Tragedy of Culture in Indian Anthropology

Anthropologists the world over have devoted quite a bit of attention to cultures of ‘Primitive Men’ as exotic elements and romanticised them. In India not only the cultures of the tribes but even that of general society has been romantically put within the Western framework. No wonder most Indian anthropologists eulogise the works of N.K. Bose for his contribution to the concept of culture and the role it has played in the sustenance of Village India in general and Indian civilisation in particular. The concept of high and low culture is embedded in it.

With this orientation of culture, a majority of anthropologists here too have looked into the study of Indian society and the tribes in an inegalitarian framework. The Hindu society has been placed on a high pedestal and the tribes have been treated as the primitive other. Very few have dared to critically analyse Bose’s much-referred treatise—‘The Structure of Hindu Society’. A closer scrutiny of it will shock a dispassionate reader that it almost resembles the political manifesto of the BJP party. The impact of Islam and Christianity barely finds any mention in this book. Yet it is well known how syncretism has shaped the popular culture and social structure in different parts of the country. Akbar, the great Mughal emperor, had to promote Din Elahi, an eclectic religion to draw a balance between diverse conflicting nationalities —so-called Hindus or Muslims. Even now the dargahs and mazars unify the subaltern Hindus and Muslims dwelling in the slums or in the fringes of village settlements. Tagore and Nazrul are equally venerated in Bengal. Michael Madhusudhan is still a household favourite in the whole of Bengal and so are the Tagore songs, sung through the vibrant notes of Debabarata ‘George’ Biswas, much admired. ‘Jai Jai Satya Pir, Jai Jai Manik Pir’ is chimed by all the Bengali Hindu housewives through the incantations of Satayanaran Panchali, regularly done during the puja after taking bath in the morning.

No wonder, the vestiges of such an anthro-pological approach to the problem of tribes and Indian society has been denounced strongly by tribal scholars like Virginius Xaxa. He suggests that tribes in India should not be studied from the framework of caste. But most anthro-pologists, still under the trance of the Chicago School led by Boas and Redfield, continue to view it through the prisms of ‘Great Tradition’ and ‘Little Tradition’. Unqualifyingly, they have accepted the branding of 75 tribes in India as ‘Primitive Tribes’ by the Government of India. Many have also received funds from the state and international agencies to prepare ethnographies of these tribes and almost projected them as barbarians who need to be civilised and protected. No anthropologist, barring B.K. Roy Burman, criticised the policy on the so-called ‘Primitive Tribes’.

It is a sad commentary that one of the strong anthropological professional bodies in India is recommending the adoption of the American brand of anthropology and mobilising huge resources to create museums of man and tribal communities. These museum bodies in return are funding the INCAA, an apex level professional body of anthropology, to organise annual meets and publishing books. The course of events has rendered anthropology so inept that no name of an anthropologist figures in affairs related to the Maoist movement in Chotanagpur or the political issues of the North-East. It puts anthropologists like us to shame witnessing the plethora of relevant literature on these issues emerging from other social science disciplines.

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I am not surprised that a scholar as profound as Ashish Nandy heavily breathes down the necks of anthropologists for their romantic portrayal of culture. He writes: “The culture-oriented approach (towards state) presumes that culture is a dialectic between the classical and the folk, the past and present, the dead and the living. Modern states... emphasise the classical and frozen-in-time, so as to minimise culture and make it harmless. Here, too, the modernists endorse the revivalists who believe in time-travel to the past, the Orientalists to whom culture is either a distant object of study or a projection of their own cultural needs, a gallery. Such attitudes to culture go with a devaluation of folk which is reduced to artistic and musical self-expression of tribes and language groups. Ethnic arts and ethnic music then become like ethnic food, new indicators of social status of the rich and powerful. Correspondingly, new areas of expertise open up in the modern sector such as ethno-museology and ethno-musicology. And then Cultural Anthropology takes over the responsibility of making this truncated concept of culture communicable in the language of professional anthropology to give the concept a bogus absolute legitimacy in the name of cultural revivalism.”

Nandy has been too benevolent towards anthropology in the country by not projecting the moribund state that it is now in India. The Anthropological Survey of India is virtually in a state of closure. The number of students in the departments of several universities in the country is steeply dwindling. The career prospects of students are zeroing down. Most Departments of Anthropology wear a dingy deserted look. Ignoring these, while the anthropologists in eastern India are immersed in the cacophony of pre- and post-colonial anthropology, those from Delhi and Lucknow believe that tribals wearing Western attire and speaking English do not merit constitutional support.

Perhaps it is time that the anthropological acumen in the societies of post-colonial countries discards being a colonial tool and creates new vistas to convert it into a tool of resistance and play a vanguard role against the state and non-state international hegemonic forces. It can pave the way for development with social justice. Culture in that sense can operate both as an instrument of political power and autonomy or ensure a path of development based on indigenous cultural institutions and practices. They are not always inimical to development. Deng Xiaoping in China dismantled communes, edificed during the Mao Zedong regime, into smaller brigades. While the communes were artificially amalgamated, the brigades are largely based on traditional kinship ties and ties of localities. The round houses of South China have provided the backbone of revolutionary success of cottage and small-scale industries which have captured the global market of consumer products. Many of the tribal communities in India too possess the inherent quality of share and reciprocity. Unstinted anthropology in India can certainly do wonders by facilitating declassification of ethnic and territorial detachment The mantra of the true Gandhian sense of trusteeship and anarchism may brilliantly work to the advantage of anthropologists in India. Mostly, a political-economic approach is needed rather than being glued to a pansy way of studying culture.

The author is a Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and inclusive Policies, School of Social Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.