M. N. Srinivas (1916-99) became twentieth-century India’s most distinguished social anthropologist. He was a DPhil student in Oxford supervised by Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard in 1945-47, and then a lecturer in 1947-51, although his first year was spent doing fieldwork in a south Indian village. In England, Srinivas’s network of friends and colleagues included Godfrey Lienhardt, Max Gluckman, Jack Goody and other leading anthropologists in the post-war years. In 1951, Srinivas returned to India to become a professor in Baroda University, where foreign anthropologists often visited him. In 1952, his revised DPhil thesis was published as Religion and Society among the Coorgs. This book attracted considerable attention internationally, including among leading anthropologists in America, such as Robert Redfield, Milton Singer and David Mandelbaum. Srinivas’s scholarly reputation was equally enhanced by his publications on village India, which contributed significantly to the development of modern Indian anthropology in the early post-colonial period.
Departmental Seminar Series Hilary Term 2026
Theme: Hidden Histories of Oxford Anthropology
3pm, Fridays of Weeks 1-8, Lecture Room at 64 Banbury Road
Convened by Paul Basu, Clare Harris, David Pratten, Alpa Shah
