ISSUES AND THEMES IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY: Essays in Honour of Professor Ishwar Modi

India is passing through a period where the forces of unification and segregation are acting strongly on the systems of living and thinking of all communities. On one hand, India is becoming more and more unified, on the other, the ethno-political movements are gaining strength across states. It was thought in the past that with the coming of modernization and technological development, primordial ties will occupy a back seat, and a kind of individualism, akin to its western counterpart, will emerge, where the individual will be known in terms of his or her qualifications, or achieved status, rather than the community to which he or she belongs by the fact of birth. It has been noted time and again that the traditional institutions have been able to adapt to the kind of changes brought about by the process of globalization, with the result that caste, kinship, religion, sect, creed and linguistic and regional ties continue to flourish, even with sea changes happening in contemporary Indian society. The truth is that we are in a situation of a mix of tradition and modernity, or locality and global annexation. The volume before you, an edited one in honour of Dr Ishwar P. Modi, has articles that substantiate the ideas outlined above. This volume tries to cover several institutions and practices. It includes articles which are embedded in theory as well as ethnography.