Here’s Why You Must Read ‘The Remembered Village’ by M.N. Srinivas

Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas was born in Mysore in 1916 and died in Bangalore in 1999. He was one of the most well-known sociologists from India ever. He was born and raised in a Brahmin home, and he conducted important ethnographic research on caste and its other categories. He also proposed essential concepts about caste, such as dominant castes, sanskritization, westernisation, and other ideas. He earned his PhD in sociology and foundational training at the University of Bombay. He subsequently pursued his education at Oxford University, where he made a significant contribution to the development of sociology as a field of study on the Indian subcontinent. Since he did not rely on a human anthropology textbook like many of his peers, Srinivas’ approach to sociology was significantly different. He was saddened by the book’s perspective and thought it was only worthy of use as a supplementary reference. He was an unwavering advocate for meticulous fieldwork and observation. He had the opinion that one must go into the field and become systematically associated with the field via observation in order to comprehend Indian society. Radcliffe Brown and his view of structure had a big impact on Srinivas. During his tenure at Oxford, Brown also served as his professor.

The author’s primary goal in writing this essay is to critically analyse Srinivas’s well-known book “The Remembered Village,” in which he exhaustively discusses the Mysore village of Rampura with an emphasis on revealing the caste dynamics that reigned there. Numerous aspects of the ethnographic study’s peculiarity and uniqueness to the anthropological discourse will be covered in depth in the following sections.

The life of an Indian hamlet in 1948 is captured in Srinivas’ book, “Remembered Village,” which was written from memory after an arsonist destroyed his fieldwork notes and data. Due to the independence of India and the sudden changes that followed in many facets of Indian politics, culture, society, and even academics, this time period was exceptionally crucial. Srinivas saw that India was undergoing a transformation and that now was the ideal moment to document rural Indian practices before they were replaced by the government’s promises of technological advancement, economic growth, and—most importantly—equality. This understanding of a transition and change process distinguishes the book from the competition and makes it essential to the development of anthropology in India.

Srinivas and his informants in The Remembered Village are a major aspect of the plot, in contrast to colonial ethnographers like Herbert Risley and C. Nesfield who created vast volumes of data that read Book Review: The Remembered Village (1976) scientific studies and a collection of “facts.” He has introduced himself as a character in the story. In contrast to an academic statement or an argument based on statistical data as such, his study of the village of Rampura and its inhabitants is presented through a meticulous recall of anecdotes from memory.

In the period of 1945–1946, Srinivas’ mentor and adviser Radcliffe Brown first planted the idea of conducting a study of a multi-caste village in his head. Later, after being hired as a lecturer in Indian sociology at Oxford, he had the chance to undertake fieldwork in India. He used this opportunity and travelled to his home Karnataka, then known as Mysore, and undertook rigorous fieldwork, something he had never done before. The Remembered Village’s first chapter asks, “How did it all start? “, and how the decision to choose the community was made more on the basis of feeling than on rational considerations. Readers are introduced to the village in Chapter 2 and are given further details on the connections Srinivas made with the locals. The chapter focuses in particular on the benefits and drawbacks of his heritage as a Mysore Brahman anthropologist, as well as the achievements and failures this social position had on his fieldwork. The same chapter also covers his friendship choices and certain villagers’ decisions to accept him as a friend and patron. The focus of the following chapter is on “three key men”: Nadu Gowda, an elderly and wealthy peasant leader; the local headman; and Kulle Gowda, Srinivas’s fieldwork helper. As a result of Srinivas’ explanation of these men’s relationships with other villagers, certain important elements of the village’s social and economic life have been highlighted. For instance, the reader’s understanding of the ties between the landowner and the people from different castes who depend on him is much improved by his depiction of the interactions between the males.

The focus of Chapter 4 of the book is on agriculture, which Srinivas refers to as the “dominant” or the most significant activity in the village. He places the various elements of land, water, crops, livestock, and so forth in relation to a larger agricultural complex. To support these placements, however, there is little to no specific quantitative evidence offered. According to Srinivas, economic activity serves as a link between household and extra-domestic realms. His discussion of the apparent sexual division of labour that exists in the home, as well as other features of male and female conjugal and sexual interactions that invariably appear in the domestic setting, is covered in length in the next chapter (chapter 5).

The caste dynamics are elaborately discussed in Chapter 6, which almost exclusively focuses on the interactions between caste groups inside the hamlet. It is one of the book’s longest chapters as well. He has dealt with the Harijans and Muslims who live in the village as well as their interactions with the other caste groups. But Srinivas makes it obvious that he is unhappy with the scantness of the information he has about these communities from his fieldwork and his recollection. He has arranged his data according to its cleanliness and level of contamination. Srinivas explains what he refers to as the land-based hierarchy of classes in the seventh chapter. The key themes of this chapter are the interaction of factional interests and the historically peaceful relationship between patron and client.

