead · 10 marks≈ 7 min
George Herbert Mead: Self and Identity
Using Mead's theory of symbolic interactionism, discuss the stages in the formation of gender identity.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मीड की सांकेतिक अन्योन्यक्रियावाद (इंटरऐक्शनिज्म) की थियोरी का उपयोग करते हुए लिंग पहचान (जेंडर आइडेंटिटि) की रचना में अवस्थाओं पर चर्चा कीजिये।
Practise this question Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(c)
Approach: Apply Mead's stages of self (imitation, play, game, generalised other) to how gender identity is formed, with Indian examples, and add a feminist criticism.
George Herbert Mead held that the self develops through symbolic interaction and role-taking. Gender identity, the sense of being a boy, girl or other gender, can be seen as formed in the same stages.
In the preparatory stage the infant imitates gestures of parents without meaning. In the play stage the child takes the roles of significant others: girls play at cooking like their mother, boys at driving like their father, using gendered toys. In the game stage the child grasps the whole set of gender roles and rules in the family and school.
Finally, the child internalises the generalised other: society's gender norms, in India expressed in ideas of izzat, modesty for girls and breadwinner roles for boys. Leela Dube's work on the socialisation of girls in India shows how such norms are taught through daily practice.
Flow chart: imitation → play (mother/father roles) → game (gender rules) → generalised other (social gender norms) → gender identity.
Feminists such as Judith Butler add that gender is continuously performed; the 'I' allows resistance, as in changing roles among urban youth.

Question 5 (50 marks)

Q5(a) · Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Karl Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle
For Marx, class divisions are outcomes of 'exploitation'. Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मार्क्स के अनुसार, वर्ग-विभाजन 'शोषण' के परिणाम हैं। चर्चा कीजिये।
Practise this question Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(a)
Approach: Explain how Marx defines class by relation to the means of production and exploitation through surplus value, give an Indian example and add criticism.
For Marx, class is defined not by income or status but by relation to the means of production: owners and non-owners. Class division arises because owners appropriate the surplus produced by others, which is exploitation.
In Capital (1867) he explained that the worker sells labour power for a wage equal to its value, but works longer than needed to produce that value; the extra, surplus value, becomes the capitalist’s profit. Slaves, serfs and wage workers were exploited in different forms, so exploitation makes class interests opposed and leads to class struggle.
Indian examples: semi-feudal sharecropping and debt, analysed by Amit Bhaduri (1973), and bonded labour, abolished by law in 1976, show exploitation creating agrarian classes.
Criticism: Weber saw class as market situation, alongside status and party; Dahrendorf stressed authority; and Erik Olin Wright refined exploitation to explain middle classes. In India, caste also shapes division.
Q5(b) · Works and Economic Life · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Social Organisation of Work: Slave, Feudal and Industrial Societies
What are the distinctive features of social organization of work in slave society? How is it different from feudal society?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
दास-समाज में कार्य के सामाजिक संगठन के प्रभेदक अभिलक्षण क्या होते हैं? यह सामंती समाज से किस प्रकार भिन्न है?
Practise this question Works and Economic Life notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(b)
Approach: Two parts: first the features of slave work (Patterson, Finley, Marx, Weber), then a contrast with feudal serfdom on ownership, rights and coercion, with Indian agrestic slavery and bonded labour.
Orlando Patterson (Slavery and Social Death, 1982) defined slavery as the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and dishonoured persons, a condition of social death.
Features of slave work: the owner holds the worker as property, can sell him and takes the whole product, giving only subsistence. Work is gang labour on plantations and in mines under overseers and the whip. Moses Finley noted that few societies, such as Athens, Rome and the American South, were genuine slave societies. Weber argued slave economies stagnated because slaves had no incentive to innovate.
Difference from feudalism: the serf is not owned and cannot be sold apart from the land; he has a family, plot, tools and customary rights, and owes fixed labour services or rent (Marc Bloch). Coercion is customary rather than total, and subsistence farming gives some autonomy.
India had agrestic slavery among Pulayas and Cherumas in Malabar into the 19th century; today bonded labour, abolished by the 1976 Act, resembles both forms.
