Why Should We Study the Beginning and Growth of Sociology in Europe?

Most of the issues that sociology studies today were first raised when European society was going through violent and rapid change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That was the era when capitalism and industrialisation arrived, and with them came factory production, the growth of cities, and the disruption of older ways of life. Questions that were asked then — about urbanisation, about work, about the effects of industry on communities — are still relevant to every modern society, even though the specific features of those problems differ from place to place.

Indian society, with its colonial past and its extraordinary diversity, is clearly distinct from Europe. The sociology of India reflects that distinctness. So the natural question arises: why begin the study of sociology in Europe at all? Why not start with India?

The answer is simple but profound. India's past is closely tied to the history of British capitalism and colonialism. Capitalism in the West was never a purely European affair — it involved a worldwide expansion that reshaped every continent it touched. To understand Indian society, you have to understand the forces that acted upon it, and those forces were set in motion in Europe.

The book illustrates this with a striking example from R.K. Laxman's travelogue of Mauritius. Mauritius is a small island in the Indian Ocean, yet on it you find Africans and Chinese, Biharis and Dutch, Persians and Tamils, Arabs, French and English — all living together. This mix is not accidental; it is the living residue of the colonial and global past. Laxman describes meeting a Tamil man named Radha Krishna Govindan, who looks South Indian and carries a South Indian name. But when Laxman speaks to him in Tamil, Govindan replies in heavily accented, mangled English with a French accent. He has no knowledge of Tamil at all — his tongue stopped producing Tamil sounds centuries ago. A man who appears entirely Indian is, in fact, a product of a history that carried Indian labourers across oceans to French colonies.

This example makes the point concrete: the global expansion of capitalism created connections between peoples and places that seem utterly unrelated. Studying the beginnings of sociology in Europe is not about privileging Europe. It is about understanding the historical engine that shaped the modern world — including India — and that continues to shape it. …