Professional Ethics,

Principles of
Management, and
Entrepreneurship
Development
19BTFT701
DR .P.CH ITRA

Unit-1
ENGINEERING ETHICS

SENSES OF ENGINEERING ETHICS

There are two different senses (meanings) of
engineering ethics, namely the Normative and the
Descriptivesenses. The normative sense include:
(a) Knowing moral values, finding accurate
solutions to moral problems and
justifying moral judgments in
engineering practices,
(b) Study of decisions, policies, and values
that are morally desirable in the
engineering practiceand research, and
(c) Using codes of ethics and standards and
applying them in their transactions by
engineers. The descriptive sense refers
to what specific individual or group of
engineers believe and act, without
justifying their beliefs or actions.
VARIETY OF MORAL ISSUES
It would be relevant to know why and how do
moral issues (problems) arise in a profession or
why do people behave unethically? The reasons

 for people including the employer and

employees, behaving unethically may be
classified into three categories:
1. Resource Crunch
Due to pressure, through time limits, availability
of money or budgetary constraints, and
technology decay or obsolescence. Pressure
from the government to complete the project in
time (e.g., before the elections), reduction in the
budget because of sudden war or natural
calamity (e.g., Tsunami) and obsolescence due
technology innovation by the competitor lead to
manipulation and unsafe and unethical execution
of projects.
Involving individuals in the development
of goals and values and developing policies that
allow for individual diversity, dissent, and input
to decision-making will prevent unethical
results.
2. Opportunity
(a) Double standards or behavior of the
employers towards the employees and
the public. The unethical behaviors of
World Com (in USA), Enron (in USA as
well as India) executives in2002 resulted
in bankruptcy for those companies,

 (b) Management projecting their own

interests more than that of their
employees. Some organizations over-
emphasize short-term gains and results
at the expense of themselves andothers,
(c) Emphasis on results and gains at the expense of
the employees, and
(d) Management by objectives, without
focus on empowerment and
improvement of the infrastructure.
This is best encountered by developing
policies that allow ‘conscience keepers’ and
whistle blowersand appointing ombudsman, who
can work confidentially with people to solve the
unethical problems internally.
3. Attitude
Poor attitude of the employees set in due to
(a) Low morale of the employees because of
dissatisfaction and downsizing,
(b) Absence of grievance redressal mechanism,
(c) Lack of promotion or career development
policies or denied promotions,
(d) Lack of transparency,
(e) Absence of recognition and reward system, and
(f) Poor working environments.

 Giving ethics training for all, recognizing

ethical conduct in work place, including ethics
in performance appraisal, and encouraging open
discussion on ethical issues, are some of the
directions to promote positive attitudes among
the employees9.
To get firm and positive effect, ethical
standards must be set and adopted by the senior
management,with input from all personnel.

TYPES OF INQUIRIES
The three types of inquiries, in solving ethical
problems are: normative inquiry, conceptual
inquiry,and factual or descriptive inquiry.
The three types of inquiries are discussed below to
illustrate the differences and preference.
1. Normative Inquiry
It seeks to identify and justify the morally-
desirable norms or standards that should guide
individuals and groups. It also has the theoretical
goal of justifying particular moral judgments.
Normative questions are about what ought to be
and what is good, based on moral values. For
example,
1. How far does the obligation of engineers to
protect public safety extend in any given
situation?

 2. When, if ever, should engineers be

expected to blow whistle on dangerous
practices of theiremployers?
3. Whose values ought to be primary in
making judgment about acceptable risks
in design fora public transport system or a
nuclear plant? Is it of management, senior
engineers, government, voters or all of
them?
4. When and why is the government justified in
interfering with the organisations?
5. What are the reasons on which the
engineers show their obligations to
their employees or clients or the
public?
2. Conceptual Inquiry
It is directed to clarify the meaning of concepts
or ideas or principles that are expressed by
words or by questions and statements. For
example,
(a) What is meant by safety?
(b) How is it related to risk?
(c) What is a bribe?
(d) What is a profession?
When moral concepts are discussed, normative and
conceptual issues are closely interconnected.

3. Factual or Descriptive Inquiry

It is aimed to obtain facts needed for
understanding and resolving value issues.
Researchers conduct factual inquiries using
mathematical or statistical techniques. The
inquiry provide important information on
business realities, engineering practice, and the
effectiveness of professional societies in
fostering moral conduct, the procedures used in
risk assessment, and psychological profiles of
engineers. The facts provide not only the reasons
for moral problems but also enable us to develop
alterative ways of resolving moral problems. For
example,
1. How were the benefits assessed?
2. What are procedures followed in risk
assessment?
3. What are short-term and long-term effects of
drinking water being polluted? and
4. Who conducted the tests on materials?

MORAL DILEMMA

Definition
Dilemmas are situations in which moral reasons
come into conflict, or in which the application of
moral values are problems, and one is not clear

of the immediate choice or solution of the

problems. Moral reasons could be rights, duties,
goods or obligations. These situations do not
mean that things had gone wrong, but they only
indicate the presence of moral complexity. This
makes the decision making complex. For
example, a person promised to meet a friend and
dine, but he has to help his uncle who is
involved in an accident — one has to fix the
priority.
There are some difficulties in arriving at
the solution to the problems, in dilemma.
The three complex situations leading to
moral dilemmas are:
1. The problem of vagueness: One is
unable to distinguish between good and
bad (right or wrong) principle. Good
means an action that is obligatory. For
example, code of ethics specifies that
one should obey the laws and follow
standards. Refuse bribe or accept the
gift,and maintain confidentiality
2. The problem of conflicting reasons: One
is unable to choose between two good
moral solutions. One has to fix priority,
through knowledge or value system.
3. The problem of disagreement: There
may be two or more solutions and none

 of them mandatory. These solutions may

be better or worse in some respects but
not in all aspects. One has to interpret,
apply different morally reasons, and
analyze and rank the decisions. Select
the best suitable, under the existing and
the most probable conditions.
Steps to Solve Dilemma
The logical steps in confronting moral dilemma are:
1. Identification of the moral factors and
reasons. The clarity to identify the
relevant moral values from among
duties, rights, goods and obligations is
obtained (conceptual inquiry). The most
useful resource in identifying dilemmas
in engineering is the professional codes
of ethics, as interpreted by the professional
experience. Another resource is talking
with colleagues who can focus or narrow
down the choice of values.
2. Collection of all information, data, and facts
(factual inquiry) relevant to the situation.
3. Rank the moral options i.e., priority in
application through value system, and
also as obligatory, all right, acceptable,
not acceptable, damaging, and most
damaging etc. For example, in fulfilling

 responsibility, the codes give prime

importance to public safety and
protection of the environment, as
compared to the individuals or the
employers (conceptual inquiry).
4. Generate alternate courses of action to
resolve the dilemma. Write down the
main options and sub-options as a
matrix or decision tree to ensure that
all options are included.
5. Discuss with colleagues and obtain their
perspectives, priorities, and suggestions
on variousalternatives.
6. Decide upon a final course of action,
based on priority fixed or assumed. If
there is no ideal solution, we arrive at a
partially satisfactory or ‘satisficing’
solution.

MORAL AUTONOMY
Moral autonomy is defined as, decisions and
actions exercised on the basis of moral concern
for other people and recognition of good moral
reasons. Alternatively, moral autonomy means
‘self determinant or independent’. The
autonomous people hold moral beliefs and
attitudes based on their critical reflection rather

than on passive adoption of the conventions of

the society or profession. Moral autonomy may
also be defined as a skill and habit of thinking
rationally about the ethical issues, on the basis
of moral concern.
Vi e w i n g e n g i n e e r i n g a s s o c i a l
experimentation will promote autonomous
participation and retain one’s professional
identity. Periodical performance appraisals,
tight-time schedules and fear of foreign
competition threatens this autonomy. The
attitude of the management should allow latitude
in the judgments of their engineers on moral
issues. If management views profitability is more
important than consistent quality and retention of
the customers that discourage the moral
autonomy, engineers are compelled to seek the
support from their professional societies and
outside organizations for moral support. It
appears that the blue-collar workers with the
support of the union can adopt better autonomy
than the employed professionals. Only recently
the legal support has been obtained by the
professional societies in exhibiting moral
autonomy by professionals in this country as
well as in the West.
The engineering skills related to moral autonomy
are listed as follows:

 1. Proficiency in recognizing moral

problems in engineering and ability to
distinguish as well as relate them to
problems in law, economics, and
religion,
2. Skill in comprehending, clarifying, and
critically-assessing arguments on
different aspectsof moral issues,
3. Ability to form consistent and comprehensive
view points based on facts,
4. Awareness of alternate responses to the issues
and creative solutions for practical difficulties,
5. Sensitivity to genuine difficulties and
subtleties, including willingness to
undergo and tolerate some uncertainty
while making decisions,
6. Using rational dialogue in resolving
moral conflicts and developing
tolerance of different perspectives
among morally reasonable people, and
7. Maintaining moral integrity.
Autonomy which is the independence in
making decisions and actions, is different from
authority. Authority provides freedom for action,
specified within limits, depending on the
situation. Moral autonomy and respect for
authority can coexist. They are not against each

 other. If the authority of the engineer and the

moral autonomy of the operator are in conflict, a
consensus is obtained by the two, upon
discussion and mutual understanding their
limits.

MORAL DEVELOPMENT (THEORIES)

1.Kohlberg Theory
Moral development in human being occurs
overage and experience. Kohlberg suggested
there are three levels of moral development,
namely pre-conventional, conventional, and
post-conventional, based on the type of
reasoning and motivation of the individuals in
response to moral questions.
In the pre-conventional level, right conduct
for an individual is regarded as whatever
directly benefits oneself. At this level,
individuals are motivated by obedience or the
desire to avoid punishmentor to satisfy their own
needs or by the influence by power on them. All
young children exhibit this tendency. At the
conventional level, people respect the law and
authority. Rules and norms of one’s family or
group or society is accepted, as the standard of
morality. Individuals in this level want to please
or satisfy, and get approval by others and to

meet the expectations of the society, rather than

their self interest (e.g., good boy, good girl).
Loyalty is regarded as most important. Many
adults donot go beyond this level.
At the post-conventional level, people are
called autonomous. They think originally and
want to live by universally good principles and
welfare of others. They have no self-interest.
They live by principled conscience. They follow
the golden rule, ‘Do unto others as you would
have them do unto you’. They maintain moral
integrity, self-respect and respect for others.
Kohlberg believed that individuals could only
progress through these stages, one stage at a time.
He believed that most of the moral development occurs
through social interactions.
2. Gilligan’s Theory
Carol Gilligan found that Kohlberg’s theory had
a strong male bias. According to Gilligan’s
studies, men had a tendency to solve problems
by applying abstract moral principles. Men were
found to resolve moral dilemma by choosing the
most important moral rule, overriding other
rules. In contrast, women gave importance to
preserve personal relationships with all the
people involved. The context oriented emphasis
on maintaining personal relationships was called

the ethics of care, in contrast with the ethics of

rules and rights adopted by men.
Gilligan revised the three levels of moral
development of Kohlberg, as stages of growth
towards ethics of caring. The pre-conventional
level, which is same as that of Kohlberg’s first
one, right conduct, is viewed in a selfish manner
solely as what is good for oneself. The second
level called conventional level, the importance is
on not hurting others, and willing to sacrifice
one’s own interest and help others. This is the
characteristic feature of women. At the post-
conventional level, a reasoned balance is found
between caring about others and pursuing the
self-interest. The balance one’s own need and
the needs of others, is aimed while maintaining
relationship based on mutual caring. This is
achieved by context-oriented reasoning, rather
than by hierarchy of rules.

 The theories of moral development by Kohlberg

and Gilligan differ in the following respects.

Kohlberg’s Theory Carol Gilligan’s Theory

A. Basic Aspects
1. Is based on the study on men. 1. Is based on the study on men and
2. Men give importance to moral women
rule. 2. Women always want to keep up
the personal relationships with all
the persons involved in the
3. Ethics of rules and rights. situations.
3. Wo m e n g i v e a t t e n t i o n t o
circumstances leading to critical
situations rather than rules:
B Characteristic Features
1. Justice 1. Reason
2. Factual 2. Emotional
3. Right or wrong 3. Impact on relationships
4. Logic only 4. Compassion too
5. Logic and rule-based 5. Caring and concern
6. Less of caring 6. More of caring
7. Matter of fact (practical) 7. Abstract
8. Present focus 8. Future focus
9. Strict rules 9. Making exceptions
10.Independence 10.Dependence
11.Rigid 11.Human-oriented
12.Taking a commanding role 12.Shying away from decision-
13.Transactional approach making
13.Transformational approach

The difference in these two theories is

explained through the well-known example,
Heinz’s dilemma1. Heinz being poor and a
debtor could not buy the costly medicine for

 his sick wife, at ten times the normal cost.

Initially he begged the Pharmacist to sell at half
the price or allow him to pay for it later.
Pharmacist refused to oblige him either way.
Finally he forcibly entered the Pharmacy and
stole the drug.
According to Kohlberg study, men observed
that the theft was morally ‘wrong’ at the
conventional level, because the property right
was violated. But men at the post-conventional
level, concluded that the theft was ‘right’, as the
life of the human being was in danger. But
women observed that Heinz was wrong. They
observed that instead of stealing he could have
tried other solutions (threatening or payment in
instalments) to convince the Pharmacist.
Gilligan however attributed the decision by
women as context-oriented and not on the basis
of rules ranked in the order of priority.

MODELS OF PROFESSIONAL ROLES

Promotion of public good is the primary concern
of the professional engineers. There are several
role models to whom the engineers are attracted.
These models provoke their thinking, attitudes
and actions.
1.Savior

 The engineer as a savior, save the society from

poverty, illiteracy, wastage, inefficiency, ill
health, human (labor) dignity and lead it to
prosperity, through technological development
and social planning. For example, R.L.
Stevenson.
2. Guardian
He guards the interests of the poor and general
public. As one who is conversant with
technology development, is given the authority
befitting his expertise to determine what is best
suited to the society. For example, Lawrence of
Arabia (an engineer).
3. Bureaucratic Servant
He serves the organization and the employers.
The management of an enterprise fixes its goals
and assigns the job of problem solving to the
engineer, who accepts the challenge and shapes
them into concrete achievements. For example,
Jamshedji Tata.
4. Social Servant
It is one who exhibits social responsibility. The
engineer translates the interest and aspirations of
the society into a reality, remembering that his
true master is the society at large. For example,
Sir M.Viswesvarayya.

5. Social Enabler and Catalyst

One who changes the society through
technology. The engineer must assist the
management and the society to understand their
needs and make informed decisions on the
desirable technological development and
minimize the negative effects of technology on
people and their living environment. Thus, he
shines as a social enabler and a catalyst for
further growth. For example, Sri Sundarlal
Bahuguna.
6. Game Player
He is neither a servant nor master. An engineer
is an assertive player, not a passive player who
may carry out his master’s voice. He plays a
unique role successfully within the organization,
enjoying the excitement of the profession and
having the satisfaction of surging ahead in a
competitive world. For example,
N a r a y a n a m u r t h y, I n f o s y s a n d D r.
Kasthurirangan, ISRO.

