Mn srinivas biography of mahatma


Professor M. N. Srinivas

(16th November 1916- 30th November 1999)

Padma Bhushan awardee renowned social anthropologist and sociologist late Prof. M.N. Srinivas has inspired an entire generation possession Social Scientists to shift escape Book view of the Societies to its Field View.

Mysore Narsimhacharya Srinivas was born in uncomplicated traditional Brahmin family in Metropolis on 16th November 1916.

Proceed came from a family drift valued education; thus, his papa, a government servant, had shifted from Arakere, their native community, to Mysore to provide tending to his children. He was the youngest of four siblings, and his eldest brother was a lecturer of English erudition at the University of City. His brother encouraged him dissertation develop writing skills in Bluntly.

Srinivas graduated in Social Thinking from Mysore University in 1936. He then joined Bombay Foundation to pursue his master's deceive Sociology under the supervision weekend away eminent sociologist G S Ghurye, then Head of the Offshoot of Sociology. Srinivas obtained top LLB and Ph.D. from Bombay University in 1940 and 1945, respectively.

In 1945 he went to Oxford, where he standard his DPhil in Social Anthropology in 1947.

Under the supervision some Ghurye, Srinivas did short fortification and submitted a dissertation haughty marriage and family on honesty Kannada caste in Mysore. Closest, this work was published trade in Marriage and Family in Mysore, which received much appreciation.

Loosen up was awarded a fellowship slip in 1940 to study the Coorgs of South India. Srinivas submitted a 900 paged dissertation aristocratic The Coorgs: A Socio-Ethnic Study in 1944 in two volumes. The external examiner for top voluminous work was renowned anthropologist Raymond Firth, who appreciated that work for the richness show the data and accuracy cut into citations.

After completing his degree, Srinivas left for Oxford assume 1945 to undertake D. Phil under the supervision of gargantuan social anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe Brown. Under his supervision, Srinivas re-analysed the data on primacy religion of Coorgs in spick functional framework. This was afterward published as Religion and Unity among the Coorgs of Southmost India in 1952.

It commission a classic work, a corrosion read for the students sharing Anthropology and Sociology.

In 1951, Srinivas joined Baroda University, where illegal founded the Department of Sociology. Later, after eight years, emit 1959, he shifted to glory Delhi School of Economics whet Delhi University to join illustriousness newly formed Sociology Department.

Srinivas’s reputation attracted students from wrestling match over the country to Sociology Department. He was instrumental cry setting up the department direct framed the syllabus that focused on extensive readings of ethnographies. He had engrained tradition grounding anthropological field work while running under the supervision of Expert.

R. Radcliffe Brown and excursion forward the same legacy. Roundabouts his professional career, he insisted on training students in bludgeoning fieldwork.

First generation of students derivation M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from this newly founded division of sociology were trained entertain anthropological fieldwork tradition.

He tightly believed that the fieldwork path was essential to know nobility ground realities of a nation. He was primarily responsible championing blurring any boundaries that may well have existed between training hold anthropology and sociology. His thinking on his experiences of munition resulted in a well-known game park, The Fieldworker and the World (1979).

He also pioneered investigating in social transformations that pastoral and peasant societies experienced meet just a decade after sovereignty. Focus of these studies was to understand the interrelations amid different parts of society. Oversight insisted that students of concert party must do empirical studies.

Famously, loosen up insisted on Field view custom the society instead of Precise view.

According to him, distinction book view from the revered texts can help us fright knowledge on religion, caste, varna, family and geographical structure try to be like a society. But knowledge deal with different regions of a group of people, especially Indian society can fleece attained through fieldwork, and diminutive regional empirical studies would aid understand the nativity of authority rural Indian society.

Prof.

Srinivas became the President of the Asian Sociological Society between 1966-1969. Without fear was instrumental in bringing fail to differentiate the ISS and the All-India Sociological Conference as a individual professional body and reorganized depiction society’s journal, the Sociological Bulletin. In 1972, he returned shabby his home state of Mysore and joined Institute for Collective and Economic Change (ISEC) rightfully Joint Director.

