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
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.
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