The best way to describe Dhirubhai L Sheth’s unique understanding of India is with an anecdote. On hearing of his passing away, on the morn...
The best way to describe Dhirubhai L Sheth’s unique understanding of India is with an anecdote. On hearing of his passing away, on the morning of May 7, sociologist Chandan Gowda sent me this reminiscence. At the end of a hard-working day at the University of Chicago, Dhirubhai (who was visiting), cultural critic DR Nagaraj and Chandan Gowda sat down to talk. Someone raised the issue of the difficulty of understanding exactly when India became modern and, hoping for clarity, turned to Dhirubhai. Pat came his reply: “India began with the post-modern.”
Everyone burst into laughter but in that humourous remark was a profound truth.
That was Dhirubhai. He saw things that most of us missed. His observations on Indian politics or of India’s changing social relations revealed a mind that was untrapped by the ways of seeing offered by the presiding social theories of the day.
His was an original mind, desi in its insight but not nativist in its articulation. All the world was his stage, but India was his akhada. For more than half a century he interrogated the peoples of India, their lives and livelihoods, and from that questioning emerged some of the most creative readings of the changes taking place...
