Anthropology

The need for a Forum came up in the context of a call to the Anthropology Fraternity in India for upholding the spirit and tenets of Anthropology, responding to the crisis of sorts concerning the organisation of the World Anthropology Congress 2023 in India. The different Anthropology Associations and Organisations in India had also joined to lend their support in a unison voice to come out of the crisis.

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In the process, two distinct groups of Anthropologists namely the Senior and the Young Anthropologists emerged only to be joined with a third group of anthropologists by name Practising Anthropologists, all becoming active in the social media WhatsApp group. The interactions among the members of the group led to the idea of the formation of a United India Anthropology Forum. This was followed by a process of inviting all anthropologists for online registration to the Forum. Thus, the crisis that gave the idea of the Forum was a blessing in disguise to unite the Indian Anthropologists across specialisations, regions and age groups for a just cause which, in the course of a short span of time, has evolved into a formidable force to become determined to promote the interests of Anthropology beyond the 2023 World Anthropology Congress.

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The UIAF is cognisance of the existing anthropological bodies at various levels and looks for unification of ideas, suggestions, and collective efforts from all those bodies to achieve the set goals in revitalising Anthropology discipline to realise its true potentiality. All these organisations could continue to play their fundamental and constructive role in upholding the anthropological identity and popularising the subject at their respective levels.

The members of the Forum are to become more connected through online and social media for quick actions. While it could maintain its autonomy as a legitimate anthropological identity at the national level, it is expected that the role of UIAF has to be in partnership with Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologists (INCAA) in several areas of common interest, and at the same time work in complementarity with the other associated organisations as well, with the sole aim to rejuvenate and revamp Anthropology in India and work towards consolidation of Anthropological interests.

A dreamy-eyed 18 years old attended a series of lectures by Prof. K.P.Chattopadhyay of Calcutta University. Lectures, that discussed the plight of the oppressed sections of society, especially tribal people. This young man, Lakshman Kumar Mahapatra, was overwhelmed and decided to dedicate his life to comprehend the causes of tribal subjugation. Instantaneously, he decided to pursue a future in the discipline of anthropology, while he was still studying for his intermediate degree at Ravenshaw College (now Ravenshaw University) at Cuttack, Odisha. Anthropology was then an emerging discipline growing under the shadows of colonial rule. In his words, it promised him the intellectual fare, apart from ensuring emotional satisfaction and idealistic fixation (Mahapatra, Felicitation volume 1992, P 312).

This renowned scholar of a holistic tradition of Indian Anthropology was born on 29th October 1929 in the erstwhile princely State of Rajanilgiri, Balasore District, Odisha. The scholarship came naturally to him and it brought along with its accolades, meritorious awards, and fellowships to fund his education. He appeared for the matriculation examination from MKC High School, Baripara, and stood 2nd in the Orissa State. Completing his intermediate from Ravenshaw College, Cuttack he moved to Calcutta University for obtaining his B.A. (Hons) and M.A. in Anthropology in 1952, securing 1st and 2nd positions in the University, respectively.

He was Jawaharlal Nehru Scholar, (1957-60) in Hamburg, Germany, and received his Ph.D. from there in the field of “Cultural Anthropology, Sociology and Comparative Education” in 1960 with Magna-cum-Laude. The thesis was titled: A Hill Bhuiyan Village and its Region: A Socio-Economic Empirical Study. Drawing inspiration from Redfield’s concept of little community, Mahapatra analyzed Hill Bhuiyan village as a self-sufficient, autonomous unit having extended networks with other towns and villages. The conceptual framework and methodological perspective evolved in this study paved the way for future researchers to develop holistic ethnographic studies located in contextual details.  If research was his forte, teaching came as a conscious choice, as his own words reflect:

 I wanted to be a teacher, and a better teacher in those days of nationalistic turmoil and transition… He (the teacher) could be independent-minded, could brush aside power and pelf as trash, and could meet anyone in society on an intellectual and moral plane without fear or favor (cf. Felicitation Volume 1992, P 311-12).

His fearless crusader spirit dominated his entire career. He never bowed down to administrative diktat and frankly voiced his opinion on matters and on subjects of his interest. His life and career encompassed three thrust areas: Mahapatra as the institution builder, Mahapatra as the scholar and researcher, and Mahapatra as the activist.

MAHAPATRA: THE INSTITUTION BUILDER

His professional career started in 1953. He was Joint Secretary, Tribal Research Bureau, Odisha (1954), Lecturer in Anthropology, Lucknow University (1954-55), Head, Department of Sociology, Meerut College, U.P. (1955); Lecturer, Community Development Training Centre for Tribal Areas, Ranchi, (1955-56); Lecturer, Anthropology, Guwahati University, (1956-62); Reader, Anthropology, Karnataka University, Dharwad (1962-64).

He finally joined Utkal University in his home state of Odisha as Reader in 1964 and subsequently succeeded Prof. A. Aiyyapan as Head of the Department in 1967. He continued as Professor and Head of the Department until 1989. In these twenty-two years, he is credited with placing anthropology in the state of Odisha on the international map. He made it his mission in his twenty-five years (22 years as faculty and 3years as vice-chancellor) long tenure at Utkal University, to bring at par, Odisha’s academic community, in particular anthropologists to international standards. He never compromised on the quality of scholarship and research. For him, teaching was an inner calling with a noble purpose. Paying tributes to his erudite scholarship, Prof. K.K Misra wrote, Teaching is not a job with work and leisure; it is a profession that demands passion and commitment and LK Mahapatra epitomized it (2020:121).

Under his cosmopolitan outlook, broad vision, and sagacious leadership, Anthropology Department at Utkal University was accorded by UGC, the status of Department of Special Assistance (DSA in 1988). Distinguished scholars from within and outside the country patronize it for knowledge exchange and affiliation.

I said at the outset that he was an institution builder. His farsightedness and ability to innovate resulted in the creation of the Centre for Regional Studies (CRS), Population Research Centre (PRC), an interdisciplinary center of South-East Asia Culture Area Study in collaboration with the Departments of History and Geography. He introduced several new courses in the domain of anthropology that were not taught in other specialized departments of Anthropology. Population Studies and Development Anthropology provided students in the department additional heft to work in the field of demography and development programs.

Production of ethnographic films by a university department started under his visionary leadership. His interventions in developing new specializations helped the department at Utkal university to go beyond the traditional structure of four-fold specializations. His training in ethnology and sociology in Germany dominated anthropological teaching and thinking about Utkal for a quarter-century (1967- 1989).

He used his institution-building abilities as Vice-Chancellor of Utkal University and then Sambalpur University to promote integrated learning. In his capacity as Director and later Chairperson of the Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies, (NCDS), Bhubaneswar; he used his training in Social Sciences to bring together the disciplines of Economics, Anthropology, and Sociology for promoting holistic social science research. He provided robust leadership to these institutions and abhorred any form of compromise on academic standards. As an imaginative researcher and administrator, he captured the essence of future trends in the social sciences and remained ahead of his academic peers. 

During his distinguished academic career, he had several national and international assignments. He was a Visiting Professor at Hamburg University, (Germany), Visiting Lecturer at the Universities of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Heidelberg (Germany), Consultant with UNESCO, Bangkok (Thailand), fellow under the German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD, (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst e.V), visiting fellow at the Universities of Heidelberg and Bielefeld (Germany), Ford Foundation Fellow, Jakarta (Indonesia) and also received prestigious Urgent Anthropology Award of the Smithsonian (USA) and International Decade for People of African Descent, visiting fellowship to Hague (the Netherlands).

Several national honours awarded to him in his brilliant career include UGC National Lectureship, National Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science; Research and Visiting Fellow, Anthropological Survey of India; and post-retirement UGC Emeritus Fellow at Utkal University.

MAHAPATRA: THE SCHOLAR AND RESEARCHER

He conducted extensive research in Social Anthropology making significant contributions to the study of castes, tribes, tribe/caste transformation and continuum, ritual kinship, the role of Hindu princes in the caste system in Odisha, swidden cultivation, social movements, social welfare, folklore, tribal development, resettlement and rehabilitation, cultural tradition, self-managed development, etc. His grounding in German ethnology made him see culture as a dynamic process, and not merely a product of history. His pioneering work on social organization in Odisha made him a valuable knowledge resource on the culture and society of this important region in India. He was called a moving encyclopaedia of Anthropology by his friends and colleagues.

His passion to study Odisha’s folklore came from the conviction that folklore represented a world view and rational cultural practice that should be taken seriously was his persuasive argument (Manoranjan Mohanty, 2020)[1] He was among the first to put Odisha folklore studies in the global academic realm. He studied folklore, oral traditions, music, language, myths, legends, social institutions, and the cultural heritage of Odisha’s tribes. In doing so, he tried to establish linkages between the memory of historical association and reconstruction of the nature and structure of tribes and castes.

Arguably, his magnum opus was his paper on “Gods, Kings and Caste System in India” first published in Kenneth David (1977, edited), a publication titled:  The New Wind – Changing Identities in South Asia. The Hague:Mouton. This paper offers invaluable insights into the caste systems in India and is considered a seminal contribution to South Asian studies. The premise of his arguments in this exceptional piece of writing is to establish structural similarities between a Hindu temple, a royal palace, and an intertwined network of caste relations in village India. He goes beyond Hocart’s (1970) notion of the caste system serving both King and God and relocates it in the texts of Thakur-Raja– as the God-King. According to Nayak (2020, P, 255), the Prevalence of such a conception of divine kingship continued for a long time in Southeast Asia.