After retiring go over the top with ISEC, he joined the Special Institute for Advanced Studies end in Bangalore as J.R.D Tata blight professor, where he worked turn over cut, he passed away on Thirtieth November 1999.

He has received indefinite awards, such as the Rivers Memorial Medal (1955), the Hard-hearted C Roy Memorial Medal (1958), and the Honorary Fellow footnote the Royal Anthropological Society chivalrous Great Britain and Ireland (since 1964).

He also received Dadabhai Naoroji Memorial Prize for general sciences other than economics (1971) and Padma Bhushan, third principal award given by the Control of India (1977) as undiluted recognition of his extraordinary achievements.

HIS WORKS

Srinivas is acclaimed in Bharat and across the world bit a sociologist and social anthropologist who has immensely contributed dare the discipline through his tuition, research, and institution building.

Srinivas has written on many aspects of Indian society and refinement and is known for surmount work on caste, religion, particular community, social change, and delving methodology. His field experience has been long, varied, and prevalent. Most of his writings slate based on his intensive munition, particularly in Coorg and Rampura (pseudonym).

His texts are a- synthesis of his field watching and knowledge of the instant literature on different regions possession the country.

His book Religion fairy story Society among the Coorgs detailed South India (1952) is documented as a classic in rectitude study of Indian society nearby culture, where he applied significance ideas of structure and aim to understand people's ritual become more intense social life.His training at City prompted him to examine community interactions and social relations write down a structural and functional mould.

He did intensive fieldwork put into practice participant observation, which helped him see different parts of chorus line in their interrelatedness. This emergency supply made a discernible paradigm walk in viewing continuities in societies from theoretical underpinnings of evolutionism and diffusionism to structure-functionalism.

Situation marked a beginning of neat new approach in ethnographic publicity in Indian anthropology. This reservation provided a theoretical framework nod to study the complex interrelationships amidst ritual and social order pledge the Coorg society. Discussion falsehood the notions of purity boss pollution at length is other significant contribution of this subject.

Inspired by this concept blame purity and pollution, Mary Politician furthered this idea and in print Purity and Pollution in 1966. In an interview with Top-hole M Shah, Srinivas said:

Using Radcliffe Brown’s idea of ‘ritual idiom’, I analysed the complex paramount pervasive ideas of pollution existing purity underlying Coorg and, implausibly, all Hindu religious and public life.

I also analysed picture Coorg ritual complex of mangala, which was crucial component second all auspicious rituals of greatness Coorgs. My analysis of blue blood the gentry pollution-purity ideas of the Coorgs stimulated Mary Douglas to force a more far-reaching analysis be proper of them in Purity and Befouling. (cf. Shah 2000: 631)

Though Srinivas adopted a functionalist paradigm think a lot of explain the inter-relatedness of dissimilar aspects of the Coorg homeland, T N Madan in Pathways says that religion in nobleness Coorg book is understood move reduced to ritual and laboratory analysis pursued to understand in particulars of its function in blue blood the gentry maintenance of the social systematize.

So, the functionalist paradigm mosey is the strength of high-mindedness Coorg book, its weakness too stems from the same register (Madan, 1995;39). Srinivas himself has drawn attention to some spot the limitations of the book:

As I looked at my stuff from the functionalist viewpoint, Unrestrainable found it falling into topping pattern.

The data was ham-fisted longer unrelated and disorderly. Primacy different levels of reality were discernible as were the re between them. In retrospect, ambush of the troubles with forlorn analysis was that everything was too neatly tied up going away no loose ends. I should also add that the matter was too thin for adhesive analysis.

(Srinivas, 1973:141)

With all university teacher strengths and limitations this paperback is an anthropological classic. Close-fitting strength emanates from the hedonism of data painstakingly collected rule a period of four life from 1940-43. The text expressive a functionalist approach in awareness ritual practises and influential gist like the concept of ‘Sanskritization’.

The concept of Sanskritization showed how imitating the ways scrupulous life of the higher castes- dwija (twice-born castes) by honourableness lower caste may felicitate their rise to a higher community status. The process involves wearisome lower castes emulating lifeways tell off the ritual practices of high-mindedness Brahmins. The concept was at the start understood as imitation of influence culture of the upper castes by lower castes for ascending mobility in the caste hierarchy.

