Reviews
Anthropology Curriculum
and Its Discontents
The Anthropology of North-East
India: A Textbook
edited by T B Subba and G C Ghosh;
Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2003;
pp vi+380, Rs 145 (paperback).
SURESH M, K T RAMMOHAN
O f human sciences, anthropology has
been among the most buoyant in
recent times. Paradoxically, the buoyancy
owes to the discipline’s newfound dis-
belief in its original mission, that is, rep-
resenting other cultures. The disbelief,
rather than impeding the growth of the
discipline, has prompted innovative ways
of thinking and writing anthropology. Ex-
ceptions notwithstanding, the graduate
curriculum in Indian universities has not
quite opened up to the new concerns,
concepts, and methods of the discipline.
The new textbook on The Anthropology
of North-East India, its editors claim, is
an attempt to respond to the current con-
cerns of the discipline. To what extent it
does so and fills the void in the Indian
curriculum is the central concern of this
review essay.
Constituting the North-east
The introductory essay by the editors
rightly begins by problematising the cat-
egory, north-east India. The north-east
exists and does not exist. It had “exten-
sions towards all directions beyond the
region from very ancient times”. Within
the region “ethnic, cultural and linguistic
differences” prevail. At once, the editors
emphasise the historical antecedents of
the region and the characteristics of geo-
graphical location, habitation, economic
pursuit, language, religion, and race that
mark it off from the rest of India. The
picture that emerges is that of a region
imagined by way of residuality – “people
of the north-east see themselves as a group,
128
share a sense of fraternity and see them-
selves as distinct from the rest of India”,
held together by “common suffering”,
inhabitants of a landscape of unemploy-
ment and insurgency. “If there is anything
that binds the region it is a sense of
deprivation”. Such reduction to the
economy marginalises the aspects of
ethnicity and culture while constituting
the identity of the region. Further, the
editors’ implicit assumption of the north-
east as an entity with unchanging geo-
graphical and cultural boundaries from
colonial to postcolonial times does not go
well with their attempts to historicise the
category of north-east.
The introductory essay rather than bring-
ing to the attention of students the crucial
issues that bear upon thinking, learning,
and practising anthropology in postcolonial
India, settles for the soft option of indi-
cating the organisation of the book and
making a cursory summary of the main
observations of the essays collated. The
relationship between colonialism and
anthropology has been a matter of grow-
ing interest world over but has not been
sufficiently explored in the Indian curricu-
lum. Viewed thus, the organisation of the
book with a section on “Colonial North-
East” is apt. Yet, the trappings of “four
field” anthropology are revealed when the
editors note: “regretfully, we have not
been able to include Linguistic Anthro-
pology”. Taxonomies while relevant
should not be assumed as fixed. Consider,
for instance, the current interest in the
anthropology of violence and anthro-
pology of globalisation that do not fall
within the traditional, “four field” scheme.
The scheme constrains the editors from
discussing these and other aspects of
anthropology, now considered important.
Enigma of Prehistory
The formidable forest-clad, hilly terrain
of the north-east failed to tempt the co-
lonial archaeologists; it was left out even
Economic and Political Weekly
from Alexander Cunningham’s pan-
Indian archaeological gaze. Excavations
during the colonial period were sparse and
collections mostly confined to stone tools.
In the post-independence period too, when
the rest of the country witnessed buoyant
archaeological activity, the north-east failed
to receive deserving attention. The paper
“Prehistoric Archaeology of the North-east”
notes that archaeologically speaking, even
today, the region is largely terra incognito.
The paper prioritises the need to con-
struct a congruous chrono-cultural se-
quence of the region, connecting the stone
age culture with the contemporary cul-
tures. It recognises the hurdles involved,
the major one being the lack of archaeo-
logical resources itself. Besides, migra-
tions in the region date to the ancient
period. There has also been forced re-
settlement by the state, as in the case of
the Kuki, resettled by the British as buffers
between administered and non-adminis-
tered areas. The paper, however, does not
explore the implications of migrations and
colonial rule for the cultural trajectory of
the region, rendering it neither unilinear
nor wholly internally determined. Coupled
with the ethnic, cultural and linguistic
diversity within the north-east, the situa-
tion raises two questions. How valid is the
assumption of a congruous chrono-cultural
sequence for the entire region? Even if it
were valid, how feasible is its construction?