His intellectual acumen is distinctively visible in the vast panorama of his writings from folk tradition to interpretation of caste in metaphors of religion as also politics. His paper on The Role of Hindu Princes in the Caste System in Orissa (1984), examines Caste Councils and caste dynamics and the role of the king (Raja) in sustaining caste order and hierarchical Hindu society. He also discusses caste mobility and the role of the princely state in the Hinduization of the Tribes in the region. His studies on ex-princely states of Odisha, especially Mayubhanj, Keonjhar, and Bonai, deepen our understanding of tribal politics, rulers with alleged tribal ancestry, and those sponsored by tribes. He sums it all in his research publication Tribal Polity and Hindu Kingdom: Case Study of Early State Systems in Orissa, India. His work on Ritual Kinship describing it as institutionalized friendship marks the beginning of innovative thinking on the subject. He interprets ‘ritual kinship’ as a fictive extension of actual kinship drawing inferences from both tribal and peasant communities. In his opinion, this constitutes the essence of social interactions and inter-relations between Hindu castes and local tribes.

He moved with ease from studying South Asian Anthropology to the study of Southeast Asia. He wrote a brilliant note on the comparative study of Folk Culture and Society in Orissa and Bali. In 1982, he researched in Bali as an ICSSR fellow and also registered society for friendship and cultural cooperation with Indonesia. A journal named Southeast Asian Perspectives was also launched with Prof Mahapatra as the editor and Professor Mario.D. Zamora as the guest editor. Subsequently, he established a Centre for South-East Asian Studies within the precincts of the Anthropology department. He also taught South-East Asian Culture. Professor Mahapatra spent many years researching shifting cultivation in India and Indonesia. Contributing towards these efforts was the post-IUAES Congress symposium on, Anthropology of Shifting Cultivation in collaboration with UNESCO in 1978. In 1983, his research paper titled An Overview of Swidden cultivation in India was part of UNESCO’s publication on Swidden Cultivation in Asia published by UNESCO. In 2011, he published another paper titled Swidden Peasantry in Indonesia (2011).

MAHAPATRA: THE ACTIVIST

Mahapatra was not only a scholar par excellence but with his humanistic instinct traversed the traditional threshold of an academic and activist. He worked assiduously for the cause of the dispossessed. His ethnographic studies went beyond micronuclear village studies. According to Prof. Ajit Danda, he achieved a balanced synthesis of empirical micro-perspective with comparative worldwide macro-perspective, which is difficult to achieve (https://www.lkmahapatra.org/anthropologists).

His theoretical insights provided a global perspective on the lingering crisis of induced development commonly marketed as planned and sustainable development. He challenged larger centre and state policies of industrialization and hydro-projects in tribal heartlands. These policies resulted in a mass exodus of tribal from their habitats without adequate compensation or rehabilitation. He raised these concerns in the 11th IUAES meeting held in Vancouver while chairing International Symposium on Development and Population Displacement.  His address titled “Development for Whom?” was a scathing reflection on the global agenda of development. It was a clarion call to the anthropologists and sociologists to come forward to defend the livelihood, rights, and entitlements of the tribal people. 

He had a human rights perspective, and an approach of legal pluralism to deal with the problems of food, nutrition, social security of immiserated tribal oustees and peasantry. He fought against the erosion of their customary entitlements, assault on their genomic autonomy and integrity, loss of their sui generis, the custodial, collective intellectual property right to biogenetic, forest, and knowledge resources. He strove for justice for the tribal, through a process of participatory, self-managed development. He believed in their inner strength to innovate as they represented the most trusted agency to protect and conserve nature. His vision was grounded in empirical reality attained through decades of rigorous fieldwork. His research findings documented the capacity of the Bonda tribal of Bonda Hills to confront natural calamities and to cope with new challenges while retaining their core cultural and production practices. He wanted development policy planners to emulate the tribal model of ‘Self-managed development’.

His crusades against the unilateral policy and planned interventions by the state resulted in several changes in legislation and greater involvement of the primary stakeholders-The tribal. He recorded travails of the communities displaced by the construction of river dams, and industrialization in the vicinity of the Pengo Paraja, Jharia Paraja, Bhatara villages bordering Kalahandi, Koraput districts. Mineral resource-rich districts had pushed their native inhabitants to starvation and pecuniary. He organized a field trip for his postgraduate students to record how the Indravati Dam project was impacting tribes of the Koraput, Sundargarh, and Sambalpur districts. Many tribal people were moving out of the project area as adequate measures for their rehabilitation and secured future was not made. With empirical evidence, he approached authorities and compelled them to appoint a development scientist to map and suggest measures to alleviate the sufferings of the local inhabitants. 

His indomitable spirit to fight for the rights of the marginalized tribal people is aptly described by Bishnupada Sethi:

 If Odisha today boasts of a robust people-centric research and rehabilitation policy, it being the first state to do so, the credit goes to Prof. Mahapatra, who was the guiding father for this endeavour. It was due to his tireless effort, and compassionate appeal that the Orissa Resettlement and Rehabilitation of Projects Affected Persons Policy, 1994 of the Water Resources Department, Government of Orissa, provided for payment of compensation for assets lost, in addition to a rather substantial rehabilitation package for the landless and those who occupied land without proprietary title (http://indr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Mahapatra-memorial.pdf).  

 These are historic legislations for the indigenous people. These have resulted, primarily as a result of the perseverance of Prof. Mahapatra’s relentless fight for the protection of their rights and entitlements in the land, forests, and other resources. He insisted on a compilation of customary rights in land, forest, and water resources. The objective was to demand legitimate, adequate, and comprehensive compensation packages for the displaced communities. He believed that the compilation of records would benefit not only the land-holding peasants but also the greater majority of landless tribal people, who do not hold a proprietary record of rights over their natural and common property resources. Effectively, these resources were hitherto enjoyed by them from time immemorial but became part of the government lands under the colonial principle of eminent domain.

Prof. Mahapatra belonged to a rare genre of teachers, scholars, and institution builders, who dominated their disciplines and became a sort of ‘cult’ figure. With his impeccable command over social science theory and methods, vast experience, and rich repertoire of research, combined with passionate and fearless activism for the marginalized population in India and the world, he cemented his place among the luminary anthropologists of India. His scholarship is recognized beyond India. He was appointed Consultant, World Bank in India and the US on Rehabilitation of displaced population, 1985-88, 1995-96 and remained one of the most admired members of the IUAES.

His energy was seamless! He revamped the Institutions he headed, with his futuristic vision, robust initiatives, and uncompromising attitude in matters of academic rigor. The significant role of this eminent professor in shaping the intellectual world of Odisha in the last decades of the twentieth century is incomparable. Summing up this dynamic and multifaceted personality, eminent anthropologist P.K. Nayak wrote:

By birth, Mahapatra was a stubborn Odia, in his dealings with people, he was a polite and Bengali gentleman, and by temperament, he was a forward-looking German, who constantly strove to expand the boundaries of anthropological research and inquiry as a doyen of the discipline! (Nayak. 2020, P 253).

PUBLICATIONS

Professor Mahapatra was not only an outstanding teacher but also a voracious reader and prolific writer. He has written and co-edited 15 books, his last one being Knowledge for Actions: A Treatise in Anthropology which appeared in 2016. He published about 180 research papers in international and national journals. He was Founder- Editor, Man in India, (Journal of the Department of Anthropology, Utkal University) and Founder and Editor, South East Asian Perspectives (1st International Journal in the Social Sciences from Odisha)

BOOKS

Mahapatra, L.K. 2013. Development for Whom: Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy in India, New Delhi: Mittal Publications.

Mahapatra, L.K. and Meera Swain(ed.) 2016. Knowledge for Actions: A Treatise in Anthropology, New Delhi: APH.

RESEARCH PAPERS

 Mahapatra, L.K. 1965. “Technological Development and Cultural Resistance”, Baessler Archiv, Vol. XIII, Berlin.

Mahapatra, L.K. 1968.  “Social Movements among Tribes of Eastern India with special reference to Orissa”, Sociologus, Vol. XVIII, No. I, Berlin.

Mahapatra, L.K. 1973. “Ritual Kinship in Orissa” presented at the 8th International Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists, Tokyo-Kyoto, 1968 published in Reports. Published in Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute Vol. XXXI-XXXII, Part-I, 1970-71, Part-II, 1971-72, Poona.

Mahapatra, L.K. 1973. “Gods, Kings and Caste System in India” paper presented at IX International Congress in Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Chicago, 1973, published in World Anthropology Series, Mouton (in 3 different volumes).

Mahapatra, L.K. 1975.  “Pastoralists and the Modern India State” in Pastoralists and Pastoralism in India, eds. L.S. Leshnik and C.D. Sontheimer, Heidelberg,

David, Kenneth, Ed.1977. The new wind: changing identities in South Asia.

Mahapatra, L.K. 1979.  “Group Discrimination in Orissa” in Studies in Plural Society, Vol. III of the Case Studies of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, The Hague.

Mahapatra, L.K. 1989. “Tribal Polity and Hindu Kingdom: Case Study of Early State Systems in Orissa, India”, presented at XI International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Canada, 1983, in Orissa: Past and Present, Bhubaneswar 1989.

 Mahapatra, L.K. 1994 “Classification and Enumeration of Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes in Orissa” in Economic News and Views. Vol.2, New Delhi.

References:

1. Behura, N.K. & K.C.Tripathy (ed.) 1992. Science, Culture, and Development: L K Mahapatra Felicitation Volume. Bhubaneswar: Paragon Publishers.

2. Danda, Ajit K. “In Memoriam: Professor Lakshman Kumar Mahapatra, M.A. (Calcutta), D.Phil. (Hamburg)”, https://www.lkmahapatra.org/anthropologists

3. Hocart, A.M.1970 (1936). Kings and councillors. An essay in the comapritive anatomy of human society Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

4. Mahapatra,L.K. 1977. “Gods, Kings and Caste System in India”in David, Kenneth, Ed.1977. The new wind: changing identities in South Asia. The Hague:Mouton. Hocart

5. Mishra, K.K. 2020. “A personal Homage to an extraordinary teacher: Professor Laxman Kumar Mahapatra, 29.10.1929-1.06.2020)”. Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society, 55: 122-125.

