Global Thinker Award 2011
Citation
Prof. Andre Beteille
Prof. Andre Beteille is the doyen among India’s contemporary Indian sociologists. He was born in Chandannagore Municipality close to Kolkatta in West Bengal, where his father was a Mayor. He did his graduate and post-graduate studies in Anthropology from University of Calcutta. Subsequently, he joined University of Delhi as a lecturer from where he also received his doctorate in Sociology.
He had a long life association with the faculty of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi where he is currently Professor Emeritus of Sociology. Prof Beteille had also taught at Oxford University, Cambridge University, the University of Chicago, and the London School of Economics.
The Government of India awarded the Padma Bhushan to Prof Beteille in 2005 for his immense contribution in the field of Sociology. He also served as a member of the National Knowledge Commission for sometime.
He was made National Research Professor in 2006. The Government of India appointed Prof. Beteille as Chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research for a three year term, a responsibility which he discharged with distinction.
Prof. Beteille has written extensively on almost all the current issues of Sociology. He has a number of books, essays, and other publications in scholarly journals to his credit. His writings look at the contradictions between the idea of equality and the practice of inequality, caste hierarchies, and making basic rights available to all, irrespective of individual merit and need.
Some of the important books he authored are: Universities at the Crossroads, Marxism and Class Analysis, Ideology and Social Science, Sociology: Essays on Approach and Method, Chronicles of Our Time, Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in Tanjore Village, Antimonies of Society: Essays on Ideologies and Institutions, Anti-Utopia: Essential Writings of Prof. Andre Beteille, among many others.
He is one of the very few remaining titans in the best classical traditional of a scholar, erudite, inquisitive passion for truth, and most importantly utterly humane.
IILM feels honoured by conferring the Global Thinker Award, 2011 on Prof. Andre Beteille.
