The Formative Phase (1774-1919)
For Majumdar, this phase ended in 1911. According to Vidyarthi, this period extended to 1920. This period seems to have been characterized by an emphasis on tribes, a natural history approach and descriptions of the diversity of customs. A variety of encyclopaedias on tribes and castes were published during this period. A search for primitive survivals from the viewpoint of classical evolutionism and an attempt to piece together the cultural history of the people was a hallmark. Apart from ethnographic reports, listings of customs, and administrative reports, there were also land revenue settlement reports that gave a more realistic functional idea of Indian rural society, like the works of Dalton, Buchanan and Lord Baden-Powell.
The Asiatic Society was established in 1774 (it became the Asiatic Society of Bengal later in 1784) and this seems to be the beginning of anthropology in this part of the world. By 1784 the journal of the society also started coming out regularly. By 1893, a separate section or Part III was being published of the journal which contained only anthropologically relevant material. This continued till 1904. Recently these old issues have been digitized for future generations and copies of articles contained there may be obtained for a price. The Academic Association began in 1828, the Bethune Society in 1851, the Benaras Institute in 1861 and the Bengal Social Science Association between 1867 to 1878. All of these were Institutes where social science research began to be carried out.
By 1872 the Indian Antiquary came out and contained many articles of anthropological interest. The first journal solely devoted to Anthropology seems to be that of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, published first on 31 December 1886, published first by Edward Teyrrel Leith. The first Anthropological Society in India was formed through a meeting on 7 April 1886 at Apollo Street, Bombay (now Mumbai). T. H. Huxley, E. B. Tylor and Sir James Frazer became honorary members. It continued in a room in the Bombay Asiatic Society offices and some grants were occasionally made available to it. Many well-known Indian anthropologists were part of it.
H. H. Risley first published his account of the tribes and castes of Bengal in Later, he was famous as head of census operations in India. This period resulted in The People of India. He developed a wing in the census operations that was devoted to ethnographic survey in 1905. According to many, this may be called the beginning of Indian anthropology (Sarana and Sinha; 1976). After Independence in 1947, a social studies division was added to the office of the Registrar General of India, who was in charge of the census operations in India. Many others who were not anthropologists also influenced the discipline. These included Indians like Dadabhai Naoroji, G. K. Gokhale, R. C. Dutt, M. G. Ranade, Raja Rammohun Roy, K. C. Sen, Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Swami Vivekananda. All of them, through their interpretations of Indian society, have affected the works of many social scientists and anthropologists.
By 1915 a slew of other journals came out like The Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society and Man in India in 1921. Books and District Gazetteers also came out and started gaining public interest to such an extent that they have remained in print till today! After Grierson’s linguistic survey of India, many associations brought out small monographs on the tribes of their region, their social and cultural mores and customs, as well as their language.
The Mythic Society of Bangalore was also publishing a journal by this time. A Department of Sociology opened in Bombay with F. Geddes as its head in 1919.
The Constructive Phase (1920-1949)
For Majumdar (1950), this phase began in 1912 and ended in 1937. By 1920, Anthropology came into the curriculum of Post-graduate studies at Calcutta University with R. Chanda as Head. This was a marked change from the earlier period. By 1918 it was a subsidiary subject in Calcutta University but its true identity emerged only with its development into a full-fledged discipline. K. P. Chattopadhyay was one of the first to be appointed there with R. P. Chanda (who is famous for his idea of brachycephalization in Western India). They were joined by L. K. A. Iyer. The first group of students included luminaries like N. K. Bose, D. N. Majumdar, B. S. Guha, P. C. Biswas, T. C. Das, S. S. Sarkar, Dharani Sen and Andre Beteille.