6. Nayak P.K . 2020. “Laxman Kumar Mahapatra. 29th October 1929-1st June 2020”, Man in India, 100 (3-4): 2020: 251-256

7. Sethi, Bishnupada, “The Guiding Father of Odisha’s Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy”, Mahapatra-memorial http://indr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/

Contributed by:

Prof.A.B. Ota, IAS (Retd)

Director and Special Secretary,

SCSTRTI,

Govt. of Odisha

[email protected]

Editorial Inputs:

UIAF & WAC editorial team

[1] Manoranjan Mohanty. A People’s Anthropologist, L K Mahapatra (29 October 1929- 1 June 2020), https://www.lkmahapatra.org/intellectuals-activists)

Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology (retd.)

Department of Anthropology

[email protected]

Many a doctrine is like a windowpane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

On opening first few pages of N. K. Vaid’s recent publication titled Truth about Caste (2022), Khalil Gibran’s famous quote about truth echoed in my ears. Is it that we learnt and taught ‘truth about caste’ seeing it through a windowpane? Did this gaze divide us from the truth?

This small book that challenges dominant discourse of ‘caste in India’ is likely to be dismissed by elite academics for being brash and subservient to the dominant political discourse of the decade. But before distinguished intellectual elite decide to dismiss it for being crass and endorsement of dominant political discourse, there are few important lessons that each one of us must ponder over:

For decades, we decried Manusmriti for being the genesis of Hindu social system’s most acknowledged nemesis. But most of us never ventured into reading the original text in its entirety. Few may have used translations, but most others cited from frequently cited readings on Hindu social system. In academic terms, there is hardly any reference that tells researchers not to use secondary sources for endorsing or developing rationale for research. But in what context these interpretations are offered remains in abyss.

There is no rationale in denying that the imposed identities of caste, associating it with birth and tragically responsible for annihilating a section of our social fabric is a bitter reality, that we must confront upfront. What this text is trying to debate is not this fact but blind acceptance of its origins in versions to which most of us had no first-hand access. Arguments that were reiterated in support of the incorporated interpretations were invariably drawn from secondary sources. How authentic these transliterations/translations are-is anybody’s guess!

The author of this small text largely holds historians of the pre- and post-independence era responsible for creating the windowpane through which we have continued to view ‘caste system’ for hundreds of years now. Citing ancient Indian texts, he argues that Manu never ascribed varana identity to anyone because of their birth. Vaid writes:

“According to Manu (2:146)[1], the Guru assigns Varana to the student after he has completed his education and becomes a Sanatana”-thus dismissing the commonly accepted view that ‘caste always had an ascriptive status designated by birth’. To substantiate his argument, he cites Bayly’s (1999/2007(online publication) contention:

Until well into the colonial period, much of the subcontinent was still populated by people for whom the formal distinctions of caste were of only limited importance even in parts of the so-called Hindu heartland —The institutions and beliefs which are now often described as the elements of traditional caste were only just taking shape as recently as the early 18th century.[2]

Vaid is not alone in his search for seeking ‘authentic origins of caste’[3]. There are unending arguments in favour or against two diametrically opposite position on interpreting genesis of caste in India.

His other argument to which two eminent anthropologists in two separate forewords to the book effectively agree, that in post-colonial India, we continued to live with social constructs that imperial powers construed for ‘colonising the other’. They both cite construct of ‘tribe’ and the colonial hangover with which we continue to preach policies and lessons to ‘primitives’[4] in modernity, morality, wisdom, and ‘so-called development’. For centuries the most enduring civilizations with distinctive ethnic and cultural diversities and enriched knowledge systems were described as ‘primitive’ and static, initially by European adventure travellers and later by colonial administrator ethnographers.

In author’s considered opinion, ‘Caste was deliberately thrust upon India in the first ever census of 1881” (2022:43). To support his argument, he cites comments of British Superintendent of 1921 census:

“We pigeonholed everyone by caste and if we had no true caste for them, labelled them with the hereditary occupation. We deplore the caste system and its effects on social and economic problems, but we are largely responsible for the system we deplore. Left to themselves such castes as Sonar and Lohar would rapidly disappear and no one would suffer—“[5]

Several other British officers[6], involved with the census of India during British regime raised similar concerns. Researchers working on the subject trace this argument to Bernard Cohn’s work on role of Census in categorising Jati identities. Cohn (1987:241)[7] believed,

It would not be an exaggeration to say that down until 1950 scholars’ and scientists’ views on the nature, structure and functioning of the Indian caste system were shaped mainly by the data and conceptions growing out of the census Operations. The census was the necessary prerequisite both for the Imperial Gazetteer and for the Tribes and Castes series.

In a 2019 publication[8], Sanjoy Chakravorty rekindled the debate about the colonial construction of caste. He purposes in his BBC interview:

the social categories of religion and caste as they are perceived in modern-day India were developed during the British colonial rule, at a time when information was scarce and the coloniser’s power over information was absolute.

This was done initially in the early 19th Century by elevating selected and convenient Brahman-Sanskrit texts like the Manusmriti to canonical status; the supposed origin of caste in the Rig Veda (most ancient religious text) was most likely added retroactively, after it was translated to English decades later.

He also cites anthropologist Susan Bayly and quotes him to support his proposition. In Bayly’s words:

until well into the colonial period, much of the subcontinent was still populated by people for whom the formal distinctions of caste were of only limited importance, even in parts of the so-called Hindu heartland… The institutions and beliefs which are now often described as the elements of traditional caste were only just taking shape as recently as the early 18th Century.

These opinions suggest that subjugations and atrocities against a section of the society in the name of caste discrimination solidified because of deliberate design of colonial regime. This position is vehemently denied and vociferously opposed by some contemporary historians of caste. In a scathing critique of Sanjoy Chakravorty’s -2019 publication and his interview to BBC, Ananya Chakravarti in an article titled Caste wasn’t a British Construct-and Anyone Who studies History should know that, argues that colonial construction of caste is nothing but figment of imagination of Brahmin intellectual elite who dominate academic world not only in India but also in the United States. To bunk the thesis of colonial construction she cites historical evidence from her study of Caste as an organising principle of social life everywhere and writes:

At the Goa State Historical Archives, I recently transcribed a late-17th-century register of slave manumissions. The vast majority of the freed slaves were from lower castes in the Konkan, such as kunbis and kolis, which still exist today:

(for details refer to https://thewire.in accessed on 6th March 2023)

One is not sure if this is a stand-alone record or there are other historical records to augment this position. Her reference to two poems, one by much respected Saint poet Tukaram and Janabai seeking companionship of God in all ‘lowly’ activities to ward off their loneliness metaphorically explicates their suffering. Transliterations are invariably imbued with the imagination of the translator and are not necessarily substantiated as historical evidence.

I am not getting into controversies of what is the truth[9] or untruth about caste. Whatever the narratives or counter narratives, attempting to personify their respective positions, it is rational to assume that multiple narratives of caste are intertwined in complexities of race, religion, and political power structures. Discernment of Brahmanical dominance was countered by a string of Dalit movements that have carved a space for itself both socially and politically. A cursory survey of caste in India on Google invariably takes one to Dalit literature on the subject. However, there is another perception suggesting that the current political transformations in India, is passing through a period of ‘post truth’[10].

Evidently, there is vociferous demand to trace our rich cultural heritage and lost roots that was deliberately submersed in the era of western construct of enlightenment. Indian intellectuals from several western nations in particular United States of America have evoked persuasive debates to declutter historical texts taught in post-colonial India.

One such attempt is being made since 2011 by Infinity foundation based in the US that has published several best-selling books by its founder director Rajiv Malhotra. Primacy of their arguments is rooted in the belief that there was a deliberate design of communism, responsible for the neglect of India’s rich ancient heritage and knowledge.

POLITICS OF NARRATIVES OF CASTE CONSTRUCTON

Few weeks ago, I was intrigued by the focus that ban on caste-based discrimination[11] in Seattle in the US received in the media. It became first state in the United States of America to do so, indicating probabilities of many other states doing the same.

California considers ban on Caste Discrimination.

My immediate reaction to the news could best be described as that of a confused layperson. It brought back memories of sociologists Nathan Glazer and Moynihan’s book titled Beyond the melting pot published in 1963. Though the book did not cover Indian diaspora, but it did emphasize primoradial identities remaining unfazed even in dream destinations.

I also vividly recall ‘American dream’ that every young college student in India visualized as its future in the first decades after India became independent. Many continue to do so but after the opening of economy, it seems to have ebbed a little. American calling card in early 50s and 60s was vision of its being a ‘melting pot’[12] that claimed to absorb people from diverse nationalities in a common pool of economic aspirations giving them a new identity. Today, when there is a woman vice president and nearly 60 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies of Indian origins, there seems to be a discernible contest for a distinct political identify by a section of the Indian diaspora.

If one goes by the narrative of caste discrimination in the academic business circuit of US, then it appears that competition and space for opportunities is shrinking. To assume that all successful business heads in the US are of Brahmin origin appears absurd and parochial. It undermines their hard work, commitment, and intellectual acumen. Social construction of caste was always a political narrative immaterial of the fact who the narrator was. Legitimizing it in the name of religion and locating it in the ancient texts and scriptures associated with polytheistic Hinduism is an instrumentality for substantiating power equations. Dominant power structures usurp the narrative and give it contours that defends the boundaries they create. It could be Brahmanical narrative or colonial reconstruction or Dalit rescripting, tone and tenor may change but the narrative was, is and will always remain political.

• Bayly, Susan. 1999. Caste, Society and Politics in India. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press

• Cohn, Bernard; 1987; The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia; An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays; New Delhi; OUP; 224-254

• Chakravorty, Sanjoy. 2019. The Truth About Us-The Politics of Information from Manu to Modi.

• Dirks, Nicholas B. 1992b ‘Caste states of Mind’ Representations 37: 56-78. Google Scholar.

• Glazer, Nathan, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. 1970 (2nd edition) Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. 2d ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970. This second edition includes a noteworthy introduction written by Glazer ten years after he initially undertook the project.

• Glazer, Nathan. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. 1997. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

[1] I have not read original text of Manusmriti and thus not able to either endorse or negate its contextual construction.

[2] Page number for the citation is missing and I have not read the book to infer the meaning in its entirety.