Besides, there is an even more funda-
mental question. This bears upon the
relation between anthropology and archae-
ology. We can no longer afford to be
content with partial views like archaeo-
logy is to anthropology what palaeontology
is to zoology. The question that needs to
be addressed is how the past is/was con-
structed in archaeology. As a system of
scientific knowledge, archaeology orders
the past within the western paradigm of
development. Its origins may be traced, as
in the case of anthropology, to colonial
rule. The “oriental” landscape was exca-
vated to discover the exotic “other”, which
was turned into an object of display in the
imperial museum. Subsequently, archaeo-
logy was recast into a project for building
the nation, complete with its “traditions”.
Archaeology, thus, is not a context-free
and value-free science and the past it
constructs is not one that may be drawn
January 14, 2006
upon uncritically by the anthropologist.
While a graduate textbook cannot be
expected to be comprehensive in its cov-
erage of frontier knowledge it should not
fail at least to mention this important
question that continues to trouble the
practitioners of the discipline.
Colonialism and Anthropology
The power-laden implications of anthro-
pology came under radical fire in the 1960s.
It was pointed out that anthropology grew
out of the imperialist needs of governance
of the colonies. The “authority” of anthro-
pology was its political authority. The
extended critique was that the discipline
fulfilled a similar function in contemporary
times by affirming the dominance of the
western powers over the underdeveloped
world. The radical anthropologists strove
for an anthropology committed to the
conquered rather than the conquerors.
With a closer understanding of the
relationship between knowledge and power,
the critique of anthropology attained a new
dimension in the 1980s. It was pointed out
that the “authority” of anthropology was
derived, political dominance apart, from its
epistemological authority. The epistemo-
logical premise was that of the modern, posi-
tivist science, with its characteristic belief
in an objective truth that could be fully
known. The premise had anthropology
staking claim to represent other cultures.
While radical anthropology dissented merely
with the western imperialist origins of the
discipline and its influences, the new think-
ing was critical of all anthropology. It chal-
lenged the fundamental presumption that other
cultures could be known and represented.
The section on “Colonial North-East”
traces the anthropological career of two
colonial administrators of north-east India
during the first-half of the 20th century.
The lives of J P Mills and J H Hutton, whose
histories are traced, had much in common.
Both held high positions in the adminis-
tration in Assam for over two decades and
were, in their capacity as honorary director
of ethnography, “state anthropologists”.
They wrote in scholarly journals and
published monographs. Hutton’s career in
India spanned about three decades, from
1909 to 1936. Mills served over three de-
cades, from 1913 till independence. On retire-
ment to England, both became active in pro-
fessional bodies and taught in universities.
How do the works of Mills and
Hutton, sharing similar administrative-
anthropological career compare? Mills is
viewed as “a beacon for the anthropology
of north-east”, a “meticulous” field
researcher, author of “monumental mono-
graphs”, and “a model” for the current
times. In sharp contrast, Hutton was “an
agent of the colonial power”. He was
eurocentric in his perspective and viewed
local people as uncivilised and criminal-
minded. His fieldwork was flawed, drew
the hostility of the local people and was
conducted under military escort. The out-
come was biased and of inferior scholar-
ship, “with no value at all”.
If the papers are to be believed, there is
substantial difference in the levels of
scholarship of Mills and Hutton. Even the
paper on Hutton, severely critical of the
whole range of colonial anthropologists
spares Mills and recognises his Ao Nagas
as “authoritative”. The paper fails to note
what makes it more scientific and less colonial
as compared to Hutton’s writings. It is
even more intriguing when the paper notes
that Hutton set the mould for Mills’ writing.
Why is Mills whose work was patterned
on Hutton’s evaluated as a serious scholar
while Hutton himself is seen in poor light?
From scattered pointers in the two
papers, one may infer certain differences
in their personalities, political-historical
contexts and fieldwork practices. Even
while being a representative of an alien
ruling power, Mills was relatively close to
the people and more sympathetic to their
interests. Mills arrived in the north-east
seven years after Hutton and left eleven
years after him. By the later phase of Mills’
fieldwork, the colonial administrator had
assumed the new role of the arbitrator and
mediator in settling inter-tribal conflicts
and disputes arising from newly compli-
cated property regimes and family
organisational forms. While both Hutton
and Mills were constrained by their limited
proficiency in local languages, Mills in-
novated fieldwork strategies to overcome
this. Together considered, their anthropo-
logical careers leave the important hint
that there is need to distinguish between
different writings within the genre of
colonial representation.