Q5(c) · Politics and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Nation, State, Citizenship, Democracy, Civil Society and Ideology
Discuss T. H. Marshall's views on citizenship.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
नागरिकता पर टी० एच० मार्शल के विचारों की विवेचना कीजिये।
Practise this question Politics and Society notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(c)
Approach: Explain Marshall's three elements of citizenship and their historical sequence, his argument on citizenship and social class, then criticisms (Mann, Turner, feminists, Young) and an Indian application.
T.H. Marshall (Citizenship and Social Class, 1950) defined citizenship as a status bestowed on full members of a community, all of whom are equal in rights and duties.
He traced three elements in England: civil rights (liberty, property, justice) in the 18th century, political rights (the vote) in the 19th, and social rights (education, health, welfare) in the 20th-century welfare state. Social rights reduced the inequality produced by the market, so citizenship and capitalist class were 'at war', yet citizenship made class inequality more acceptable.
Criticism: Michael Mann argued that the sequence fitted England only; Bryan Turner showed that rights were won through struggle, not evolution; feminists noted women gained rights in a different order; Iris Marion Young argued for differentiated citizenship.
India granted political rights to all in 1950 before social rights, which came later through laws such as the Right to Education Act 2009 and the National Food Security Act 2013, reversing Marshall's order.
Q5(d) · Politics and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Theories of Power, Power Elite, Bureaucracy, Pressure Groups and Parties
Distinguish between Political Parties and Pressure Groups.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
राजनैतिक दलों तथा दबाव समूहों में विभेद कीजिये।
Practise this question Politics and Society notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(d)
Approach: Define both, then distinguish them on aim, membership, organisation, methods and accountability, with Indian examples, and note their overlap.
Max Weber described political parties as associations that aim to secure power within an organisation for their leaders; pressure groups are organised groups that try to influence policy without seeking to form a government.
Aim: parties seek to capture and exercise state power; pressure groups seek favourable decisions from whoever holds power. Scope: parties aggregate many interests into a programme for the whole electorate; groups articulate a specific interest or cause, such as FICCI for industry or the Bharatiya Kisan Union for farmers.
Methods: parties contest elections and form governments; groups lobby, petition, litigate and protest. Accountability: parties answer to voters and are regulated by the Election Commission and the anti-defection law; groups are not directly accountable to the electorate. Membership of groups can also cut across parties.
Yet the line is blurred: Indian trade unions are party wings, and groups can turn into parties, as the India Against Corruption movement led to the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012.
Q5(e) · Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Emile Durkheim: Suicide, and Religion and Society
"According to Durkheim, the essence of religion in modern society is the same as religion in primitive society." Comment.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
"दुर्खीम के अनुसार, आधुनिक समाज में धर्म का सार वैसा ही है जैसा कि आदिम समाज में था।" टिप्पणी कीजिये।
Practise this question Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(e)
Approach: Explain why Durkheim studied the simplest religion to find the essence of all religion, show how that essence (sacred, ritual, integration) persists in modern society in new forms, then comment critically.
Durkheim studied Arunta totemism in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) because he believed that the simplest religion reveals the essential elements common to all religions. That essence is the division into sacred and profane, beliefs and rites shared by a moral community, and the worship of society itself through its symbols.
In modern society, he argued, the gods may change but this essence remains: there is something eternal in religion, since every society needs to reaffirm its collective sentiments. New sacred objects emerge, such as the festivals of the French Revolution and the cult of the individual, which he defended in ‘Individualism and the Intellectuals’ (1898).
Indian examples: Republic Day, the national flag and reverence for the Constitution, as well as mass rituals such as the Kumbh, show collective sentiment renewed, close to Bellah’s civil religion.
Comment: secularisation, pluralism and religious conflict show that modern religion also divides, so the claim holds for its social function more than its content.

Question 6 (50 marks)

Q6(a) · Politics and Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Theories of Power, Power Elite, Bureaucracy, Pressure Groups and Parties
"Power is not a zero-sum game." Discuss with reference to Weber's and Parsons' views.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
"शक्ति, शून्य-योग खेल (जीरो-सम गेम) नहीं है।" वेबर और पारसन्स के विचारों के सन्दर्भ में विवेचना कीजिये।
Practise this question Politics and Society notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(a)
Approach: Contrast Weber's zero-sum (distributive) concept of power with Parsons's variable-sum (collective) concept, assess both with critics (Mills, Giddens, Lukes) and Indian examples, and conclude that power has both aspects.
