ANDRÉ BÉTEILLE (1934-2026): SOCIOLOGIST WHO MADE INDIA SEE ITSELF CLEARLY
Abhijit Dasgupta
André Béteille passed away on February 3, 2026, after five decades of teaching and research at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. His contributions to sociology include several books on theories and methods, caste, class and power, affirmative action, social inequality, ideologies, and intellectuals. He held administrative positions, including Chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, Chancellor of North Eastern Hill University, and Chairman of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.
He was appointed National Research Professor by the government in 2007 and served as Professor Emeritus at the University of Delhi from 2003. Béteille was one of the first recipients of the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1968-70, which offered him an opportunity to select a topic of his choice for research. He decided to work on some aspects of agrarian relations in West Bengal, the State which was in turmoil owing to agrarian tensions.
He published his first book, Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village, in 1965, which received accolades from scholars in India and abroad. Béteille acknowledged his intellectual debt to N.K. Bose, an anthropologist and his teacher at Calcutta University. From Bose he learnt basic lessons of social anthropology, the intricacies of doing fieldwork, and his scientific world view, his insistence on proof and evidence. He was indebted to M.N. Srinivas for his ideas on the unity of sociology and social anthropology and more specifically for his writings on research methodology that required intensive fieldwork within a small universe like a village. This was the methodology he followed in his village study in Sripuram, Tanjore.
However, like Srinivas, he did not subscribe to functionalist theory. He was convinced that studying morphological structure without accounting for conflict and antagonistic relations between classes was utopian. Perhaps for this kind of view Bose considered Béteille a “fellow traveller”. But in his analysis of conflict and change he found Max Weber more relevant than Karl Marx. However, he believed that Marxian method of social enquiry had much to offer to a sociologist, though orthodoxy and predictions should be ignored. He was of the view that the comparative method was ideally suited for intensive village study.
Reflecting on his initial days at the Department of Sociology, Béteille writes in his memoir:
When I secured a lectureship in the newly established Department of Sociology in the Delhi School of Economics, I felt I had gotten what I had been looking for. I made my intellectual home in the place to which I continue to remain attached as Emeritus Professor of Sociology.
India had become independent in 1947. The world was changing. The talk in the Delhi School of Economics was about democracy and development, about poverty and inequality, and about capitalism and socialism. I wanted to find a way to engage with all of that and felt that sociology was better equipped to do so than anthropology. At the same time, I was wary of engaging with matters of policy in which most of the economists at the Delhi School took an active interest.
Agrarian inequality and social conflict
One of Béteille’s main research concerns was rural inequality and agrarian conflict. He was of the view that the relation between inequality and social conflict is both complex and ambiguous. One expects that conflict would be common where inequalities are sharp and visible, but conflict appears in its acute form where inequalities are actually declining, as in the case of West Bengal. Under conditions of social and political change, inequality may be less important than heightened perception of the differences which persist.
What matters most in an agrarian conflict is consciousness of one’s position in agricultural production and mobilisation of those deprived and exploited. After the Green Revolution in the late 1960s, the epicentre of agrarian conflict was West Bengal and not Punjab, where inequality was sharper. Political mobilisation of agricultural workers by the peasant associations in West Bengal prepared an ideal condition for conflict to take place.
In the context of agrarian unrest in Tanjore, he points out the region had an economically homogenous class of people whose common material interests were not difficult to identify. Along with this, they shared common cultural unity as they were all untouchables or adivasis. They lived in separate hamlets known as cheris, their natural habitat, shared multiple kinship and other ties. In his memoir he writes: “There is much that we still need to learn about rural society in India. I have proposed a new problem for enquiry which will enable us to make village studies on a new basis and thereby to revive interest in a kind of investigation which anthropologists have made their very own.”
While commenting on castes and political power, Béteille noted the rise of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the Indian political arena, which scholars had hardly taken note of. In his view, the polarisation of Dalits and OBCs for political power would change the nature of Indian politics. This was indeed the case in places like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and in some other parts of the country. On the question of reservation, he was critical of the way it was used, as he always feared that those who deserved reservation benefits most would be left out. He was also critical of the way tribes were identified for reservation.
An outstanding teacher and scholar
Béteille’s language in presenting his findings is simple, lucid, and free from jargon, easily accessible even to a layman. The new style of presenting field data that was introduced by Srinivas reached its peak with Béteille’s style of presentation. His commitment to teaching and research, and to building a newly established department as an institution of repute, materialised with the recognition of the Department by the University Grants Commission as the centre of advanced study.
Students from all over the country and from various parts of the world joined the Department of Sociology to study or to do research. Béteille supervised several M.Phil. and Ph.D. students, some of whom joined the Department from countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Béteille will always be remembered by his students as an outstanding teacher and by his friends and colleagues as a scholar who gave new directions to sociological studies in India.
Abhijit Dasgupta is the former head of the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.