ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a small slice of the work done in universities and research institutions in India in order to understand how national public preoccupations continue to structure anthropological/sociological knowledge production and its reception within a pluri-centric academic world. It shows that there are very strong ties between Indian scholars and their counterparts in the diasporic communities from South Asia. The reception of scholarship varies with the publics to whom it is addressed, as well as with one's institutional location. In India, the focus in anthropology and sociology on the study of one's own society has had important consequences in terms of a vibrant tradition that never allowed India to be spoken of in terms that were simply imported. Scholarly opinion on how to evaluate democratic processes in India is divided, but there is agreement that they are complex and that the experience of democracy on the sub-continent poses a challenge to political theory.