[3] The debate is not new, and some scholars have traced it back to the writings of sociologist Ghurye and anthropologist Bernard Cohen.

[4] These narratives are vehemently challenged by native scholars from the communities and progressive researchers are constantly emphasizing absurdity imbued in calling them ‘primitive’. Inherent ludicrous connotations of this phraseology are truly condemnable. There is growing consensus among the anthropologists that the term ‘tribe’ was coined by colonial rulers to justify their ruling strategy and desire to control fiercely independent communities. All these communities have distinct identities, most of them have dialects, some even written scripts and enriched knowledge systems and cultural fabric.

[5] Reference for the citation is incomplete and one is not made aware if the statement was duly checked from its original text and analysed in the given context. What is given at the end of the statement is a footnote that takes reader to Susan Bayly’s 1999 publication (that was put online in 2008 and is incorrectly cited as 2005, her online biodata has no reference citing any 2005 publication) and a citation from there without the page number. This in my opinion defeats the highpoint of the book that insists on the reading of original texts before propagating doctrines or theoretical constructs.

[6] W.R. Cornish while conducting census operation in 1871 in Madras Presidency, and C.F. Magrath, author of Bihar Census 1871 made similar observations.

[7] Every student of caste must read Bernard Cohn’s extensively researched paper published in 1987 The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia in An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays; New Delhi; OUP; 224-254.

[8] Titles of Vaid’s and Chakravorty’s book have uncanny similarity. Vaid’s book is titled Truth about Caste (published, 2022) and Chakravorty’s 2019 publication is titled The truth About us: The Politics of Information from Manu to Modi. While I have read the former, I have not had access to Chakravorty’ book but read his lengthy interview to BBC and excerpts from the Book Launch event at Delhi and several reviews of this publication.

[9] Truth is socially and administratively constructed narrative that as Chakravorty portrays in his work is marketed through hegemonies of information.

[10] The term post-truth was coined as the word of the year by Oxford dictionary in 2016. Wikipedia (accessed on 23.03.23) explains it as, “—a term that refers to the 21st century widespread documentation of and concern about disputes over public truth claims. The term’s academic development refers to the theories and research that explain the historically specific causes and the effects of the phenomenon”. There are innumerable arguments contesting its theoretical meaning and premise of philosophy of post-truth. Some would argue that it is akin to past debates on morality, relativism and post modernity and dishonesty in politics. Many locate it in the context of information technology boom and prevalence of hegemonic discourse on techno-science being the ultimate truth. There is general concurrence among scholars that its theoretical construction is influenced by western imagination of knowledge societies (for details refer to Kjetil. Rommetvelt. Post-Truth Imaginations: New Starting points for critique of politics and Techno science. 2021, Routledge Publications.)

[11] The declaration was made on 21st February and on 22nd every newspaper in India, most news channels and social media were flooded with discussion and debates on the subject.

[12] The concept of melting pot was given by French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813) in his work titled Letters from an American Farmer implying, “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men”.

Field Narratives of Kashmiri Pandits from Jagati, Jammu and Delhi-NCR

Email: [email protected]

As I pondered over possible areas of research for my thesis, I was naturally drawn to the idea of exploring my own community. With time, I realised I wanted to engage with the history of what happened to the Kashmiri Pandits more than thirty years ago and engage with it intimately – to uncover their lived experiences, narratives and memories. And this became the foundation of my thesis – a project in the pursuit of uncovering lived experiences. I decided to explore how different life trajectories had been for different set of people and thus began my journey across three sites – Jagati, Jammu and Delhi-NCR.

‘A forgotten minority community, with many being further pushed to the margins’—was my first impression from my fieldwork. My research centres on the differential impact of protracted displacement on one of the most wronged communities of India: the Kashmiri Pandits. Forced into exile in their own country more than thirty years ago, the community continues to grapple with questions of identity, justice, belongingness, and the elusive dream of return. The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir, triggered equally by fear and targeted violence against Hindus, forced thousands of Kashmiri Pandits to seek shelter outside Kashmir. For some, Jammu became a permanent home; for others Jammu was merely a temporary stop before they moved onward to Delhi and other cities across North India.

Despite being uprooted due to the same chain of events, the trajectories of displaced Kashmiri Pandits diverged significantly. Over three decades later, quality of life of displaced Kashmiri Pandits is not uniform but one that is layered with differences shaped by factors such as class, social capital, networks, opportunity, and access to resources. My study explores these differential outcomes, with a particular focus on women’s health and well-being.

The most reliable way to know about the lived experiences of the displaced Kashmiri Pandits was from them, and therefore, fieldwork, formed the backbone of this qualitative inquiry, helping me trace the everyday struggles, the coping mechanisms, and the subtle hierarchies that displacement has produced within the community.

The thesis was a multi-sited study, comparing the lived experiences of Kashmiri Pandits across three distinct locations: Jammu city, Jagati township, and Delhi-NCR. Each site offered unique and surprising insights into the lived realities of their displacement, highlighting how material conditions, social networks, access to healthcare services, education and employment shaped lives differently across contexts.

Because the subject was deeply personal and traumatic, entering the field was not straightforward. Even though I had a distinct advantage of being a researcher from the community being studied, I was also different in terms of my diction, my context and that alone made them sceptical of my presence, making me an ‘outsider’ despite being a Kashmiri Pandit myself. Trust, therefore, could not be assumed—it had to be earned.

I relied on key informants, some of whom acted as cultural brokers, vouching for me and softening the scepticism that researchers often encounter. Even then, there were many moments of hesitation and deafening silence. At times, women would begin narrating their stories, only to fall awfully silent mid-way, overwhelmed by memories and/or trauma. Others would stop mid-sentence regretting that they probably overshared. And as I encountered more silences and hesitation, I learned to respect their silences, to sit with them without rushing to fill the gaps with ‘data’.

As a researcher, I was reminded that listening is as much about presence as it is about gathering data. My positionality was never far from my mind. I was an “insider-outsider”—not displaced myself, yet carrying my own awareness of what exile means for Kashmiris. This duality shaped both access and interpretation.

At times, respondents treated me as an empathetic listener; at other times, my outsider status allowed them to narrate with a certain distance, unburdened by the fear of being judged by someone too close to their community. Or the compulsion to sound grateful to the community for helping them in their times of distress.

Erstwhile relief camps where displaced Kashmiri Pandits lived for years in Jammu. Right next to the tents is an open drain which becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes during rains.

Jagati was my first field site and perhaps the most emotionally overwhelming. Walking through the township, the rows of one-room tenements struck me as both orderly and suffocating. Families compressed into these spaces lived lives that were stable yet profoundly limited. The pucca walls stood in sharp contrast to the memories they carried of tarpaulin tents, harsh winters and the cruel summers in the early years of displacement. Women often told me how grateful they were for these permanent structures—yet the gratitude was laced with resignation. They were glad that they didn’t have to physically hold onto two sides of the tent while it poured outside in a thunderstorm, but they weren’t too happy to live in a town that almost looks like a ghost town in the afternoon – with nothing but building slowly turning yellow.

Here, I was quickly made aware of the double edge of collective living. The geographical concentration of displaced Pandits created a strong sense of solidarity—stories were shared, rituals observed together, and friendships sustained survival. Marriage of girls in Jagati is almost a community affair. The marriage happens in the community hall, with the rituals and the catering being sustained by neighbours who contribute in different ways. Some bring oil, others bring lentils, and yet others offer services like stitching or painting the walls of the home.

Yet this very concentration also marked residents with a stigma. “If someone says they are from Jagati,” one respondent told me, “It is like saying you could not rise above your fate. It was reflected in rather interesting ways. Matrimonial alliances are next to impossible between those in Jagati and other Kashmiris.” This ‘othering’ despite a shared history of targeted violence seems to have far-fetched impact in terms of social cohesion and interaction. Intra-community bonds are ruptured, unrecognised boundaries between displaced and Kashmir Pandits settled outside the state are distinct.

Conducting interviews here was both easier and harder than other two sites. Easier because people were used to narrating their stories in collective settings; harder because the very density of trauma meant emotions often ran high. I recall one woman showing me the open drains outside her tenement as proof of the township’s neglect. The anger in her voice was not just about sanitation—it was about dignity, or the lack of it.

Open drains in Jagati with dirty water unsanitary conditions of the relief camp        

             The entire township of Jagati is surrounded by such open drains that often get clogged due to heavy rains and spill sewage water in the adjoining areas. Getting the drains cleaned from time to time is almost the responsibility of the residents with no accountability from authorities.

Other women broke down recalling how difficult her life has been post-displacement because she and her two children were abandoned by her husband after displacement. But conversations were also about how women have shown unparalleled strength and resilience. Whether it is learning how to do kashida embroidery and sell it in different places to different vendors in Jammu or taking up odd jobs to sustain their families after their husbands fell prey to alcoholism. Their narratives didn’t paint them as passive victims of a historical wrong, but as active survivors who have carried out the role of a provided – material, financial as well as emotional – all equally well.

Kashida embroidery being done by Kashmiri Pandit women living in Jagati

In Jammu, the fieldwork unfolded differently. Here, the displaced were dispersed, living across neighbourhoods rather than in concentrated camps. My sample was shaped through snowballing, each conversation opening doors to another household. Unlike Jagati, Jammu revealed striking diversity of outcomes. Some families had managed to reconstruct a life of relative comfort, building homes that mirrored their old ones in Kashmir. Others lived precariously, still dependent on government relief as their only reliable income. And there were a few who lamented having to leave their home in Kashmir but didn’t suffer materially as they were better placed economically and had enough of a buffer to start afresh in Jammu.

What I noticed most here was the quiet resilience of women. Many had become the backbone of their families’ survival strategies—taking up teaching, tutoring, or home-based work while also maintaining cultural practices. Yet beneath their resilience was fatigue. One respondent told me: “We tried to recreate Kashmir in our homes. The courtyard, the kitchen, even the way we pray. But this house is still not home.” As I listened, I felt the weight of exile as a daily negotiation between memory and adaptation.

