Nineteenth Century Anthropology: Ethnological Surveys
Ethnological surveys pre-date anthropology as a professional discipline in India. Ethnological surveys were undertaken by English administrators whose major objective was to build ethnographic profiles of the people they administered. This was largely because of administrative exigencies, but also, sometimes because of genuine curiosity to understand the variety of cultures and customs, religion and know languages, economy and occupations, history and habitat in Indian subcontinent. These administrators were naturalists, observing and recording the ethnographic accounts of people, comparing and classifying tribes and castes, sometimes delving in folk history and making social linguistic comparisons. Their inquiries reflect extensive, rather than intensive studies. Their approach was to paint a large social canvas and sometimes to interpret the socio-cultural phenomena relevant not only for understanding, but also for administering the people.
Ethnological surveys made during 1871-1920 were essentially compendia of tribes and castes. These provide social-cultural profiles of these tribes and castes Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Dalton, 1973); Primitive Tribes of Nilgiris (Breek 1873); Hindu Tribes and Castes (Sherring, 1881); Tribes and Castes of Rajasthan (Sherring, 1881); Wild Tribes of India (Rowney, 1882);
Tribes and Castes of Bengal (Risley, 1891); Tribes and Castes of North-Western India (Crooks, 1896); Tribes of Brahmaputra Valley (Waddeller, 1901); Tribes and Castes of Cochin (Iyer, 1908); Castes and Tribes of South India (Thurston, 1909); Tribes and Castes of Madras(Sherring, 1909); Punjab Castes (Ibbetson, 1916); Tribes and Castes of Mysore (Iyer, 1912); Tribes and Castes of Bombay (Ethnoven, 1920).
These early works of the Indian anthropology provide one of the basic identities of the discipline. Some of the early efforts were to produce integrative ethnological surveys, such as The Peoples of India (Risley, 1904), Linguistic Survey of India (Grierson, 1905) and the Archaeological Survey published in The Antiquities of India (Barnett, 1913). Even the recent decades, there have been a number of studies, which offer an all-India perspective on ethnological issues. Ghurye (1943) wrote The Aborigines, So-Called and Their Future;
Majumdar (1944) published the classic Races and Cultures of India; Singer (1961) edited Traditional India: Structure and Change; and Piggott (1950) synthesised Indian Archaeology in his book Prehistoric India. These studies belong to the same genre. More recently, the Anthropological Survey of India has completed a massive study of Peoples of India, which is a descriptive account of nearly 4500 communities across the subcontinent.
Anthropology in Early Twentieth Century: Ethnographic Studies
The shift from ethnological surveys to ethnographic studies during the early part of the century was dictated by the rise of anthropology as a professional discipline. It called for an intensive, descriptive, ethnographic understanding of simple, isolated, preliterate, tribal aboriginal communities. Some of the above ethnographic account provided an understanding of their habitat and (folk) history, ecology and economy, ethnic characteristics and linguistic features, religion and customs, social organisation besides focussing on the unique characteristics of the tribe. A distinctive contribution to anthropology is apparent during this period.
Earliest account:
While the earliest ethnographic accounts published on an Indian tribe was the Todas of the Nilgiri Hills by Marshall (1873), most of the studies were carried out during the first four decades of this century.
North-Eastern India:
From North-Eastern India, the first monograph was on the Nagas (Hodson, 1911), the next were on the Lushai Kuki clans (1912), The Khasis (Gordon 1912), The Garos (Hudson, 1921), the Purums (Das, 1945) and The Apatanis (Haimendorf, 1962). Some of these tribes, e.g. the Nagas, the Garos, and the Khasis, have been re-studied at several points of time. On the Nagas,
several monographs have been published on its subgroups by J.P. Mills (1921, 1926) and von Haimendorf (1946).