A zero-sum view treats power as a fixed quantity, so that one party's gain is another's loss; a variable-sum view holds that the total amount of power in a society can grow.
Weber: power is the chance of a person or group to realise their will in social action even against the resistance of others (Economy and Society, 1922). Power here is distributive and conflictual: it is exercised over others, and in his analysis of class, status and party, groups struggle for a limited share. Mills's power elite and Marxist theories share this view.
Parsons ('On the Concept of Political Power', 1963) argued that power is a generalised capacity of the social system to mobilise resources for collective goals, legitimised by shared values. Like money in an economy, power can be 'created': when citizens trust leaders and grant them authority, the capacity of the whole society to act grows, as in a war effort or a public health campaign. Power is therefore not a zero-sum game.
Flow chart: shared values → legitimacy and trust → authority granted to leaders → greater collective capacity (Parsons) versus scarce power → competing groups → gain of one is loss of another (Weber).
Evaluation: Anthony Giddens noted that Parsons ignored the hierarchical side of power, which is always used by some over others; Mills held that the collective goals are often the goals of the elite. Steven Lukes showed that apparent consensus may itself be a product of power.
In India, a national immunisation drive or the panchayati raj system after the 73rd Amendment (1992) increased the collective capacity of society, supporting Parsons; yet land reform and reservation conflicts show distributive struggle, supporting Weber.
Power thus has two faces: distributive and collective. A complete analysis combines Weber's attention to conflict with Parsons's attention to legitimacy and capacity.
Q6(b) · Systems of Kinship · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Family, Household and Marriage: Types and Forms
Critically examine the functionalist views on the institution of family. How do those help us in understanding family in the present times?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
परिवार की संस्था के प्रकार्यात्मक (फंक्शनलिस्ट) विचारों का समालोचनात्मक परीक्षण कीजिये। वर्तमान समय में किस प्रकार ये परिवार को समझने में सहायक हैं?
Practise this question Systems of Kinship notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(b)
Approach: First set out the functionalist views (Murdock, Parsons, Goode), then critically examine them with named critics, and finally assess their usefulness for understanding families today, especially in India.
Functionalism sees the family as a universal institution that meets the functional prerequisites of society and of individuals.
Murdock (Social Structure, 1949), surveying 250 societies, found the nuclear family universal and performing four functions: sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. Parsons (1955) argued that in industrial society the family lost many functions to specialised institutions but kept two 'basic and irreducible' ones: primary socialisation of children and stabilisation of adult personalities. The isolated nuclear family, with an instrumental husband and expressive wife, fits a mobile industrial economy. William Goode (1963) predicted worldwide convergence towards the conjugal family.
Criticism: Kathleen Gough's Nayar study and the Israeli kibbutz questioned universality. Laslett (1972) found nuclear households in pre-industrial England and Anderson (1971) extended families in industrial Lancashire, undermining the 'fit' thesis. Leach (1967) saw the inward-looking nuclear family as a source of tension, and Marxists (Zaretsky) and feminists (Oakley, Delphy and Leonard) said it hides exploitation; its model is also ethnocentric.
Relevance today: functionalism still helps explain why the family persists: socialisation, emotional support and care of the elderly remain family tasks, which Indian laws such as the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 reinforce.
However, it cannot explain diversity (lone-parent, live-in, same-sex and transnational families), rising divorce, domestic violence (addressed by the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005), or the Indian pattern of residentially nuclear but functionally joint families described by I.P. Desai and A.M. Shah.
Functionalism is therefore a useful starting point for the family's functions, but contemporary families are better understood by adding conflict, feminist and postmodern perspectives such as Morgan's 'family practices'.
Q6(c) · Systems of Kinship · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Patriarchy, Sexual Division of Labour and Contemporary Trends
What do you understand by institutionalization of 'live-in relationship'?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
आप 'लिव-इन सम्बन्ध' के संस्थायन (इंस्टिट्यूशनलाइजेशन) से क्या समझते हैं?
Practise this question Systems of Kinship notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(c)
Approach: Explain what institutionalisation means (norms, legal recognition, social acceptance), show how live-in relationships in India have moved towards it through courts and law, and note its limits.
A live-in relationship is cohabitation by an unmarried couple. Institutionalisation means that a practice becomes patterned, normatively accepted and backed by rules, as Berger and Luckmann described, so that it is no longer deviant.
