The Other From Within: Indian Anthropologists and the Birth of the Nation

This project traces the development of anthropology as an academic discipline in India and as an instrument of state formation across the transition to independence (1900- 1970). Despite the impact of postcolonial studies worldwide after the 1970s, the history of anthropology in the subcontinent is relatively unexplored. Previous works have focused mainly on the impact of colonial ethnographers and on the writings of Western anthropologists. In contrast, our project examines the discipline itself in terms of ideas, institutions, intellectuals, their subjects, and the interplay between the global production and utilisation of anthropological forms of knowledge. The project connects these themes by examining the power relations between Western anthropologists and their Indian counterpart, and by analysing how these intellectual networks affect the state and its citizenship.
We know very little about the institutional, intellectual and personal histories linked to the development of Indian anthropology. In comparison, the history of this discipline in the West is a mature field, with specialised archives dedicated to the growth of the discipline and its notable scholars. To bridge this gap, this project will assemble the scattered and dispersed collections of the founders of Indian anthropology to provide a clear vision of this corpus of work and the communities they studied. Similarly, we will preserve, edit and migrate audio-visual material into a digital format belonging to DNTs organisations such as our partners the Budhan Theatre and the Sansmal Bhantu Samaj. The online resources will be hosted on the project website and on the portal of our partner Sahapedia. This effort will tell us more about the education and influences of Indian scholars; how did they choose their sites of study; and what was their relationship to both their informants and subjects.
The project covers three main themes: i) ideologies, ii) institutions and iii) anthropological subjects. First, we will examine the ways in which early twentieth-century global anthropological trends, such as primitivism and scientific racism, posed a significant challenge to Indian anthropologists trying to understand their lives as colonial subjects and the place of their society in the world. In the same way, we will study the influence of notions such as 'cultural relativism', 'functionalism' and 'development'. From the 1940s to the 1970s, Indian anthropologists adopted such concepts to comprehend questions of caste and as a way to modernise Indian villages.
Second, we will trace the colonial and postcolonial lives of the various institutions which attempted to classify and structure the heterogeneity of the Indian population under fixed terms such as caste and race. Here we will look at the transition from the projects of colonial censuses to the establishment of the Anthropological Survey of India in 1945. Similarly, we will investigate the anthropological projects of village development created by the Nehru administration as part of their 5 year plans. These endeavours had strong anthropological components and played a key role as tools of state formation. Furthermore, as they were funded by international bodies such as the Ford Foundation, these projects reflected new anthropological trends coming from the US rather than Britain.
Finally, we will focus on 'anthropological subjects' by piecing together a history of Indian anthropologists' writings, their experiences in the field and their networks of collaboration (including local guides and 'fixers'). We will trace the afterlives of these anthropological projects for their so-called marginal subjects. Through pre-existing relationships with members of the dalit, adivasi and denotified tribe communities, our research explores the ways these groups understood, negotiated and constructed their history as anthropological subjects, and what this means in terms of contemporary struggles for political recognition.

Who might benefit from this research?
Three categories of non-academic participants will potentially benefit from this research, and the project has already drawn many of them into partnerships:
1. Policy organisations
The PI has already established links to the Ministry of Social Justice, India, who are working on a new report on the condition of Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs). This report sets out the possibility of a new schedule (list) for affirmative action for DNTs. We also have connections to Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance (ACDA), via its organiser, Santosh Dass. This organisation has lobbied the UK government for the passage and implementation of anti-caste discrimination legislation.
2. Museums, institutes and archives
Kevin Greenbank helped us to establish a relationship with the main repository of South Asia related material in Cambridge - the Centre for South Asian Studies. This repository houses important documents on the history of anthropology in India and the UK. We will also have a partnership with Budhan Theatre and the online cultural repository - Sahapedia. These organisations will attend the main workshops of the project and via Dr. Greenbank, we will migrate, host and disseminate their audio-visual materials and documents. Furthermore, we will share our existing archival research with them.
3. Community organisations
We will work with a number of community organisations that are campaigning for the promotion of Dalits, Adivasi and DNT rights, and have established partnerships with three organisations in particular: ACDA UK, a lobbyist group fighting for Dalit's rights in Britain; and Budhan Theatre, a cultural-activist organisation based in Ahmedabad.
How might they benefit?
1. Policy organisations
The PI has already been asked to provide historical data for the preparation of the Interim report on DNTs being prepared by the National Commission on DNTs, part of the Indian Ministry of Social Justice. We will develop this relationship further, via contacts with their researcher Mariya Salim, for future collaboration with the department. Santosh Dass, from ACDA UK, has also asked us to provide detailed background material on the definitions of low-caste organisations. We will forge connections between community organisations in India and ACDA UK via the project. One of our international workshops will be hosted by ACDA UK's facilities in London.
2. Museums, institutes and archives
The main benefits for archives will be the migrating and cataloguing of existing material into a coherent form. We will also host, preserve and disseminate the migrated material in our project website. This will bring scholars to each of the institution involved in the project. Budhan Theatre will receive assistance in the preparation and organisation of their exhibited and archival materials. Our research findings will also bring forms of anthropological context to their museums. Sahapedia will have a new online exhibition and will plan a formal collaboration with the School of History at Leeds in the longer term, which will lead to further projects.
3. Community organisations
Through our interest on anthropological networks and informants, we will structure co-produced outputs that will act as exhibits and source material for the archival aspects of the project with our key community partners. The benefits will include the development of research-films and research gathering experience, the development of archival material of use to the organisations themselves, and the preparation of community histories. The latter are potentially important to policy initiatives relating to affirmative action. The project will forge links through pre-existing public engagement and outreach networks facilitated by the University of Leeds, as well as the PI's existing relationship with the Bradford Literary Festival.