Nation Building on the Margins: How the Anthropologists of India Contributed (original) (raw)
Related papers
NATION-BUILDING IN INDIAN ANTHROPOLOGY
BOOK, 2023
Researches on the history of anthropological studies in India, unlike in western countries, have not yet been an established tradition, despite the fact that courses on the growth and de velopment of anthropology in India are being taught at the graduate and postgraduate levels in the Indian universities and are strongly recommended by the University Grants Commission. Indian anthropologists, however, in the early decades after the independence made inspiring and solid research contributions on the major problems encountered by the new nation, which has been described and analyzed in detail in this book. These problems include rehabilitation of refugees after the 1947 Partition; and displacement of people from their homes and land caused by the big dams, industrialization and famines. This book, result of years of painstaking research by the author, critically reviews the existing works and their gaps in the history of Indian anthropology and makes a new and valuable addition in the field of the history of academic disciplines in the context of nation building. It should be read not only as a text by the students of anthropology and sociology, but also as a reference work for researchers interested in the history of social sciences and development studies in India.
In search of a nationalist anthropology in India
Article, 2020
Research on the history of anthropology in India unlike western countries has not yet become a formidable tradition. Existing works contain a lot of useful data on the history of anthropology during the colonial and post-colonial periods but they did not venture into a search for the growth of nationalist anthropological writings by the Indian anthropologists or the role of the anthropologists in nation building in the pre and post independence periods. Along with the colonial tradition, a nationalist trend in Indian anthropology could also be discerned, which was growing during the pre and post-independence periods in India and this trend was characterised by the works of the anthropologists who were socially committed and contributed to nation building through their analytical writings and research.
Article, 2024
Researches on the history of Anthropology in India unlike western countries have not yet become a formidable tradition despite the fact that courses on the growth and development of Anthropology in India had been recommended at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the Model Curriculum Development Report of the University Grants Commission as early as 2001. Under this scenario, the conceptual framework of my discourse was derived from a critical and selective reading of the anthropological texts produced by the Indian anthropologists. This reading of the history of Indian anthropology was based on two sources. One source was the reading of the original texts by pioneering anthropologists which were committed to various tasks of nation building and the other was the reading of literature by anthropologists who critiqued early Indian anthropology as simply following the western/colonial tradition. These two readings of the texts were juxtaposed to write a new and critical history of the discipline, which emphasized the nationalist tradition of Indian Anthropology. On the reverse side of the colonial critique there also existed a view that an Indian form of Anthropology could be discerned in many ancient Indian texts and scriptures before the advent of a colonial anthropology introduced by the European scholars, administrators and missionaries in the Indian subcontinent. I have designated this view as "Hindu Anthropology". Finally, I have argued that anthropologists did make attempts to tackle some of the major challenges (viz. famine, rehabilitation of refugees and development caused displacement) encountered by the country in the early periods of nation building, which I would narrate in some detail in this lecture.. Under the changing times and circumstances, the future of nationalist anthropology in India lies in carrying forward this remarkable tradition of anthropology developed by some of the pioneers and this justified the historical exploration of the nationalist trends in Indian anthropology having present and future implications.
A Century of Anthropology in India:Searching the Nationalist Trends
The Eastern Anthropologist Lead article, 2022
There is little research on the history of anthropology in India.The works which have been done though contained a lot of useful data on the history of anthropology during the colonial and post-colonial periods have now become dated and they also did not venture into a search for the growth of nationalist anthropological writings by the Indian anthropologists in the pre and post independence periods. The conceptual framework of the discourse developed in this paper is derived from a critical reading of the anthropological texts produced by Indian anthropologists. This reading of the history of Indian anthropology is based on two sources. One source is the reading of the original texts by pioneering anthropologists who were committed to various tasks of nation building and the other is the reading of literature by anthropologists who regarded Indian anthropology simply as a continuation of the western tradition. There also existed a view that an Indian form of anthropology could be discerned in many ancient Indian texts and scriptures before the advent of a colonial anthropology introduced by the European scholars, administrators and missionaries in the Indian subcontinent. I have argued that while criticizing Indian anthropology or sociology the critiques mostly ignored the studies done by the pioneers of the disciplines which were socially relevant and directed to the welfare and betterment of the underprivileged sections of our country and these studies for the betterment of the underdog were often conducted by anthropologists and sociologists who belonged to higher castes occupying elite positions in the society. The critics have only followed the smart way to criticize the pioneers instead of studying the socially committed works of the later and this was one of the reasons that Indian anthropologists failed to honour their nationalist predecessors and depended more on the wisdom of the Western scholars.The new discourse in search of a nationalist trend in Indian anthropology, therefore, is urgently needed for the construction of the historiography of the discipline.