Legal recognition: the Supreme Court held in Lata Singh (2006) and S. Khushboo (2010) that adults living together commit no offence. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 covers a 'relationship in the nature of marriage', interpreted in D. Velusamy (2010) and Indra Sarma (2013), and courts have protected the inheritance rights of children of long cohabitation.
Social drivers: urban education, migration for work, later marriage and Giddens's 'pure relationship' make cohabitation acceptable among sections of the urban middle class.
Limits: social stigma, landlords' reluctance, family opposition and the absence of a full legal framework show that institutionalisation is partial. Uttarakhand's Uniform Civil Code (2025) later required registration, which formalises live-ins but raises privacy concerns.

Question 7 (50 marks)

Q7(a) · Religion and Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Religion in Modern Society: Science, Secularisation, Revivalism and Fundamentalism
How is religious revivalism different from communalism? Elaborate with suitable examples from the Indian context.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
धार्मिक पुनरुज्जीवनवाद (रिवाइवलिज्म) साम्प्रदायिकता से किस प्रकार भिन्न है? भारतीय संदर्भ से उपयुक्त उदाहरणों के द्वारा सविस्तार स्पष्ट कीजिये।
Practise this question Religion and Society notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(a)
Approach: Define both terms, distinguish them on aim, target, relation to other communities and politics, illustrate with Indian examples (Arya Samaj, Singh Sabha, Deoband versus riots and communal parties; Bipan Chandra's stages), and note how revivalism can slide into communalism.
Religious revivalism is the renewed assertion of a religion as a return to its pure or original form, aimed mainly at reforming and energising its own followers. Communalism is an ideology that treats a religious community as a political unit whose interests are opposed to those of other communities; Bipan Chandra traced its growth from communal nationalism to liberal and then extreme communalism.
Differences: first, aim: revivalism seeks religious renewal and purification, communalism seeks political power and advantage for a community. Second, direction: revivalism looks inward at belief and practice, communalism looks outward at an 'other' defined as the enemy. Third, means: revivalism uses preaching, education and ritual; communalism uses mobilisation, propaganda and sometimes violence. Fourth, revivalism need not be hostile to others, while hostility is inherent in communalism.
Indian examples: colonial revivalist movements such as the Arya Samaj (1875) with its call to return to the Vedas, the Deoband seminary (1866) and the Singh Sabha (1873) aimed at reform within their communities. Communalism appears in the politics that led to Partition, in riots such as Bhagalpur (1989), Mumbai (1992–93) and Gujarat (2002), and in the use of religious identity in elections.
The overlap: revivalism can become communal when it defines identity against another community, as the Arya Samaj's shuddhi campaigns and Muslim tabligh in the 1920s fed mutual suspicion, and the Ram Janmabhoomi movement led to the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. Asghar Ali Engineer stressed that communalism is a product of elite and political interests rather than religion itself.
Revivalism is thus a religious phenomenon and communalism a political one; secular institutions and interfaith dialogue keep the first from turning into the second.
Q7(b) · Social Change in Modern Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Education, Science, Technology and Social Change
Education is often viewed as an agency of social change. However in reality it could also reinforce inequalities and conservatism. Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
शिक्षा प्रायः सामाजिक परिवर्तन का एक अभिकरण माना जाता है। तथापि वास्तविकता में यह असमताओं और रूढ़िवाद को प्रबलित भी कर सकती है। चर्चा कीजिये।
Practise this question Social Change in Modern Society notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(b)
Approach: Give the view of education as an agent of change (Durkheim, modernisation, Indian reformers and data), then show how it reinforces inequality and conservatism (Bourdieu, Bowles and Gintis, Indian curricula and gender norms), and conclude on conditions for transformative education.
Education is widely viewed as an agency of social change: it spreads new knowledge, rational values and skills, and enables mobility. The Kothari Commission (1964–66) opened its report by saying that the destiny of India is being shaped in her classrooms.
Education as change: modernisation theorists such as Inkeles and Smith found that schooling produces 'modern' attitudes. In India, Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule opened a school for girls in Pune in 1848, and Ambedkar saw education as the key to Dalit liberation. Census 2011 recorded literacy of 74.04%; reservations and the RTE Act, 2009 have created first-generation graduates who challenge caste occupations; education has delayed marriage age and lowered fertility, as Kerala's experience shows.