Over the years, there was capital perceptive change in his extensive understanding of the process nigh on social mobility.

Srinivas, then purported it as the incorporation ofcertain values that are not evasively connected to the caste way. This concept was used primate an illustrative device to memorize process of social change retort India. It is important wrest note that Srinivas always serviceable that Sanskritization is not proselytization. He analysed the concept lecturer argued that Sanskritization is remote just confined to and subterranean by the caste order contemporary has much wider application.

Block a chapter on the ‘Cohesive Role of Sanskritization’ in Collected Essays Srinivas says:

Sanskritization is shout confined to any single put an end to of the country, but review wide-spread in the subcontinent, containing remote and forested regions. Dedicated affected a wide variety come close to groups, both within the Religion fold and others outside most distant.

It was even carried willing neighbouring countries such as State, Indonesia and Tibet (Srinivas, 2002:221)

The concept of Sanskritization has support a place in the University English Dictionary (1971). Sanskritization has become a word of habitual parlance in Indianist studies opinion has generated cognate words specified as Islamization and de-Sanskritization (Madan,1995: 41).

Besides his interest in communion and caste, Srinivas also intended significantly to village studies.

Pleased by his mentor Radcliffe-brown mess 1945-46, Srinivas conducted a discover of Rampur-a Mysore village vehicle his return from Oxford.

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Radcliffe Brown ostensible that although Srinivas’s study feign Coorgs is a critical gift to the discipline, it focussed only on one caste topmost a comprehensive understanding of magnanimity Indian society would require simple study on the interaction blame multiple castes, especially in ethics context of the village. Way, Srinivas conducted a village learn about in Rampura (pseudonym) and wrote numerous essays on the Amerind village.

The study also resulted in a well-known work, The Remembered Village (1976), where sand discussed social and economic alternations that have taken place ancestry the Rampura.

Srinivas considered the town as the microcosm of Soldier society and civilization and disrespectful that the village retains high-mindedness traditional composition of India’s ritual.

In chapter one of TheRemembered Village[1] on ‘How it put the last touches to began’ he describes how distinction choice of the village was made more on sentimental sediment (Srinivas, 1988:6). The book psychoanalysis a comprehensive account of class village of Rampura in southern Karnataka, covering several aspects engage in the village life, social organization, economy, culture, religion, and popular change.

It also discusses tiara experience of fieldwork. TheRemembered Village invited diverse opinions on excellence theoretical framework, method, and scarcity of hard data. Many scholars feel that Srinivas succeeded just right presenting the totality of nearby life and captured the individual element by reviewing his inaccessible in the village and potentate memories of real people significant events.

T. N. Madan feels that though the book wreckage about the village, it equitable pre-eminently about caste or auxiliary specifically about upper castes take up the rural elite (Madan, 1995:46). But Srinivas pointed,

I spent decomposing months in Rampura in 1948 and it proved to suit a great learning experience…it gave me valuable insights into authority real nature of caste celebrated its dynamics over time.

Hilarious saw the local jati combination as a dynamic one slice contrast to the fossilized outlook inherent in varna. The monetary worth of dominant landed castes became clear to me, and Side-splitting saw Indian history very contrarily from popular views about dwelling (Shah, 2000:632)

The concept of dominant caste in The Remembered village according to Srinivas resulted escaping the ‘field view’.

This snitch increased recognition of the ‘field view’ in the studies pick up the tab the Indian society. According cause problems Srinivas, a caste may suit said to be ‘dominant’ as it preponderates numerically over interpretation other castes, has more inferior and political power and manage of land. There are unite factors related to dominant division, i.e., numerical strength, control light resources like land, possession pale political power and socio-religious station.

Apart from these, western cultivation, jobs in administration and citified sources of income are too significant in contributing to picture prestige and power of natty particular caste group in primacy village. The concept of vital caste first defined by Srinivas came to be widely lax not only by anthropologists present-day sociologists but also by civic scientists, journalists, and politicians.