In search of nationalist trends in Indian anthropology: opening a new discourse
Occasional Paper, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata, 2018
There is little research on the history of anthropology in India. The works which have been done though contained a lot of useful data on the history of anthropology during the colonial and postcolonial periods have now become dated and they also did not venture into a search for the growth of nationalist anthropological writings by the Indian anthropologists in the pre and post independence periods. The conceptual framework of the discourse developed in this paper is derived from a critical reading of the anthropological texts produced by Indian anthropologists. This reading of the history of Indian anthropology is based on two sources. One source is the reading of the original texts by pioneering anthropologists who were committed to various tasks of nation building and the other is the reading of literature by anthropologists who regarded Indian anthropology simply as a continuation of the western tradition. There also existed a view that an Indian form of anthropology could be discerned in many ancient Indian texts and scriptures before the advent of a colonial anthropology introduced by the European scholars, administrators and missionaries in the Indian subcontinent. The readings from these texts are juxtaposed to write a new and critical history of Indian anthropology, which I have designated as the ‘new discourse’ in the title of this occasional paper. I have argued that while criticizing Indian anthropology or sociology the critiques mostly ignored the studies done by the pioneers of the disciplines which were socially relevant and directed to the welfare and betterment of the underprivileged sections of our country and these studies for the betterment of the underdog were often conducted by anthropologists and sociologists who belonged to higher castes occupying elite positions in the society. The critics have only followed the smart way to criticize the pioneers instead of studying the socially committed works of the later and this was one of the reasons that Indian anthropologists failed to honour their nationalist predecessors and depended more on the wisdom of the Western scholars. The new discourse in search of a nationalist trend in Indian anthropology, therefore, is urgently needed for the construction of the historiography of the discipline.
Book chapters, 2021
These are my two book chapters on Bhupendranath Datta and Tarak Chandra Das in a book edited by Sarthak Sengupta published in 2021. Both Datta and Das still remains neglected personalities in the curriculum of Indian anthropology. I wrote and spoke extensively on T.C.Das and his contributions in Indian anthropology and also on Bhupendranath Datta. Both these anthropologists were nationalists in the true sense of the term who looked at the problems of nation building in India from an Indian perspective.Datta studied caste system from the class angle while Das constructed ethnographies of individual tribes and the Bengal famine from applied anthropological perspective.
Colonial, Hindu and Nationalist Anthropology in India
Article, 2019
The long-standing critique of Indian Anthropology advanced by some notable anthropologists held that Indian Anthropology is the product of a colonial tradition and the anthropologists in India for various reasons followed their colonial masters in one way or the other. There also exists a view of Hindu Anthropology which holds that an Indian form of Anthropology could be found in many ancient Indian texts and scriptures before the advent of a colonial anthropology introduced by the European scholars, administrators and missionaries in the Indian subcontinent. Both the views ignored the materialistic, socially committed, secular and nationalist trends of Indian Anthropology which was growing in the hands of some remarkable anthropologists before and after the Independence of the country.
This essay is about how Indian anthropology-sociology has historically theorized Islam and Muslims. In it, I demonstrate how anthropologists’ discourse on Islam and the majoritarian Hindu discourse on nation – Muslims being its constitutive other – dovetail into each other. Three main catalogues through which anthropology has dealt with Muslims are: silence, alienness and erasure. Against anthropology’s self-perception as the most reflexive discipline, I argue how Indian anthropology has been intertwined with nation-state as both an ideology and a set of practices. I also identify connections between symbolic violence of anthropology-sociology manifest in the othering of Islam and anti-Muslim political violence in postcolonial India. Discussing influential texts, schools of thoughts, departments, individuals, institutions, professional association in a framework that comparatively alludes to the ‘anomaly’ of Jews vis-à-vis German anthropology, this essay also charts out a different genealogy of anthropology in India, one that remains hushed in the regnant accounts. In so doing, it maps the discipline’s trajectory from its moment of formation to the present. One key aim of the essay is to unveil the theory behind methodological nationalism to discuss the (im)possibility of writing an alternative anthropology-sociology of India.
Saurabh Dube (ed.), Historical Anthropology (Oxford in India Readings in Sociology and Social Anthropology). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007. xiv + 427 pp. Notes, index. `595 (hardback). DOI: 10.1177/006996671004400314 At the very first glance, Saurabh Dube’s volume tells us that on offer here is a very unusual mix of essays under the rubric of ‘historical Downloaded from cis.sagepub.com at COLEGIO DE MEXICO BIBL on January 30, 2015 432 / Contributions to Indian Sociology 44, 3 (2010): 425–466 anthropology’. Clearly, much thought has gone into the choice of what is ‘representative’ of the field and why. Indeed, by his very choice of essays, Dube has effectively told the complex story of how, through time, an interdisciplinary domain is produced by a variety of academic practitioners, sometimes consciously, sometimes in spite of themselves.