Cultural Profiles of Mysore City

Foreword In January, 1970 Anthropological Survey of India collaborated with the Indian Anthropological Society in organizing a seminar on Cultural Profile of Calcutta, which brought the anthropologists together with scholars, specialists and creative artists from many disciplines in an attempt to bring into relief some of the basic social and cultural patterns of the urban complex of Calcutta". This preliminary exercise provided a model for organizing similar seminars on urban profiles of Mysore City, Shillong and Kashi.

Preface It often happens that one knows more about the distant things than of the immediate surroundings. Though most of us had lived in the Mysore city for quite some time we felt that we have some observations of only some aspects of the city but they are hardly enough to have even a perspective of the city. We felt that similarly others must have their observations from their own vantage points on the city, then why should we not get in touch with such people and exchange our notes and see how far we can learn about the place where we live and work. With this idea in mind, on behalf of the South India Statiin of Anthropological Survey of India, we organised a seminar between 15th and 17th January, 1971 on Mysore city. We called this seminar as 'Profiles of Mysore city". The seminar was organised as a part of the celebrations on the completion of 25 years of existence by the Anthropological Survey of India. We got enthusiastic and immediate response from the people when we contacted them for this seminar. As we contacted people our knowledge of the city and its people increased step by step. Once we made the beginning we got valuable suggestions and introductions to reach the right kind of people for every subject matter. The process of contacting people and selecting topics for discussion in the seminar was exciting and immensely fruitful. We not only came to know about the different specialists and academicians of the city and their work but we also had initiated a dialogue between ourselves, the anthropologists and the scholars of different disciplines on the reality of Mysore city. This dialogue was carried over to the seminar and this volume is the result of that dialogue. We leave it to the reader to judge how far this volume contributes in understanding an urban centre like Mysore and how for inter-disciplinary approach is successful in an endeavour like the present one.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages