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46 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION
of the peasantry has to be gathered primarily as a product of history and tradition. In that case we will be having a still picture of the moving society. The synchronic study has its own advantages. It enables us to look closely into the static factors which account for the stability and structure of the whole society. Here I am using the terms stability and structure in a purely descriptive sense and not in any evaluative one. While studying a society synchronically one must not over-estimate its advantages and ignore the limitations it is subject to. In relation to the urban society admittedly the rural society and therewith the peasantry are changing at a slower rate. Even then the peasantry is in transition and its characters and contours as a process are more noteworthy than as a product of history.
To understand the peasantry properly we must look at the peasant against his social background. Social background is an umbrella term or a very comprehensive concept. It includes so many concepts under it, (a) family, (b) caste, (c) community, (d) class, and (e) system.18 The identity of the peasant assumes and loses different traits in relation to these different reference groups. The disposition and the behaviour of the peasant in his family context are somewhat different from the same in relation to his caste or community reference groups. The comprehensiveness of the reference groups and the subjectivity or the objectivity of the psychological factors could be definitely co-related in a graded scale. This sort of study has its own intrinsic merits. Firstly, it could exhibit, for example, how the peasant is opening up to or withdrawing from his immediate and remote reference groups. Secondly, it can bring out the motivation and orientation of his individual action and of the concerned group action. Thirdly, the results of this synchronic study can also be fruitfully exploited in the diachronic context, indicating how and to what extent his motivation and action influence the process of social transformation. Finally, these five reference groups, taken as five graded social units, may also serve as excellent explanatory categories, enabling us to tackle different types of sociological problems. For example, family, analysis of the peasant might shed considerable light on the labour, i. e. economic, demographic and other related problems like nature and size of the land holdings. Caste analysis and community analysis may indicate, among other things, voting pattern, political trend, political leadership composition and other factors facilitating and retarding integration of the reference group in question to the rest. It has often been pointed out that explanation of action and motivation of any individual, in this case of the peasant, in terms of his immediate reference group is bound to be inadequate, if not fallacious. Because the family identity of the peasant or for that even his caste identity is not the only identity he is subjectively and primarily conscious of; he has his other identities, e. g. religious and linguistic.19 While for the analytic-explanatory purpose we might objectively highlight his immediate reference group identities, under-estimating or ignoring altogether his dominant but subjective identity consciousness, one might pertinently and