The Remembered Village

"The author has managed to combine successfully the professional approach of an anthropologist with that of a novelist to the description of an Indian village community...Srinivas has made a virtue out of the misfortune of losing all his field notes: The Remembered Village is a piece of art which is bound to become a classic of Indian ethnography." (T. Scarlett Epstein, Times Higher Education Supplement). "The real virtue of this most recent contribution by Dr. Srinivas is the consistently human, humane, and humanistic tone oft he observations and of the narration; the simple, straightforward style in which it is written; and the richness of anecdotal materials...He writes modestly as a wise and knowledgeable man. He restores faith in the best tradition of ethnography. Without being popular, in the pejorative sense, it is a book any uninitiated reader can read with pleasure and enlightenment." (Cora Du Bois, Asian Student). "Few accounts of village life give one the sense of coming to know, of vicariously sharing in, the lives of real villagers that this book conveys...The work is holistic in the best anthropological manner; the principal aspects of Rampura life are lucidly sketched and the interrelations among them are cogently considered. ..our collective knowledge and its practical relevance become enhanced." (David G. Mandelbaum, Economic and Political Weekly). "[Srinivas] has described and analyzed life in Rampura in the late 1940s with charm and insight. His book is enjoyable as well as illuminating...In addition to the rich detail of village life and of a number of individual villagers, Srinivas gives us valuable insights into the nature of ethnographic research. He relates how he came to study this particular village. He tells us how he got established in the village, and describes vividly his living quarters...He describes, at various places throughout the book, his reactions to the villagers and his perceptions of their reactions to him. He freely admits his own negative reactions to certain things and certain behavior. He discusses the factors that could and did bias his research...illuminate[s] both the problems and the rewards of the ethnographer...must reading." (Robert H. Lauer, Sociology: Reviews of New Books).