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Andre Béteille

Andre Béteille is one of India's leading sociologists and writers. He is particularly well known for his studies of the caste system in South India.

He was a Professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics at the University of Delhi where he is Professor Emeritus of Sociology since 2003.Béteille has written insightfully about all the major questions of the day: India's encounters with the West, the contest between religion and secularism, the relationship between caste and class, the links between poverty and inequality, the nurturing of public institutions, the role and responsibilities of the intellectual.

In 2005, Professor Béteille received the Padma Bhushan as a mark of recognition for his work in the field of Sociology. The same year he was appointed a member of the Prime Minister's National Knowledge Commission. In 2006, following a proposal for increasing caste-based reservations, Andre Beteille quit the Commission in protest. In 2006, he was made National Professor.His famous books are :

• Sociology: Essays on Approach and Method, 2002.
• Antinomies of Society: Essays on Ideologies and Institutions, 2000.
• Chronicles of Our Time, Penguin Books, 2000.
• The Backward Classes in Contemporary India, 1992.
• Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative Perspective 1991 .
• The Idea of Natural Inequality and Other Essays, 1983 .
• Inequality Among Men, Basil Blackwell, 1977 .
• Studies in Agrarian Social Structure, 1974.
• Six Essays in Comparative Sociology, 1974.
• Inequality and Social Change, 1972.
• Castes: Old and New, Essays in Social Structure and Social Stratification, 1969.
• Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village, 1965.

Essays

• Secularism Re-examined
• Race & Caste
• Teaching & Research
• Government & NGOs
• The Indian Middle Class