Breaking down the question
The question invites you to explain the ongoing interaction between two levels of tradition in Indian civilization. The great tradition is the reflective, textual, pan-Indian stream of literate elites — the Vedas, epics and classical Sanskritic culture. The little tradition is the local, oral, folk stream of villages and regions. The key word is coexist — you must show that these are not separate compartments but continuously interacting levels within a single civilization.
Emphasize contemporary — bring the framework up to date with festivals, media, pilgrimage and popular religion.
How to approach it
Introduce Robert Redfield's original distinction and its adaptation to India by McKim Marriott through his study of Kishan Garhi. Explain his twin concepts of universalization and parochialization as the two-way traffic between the levels. Connect this to M. N. Srinivas's sanskritization as a mechanism of upward cultural mobility. Then illustrate coexistence with living contemporary examples — festivals, cinema and pilgrimage.
Model answer
The idea of little and great traditions derives from Robert Redfield's study of peasant societies, where he distinguished the reflective great tradition of the literate few from the unreflective little tradition of the folk many. McKim Marriott applied and refined this framework in his study of the north Indian village of Kishan Garhi, showing that in India the two traditions are not opposed but continuously interpenetrate.
Marriott identified two processes of interaction. Universalization is the upward movement whereby elements of local little tradition are carried up, generalized and absorbed into the pan-Indian great tradition. Parochialization is the downward movement whereby elements of the Sanskritic great tradition are localized, reinterpreted and embedded in village practice, often losing their textual purity. Together they constitute a constant two-way cultural traffic.
M. N. Srinivas's concept of sanskritization captures a related dynamic — the process by which lower castes emulate the customs, rituals and idioms of the twice-born great tradition to raise their status. This shows the great tradition acting as a reference model for local groups.
In contemporary India coexistence is everywhere visible. Village deities sit alongside the great gods of the Puranas; a local goddess may be identified with Durga through universalization, while a great festival like Navaratri is celebrated with intensely local rituals through parochialization. Modern forces amplify rather than dissolve this interaction: cinema, television serials on the epics, and mass pilgrimage circulate great-tradition motifs into every locality, while regional folk forms feed back into national popular culture.
Thus the two traditions coexist as complementary levels of one living civilization, held together by continuous processes of exchange rather than kept apart.
For further study, see Theories of Social Change.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners look for accurate attribution — Redfield for the original concept, Marriott for its Indian application, and the precise pairing of universalization and parochialization. Linking sanskritization to the framework shows integration across the syllabus. What distinguishes a high-scoring answer is the use of vivid contemporary illustrations — festivals, epic serials, pilgrimage — that demonstrate coexistence as a living, ongoing process rather than a static textbook contrast.