THEORIES ABOUT RIGHT ACTION (ETHICAL

THEORIES)

Uses and Criteria

The ethical theories are useful in many respects.

 1. In understanding moral dilemma.

They provide clarity, consistency,
systematic and comprehensive
understanding.
2. It provides helpful practical guidance in moral
issues towards the solution.
3. Justifying professional obligations and
decisions, and
3. In relating ordinary and professional morality.
Different criteria may be applied for evaluating
various ethical theories and deciding upon the
best.
1. The theory must be clear and (coherent)
formulated with concepts that are logically
connected.
2. It must be internally consistent, i.e., none of its
principles conflicts with any other
3. The theory and its defense must depend, only
upon facts.
4. It must organize basic moral values in
systematic and comprehensive
manner. It is to fix priority of values
and provide guidance in all situations
5. It must provide guidance compatible
with our moral convictions (judgments)
about concretesituations. For example, if

 an ethical theory says that it is all right

for engineers to make explosive devices
without the informed consent of the
public, we can conclude that the theory
is inadequate.
Theories and judgments are continually adjusted to
each other until we reach a reflective
equilibrium. Most of the theories converge
towards the welfare of the humanity. The duty
ethics and right ethics differ in great extent on
their emphasis. But they remain complementary
always.

Ethical Theories/Approaches
Several ethical theories have been developed
over different times, each of them stressing
certain ethical principles or features. Each
stresses a view and many a times, we find that
these theories converge and reinforce the ethics,
in deciding upon the actions and justifying the
results.
1.Utilitarian Theory
The term Utilitarianism was conceived in the
19th century by Jeremy Bentham and John
Stuart Mill to help legislators determine which
laws were morally best. They suggested that the
standard of right conduct is maximization of

 good consequences. Good consequences mean

either ‘utilities’ or the ‘balance of good over evil’.
This approach weighs the costs and benefits.
Right actions are the ones that produce the
greatest satisfaction of the preferences of the
affected persons. In analyzing an issue in this
approach,we have to:
(a) Identify the various courses of action available
to us.
(b) Ask who will be affected by each action
and what benefits or harms will be
derived from each.
(c) Choose the action that will produce the
greatest benefits and the least harm. The
ethical action is the one that provides
the greatest good for the greatest
number.
The ACT UTILITARIAN theory proposed
by J.S. Mill (1806-73) focuses on actions,
rather than on general rules. An action is right,
if it generates the most overall good for the
mostpeople involved.
The RULE UTILITARIAN theory,
developed by Richard Brandt (1910-97),
stressed on the rules, such as ‘do not steal’, ‘do
no harm others’, ‘do not bribe’, as of primary
importance. He suggested that individual actions

are right when they are required by set of rules

which maximizes the public good.
The act utilitarian theory permitted a few
immoral actions. Hence, there was need to
develop rule utilitarian theory to establish
morality and justice, in the transactions. For
example, stealing an old computer from the
employer will benefit the employee more than
the loss to the employer. As per Act, utilitarian
this action is right. But rule utilitarian observes
this as wrong, because the employee should act
as ‘faithful agent or trustee of the employees’. In
another example, some undisciplined engineers
are terminated with the blame for the mistakes
they have not committed.
The process is unfair although this results in
promotion of overall good.
2. Duty Ethics
A. The duty ethics theory, proposed by
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) states,
that actions are consequences of
performance of one’s duties such as,
‘being honest’, ‘not cause suffering of
others’, ‘being fair to others including
the meek and week’, ‘being grateful’,
‘keeping promises’ etc. The stress is on
the universal principle of respect for

 autonomy i.e., respect and rationality of

persons. As per Kant we have duties to
ourselves, as we are rational and
autonomous beings. We have a duty not
to commit suicide; a duty to develop our
talents and a duty to avoid harmful
drugs. Kant insisted that moral duties
are categorical imperatives. They are
commands that we impose on ourselves
as well as other rational beings. For
example, we should be honest because
honesty is required by duty. A
businessman is to be honest because
honesty pays — in terms of profits from
customers and from avoiding jail for
dishonesty.
B. On the other hand, the DUTY ethics
theory, as enunciated by John Rawl,
gave importance to the actions that
would be voluntarily agreed upon by all
persons concerned, assuming
impartiality. His view emphasized the
autonomy each person exercises in
forming agreements
with other rational people. Rawl
proposed two basic moral principles; (1)
each person is entitled to the most
extensive amount of liberty compatible

 with an equal amount for others, and (2)

differences in social power and
economic benefits are justified only
when they are likely to benefit every
one, including members of the most
disadvantaged groups. The first
principle is of prime importance and
should be satisfied first. Without basic
liberties other economic or social
benefits can not be sustained for long.
The second principle insists that to allow
some people with great wealth and
power is justified only when all other
groups are benefited. In the business
scenario, for example, the free enterprise
is permissible so far it provides the
capital needed to invest and prosper,
thereby making job opportunities to the
public and taxes to fund the government
spending on the welfare schemes on the
poor people.
Ross, the British philosopher
introduced the term prima facie duties,
which means duties might have justified
exceptions. In fact, most duties are
prima facie ones; some may have
obligatory or permissible exceptions.
Ross assumed that the prima facie duties

 are intuitively obvious (self-evident),

while fixing priorities among duties. He
noted that the principles such as ‘Do not
kill’ and ‘protect innocent life’ involve
high respect for persons than other
principles such as, ‘Do not lie’ (less
harmful). This theory is criticized on the
fact, that the intuitions do not provide
sufficient guideline for moral duty. He
has listed various aspects of Duty Ethics
that reflect our moral convictions,
namely:
1. Fidelity : duty to keep promises.
2. Reparation : duty to compensate
others when we harm them.
3. Gratitude : duty to thank those
who help us.
4. Justice : duty to recognize
merit.
5. Beneficence : duty to recognize
inequality and improve the
condition of others.
6. Self-improvement : duty to improve virtue
and intelligence.
7. Non-malfeasance : duty not to injure
others.

3. Rights Theory
Rights are entitlement to act or to have another
individual act in a certain way. Minimally, rights
serve as a protective barrier, shielding
individuals from unjustified infringement of
their moral agency by others. For every right, we
have a corresponding duty of noninterference.
A. The RIGHTS approach to ethics has its
roots in the 18th century philosopher
Immanuel Kant, who focused on the
individual’s right to choose for oneself.
According him, what makes human
beings different from mere things is, that
people have dignity based on their
ability to choose freely what they will
do with their lives, and they have a
fundamental moral right to have these
choices respected. People are not objects
to be manipulated; it is a violation of
human dignity to use people in ways
they do not freely choose. Other rights
he advocated are:
1. The right to access the truth: We
have a right to be told the truth
and to be informed about matters
that significantly affect our
choices.

 2. The right of privacy: We have the

right to do, believe, and say
whatever we choose in our personal
lives so long as we do not violate
the rights of others.
3. The right not to be injured: We have
the right not to be harmed or injured
unless we freely and knowingly do
something to deserve punishment or
we freely and knowingly choose to
risk such injuries.
4. The right to what is agreed: We
have a right to what has been
promised by those with whom we
have freely entered into a contract
or agreement.
B. In deciding whether an action is moral
or immoral, we must ask, does the
action respect the moral rights of
everyone? Actions are wrong to the
extent that they violate the rights of
individuals; the more serious is the
violation, the more wrongful is the
action. The RIGHTS theory as promoted
by John Locke states that the actions
are right, if they respect human rights of
every one affected. He proposed the
three basic human rights, namely life,

 liberty, and property. His views were

reflected in the modern American
society, when Jefferson declared the
basic rights as life, liberty, and pursuit
of happiness.
C. As per A.I. Melden’s theory based on
rights, nature mandates that we should
not harm others’ life, health, liberty or
property. Melden allowed welfare rights
also for living a decent human life. He
highlighted that the rights should be
based on the social welfare system.
D. Human rights: Human rights are
explained in two forms, namely liberty
rights and welfare rights. Liberty rights
are rights to exercise one’s liberty and
stresses duties on other people not to
interfere with one’s freedom. The four
features of liberty rights (also called
moral rights), which lay the base for
Government Administration, are:
1. Rights are natural in so far as they are not
invented or created by government.
2. They are universal, as they do not change
from country to country.

 3. They are equal since the rights are

the same for all people, irrespective
of caste, race,creed or sex.
4. They are inalienable i.e., one
cannot hand over his rights to
another person such as selling
oneself to slavery.
The Welfare Rights are the rights to
benefit the needy for a decent human
life, when one can not earn those benefits
and when those benefits are available in
the society.
E. Economic rights: In the free-market
economy, the very purpose of the
existence of the manufacturer, the sellers
and the service providers is to serve the
consumer. The consumer is eligible to
exercise some rights9. The consumers’
six basic rights are: Right to
Information, Right to Safety, Right to
Choice, Right to be Heard, Right to
Redressal, and Right to Consumer
Education.
A few rights are absolute, i.e., unlimited and
have no justifiable exceptions. For example,
rights ethicists view that the rights have not been
violated if the people purchase a (technological

product) hang glider and they get injured by

flying them carelessly or under bad weather
conditions. But human rights imply that one not
to be poisoned or killed by technological
products, whose dangers are not obvious or
wantonly hidden. They imply a right to be
informed, when the purchase was made, of the
possible dangers during use or service (obtaining
informed consent).
Rights ethics is distinctive in that it makes
human rights the ultimate appeal — the moral
bottom line. Human rights constitute a moral
authority to make legitimate moral demands on
others to respect
our choices, recognizing that others can make
similar claims on us. Thus, we see that the rights
ethics provides a powerful foundation for the
special ethical requirements in engineering and
other professions.
4.The Virtue Theory
This emphasizes on the character rather than the
rights or duties. The character is the pattern of
virtues (morally-desirable features). The theory
advocated by Aristotle, stressed on the tendency
to act at proper balance between extremes of
conduct, emotion, desire, attitudes to find the
golden mean between the extremes of ‘excess’ or

‘deficiency’. The examples shown below

illustrate the theory:

Virtue Excess Golden mean Deficie

nt
Truthfulness Revealing all Necessary Secreti
(governs inviolation of and ve
communication) tact sufficient,
and proper person
confidentiality
Courage (face danger, Roguishness, Firm and Cowardi
risk) bold humble ce
Generosity (giving) Wasting Give, in Miserl
resources appropri- y
ate measure

Friendliness Without Within Bad-

(governs anger, decent tempered
relationship) effusive limits
Green environment Exploitation Protection Negle
ct
Work and earn Tiresome work Balance of Lazy (no
work work)
(strained) and leisure and more
pay

On the other hand, the Virtue Theory

proposed by Mac Intyre, highlighted on the
actions aimed at achieving common good and
social (internal) good such as social justice,
promotion of health, creation of useful and safe
technological products and services. Five types
of virtues that constitute responsible
professionalism, namely public-spirited virtues,
proficiency virtues, team-work virtues, self-
governance virtues, and cardinal virtues are
discussed in # 2.10.3.
5. Self-realisation Ethics

Right action consists in seeking self-fulfillment.

In one version of this theory, the self to be
realized is defined by caring relationships with
other individuals and society. In another version
called ethical egoism, the right action consists in
always promoting what is good for oneself. No
caring and society relationships are assumed.
6. Justice (Fairness) Theory
The justice or fairness approach to ethics has its
roots in the teachings of the ancient Greek
philosopher Aristotle, who said that “equals
should be treated equally and unequals
unequally.” The basic moral question in this
approach is: How fair is an action? Does it treat
everyone in the same way, or does it show
favoritism and discrimination?
Issues create controversies simply because
we do not bother to check the fairness or justice.
Favoritism gives benefits to some people without
a justifiable reason for singling them out;
discrimination imposes burdens on people who
are no different from those on whom burdens are
not imposed. Both favoritism and discrimination
are unjust and wrong.

SELF-CONTROL

 It is a virtue of maintaining personal discipline. It

means a strong will and motivation and
avoidance of fear, hatred, lack of efforts,
temptation, self-deception, and emotional
response. It encompasses courage and good
judgment also. Self-respect promotes self-
control.
SELF-INTEREST
Self-interest is being good and acceptable to
oneself. It is pursuing what is good for oneself.
It is very ethical to possess self-interest. As per
utilitarian theory, this interest should provide for
the respect of others also. Duty ethics recognizes
this aspect as duties to ourselves. Then only one
can help others. Right ethicist stresses our rights
to pursue our own good. Virtue ethics also
accepts the importance of self-respect as link to
social practices.
In Ethical Egoism, the self is conceived in a
highly individualistic manner. It says that every
one of us should always and only promote one’s
own interest. The ethical egoists do not accept
the well being of the community or caring for
others. However this self interest should not
degenerate into egoism or selfishness, i.e.,
maximizing only own good in the pursuit of
self-interest. The ethical egoists hold that the

society benefits to maximum when (a) the

individuals pursue their personal good and (b)
the individual organizations pursue maximum
profit in a competitive enterprise. This is
claimed to improve the economy of the country
as a whole, besides the individuals. In such
pursuits, both individuals and organizations
should realize that independence is not the only
important value. We are also interdependent, as
much as independent. Each of us is vulnerable in
the society. Self-respect includes recognition of
our vulnerabilities and interdependencies.
Hence, it is compatible with caring for ourselves
as well as others. Self-interest is necessary
initially to begin with. But it should be one ofthe
prime motives for action; the other motive is to
show concern for others, in the family as well as
society. One’s self-interest should not harm
others. The principles of ‘Live and let (others)
live’, and ‘reasonably fair competition’ are
recommended to professionals by the ethicists.

CUSTOMS
Ethical Pluralism: Various cultures in our
pluralistic society lead to tolerance for various
customs, beliefs, and outlooks. Accordingly
ethical pluralism also exists. Although many
moral attitudes appear to be reasonable, the

rational and morally concerned people can not

fully accept any one of the moral perspectives.
There are many varied moral values, which
allow variation in the understanding and
application of values by the individuals or
groups in their everyday transactions. It means
that even reasonable people will not agree on all
moral issues and professional ethics.
Ethical Relativism: According to this
principle, actions are considered morally right
when approved by law or custom, and wrong
when they violate the laws or customs. The
deciding factor is the law or the customs of the
society. Should we accept the principle of
relativism or not? A few reasons to accept this
are explained in the following paragraphs:
1. Laws appear to be objective ways for
judging values. The laws and customs
tend to be definite, clear and real, but
not always. Further moral reasons allow
objective criticism of laws, as being
morally lacking. For example, the
Apartheid laws of South Africa violated
the human rights of the native Africans.
No legal protection was available for
native citizens for a long time. Now, of
course, these laws have been repealed.

