Mainstream, Vol XLIX, No 12, March 12, 2011

Tragedy of Culture in Indian Anthropology

J.J. Roy Burman
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 Boses much-referred treatiseThe 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 anthropological 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 anthropologists, 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.
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.