India as A Plural Society: Contexts and Categories

On June 25, 2021 the third Sociology Web-talk, organized by the Department of Sociology, and approved by IQAC, Loreto College was held. On this occasion our invited speaker was Dr. Suraj Beri, who is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. His Ph.D. (2019) research dealt with an empirical exploration of the elite structure in Bikaner city of the Rajasthan state. He completed his M.Phil. as well as his Masters in Sociology at Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His area of academic interest includes analysis of social inequalities, class relations and reproduction of elite structures in urban contexts, mechanisms of social exclusion, democratic politics and neoliberal order, social theory and modernity, new forms of associational life, social and cultural aspects of conflicts, change, and mobilities.

The title of his presentation was India as a Plural Society: Contexts and Categories. This Web-talk was designed to enable students understand the sociological interpretation of the social transformations, ideological, political and cultural nuances of the making of a nation via structural contexts and processual analysis. Through his presentation, the speaker encouraged the students to understand the social, cultural and historical construction of the knowledge of the "national imagination". For this he utilized the example of diverse images of Mother India, as has been illustrated in Sumathi Ramaswamy’s work ‘The Goddess and the Nation’. As Sociology Elective students from both Semester 2 and 4 were able to comprehend the multiple aspects of knowledge production in social sciences that can be considered an outcome of this web-talk.