In 1947, a Department of Anthropology opened in University of Delhi, then in 1950 in Lucknow and in 1952 in Guwahati. Other Universities having Departments of Anthropology included Sagar, Pune, Madras, Ranchi, Dibrugarh, Utkal, Ravi Shankar at Raipur, Karnataka, North-Eastern Hill at Shillong, Garhwal, and so on. Many would still claim that despite this growth, the number of Departments were not adequate as many Universities in India still have no Departments of Anthropology. The anthropologists mentioned above as well as others like K. P. Chattopadhyay made inroads into detailed systematic studies of Indian populations. Many Indian anthropologists also began to be educated abroad, especially as students of W. H. R. Rivers (like G. S. Ghurye and Chattopadhyay in 1923) and B. Malinowski. Tribal monographs with a functional orientation were published and there was an interest in kinship studies. Some studies were also conducted on the American diffusionist school lines and there were studies related to acculturation. Though missionaries were often from the Austro-German diffusionist school, their impact has been much less. Applied problems were also being studied, like the condition of industrial
labourers, the future of aborigines, the impact of famine on Bengal society, etc. By 1939, Verrier Elwin had commented that the tribes should be left alone and they should be allowed to develop in isolation, away from the mainstream. This would ensure that outside populations did not influence and exploit these tribal populations. On the other hand, G. S. Ghurye had not even wished to enumerate the tribals separately in the census operations, thus enforcing his contrary idea that the tribals should be completely assimilated by the Hindus as a part of the mainstream. J. H. Hutton had claimed that tribals were to be seen as backward Hindus, and also that their assimilation into the Hindu fold had been going on for a long time.
Later, aided by Elwin, Nehru set out the panchsheel document, which became the Golden Mean between these two extreme methods. He claimed that
- (a) people should be allowed to develop on the lines of their own genius and nothing should be imposed upon them;
- (b) tribal rights in land and forest should be respected;
- (c) induction of too many outsiders into tribal areas should be avoided;
- (d) there should be no over-administration of tribal areas and as far as possible work should be done through their own social and cultural institutions;
- (e) the results should be judged not by the amount of money spent but by the quality of human character that is evolved.
The Analytical Period (1950-1990)
For D. N. Majumdar (1950), this phase began in 1938 and carried on to the present. The earlier anthropologists like Surajit Sinha called this the recent phase. By this time Indian Anthropologists started regularly interacting with anthropologists abroad and many kinds of collaborative works were taken up. A shift was seen from the descriptive studies of preliterate villages to the analytical studies of complex societies. Village studies still remained the norm and began to be raised to the level of a methodological deity. The Americans who came to India during this period made their works famous for all time and immortalized also the names of the villages they worked in. These studies began with the work of Sir Henry Sumner Maine in 1871 and Sir Baden-Powell in 1892. Morris Opler of Cornell University (Madhopur and Rampur), Oscar Lewis of the University of Illinois (Rampura) in 1952, David Mandelbaum of the University of California, W.H. Wiser and Charlotte Wiser of Cornell University in 1933-36 (Karimpur), Alan and Ralph Beals from University of California (Namhali and Gopalpur), Harold A. Gould (Sherupur), Kathleen Gough, Stephen Fuchs, Ruth and Stanley Freed from the National Museum of Natural History at New York (Shanti Nagar), F. G. Bailey (Bisipara), Robert Redfield, W. A. Rowe of Cornell University (Senapur), M. S. Luschinsky in 1954-57 (Senapur), M. R. Goodall of Cornell University (Chittora), Scarlett Epstein (Wangala and Dalena), David Mandelbaum, McKim Marriott (Kishan Garhi, Wai town near Pune), John T. Hitchcock (Khalapur), John J. Gumperz (Khalapur), Kolenda (Khalapur), Ralph R. Retztaff (Khalapur), Leigh Minturn (Khalapur), A. P. Barnabas (Sharanpur), Adrian C. Mayer (Ramkheri), G. M. Carstairs (Deoli), Henry Orenstein (Gaon), Robbins Burling (Rengsanggri), Milton Singer (Madras), Gerald D. Berreman (Sirkanda), David G. Mandelbaum, O. T. Beidelman, Martin Orans (Jamshedpur), etc. Indian anthropologists who were included in this group included S. C. Dube (Shamirpet), M. N. Srinivas (Rampura), A. Aiyappan, D. N.Majumdar (Mohana), Prof. Inder Pal Singh (Deleke), K. S. Mathur (Potlod), Yogendra Singh, G. S. Ghurye (Haveli Taluka), etc. A large number of village study monographs were published in the 1960s through the Census of India The first of these was a study of Ghaghra by L. P. Vidyarthi.
