South Asia has provided much material for anthropologists and other social scientists who have explored this region for what was in the colonial period known as ‘exotic’ customs and for cross-cultural comparisons with ‘other’ cultures. The social characters of South Asia were seen as early stages of social evolution according to the speculative social evolutionary theory popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and labelled savage, barbaric, and backward. Even up to recent times, South Asia has mostly provided material for the study of caste, religion, community, tribes, and so on. However, most parts of this region are no longer bound by ‘tradition’ or time lagged to remain rural or ‘different’ but rapidly becoming globalized, urbanized, and part of a global network of neoliberal market systems and ‘global cities’ (Sassen 1991). It is realized that theoretical work about South Asia needs to expand into the areas of urban studies as very large portions of South Asia are getting converted to cities of various sizes and shapes and even those areas that can still be classified as rural or interior, are strongly influenced by urban cultures and urban market economies as people are constantly migrating from rural to urban areas and moving from urban to rural areas for tourism, recreation and work. With digital technology and strong communication networks, the classical divisions are no longer able to be sustained. Demographically too, more and more people are now shifting to urban areas for various reasons, for work, livelihoods and education, and bettering of life chances. Whatever the reason, it is a fact that anthropological and sociological studies in South Asia need to focus more and more on the realities of urban life than to remain confined to more traditional areas of research and study.