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Renowned Indian sociologist and writer Andre Beteille died owed to age-related illness astatine his residence successful New Delhi connected Tuesday. He was 91.
The passing distant of Professor Beteille, 1 of India’s foremost scholars, brought distant a unreserved of tributes from colleagues and erstwhile students, amid a realisation that it besides marks the passing of a peculiar mode of scholarship, and of a practitioner of teaching arsenic a vocation.
Anyone entering the Delhi School of Economics (DSE) for a Master’s grade successful Sociology, for which the instauration is justly famous, couldn’t assistance but beryllium alert of the colony of Sripuram successful Thanjavur territory of Tamil Nadu, the tract of Prof. Beteille’s fieldwork for his enactment Caste, Class and Power on agrarian relations and shifting powerfulness structures successful India.
It was a enactment that possibly gave galore postgraduate students, hailing from antithetic strands of societal classes and parts of the country, a sensation of not conscionable the complexity but besides the structural quality of societal categories and however they interact, of however to recognise from a survey successful 1 country of India’s heavy southbound processes that were ongoing successful our society.
One entered “D’School”, arsenic DSE is referred to, with an consciousness of Prof. Beteille’s rigorous assistance and his accent connected the value of fieldwork; erstwhile there, his committedness to teaching -- mercifully jargon-free and disciplined -- was our adjacent acquisition with him.
Born successful Chandannagar, West Bengal, successful 1934 to a French begetter and a Bengali mother, helium could work 3 languages fluently -- English, French and Bengali. The books and papers that helium wrote, including Inequality and Social Change, Studies successful Agrarian Social Structure and Society and Politics successful India: Essays successful a Comparative Perspective, attest to his rigorous scholarship.
It is arsenic a teacher, however, that his legions of students retrieve him. Speaking to The Hindu, his erstwhile workfellow Prof. Virginius Xaxa said helium excessively acknowledges Prof. Beteille arsenic an “undeclared mentor” to him, successful guiding him, done affable nudges (the 2 had offices adjacent to each different connected the DSE campus) towards the survey of tribal societies successful India, for which Prof. Xaxa is known for.
“He was a teacher par excellence, not conscionable successful presumption of benignant and canvass of his knowledge, but besides arsenic an ethical idiosyncratic successful presumption of his work to his students,” helium said.
Students who studied nether him callback that careless of strikes oregon different disruptions, helium would, arsenic was his wont, crook up astatine the DSE whether classes were being held oregon not.
Prof. Janaki Abraham, who had been a pupil of Prof. Beteille and is present teaching astatine the DSE, said teaching schedules during the semesters remained inviolate for him. “He would ever say, delight be conferences during holidays, not during semester. As a teacher, helium would interact a batch with students and was accessible to us,” she said.
His scholarly enactment is inactive portion of world curricula successful courses connected Indian Sociology. While helium was accorded the Padma Bhushan successful 2005 for his contributions to lit and education, his legions of students springiness a much lasting relationship of his career.
