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MATTER AND METHOD IN SOCIOLOGY & IDEOLOGY 51 The landless wage-earner is bound to be prochanger. For he has nothing to lose but his under-paid servile occupation. In an ordinary situation not disturbed by the extraneous forces, the proprietary class is a motivationally anti-changer. Understandably he is a status quoist. sacrifices) and (10) moksha (liberation or salvation). The motivation underlying these concepts is self exceeding, altruistic and therefore opposed to the vested interests. These concepts, rightly understood and practised, promote social integration and mobility. But, as it happened in the other cases of the concepts of dharma-shastra, feudal mode of production and its accompanying servile morality murdered the original motive-force of these dynamic concepts and in the course of time reduced them into routine rituals.
Substantial incursion of the urban-educated elements and the emergence of a thin layer of educated people have created a disturbed situation in the rural life. The composition of the rural people may be classified under three heads, (a) occupational, (6) motivational and (c) proprietary. These groups are not topologically isolable and overlap each other at many places. The landless wage-earner is bound to be prochanger. For he has nothing to lose but his under-paid servile occupation. In an ordinary situation not disturbed by the extraneous forces, the proprietary class is motivationally anti-changer. Understandably he is a status quoist. He is in favour of preserving the stratified character of the rural society and the agrarian economy. According to him, stratification promotes cohesiveness and orderliness in the society. But the picture of life to the poor peasant and to the landless peasant is quite different. He prefers friction to deceptive cohesiveness and illusive integration of the static society. Friction and conflict generate social commotion and promote the process of socialization, breaking, or at least weakening, the barriers of the stratified society. But this process of socialization is resisted not only by the landlord and the rich farmer but also by the professional and occupational groups consisting of village priests, pundits, maulanas, money-lenders and quacks, all of them have their vested interests in the static society.25 It is true that each of these groups performs a positive role in the absence of corresponding pro-change professional group. Desperately in need of credit and with no nationalised bank near about to come to his help, the poor peasant is forced to go to the village money-lender, mortgage his land and hypothecate his crop on the field at a very low price to him. Similarly, the village with no qualified doctor or hospital near him is obliged to depend on the quack. He has little or no option before him: either he can see his relation dying untreated or treated by a quack. He just takes a chance.
Though the people having vested interest in the agrarian economy do not willingly produce and promote the forces of change, forces are objectively generated by a mixture of causes. I have already referred to the forces of transformation and mobility and spill-over effect of the urban life in the
