Indian Sociologists | ISC Class 11 Sociology Notes

This note covers five founding Indian sociologists and their main contributions: how sociology took root in India, Radhakamal Mukerjee and social ecology, G.S. Ghurye and the theories of the origin of caste (including his critique of the racial theory and his six features of caste), N.K. Bose and the Hindu method of tribal absorption, Irawati Karve on kinship and the family, and M.N. Srinivas on Brahminisation and Sanskritisation.

How did sociology take root in India?

In India, interest in sociological ways of thinking is a little more than a century old, but formal university teaching of sociology only began in 1919 at the University of Bombay. In the 1920s, the universities at Calcutta and Lucknow also began programmes of teaching and research in sociology and anthropology.

The early sociologists faced questions that western sociology had not. India experienced modernity as a colony. It was an ancient and advanced civilisation that also had 'primitive' societies within it. And after independence it began planned development and democracy.

The pioneers had to find their own answers, and also formulate new questions. These questions took shape only through the experience of 'doing' sociology in an Indian context; they were not available 'readymade'.

Bombay and Lucknow

Between the 1920s and the 1950s, sociology in India was equated with the two major departments at Bombay and Lucknow. Both began as combined departments of sociology and economics.

The Bombay department was led by G.S. Ghurye. The Lucknow department had the famous 'trinity' of Radhakamal Mukerjee (the founder), D.P. Mukerji and D.N. Majumdar. Ghurye's students included M.N. Srinivas and Irawati Karve.

What is Radhakamal Mukerjee's social ecology?

Radhakamal Mukerjee (also written Radha Kamal Mukherjee) founded the Lucknow department of sociology and economics. Trained as an economist, he argued that economics and sociology must be studied together with the natural environment.

Ecology is the study of the relationship between living beings and their environment. Social ecology, as Mukerjee developed it, applies this to human society: it studies how human groups, their economy and their culture are shaped by, and in turn reshape, the natural region in which they live.

Definition: Social ecology. The study of the interdependence between human society and its natural environment, in which the region, its living beings and human groups form one balanced whole.

Main ideas of social ecology

• The region as the unit: Mukerjee took the region, an area with its own soil, climate, rivers, plants and animals, as the basic unit of study. He called this approach regional sociology.
• Interdependence: human beings, plants, animals and the physical environment are bound together in a web of relationships.
• Two-way influence: the region shapes how people live, farm and organise themselves, while people change the region through cultivation, settlement and technology.
• Ecological balance: a society thrives when its use of land, water and forests stays in balance with nature; when the balance breaks down, problems follow.
• Interdisciplinary study: understanding a region needs economics, sociology, geography and biology together.

When the balance breaks down

Mukerjee drew attention to the harm caused when people over-use their environment. Rising population pressure, the clearing of forests, over-cultivation and soil erosion can lower farm output, deepen poverty and push people into crowded cities.

His work linked these ecological problems to social problems, such as rural poverty and urban overcrowding. Today's concerns about sustainable development echo his call for a balance between people and nature.

Who was G.S. Ghurye?

Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1893 to 1983) can be considered the founder of institutionalised sociology in India. He was born on 12 December 1893 in Malvan, a town in the Konkan coastal region of western India.

Education and career

• He studied Sanskrit at Elphinstone College, Bombay, and in 1919 was selected for a University of Bombay scholarship for training abroad in sociology.
• He studied with L.T. Hobhouse at the London School of Economics and then with W.H.R. Rivers at Cambridge, and was deeply influenced by Rivers's diffusionist perspective.
• In 1924 he was appointed Reader and Head of the Department of Sociology at Bombay University, and remained Head for the next 35 years.
• In 1936 the department launched a Ph.D. programme; the first Ph.D. in sociology at an Indian university went to G.R. Pradhan under Ghurye's supervision.
• In 1951 he established the Indian Sociological Society, and its journal, Sociological Bulletin, was launched in 1952.
• He retired in 1959, but 17 of his 30 books were written after retirement. He died in 1983, at the age of 90.

His approach

Ghurye's Bombay department was the first to combine teaching and research in one institution and to merge social anthropology and sociology into a composite discipline.

Best known for his writings on caste and race, he also wrote on tribes; kinship, family and marriage; culture, civilisation and the historic role of cities; religion; and conflict and integration. He described the tribes of India as 'backward Hindus' rather than distinct cultural groups, a view discussed further under tribal absorption.