 2. Ethical relativism assumes that the

values are subjective at the cultural level.
Moral standards also vary from culture to
culture. The objectivity is supported by
the existing laws of that society. The
relative morality accepted, supports the
virtue of tolerance of differences among
societies. This argument is also not fully
acceptable. As per ethical relativism, the
actions and laws of the Nazis and Hitler
who vowed on Anti-Semitism and killed
several million Jews would be accepted
as right.
3. M o r a l r e l a t i o n a l i s m o r m o r a l
contextualism: According to this, the
moral judgments must be made in
relation to certain factors, which may
vary from case to case. The morally
important factors for making judgments
include the customs and laws. The virtue
ethicists hold that the practical wisdom
should prevail upon assessing the facts
and in the judgment.
This principle was accepted by the early
anthropologists because they had a
specific tendencyto over-stress the scope
of moral difference between cultures.
The human sacrifices and cannibalism

 were accepted. But the modern

anthropologists insist that all cultures
shall exhibit the virtue of social welfare
and safety against needless death or
physical or mental harm. Moral
differences were based on the
circumstances and facts and not on the
difference in moral attitudes. For
example, the pharaohs buried the live
attendants along with their dead king
with the belief that they would continue
to serve the king in his after life.

RELIGION

Religions have played major roles in shaping

moral views and moral values, over geographical
regions. Christianity has influenced the Western
countries, Islam in the Middle-East countries,
Buddhism and Hinduism in Asia, and
Confucianism in China. Further, there is a strong
psychological link between the moral and
religious beliefs of people following various
religions and faiths. Religions support moral
responsibility. They have set high moral
standards. Faith in the religions provides trust
and this trust inspires people to be moral. The
religions insist on tolerance and moral concern

for others. Many professionals who possess

religious beliefs are motivated to be morally
responsible.
Each religion lays stress on certain high
moral standards. For example, Hinduism holds
polytheistic (many gods) view, and virtues of
devotion and surrender to high order.
Christianity believes in one deity and
emphasizes on virtues of Love, Faith, and Hope.
Buddhism is non-theistic and focuses on
compassion and Islam on one deity and
adherence of ishan (piety or pursuit of
excellence) and prayer. Judaism stresses the
virtue of ‘tsedakah’ (righteousness). But many
religious sects have adopted poor moral
standards, e.g., many religious sects do not
recognize equal rights for women. The right to
worship is denied for some people. People are
killed in the name of or to promote religion.
Thus, conflicts exist between the ‘secular’ and
religious people and between one religion and
another. Hence, religious views have to be
morally scrutinized.
Divine Command Ethics
As per this principle, the right action is defined
by the commands by God. It implies that to be
moral, a person should believe in God and an
action is right only if it is commanded by God.

 There are some difficulties in this approach,

namely, (a) whether God exists or not is not
clear. (b) How to know what are the God’s
commands? and (c) How to verify the
genuineness of the commands? Further,
religions such as Hinduism, Islam, and
Christianity accept the existence of God. But
Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism adopt
only faith in a right path and do not believe in
God.
Socrates was said to have argued that God,
an entity which is responsible, morally good,
and beyond fear or favor, would not command
murder, rape, torture, immoral activities, and
even mass suicide. Many such crimes were
committed in the name of God then and continue
even now in different parts of the world. Some
Western leaders had claimed that God had
commanded them to invade against the Middle-
East countries. If anyone claims to have
obtained commands from God to kill people
merciless, then we have to conclude that the
person is not religious but insane.

SELF-RESPECT

It is defined as valuing oneself in morally

suitable ways. Self-respect includes (a)
recognition, which means respect to others, their
ideas, decisions, ability, and rights and (b)
appraisal, which means properly valuing
ourselves as to how well we face moral
standards and our personal commitments (aims).
An intensive but balanced feeling of self-respect
is sense of honor. This includes intense agony
and guilt for wrong doings. Self-control is a
virtue of maintaining personal discipline (self-
regulation). Courage is a bye-product of self-
respect, which makes a person face the hardship
in rational way
Self-respect is different from self-esteem in the
following manner:

Self-respect Self-esteem

1. A moral concept 1. A psychological concept

2. Valuing oneself in morally- 2. Having a positive

suitable ways attitude towards oneself.
It may be excessive or
un- warranted or normal
3. It includes virtues of
recognition and appraisal. It
promotes virtues of sense of

CASE STUDY: CHOICE OF THE THEORY

The choice of the ethical theory to study a
problem is illustrated herein with an example. In

tackling ethical problems, we can apply all the

theories and analyse the actions and results from
different angles and see what result each theory
gives rise to. This enables us to examine the
problem in different perspectives. Many a time,
the result will be the same though we have
applied various theories.
Case: A chemical plant near a small town is
discharging hazardous wastes into the fields nearby.
The ground water gets contaminated and significant
health problems surface in the community.
Since harm is caused to the residents, the
action is unethical as per rights ethics. The
agriculturists who have the agrarian right of
water supply have been over looked. The
pollutants may endanger their profession and
welfare. Hence, rights ethics also concludes that
the action is unethical.
The effects of polluted water and the cost to
purify the water by the municipality may out
weigh the economic benefits of the plant. Hence,
the utilitarian analysis leads to the same
conclusion.
The groundwater harms the people and
caused health problems. Hence, discharging the
pollutantsis unethical as per duty ethics.

 Generally, because the rights of the

individuals should weigh strongly then the needs
of the society as a whole, rights and duty ethics
take precedence over utilitarian considerations.
Caution is necessary in applying theory of
virtue ethics. When we use the word ‘honour’,
we mean it to be a measure of dignity and
integrity. It is a positive virtue. When it points to
‘pride’ it is not a virtue and has a negative
connotation. History abounds with examples of
war, which have been fought and atrocities were
committed on innocent people in order to
preserve the honour (pride) of an individual or a
nation. In using virtue ethics, we have to ensure
that the traits of virtue are actually virtuous and
will not lead to negative consequences.

Unit-2

FACTORS OF CHANGES

Forces that Shape Culture, Social Control

PhysicalEnvironment:
Major changes in the physical environment are very
compelling when they happen. The desert wastes of
North Africa were once green and well populated.

Climates change, soil erodes and lakes gradually turn into

swamps and finally plains. A culture is greatly affected
by such changes although sometimes they come about so
slowly that they are largely unnoticed. Human misuse
can bring very rapid changes in physical environment
which in turn change the social and cultural life of a
people. Deforestation brings land erosion and reduces
rainfall. Much of the wasteland and desert land of the
world is a testament to human ignorance and misuse.
Environmental destruction has been at least a
contributing factor in the fall of most great civilization.
Many human groups throughout history have changed
their physical environment through migration. In the
primitive societies whose members are very directly
dependent upon their physical environment migration to
a different environment brings major changes in the



culture. Civilization makes it easy to transport a culture

and practice it in a new and different environment.
Population changes:
A population change is itself a social change but also
becomes a casual factor in further social and cultural
changes. When a thinly settled frontier fills up with
people the hospitality pattern fades away, secondary
group relations multiply, institutional structures grow
more elaborate and many other changes follow. A stable
population may be able to resist change but a rapidly
growing population must migrate, improve its
productivity or starve. Great historic migrations and
conquests of the Huns, Vikings and many others have
arisen from the pressure of a growing population upon
limited resources. Migration encourages further change
for it brings a group into a new environment subjects it to
new social contacts and confronts it with new problems.
No major population change leaves the culture
unchanged.

Isolation and Contact:

Societies located at world crossroads have always been
centers of change. Since most new traits come through
diffusion, those societies in closest contact with other
societies are likely to change most rapidly. In ancient
times of overland transport, the land bridge connecting
Asia, Africa and Europe was the centre of civilizing
change. Later sailing vessels shifted the centre to the






fringes of the Mediterranean Sea and still later to the

north- west coast of Europe. Areas of greatest
intercultural contact are the centers of change. War and
trade have always brought intercultural contact and today
tourism is adding to the contacts between cultures says
Greenwood. Conversely isolated areas are centers of
stability, conservatism and resistance to change. The
most primitive tribes have been those who were the most
isolated like the polar Eskimos or the Aranda of Central
Australia.

Social Structure:
The structure of a society affects its rate of change in
subtle and not immediately apparent ways. A society
which vests great authority in the very old people as
classical China did for centuries is likely to be
conservative and stable. According to Ottenberg a society
which stresses conformity and trains the individual to be
highly responsive to the group such as the Zunis is less
receptive to the change than a society like the Ileo who
are highly individualistic and tolerate considerable
cultural variability. A highly centralized bureaucracy is
very favorable to the promotion and diffusion of change
although bureaucracy has sometimes been used in an
attempt to suppress change usually with no more than
temporary success. When a culture is very highly
integrated so that each element is rightly interwoven with
all the others in a mutually interdependent system change



is difficult and costly. But when the culture is less highly
integrated so that work, play, family, religion and other
activities are less dependent upon one another change is
easier and more frequent. A tightly structured society
wherein every person's roles, duties, privileges and
obligations are precisely and rigidly defined is less given
to changes than a more loosely structured society
wherein roles, lines of authority, privileges and
obligations are more open to individual rearrangement.

Attitudes and Values:

To people in developed nations and societies change is
normal. Children there are socialized to anticipate and
appreciate change. By contrast the Trobriand Islanders
off the coast of New Guinea had no concept of change
and did not even have any words in their language to
express or describe change. Societies differ greatly in
their general attitude toward change. People who revere
the past and preoccupied with traditions and rituals will
change slowly and unwillingly. When a culture has been
relatively static for a long time the people are likely to
assume that it should remain so indefinitely. They are
intensely and unconsciously ethnocentric; they assume
that their customs and techniques are correct and
everlasting. A possible change is unlikely even to be
seriously considered. Any change in such a society is
likely to be too gradual to be noticed. A rapidly changing
society has a different attitude toward change and this



attitude is both cause and effect of the changes already

taking place. Rapidly changing societies are aware of the
social change. They are somewhat skeptical and critical
of some parts of their traditional culture and will consider
and experiment with innovations. Such attitudes
powerfully stimulate the proposal and acceptance of
changes by individuals within the society. Different
groups within a locality or a society may show differing
receptivity to change. Every changing society has its
liberals and its conservatives. Literate and educated
people tend to accept changes more readily than the
illiterate and uneducated. Attitudes and values affect both
the amount and the direction of social change. The
ancient Greeks made great contributions to art and
learning but contributed little to technology. No society
has been equally dynamic in all aspects and its values
determine in which area-art, music, warfare, technology,
philosophy or religion it will be innovative.

Culture Factor:

Cultural Factor influences the direction and character of

technological change Culture not only influences our
social relationships, it also influences the direction and
character of technological change. It is not only our
beliefs and social institutions must correspond to the
changes in technology but our beliefs and social
institutions determine the use to which the technological
inventions will be put. The tools and techniques of

technology are indifferent to the use we make of them.

For example the atomic energy can be used for the
production of deadly war weapons or for the production
of economic goods that satisfy the basic needs of man.
The factories can produce the armaments or necessaries
of life. Steel and iron can be used for building warships
or tractors. It is a culture that decides the purpose to
which a technical invention must be put. Although
technology has advanced geometrically in the recent past,
technology alone does not cause social change. It does
not by itself even cause further advances in technology.
Social values play a dominant role here. It is the complex
combination of technology and social values which
produces conditions that encourage further technological
change. For example the belief or the idea that human life
must not be sacrificed for wants of medical treatment,
contributed to the advancement in medical
technology.Max Weber in his The Protestant Ethic and
the spirit of Capitalism has made a classical attempt to
establish a correlation between the changes in the
religious outlook, beliefs and practices of the people on
the one hand and their economic behavior on the other.
He has observed capitalism could grow in the western
societies to very great extent and not in the eastern
countries like India and China. He has concluded that
Protestantism with its practical ethics encouraged
capitalism to grow in the west and hence industrial and
economic advancement took place there. In the East,
Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam on the other
hand did not encourage capitalism. Thus cultural factors
play a positive as well as negative role in bringing about
technological change. Cultural factors such as habits,
customs, traditions, conservatism, traditional values etc
may resist the technological inventions. On the other
hand factors such as breakdown in the unity of social
values, the diversification of social institutions craving
for the new thoughts, values etc may contribute to
technological inventions. Technological changes do not
take place on their own. They are engineered by men
only. Technology is the creation of man. Men are always
moved by ideas, thoughts, values, beliefs, morals and
philosophies etc.These are the elements of culture. These
sometimes decide or influence the direction in which
technology undergoes change. Men are becoming more
and more materialistic in their attitude. This change in the
attitude and outlook is reflected in the technological field.
Thus in order to lead a comfortable life and to minimize
the manual labor man started inventing new techniques,
machines, instruments and devices.
Technological Factors:
The technological factors represent the conditions created
by man which have a profound influence on his life. In
the attempt to satisfy his wants, fulfill his needs and to
make his life more comfortable man creates civilization.
Technology is a byproduct of civilization .When the
scientific knowledge is applied to the problems in life it



becomes technology. Technology is a systematic

knowledge which is put into practice that is to use tools
and run machines to serve human purpose. Science and
technology go together. In utilizing the products of
technology man brings social change. The social effects
of technology are far-reaching. According to Karl Marx
even the formation of social relations and mental
conceptions and attitudes are dependent upon technology.
He has regarded technology as a sole explanation of
social change.W.F Ogburn says technology changes
society by changing our environment to which we in turn
adapt. These changes are usually in the material
environment and the adjustment that we make with these
changes often modifies customs and social institutions. A
single invention may have innumerable social effects.
Radio for example has One of the most extreme
expressions of the concern over the independence of
technology is found in Jacques Ellul's 'the technological
society'. Ellul claims that in modern industrial societies
technologism has engulfed every aspect of social
existence in much the same way Catholicism did in the
middle ages. The loss of human freedom and the large-
scale destruction of human beings are due to the
increasing use of certain types of technology which has
begun to threaten the life support systems of the earth as
a whole.

Agencies of Social Control in India (5 Major

Agencies)

The following are the agencies of social control in

India:

(I) Custom, (II) Folkways and Folkmores, (III) Law, (IV)

Religion and (V) Education.

I. Custom:

Custom denotes habit not in the sense an individual

acquires a habit. It is a social habit in the sense that once
the members of a group form a habit, it becomes a
recognized custom only if it is backed by social
sanctions. While Ginsberg states that custom gets so
ingrained in life that we follow it almost instinctively,
McIver and Page stress the inter-relationship of habit and
custom.

An individual habit like taking tea or coffee with

morning breakfast is not a custom; when a habit becomes
socially expressed and when it carries social and external
sanction, it becomes a custom. For example, holding
celebrations and festivals are a custom but having a get-
together of friends on holidays is a habit.

 It is important that a particular mode of behaviour should

be adopted as a practice by a social group before it is
regarded as a custom. Going to church on Sundays is a
custom among Christians, while saying prayers
individually at some times of the day may be a habit if
done voluntarily.

Again it is a customary principle for married Hindu girls

to wear the vermilion mark on the forehead, and there are
sanctions for the neglect of the duty, but a peculiar style
of wearing the sari is a matter of habit. Sex taboos are
customary rules, but preferences in the matter are a
matter of habit.

It is true then that habit is more of an individual factor,

while custom is connected with social relations, and,
therefore, if an individual does not live in a society,
custom has no value for him. From a certain point of
view, it may be said that custom generates individual
habits; if taking tea at 4 p.m. is a custom among English
people, every Englishman is expected to take tea at that
time.

Customary rules play upon the individual from childhood

and different habits grow; but at times, with new
invention and technological advancements new habits

may be acquired, and these habits in turn may formulate

new customary rules. When the newspaper was first
introduced among the Indian urbanite, some formed the
habit of reading the papers in the morning; today, the
morning newspaper is a socially accepted matter, and
going through it is practically a custom.

