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Marxist Approach

In 50s-60s American structural-functionalism and British functionalism dominated social sciences in general and sociological researches in particular. However Desai continued to write on Indian society and state from the Marxist perspective. He finds that the dominant sociological approaches in India are basically non-Marxist and the Marxist approach has been rejected on the pretext of its being dogmatic, value-loaded and deterministic in nature. The relevant approach according to him is the Marxist approach as it could help to study of govt’s policies, the class entrenched into state apparatus and India’ s political economy. The Marxist approach helps to understand the social reality through the means of production, the techno-economic division of labour involved in operating the instruments of production and social relations of production or what was more precisely characterized as property relations. Thus the Marxist approach focuses on understanding the type of property relations which existed on the eve of independence in India. The Marxist approach gives central importance to property structure in analyzing any society. It provides historical location or specification of all social phenomena. It recognizes the dialectics of evolutionary as well as revolutionary changes of the breaks in historical continuity in the transition from one socio-economic formation to another. In this context A R Desai tried to understand the Indian society which also reflects in his work.