Education as reproduction: Bourdieu argued that schools convert the cultural capital of dominant classes into credentials; Bowles and Gintis's correspondence principle shows schools preparing pupils for unequal positions; and Althusser called the school an ideological state apparatus. In India, English-medium private schooling and coaching favour urban upper castes and classes, while government schools serving the poor are under-resourced.
Education as conservatism: curricula and textbooks can carry patriarchal and caste-biased content, as Krishna Kumar argued. Girls are steered towards 'feminine' subjects, and educated families may still practise dowry and caste endogamy, showing that schooling does not automatically change values. Ivan Illich criticised schools for producing conformity rather than learning.
Flow chart: education → knowledge, skills, credentials → mobility and new values (change); unequal access + biased curricula → reproduction of hierarchy (conservatism).
Education transforms society when it is equitable, critical and linked to opportunity, as Freire's pedagogy and NEP 2020's emphasis on equity suggest; otherwise it reproduces the existing order.
Q7(c) · Systems of Kinship · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Patriarchy, Sexual Division of Labour and Contemporary Trends
According to Marx, capitalism transforms even the personal relationships between men and women. Critically examine with illustrations from the contemporary Indian context.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मार्क्स के अनुसार, पूँजीवाद स्त्रियों तथा पुरुषों के बीच के व्यक्तिगत सम्बन्धों को भी रूपान्तरित कर सकता है। समसामयिक भारतीय संदर्भ से उदाहरणों के साथ इस बात का समालोचनात्मक परीक्षण कीजिये।
Practise this question Systems of Kinship notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(c)
Approach: State Marx and Engels's argument that capitalism commodifies intimate relations, illustrate it with contemporary India (dowry, marriage markets, commercial surrogacy, sex selection, care chains), then critically examine it with Weberian, feminist and cultural objections.
In the Communist Manifesto (1848) Marx and Engels wrote that the bourgeoisie 'has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation'. Engels (1884) linked monogamy to private property and the need for legitimate heirs.
Indian illustrations: dowry has become a groom price set by the groom's salary, spreading to castes that once paid bride price (Srinivas, 1984). Matrimonial sites rank partners by income, and weddings are costly consumer events.
Commercial surrogacy grew until the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 banned it, and sex selection, banned by the PCPNDT Act, 1994, treats daughters as economic liabilities.
Critique: Weberians stress that caste and religion, not only capital, govern marriage, since endogamy predates capitalism. Feminists such as Delphy and Leonard argue that patriarchy has its own logic of exploitation, and romantic, choice-based marriage (Uberoi, 2006) has also grown with capitalism.
Marx's insight is therefore partly valid: capitalism commercialises intimacy, but it works through patriarchy and caste rather than replacing them.

Question 8 (50 marks)

Q8(a) · Social Change in Modern Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Education, Science, Technology and Social Change
How is the increasing use of technology changing the status of women in Indian society?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
प्रौद्योगिकी का बढ़ता हुआ उपयोग भारतीय समाज में किस प्रकार स्त्रियों की प्रस्थिति में परिवर्तन कर रहा है?
Practise this question Social Change in Modern Society notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(a)
Approach: Use the mutual-shaping view of technology and gender (Wajcman, Cowan) to show how technologies (mobile phones, digital finance, household and reproductive technology, ICT jobs) change women's status in India, both empowering and constraining, and conclude.
The status of women refers to their position in terms of rights, resources, autonomy and respect. Feminist sociologists such as Judy Wajcman argue that technology and gender shape each other: technology can empower women, but it enters a patriarchal social structure that shapes who uses it and how.
Empowering effects: mobile phones and the internet give women information, mobility and networks; NFHS-5 (2019–21) found that 54% of women had a mobile phone they themselves used. Jan Dhan accounts, Direct Benefit Transfer and UPI give women direct control over money, and SHG members use digital finance. Clean cooking fuel under Ujjwala (2016) reduced drudgery and indoor smoke. IT and service jobs created new careers and independent incomes for urban educated women, raising their bargaining power within families and delaying marriage.