These studies ensured that new concepts and ideas began to germinate and alarge amount of data was generated on a very large number of villages from all over India. This provided a very good baseline from which emerged other kinds of studies as well as new theoretical ideas. The work of L. P. Vidyarthi, B. K. Roy Burman, R. M. Sarkar, Baidyanath Saraswati, Makhan Jha, A. Danda, M. K. Raha, P. K. Misra, K. S. Singh, T. N. Madan and others is memorable. P. K. Bhowmick’s study of the Lodhas and the setting up of the society ISRAA for their development in a village created by him called Bidisa is memorable. Such Action Anthropology was a direct influence of the famous anthropologist Sol Tax and others. Further, in places like Panjab University, inter-University collaboration with Universities abroad resulted in a detailed palaeo- anthropological study of the Siwalik region and the discovery of many fossils, some of whom, like the Gigantopithecus fossil, became very famous. It led tothe Department becoming specialized in such work and much work was done in this region on Palaeo-anthropology by those from this University over the years.
In spite of these influences from American cultural anthropologists, the influence of British anthropology on Indian anthropologists continued to be very important. A professional cadre of anthropologists was developing with a Ph.D. degree being very important. Influences from Redfield were coupled with those of Levi-Strauss, Dumont, Leach and Radcliffe-Brown. Books and articles increased tremendously and many publications of Indian anthropologists in foreign journals occurred. However, in following the West so assiduously,
Indian anthropologists seem not to have followed a constructive trend in their own approaches to a logical conclusion. In 1952, Ghurye made a reference in Vienna to the mistrust of social workers and popular political leaders of anthropologists. According to D. N. Majumdar in 1956, Indian anthropologists had an inadequate knowledge of American anthropology.
By 1953, attempts were being made in India to use anthropological knowledge to intervene, train, develop, and in other ways to help, the tribals. This was done through the setting up of the Tribal Research and Training Institutes all over India at the instance of the Commissioner for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes. Such institutes would conduct researches and their data would be used for all planning and welfare programmes. This has not really been done in thorough detail even now. This seems to have been due to the apathy of many government employees, their lack of autonomy and initiative, and the fear of annoying those in power that their present schemes may be wrong. Even while evaluating welfare schemes, such institutes have remained non-controversial in their approach. However, even after many forays in the field of applied anthropology, few anthropologists were being consulted by the government for most plans and programmes. Perhaps, it is in this context that S. C. Dube commented on a cautionary note that, “There are obvious dangers in overselling applied social science and anthropology and in making high sounding but impossible claims as a science of human engineering” (Dube; 1958: 152 in Sachchidananda; 1972: 27).
In studying culture change, Indian anthropologists have been involved in studies relating to the determination of whether the caste system is disintegrating or whether it has been strengthened since Independence. Studies have also been conducted on adult franchise, urbanization, industrialization and their effects on the caste system. With this there has been an emphasis on the nature of Indian unity and the characteristics of various categories of sub-nationalism. Finally, the role of the Indian social and religious traditions in economic development were studied, with special emphasis on the theories of Max Weber.
In other words, the utilitarianism of Indian anthropology was a feature within colonial anthropology, and this attribute continued to play an important part in anthropology all through, even after India’s Independence in 1947. A major part of this work was that of the Anthropological Survey of India with its headquarters in Kolkata and having hundreds of anthropologists employed in seven regional stations. Anthropologists are also employed by the Harijan and social welfare departments. They are employed in the National Institute of Community Development, National Institute of Family Planning, International Centre for Population Studies, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, National Institute of Health and Family Welfare as well as the departments of preventive and social medicines in various hospitals, forensic science departments attached to the Home Ministry in the centre and various states as well as at anatomy departments in some hospitals. They are Public Relation Officers attached to governments, in relation to health and NGOs as well as consultants and counsellors. They are present at the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) at the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad. They are, of course, present at the Office of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, social welfare departments of the Government of India and state governments, the Office of the Registrar General of India, the Gazetteer Division of the state information departments, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs. There are anthropologists associated with the country’s major museums also. The Indian Museum at Kolkata and the National Museum, New Delhi both have anthropology departments. The Government Museum at Chennai, The Prince of Wales Museum at Mumbai, Gujarat Vidyapith museum in Ahmedabad all have anthropologists and the Gurukul Kangri Vishwavidyalaya museum near Haridwar also has a section on anthropology. A trend of picking up locally trained anthropologists in various Departments of Anthropology led to a regionalism and parochialism in their setup. The better-financed, semi- autonomous, inter-disciplinary institutes where anthropology was also being carried out, became outward-looking and American-focussed, as in the National Institute of Community Development, the Indian Institutes of Management and the UNESCO Research Center for the Developing Nations in South and Southeast Asia. Meetings between anthropologists were restricted to seminars/conferences or as external examiners, often due to a paucity of funds.