Each home that I visited, had remnants of Kashmir and its traditions. Most homes in Jammu still go to the local baker called a ‘kandur’ to get their bread and have that with ‘noon chai’ (a pink salted tea) every day at 4 pm. A few of these participants were also those who had lived in camps for a few years before being able to shift out. And there were yet others who lived in some deplorable conditions in Jammu, like in a garage or a tiny one-room apartment with a common toilet, just to avoid living in a ‘relief camp’ so that they could escape the stigma associated with it.

Fieldwork in Jammu made me reflect on my own position as a researcher. Moving from one household to another, I often wondered how my presence disrupted their daily rhythm. I had to remind myself to be more than just a collector of narratives—to be a respectful listener who recognized that each disclosure came at an emotional cost.

Delhi presented yet another picture. Here, Kashmiri Pandits were relatively well integrated. Many held government jobs, worked in the private sector, or had retired into financial security or some kind.

In contrast to Jagati or Jammu, Delhi offered invisibility—exile did not define one’s identity in the same way. In a city of migrants, Pandits blended in, though clusters of them still existed in certain neighbourhoods.

Yet beneath this surface integration lay internal hierarchies within the community. During the interviews, several references were made to Jagati as a marker of lower social standing, even though they were forced to leave Kashmir under the same circumstances. In matrimonial discussions too, families weigh whether a potential match hailed from Jagati or from better-off circles in Delhi or Jammu. Nevertheless, it was jarring to realize how displacement itself had stratified the community, producing new inequalities within an already marginalized group.

Women in Delhi often spoke of opportunity rather than trauma. They discussed their children’s education, career choices, and upward mobility. This was not because they did not face any trials or tribulations post displacement. Many stayed in cramped rooms with their relatives, an experience that was more difficult for women than men, but their progression has been faster thereby making their displacement somewhat less traumatic than those in Jagati. Yet memory remained alive in subtle ways—through the food they cooked, the festivals they celebrated, and the artefacts they displayed in their homes.

Women gathered for a celebration in Delhi-NCR in a Kashmiri Pandit colony, playing a ‘tumbakhnar’ a traditional Kashmiri instrument. Faces have been blurred to maintain privacy of the participants. 

In nearly every Delhi household I visited, I found a token of Kashmir: a photograph of Kheer Bhawani temple, a miniature shikara, or embroidered shawls. These objects quietly testified to a homeland carried in exile. It was interesting to hear how Kashmiri Pandits in Delhi, were one of the most vocal groups fighting for relocation of displaced Kashmiri Pandits, even though they themselves were in better off places.

For me as a researcher, Delhi also demanded a different posture. Here, participants were more conscious of how they presented their stories, often emphasizing success and resilience. I found myself questioning: were they narrating their lives as they lived them, or as they wished them to be seen? This reflexive discomfort became part of my field notes, reminding me that data is not just about what is said, but also about silences, self-censorship, and aspirations.

This was probably because the focus of narratives in Delhi was about the challenges faced with respect to education, employment and improving visibility instead of just the challenges faced.

Moving between the three sites, I became acutely aware that fieldwork is as much about the researcher as it is about the researched. I carried my own assumptions and had to confront them repeatedly. In Jagati, I caught myself romanticizing solidarity until I saw how it was also a form of enforced confinement. How those in Jagati collectively narrated a much more difficult past than others in Jammu or Delhi, but also how women in Jagati felt doubly marginalised as against the men in Jagati. In Jammu, I tended to celebrate resilience until fatigue and despair surfaced in conversations. In Delhi, I almost didn’t believe the sense of security and self-assuredness I saw, only to realize it came with its own burden of deliberate denial of painful memories in the process of reconstructing their present.

There were also emotional costs. At times, I felt like an intruder reopening wounds and causing agony to older participants. At other times, I felt complicit in the silences—accepting when someone chose not to narrate further. Yet, these ethical dilemmas also deepened my understanding of displacement as a living, breathing reality that cannot be neatly categorized.

One of the most interesting features of the research across the three sites was the degree of freedom that women in each site seemed to have. Jagati allowed women to gather in one place and talk about their trials and tribulations, free from the prying eyes of men. This shared sense of freedom and privacy allowed them to divulge some of the most intimate experiences they had, even if that meant talking ill of their own family members and how they felt utterly neglected.

In Jammu and Delhi-NCR, since the interviews all happened in the homes of the women, complete privacy was difficult. Many time, the men of the house would either hover around, or intervene in the interview. As a result, women would not get the space to voice their opinions or share their experiences openly. The only time they could talk freely was when they would get together for the evening ‘aarti’ or some other ritual.

The field experience underscored that displacement is not only about movement across space but also about negotiation with new structures of opportunity and exclusion. For Kashmiri Pandits, displacement produced not one but multiple realities: stigma and isolation in Jagati, uneven survival and adaptation in Jammu and relative integration but fractured bonds in Delhi. At the core of these divergent trajectories, however, lies a common thread – a desire to keep Kashmir alive, whether through rituals, memories or community ties. 

As a researcher, this journey for me was transformative. Fieldwork was not just a method to collect data, but it became a mirror reflecting my own positionality, assumptions and even ethical responsibilities. I left each site, carrying not only fieldnotes and transcripts, but the imprint of conversations, silences and even the resilience of women whose stories form the very heart of this study.

This article was earlier published in Anthro Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 8 (August 2025). Anthro Bulletin is a Digital Magazine by Anthropos India Foundation.

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Relativity applies to physics, not ethics

Albert Einstein

Following ethics is a way of life. Ethics is also a personal attribute, which one follows in all walks of life, be in personal, professional, research and institutional. However, we may teach the principles of ethics, and if self-conscience is not attuned, there is a tendency to breach ethics.

But what is ethics and what are its principles? These are a set of rules, written and unwritten, primarily embedded in culture and imbibed through processes of socialization, that govern human behaviour.

In research, ethics refers to the values and norms established by an institution to regulate any scientific activities. It is also a collection of scientific morals in the line of duty, binding on the researcher and the institution. Figure below shows multiple aspects of Ethics, which combines and overlaps with rules of conduct, regulations, values, moral principles, ethical practices and research.

Fig. 1. Conceptual framework on Ethics

In this article[1] we will give a brief on following ethics in research by providing some well-known and not so well know illustrations that document a discourse on ethics in research.

Some common questions that intrigue every researcher are:

What are the principles of conduct in research?

What is the meaning of ethics in research and how to follow it?

Is ethics a personal attribute or a learned trait?

Who determines them and, in whose judgement, are they be considered correct?

Are there any universal principles of ethics to conduct that are applied in research?

Do ethics change over time, and what happens when the researcher or the professional body conducting the research does not abide by them?

How to write ethically?

Generally, ethics in research means honesty- honesty in reporting the data, results, methods, procedures, and publishing. It also encompasses objectivity, integrity, prudence, ingenuousness, respecting intellectual property, maintaining confidentiality, and publishing responsibly. The question of ethics in the past appeared as a footnote in research methodology curriculum; but now adherence to ethics and ethical conduct in the research practice is integral to its validity.

The term ethics comes from a Greek word, ethos meaning ‘character’ and is increasingly used in research across disciplines. The consideration of the ethical dimension in research requires the researcher to ask how the ethical issues influence one’s research questions, how the ethical issues affect the conduct of one’s study, and what moral responsibility one has towards their research subjects[2]. The word ‘Subject’ is also contested now; instead, research participants, research partners and collaborators and lately co-research participants are employed that are neutral and acceptable across disciplines. The notion of informed consent, i.e., the participant’s right to be informed about the nature of the research study, detailing the risks and benefits before the research, is now mandatory.

It also entails the ethical issues/dilemmas the researcher faces while writing or publishing one’s research and whether the research directly benefits those participating in the study. Being ethical is an essential and critical part of the research. It starts with the conceptualization of research questions to data generation, its interpretation and then publication.

History of discourse on ethics is complex and ambivalent. It has not been a smooth journey both in social sciences and biomedical research. Various events led to the development of research protocols that were made mandatory to follow if the research involved living beings.

The infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1932, is an illustration of an unethical research that persisted for decades without being questioned. The study examined the untreated cases of latent syphilis in 400 African American males from Tuskegee, Alabama. The studied subjects were not asked for consent to join the project, and the antibiotic treatment that was known to offer relief was deliberately withheld, leading to the slow progression of the disease and, eventually, early death of the subjects.

Fig. 2. Newspaper reporting of Syphilis in the New York Times

This experiment lasted for more than four decades until 1972 when it was exposed, and the government officials were compelled to end the experiment. More than 100 subjects died of advanced syphilis, and later, the study was declared ‘ethically unjustified’. It was argued that penicillin should have been administered to the infected subjects. Moreover, the subjects were unaware that a study was being conducted on them. They had not volunteered for the study; instead, they were deceived into believing that they were given free treatment by the Government doctors.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL MISDEMEANOURS

Some Anthropologists have also erred in their pursuit of knowledge and indulged in unforgiveable unethical acts. One name that is often cited in this context is that of Leopold Franz Eugene Fischer (5th June 1874 to 9th July 1967). From 1927-1942, he was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human heredity, and Eugenics (KWIA) in Berlin. In this position, he facilitated use of his scientific skills to legitimize Nazi racial policy. He endorsed superiority of European races and denied relevance of process of natural selection. His arguments emanated from an ideological belief and professional aspirations and were not based on any scientific reasoning. In violation of ethical conduct, Fischer and his colleagues gave scientific reasoning in the Nazi “genetic Health courts” supporting forced sterilization on racial grounds, particularly those born to German women and French-African soldiers in World War I. He resourced human research material from victims of Nazi brutality, killed in concentration camps and penal institutions. He also defended Nazi racial policy in International scientific meetings. He retired from KWIA in 1942 and appointed his student and colleague Otmar Von Verschuer. It was under Verschuer and his student Josef Mengele that most inhuman experiments were conducted in the name of science. They were responsible for infecting twins with virulent disease organisms, removing their body parts for ascertaining phenotypic similarities and differences to cite just a few examples of malicious unethical research.

