Political sociology in India emerged after India gained independence and became a democratic republic. For the disciplines in the social sciences, especially political science and sociology, such a transformation made necessary the need to not only understand the functioning of modern political institutions, but also how the traditional social base of Indian society would function within such modern political system. It is this particular emphasis on the social in the understanding of the political in India that gives rise to the discipline of political sociology. In the period after Independence a number of sociologists and social scientists sought to understand the changing social context of political behaviour in India. It is this inter-disciplinary terrain of the interface between the political and the social that resulted in the need for a separate discipline of political sociology. However, this neither reduced the relevance of sociology nor of political science as political sociology developed as a sub-discipline of sociology, notwithstanding the fact that both are closely inter-related. Dipankar Gupta (1996) provides an excellent understanding for the development of Political Sociology in India. His book gives us a clear idea on the social and political conditions that prevailed before and after independence and how the modern principles that were adopted after independence managed to survive along with the traditional ones that already existed.