Both Ananthakrishna Iyer and Sarat Chandra Roy were pioneers of social anthropology in India who came to practice this discipline by accident. In the early 1900s, they began practising a discipline that did not yet exist in India and had no institutions to promote it.

L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer (1861-1937) began his career as a clerk, then became a school teacher and later a college teacher in Cochin state. In 1902, he was asked by the Dewan of Cochin to assist with an ethnographic survey of the state. The British government wanted similar surveys done in all princely states. Despite having no formal qualifications in anthropology, he became the first self-taught anthropologist to receive national and international recognition.

Sarat Chandra Roy (1871-1942) was a lawyer by training who had done graduate and post-graduate degrees in English. In 1898, he went to Ranchi to work as an English teacher at a Christian missionary school. His interest in anthropological matters began when he gave up his school job and started practising law at the Ranchi courts, eventually becoming an official interpreter in the court.

Roy became deeply interested in tribal society as a byproduct of his court work. He became the leading authority on the culture and society of the tribal peoples of the Chhotanagpur region (present day Jharkhand).

Thus, both Iyer and Roy were 'accidental anthropologists' who entered the field through unexpected opportunities and circumstances during the colonial era, rather than through formal academic training.