Sociological traditions

Abstract

Students of sociology are likely to come across synoptic accounts of the ‘Lucknow School’ in courses relating to the growth and development of sociology in India. Most, if not all, may find names such as Radhakamal Mukerjee, D.P. Mukerji and D.N. Majumdar, the ‘three Ms’ as T.N. Madan (2013: 3) calls them in his recently edited volume entitled Sociology at the University of Lucknow: The First Half Century (1921–1975),1 somehow familiar. This familiarity, though, does not presuppose any serious understanding on their part of the substantive works of the Lucknow sociologists. Preliminary ideas about Radhakamal Mukerjee’s work in the field of social ecology, or D.P. Mukerji’s stress on the study of tradition, or D.N. Majumdar’s ethnographic work among tribes, or A.K. Saran’s repartee to Louis Dumont, is all that one can generally expect. Given the general amnesia surrounding the works of the pioneers at Lucknow, Madan’s volume is a noteworthy contribution to the recent attempts at retrieving