ABSTRACT
In the 1960s a distinguished school of thought on the social and economic evolution of India arose. History is defined as the representation in chronological order of successive changes in the means and relations of production. This definition has the advantage that it enables history to be seen as something distinct from a series of dated episodes. Pursuing this approach it transpires that India displays a peculiar zigzag process. A new stage of production manifests itself in formal change of some sort; when the production is primitive, the change is often religious. India’s development has been in its own way more ‘civilised’ than other countries. The older cults and forms were not demolished by force but were assimilated. Superstition reduced the need for violence. Much more brutality would have been necessary had Indian history developed along the same lines as that of Europe or the Americas. At every stage, in almost every part of the country, a great deal of the superstructure survived, along with the productive and formal mechanism of several previous stages. There always remained some people who could and did cling stubbornly to the older modes (Kosambi, 1970, pp. 10–23).
