[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985) › c16.32 # The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.32 The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.32 - **Language:** English ### [c16.32](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c16.32) There is then no single principle for ordering and integrating society. This, far from obstructing change and fostering stagnation, gave the ancient regime a flexibility and adaptiveness that, paradoxically, offered ample scope for instituting the modern state. However, what the modern state needed was not flexibility but fixed, unambiguously defined entities. For this purpose, it had to do away with ambiguities and polarities. The equivocations of jāti and varṇa were replaced by the unitary concept of "caste," which interprets jāti in the sense of varṇa. The village also had to be redefined as a closed, self-sufficient unit, to the exclusion of the wide-ranging web of dispersed and interspersed interests. In other words, the modern state took away, or drove under ground, society's flexibility, suggesting instead an image of motionless stagnation. - [Previous: c16.31](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c16.31) - [Next: c16.33](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c16.33) - [Up: c16](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c16) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c16.32](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c16.32) · Pramāṇa