About the Book

This book has grown out of the author’s involvement in the teaching of social geography over the last two decades. It makes an approach towards a social-geographical interpretation of India. The critical elements of the complex social phenomena that defined India today or at any other point of time in our long history have received detailed attention in this work. Focusing on elements of social identity, such as ethnicity, tribe, caste, language and religion, the work evaluates these parameters of Indian identity in a spatial frame.

Admittedly, not much work has been done on the spatial organization of Indian society and its social structure as expressed in identities such as ethnicity, tribe, caste, community, language, dialect and religion at the grassroots level, although broad all-India outlines are discernible in stray research. The present work seems to serve two main purposes: First, it reconstructs the broader outlines at the all-India level, disaggregating the data wherever possible upto the regional levels. Secondly, it presents data in a historical context, thus demonstrating how crucial the spatial dimension is in understanding the socio-cultural evolution of the Indian people, as well as in realizing the significance of the socio-cultural diversity in the functioning of the federal polity in India today.

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Contents

•        SOCIAL  GEOGRAPHY :  An  introduction

•        TOWARDS  A  SOCIAL  GEOGRAPHY  OF  INDIA :  Laying  the  foundations

•        ORIGINS :  Social  differentiation  and  region  formation

•        TRIBE :  Between  the  two  worlds

•        CASTE :  Everyone  in  one’s  own  place

•        LANGUAGE :  A  bridge,  not  a  cleavage

•        RELIGION :  Cast  in  a  regional  mould

•        AN  OVERVIEW :  Some  preliminary  conclusions

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About the Author / Editor

Aijazuddin Ahmad is a geographer with a brilliant academic record and notable professional achievements. He retired as Professor of Geography from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where he served at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development from 1972 to 1997. He also taught at the Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, during the period 1962-1972. His earlier published works include: Demographic Transition, Social Structure and Regional Development, Mountain Population Pressure, An Atlas of Tribal India and The Valley of Kashmir.

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