Further, anthropology has been a part (though now sadly a smaller part) at the Indian Science Congress Association, the Indian National Science Academy (earlier National Institute of Sciences in India), the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (and NISCAIR), Indian Council of Medical Research, Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Planning Commission.
Anthropologists were also employed by the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institute of Management at Kolkata, as well as the Administrative Staff College at Hyderabad, Udaipur and other areas. In spite of a lack of facilities and the slow growth rate, India is second only to the United States of America in the number of professionally trained anthropologists working in different institutions (Sarana and Sinha; 1976).
By 1979, 8420 social science periodicals were in print in India. By 1980, the number of Ph.D. s awarded by Indian universities in social science exceeded 10,000. The study of social science seems to have been restricted to universities between 1947 to 1969. After this period, it has come out of these centres to other institutes and organizations. One major event was the setting up of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) in 1969, which started funding a lot of social anthropological work (Sharma; 1992).
Apart from such general cultural studies a growing body of studies incorporated Indian culture as a whole in their studies. N. K. Bose tried to see India as two basic zones of material culture which cut across linguistic divisions. He sees a pyramidal form of Indian unity in diversity. He sees a non-competitive economic ideology in the caste system and a Hindu mode of tribal absorption.
There was also an interrelationship between the village and other supra-local centres. For M. N. Srinivas, there was the fact of sanskritisation combined with the role of the dominant caste in local and regional integration. For Iravati Karve, there was an agglomerative character to Indian society. For Surajit Sinha, Indian society was an ‘evolutionary emergent’ from a tribal base while for L. P. Vidyarthi, among caste groups there was the concept of a sacred complex while for tribal groups there was a Nature -Man-Spirit complex. Most Indian anthropologists happened to be apolitical except for some Marxists and Gandhians.
Those who developed a distinct research methodology to conduct their studies included Das (using genealogies to study Parum society), N. K. Bose (spatial distribution technique used to date Indian temples, use of human geography in study of culture-historical issues as well as the use of family histories in studying social change in urban centres), Chattopadhyay and Mukherjee (use of statistics in studying social change), Iravati Karve (text analyses incorporated with kinship studies) and L. P. Vidyarthi (using the concepts of sacred centre, cluster and segment to study sacred complexes). Perhaps, a caste structure and
community content of the Indian anthropologists may have influenced their comments on Indian civilization. According to Sinha (1980: 281), “it is unlikely that Indian anthropology will find a strong domestic orientation in the near future. For some time, the proliferation of trained manpower, random efforts at catching up with the latest developments in the West and a general increase in the number of publications will characterize the development of Indian anthropology.”
The Evaluative Phase (1990-present)
The complexity of Indian society was frequently described by Western anthropologists in terms inimical to many Indian anthropologists. Hence, Indian anthropologists began to feel that a better interpretation of such complex interrelationships could be given by Indian anthropologists. As a result, many anthropologists have proposed their own theories. The study of recent improvements and changes in anthropology in India deserves to be done in much more detail. However, it has become clear that not only are the earlier trends being maintained but many areas of anthropology are emerging anew and other sub-fields within are becoming active. An increasing interest in Medical Anthropology, Religion, Development studies, Psychological studies, as well as other areas is becoming more evident.
It seems apparent to many that Indian anthropology has many new directions to travel in. Where it will eventually go is something that may only be wondered at. Some of the ideas may come from our guides in anthropology from the past.
M. N. Srinivas seems to believe that due to its particular history, Indian anthropologists have gained much more expertise in studying their own histories and cultures. He advocates that this background should enable studies of others to understand the self (self-in-the-other) may now give way to studies of the self itself as a valid mode of anthropological inquiry. Each life (one’s own) thus becomes a case study, which the anthropologist self is uniquely placed to study (Srinivas; 1996).