ETHICAL CODES

The above-mentioned events shocked humanity and scientific community. These were most inhumane experiments on the prisoners in the Nazi death camps during World War II. The gory experiences and merciless acts formed the basis for evolving ethical codes and principles. The Nuremberg code was drafted in 1947 as a set of standards for judging physicians and scientists who had conducted biomedical experiments in concentration camps. The code formally talked about the rights of the research participants and stipulated that all research participation must be voluntary. The Nuremberg codes (1949) evolved principles such as informed consent, absence of coercion, properly formulating scientific experimentation and beneficence toward experiment ‘subjects’.

Fig. 3 The Nuremberg doctors’ trial: the 60th anniversary Source:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-006-0467-0/figures/2

Other codes of ethics soon followed, Helsinki Declaration of 1964, which mandates that all biomedical research projects involving human participants should carefully assess the risks of participation against the benefits, respect their privacy, and minimize the costs of participation. The Council for International Organization of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) was created for those researching in developing nations. The Belmont Report, written by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioural Research, USA, identified the basic ethical principles that should underlie the conduct of biomedical and behavioural research involving human beings. So, any research involving human participants must follow the ethical guidelines. Any discrimination of the research participants based on gender, age, caste, or ethnicity is not acceptable. Moreover, vulnerable populations like children, aged, handicapped or physically challenged should be researched with the utmost sensitivity and their rights should never be violated.

This was the worst form of Eugenics, during the holocaust that arose from the abuse of political power to harm humankind using science as an instrumentality. Outrage and shock these experiments generated pushed for the formulation of ethical codes for human research. It brought individual to the forefront recognising one’s right to say no to any kind of live experimentation. It gave them the option to withdraw from any research study at any time. Ethics is an evolving subject, but decidedly there is no place for coercion and power in it. Ethical research must follow normative value of equality. Hierarchies segregating researcher from the researched have no place in ethical research. It is the responsibility of the institution as also that of individual researcher to ensure safety of the people agreeing to be part of any research study. Only ethical research has the potential to keep humanity safe from any impending disaster. Several procedural checks have been placed by various institutions by setting up ethical committees. Even publications now demand certificates of ethical clearance before accepting any research, particularly those involving vulnerable populations. International or national collaborative research requires ethical clearance from the national committees. But the most important responsibility is that of the individual researcher and his ability to remain neutral while reporting research findings. The decentralization of power is critical to the process of evolving standards of ethics.

In this context Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC) UK gave a set of conducts for research on human participants:

• Research should aim to maximise benefit for individuals and society and minimise risk and harm

• The rights and dignity of individuals and groups should be respected

• Wherever possible, participation should be voluntary and appropriately informed

• Research should be conducted with integrity and transparency

• Lines of responsibility and accountability should be clearly defined

• Independence of research should be maintained and where conflicts of interest cannot be avoided, they should be made explicit.

• Organisations and researchers should ensure the confidentiality and security of personal data relating to human participants in research; and human material involved in research projects.

• Organisations and researchers should make sure that any research involving human participants, human material or personal data complies with all legal and ethical requirements and other applicable guidelines.

• Appropriate care should be taken when research projects involve vulnerable groups, such as the very old, children or those with mental illness; and covert studies or other forms of research which do not involve full disclosure to participants.

• The dignity, rights, safety, and wellbeing of participants must be the primary consideration in any research study. Research should be initiated and continued only if the anticipated benefits justify the risks involved.

• Researchers should inform research participants that data gathered during the course of research may be disseminated not only in a report but also in different forms for academic or other subsequent publications and meetings, albeit not in an identifiable form, unless previously agreed to, and subject to limitations imposed by legislation or any applicable bodies, ethical, regulatory or otherwise (UKRIO)

Ethics not only pertains to the conduct of research; it also must be followed in writing. There are examples in history where the works of some scholars are not recognized, and the credit goes to someone else. An example is Scottish physician Henry Faulds who investigated fingerprints.

Fig. 4 Picture of Henry Faulds 1843-1930

Faulds worked as a medical missionary in Darjeeling and Japan. He did some path-breaking work in identifying fingerprints. On seeing fingerprints on the ancient pots, he realized that everyone has unique fingerprints. He and his medical students shaved off their finger’s ridges with razors until no pattern could be traced. But each time, the ridges grew back in the same pattern confirming it to be a unique identification of an individual. They also noticed that in scarlet fever, which results in peeling of the skin, the fingerprint pattern did not change. Faulds decided to promote the idea of fingerprints and approached Charles Darwin in 1850. Darwin declined this work but passed it on to his relative Francis Galton. In 1880, Faulds’s first paper on the subject titled “On the Skin-Furrow of the Hands” was published in Nature. In 1892, Francis Galton published a book on the use of fingerprints with no mention made of Faulds’ contribution. In 1901, Edward Henry, a former colleague of Galton and Commissioner of Police at Scotland Yard, set up the Fingerprints Bureau. It is to these three men – Galton, Herschel and Henry – that credit is frequently given for discovering the use of fingerprints in criminology, but the contribution of Henry Faulds is often not mentioned. It is essential to follow the principle of ethics in writing and publishing and give due credit to other scholars’ ideas, theories, and concepts.

However, over the years, concerns raised over ethical issues have given voice to those who have been victims of uninformed research. One such study was conducted on the American Indians in Arizona, where consent was taken for a study on their blood sample. Few years later, another study was undertaken on the stored samples and the results published without taking consent from the research participants. When the new study and its results came to the fore, the natives challenged the University for its unethical conduct of publishing the second study. The university had to compensate research participants. What is troubling in such instances is that irrespective of strong ethical codes in place, its violations continue to happen. This is denial of fundamental human rights to privacy and voluntary participation in any research. If such violations happen in democracies, one wonders what may be happening in the name of science in closed societies!!

ETHICAL CODE FOR RESEARCH PRESCRIBED BY ICMR

In India, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is leading in developing the ethical guidelines for research. The guidelines can be accessed on the link

https://ethics.ncdirindia.org//asset/pdf/ICMR_PRIPE2019.pdf

Keeping pace with the changes in the biomedical research, the guidelines are regularly refined thereby providing adequate protection to the participants. The ethical principles in research have now become one of the cornerstones of modern social research and research ethics has become an essential aspect of any study. There are review boards to oversee the goals of the research project and monitor research process to ensure ethical conduct. Most reputed publication editorial boards insist on ethical clearance before accepting any research study for publication. The Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) now watch over all the research proposals that involve working with human participants and animals. The board ensures that the consent procedures have been carried out carefully, and no group of individuals is unfairly treated or is left out of the potential outcomes of a given study.

Currently, professional associations for each discipline exist that outline the general ethical guidelines relevant to the disciplines. The last decade has seen more concern with the ethical issues in social science research and biomedical research. The guidelines now cover public health research, and social and behavioural science research and ensure a strict code of conduct focusing on specialized areas like informed consent, biological materials, biobanking datasets and vulnerability. However, these committees are more inclined towards medical research, and we need to evolve ethical codes for social science research, especially when UGC has mandated it.

CONTRIBUTED BY

Sunita Reddy (Associate Professor), Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Adjunct Faculty, Special Centre for Disaster Research, New Delhi-110067. [email protected]

Gunjan Arora (Post Doc Fellow), Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health , School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Email- [email protected]

Edited By:

Shalina Mehta, Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology (retd.)

[email protected]

[1] This article is inspired by conversations held in the UIAF WhatsApp chat on 01-06-2022 and July 14th, 2022, and 31st July 2022. Concerns on ethical practises in research were initially raised by Prof. P. C. Joshi. Several members participated in these conversations citing various instances in science research where unethical practises have persisted before the enactment of ethical code of conduct as also after these guidelines came in practise. Some important points were put forth by Prof. Mutatakar, Dr Nita Mawar, Prof. Ranjan Sahoo. [2] The term Subjects was initially used for the participants who participate in the research. But currently the term is no longer in use; instead, research participants and collaborators and more recently co-research participants are used. This change signifies the acceptance of the participants’ rights and nullifies the power difference between the researcher and the researched.

History of palaeoanthropology in India would be incomplete without acknowledging the contributions of Professor Shiv Raj Kumar Chopra, Founder Head of the Department of Anthropology at Panjab University, Chandigarh. Erudition, dedicated commitment to knowledge and valuing others above self are the few widely acknowledged attributes of this distinguished scholar. Admired for his charisma and ability to fight for the discipline and its contributions from India, he showed rare foresight. His fight to retain fossil find of intact mandible of Gigantopithecus from Shiwalik Hills as priced possession of Museum of Anthropology at Panjab University is legendary. He is rightfully recognised for putting paleoanthropological findings from the country on the world map.

SRK, as he was fondly addressed, was born on 8th of October 1931 in Ludhiana. He hailed from a family of educators, with a grandfather who was tutor to the Royal family of Bilaspur, and a father who was a Professor of English literature at the Delhi University. He earned his BSc Honours in Zoology in 1951 and his Masters in Anthropology in 1953 from Delhi University. In 1955, he completed his PhD from Zurich. While at Zurich, Switzerland [1953 – 55] he conducted research on the cranial suture closure in old world and new world monkeys. The findings, published as an inaugural dissertation in the proceedings of the Zoological Society of London [Volume 128, 1957], provided new information on suture closure in relation to physiological age in monkeys. This contribution gained significance as the data has been compared with corresponding ones for anthropoid apes and men. It finds prominent reference in textbooks and in standard works on primates.

At the University of Birmingham [1955- 58] under a grant from the Wenner-Gren foundation for anthropological research, New York, he designed the “Pelvimeter”, for the measurement of angles of torsion on the pelvis and other bones of primates including man, which had been impossible to achieve at the time with the conventional osteometry instruments. The design of the instrument and its applicability were published in 1958 in the Journal MAN, published by the Royal Anthropological Institute, London. His professional academic journey started in the year 1957. From 1957 to 1958, he served as an invited lecturer at the Duckworth Laboratory, University of Cambridge, U.K.