Rampura saw the rapid technical shift shortly after India’s Independence, just like any other region of the country. This did not occur in a vacuum since the technical revolution was closely followed by significant adjustments in the fields of economics, politics, and culture. These are a few of the topics he covers in depth in the book’s eighth chapter. Alongside these changes, there were also new ideals, attitudes, and behavioural patterns that began to shape and control social interactions globally and developed into traits. These aspects were covered in detail in Chapter 9 of the book under the categories “hierarchy,” “friendship,” “enmity,” “reciprocity,” “gossip,” “envy,” and “sense of humour.”

The topic of religion is now the main concern of Chapter 10. As such, Srinivas is less interested in Sanskritic Hinduism than he is in religion as it is experienced by the people on a daily basis. He has put a lot of work into providing a thorough overview of the many types and personalities of gods. The chapter also discusses how the locals practise and view religion.

In the last chapter, “Farewell,” Srinivas writes to himself as he did in the first, outlining the effects of the fieldwork and how the town and its residents came to somehow dominate him. He provides three brief appendices that summarise the calendrical subjects and a glossary of a few Kannada terminology after the final chapter.

The Remembered Village is a somewhat large book that has 350 pages and a vast goal that it seeks to accomplish. Its main goal is to give a thorough overview of the south Karnataka village of Rampura. But Srinivas’ description is more of what these actions of seeing and hearing did to him than it is merely the result of his ethnographic experience and what he saw and heard. The first two volumes by Srinibas, marriage and family and religion and society, respectively, were focused on certain issues. The book, which was based on fieldwork done among the Coorgs, also included a heavy theoretical component. The Remembered Village, however, differs from prior works in that it doesn’t focus on a particular social issue or use a certain theoretical tool, unlike his earlier works. According to Srinivas, his main motivation for creating this book (just from memory) was to shed light on the Rampura village and its residents as he discovered them in 1948. Due to the fact that he doesn’t really concentrate on any one issue, Srinivas writes about a variety of facets of the village, including its social, cultural, economic, political, and structural features. Even if this is mainly the case, one cannot truly dispute the fact that the issue of caste remains a fundamental subject that lies at the heart of The Remembered Village. The book extensively discusses caste, or more specifically, the ruling castes and the rural aristocracy.

More significant than debating the book’s contents is the fact that Srinivas somehow managed to convey the entirety of village life via his story and brilliantly captured the human character and feel of Rampura. He has succeeded in conveying to the readers the truth of their existence. In contrast to his earlier works, which are mostly replete with detailed descriptions and analyses of conventions, norms of social interaction, rank systems, and so on and so forth, this one hardly features real people. Despite the loss of his hard data, what he was able to recreate in The Remembered Village by just reliving his recollections of his time there was an admirable attempt. Scarlett Epstein, who also completed her research in Karnataka and obtained a substantial quantity of actual data, subsequently acknowledged that she was unable to duplicate Srinivas’ achievements and hailed his work as a “classic.” The Remembered Village of Srinivas has been compared by Nakane to a fine picture, and she claims that both have a lot of dramatic characteristics.

Along with the many compliments and plaudits that this work received, Srinivas was the target of several inquiries, skepticisms, and pertinent comments after the book’s release. Questions were raised about the narrative’s quality and content as well as, more specifically, the narrator’s theoretical perspective and approach. Has he underemphasized some facets of social life and possibly significant tendencies in change, to name a few key queries? , did he overly emphasise caste while failing to incorporate the crucial topic of class? or did he create accounts that are somewhat false and deceptive?

Many academics have explored Srinivas’ hypothesis, which was largely inspired by his mentor R. Brown, Redfield, and Evans Pritchard, as well as in certain ways. The majority of critics who unintentionally remarked on his work afterwards believed that there was a very evident, unresolved conflict between Srinivas’s anthropology side and the fundamentally reasonable Indian in him. Srinivas conducted his research in the village of Rampura in the same way that any other anthropologist from India or another cultural area would have. Even a review of his fieldwork equipment would show how the area was selected for the study of “other.” Or, to put it another way, being an urban, English-speaking, and highly educated Indian, he always felt like an alien in Rampura. His caste position as a Brahmin is another factor that may have added to the social isolation and cultural shock he must have experienced throughout his stay in the village.

Given that he relied nearly entirely, if not entirely, on memory when writing the book, theories about the method he used to do so became a topic of discussion. Some academics held the opinion that this narrative’s unique flavour was a result of the interaction of the capacities of observation, reflection, and recollection. Another set of criticisms, however, questioned whether Srinivas’ dependence on his recollection (and the absence of concrete facts) may have caused him to fall into inconsistencies, which might have resulted in unsatisfying results and interpretations.

What makes The Remembered Village stand out despite all the critiques it has faced, which primarily come from a group of “intellectuals” in academia, is the author’s desire to provide a firsthand narrative of village life. Since there is no established metric to gauge the success of such a work, it is likely this element or goal of the book that makes it challenging for others to evaluate it. The Remembered Village by Srinivas is closer to R.K. Narayan’s works, according to some readers who are not academics and who read the book simply from a laperson’s perspective. This is because both books place a focus on individuals and situations from daily life while also incorporating humor.

Srinivas, M.N. 1976. The remembered village, Berkley: University of California Press.

 

Featured image is for representative purposes only. Image credit – Wikipedia