Again, another distinction between a habit and custom is

that individual habits usually do not carry any sanction as
long as they do not come into conflict with social norms.
No one is despised by society if he has I additional cups
of tea, besides the customary afternoon refreshments.

But if it is found that a particular family does not observe

the custom of having the afternoon tea, it will be placed
under social ridicule. Social pressure is exerted in matters
of custom and the one who does not conform to custom
will either be despised or gradually be placed under
conditions of ostracism. The element of social pressure,
however, must not be exaggerated for, it is claimed by
sociologists, that if customary rules were merely
dependent upon social coercion and they were not in
themselves beneficent to society, they would not have
been able to stand the test of time.

If an individual voluntarily conforms to custom, he

comes into no conflict with society and its norms. If, on

the other hand, if he places individual interest above

group interest and gives precedence to his individual
habits rather than to customary laws, society comes
forward with its pressures upon the individual, who may
either learn to conform to social norms or revolt against
them and, perhaps, become a deviant or a delinquent.

Rousseau over-emphasized the element of social pressure

by looking upon it as a means of tyrannizing over
individuals or, at least, as the device of the society to
secure the surrender of the individual to its ways.

Even McDougall, the social psychologist, observes that

custom creates a complexity of rules and regulations for
holding different elements in society together and to
make them adhere to its norms and standards; at the same
time, it has liquidated and destroyed the rebels against
such norms and standards.

What custom establishes with permanence, ‘fashion’

modifies with varieties and as such, custom becomes
more enduring than fashion; it has a closer relationship
with life and the traditional qualities and values of
society.

‘Law’ is a specific code and it is more organized than

custom. Custom itself cannot be regarded as law as we

understand it today, although several customary

obligations have been translated into legal provisions by
the legislature of different countries. Custom is more
spontaneous in its origin and its sanctions are also more
immediate and more formal than those of law.

In making a comparative study of law and custom, it will

be imperative to consider certain factors that regulate the
relation between the two. It is true that in modern
societies, customary principles which had all along been
effective in regulating actions of simple men are fast
becoming inadequate, and law must complement
customary rules.

First of all, in the matter of inter-relationship of the two,

it will be noted that custom is voluntarily accepted by
society and legal codes are evolved through much
deliberation. The social subject almost unconsciously
responds to custom but our responses to legal codes are
conscious and compulsive.

Secondly, a specialized agency with powers of

authoritative jurisdiction is required for enforcing the law
and such agency is usually located in the judiciary; for
enforcing custom, no such agency is required.

While an elaborate machinery consisting of the police

personnel, officials and the law courts looks after law and
its violation, social interactions produce the desired effect
of bringing the offender of customary regulations to
book. Whenever State power is well organized, an arbiter
is required for pronouncing the law and its fine
interpretations.

The judge when he delivers his judgment may, in fact,

clarify the position of custom and make a new law. After
all, constitutional provisions to a great extent provide
recognition to customs and conventions and convert them
into the law of the land. When we say in our country that
the President is immune from the law, who does not
recognize in the principle the restatement of the
customary rule as to the Divine Rights of Kings and the
King’s prerogatives?

Thirdly, in a complex society, it may be found that

customs regulating the different ethnic groups differ from
each other in a vast measure and, in such cases; the law is
required to harmonize State and national activities by
operating as a single agency for providing the people
with codes.

This task is not very easy of performance; and, in India, a

clear distinction is made between constitutional,

 proprietary and personal rights. While constitutional and

proprietary rights are made uniform, personal rights and
obligations still remain to some extent within the ambit
of custom.
Therefore, Hindu personal laws as to marriage
guardianship and succession are not the same as the
corresponding laws that apply to Muslims in the country.
In totalitarian countries, all such differences have been
wiped off arbitrarily and with the use of the strong State
machinery. Fourthly, custom appears to be more enduring
than the law in the sense that few modifications are made
to it; and if modifications were needed so urgently, the
rules would not have been regarded as custom in any
way.

Law is alterable and, with the rise of new and complex

situations, laws are adapted to the need of the hour. In
times of peace and normalcy, our constitution allows us
several freedoms; but in times of grave emergency like
external aggression upon the country, many of these
freedoms can be curtailed by enacting different laws to
that effect. Similarly, economic control has been found to
be legally necessary from time to time in order to prevent
abuse of the processes of a free economy.

Custom is more enduring, possessing a built-in device for

adapting itself to varying conditions. Customary
principles come down through centuries of

experimentation and they are usually regarded as

beneficial to the group as a whole. Since, they aim at
general welfare, and not at the advancement of certain
specific interests in the society, they suit all
circumstances and do not require modifications.

When, however, they are found to be based on age-old

blind beliefs and superstitions, education ensures their
obliteration; and one may even venture to state that the
process of their liquidation in such circumstances begins
even before formal education establishes their emptiness.

Lastly, another factor distinguishes custom from law and

that relates to the quality that man possesses in addition
to, and by way of distinction from, the faculties
possessed by animals: It is his rationality. Everything that
the human being concerned which is not external
behaviour and material interests; he has his mind and the
intellect that is concerned with matters like faith, creed
and ideologies, may argue that creeds and beliefs are
mental conditions that appear as products of the interplay
of custom upon individual, family and group lives.
Whatever it may be no law is effective if it ever comes
into conflict with group creeds and beliefs. We know how
disastrous it would be to coerce an average Indian into
believing in the non-existence of God. Call it custom, or
term it as superstition or blind faith, he has been reared in

the midst of staunch religious beliefs; his very soul

smacks of religious attitude.

The law in this matter becomes a very delicate affair, for

every docile Indian has for ages and even under foreign
rule remained alert lest his religious beliefs are trampled
upon. In matters of creeds, faiths and ideologies,
therefore, the law cannot take an authoritative posture.

II. Folkways and Folkmores:

According to Sumner, man has obtained from his

ancestors certain proclivities, skills and habits by way of
heritage, which enable him to solve several of his
problems, like those relating to production of food or
food habits, sex relationships I and his aesthetic
sensibilities. These become the ‘folkways’ of his society
for, in formation of these unwritten rules, deliberation by
exchange of thoughts between different elements of the
society took a very important role.

If several individuals have to live together, particularly in

geographical proximity, they have to come to an
understanding as to their common way of life which
helps in co-operation between them. Almost all in the
society voluntarily follow the rules formulated by such
understanding and much upon their willingness to follow

these folk-ways depend upon the organization and the

stability of such society.

Sumner asserts that folkways are none other than ‘social

habits’ that ancestors pass down the generations, and
posterity finds them acceptable to their way of life. For
example, nobody in our country objects to the practice of
folding palms when a guest or an acquaintance is being
greeted; in the West, the manner of greeting is a wish,
with or without a handshake.

In certain parts of Central and West Asia, people rub

noses to show the warmth of their feelings. While the
Indian married woman puts the vermilion mark on her
forehead, her Western counterpart carries her status on
her ring finger. It is interesting to note that the folkways
of a society are usually not followed by another, except
when a transfusion of cultures has taken place; and, in
fact, at times the ways of a community or a society may
be despised by another.

For example, some Europeans kiss each other,

irrespective of sex or station in life, when they exchange
greetings; in India, an average man would consider the
practice as an act of vulgarity. When an Indian touches
the feet of an elder to show his respects, the European
might find it to be a weird and servile practice.

It cannot be maintained that folkways are products of

such deliberations as guarantee the secure findings of
rational exercises of judgment. At times, no judgment of
the intellect is involved in the practice; but a process of
trial and error must have obtained before the practices
came to be generally accepted, particularly with regard to
food habits and attires, definite experimentation seems to
have been the basis of crystallization of practices.

Food habits in dry climates appear to be different from

those in moist ones, and the people living in hot parts of
the world can of consume the food that is taken in the
colder regions. Milk, taken hot in India, is referred cold
in Europe.

Similarly, the Westerner might consider the Indian mode

f dress as bizarre, but the excessive heat of the tropical
region does not allow an average Indian to be bedecked
with debonair European coverings for most parts of the
year. Attitudes of hospitality and tolerance for others’
thoughts must have developed after it was found that
constant and unrelenting hostility towards neighbours
and strangers was futile.

Folkways are inculcated in the individual through

suggestion and indoctrination and the processes are so
natural and spontaneous that no individual thinks of

revolting against them. There is no definite authority for

punishing an individual who would not follow the
folkways, but every person is invested with knowledge
that the collective opinion of the society will go against
him if he seeks to violate any of these.

There is ridicule or contempt for him in case he makes

any violations, and not many heads are strong enough to
bear the pressure of social ridicule, which may even take
the shape of virtual ostracism. The attire for girls is
different from that which boys must adhere to, and a boy
who shows a liking for girl’s clothes is so ridiculed by
society and shunned by his fellows that he prefers
correcting himself rather than remaining a rebel.

It, therefore, follows that the chief merit of folkways lies

in their being accepted as valuable guidance to the way
of living. The sound of the tongue touching the palate
when one takes his food is regarded as so objectionable
by cultured society that a person who seeks advancement
in his life would not dare to continue with his own
inadequate standards.

Obedience to folkways is almost a built-in mechanism in

social man, and he does not look for any authority who
would punish him for his lapses. The adventurist is
always there, but no exception has ever been strong

enough to disprove the rule. If a man decides to be rough

in the presence of ladies, he may not interfere with legal
provisions but he would come perilously near to being an
outcast.Informal codes written large in contempt, ridicule
or a sneer act as a direct social control and persons
believing in social relationships must of necessity seek to
avoid such degradation caused by the violation of
folkways. It may appear, however, that no one in society
is truly bothered as to observance or otherwise of
folkways; and particularly in the case of city life, no
individual may find the scope for meticulously following
these ways and nobody may even notice his minor lapses;
the case, of course, would be different in villages where
relations are more of a primary nature.
As it is true that with a habituated or an indoctrinated
mind, a social individual builds up his relationships with
a clear understanding of folkways so, it is an accepted
fact that folkways that have crystallized through practices
for long periods harmonize social relationships and act as
an unwritten agency of social control over individuals.
Perhaps because it is known that few would be willing to
violate the rules that are principally aimed at making
social intercourse aesthetic, the penalties for their
violations are light.

‘Folkmores’ are such habits and practices as are

concerned not merely with group welfare gauged
according to principles of aesthetics, but are distinctly

connected with values and value judgments. When

folkways were formulated, mere convenience might have
been the deciding factor and whether a man should or
should not stand up to show his respects to elders and
ladies could have no element of right are wrong in the
question.

But sooner or later, the sense of good and bad and right
are wrong dawned upon the members of society so that
they appreciated the evil effect of violation of certain
principles. Practices based on these principles came to
known as folkmores and one can describe them as
‘folkways that have taken the compulsive form’.

Sumner states that ways of life that have been determined

by distinct value] judgments come to be known as
folkmores. The mores decide upon questions ethics and
not merely upon suitability of behaviour, and also upon
questions propriety. The questions of propriety add value
to mores and the authority that enforces the mores also
tends to become more distinct in nature.

A sneer, a look of ridicule or words that derogate an

individual from his usual position may be natural
correctives to loose behaviour that goes against folkways;
but mores are considered f to be essential to the very
existence and stability of a society.

In the days when tribal clan or family authority was

considered to be supreme, undue closeness with an alien
was taken to be disruptive of group harmony; and from
that feeling came the idea that exogamy could promote
acts and thoughts of treachery. Exogamy became
prohibited and punishable and so was the inclination in
favour of any foreign culture. The mores gradually took
note of the undesirability of sex relations among siblings
and incest became a taboo with severe penalties.

The mores cover different spheres of life and different

standards can be taken to be obtained in different
societies. For example, the Indian society is very rigid
about romantic love and premarital sex; mores in this
respect are somewhat harsh. The widow’s austere mode
of life is a strict more in Hindu society, stricter in a way
than the mode of life prescribed for the mendicant.

The different strata of society have mores that differ in

application and severity. In feudal times, it was not a
misdemeanour for a peer or a zamindar to have
unwedded sex partners and, even today, the practice of
living together is not reprehensible among the lower
classes. Neither ostracism nor retributions will threaten
the existence of the individual indulging in the act.

But consider the case for the member of the middle class,
and the mood of appreciation changes. As Bernard Shaw
puts it, middle class morality prohibits activities that may
be customary with other classes. Changing times, too,
can have a modifying influence upon the mores.

The position of the widow in India has been bettered

after the model of Western liberal and humanistic
thinking, and the study of the social sciences accepts a
romantic longing of one young person for another as an
expression of a very natural impulse which cannot, and
should not carry value judgments.

The environment and the group to which an individual

belongs can also determine the nature of the more that is
to apply to him. The city dweller may wink at some of
the prominent mores like those related to adultery or
inter-caste marriages, as in India; but the villager is still
under strict surveillance in this regard, and village heads
and panchayats bring their axes down upon every lapse
that deserves punishment.

T h e p u n i s h i n g a u t h o r i t y m a y, a c c o r d i n g t o
circumstances, be the head of the family, the high priest
the village panchayat or the head of the locality
concerned; the authority is at least more distinct than the
one that regulates folkways. The nature of the penalty is

harsher in the case of the mores than for the folkways,

varying from physical torture to ostracism.

These penalties are not prescribed by the law of the

country, but the penalties all the same remain effective.
Any person violating the sex mores may be beaten up,
made to starve for a few days or even paraded down the
village, being mounted on an ass and his head shaven.
Fear of any of these may operate as a check upon an
individual’s behaviour and, when we consider that many
women in our country have been thrown open to immoral
traffic for violation of mores, we may assert that women
fear lapses from mores in a greater measure than
men.Mores tend to become less effective if geographical
mobility is high in any group or community. On the one
hand, occupational demands can make a person shift
from his usual surroundings and seek shelter in the wider
complex of an urban life; on the other, if mores appear to
be oppressive and unreasonable, as is the case with social
bans upon inter-caste and inter-provincial marriages in
our country, one may take the advantage of the more
liberal law of the country and dissociate himself from his
family or group.
A Brahmin youth can live in comfort outside his native
village even though he has married a girl belonging to the
Scheduled Caste or tribe; he will feel all the more secure
because the enlightened statutory law will grant him
protection. Therefore, one may conclude by saying that

mores will be obeyed and respected as long as the

collective social intellect considers them to be
trustworthy and benevolent for social stability and
development.

As soon as it is realized that they are a hindrance to

individual development, every individual would be faced
with a choice as to whether it is advisable to continue
with the restrictions or it would be enlightened behaviour
to discard the old, age-ridden practice that no longer
carries weight and conviction. In changing India, an
average youth is faced with this choice and this is one of
the factors that indicate the generation gap between him
and his orthodox elders.

III. Law:
Law as an agency of social control is a much later
development than custom, folkways or folkmores; it is
more recent and more liberal than religious precepts. Law
may take the shape of unwritten conventions or codified
commands made by a recognized authority and, in either
case, there must be a well-defined machinery for
enforcing the provisions.

