An Ideographic Analysis

The study of social movements by so­ciologists is comparatively a recent pheno­menon. In Indian sociology, this research trend began to take a shape during the sixties, when agrarian, tribal, backward class and Naxalite movements etc., increasingly received the attention of sociologists. M.S.A. Rao’s book Social Movements and Social Transformation which is a study of two backward classes movements from a comparative perspec­tive forms a part in this series of studies. He has selected for analysis Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) movement in Kerala and the Yadav Movement in India because of his prior interests in these two sociological entities—first through his doc­toral dissertation on social change in Malabar (1957) and the second for his study of social change and urbanization in an Ahir village ‘Yadavapur’ near Delhi in 1970. From these two exposures to the aspects of the problem which are reflec­ted in the two movements—the two ‘original sins’ as characterized by Rao—­one gets an idea of his sustained interest in this problem.