Akshay Ramanlal Desai

This presentation is on Indian contemporary sociological thinker named Akshay Ramanlal Desai. Desai alone among Indian sociologists has consistently applied Marxist methods in his treatment of Indian social structure and its processes. He is a doctrinaire Marxist. He rejects any interpretations of tradition with reference to religion, rituals and festivities. It is essentially a secular phenomenon.

1. Akshay Ramanlal Desai Submitted to DR kanika Pawar By Hitesh Meena and Ramesh

2. LIFE Akshaya Ramanlal Desai (1915-1994) born on April 16, 1915 at Nadiad in Gujarat died on November 12, 1994 at Baroda in Gujarat. Influenced by his father Ramanlal Vasantlal Desai, a well known litterateur who inspired the youth in Gujarat in the thirties. Desai took part in student movements in Baroda, Surat and Bombay.

3. LIFE Graduated from the University of Bombay, obtained a law degree and a PhD in sociology under G.S. Ghurye from the University of Bombay in 1946. Later on, he taught at the Bombay University also became head of the department. In 1947, he got married to Neeraj Desai, She has done pioneering work in the field of women’s studies. In 1953, he took the membership of the Trotskyites Revolutionary Socialist Party and resigned from its membership in 1981.

4. WRITTINGS Rural sociology in India India’s path of development: A Marxist approach Social background of Indian nationalism Slum and Urbanization Society in India

5. Methodology Desai alone among Indian sociologists has consistently applied Marxist methods in his treatment of Indian social structure and its processes . He is a doctrinaire Marxist. He rejects any interpretations of tradition with reference to religion, rituals and festivities. It is essentially a secular phenomenon.

6. Methodology Its nature is economic and it originates and develops in economics. He finds it in family, village and other social institutions. He also does not find the origin of tradition in western culture. His studies mainly of nationalism and its social configuration (1966), his exami­nation of community development programs for economic development in villages (1959), his diagnosis of the interface between state and society in India or the relationship between polity and social structure (1975), his treatment of urban slums and their demographic problems (1972), and finally his study of peasant movements (1979) are all based on a Marxist method of histori­cal-dialectical materialism.

7. Methodology He considers that the emerging contradictions in the Indian process of social transformation arise mainly from the growing nexus among the capitalist bourgeoisie, the rural petty-bourgeoisie and a state apparatus, all drawn from similar social roots. This thwarts the aspirations of the rural and industrial working classes by sheer of its power and of its skillful stratagems.

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