Ehrlich builds up a theory that law depends on the

condition of acceptance by a group which itself creates
the legal complex that is to apply to it; the judge makes it
more precise in his judgment so that the living law that

 the community observes fixes the norms that it must

attain to. The sociologist R. Pound (in his Sociology of
Law and Sociological Jurisprudence) observes that living
law as the community observes may not be the same as
the code that is stored in official files; and that the real
law does not consist of propositions but of legal
institutions created by the groups within a society.

The sociologist therefore studies the law, on the one

hand, with an understanding that every living hand rests
on the consent of the group or the community to which it
applies and, on the other, with his attention riveted more
upon the processes that make the law and institutions that
support them rather than upon the mere provisions
themselves.

The basis of law, as understood in sociology, is the

relation between human behaviour and disorder. In order
to know how law operates, it will be necessary to
understand the factors that cause changes in any society
and govern its evolution. In any legal system, the
knowledge of the social interests becomes necessary
when we take into account the fact that man’s ideas about
ethics and matters relating to his creature needs and
social needs have not remained the same throughout the
ages.

With a change in his views, the legal provisions have

changed and the evolution of law can well be said to have
been connected with changing social interests. With
technology and innovations affecting our life modes, our
interests have changed; and laws have correspondingly
been subjected to a process of alteration and adaptation
by comparing the application of the theoretical bases of
law with the’ practical results that have been obtained.

Law can then be looked upon as a function of society

rather than a mere abstract set of rules, and even the
courts now- a-days very often test the social policy that
lie behind certain rules of law rather than confine
themselves to mere arguments of abstract logic. This is
known as the functional approach to the study of law, and
this approach satisfies the sociologists, whose task it is
not only to study social facts but also to prescribe
standards that are to be attained.

While in primitive societies customary principles were

effective enough for controlling human behaviour and
aberrations, the need for something formal and coercive
arose and along with that need came the urgency for a
lawyer and a law- administrator. The concept of the
welfare state as is current now-a-days imposes heavy
duties upon the State not only in the negative aspect of
control in preventing undesirable action, but also in its
positive aspect of prescribing affirmative norms to which

a healthy and a right thinking individual must

conform.Although coercion is a weapon in the hands of
the State when it fixes the law for its nationals, force
alone cannot uphold the sanctity of the law. As already
observed, such laws are likely to survive the test of time
as are considered to be right and ethical; legislation that
is unethical or immoral will be rejected particularly in an
open and participating society. To this extent, a link can
be observed between morality and law; and to this very
extent also, law and custom can be said to be related, for
whatever is established custom today may tomorrow find
its place in the statute books.
But while custom tends to remain static, law is marked
by its dynamism. The question whether or not law is
functioning as an effective agency of social control can
be determined by examining the relation between law
and society, that is, the factors that shape the correlation
between the two.

Almost every modern nation being closely identified with

the State it represents, the State is required in each case
to show a greater understanding of the needs of the
society and the spheres in which the State power can
introduce its legal mandate. For the study of this
correlation, in the first instance, it is necessary to
distinguish between the ‘simple society’ and the
‘complex society’.

A simple society is the one based on the single principle

of kinship, class or the tribe. Such a society has evolved
from the mere fact that in conditions of geographical
contiguity, certain persons related by blood, or others
related through the common bond of occupation for
subsistence, have grouped together. These are more or
less closed and self-contained units which have not faced
any outside, disruptive influence.

The complex society, on the other hand, as shown in the

patterns of the more modern nations and states, has
grown out of the interplay of multifarious factors, the
ethnic with the linguistic, the spiritual with the temporal
and the economic with the political or the geographical.
Every complex society must, in the past, have begun
along simple lines, but the times of their origin in
simplicity are almost forgotten.

The relation between the laws and the society can well
be understood by considering the accommodation in
each society of the following factors:

(1) Law-Making Authority:

In simple societies, laws are observed as an heritage, and

the entire tribe or clan may itself be regarded as the law-
making authority though, at times, some sort of

imposition of the law, more by the spiritual authority than

by the temporal one, may be envisaged.

The complex society has, virtually without any

exception, a well-organized body of legislators who must
be well qualified for the job, according to the law of the
land, for example, members of the legislative body. In the
majority of the complex societies, they are elected by the
people of the State, while in some monarchies the
legislators are nominated by the sovereign himself.

(2) Law-Enforcing Authority:

In simple societies, any violation of law may be enforced

by the chief or the head of the tribe or the clan; by the
paterfamilias in case of kinships, or by the spiritual chief,
including the head priest or the witch doctor. In complex
societies, a distinct organ of the government under the
name of the judiciary enforces the law.

The members of the judiciary are required to possess

specialized qualifications and experience, and be persons
of unimpeachable integrity. Though in some countries
judges are elected, in most cases they are rarely made
directly responsible to the electorate or the people, in
general

(3) The Type of Law Administered:

In simple societies the law is unwritten, comprising of

folkways, folkmores, superstitions and a reliance on
divine revelations or on magic. Folkways are accepted
norms of behaviour, the violation of which entails mild
penalties in the form of ridicule. Folkmores are also
precepts of behaviour in society, but the violation of any
of these demands necessitates harsh penalties.

Superstitions arise from a failure to understand the divine

or the natural forces in their proper perspectives; while
magic stands for a crude understanding of the chain of
cause and effect for any matter.

In complex societies, the law is partly written and partly

unwritten. Well-established customs and conventions
form the unwritten law of the society, while legal
principles in writing are found in codes, statutes and
Royal Charters. With the development and the
advancement of the society, the importance of the
unwritten law diminishes; and the more advanced the
society is, the more it concerns itself with codified laws.

(4) The Subject-Matter of Law:

Simple societies are formed out of their members’ desires

to collect together for the advancement of motives
of (a) self-preservation and (b) self-expression.
Principles applying in these societies are aimed at

securing these motives, and, as a result, the laws applying

in tribes or clans cover all the activities of the individual
and the society, covering the social and economic
activities as also private matters like religious faith and
freedom of thought of the individual. One can well
imagine a member of a simple society being penalized
for being an atheist, for blasphemous utterances or for his
inclinations for an alien faith.

In the complex society, laws are made on matters relating

to the security of the State, on political matters and on
matters relating to property and economic activities. In
the more advanced societies, a greater control of
economic activities by means of specialized legislation is
being exercised, while a new sphere of freedom is being
granted to the individual in matters concerning the
adjustment of his personal interests in society, like
whether or not he would be religious, or he would or not
lead a married life and procreate.

(5) The Nature of Sanctions:

No legal principle is worth its sanctity if it is not backed
up by an effective system of counter-acting violations. In
simple societies, offences of different magnitudes are met
with penalties of varying degrees of severity. Ostracism
or the disqualification from the membership of the tribe
is the severest penalty, second to which comes penalties
of mutilations of limbs.

Capital punishment is not considered in such societies as

the utmost penalty, though in complex ones it is a penalty
that has evoked loud protests on humanitarian grounds.
Solemn curses, subjection to magical rites or exposure to
ridicule are other examples
of penalties imposed by simple societies.

In complex societies, punishments in form of

confinement in prisons or reformatories are very
common, a severe alternative being exile, which is a
variation of the old practice of ostracism. Fines,
payments by way of a penalty to the State, or
compensations being payments ways of retributions to
the party injured by the act of violation are other
alternative. The penalty of confiscation is imposed in
societies in which the State power is very exacting.

IV. Religion:

In order to understand religion and religious precepts as

an agency of social control, we must first try to
appreciate the meaning of the word. The word ‘religion’
appears to have been taken from a Latin root which
stands for a ‘bond’ The Indian word Dharma standing for
religion emphasizes the quality of ‘holding together’.
Hence, religion does not merely connote a belief in God,
or a relationship between man and his Creator; it appears

that the quality of religious practices that hold society

together has a greater significance for the word.

Man’s belief in God must find an outward expression

before religion can come into existence, external
institutional practices that are associated with it,
therefore, have a social significance. Had it been that
man simply believed in God and did not consider i
necessary to give any expression to his belief, the
question of any relations between religion and society
would not have arisen. But religion is an institution now
and as such it has its importance as an agency of social
control.

E.B. Tyler (in his Primitive Culture) defines religion as

the belief in spiritual beings, while Auguste Comte
identifies humanism with it. No definition of the word
can be absolutely satisfactory since the very nature of
religion remains clouded human thinking. However,
every religion can find a meaning in the importance that
it has in a society. Mere belief in God may estrange an
individual from his fellows, since he would be liable to
apprehend the link between his own self and infinity,
other phenomena losing their significance.

But when religion emphasizes the institutional side of it

in rituals and celebrations, human beings find an

opportunity-1 of assembling together, as in a church or a

temple, and bonds of social solidarity are thereby created
for the welfare of society as a whole. Moreover, rituals
and ceremonies as are devised by religious institutions
generate faith in the individual, and the importance of
religion in this regard is of no mean significance.

The necessity of religion is as such felt in its contribution

to the ideas of the paternity of the Almighty and
fraternity of all mankind, as Gisbert puts it in his
Fundamentals of Society.

The Place of Religion in Society:

Undoubtedly, the institutional side of religion gains its

importance in a discussion of the place or religion in
society.

However, for our convenience, we may divide the

study into three parts:

(i) Religion through the ages,

(ii) Religion in modern society, and

(iii) Religion in modern India.

(i) Religion Through the Ages:

The early forms of religion came into existence on this

earth as a result of a desire to bring cohesion into society,
which itself was a product of man’s urge to shift away
from the wilderness; but it is undeniable that in far later
stages of sociological development witnessed by
mankind, religion shaped and modified society in mild as
also in violent terms. Palaeolithic man was aw struck by
the inexplicable phenomena in the universe, which he
tried to explain or appease with the help of magic.

Imperfect faiths based on magic as also on several rituals

aimed at quieting the fury of the natural elements have
long disappeared from the earth and, one may venture to
say that with none of these was present any persuasive
and sectioning element that could keep society together.

It is only partly correct to state that religion is based on

man’s desperate attempt at believing that he has a soul,
that he is immortal It would rather be more cogent an
argument that as the principles of ethics were enunciated
by human society in order to preserve their acquisitions
and to maintain their supremacy over the animal world,
the need was felt for some extra-human or supra-social
agency, in whose name not only would the subjects in the
tribe behave well, but the ruler would restrain himself in

e­

his art of governance. As exigency would have it, the

need for a spiritual exercise in thought and the
imperatives of an ultra-temporal power coincided, and
the concept of religion emerged.Undoubtedly, religion is
connected with the concept of God; but in practical terms
it is more than that The American anthropologist,
William Howells, maintains that man is the creature who
comprehends things he cannot see and believes in things
he cannot comprehend. No doubt the statement explains
man’s attitude of greater reverence towards things that
are less known than for objects of recognition; but this
factor alone has not given birth to any religion that still
subsists on earth.
Man is a religious being not only in the sense that he
believes in the Almighty, but also in the light of the fact
that he has a half-conscious understanding that the
particular belief will sustain him in society. The Hindu
distinguishes between Viswas (or belief) and Dharma (or
religion); and this dharma is none other than the power
blessed by the Divinity that holds society together.

Therefore, religions of the modern world, whether

Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity or Islam, have a greater
concern for human society than the mere obligation of
delineating a super power who comprehends the entire
universe. In fact, in the times of recorded history, so great
has been, and still is, the influence of religion on man,
that societies, nations and governments have risen and

fallen – and they still rise and fall – in the name of

religion, and religion only, while God Himself is given a
clean alibi.

In the closer context of society, it would be noted that all

the modern founders of the different world religions have
basically been social reformers. Prophets, in ancient
Hinduism and Judaism, have been numerous; but
whether we take the examples of Abraham or the Hindu
human incarnation of Vishnu, the purpose has always
been to restore the tilted values of life, much more than
to explain to man the very nature of Divinity. Jesus Christ
is best looked upon as the Reformer of the Jewish faith
though, in effect, he has emerged as the founder of a new
religion.

In his exhortation to the Israelites to search their own sins

before branding others as violators, he did not pronounce
what the world had not known; he merely reminded the
people of a sense of logic and ethics which had become
blunted by use. Gautama’s teachings, once again, no
doubt emphasized the need for Nirvana, but that too was
very closely related to the adjustment of human
behaviour to the conditions and origins of sorrow and
misery.

Mohammed preached the importance of Islam, that of

submission to the will of God, in a society of barbarians
that desperately needed a greater understanding of what
Moses and Jesus had thought earlier, but was lost in the
wilderness. Islam is now a religion distinct from Judaism
and Christianity, but originally it did not begin with any
disrespect for either.

One may say that Mohammed tried to harmonize the

social behaviour of the day with the unfailing
understanding of an omnipotent and omniscient
monotheistic Divinity. Even when Ramakrishna taught in
our own country in the last century, he did not arrive on
the scene with the desire of establishing a new religion;
he merely explained religion in order to clarify certain
entangled ideologies that were confounded by the
induction of many faiths in the sub-continent.

Once again, when he explained] that all religions lead

man to the same path – his eternal home, he merely
reiterated 1 the condition of social equality between
human beings, a condition in which the use] of any name
for our Eternal Father does not, and cannot, downgrade
or upgrade any human being.

Every religion preaches the brotherhood of man and, to

this extent; every faith is a theological rendering of what

later has been celebrated as a communistic innovation.

Religion in this sense is more the social relationship
between man and man than that between him and his
Creator.

Yet the concept of universal brotherhood of man has not

encompassed man in a sole, undivided frame of life.
While God, in his monotheistic or polytheistic
manifestations, has remained the easily identifiable
founder and the protector of the cosmos. His followers
and believers have come from different parts of the world
with differing social backgrounds and sociological
sensibilities.

This factor, however, has not given religion the oneness

that it deserves; it has fragmented human society into,
distinct compartments, at times more hostile and inimical
than amiable to each other. This has introduced yet
another argument for man’s hatred for each other,
xenophobia being the other. It began with the Pharisees
of the Chosen Land and then with the several Neros of
the West; while Ajatasatrus in the East defiled Buddhist
monasteries and recluses all in the name of religion,
Judaism stood against Christianity and Hinduism against
Buddhism.

 This religious feud justified itself in the name of Holy

Wars, Crusades and Inquisitions and advanced with
merciless rapacity, further reinforced by the Zehads that
brought Islam into reckoning both in the East and in the
West It is not maintained that with these hostilities the
word of God did not spread; what is being emphasized
here is that the history of the Middle Ages reinforces the
belief that man has used religion to restrict society in
bondage and to aggrandize the temporal gains of the
physically mighty.

To a man of this century, who has been withstanding the

onslaught of science on religions, it seems strange that
man has in fact, more often than not, used the name of
God in destroying His creation rather than in preserving
it.

In the process of segmenting humanity according to

man’s psychology about the incomprehensible, mankind
has been able to build up a distinct heritage, in each case,
of religiosity that has predominantly shaped his social
existence. It is commonly maintained that while the
Easterner is an introvert, a Westerner is a determined
extrovert.

While an average Hindu or a Buddhist looks upon the

material world with an attitude of philosophical

 detachment, a European or an American finds a greater

fulfilment in his religious attitudes if he has actually and
materially lived well on this earth. These are
irreconcilable propositions; and in the modern quest for
‘syncretism’ propounded with a view to placing all
religions on the same level, this difference alone baffles
the understanding of the one world in the context of the
other.