Constraining effects: ultrasound technology was used for sex-selective abortion, contributing to a skewed child sex ratio (918 girls per 1,000 boys in Census 2011) and leading to the PCPNDT Act, 1994. The digital divide persists: only 33.3% of women had ever used the internet against 57.1% of men (NFHS-5). Online harassment, cyberstalking and morphed images restrict women's online presence, and families often monitor girls' phones. Ruth Schwartz Cowan's More Work for Mother (1983) showed that household technology raised standards rather than freeing women's time, a pattern visible in Indian homes too. Mechanisation in agriculture has displaced many women labourers.
Flow chart: technology → access to information, money and work → autonomy and status; patriarchal control + digital divide + misuse → new forms of subordination.
Technology is therefore changing women's status in India, but its emancipatory potential depends on equal access, digital literacy, legal safeguards and change in gender norms.
Q8(b) · Social Change in Modern Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Development and Dependency
Write a short essay on the Latin American perspective on 'dependency'.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'निर्भरता' के लातीन अमरीकी दृष्टिकोण पर एक संक्षिप्त निबन्ध लिखिये।
Practise this question Social Change in Modern Society notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(b)
Approach: Write a short essay: origins (ECLA, Prebisch), main thinkers (Baran, Frank, Dos Santos, Cardoso and Faletto), core propositions, criticism and relevance for India.
The Latin American perspective on dependency arose after the Second World War from the failure of the region's export-led growth to produce development. It rejected modernisation theory's view that poor nations were merely 'traditional' and would follow the West.
Its roots lie in Raúl Prebisch and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA, around 1950), which argued that the terms of trade of primary-commodity exporters decline against industrial goods, so the 'periphery' transfers value to the 'centre'. ECLA proposed import-substituting industrialisation.
Radical thinkers went further. Paul Baran (1957) showed that surplus was drained by foreign capital and local elites. Andre Gunder Frank (1966) coined the development of underdevelopment, a metropolis–satellite chain extracting surplus from villages to world centres. Theotonio Dos Santos defined dependency as a situation in which one economy's development is conditioned by another's. Cardoso and Faletto (1979) offered a more nuanced associated dependent development, in which growth occurs within dependency through alliances between foreign capital, the state and local elites.
Core propositions: underdevelopment is relational and historical; the external link shapes internal class structure; and development requires breaking or renegotiating dependence.
Criticism: Laclau said Frank confused exchange with production; Bill Warren argued capitalism was industrialising the Third World; and the success of East Asian economies challenged the thesis. It also neglected culture and internal factors.
For India, the perspective echoed Dadabhai Naoroji's drain theory and influenced the import-substitution model of planning. It remains a key reminder that development is shaped by global power relations.
Q8(c) · Politics and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Protest, Social Movements, Collective Action and Revolution
What do you understand by social movement? How has the mobilization by Scheduled Castes helped them in constructing a new identity?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक आन्दोलन से आप क्या समझते हैं? अनुसूचित जातियों द्वारा लामबंदी ने उनको एक नई पहचान बनाने में किस प्रकार सहायता की है?
Practise this question Politics and Society notes
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(c)
Approach: Define a social movement briefly, then show how Scheduled Caste mobilisation (Ambedkar, neo-Buddhism, Adi-Dharm, Dalit Panthers, BSP) constructed a new identity, with studies by Zelliot, Juergensmeyer and Omvedt.
A social movement is a sustained, organised collective effort to bring about or resist change, with an ideology and leadership (M.S.A. Rao; Charles Tilly).
Scheduled Caste mobilisation turned a stigmatised identity into an assertive one. Early movements such as Adi-Dharm in Punjab in the 1920s, studied by Mark Juergensmeyer, claimed that Dalits were the original inhabitants with their own religion. Ambedkar rejected Sanskritisation and Hindu caste identity; the mass conversion of 1956 created a neo-Buddhist identity based on equality, which Eleanor Zelliot traced in the Mahar movement.
The Dalit Panthers (1972) adopted the word 'Dalit' (the oppressed) as a proud political identity, and Dalit literature expressed it. Kanshi Ram's BSP (1984) built a 'Bahujan' identity uniting SCs, OBCs and minorities against upper-caste dominance. Gail Omvedt called this anti-caste assertion a democratic revolution.
The new identity is based on dignity, rights and political power rather than ritual status, though internal divisions among SC sub-castes remain.

UPSC Mains 2014 Sociology Paper II