What are the main theories of the origin of caste?

Scholars have offered several theories to explain how the caste system began. No single theory is accepted by all, and Ghurye himself drew on several factors.

Traditional or divine theory

The traditional theory traces caste to a divine origin. According to the Purusha Sukta hymn of the Rig Veda, the four varnas came from different parts of the body of the primeval being: Brahmins from the mouth, Kshatriyas from the arms, Vaishyas from the thighs and Shudras from the feet.

Groups that believe their caste and its occupation were created by God hold this view. Critics note that it explains the four varnas but not the many jatis, and that it cannot be checked by evidence.

Racial theory

The racial theory, proposed mainly by Herbert Risley, a British colonial official, held that caste originated in race. Different caste groups seemed to belong to distinct racial types, measured through anthropometry: the circumference of the skull, the length of the nose and the volume of the cranium.

Risley argued that the higher castes approximated Indo-Aryan racial traits, while the lower castes were the original aboriginal inhabitants of India, subjugated by an Aryan people who had come from elsewhere.

Occupational theory

The occupational theory, associated with John Nesfield, held that caste grew out of occupation. Groups doing the same work formed separate castes, and castes were ranked by how highly their occupation was valued, with priestly work at the top.

Political theory

The political theory, associated with the French missionary Abbé Dubois, held that caste was a device created by the Brahmins to secure their own supremacy in society.

How did Ghurye critique the racial theory and define caste?

Ghurye's reputation was built on his Cambridge doctoral dissertation, published as Caste and Race in India (1932). In it he gave a detailed critique of the then dominant theories about race and caste.

Ghurye on caste and race

Ghurye did not disagree with Risley's basic argument, but believed it to be only partially correct. He pointed out the problem with using averages alone without considering the variation in the distribution of a measurement within a community.

He held that Risley's thesis of upper castes being Aryan and lower castes non-Aryan was broadly true only for northern India. In other parts of India, inter-group differences in anthropometric measurements were not very large or systematic.

This suggested that, except in the Indo-Gangetic plain, different racial groups had been mixing for a very long time. 'Racial purity' had been preserved by the ban on inter-marriage only in 'Hindustan proper' (north India). Elsewhere, endogamy may have been introduced into groups that were already racially varied.

Ghurye saw caste as having developed among the Indo-Aryans of the Gangetic plain, with the Brahmins seeking to keep themselves pure, and then spreading to other parts of the country. Today the racial theory of caste is no longer believed, but in the first half of the 20th century it was still considered true.

Ghurye's six features of caste

• Segmental division: caste is divided into closed, mutually exclusive segments. Caste is decided by birth; it can neither be avoided nor changed.
• Hierarchical division: every caste is either higher or lower than every other one. In theory, though not in practice, no two castes are ever equal.
• Restrictions on social interaction, specially the sharing of food, governed by ideas of purity and pollution, most dramatically in untouchability.
• Differential rights and duties for different castes, in religious practices and in the secular world.
• Restricted choice of occupation, which is hereditary; caste works as a rigid division of labour.
• Strict restrictions on marriage: caste endogamy, often with rules of exogamy about whom one may not marry.

Ghurye's definition helped make the study of caste more systematic. It was based on what the classical texts prescribed; in actual practice many features were changing, though all continue to exist in some form.

Who was N.K. Bose?

Nirmal Kumar Bose (1901 to 1972) was an anthropologist from Bengal who taught at Calcutta University. He combined careful field studies of tribes and villages with deep involvement in public life.

Career and public life

• He did fieldwork among the Juang, a tribe of Odisha, and among other tribal and peasant communities of eastern India.
• He was closely associated with Mahatma Gandhi and served as his secretary during Gandhi's peace mission in Noakhali in 1946 and 1947. He later wrote My Days with Gandhi.
• He served as Director of the Anthropological Survey of India and later as Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
• He wrote on the structure of Hindu society, arguing that caste had long organised the economic and cultural life of Indian communities.

The context of the tribal debate

In the 1930s and 1940s there was much debate on the place of tribal societies within India. Many British administrator-anthropologists believed tribes were primitive peoples with a distinctive culture far from mainstream Hinduism. They felt the state had a duty to protect tribes from exploitation and cultural degradation.

Nationalist Indians believed that attempts to preserve tribal culture kept tribals backward, as 'museums' of primitive culture. Ghurye, the best-known exponent of this view, showed that tribes had been involved in constant interactions with Hinduism over a long period.