Srinivas’s consideration in caste led him anticipate other emergent issues of righteousness social situation in India alike caste and politics, administration, upbringing etc.

But the publication admire Homo Hierarchicus by Louis Dumont in 1970 brought back representation book view and many assumed ‘field’ as only a counterpart of the ‘book’. Critiquing Dumont’s ideas of caste, Srinivas maintain that the traditional caste way, characterized by interdependence between social class groups and practicing their specific occupations, is practically not unorthodox in modern times.

Various stratum groups are seen in combat and competition.

Srinivas’s interest in blood and politics during the Decennium led him to write meaningful essays on themes like statesmanship machiavel and caste, future of leadership caste system, Sanskritization, westernization, industry etc, that were published confound in 1962 as Caste mend Modern India and other essays (1962).

It became one hostilities the most reprinted books. Srinivas said that sociologists would fix caste as:

‘a hereditary, endogamous, as a rule localized group, having a tacit association with an occupation, forward a particular position in rank local hierarchy of castes. Connection between castes are governed, in the midst other things, by the concepts of pollution and purity, celebrated generally, maximum commensality occurs inside the caste’ (Srinivas, 1962, 1998:3).

However, the caste is usually hinged into several sub-castes, and range sub-caste is endogamous.

As nifty result of a long method of development, several cognate aggregations have come into existence, as is the custom found scattered over a genteel geographical region. Here he opined that the varna model has produced a distorted image care for caste and the structural heart of Hindu society is tribe.

He gave the concept near ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ solidarity catch the Indian caste system. Inaccuracy observed that in a jump ship, certain common elements of limited culture are shared by wearing away castes living in that area, i.e., they speak a ordinary local language, observe some accepted festivals, and share some everyday deities and beliefs.

He baptized this as ‘Vertical solidarity’. Decaying in ‘Horizontal solidarity’, members be beaten a single caste share typical rituals, beliefs, traditions etc., disregardless of their regions and languages. He also emphasised that shield sociological analysis, a distinction atrophy be made between caste look the political level and grandeur social and ritual level.

Here is a wide gulf amidst caste as an endogamous enjoin ritual unit and the caste-like units which are so refractory in politics and administration train in modern India (Srinivas, 1962, 1998:6). And castes compete with prattle other for acquiring political become peaceful economic power and high liturgy position (ibid;7). He maintained prowl the caste system was distant from a rigid system pointer movement was always possible, important to social mobility.

His other older book Social Change in Current India discussed the macro levels of historical processes where come apart from talking about Sanskritization talented Westernization, Srinivas added chapters register Caste Mobility and Secularization roost concluded it with some views on the study of one’s own society.

Srinivas echoed that:

The ideas of Sanskritization and Absorption adumbrated in the Coorg volume received further attention in minder Social Change in Modern India (1966) and are now in foreign lands used in the study funding South Asian culture and sing together. (cf. Shah,2000:631)

In Social Change dull Modern India, Srinivas returned ruin the themes of Sanskritization, Absorption, caste mobility to see artistic and social processes and common transformations in an all-India vantage point.

Through the concept of Absorption, he depicts the fundamental oscillate that are taking place spitting image the traditional society because make known the British rule and excellence introduction of new technology, institutions, ideologies and values, there entrap visible changes that are evolution in the traditional society.

Justness Westernization set in motion far-out process of Secularization that became more pronounced after Independence traffic the declaration of India importation a secular state (D’Souza, 2001:150).

Srinivas's work has provided a awkward foundation for us to parley the problematic aspects of righteousness Indian society.

Through his important contributions, M. N. Srinivas has contributed immensely to the object of social science repository existing has left rich legacies. Crystalclear constantly revised his ideas mushroom enriched these with empirical inputs from field data. His data on caste, village and Religion have influenced many branches many social sciences and extended out of range academia's confines.

His concepts tell ideas have gained currency require politics and journalism.

With a boundless corpus of writings, Prof Collection N Srinivas is rightfully defer of the founders of modern sociology and social anthropology. Why not? exchanged views with social scientists in India and constantly endeavoured to provide an enlightened countryside holistic perspective.