Central India:
The Central Indian tribes have also been intensively researched. Ethnographic studies of the following tribes give excellent accounts of the work the Indian anthropologists pursued the first half of the century. From Bihar were The Munda (Roy, 1912); The Oraon (Roy, 1915); The Birhor (Roy, 1925); The Kharia (Roy, 1937); The Hos (Majumdar, 1937); The Santhals (Culshaw, 1949). The Baiga (Elwin, 1939), The Agaria (Elwin, 1942), The Maria (Gibson, 1949), The Muria (Elwin, 1947), The Bode (Elwin, 1950) from M.P. and the Saoras (Elwin, 1954) of Orissa.
South India:
Some of the best anthropological studies on Southern India include: The Todas of the Nilgiri Hills (Marshall, 1873 and Rivers, 1902), The Kadars of Cochin (Ehrenfels, 1952), The Nayars of Malabar (Ayyappan, 1941), the Chenchus of Andhra Pradesh (Haimendorf, 1943), The Raj Gonds of Andhra Pradesh (Haimendorf, 1945), The Bison Reddis of Andhra Pradesh (Haimendorf, 1945), and the Kotas of Nilgiris (Mandelbaum 1938).
Western India:
In Western India, ethnographic studies include those on the Bhils of Gujarat (Naik, 1956; Nath, 1959); The Gonds of Rajasthan (Mehta, 1885) and Warlis (Suve, 1945) of Maharashtra. Radcliffe Brown’s monograph of the Andaman Islanders had already appeared in 1922. During the post-independence era, although there was a distinctive shift in anthropological inquiry, some ethnographic accounts, such as the Malers of Santhal Paragans (Vidyarthi, 1963); The Paharis of Himalayas (Berreman,
1963), The Lodhas of West Bengal (Bhowmick, 1969); The Bauris of West Bengal (Shasmal, 1972), The Korwas of Central India (Sandhwar, 1981), The Parachiuyas of Palamau (Prasad, 1979); The Kolams of Andhra Pradesh (Rao, 1980) contain the rigors of traditional ethnographic studies.
The Anthropological Survey of India, which has the largest member- anthropologists in this country promoted researchers on the primitive communities in the country. Recently it has looked at ethnographic research not only in terms of cultural parameters, but also linguistic, ethnic, and social- psychological aspects of the people encompassing the total study of man. It has also conducted an all-India anthropometric data on different regions of the country (ASI, 1991).
Anthropology: Study of Village and Caste Communities
By the middle of the century, particularly after independence, anthropology as a discipline witnessed another shift in its domain. While a group of professionals continued to focus their inquiry on the Indian tribes since the government increased its attention on development of tribal groups and tribal areas, a new wave of anthropological studies emerged. They included village and caste communities. Rampura, a village in Mysore was studied by Srinivas (1955); Shamirpet, an Andhra village by Dube (1955); Kumbapettai, the Tanjore village by Gough, (1955); Gohana Kalan, Senapur, Khalapur; the UP villages by Majumdar (1958); Rajana, a West Bengal village by Chattopadhyaya (1964); a Sikh village by Singh (1958); Vilyatpur, the Punjab village by Kessinger (1974); the Rajasthan village by Chauhan (1967); a Gujarat Village by Sted (1955); the villages by Mathur (1964) and Mayer (1960); an Oriya village by Bailey (1957); a Hermit, Village in Kulu by Rosser (1960); Gopalpur, A south Indian village by Beals (1962); and a village in Karnataka by Gurumurthy (1989). Many tribal village studies were followed, e.g. Marriot (1955), Burling (1963), Jay (1968) and Sachchidananda (1968) by name a few. These studies were oriented to understand the tribal societies and their network relations with other tribal-caste villages in a specified territorial setting.
The above noted village studies graduated Indian anthropology from a descriptive to an analytical discipline. They helped to formulate concepts of social structure, dominant caste, Sanskritization, and rural-urban continuum and also highlighted the processes of continuity and change in India.