That Indian tribals were hardly ever isolated primitive communities was not really disputed. The difference lay in how the impact of mainstream culture was evaluated. Bose's work explained how this long interaction actually worked.

What is the Hindu method of tribal absorption?

In his essay The Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption, N.K. Bose explained how many tribal groups came to be absorbed into Hindu society as castes over time, without force or formal conversion.

Definition: Tribal absorption. Bose's term for the gradual process by which tribal groups adopted Hindu ways and found a place in the caste hierarchy, while keeping some of their own customs.

How absorption took place

Drawing on cases such as the Juang, Bose described absorption as a gradual series of changes:

1. Contact: the tribe lived next to Hindu peasant villages and traded and worked with them.
2. Economic change: it gave up shifting cultivation or forest-based livelihoods and took up settled plough agriculture like its Hindu neighbours.
3. Religious change: it began to worship Hindu gods and goddesses, celebrate Hindu festivals and seek the services of Brahmin priests.
4. Social change: it adopted Hindu rules about food, purity and marriage.
5. Caste status: the group came to be recognised as a caste, usually at a low level of the hierarchy, sometimes claiming a higher origin.

Why did tribes accept absorption?

• Economic security: caste gave each group a hereditary occupation and a protected place in a non-competitive economy, which offered security of livelihood.
• Cultural autonomy: Hindu society allowed each caste to keep many of its own customs, beliefs and practices.
• Social recognition: becoming a caste gave the group a recognised position in the wider society.

The process was a form of assimilation, in which a larger or dominant culture gradually absorbs another. Bose's account shows why it was slow and partial: tribes often kept their own deities and customs alongside Hindu ones.

What did Irawati Karve contribute to the study of kinship and the family?

Irawati Karve (1905 to 1970) was a sociologist and anthropologist who studied under G.S. Ghurye at Bombay and earned a doctorate in anthropology in Berlin. She taught for many years at Deccan College, Pune.

Her best-known work, Kinship Organisation in India, studied how kinship and marriage vary across India. She held that language, caste and family organisation must be studied together to understand Indian culture. She also wrote Hindu Society: An Interpretation and the Marathi work Yuganta, a study of the Mahabharata.

Karve on the joint family

Karve described the joint family as a group of people who generally live under one roof, eat food cooked at one hearth, hold property in common, take part in common family worship and are related to one another as a particular type of kindred.

• Common residence: members live under one roof.
• Common kitchen: food is cooked at one hearth.
• Common property: property is held jointly.
• Common worship: members join in family worship.
• Kinship: members are related as kindred, usually through several generations.

Karve's four kinship zones

Karve divided India into four kinship zones, each linked broadly to a language family:

• Northern zone: the Indo-Aryan speaking north.
• Central zone: areas such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha, where northern and southern patterns mix.
• Southern zone: the Dravidian speaking south.
• Eastern zone: areas of Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman speaking, largely tribal, communities, including matrilineal groups such as the Khasi.

How do kinship patterns differ between the northern and southern zones?

Karve's sharpest contrast was between the northern and southern zones, which follow opposite rules about whom one may marry.

The northern pattern

In the north, marriage is arranged with families who are not related. There are wide rules of exogamy: one may not marry within one's own gotra, and often not within the gotras of one's mother and grandmothers, or within one's own village.

A bride usually moves to a distant village and becomes a stranger in her husband's home. Cousin marriage is forbidden, and the family is usually patrilineal and patrilocal.

The southern pattern

In the south, marriage among close kin is preferred. Cross-cousin marriage, with the mother's brother's daughter or the father's sister's daughter, is common, and in some groups a man may marry his elder sister's daughter.

A bride often marries into a family she already knows, close to her natal home. The south also includes matrilineal communities, such as the Nayars of Kerala.

Karve's zones showed that there is no single 'Indian family'. Kinship rules differ by region and language, though the joint family ideal is found widely.

Who was M.N. Srinivas?

Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas (1916 to 1999), probably the best-known Indian sociologist of the post-independence era, was born on 16 November 1916 in Mysore. He did an M.A. and a Ph.D. under G.S. Ghurye at Bombay.

