The paper traces the growth of sociology in India through three phases. The first phase, it argues, begins in the 30s with the slow consolidation of the discipline. In this phase, sociology was associated with the Indological perspective and the social was perceived in culturist terms and analysed through the prism of the past, in and through Sanskrit texts. In the second phase, which begins in the early 60s, when University education expands in India, this indigenous perspective is re‐framed. There is a shift from textual studies to empirical investigation and the village becomes the site for studying Indian civilization. This paper makes a detailed analysis of the social anthropological perspective of M.N. Srinivas whose theories on village and caste influenced the sociological imagination in this phase. The third phase starts in the late 70s with the growth of social movements of the subalterns which challenge the received culturist nationalist sociological imagination. Today sociology together with other social sciences are at crossroads in India due to the impact of neoliberalism. The latter has encouraged privatisation of education, decreased state funding in material and human resources and an increased state control on academia. All three have affected the autonomy of the teachers and as well the University system and thus the efforts to chart a new sociological imagination in which the Indian social is perceived in global comparative terms. It is difficult to assess which turn sociology in India will take in these circumstances.

中文翻译：

---

民族主义思想与殖民地认识：构建印度社会学传统的对立面

本文通过三个阶段追溯了印度社会学的发展。它认为，第一阶段始于30年代，当时该学科的合并缓慢。在这个阶段，社会学与印度学的观点相关联，社会被以文化主义者的眼光看待，并通过过去的棱镜，梵文和梵文进行了分析。在第二阶段（始于60年代初），当大学教育在印度扩展时，这种本地化的观点得到了重新构建。从文本研究转向实证研究，该村庄成为研究印度文明的场所。本文对MN斯里尼瓦斯（MN Srinivas）的社会人类学观点进行了详细分析，其关于乡村和种姓的理论在这一阶段影响了社会学的想象力。第三阶段始于70年代后期，随着下属社会运动的发展，这挑战了已接受的文化主义民族主义社会学想象力。今天，由于新自由主义的影响，社会学和其他社会科学在印度处于十字路口。后者鼓励教育私有化，减少国家在物质和人力资源上的资金投入，并增强国家对学术界的控制。这三者都影响了教师的自主权以及大学系统的自主权，从而影响了一种新的社会学想象力的努力，在这种想象力中，印度社会以全球比较的眼光来看待。在这种情况下，很难评估印度的社会学将采取何种转向。