Revision summary
Srinivas gave Sanskritisation, dominant caste, and Westernisation. Rampura made the Indian village a modern ethnographic object. Radcliffe-Brown’s structural-functionalism trained his method. He replaced Risley’s race types with field relations. Ghurye and Indian texts still shaped what Oxford did not supply.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
M. N. Srinivas made Indian society a field science of caste, village, and change. British social anthropology gave him method; India gave him Sanskritisation and the dominant caste.
Body
Contributions
- Sanskritisation explained jati mobility as copy of a locally high style, not as varna theory alone.
- Dominant caste named who actually rules the village by land and numbers.
- Westernisation named the British-modern channel of change.
- Rampura fieldwork showed faction, vote, and ritual in one monograph, the model for later village studies.
British influence
- Training under A. R. Radcliffe-Brown at Oxford taught structure, field, and the social system as relations, not race types like Risley.
- The structural-functional village was a British-African transplant that Srinivas Indianised with Indology and jati.
- He kept the field ethic of Malinowski’s heirs: stay, learn the language of practice, write the system.
Limit of the influence
- British functionalism underplayed history and colonial power. Srinivas still wrote change, but slowly.
- Ghurye, his Indian teacher, and later critics added text, tribe, and inequality that Oxford did not exhaust.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD B[Radcliffe-Brown field] --> S[Srinivas] S --> K[Sanskritisation dominant caste] S --> W[Westernisation Rampura]
Conclusion
Srinivas contributed the working concepts of Indian sociology. British structural-functionalism trained his eye; Sanskritisation and dominant caste were his Indian inventions.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Was Srinivas only a British copy?
Method was Oxford. The key concepts were built for Indian jati and village.
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Did he ignore tribes?
His core was caste village. Tribe entered more as Sanskritising neighbour than as Elwin’s isolate.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2024 · Q3(b) · Anthropology GS 2 · 15 marks
Compare and contrast the approaches of M.N. Srinivas and L.P. Vidyarthi to social change in village India.
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