Anthropology Diversified: From General to Specific
During post-independence India, anthropology as a discipline, diversified. Social anthropology, as a sub-discipline, focussed on social phenomena interfacing with economics, demography, and sociology. There are several pointed studies made by both Indian and foreign scholars during the period 1960-1980 (Dube 1975, Srivastava 1979, 1982, and 1984). During the last two decades there has been a distinct shift from understanding social systems to social issues, e.g., from caste-to-caste politics, from tribe-to-tribe development.
Caste has been an important Indian social phenomenon; early anthropologists wrote on castes in their ethnological surveys. In 1931, J.H. Hutton published a comprehensive account of caste; and Iravati Karve wrote on kinship in India (1953, 1961). Most of the villages studies described above, in one sense or another, were studies of caste in the village context. The Village India edited by McKim Marriot (1955), and The Indian villages edited by M.N. Srinivas (1953), for example, deal with social structure of caste; changing status of a depressed caste; inter-caste relations; caste and Jajmani system; caste and election; caste and economy; caste and speech variation; caste and law; caste and leadership, etc. Indian anthropology has produced full-length ethnographic accounts of several castes, e.g. Briggs (1926); Shah and Shroff (1958); Madan (1965); Khare (1990). Dumond (1966) in his Homo Hierrarchicus has described caste as a pan-Indian phenomenon, an aspect of indigenous culture
encompassing time and space, religion and language in the sub-continent.
Another shift in anthropological inquiry has been from village studies to study of urban centres and sacred cities of India. During the 50s, economists had initiated city studies. Later, anthropologists added their own tinge to studies of Urban Cities: Majumdar (1960) wrote on Kanpur, Bose (1968) on Calcutta, and Vidyarthi (1969) on Ranchi; analysed the population, occupation, housing and environment. These studies provided an analysis of caste, class and social pattern in urban setting. They also examined linkages and impact on their hinterlands, the neighbouring villages around the urban centre.
Under the influence of Robert Redfield, Milton Singer, some scholars dwelt on the great tradition, which constituted the core of Indian civilization. About the same time, S. Sinha (1957) wrote on the Tribal Cultures of Peninsular India as a Dimension of the Little Tradition in the Study of the Indian Civilization.
Anthropologists were already searching for a framework, which could describe the Indian civilization. The great tradition, which continued through centuries, was reflected in the sacred cities and the metropolis, and the little traditions were represented by the tribal and peasant communities dispersed across the country. This theoretical construct provided a meaningful model for
the anthropological study of the Indian civilization. Using the model, Vidyarthi (1961) studied The Sacred Complex in Hindu Gaya; Cora Dubois later studied the Sacred Cities of Bhubaneswar and Puri; and Vidyarthi and Saraswati studied Varanasi the epicentre of Hindu tradition. Several sacred cities in Western and Southern India have also been studied during the recent decades.
Anthropological studies, such as Social Framework of Indian Industry (Sheth, 1968); Factory Workers in Poona (Lambert, 1958), and Inter-Tribal Market: An Institution Changing Traditional Economy to Modern Market Economy (Sinha, 1968) marked the new shift. Studies undertaken on population growth and demography provided insights into family planning and family welfare; the study of genetics, nutrition and health enabled administrators to identify and to control diseases and to promote health in tribal areas. In this connection some recent studies are worth noting: Srivastava (1982) reviews the application of Population studies in India and Joshi- Mahajan’s edited volume (on studies in Medical Anthropology in India) explores the phenomena of health in human population. Sharma’s edited volume (1989) contains several articles on aspects of health; nutrition and demographic strains on aspects of health; nutrition and demographic strains in Indian population, (see also Chauduri, 1990 and Bhasin, 1989).
The rapid growth of the Indian economy, partly because of industrialization, mainly because of modernisation of agriculture and village industries, contributed to a new social reality and social realignments. These seem to have influenced anthropological research during the period 1970-1990. A number of studies are on the impact of industrial-urbanization, in rural and tribal India.