Career

• In 1945 he went to Oxford, studying first under Radcliffe-Brown and then under Evans-Pritchard, and received a D.Phil. in Social Anthropology in 1947.
• His doctoral dissertation was published as Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, which established his international reputation through its use of the structural-functional perspective.
• In 1948 he was appointed Lecturer in Indian Sociology at Oxford and did fieldwork in Rampura.
• In 1951 he resigned to found the sociology department at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda; in 1959 he set up the department at the Delhi School of Economics.
• In 1971 he co-founded the Institute of Social and Economic Change at Bangalore. He died on 30 November 1999.

Srinivas on the village

Fieldwork for a year in a village near Mysore was decisive for his career. With scholars such as S.C. Dube and D.N. Majumdar, he made village studies the dominant field in Indian sociology in the 1950s and 1960s.

Louis Dumont argued that institutions like caste mattered more than the village. Srinivas held that the village was a relevant social entity, and criticised the British picture of villages as unchanging, self-sufficient "little republics", showing that villages had changed considerably and were never self-sufficient.

What are Brahminisation and Sanskritisation?

Srinivas's best-known concepts describe how groups seek to rise in the caste hierarchy. They show that caste, though hierarchical, allowed some mobility over time.

From Brahminisation to Sanskritisation

In his study of the Coorgs, Srinivas first used the term Brahminisation for the process by which lower castes imitated the customs and way of life of Brahmins in order to raise their status.

He later replaced it with the wider term Sanskritisation, for two reasons. The model a group copied was not always the Brahmin; it could be a Kshatriya, Vaishya or locally dominant caste. And Brahmins themselves differed: some Brahmin groups had customs, such as eating meat, that did not fit the Sanskritic model.

Definition: Sanskritisation. The process by which a lower caste, tribe or other group changes its customs, rituals, beliefs and way of life in the direction of a higher, often twice-born, caste, and claims a higher position in the caste hierarchy.

Features of Sanskritisation

• Imitation of a higher caste: the group adopts practices such as vegetarianism, giving up alcohol, worshipping Sanskritic deities, using Brahmin priests and, in some cases, wearing the sacred thread.
• Claim to higher status: over a generation or two, the group claims a higher position in the local hierarchy.
• Group process: it is a change in the position of a whole caste, not of one individual.
• Positional, not structural, change: a caste may move up, but the hierarchy itself remains.
• Link with economic and political gains: a rise in wealth or power often comes before or with the claim to higher ritual status.
• Varied models: the model may be a Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya or locally dominant caste, Srinivas's term for a caste that is numerically large and economically and politically powerful in a region.

Criticisms

• It may exaggerate social mobility, since only some groups rise, and only a little.
• It accepts the ways of the upper castes as superior and so can justify the hierarchy.
• It can worsen the position of women, for example through stricter controls and the adoption of dowry.
• It devalues the cultures of lower castes and tribes.

Srinivas paired Sanskritisation with Westernisation, the changes brought about by British rule in technology, institutions, ideas and values. Together they offered a way to study cultural change in modern India.

Glossary

• Social ecology: Mukerjee's study of the interdependence between human society, its living beings and the natural region it occupies.
• Regional sociology: Mukerjee's approach that treats a natural region, with its environment and people, as the basic unit of study.
• Anthropometry: The branch of anthropology that studied racial types by measuring the body, especially the cranium, head circumference and nose length.
• Endogamy: A rule defining the group within which marriage is permitted, as in caste endogamy, where marriage is only within the caste.
• Exogamy: A rule defining the group within which marriage is prohibited, such as blood relatives, the same lineage or the same village.
• Segmental division: Ghurye's feature of caste as closed, mutually exclusive compartments whose membership is fixed by birth.
• Diffusionism: The view that cultural traits spread from one society to others; it deeply influenced Ghurye through W.H.R. Rivers.
• Assimilation: A process by which a larger or dominant culture gradually absorbs another until the absorbed culture is no longer visible.
• Tribal absorption: Bose's term for the gradual process by which tribes adopted Hindu ways and became castes while keeping some customs.
• Joint family: In Karve's account, kin who share a roof, a hearth, common property and common worship, usually across generations.
• Cross-cousin marriage: Marriage with the child of one's mother's brother or father's sister, preferred in the southern kinship zone.
• Sanskritisation: The process by which a lower caste or tribe adopts the customs of a higher caste and claims higher status.
• Dominant caste: Srinivas's term for a caste that is numerically large and economically and politically powerful in a region.
• Administrator-anthropologists: British officials in India who conducted anthropological research, such as Edgar Thurston, William Crooke, Herbert Risley and J.H. Hutton.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: Ghurye rejected Risley's racial theory completely. Correct: Ghurye thought it only partially correct, broadly true for northern India but not for the rest of the country.
• Misconception: Sanskritisation changes the caste system itself. Correct: It brings positional change for a caste; the hierarchy itself remains, so it is not structural change.
• Misconception: Sanskritisation always means copying Brahmins. Correct: Srinivas dropped 'Brahminisation' because the model may also be a Kshatriya, Vaishya or locally dominant caste.
• Misconception: Tribes were absorbed into Hindu society by force or conversion. Correct: Bose described a gradual absorption in which tribes adopted Hindu ways and gained caste status while keeping some of their customs.
• Misconception: Kinship rules are the same all over India. Correct: Karve showed that the north forbids cousin marriage and marries outside kin, while the south prefers cross-cousin marriage.
• Misconception: Social ecology is just the study of nature. Correct: It studies the two-way relationship between human society and its natural region.
• Misconception: In theory and practice, caste ranks were always perfectly fixed. Correct: Ghurye noted that no two castes are equal in theory though not in practice, and many features of caste were changing.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. What is Sanskritisation? [2 marks]