If to a student of sociology it comes as a surprise that

millions in India undergo insufferable indignity mingled
with penury in their human existence, while their
Western counterparts are likely to revolt at the mere
suggestion of this sort of a way life, he will find his
answer in this fact that the religion philosophical attitude
that even the unlettered adopts in this country allows him
to accept privations with a calm resignation, the
trusteeship of his existence being handed over to God
with utmost credulity.

Of course, this attitude accounts for the docile, indolent

way of life that an Indian adopts for himself, while the
Western world advances with creditable dynamism, but it
ought at the same time be asserted that while the Eastern
world too is waking up to the needs of industrial,
mechanical and scientific developments, the Western
world is slowly but perceptively imbibing the reaching or
Eastern philosophy.

In the spheres of politics and economics, too, religion has

played an important role. In countries like ancient Greece
and India, religious practices determined an economic
stratification of society. In India, what is now known as
the caste system originated with a convenient distribution
of labour which, instead of being based on merit, was
made hereditary.

In this country as also in Greece and Rome, every

profession was given a patron deity, the worship of
whom added dignity to every type of labour. Economic
reforms that affect religious beliefs have found difficult
introduction in society. Only early in this century, Kemal
Pasha of Turkey made bold to do away with certain
traditional customs and faced as much hostility as the
Indian Government has in the later years experienced in
trying to obliterate the age-old attitudes of Indians
towards family planning.

The effect of religion on politics is more apparent. We, in

India, have known how devastating the effects of
religious differences may be on the political-social scene.
In the participation of sorrows and joys, the Indian lived
for over a thousand years together, though not without
ugly incidents until, in the consciousness of their modern
Western training, the people found themselves unable to
live any longer in the same political set-up.

 The Arab-Israeli conflict, keeping the centre of our

civilized world in ferment, and the Irish scene are
pointers to the same unwillingness to compromise with
what the other man believes. Hitler’s treatment of the
Jews in Nazi Germany perhaps surpasses all the human
record of diabolical intentions that are generated by a
spirit of vendetta towards persons who profess a different
faith.

Customs, traditions and institutions established by

religion are different in different countries; but an
element of unity which is observed in all the varied
practices of different societies is that through the
different media of expression man proclaims that he
believes in a Power, and that his religious practices are
very likely to evoke a very favourable response of that
Power towards his society.

Therefore, nature worship as also the reverence shown

towards certain rivers and certain animals are forms of
expression of faith for the Hindus, while a true Moslem
pleases God when he treats every other Moslem as his
fellow and brother. The worship of the poor was
advocated by Christ Himself and every pious Christian
today serves the poor with a spirit of dedication, just as
the Hindu texts enjoin upon every householder the duty
to treat even the meanest with strict principles of
hospitality.

Our debts in society we basically owe to our ancestors

and it also becomes a religious practice when we are able
to worship the spirits of the departed. Among the Hindus,
the Moslems and the Christians, a clear religious
ceremony is outlined in a particular part of the year for
remembering the dead; and in this respect, the Confucian
and the Taoist Chinese of Malaysia and Formosa observe
no less important a ritual.

But above all comes the unit of the family. Whatever the
religion, society has learnt from it that the elders are to be
respected not only for the mere fact that they are at the
pivot of the unit, but as a store of experience handed
down by generations, to be learnt from and to be
transmitted down to posterity, until the possible crack of
doom.

In India, a chant hails the father as the very object of

meditation, through which religion will be practised and
heaven will be attained; while the mother and the
motherland have been invested with a glory that is denied
even to the Heavens.

(ii) Religion in Modern Society:

Modern religious beliefs, in all their nuances, have

shifted from the thoughts of appeasing certain angry

spirits whose malefic influences brought misery and bane

to human beings. Tribal religion was based on matters
and problems relating to procurement of food, birth,
diseases, death, fertility of married couples and
protection from the weather and wild animals. In olden
times, religions might have been confused with magic
which was a wrong belief in causal relations between
certain practices and effects that were desired.

Today, however, religion has certain specialized

connotations which were incomprehensible to tribal man.
Modern religion, for example, is not based on any fear-
psychosis and does not aim at appeasing fierce powers or
deities. When this statement is being made, an
understanding of relative modernity is essential, for even
today tribal notions of religion are not totally lacking.

Consider the following report for example:

Mob Violence in Shillong:

Shillong, May 31. A large crowd today set a car on fire

and damaged the house of a rich and influential woman
for allegedly holding a young man captive to sacrifice
him to u Thien, a legendary dragon, reports UNI.

Police said a crowd of about 200, which later swelled to

thousands, threw stones at the house.

Similar reports appear from Madhya Pradesh relating to

the sacrifice of children to appease some God or
Goddess. Yet in the midst of this relativity of the concept
of modernity, some distinct changes have been noted in
the concept of religion in modem times and in its
functional utility. First, religion today has discarded
polytheistic ideas in favour of a creed for monotheism.

The realization that God is one and indivisible has

dawned on every religious thought including Hindu
pantheism, which has now accommodated all the
different deities under the one umbrella of monotheism.
The association of matter with divinity is an old concept;
and modem religiosity would rather invest the Supreme
Being with spirituality than with material attributes such
as strength, values and the ability to wage gargantuan
battles.

The modern deity is the epitome of all moral qualities

and all mankind can look upto him for inspiration and
direction in matters of moral behaviour. These moral
qualities have invested value judgments upon man-king
and religion has become the virtual custodian of values;

 religiosity now stands for the upholding of such values in

individual and social life.

Secondly, modern religion no longer becomes a vehicle

for establishing relations with God when one is in need.
Primitive people prayed only when they wanted to be
saved from perils and when a plenty in food production
or the propagation of the tribe was sought; it did not
occur to them that the Divine could bless them with a
noble and meaningful way of life. Today, religiosity
stands for everything that is ethical, moral and noble in
life.

As has already been pointed out, the very meaning and

purpose of religion today is found in ideas like
brotherhood of man and general welfare of mankind. In
this regard, primitive religion might be taken to have
been self-centred; today, it is selfless and liberal to such
an extent that the talk of unity in diversity is being
reflected in comprehensive faiths like syncretism.
Charity, hospitality and generosity might have existed in
human behaviour since olden times, but these concepts
have found their real meaning in modern man’s religious
sensibilities.

Thirdly, devoid of orthodoxy and superstitious rigidity

that accompany conservatism of the mind, religion has

risen above mere rituals, though we have noted that

institutionality of religious practices gives it a social
meaning. According to McIver and Page, rituals stand for
a rhythmic procedure that is directed to the same end and
is repeated for lending solemnly to the act. Rituals still
find their significance and importance in life because of
the myths they carry and the symbols they associate
themselves with.

Symbols are an age-old attraction for man, and his

obsession with a symbol of an animal like the bull, the
serpent or the elephant-head has been described as
‘Totemism’. Though totemism exists in some manner or
other in our social behaviour, as in cases of out
identification with mascots or insignias, modern religious
concepts have been freed of totemism.

Religion is no longer the same as magic and, today,

prayers are primarily repeated assertions of the fact of
supremacy of the Divine and man’s dependence upon
Him in all respects. To obtain the ‘Grace of God’ is the
aim of a noble life and in the midst of all perversity and
permissiveness, of the modern world, nobility cannot be
said to have been totally forgotten. The rituals for modern
man are therefore simplified and all elaborations are
regarded as synonymous with redundancy.

Lastly, more and more man-king becomes conscious of

the loftiness that religiosity stands for the institutional
character of religion as a group practice is losing its
importance to the idea of individual upliftment of the
mind. Ever since Charles Darwin shattered the Biblical
concepts of the origin of the world, the human mind
wavered between the desire to submit to science and the
will to worship an unknown power as the Almighty.

Alfred Tennyson’s Victorian compromise effected

between assertions of Divinity and scientific knowledge
brought a sense of calm to the nineteenth century human
mind. Today, the tradition of Tennysonian compromise
continues with us and except to the atheist, all scientific
knowledge appears as a part of a design that has been
woven by Divinity.

In the world of technology, this creed lies at the basis of

the continued efficacy of religion as an agent of social
control. Ceremonies and rituals are no longer considered
to be relevant; if they are observed, at best they manifest
our desire for showing our reverence to our ancestors.

Today, modern man by a majority believes that religion is

his personal faith and that he can afford to be as religious
in his ways of life by praying by himself as he can be
when he becomes a participant in a community worship.

 But, to a sociologist, community worship and

institutional religion are matters of interest, for he finds
in such, and not in prayer monologues, a point of social
significance.

(iii) Religion in India today:

According to the Census of India 1971, the following

picture emegres of people following the major faiths
in our country:

Modern India, that is made a Secular Republic by its

Constitution, contains a population that, in different
percentages as shown above, belong to different religious
groups, besides Hinduism, and these together accounted
for 3.42% of our population in 1971. The Hindus form
the largest religious community in our country along with
several variations and fragmentations from the original
faith, including the Buddhists, the Jains, the Sikhs, the
Arya Samajists and the Brahmos.

The Muslims in India predominantly belong to the Sunni

sect of the religion, while the Christians, though they
account for about 2.60% of our population, belong to not
less than 60 denominations of the Roman Catholic and
the Protestant divisions. Of the 1.4 crores of Christians

today living in the country, about one-half are Roman

Catholics. Catholics are more numerous in Kerala,
Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Goa, Madhya
Pradesh and West Bengal than in other places.

The Protestants are better distributed throughout India.

As many as 60 Protestent denominations in the country
include the Church of South India, the United Church of
North India, the Baptists, the Lutherans and the
Marthomites. While about one-fourth of the total
population of Goa, Daman and Diu follow Christianity,
344, 798 out of 516,449 people inhabiting Nagaland are
Christians.

The Republic of India does not seek the promotion of any

religious interest, though the State does not prohibit the
practise of any religion. Article 25 of the Indian
Constitution states that, subject to public order, morality
and health, all persons are entitled to the freedom of
conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and
propagate religion.

Herein lies the very essence of the seculat character of a

State and, as a further guarantee to religious freedom
amd toletance, other provisions has been made. It is
punishable to promote enmity, hatred or ill-will between
classes and religious communities, and such acts have

been made criminal offences under Section 505 of the

Indian Penal Gode.

Article 26 of the constitution guarantees of Indians the

freedom of establishing and maintaining institutions for
religious and charitable proposes. Religious minorities
have, under Article 30, the full freedom of establishing
and administering educational institutions of their choice.
Neither will the minority be deprived of State assistance
merely on the ground that they endorse certain religious
views, nor will any one be subjected to payment of any
tax, the proceeds of which are to be used for the
promotion or advancement of the cause of any religion.

Article 29 prohibits discrimination in admission to

educational institutions on ground only of religion, race,
caste, language or any of them if such institution is
maintained out of State funds. However, lest it appears
that the State is patronizing any of the religions followed
by Indians, Article 28 has made it very clear that no
religious instruction of any brand or type can be imparted
in any institution that is maintained wholly with the help
of State funds. This does not prevent minority institutions
from imparting such education, even though they are in
receipt of some State assistance.

All that appears above is State policy and the letter of the
law. In actuality, differences between creeds are only of
obvious manifestations. While the Hindu believes in God
as an entity, the Jain or the Buddhist follows principles of
morality, but no Almighty. The Hindu creed entertains
polytheistic thoughts and, even from the Vedic times,
Hindus have been worshipping many Gods and
Goddesses who are capable of taking several forms.

Idolatry, therefore, is a part of Hinduism and, in this

respect; the creed is diametrically opposed to Islamic
thoughts of a formless Almighty- power who cannot be
conceived of as an incarnate being. Idolatry is a grave sin
with the Mohamedan, much more than it is to the Roman
Catholic.

The Catholic is not an idolater in the sense the Hindu is,

but he does not totally discard the image of the Almighty
as also material representations of the Virgin and the
Christ himself from his modes of worship. Therefore,
diversity of religious thoughts and the harmonizing of all
beliefs and creeds with at least the virtues of tolerance
seem to be the theme of Indian living. To deny occasional
outbursts of vicious hostility of one community for the
other would be pretence of a very degrading nature; but
laying emphasis upon such discordant notes in the mode
of Indian life would be little short of shameless
propaganda.

The truth is that, in India, co-existence of several

communities together is more a practical possibility than
it is in many countries that lift their finger of accusation
against the Indian nation on the count of communal
disharmony. What Emperor Akbar tried to achieve
through his composite creed of the Din-e-Elahi was an
attempt at giving formal and external recognition to a fact
that all faiths together effect a unity of thought that God
is divine and that He is the Creator of all universal
objects. It is more important to appreciate the fact that
Indians have by and large applied this theme to their
everyday practice and matters of social intercourse.

It will be interesting to note in Indian way of living

the following features which happen to be a distinct
contribution of the various religious thoughts that we
subscribe to:

(a) Though the Hindu follows Hinduism, the Muslim

adheres to Islam and the Christian upholds the teachings
of the Christ, together they represent a common attitude
of religiosity. Every Indian is a religious individual and
he, in his own way, agrees with his brother that the
Divine Being controls all.

(b) Since every religion teaches the right conduct and the
ethical basis of proper human behaviour, an average

Indian can effect a unity of thought with his brother

belonging to another faith.

Religious differences cannot interfere with standards of

ethics and religious practices prescribed for every
community inspire the devotee’s conduct with ethical
ideas and lofty norms of behaviour. When the Muslim
engages in fasting during the month of Ramzan, the
Christian mourns with austere practices the Crucifixion
of the Christ during Easter, and when the Hindu fasts in
remembrance of his ancestors or while he makes
worshipful offerings to God, they are all admitting the
value of a good, noble and moral way of life.

(c) All faiths in India subscribe to the view of fraternity

of man and it is believed that, within the limitations of
different creeds and religious beliefs, every man stands as
brother to his fellow human being. The concept of a
secular republic is, therefore, not thrust upon the people
of India; the Constitution of the country merely gives
official recognition to the free will of all its nationals.

(d) Charity is regarded as an act of high virtue and

religious sensibility by the religions of India and, in this
regard, these different creeds have affected a unity of
theological thought. Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an
average Indian firmly believes that

‘He prayeth best who loveth best, both things great and
small. For the dear God who loveth us did make and
loveth all.’

Religion and Magic:

E.B. Tyler, in his Primitive Culture, defines magic as an

elaborate and a systematic pseudo-science. In it certain
beliefs were given practical expression in everyday
affairs in the older times and the objects of magic might
be food production, a voyage, childbirth or even the
desired death of an enemy. Magic as a kind of a
knowledge or art was never required to come into play as
long as natural forces like wind, rain, fire and herbs could
do the work they were expected to do.

But when these forces failed, the magician came forward

with his supposed control over them; and in certain tribes
the prevalent belief was that he could control even the
gods who had to act according to the strength of the spell.
Hence, the magician enjoyed immense prestige in
primitive societies; and several marks and emblems were
made out on his person in order to protect him from evil.

It has been the endeavour of several students of magic to

locate a method in it. By and large, magic is an individual
art that is handed down from man to man through the
generations, and that art was believed to have been

 related to the supernatural elements. J.G.Frazer writes in

his Goldern Bough Part I: Early History of Kingship that
the practice of magic was based on the law of
‘sympathy’, which operated on either of two principles,
the principle of ‘similarity’ and the principle of
‘contagion’.