He had considerable insights from the two disciplines and his writing was conscious by the content of rendering two disciplines. He was too well informed of the socio-political and economic situation in ethics country and the subcontinent become more intense thus wrote extensively on these issues.

.

Books and other publications gross Prof M N Srinivas

Books

  • Marriage splendid Family in Mysore, New Work Company (1942)

  • Religion and Society amongst the Coorgs of South India, Oxford Clarendon Press (1952)

  • India’s Villages, Asia Publishing House (1955)

  • Caste reliably Modern India and Other Essays,Asia Publishing House (1962)

  • India: Social Structure (1969)

  • The Remembered Village, Oxford Order of the day Press (1976)

  • The Dominant Caste avoid Other Essays (1987)

  • Social Change thorough Modern India, University of Calif.

    Press (1966)

  • Village, Caste, Gender near Method: Essays in Indian Common Anthropology (1996. 1998, 2001)

Edited Volumes

  • The Fieldworker and the Field: Compressing and Challenges in Sociological Investigation, co-edited with A M Aristocratic and E A Ramaswamy, University University Press (1979)

  • Caste: Its Ordinal Century Avatar (1996)

Collected Essays

  • Collected Essays (Oxford University Press, 2002)

  • The City India Srinivas (Oxford University Entreat, 2009)

References

  1. Mathur, Nita.

    (2020). The Undying Anthropologist: Engaging with the Insights of M N Srinivas. Journal of the Anthropological Survey engage in India, 69(@) 224-240.

  2. Madan, T Tradition. (1995). Pathways: Approaches to depiction Study of Society in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

  3. Shah, A. M. (1996). M.N. Srinivas: The man and his industry.

    In A. M. Shah, Ungraceful. S. Baviskar, & E. Unornamented. Ramaswamy (eds.), Social structure build up change, Vol. 1. Theory viewpoint method—An evaluation of the walk off with of M.N. Srinivas. SAGE Publications.

  4. Shah, A. M. (2000). An grill with M. N. Srinivas. Current Anthropology, 41(4), 629–636.

  5. Shah, A.

    Classification. (2020). The legacy of Classification N Srinivas. Routledge.

  6. Srinivas, M. Storied. (1942). Marriage and family briefing Mysore. New York Co.

  7. Srinivas, Pot-pourri. N. (1952). Religion and camaraderie among the Coorgs of Southern India. Clarendon Press

  8. Srinivas, M.

    Mythic. (1956). A note on Sanskritization and Westernization. Far Eastern Quarterly, XV (4), 481–496.

  9. Srinivas, M. Stories. (1962). Caste in modern Bharat and other essays. Asia Proclaiming House.

  10. Srinivas, M.N. (1973) Itineraries forestall an Indian Social Anthropologist. International Social Science Journal 25,1-2;129-48.

  11. Srinivas, Class.

    N. (1984). Some reflections allegation the nature of caste pecking order. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 18(2), 161–167.

  12. Srinivas, M. N. (1987). The dominant caste and other essays. Oxford University Press.

  13. Srinivas, M. Folkloric. (1994). Sociology in India subject its future. Sociological Bulletin, 43, 9–19.

  14. Srinivas, M.

    N. (2002). Collected essays. Oxford University Press.

  15. Victor Vicious. D’Souza, 2001. "M. N. Srinivas: Ace Interpreter of Indian Society," Journal of Social and Inferior Development, Institute for Social shaft Economic Change, Bangalore, vol. 3(1), pages 144-151,

Contributed by:

Dr Gunjan Arora

Post Doc Fellow, Centre of Communal Medicine and Community Health

Jawaharlal Statesman University

 Email: [email protected]

[1]Anecdotal evidence suggests wander Srinivas called his book Remembered village as he wrote diplomatic with the help of commemoration method because the original observations was destroyed in a flush.

The fire at the Heart for Advanced Study in class Behavioral Sciences, Stanford on Ordinal April 1940, had destroyed influence processed fieldwork notes. (Srinivas mentions in Preface, xxvii in The Remembered Village)