1. Sanskritisation, a concept of M.N. Srinivas, is the process by which a lower caste, tribe or other group adopts the customs, rituals and way of life of a higher, often twice-born, caste.
2. Through it, the group claims a higher position in the caste hierarchy over a generation or two.

Q2. Name the four kinship zones identified by Irawati Karve. [2 marks]

1. Karve identified the northern zone and the southern zone, which follow opposite marriage rules.
2. She also identified the central zone, where northern and southern patterns mix, and the eastern zone of largely tribal communities.

Q3. Members of a caste of weavers believe that their caste was created by God and that weaving is the duty God assigned to them. Identify the theory of the origin of caste reflected here and explain it. [4 marks]

1. The belief reflects the traditional or divine theory of the origin of caste.
2. According to the Purusha Sukta hymn of the Rig Veda, the four varnas came from the body of the primeval being: Brahmins from the mouth, Kshatriyas from the arms, Vaishyas from the thighs and Shudras from the feet.
3. On this view, each caste and its occupation are divinely ordained, so the weavers see their work as a sacred duty.
4. Critics note that the theory explains the four varnas but not the many jatis, and that it cannot be tested by evidence.

Q4. Explain G.S. Ghurye's critique of Herbert Risley's racial theory of caste. [4 marks]

1. Risley argued that caste originated in race, with higher castes approximating Indo-Aryan traits and lower castes being the original aboriginal inhabitants, measured through anthropometry.
2. Ghurye thought Risley only partially correct, and criticised the use of averages without considering variation within each community.
3. He found the Aryan and non-Aryan division broadly true only for northern India; elsewhere differences in measurements were not large or systematic.
4. He concluded that outside the Indo-Gangetic plain racial groups had long mixed, and endogamy may have been introduced into groups already racially varied.

Q5. Explain Radhakamal Mukerjee's idea of social ecology. [4 marks]

1. Social ecology studies the interdependence between human society and its natural environment, applying the idea of ecology to human groups.
2. Mukerjee took the region, with its soil, climate, plants and animals, as the basic unit of study, an approach called regional sociology.
3. He held that the region shapes how people live and organise, while people in turn change the region through cultivation and technology.
4. He stressed ecological balance: over-use of land, forests and water leads to soil erosion, poverty and overcrowding, so economics and sociology must be studied with the environment.

Q6. Discuss G.S. Ghurye's six features of caste. [7 marks]

1. Segmental division: caste is divided into closed, mutually exclusive segments, and membership is decided by birth; it can neither be avoided nor changed.
2. Hierarchical division: every caste is either higher or lower than every other one, and in theory, though not in practice, no two castes are equal.
3. Restrictions on social interaction: rules govern the sharing of food and contact between castes, based on ideas of purity and pollution, most dramatically in untouchability.
4. Differential rights and duties: different castes have different rights and duties in religious practices and in the secular world.
5. Restricted choice of occupation: occupation is hereditary, so caste functions as a rigid division of labour.
6. Restrictions on marriage: caste endogamy is often combined with rules of exogamy about whom one may not marry, which helps reproduce the system.
7. Ghurye's definition made the study of caste more systematic, though it was based on classical texts, and in practice many features were changing while continuing in some form.

