‘Sociology of/in India’ is arguably a vexed issue expressed in an overused phrase unless it is cast in a new light. The enormity of volumes, of debates and writings, adds to the phrase an uncanny posterity and illusive exoticness despite the fact that there are only eight (nine on stretch) decades in the backdrop. The neophytes of the discipline learn of it with a sense of disciplinary pride and scholars speak of it with due prejudices. It hinges upon the key term that is self-reflexivity innate to the discipline that invites every old and new scholar to ‘sociologise sociology’ by (re)visiting the debates and historical-intellectual trajectory of the discipline. The self-reflexivity of a discipline is indeed a point of celebration. Arguably, a little too self-reflexive a discipline as sociology is also likely to degenerate into self-fulfilling prophecies. The blowing of trumpet, to count the brownie points pertaining to the ‘glorious past of the discipline’, or the mourning of the end of the glory in the time of the banality in the institutional and disciplinary practices, both refuse to reckon with the spontaneous growth in the nature and scope of sociology. On the other hand, yet another attempt at ‘sociologising sociology’ could also aid in putting the con-temporary, with reference to the bygone, in the right perspective. The two books in main which underpin this review article offer precisely this kind of ambiguity. On one hand, understanding sociological tradition in India with T.N. Madan anchors through the dominant themes of discourse in early sociology of India and captures the intellectual preoccupation of the paragons of the discipline (sociology plus social anthropology). It is at this level that students of sociology would locate an intellectually dynamic emergence of discipline in India and the nuanced contributions in under-standing Indian society, culture, polity and economy. Yes, this is the domain wherein lies the reasons to boast of the disciplinary strides which forged a creative intellectual partnership with sociology and social anthropology at large. However, on the other hand visiting the contemporary practices in sociology of India amounts to the old raga of lament that the present conditions are indicators of decline in the standards of disciplinary excellence. It is based on a tacit comparison with the bygone and alludes to the end of the era when the sociologists and social anthropologists were burdened with the dispositions of ‘the mid-night’s children’1, ...