A.R. Desai gave Indian sociology its most sustained Marxist perspective, insisting that society be understood through its material foundations and the class conflicts that drive historical change. Drawing on Karl Marx, Desai rejected both the textual book-view of the indologists and the consensus-oriented functionalism of the field-view, arguing that neither could explain exploitation, inequality or transformation. In their place he offered the dialectical-historical method, which locates social forms in definite modes of production and treats change as the outcome of contradictions between classes. His studies of Indian nationalism, the state and agrarian struggles applied this framework with rare consistency.
The Dialectical-Historical Method
The dialectical-historical method examines society as a historically evolving totality shaped by its economic base. Social institutions, ideas and political forms are understood in relation to the mode of production and the class relations it generates; change proceeds through the working out of contradictions rather than through gradual adjustment. Desai used this approach to move beyond describing Indian society to explaining it — asking whose interests institutions served and how material forces produced particular social outcomes. He was critical of empiricism that gathered facts without a theory of structure and history, and equally critical of idealist readings that treated culture apart from its economic roots.
The Social Background of Indian Nationalism
Desai's landmark work is his study of the social background of Indian nationalism. He argued that Indian nationalism was not a timeless spiritual awakening but a modern phenomenon born of the specific conditions created by British colonial capitalism. The new economy, the railways, a unified administration, modern education and the press generated fresh social classes — a bourgeoisie, a working class, an intelligentsia and a modern peasantry — whose interests found expression in the national movement. Desai traced the movement through successive phases, showing how different classes led it at different times and how their competing interests shaped its programme. Nationalism, in his reading, was the ideological form of an emerging Indian capitalist society.
The State in India
Desai wrote extensively on the Indian state, especially after independence. He was sharply critical of the claim that India had achieved a genuinely welfare or socialist order. Examining the path of planned development, he argued that state policy served propertied and capitalist interests while poverty, landlessness and inequality persisted. In his later writing he documented the state's resort to repression and the erosion of democratic rights, coining discussion of the growing authoritarian tendencies within a formally democratic framework. For Desai the state was not a neutral arbiter but an instrument reflecting the dominant class configuration.
Agrarian Struggles
Consistent with his method, Desai gave close attention to the rural class structure and to peasant movements. He compiled and analysed agrarian struggles across India, treating them as expressions of the contradictions between landlords and cultivators, and between capital and labour on the land. Rather than viewing the village through ritual and caste alone, he foregrounded property relations, tenancy, indebtedness and the exploitation of agricultural labour. Peasant unrest, for Desai, was neither disorder nor mere reaction but a political response to material deprivation and a force in the wider transformation of Indian society.
Critique
Critics argue that Desai's framework can be economically deterministic, reducing complex social realities — especially caste, religion and community — to class and material interest. Caste in India has a resilience and logic that a purely class-based reading struggles to capture, and critics say Desai underplayed its autonomous force. Others find his categories drawn closely from European Marxism and not always tailored to Indian specificities. Nonetheless, his insistence on history, structure and conflict corrected the consensus bias of functionalism and the idealism of the book-view, and his empirical rigour kept his Marxism grounded in evidence.
How to use this in the exam
Position Desai as the Marxist alternative to both Ghurye's book-view and Srinivas's field-view, and lead with the dialectical-historical method as his defining contribution. Use the social background of Indian nationalism as your central example, stressing that he read nationalism as the product of colonial capitalism and new classes. Bring in his critique of the state and his work on agrarian struggles to show range. Anchor the analysis in Karl Marx, then close with the balanced criticism that his class emphasis can underrate caste and community — a point that pairs the three perspectives into a comparative answer.