According to the principle of similarity, it was taken that

if there was any resemblance between two objects, they
were one and the same in element. Thus, if a wax doll of
an enemy could be hit with thorns or sharp instruments as
magic spells were uttered, the belief was that the man
himself would die. Similarly, if rain was sought amidst
dro ght conditions, sprinkling of water to the
accompaniment of a recital of charms was thought to be
effective for bringing about the desired effect.

Again, when the principle of contagion was applied, it

was believed that if two objects had at one time been
together, their subsequent dissociation from each other
would not obliterate their original link; and if one of
them is placed under any magic spell, the other would
necessarily feel its influence. Thus, if an enemy’s nail,
hair or excreta can be cast under a magic charm, the
individual himself would suffer from its malefic
influence.
u­

The procedure in invoking magic powers had also certain

definite elements or features in it and these comprised of
(i) the ‘recital’ of charms, (ii) the set ‘acts’ required to be
performed in each case and (iii) the ‘matter’ or the
‘object’. The matter was either actual or representative.
In other words, with some kind of knowledge of
medicine and surgery, the witch doctor could perform
magical rites upon the patient himself, which could be a
mode of auto-suggestion for obtaining desired results; or
he could take an object that would represent the man
upon whom the magic spell was to be cast.

The action in magic took various shapes and forms, and

varied from mildly touching the object with a wand to
violently striking it depending upon the viciousness of
the magician’s purpose. Of course, he was not always
vicious; he could be benevolent also when he sought to
improve the yield of crops with the help of his magic. His
purposes could range from private vendetta to public and
social service, the latter being more noble and in the least
degree harmful.

The magic charm had to be uttered with special skill

which only the magician possessed and much of the
effects of magic depended on whether or not the words
were recited with perfection. Herein lay the secret of his
trade which he would not share with any person other
than his true successor, and techniques like uttering all

the words of the chant in one breath might have had some
connection with bluff or subterfuge.

The prop of magic was the strange or the inexplicable.

R.R. Marett writes in his Threshold of Religion that
Melanesians believe in a mysterious occult power known
as the ‘mana’. Mana is believed to be a supernatural
power or quality in an object that makes it behave in an
inexplicable manner.

For example, a piece of stone will be taken to possess the

quality of the ‘mana’ if it can influence some other object
like a woman or a plant and can make her or it fertile.
But then ‘mana’ is not magic truly speaking, since magic
must be performed by an individual and mana is a
mysterious quality possessed by an object.

Magic and magical rites may at times be confused with

religion and religious practices. Both religion and magic
are concerned with those elements of human experience
that lie outside his power of control over natural forces.
In ancient religion the attempt was to please a God with
rites so that he blessed the devotee; and the magician
among primitive people applied his spell to a spirit or a
demon who would secure for him all the effects that he
was applying for.

Frazer believes that religion followed magic, particularly

when the magician failed in his efforts and the clever in
the tribe understood that he had no actual control over the
forces of nature; perhaps the magician too admitted his
limitations and thought of appealing to the Gods for the
good of mankind. Some other writers point out that
though magic was and still is, more predominant in
primitive societies than religion and that occult and
magic charms were, and still are, similar to those of
primitive religious rites, the observation made by Frazer
need not be taken to be fully correct.

Magic has, at all times, concentrated its attention upon

matter and has tried physically to influence its activities.
Magicians believed that they could keep material objects,
and even gods, under their control by placing them under
magic spells. The priest on the other hand offered prayers
and scarifies to a supra-natural power who was known as
a God and sought its blessings, the very posture on his
part admitting that the power was a superior one and that
it could not be controlled by occult practices.

In some primitive societies, the same individual acted

both as a priest and as a magician, and these were the
stages when religion and magic were almost identified.
The offerings of animals as a sacrifice to appease a God
in ancient India could be taken as instances of the
confusion of magic and religion.

According to Frazer, when primitive man woke up to the

consciousness of existence of gods, such gods were
initially considered to be either as powerful in magic arts
and acting as the presiding deities over magic, or as
magicians themselves. In some cases, human magicians
came, after their death, to be worshipped as gods. Frazer
tells us that in old Australia, religion was not conceived
of as any entity that was distinct from magic; ancient
Australian tribes had only magicians and no priests.

When magic had its sway over ancient communities it

acted as an agent of social control, and the fear of a
magic spell could even go to the extent of causing
morbidity in an individual. As an agent of social control,
it acted in a manner that was different from the modus
operandi of religion. Magic was based on the fear of the
unknown and the grotesque; it indicated a spirit in all
objects that could have its benefic or malefic effects and
such effects could be excited, directed or controlled by
the magician’s art. Religion, too, was in ancient times
based on fear, but the fear of an unknown power that
stood above all human forces.

It had to be appeased with offerings and prayers but, in

this regard, no human being had any power of predictions
of the divine will. While magical rites were primarily
individual – based in the sense that the participant in
them was the magician only, religious rites

comprehended the entire society in participation and as

such, religion acquired a greater social significance than
magic.Religion and Morality:
The concept of religion and morality must best be kept s
apart. Morality means conformity to the laws of ethics,
and ethics are a social understanding of right and wrong.
Every individual may, however, have a sense of ethics
but unless his understanding of ethical principles
coincides with the understanding of the same by his
society, the true concept of right and wrong is not likely
to emerge.

Ethics is not religion, at least, not necessarily so; for one

can be a atheist and yet have a strong sense of right and
wrong and being religious does not necessarily imply that
one’s sensibilities are in line with ethical philosophy.
Morality seems, therefore, merely to be an attempt of
human beings at regulating their course of action in
accordance with the dictates of nature; it is an effort at
bringing harmony between conscious human acts and the
order that the sun, the moon, the stars and in fact, all
things universal follow.

As we assert so frequently, ‘there is an order in nature’,

so we try to translate this belief of ours into our actions
when we call ourselves moralistic. Of course, there are
different versions of ethical principles available in
different communities but, minor differences apart, all

 communities endeavour to bring to human life a natural

order. Perhaps, that is the very essence at ethics.

Religion cannot but teach the same order in things when

it admits human subordination to the Almighty and the
universal brotherhood of man. Religion, therefore,
encourages ethics without being an institution of morality
itself.

In fact occasionally when unscientific religious practices

ordain maiming rites, human sacrifice or offering the
first-born to Mother Ganga, besides declaring certain
types of foodstuff with hygienic value as unsanctified, it
is not following ethical patterns; and in our country the
concept of preserving one’s religious virtue by shunning
the contact of non-Hindus is morally outrageous.

Yet, by and large, the teachings of religion and ethics are

the same, and such lessons are regarded as conducive to
the growth of healthy relationships between individuals
who live in society. The difference between the two
becomes apparent when one takes into account the nature
of sanctions applying in either case or the respective
authorities that are empowered to impose the sanctions.

Religion places before society ‘supra-social’ sanctions for

the detractor of religious precepts, the priest acting in the

name of God being regarded as the authority, who would

specify the nature of penalty that goes with an act of sin.
Moral codes have nothing to do with God, although
modern religion takes ethical behaviour as virtue and
violations of morality as sinful.

Morality is based on social considerations of good and

evil and, in order to sanctify ethical values, perhaps at a
certain point of social development all moral
considerations were pronounced as commandments of
God Himself. In this context, one must remember that
only such religion has stood the test of time which has
been beneficial to society and social relations; and social
relations prosper well when ethics govern human
conduct. We are not in a position to state whether, in the
course of human social development morality preceded
religion or religious growth led to moral unde standings.

One does not feel that going into the controversy is a

needful activity. When Auguste Comte asserts that
religious consciousness preceded ethical unde standings,
or when Emile Durkheim states that religion came to
sanctify moral ideas, neither is speaking the whole truth.
Even primitive people with religious sentiments had
ethical preferences for life and it is not until our rational
times that the conflict between the two, if any, has been
emphasized.

r­
r­

When religion divides humanity into different segments,

social welfare as a whole cannot be conceived of in any
community that takes the shape of a complex society-
today. In our complex societies, different ethnic and
religious groups must exist together, and the new concept
of the morality of ‘humanism’ requires a new social and
religious code based on tolerance of every idea, faith or
creed so that social welfare for humanity as a whole
becomes the keyword of ethics.

Religion is itself being purified not only of all its

conservative approach to innovations and discoveries, but
also of its hostility to the integrating process in the
conscience of modern man and, if that process is ever
completed, it would speak of the supremacy of ethics
over sectarian creeds.

Mythology and Social Behaviour:

It is fitting that in the context of certain countries like

India, a discussion on mythology be appended to the
study of religion Mythology, in the truest sense of the
word, represents the incredible, and must have found its
origin in those inquiries that puzzled early man about the
origins and the beginnings of mankind and their possible
conditions after death.

Yet apart from the fact that myths have always sought to
explain what remained inexplicable till science, to a large
extent, dispelled the doubts, there is a clear
understanding that these stories told more about man
himself than about the unknown. Myths of different times
and of different, regions of the world give an account of
traditional rites and customs observed by men, and the
student can easily get an insight into the type of society
that he has placed under study.

More often than not, mythical stories tell about ancient

man’s environment and society in which he lived as also
his psychology which, curiously enough, he himself did
not appreciate. Gods and goddesses conceived of in
yester years were human beings drawn on a larger and a
grander scale so that they could be invested with super
human capabilities and, at times, as in Indian mythology,
repetition of heroic feats, with or without
embellishments, in the course of time transformed actual
human beings into deified personalities.

Certain characteristics about mythical stories explain

how the geographical environment, in each case,
modified the over-reaching imagination of early man in
giving shape to his concept of the unknown which, to
simple mind, was the supernatural. First, the climate of a
particular country played an important role in depicting

the regions of the dead or those that were inhabited by

the gods.

In the cold north, a mythical cow named Audumla caused

the birth of man by licking frozen stones, while the
region of the dead was a bare and misty plain where
shivering and hungry spirits merely wandered about. The
Greeks ascribed to Prometheus the task of raising the first
human being from clay on a flowery river bank, which
had a much fairer climate than northerners conceived of.
To them the afterworld was either a dark cavernous
region meant for the slaves or the Elysian Fields that
welcomed the nobler and the royal soul.

Early Indians, to whom the mighty Indus and then the

Ganga must have presented much hindrance and misery
mixed with dismay, almost unfailingly conceived of the
void as a huge flood of water from which emerged Lord
Vishnu and the Creator Brahma collectively to execute
their designs of bringing into existence a new kalpa of
mankind.

In China, according to Taoist legends, the God in charge

of mankind lived in the mountain Tai-shun in Shantung,
and was known as the Great Emperor of the Eastern
Peak. In Polynesia, the creator of the world, Tangaroa,

lived (or still lives) in surroundings which are not

strikingly dissimilar to the island surroundings.

African mythology, which by and large accommodated

the natural elements and forces as divine powers,
nevertheless accepted a supreme God who created the
first man and first woman. The natural surroundings of
Africa find expression in the Malagasy myth that the son
of God, sent to earth on a mission by his father, found the
Globe so hot that he plunged deep to find a little coolness
and never appeared again. Man comes to this earth, even
to this day, to search for Ataokoloinona, the son of God,
and return after a fruitless search to report to God; and
their departure from the earth is known as Death.

The connection between mythology and the society that

created the myth is also explained by the fact that
animals and birds, quaint, monstrous or even terrifying,
abound in anecdotes, and animal gods are by no means
inferior to human shaped gods in their physical power
and magical or ominous attributes. Several gods of the
Egyptian Pantheon possessed animal shapes, or even
shapes that contained the attributes of human beings
mixed with those of birds or animals.

Efu Ra, the dead sun, was portrayed as a man with a

ram’s head, while Horus, the Solar God of Memphis, had

the head of a falcon affixed to a human body. Anubis, the

God of the cemetery, was either a jackal or a human with
a jackal’s head. The protective Gods had as their head
Amon, the king of the gods, who was represented first in
the goose form and then in that of a ram.

The Hindu Ganesha and Garuda are both celestial beings

that show a combination of both human and animal
forms. The Greek satyrs, centaurs or minotaurs, though
they did not enjoy the status of gods, were nevertheless
supernatural or celestial creatures in the same measure as
Yakshas, Gandharvas and the Kubera were concerned in
the Indian mythological scene. The Greeks and the
Indians, however, chose to appropriate different animals
or birds to different deities as their cup-bearers or bearers
of their chariots.

While this line of thinking must have necessarily

emphasized the then existing close association between
human and animal existence, the gods with fearful
animalistic attributes, like Rahu in India and the four
Dragon-kings in China, represented the awe that human
beings had for their predators.

However, animal gods were not necessarily apathetic or

hostile to human interests; some of them were benign in
their influence upon mankind. Till this day. the mother

cow, one of the seven mothers that man has on this earth,
is looked upon with veneration in India; and Nandi, the
bull, finds the devotee’s offerings at its feet every time
his master.

Lord Shiva is worshipped. To modern man who is an

urbanite, this curious psychology of regarding animals as
a part of human life and society might seem strange; but
man’s association with the animal world has been longer
in point of time than his segregation from it.

Another aspect of mythology that throws light on the

society that was responsible for its growth is the concept
of hierarchy in the divine regions on the model of their
earthly counterparts. The Chinese myths by far surpassed
the others in creating a regular echelon in the patheon
under the august supreme and Almighty Jade (Yu-ti) who
lived in a place modelled exactly on the one occupied by
the Chinese Emperor. His ministers and officers were
subordinate gods, each in charge of a distinct branch of
natural or human activity; and his soldiers were
maintained for fighting rebel spirits, wherever necessary.

The God married and had near relations, his wife being
the queen mother Wang, the Lady Queen of the West.
Even among the Kani of the Japanese myth, a clear
division of labour allowed a particular god to rule over

heaven, the earth or hell. The Egyptian Ra was the

soverign lord of the sky, possibly representing the Sun,
though Amon was regarded as the King of the gods.

Kings of gods are to be found in both Greek and Indian

myths, in the personages of Zeus and Indra respectively.
What baffles thought is that both the Greek and the
Indian monarchs of divinity have several attributes in
common; at least, each of them carries a thunderbolt.
Undertones of political happenings in society often find
expression in mythical narratives, and even among gods
one finds the tyrant and the usurper being overthrown by
celestial versions of a revolution.

The study of the Goddess Durga or Goddess Athena

slaying the demon might have been inspired by actual
happenings on earth which, in course of time, acquired a
supra-human colouring.

Some sociologists have tried to establish the fact that

human society was originally matriarchal in character,
and this observation finds greater emphasis from the
original myths created in certain parts of the world long
before any reckoned era began. The Akans of Ghana
believed that the Moon Goddess, Ngame, was
responsible for the birth of our planet as also of human

beings. The concept of a male creator Odomankoma was

a much later induction.

In Egypt, too, the divinity was originally conceived of as

small matriarchal queendoms until years later — around
the second millennium B C — When the patriarchal sun
monarchy and a clan of grotesque animal deities was
introduced. The myths followed by Aryans, whose
history is at best recorded from the second milleunium B
C, show a different trend. In Greece as well as in India,
the primacy belonged to the male god and however
powerful a goddess might be, she was the consort of a
god with mighty attributes.