Q7. Discuss N.K. Bose's idea of the Hindu method of tribal absorption. [7 marks]

1. Bose explained how tribal groups were gradually absorbed into Hindu society as castes, without force or formal conversion.
2. Absorption began with contact, as tribes lived beside Hindu peasant villages and traded and worked with them.
3. Tribes such as the Juang took up settled plough agriculture in place of shifting cultivation or forest livelihoods.
4. They began worshipping Hindu deities, celebrating Hindu festivals, using Brahmin priests and following Hindu rules of food, purity and marriage.
5. In time the group was recognised as a caste, usually at a low level of the hierarchy, sometimes claiming a higher origin.
6. Tribes accepted absorption because caste offered economic security through a hereditary occupation and allowed cultural autonomy to keep many customs.
7. The process was slow and partial, which fits Ghurye's point that tribes had long interacted with Hinduism and were not isolated primitive communities.

Q8. Explain M.N. Srinivas's concept of Sanskritisation. Why did he replace the term Brahminisation? [7 marks]

1. Sanskritisation is the process by which a lower caste, tribe or other group adopts the customs, rituals and way of life of a higher caste and claims a higher position.
2. Srinivas first used the term Brahminisation in his study of the Coorgs, for lower castes imitating Brahmin ways.
3. He replaced it because the model was not always the Brahmin; it could be a Kshatriya, Vaishya or locally dominant caste.
4. He also found that some Brahmin groups had customs, such as eating meat, that did not fit the Sanskritic model.
5. Sanskritising groups adopt practices such as vegetarianism, giving up alcohol, worshipping Sanskritic deities and using Brahmin priests.
6. It is a group process that brings positional, not structural, change, and is often linked to prior economic or political gains.
7. Critics say it exaggerates mobility, accepts upper-caste ways as superior and can worsen the position of women, for example through dowry.

Q9. Compare the kinship patterns of the northern and southern zones as described by Irawati Karve. [4 marks]

1. In the north, spouses come from unrelated families, while in the south marriage among close kin is preferred.
2. The north forbids cousin marriage, while the south prefers cross-cousin marriage and, in some groups, marriage with the elder sister's daughter.
3. The north has wide exogamy rules covering one's own gotra, often the mother's gotra and the village, while southern rules are narrower.
4. A northern bride usually moves far and is a stranger in her new home, while a southern bride often marries among known kin close to home.

Key takeaways

• Formal teaching of sociology in India began in 1919 at Bombay; Bombay under Ghurye and Lucknow under its 'trinity' led the discipline from the 1920s to the 1950s.
• Radhakamal Mukerjee's social ecology studies the two-way relationship between society and its natural region and stresses ecological balance.
• Theories of the origin of caste include the traditional, racial, occupational and political theories; none is accepted by all scholars.
• Ghurye found Risley's racial theory only partially correct, broadly true for north India, and defined caste through six features.
• N.K. Bose showed how tribes were gradually absorbed into Hindu society as castes, attracted by economic security and allowed cultural autonomy.
• Irawati Karve mapped four kinship zones and contrasted the northern ban on cousin marriage with the southern preference for cross-cousin marriage.
• Karve described the joint family by common residence, common hearth, common property, common worship and kinship.
• M.N. Srinivas replaced Brahminisation with Sanskritisation, a group process of positional mobility in which lower castes adopt higher-caste ways.

Test yourself

Who founded the Indian Sociological Society, and in which year?

G.S. Ghurye established the Indian Sociological Society in 1951 and became its founding President.

Name the 'trinity' of the Lucknow department.

Radhakamal Mukerjee, the founder, together with D.P. Mukerji and D.N. Majumdar.

What is anthropometry?

The branch of anthropology that studied racial types by measuring the body, especially the cranium, head circumference and nose length.

Which tribe did N.K. Bose study in Odisha?

The Juang, whose gradual adoption of Hindu ways informed his account of the Hindu method of tribal absorption.

Which book by Irawati Karve mapped kinship across India?

Kinship Organisation in India, which divided the country into northern, central, southern and eastern kinship zones.

What is a dominant caste?

Srinivas's term for a caste that is numerically large and economically and politically powerful in a particular region.

Why did Srinivas disagree with Louis Dumont about village studies?

Dumont thought caste mattered more than the village, but Srinivas held that the village was a relevant social entity with real unity.

In which book was Srinivas's doctoral dissertation published?

Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, which established his international reputation.