Yogendra Singh: Remembering the Sociologist (1932–2020)

Yogendra Singh, the sociologist and the Professor emeritus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) passed away in May this year. Professor Singh’s demise is not only a loss to the sociology fraternity, but also to the scholarship on and more importantly, to the tradition of critical studies in India. The article remembers Yogendra Singh and reflects on his career as a teacher, an academic and institution builder. Yogendra Singh was not simply a professor of JNU, but he collaborated with his colleagues in the late sixties in making possible the school of social sciences of JNU. The paper remembers him as a fine human being careful with his words and committed to the society he made the subject of his study. His sociology taught him to be critical about his ascriptive ancestry. In spite of being born in a zamindar family in Uttar Pradesh, Singh made caste, hierarchy and privileges an object of his critical analysis. The paper looks at Professor Singh’s contribution to different domains of sociology and Indian society, particularly modernizing India, Indian tradition, caste, class and hierarchies. He is also remembered for his works on historical roots of Indian sociology and institutions of science and critical learning.