In 1959, he returned to India. He joined as a Reader in Anthropology in the Department of Zoology at Panjab University on 2nd April 1959. Within a year, he successfully separated from the Zoology department to establish an independent Department of Anthropology.   In 1960 he married Krishna Taneja, his lifelong companion and a woman of great strength and resolve who stood by him through thick and thin. Same year, he became one of the youngest Founder Heads of an integrated Department of Anthropology in independent India. His academic and administrative genius started flourishing at the young age of 30. By this time, he was recognised as one of the leading paleoanthropologists in the World. He served as Chair of the department till 1981, a tenure of more than twenty years through which he positioned this young department as a pioneer in research in various domains of biological and social-cultural anthropology. Under his expert guidance, the department emerged as a centre of excellence for paleoanthropological studies.

From 1967 onwards, he, along with his team, investigated various hominoid and other fossils from the Sivalik region. To his credit, stands the discovery of a new fossil Gibbonoid tooth from the Sivalik Hills. His work, including the discovery of fossils like Gigantopithecus Bilaspurensis, Pliopithecus Krishnaii (in the Miocene beds) and Sivasimia attracted widespread attention. This was followed by several collaborative projects funded by different national and international institutions. Some of the findings from various collaborative projects were presented at the second international Congress of Primatology held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA in 1968 and were subsequently published in Recent Advances in Primatology.

Funds from the Kiel University in collaboration with the German Research Council (Deutche Forschung-Gemein Schaft) assisted him in his project on the biological surveys of select Himalayan populations. Between 1964 and 1968, the Punjab government and the CSIR continued to fund the project which was extended to Lahaul and Spiti regions in Himachal Pradesh. The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) further funded the research in this area from 1972 to 1974. In 1974, he presented some details of dryopithecine material from the Shivalik’s at the 5th International Congress of Primatology held at Nagoya, Japan. This was later published in Contemporary Primatology (1975). He contended that these remains refute the belief propounded by Simon and Pilbeam (1972) that the fossil ape species in the Haritalygar area in India are not diversified. The work of Professor SRK Chopra on human adaptability in varying climatic zones was conducted in association with the Cambridge Himalayan High Altitude Research Expedition in 1979, and the research was supported by the Medical Research Council and the Royal Society, UK. Its report was published in the international compendium, Cambridge University Press.

In 1980 he was invited by the President of the 8th Congress of International Primatological Society, Professor A.B Chiarelli of Florence University to share his findings from the “Shivalik Fossils Remains” with other experts and participants of the congress. His work on evolution of Early Man is well acclaimed, documented and cited. The Shivalik region may now be considered as an area where the earliest primates may have evolved. Professor Chopra’s intensive and incisive research and experience extended over three decades. More than 100 research papers published in various national and international journals and cited in several significant textbooks on physical anthropology speak volumes about the excellence and intensity of his research.

In 1974, Professor Chopra conceived of a unique ‘Museum of Man’ within the precincts of the Department of Anthropology at Punjab University. The project was aesthetically executed with the help of celebrated artisans from Kolkata and was inaugurated by the then Chief Minister of Punjab, Giani Zail Singh. The life-sized models of fossil apes, primates and homo sapiens trace the evolution of humankind and are configured from the reconstruction of fossil material collected by him and his team in the course of various field expeditions. Some of these fossils from the Shivalik region date back to 14 million years ago. The museum also exhibits various ethnographic materials collected from different regions of India. It has been posthumously named the SRK Chopra Museum of Man in his honour. It is to his vision that the Department of Anthropology, Panjab University, holds the distinction of being a UGC funded Centre for Advanced Studies in Anthropology since 2011.

Professor Chopra made cardinal contributions not only to his primary interest in strengthening palaeoanthropology but also to the holistic approach and integrated character of the discipline. Research articles published in Nature and Human Biology symbolize that spirit. He identified and brought talent from different parts of the country to teach in this new department and encouraged them to take up challenging tasks and projects. He supervised 19 PhDs and was an examiner at both international and national universities with a fluency in both English and German languages. Students trained in the department were hired with ease by various national and international universities as also in allied institutions like anthropological and archaeological Survey of India because of the training they received under his supervision. The Department of Anthropology, Panjab University was one of the first departments in the country to introduce a diploma in Forensic Science/ anthropology under his visionary leadership. Ethnographic explorations in remote areas of Himachal Pradesh, Kinnaur and Lahaul Spiti was also initiated under his guidance.

He went on several international assignments to various Universities across the world. Few of the most prestigious teaching assignments were at the universities across the United Kingdom, West Germany and Japan. From 1965 to 1967, he was a Visiting Professor in the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Kiel in West Germany. Continuing to take his wealth of academic experience abroad, in 1979 he was invited to the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University in Inuyama, Japan, as a Visiting Professor. Among his many Awards, reference must be made of the Wenner-Gren Foundation Award for Excellence twice from 1955 to 1956, and then again in 1966 to 67. He was fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland as also fellow of the Zoological Society of London and Member, Permanent Council, International Association of Human Biologists along with several reputed national organizations. He also Chaired the session on Paleo-Biology and Evolution for the 7th Congress of International Primatological Society in 1979.

He received a silver plaque from the Ethnographic and Folk Culture Society, Lucknow in 1976 and also delivered the Majumdar Memorial Lecture there. From 1980-81, he served as the UGC national Lecturer. Some of the other prestigious lectures that he delivered in his career include the 1984 M.R. Sahni Memorial lecture to the Paleontological Society of India and the 1985-86 Dr. Panchanan Memorial Lectureship, Asiatic Society, Kolkata. He also served as the Editor of Everyday Science and as Member of the Advisory Committee of Anthropological Survey of India, and the Indira Gandhi National Museum of Man, Ministry of Culture. Additionally, he held the esteemed position of the President of the Indian Association of Physical Anthropology from 1976 to 1978. In 1989, he was bestowed the Excellence Award by the Shiromani Nehru Centenary Committee for enhancing India’s prestige and contribution towards National Development.

His academic commitments and frequent travels within and outside India impacted his health severely. His resilience, however, knew no bounds. In the year 1988, he had to undergo kidney transplant and received a kidney from his wife of twenty-eight years, the ever-resolute Krishna Chopra. He recovered and went back to the hectic life of an active academician and academic administrator.  In 1988, he spent a year as a Visiting Professor at the United Medical and Dental School at the University of London. His administrative acumen was distinctively visible, when he held the office of the Pro Vice Chancellor of Panjabi University, Patiala from 1983-1986 and then as Vice-Chancellor of Kurukshetra University, Haryana from 1986 to 1989. On his return to his parent University, he was given the prestigious position of Dean of University Instructions, Panjab University till he retired from formal academic career on 31st October 1991.

In 1989, eminent geologist Professor Ashok Sahni and paleoanthropologist Dr. Rajan Gaur published S.R.K Chopra festschrift volume titled Perspectives in Human Evolution to honour his immense contributions. In recognition of his research contributions in promoting scientific explorations in the field of fossil primate discoveries, he was nominated as a member of the Explorers Club of the USA. He was the first Indian University don to receive the distinction in recognition of his astronomical scientific career, most notably his fossil primate discoveries. He also featured in the Indo-American Who’s Who. His academic attainments are legendary and his meteoric rise in the world of paleo-anthropology is exceptional. He is recognised as one of India’s original intrepid explorers who conquered hostile terrain to dig up significant finds that pieced together major anthropological indications of our past.

SRK made not only an exceptional contribution to the growth of the discipline of anthropology but also made generous financial contributions to provide motivation to the students of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes to excel in the discipline. In the year 1962, his family contributed towards setting up of the Rai Bahadur Wali Ram Taneja Medal in the memory of his father-in-law which was to be given to the top-ranking student of B.Sc. final year. In the year 2005, the Syndicate of the Panjab University, Chandigarh (vide its meeting on 28th February 2005) has formalized the institution of the SRK Chopra Memorial Scholarship to be awarded to the topper in BSc (Hons. School) in Anthropology.

Significant Contributions

1. Chopra, S.R.K. (1978). New fossil evidence on the evolution of Hominoidea in the Sivaliks and its bearing on the problem of the evolution of early man in India. Journal of Human Evolution, 7, 3-9.

2. Chopra, S.R.K., & Kaul, S. (1979). A new species of Pliopithecusfrom the Indian Sivaliks. Journal of Human Evolution, 8,475-477.

3. Chopra, S.R.K., Kaul, S., & Pathak, R.K. (1982). Morphometric affinities in innominate bones of old-world primates including man. Journal of Human Evolution, 11, 105-108. 

4. Chopra, S.R.K., Kaul, S., &Vasishat, R.N. (1979). Miocene tree shrews from the Indian Sivaliks. Nature,281, 213-214.

5. Chopra, S.R.K., &Vasishat, R.N. (1979). Sivalik fossil tree shrew from Haritalyangar, India. Nature,281, 214-215.

6. Chopra, S.R.K., &Vasishat, R.N. (1980). A new mio-plioceneIndraloris(primate) material with comments on the taxonomic status of Sivanasua (carnivore) from the Sivaliks of the Indian subcontinent. Journal of Human Evolution, 9, 129-132.

7. Gaur, R., & Chopra, S.R.K. (1983). Palaeoecology of the middle mioceneSivalik sediments of a part of Jammu and Kashmir state (India). Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 43, 313-327.

8. Simons, E.L., & Chopra, S.R.K. (1969). Gigantopithecus (Pongidae, Hominoidea) a new species from North India. Postilla, 138, 1-18.

9. Vasishat, R.N., Gaur, R., & Chopra, S.R.K. (1978). Geology, fauna and palaeoenvironments of lower Sivalik deposits around Ramnagar, India. Nature, 275, 736-737.

10. Vasishat, R.N., Gaur, R., & Chopra, S.R.K. (1978). Community structure of middle Sivalik vertebrates from Haritalyangar (H.P.), India. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 23, 131-140.

