M. N. Srinivas: What I Learnt from His Sociology and Social Anthropology

Abstract

M. N. Srinivas, the pioneering Sociologist of India, has contributed immensely to the development of the discipline of sociology and social anthropology through his teaching and research. He combined theory, method and field reality in his body of work. It generated a great deal of interest and critique. This essay looks at his contributions with reference to how I learnt, through my links with rural India, from his sociological writings drawn from intensive fieldwork on caste, village, processes like Sanskritisation and Westernisation and concepts such as vote bank, which gained popular currency.