The Tantric or the Shakti cult in India is of a much later

development and, in any case, does not find a general
acceptance in the sub-continent. According to this cult,
the male may achieve feats of acclaim, but the pivotal or
central force behind his work is female power. With the
exception of the above cult, the transformation of the
Omnipotent from the female into the male form is a
measure of the advance of society from a matriarchal to a
patriarchal existence.

Mythology, in its fuller perspective, cannot be looked

upon merely as an attempt made by early man in
resolving the mysteries relating to this universe and

 human lives. While this motive remains prominent,

several other sympotomatic expressions of human
mentality and social habits of yester years come into
play. The psychological attraction of man for the number
‘3’ and its necessary to the division of the Godhead into
three cannot be overlooked.

In China, the number 72 was given much theological

importance, since it was made of 3 X 3, the Moon’s
mystical number, multiplied by 2X2X2, the mystical
number of the Sun. It was not unknown that this earth
and the lives on it derived much power and strength from
the Sun and the Moon. The social system of marriage on
earth was reflected in the social relations of gods. While
male gods could have several wives, the goddess was
always the very idea of a chaste and faithful wife on
earth.

How much inspiration an Indian woman finds over the

narrative of Sati courting death after being unable to bear
her father’s derogatory remarks about her husband Lord
Shiva. Asceticism, the renunciation of worldly pleasures
and the establishment of norms of behaviour even for
mighty kings, who must not shy away from fighting even
their close relatives for the cause of law and justice, have
all found expression in tales related in the different
sections of the Mahabharata.

In India, one of the very few countries where myths are

still followed with veneration and scrupulously applied to
detailed religious practices, mythology has found a way
into private and public life. Unlike other countries,
mythical narratives of heroes and their faithful following
still guide the individual who, in private life, aspires to be
one of the nobler characters outlined by the myth; and,
in” the public sphere, an average Indian still dreams that
one day his vision of the Ram Rajya, or Utopia, will be
fulfilled.

Mythology is, therefore, not any system that is divorced

from society and social behaviour. It can best be taken as
a complex of allegorical tales that inspire noble conduct
in man and remind him of the consequences of adopting
an evil way of life. We, in our country, know how
important the teachings of myths can be; and the
sociologist can, besides tracing the growth and
development of social personality through the myths,
find in these beautiful stories an agent of social control, a
teacher that imparts knowledge and understanding to
pupils without letting them know of his didactic purpose.
Mythological training becomes then a part of the
socialization process in the individual.

V. Education:

In a sense, education is an informal process of acquiring

knowledge throughout one’s life and such process is
never completed until death. According to the Latin root
educare meaning to bring up and educere, which stands
for bringing forth, the word ‘education’ would fit in with
the idea of all the knowledge earned by ac individual for
facing life as a whole with the sense of confidence of
preparedness.

Aristotle emphasized the sense of aesthetics, or

proportions, that was inspired by learning, and therein lay
the happiness of acquiring knowledge. In modern times,
we know education as a process operating in a narrower
sense which, according to Bertrand Russell, may be
described as ‘utilitarian’ education.

Utilitarian education is a predetermined course of study

which the elder compiles for the benefit of the younger,
and the latter is given a calculated surfeit of it, and
nothing else, so that he may approach the world with the
medal mark of being educated and carve out a profession
for himself.

Bertrand Russell’s concept of ‘liberal’ education may

also be imparted in the classroom, but such learning is
pursued merely for the sake of developing the dormant
talents in an individual and appreciating the beautiful

Plato’s idea of education was very similar, but he would

restrict life education only to the good and the beautiful,
he would not show the other side of life to children lest
they be tempted to imitate it.

Education as an agent of social control covers both the

liberal and the utilitarian types, for both together present
life itself to the student. In ancient India, pupils were sent
at the age of eight to stay with the Guru, a personal
teacher and a guide. When, at the age of sixteen, the
educated young man was sent into the world, he was told
by the Guru that a pupil learns one-fourth from a teacher,
one-fourth from private study, one-fourth from his own
fellows and one-fourth from life itself (Panchatantra by
Vishnusharma).

This very idea of education in ancient India should help

one to understand that education must be all-pervasive an
activity; and when we look upon it as an agent of social
control, we cannot restrict its courses to the confines of
educational institutions. In the larger concept, therefore,
education becomes pertinent to us.

Education, in this sense, has three distinct formations:

(i) It socializes a human being by transmitting to him the

culture of the earlier generations:

(ii) In the process of socialization, it teaches the child to

understand his role in society, to cultivate social
relationships, and then to face the world with his adult
role; and

(iii) It becomes an instrument of social change,

particularly in advanced societies, and for educated
individuals learn to mould and reshape their cultural
heritage with the help of newly acquired and newly
developed knowledge.

Education must, therefore, be regarded as useful and

effective only when it can help the pupil to ‘induct his
own culture’; and this must be regarded as the first task
of education. All throughout our lives, we gather
experience, and every experience can be a source of our
education. In the initial stages, the child learns about his
environment; he understands the natural and the social
surroundings in which he lives, though he may yet not
have any appreciation of comparative values of
surroundings.

This process of learning is natural and spontaneous, quite

distinct from the mode of instilling formal education in
him. Formal education is different from the larger
concept of education that we have taken for our
discussion in the very consciousness of its approach.

The mother, the father, the teacher at school or the games

master teach with the full knowledge that their purpose is
didactic; and the scope of such education remains
limited. As we have noted above, the Indian Guru takes it
as a quarter of education, the rest to come involuntarily
from the world.

Values, standards and attitudes of the society are taught

by parents even while they explain terms, word meanings
and patterns of behaviour to the child. To the initiate,
everything is strange and a matter for blatant
appreciation. He does not hesitate to ask why a particular
neighbour embellishes herself more than his mother does;
and he learns from his mother’s admonitions that one
should not find any amusement in the strange, antiquated
looks of his grandparents. He, therefore, learns to revere
his elders and to be polite to neighbours.

A store of knowledge he gathers from such informal

experiences as well as from the different educational
institutions. It will not be an easy task to enumerate the
various agencies that induct culture in an individual; he
has his family and other primary groups to educate him
in this respect, and educational institutions do the work
independent of groups and other cultural institutions.

If socialization is correct, the child will learn to fit

himself into the social pattern with a clear understanding
of his social responsibilities. Delinquency is an indication
of inadequate social training, a failure to understand
one’s social role. In learning one’s own social role, one
has to develop his practical sense, learn and assimilate
his language and, with a view to preparing himself for
participation in social life, he has to cultivate a conscious
view of self-appreciation.

Usually, the boy imitates his father and the girl watches
all the chores that her mother engages in. The importance
of the family in the task of socializing the child is
immense, but the process of imitating the elder may
terminate as soon as the child enters the wider world.

Therefore, the educational institutions have to take up the

charge of completing the rest; and the school teacher, in a
more impersonal manner than the mother, trains the child
to control his emotions and impulses in order that
rationality is ingrained in his behaviour., Unless an
individual learns to apply reason to his thought processes,
his value judgments will be defective; and a society in
which such individuals abound is walking the path of
ruin. Formal education allows an individual to mould his
rational powers and apply reason to judgment and hence
it can be said that the process of socialization begun at
home is completed in schools and colleges.

In modern societies, education is expected to contribute

to progress and progress, as we understand it, means
diverting our conscious and trained attention from the
‘sacred’ to ‘secular’. While sacred societies remain in the
past and retain their cultural heritage, secular societies
learn to judge social practices in terms of efficiency.

The socialized individual must learn to cultivate this

judgment and, according to the elasticity of his intellect,
he would be able to give a direction to the type of social
change that his society desires. Social mobility in modern
societies allows every individual, within the precincts of
his limited scope and opportunity, to apply his education
in deviating from age-old family traditions of
occupations and, more often than not educational
institutions gather and store new knowledge for
transmitting it to pupils who could then think in terms of
a social change.

If one believes in progress, one is likely to take change

and improvements as concepts that are closely related,
and today, there is a growing belief that educational
institutions should, by encouraging research and
discoveries, devote themselves to finding out ways and
means of changing society. This need arises acutely in
developing societies in particular, where material culture
of man needs a drastic reorientation.

However, change is hazardous if it imperils all existing

social institutions, and education cannot be taken by any
reasonable man as a thorough overhauling system that
would be after the line of thinking of the iconoclast.
Purposeless adherence to millennial thoughts of a
completely changed society cannot smack of social
welfare; at least, history does not teach us that lesson.

Every culture has its own values and value systems and,
though some change with modernization is inevitable, no
educational structure can in the name of social change
think of uprooting the cultural complex of the society
concerned. If this aim in education is forgotten, its
efficacy in controlling social elements will be impaired.

The truly educated mind must learn to distinguish

between the dynamics and statics of society and strike a
balance between progress and cultural heritage. True
education cannot, therefore, afford to rear upstarts who
find leaves and branches growing about themselves, but
without any roots; and, in India, every educated person
must realize that the basic humanistic qualities of
learning remain the same in all societies.

Importing knowledge from different parts of the world

can not necessarily imply that foreign thoughts are
inimical to, and destructive of, one’s own cultural

heritage If education cannot inspire us with this thought,

either our socialization has been inadequate or the very
system of education has not found its prop in reason.

The Modes of Effective Social Control:

We have considered the different agencies of social

control. It is not being submitted that all these agencies
effectively control individual behaviour in all societies in
the same degree. Certain factors help or hinder society in
extending its control over its members through these
agents, and some of these are discussed below:

(1) An ‘organized society’ controls its members

effectively and the organization structure in each case has
its share of importance. A rigidly structured society like
conservative communities and village societies can
firmly control individuals thx are members of such.
Urban societies are too impersonal and liberal to achieve
thx task.

Not only when social groups are loosely related to each

other but also when they do not live in harmony to a
common social end, the organizational structure k the
society concerned will be weak and unstable and, as a
result, its power of control will be diminished.

(2) The elements in a society must have close links with

its ‘culture’ in order that the different agencies operate
effectively. On the one hand, an individual who has
effected true acculturation will not have a tendency to
violate the norms of society and, on the other; society too
will not alienate individual or group conscience by
introducing social sanctions that are contrary to the
welfare of the society.

Public opinion becomes a strong factor in a democratic

set-up for controlling both the propensity to violating
norms and the devising of unethical penalties.
Democratic institutions, therefore, preserve cultural
values more effectively than authoritarian institutions.

(3) Relations between the ‘different groups’, where

society is distinctly stratified can determine the nature of
control in it. For example, as long as the ruling classes
make rules and principles that are conducive to the
preservation of their interests to the exclusion of the
rights of others, social control Will become ineffective
and sooner or later, explosive conditions may be created
destablizing social life itself.

If, on the other hand, the ruler or the elder places himself
in the position of a trustee who vigilantly guards the
welfare of the subject or the youngster respectively,

cordial relations are generated and distrust for rules and

regulations is removed.

Therefore, a tyrannical father is less likely to control his

child than the one who conditions the youngster’s
training with a rational understanding that the child has
an intellect which has to be nurtured and developed
through training. Social control does not mean thrusting
one’s egoistic thoughts upon another; it is rather a mode
of exchanging thoughts for regulating human relations.

(4) Choice of standard – The most important factor that

guides social control is the ‘value-standard’ that is
associated with a particular culture. These values
determine the nature of the ‘institutions’ that the
concerned society sets up. Familial, educational and
religious institutions reflect these values and present the
individual with the choice of standard for his own life. A
society in which values and value – standards are well
ascertained will determine all its institutions according to
them and the individual will not be obstructed by any
value discrepancy between them.

If, however, the different institutions have not had the

privilege of being nurtured with the same degree of
liberalness, conflicts may arise between them. For
example, if an individual finds that the values taught by

his family are diametrically opposed to those that modern

educational institutions impress him with, a schism in his
thoughts will take place which can adequately confound
him particularly when his emotional attachments with
either is of an equal degree.

An individual must then have standard institutions for his

training and, in this respect, the importance of political,
economic and the different social institutions is immense
in maintaining social order.

Social Changes - Meaning and Nature theories:

Meaning of social change:

Any alteration, difference or modification that takes place
in a situation or in an object through time can be called
change. The term ‘social change’ is used to indicate the
changes that take place in human interactions and
interrelations. Society is a web of relationships and social
change means a change in the system of social
relationships. Thus the term social change is used to
desirable variations in social interaction, social processes
and social organization. A society generally has two
distinct tendencies. They are- conservative and
progressive. People in society have their tendency to
conserve or preserve the social heritage of the past. Every
society is proud of its own cultural history of the past.
This is what may be describing as the conservative
tendency of the society. But at the same time it has the
tendency to change, modify and improve the existing

social heritage. Man is never satisfied with his present

situation or existing condition. He wants to make changes
and improvement of the existing state of affairs. This
change is the law of nature and it is inevitable in the life
of an individual as well as of society.
So social change and development is inevitable in human
society. It is also an instinctive tendency in man to have
the curiosity for new knowledge and new experiences. It
leads to dissatisfaction with the existing situations that
result in the changes. So, social situation undergoes
changes with the changes of time that result in social
progress.

According to Kingsley Davis- “By social change is

meant only such alterations as occur in social
organization, that is, structure and functions of society.”

According to Maclver ad Page-“Social change refers to

“a process” responsive to many types of changes; to
change in the manmade condition of life; to changes in
the attitudes and beliefs of men, and to the changes that
go beyond the human control to the biological and the
physical nature of things”

Nature and characteristics of social change:

Social change is continuous: Society is always

undergoing endless changes. Society cannot be preserved
in a museum to save it from the ravages of time. From
the dawn of history society has been in continuous flux.

Social change is temporal: Social change is temporal in

the sense it denotes the time sequence. In fact, society

exists only as a time-sequence. Innovation of new things,

modification and renovation of the existing behavior and
the discarding of the old behavior patterns take time.

Social change is environmental: It must take place within

a geographic or physical and cultural context. Both these
contexts have impact on human behavior and in turn man
changes them. A social change never takes place in
vacuum.

Social change is human change: The sociological

significance of the change consists in the fact that it
involves the human aspect. The composition of society is
not constant, but changing.

Social change may be planned or unplanned: The

direction and tempo of social change are often
conditioned by human plans and programmes of man in
order to determine and control the rate and direction of
social change. Unplanned change refers to change
resulting from natural calamities such as- famines,
floods, earthquakes etc.

Short versus long-run changes: Some social changes may

bring about immediate results while some others may
take years and decades to produce results. This
distinction is significant, because a change which appears
to be very vital today may be nothing more than a
temporary oscillation having nothing to do with the
essential trends of life, some years later.

Social change is an objective term: The term social

change describes one of the categorical processes. It has

no value-judgments attached to it. To the sociologist

social change as a phenomenon is neither moral nor
immoral, it is amoral. It means the study of social change
involves no value judgment. One can study change even
within the value system without being for against the
change.

Social change may create chain reaction: Change in one

aspect of life may lead to a series of changes in its other
aspects. For example- change in rights, privileges and
status of women has resulted in a series of changes in
home, family relationships and structure, the economic
and to some extent political pattern of both rural and
urban society.