Contributed by Ms. Shalini Vahi (Daughter of Prof. S.R.K. Chopra and a Practising social and Cultural anthropologist)

Edited by Prof. Shalina Mehta, Former Professor and Chairperson Department of Anthropology, Panjab University, Chandigarh and Dr. Rajni Lamba, Anthropologist and CEO, The Rural Environmental Enterprises Development Society (THE REEDS), INDIA 

Acknowledgment: Dr. Maninder Kaur, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Panjab University, Chandigarh for institutional support.

This extraordinary internationally acclaimed anthropologist of the Third World spent his childhood very ordinarily (Sahay, 1988, 2001). Born in a remote village of Bariyarpur, under the Barh Police Station, District Patna in the State of Bihar, Vidyarthi learned the initial alphabets under the shade of a tree in a gurupinda (a village school of traditional type). From this rural background, within a short span of fifty-six years of his active life, he became one of the most distinguished anthropologists of the world, whose contributions in the discipline of anthropology was internationally acclaimed. A leader of world anthropology, an advocate for the just cause of anthropology, an anthropologist who propelled the Indian anthropology since mid-fifties, and gave maximum momentum to anthropology in India during the post-Independent period; the man, who perhaps produced the largest number of professional anthropologists in the country after Independence; the man, who was elected as the President of the Xth IUAES and ICAES; the man, who lifelong remained the President of the Indian Anthropological Association; and the man, who received the ‘Distinguished Service Award’ in anthropology from the University of Chicago, died suddenly on December 1, 1985. In the death of Professor Vidyarthi an era of Indian anthropology had to an end. 

I had been associated with him under different capacities for over a decade and half. It was during the Xth ICAES in New Delhi in December 1978, that I apprised Professor Vidyarthi of my intention to write his biography. Thereafter, in a series of discussions with him at his residence, he narrated accounts of his childhood and early education; his schooling in Mahabir Middle School and matriculation in 1946 from City High School (Rajendra Vidyalaya) Gaya; graduation from Patna College in 1950; M.A. (Part I) in Geography in 1952 from Patna University; his somewhat accidental shift, from geography in Patna University to anthropology in Lucknow University; his flair for writing; his inclination towards anthropology, sociology and social psychology; his political awareness at Lucknow; his association with D. N. Majumdar and Acharya Narendra Dev- the then Vice Chancellor of Lucknow University, and so on. Vidyarthi was the 100th PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1958. 

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Out of those discussions I had prepared a brief biographical account of him in 198l. Professor Vidyarthi told me to send this biographical account to Shelley Porteous, who was then working on the same line in Canada. In her article on Vidyarthi, Porteous (19865) extensively quoted from my write up, which appeared in a volume edited by M.K. Gautam and A.K. Singh (1986). Even earlier, a brief article by me, under the title In Search of Ranchi School of Anthropology (Sahay, 1981) appeared in a volume edited by Vidyarthi and Upadhyay (1981) that highlighted how overall anthropological researches and contributions of Vidyarthi and his followers in Ranchi University helped framing ‘Ranchi School of Anthropology.’ 

He was a great field worker. On our trip to Andamans for fieldwork in 1970, we found a number of tribal labourers from Ranchi on board the ship. I reported it to Vidyarthi. Immediately he became interested, and within a short time prepared an inventory and asked us to collect as much of information as possible. Frankly speaking, at that time we were in no mood to interview the labourers on board the ship. But I feel nostalgic today to recollect how Vidyarthi was then moving up and down the stairs of the vessel with a small group of students in search of information of anthropological interest. He mixed freely with the labourers. It only reflects Vidyarthi’s love and dedication for fieldwork. He would extend hero’s welcome to any of his students/scholars who returned from the field. 

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There are many people from every walk of life, at least in Ranchi, who would claim that they were most close to Vidyarthi. It was perhaps an outstanding feature of his personality that people in distress or unable to take decision in their personal problems always confided with Vidyarthi, who gave them a very patient hearing. The hard-taskmaster Vidyarthi of the department, was very friendly, sociable and naive outside. One who has seen Vidyarthi playing Kabaddi (a rural Indian game) along the sprawling beach of Digha can hardly miss to see the social and friendly aspect of him. It was during an excursion trip in February 1970, that the staff and students had gone to Digha, a beautiful sea beach of Bay of Bengal in the coastal Midnapore district of West Bengal. While strolling along the beach in the evening, Vidyarthi suggested all of us to play kabaddi. He immediately took off his kurta (long shirt), and wearing only pajama and undershirt was soon lost in play with us. 

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 Vidyarthi believed in the maxim ‘Work is God’. He virtually venerated his work. He remained so absorbed in his works that he remained in his study room till midday dictating articles, letters, or speeches, which he had to deliver on different occasions. He used to derive great pleasure and self-satisfaction in his work. It seems incredible though, but it is true, that even just two days before his death (when doctors advised him for complete rest), and only a few hours before falling into coma, he worked for four hours. 

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His public relations were very extensive. It included anthropologists as well as scholars of other disciplines, philanthropists, social workers, missionaries, industrialists, businessmen, administrators, bureaucrats and leaders of political parties; and thus, in general people from all walks of life. Obviously, such an extensive public relation was not developed in a few days; he had nurtured it for decades. 

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Ranchi has twice led the anthropological researches in India. It has been the home of two ‘veteran anthropologists of international repute’, namely, S.C. Roy and L.P. Vidyarthi. With a band of disciples, they brought to light many of the unexplored fields of Indian life and culture. Their conceptual frameworks and methodologies have given light to many young researchers of their respective times. They, however, represent two different ‘eras’ of anthropological development in the country. While Roy focused his attention primarily on the tribes of South Bihar (now Jharkhand), Odisha, and Bengal, Vidyarthi’s interest went throughout the length and breadth of the country; from Badrinath in the Himalaya’s in the North to Rameshwaram in the south; and from the State of Meghalaya in the east to the sacred city of Dwarka in the west. Vidyarthi’s manifold anthropological interest went as far as to the island culture of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. If Roy brought international repute to India by his selection as a member of the Council de Honour of the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Vidyarthi’s election as the President of the Xth IUAES & ICAES (1973-78) marked the advent of a ‘new era’ in Indian anthropology. 

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Having been trained initially under the leadership of D. N. Majumdar at Lucknow, in India, and later in the University of Chicago in America, Vidyarthi entered as a professional anthropologist understandably with American influence. However, soon he realized that the methodologies developed by the western anthropologists were not accurately suited to the study of complex Indian culture. Hence, he began to advocate to bring ‘Indianness’ in anthropology’. This is very much reflected in his Presidential Address at the Xth ICAES (1978) in New Delhi. 

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Vidyarthi’s contributions in anthropology are exhaustive to behold. He authored 35 books and edited 37 volumes; wrote 159 articles for different national and international journals; and supervised three D. Litts., and 35 PhDs. Thematically, his contributions could be summed up under the following heads: Village Studies, Applied and Action Anthropology, Study on Scheduled Caste, Folklore Researches, Urban-Industrial Anthropology, Study on Leadership, Anthropological Theories; besides of course, formulating two very significant concepts in Indian Anthropology. Vidyarthi first proposed Sacred Complex (1961), and thereafter, Nature-Man-Spirit Complex (1963). He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago on Sacred Complex. 

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To sum up, Vidyarthi is known for his volumes of works, but very few people know that he died much before completing two of the most ambitious projects of his life. The first, was on ‘Anthropological Thought’, incorporating the views of the eminent Indian social thinkers and those written in the ancient Indian scriptures. This work he intended to do with my assistance. The second, was on the ‘Civilization’. He believed that India alone was a country where the people of all the stages of culture and civilization could be found. Once he told this author that he wanted to complete these two projects by 1992. It is to be noted that he was to retire in 1991. This also suggests his well-calculated and time-bound work programme. It is quite an irony that he left for heavenly abode much before even starting these two ambitious projects. Professor Vidyarthi is no more today. Regardless of all polemic, he has left his imprints in the annals of anthropology for the posterity. 

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Vijoy S Sahay Editor-in-Chief  The Oriental Anthropologist. 

December 20, 2020      6.30 PM to 8.30 PM IST

Dr. Zazie Bowen, Anthropologist, The Australian National University will be delivering the lecture and the programme will be presided by Professor Vijoy S. Sahay, Former Head, Department of Anthropology, Allahabad University. 

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Department of Anthropology

North-Eastern Hill University

[email protected]

            but with concern and care

            for the multitudes out there.

            Called a colonial hand maiden in the bygone days

            I steadfastly steered my way

            from verandah Anthropology to a barefoot one

            I arose from the clouds like a bright, determined sun

            Attacks made me grow more

            For I know my assets and my essence

            to name a few – holism, comparison and relativism

            I have silently carved my own niche

            which others also now believe

            They take from me and call it their own

            Unfettered, undeterred, my skills- I continue to hone

            My love for the humans makes me see

            Their myriad ways, their sorrows and glees

            Their physical, social, archaeological realities

            Their unique language using abilities

            How can I stop when they persevere?

            To conquer new fields and areas?

            I have grown tall, I have grown big

            As I capture new areas, as I further dig

            In every foray where the humans engage

            Media, tourism, fashion, whatever they gauge

            From the realm of the real, to the world of the virtual

            My wings spread wider, as I go digital

            I diligently strive, I religiously endeavour,

            To study and serve the human better

            I have travelled a long way

            Infused with the lofty goal

            ‘My people, my language, my culture, my region’

            I also respect the ‘my’ and fight for it too

            And yet strive for a higher self that embraces and upholds

            Beyond the confines of ‘I’ and ‘me’.

            Beyond the tongue and the colour of the skin

            It is the heart that beats for shared humanity to win

            And then we can live and live with a smile

            Holding hands and walking mile after mile.

…………………………………………………………………….

The poem was part of the Inaugural Ceremony of the World Anthropology Congress – 2023, held at KISS, Bhubaneswar, Odisha

Watch the Inagural Ceremony of the WAC- 2023