M. N. Srinivas
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M.N. Srinivas, 1916-1999
Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas is India's foremost sociologist. He is known for his work on caste and caste systems, as well as sanskritisation.
Srinivas’ contribution to the disciplines of sociology and social anthropology and to public life in India was unique. He received many honours from Bombay University, the Royal Anthropological Institute, Government of France, the Padma Shree from the President of India, and was honorary foreign member of the two most prestigious Academies – the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Without recounting all the directions that his research took, I believe that it was his capacity to break out of the strong mould in which area studies had been cast after the end of the Second World War on the one hand, and to experiment with the disciplinary grounding of social anthropology and sociology on the other, which marked his originality. Although he had already written a book on family and marriage in Mysore and completed his Ph.D. at Bombay University before he went to Oxford in the late forties, his training there was to play a significant role in the development of his ideas.
It may be important to point out that it was the conjuncture between Sanskritic scholarship and the strategic concerns of World War II which shaped South Asian area studies in the U.S. Already in the colonial period, the Pandits were accepted as important interlocutors of Hindu laws and customs to the colonial administrators. The colonial assumptions about an unchanging Indian society led to the curious assemblage of Sanskrit studies with contemporary issues in most South Asian departments in the U.S. and elsewhere. It was strongly believed that an Indian sociology must lie at the conjunction of Indology and sociology.
Srinivas’ views on the importance of caste in the electoral processes in India are well known. While some have interpreted this to attest to the enduring structural principles of Indian society, for Srinivas this was a sign of the dynamic changes that were taking place as democracy spread and electoral politics became a resource in the local worlds of village society. By inclination he was not given to utopian constructions – his ideas about justice, equality and eradication of poverty were rooted in his experiences on the ground. His integrity in the face of demands that his sociology should take into account the new and radical aspirations was one of the most moving aspects of his writing.Through terms such as "sanskritisation", "dominant caste", "vertical (inter-caste) and horizontal (intra-caste) solidarities", Srinivas sought to capture the fluid and dynamic essence of caste as a social institution.
As part of his methodological practice, Srinivas strongly advocated fieldwork but his concept of fieldwork was tied to the notion of locally bounded sites. Thus some of his best papers, such as the paper on dominant caste and one on a joint family dispute, came from his participation in village life.He wrote several papers on the themes of national integration, issues of gender, new technologies, and I have often wondered why he did not theorize on the methodological implications of writing on these issues which went beyond the village. One of his most remarkable books is "Caste in Modern India".Other books are Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India (1952).The Remembered Village (1976), Marriage and Family in Mysore (1942). Indian Society through Personal Writings (1998),Village, Caste, Gender and Method (1998), Social Change in Modern India,The Dominant Caste and Other Essays,M. N. Srinivas (et al.), Dimensions of Social Change in India