The lives of the administrator-
anthropologists studied could have formed
an effective springboard for a host of other
questions too. For instance, exploring their
lives offer the possibility to understand the
“reverse impact” of colonial anthropology.
What were the effects of the relocation of
colonial administrator-anthropologists like
Hutton and Mills in the anthropological
circles in their home country? What did
they teach and research? What kind of
knowledge did they transmit? How did
they use the material they had collected in
India? What sort of reality about the people
in colonies did they construct in the western
classroom? Likewise, it would be interest-
ing to explore the links between European-
born anthropologists with native anthro-
pologists – Mills, for instance, produced
collaborative works with Indian anthro-
pologists like D N Majumdar and
A Aiyyappan. Was it that not all European-
born anthropologists were “colonial” and
not all native anthropologists “national-
ist”? Or was it that despite differing view-
points on colonialism the two were united
in a shared epistemological premise?
Both the papers hesitate to explore the
nuances of the relationship between colo-
nialism and anthropology. They judge the
colonial anthropological project by taking
an ethical view of colonialism. While for
the author of the paper on Hutton, colo-
nialism was exploitative and oppressive
and produced inferior scholarship, for the
author of the Mills’ paper, colonialism was
suffused with good intentions, it was
indispensable for maintaining peace and
assuring welfare in the country, and yielded
superior scholarship. The former author
rightly notes that even native anthropolo-
gists, if not sufficiently sensitised, may
end up holding similar view of other
cultures as the European-born anthropolo-
gists. Nevertheless, as the critique is con-
fined to anthropology as a tool of colonial
governance, the author misses the multiple
components that constitute the hegemony
of colonial anthropology. Unless the knowl-
edge foundations of the discipline are
critically examined, native anthropologists,
despite their anti-colonial stance, might
bank on similar methodologies and arrive
at similar erroneous inferences as their
colonial predecessors. It would be defi-
cient in critical scholarship and serve only
the hegemonic interests of the state and
the ruling classes as in the colonial times.
Clearly, the relationship between colo-
nialism and anthropology needs to be
viewed in a more nuanced manner. That
colonialism is not the same at all points
of time and space has been recognised for
some time. This is a historical question on
which there is a fair degree of consensus
– though not reflected in the reviewed
book. The point is to anthropologise our
knowledge of the colonialism-anthropology
relationship. This requires knowing the
new sites and forms of conflict that
colonialism generates, the new political

Economic and Political Weekly January 14, 2006 129

discourses, powers, desires and anxieties;
the subjectivities that constitute these sites
and are constituted by these.
The Body in Anthropology
During the early phase of its develop-
ment, anthropology was largely pre-
occupied with distinguishing and describing
races based on physical attributes. Towards
this, a kit of scientific techniques was deve-
loped. Physical anthropology began with
measuring the body. The initial concern
with anatomy soon gave way to physiology.
Blood groups were examined to identify
possible racial patterns. The application of
genetics gave further momentum to this
branch of anthropological knowledge and
recast it as biological anthropology.
What restricts the scope of biological
anthropology is biologism itself. This
ideology of science reduces human body
to innate properties of germ cells. The
studies collated in the book do recognise
the difficulties of racial classification owing
to migration and inter-mixing. A race with
all its defining biological features is hard
to find; biological traits often vary within
an ethnic group and sometimes even within
a family. Recognising the “impurity” of
races is a step forward from colonial
anthropology but the studies fail to explore
the function of biological anthropology in
postcolonial times.
While displaying a faint recognition of
socio-cultural and environmental variables
in human growth, the authors ignore the
politics of biologism itself. This causes
them to miss important historical connec-
tions such as those between dermato-
glyphics and criminology, the colonial
science of identifying “criminal” tribes. In-
terestingly, even while the anthropologists
often fail to recognise the politics of bio-
logism, their subjects do not. This is illust-
rated by the 2003 popular resistance in
Nagaland to genome research that required
collection of blood samples from every
Naga tribe. It was suspected that the
research was conceived to erase the Naga
identity by showing that they are discrete
and separate people. The people could have
been misinformed about the purpose of
research but they were deeply aware of the
political uses such research could be put to.
Exploring Social Anthropology
The knowledge system of anthropology,
as noted already, is enabled by the mod-
ernist episteme. As with other social
130
sciences, anthropology sought to study hu-
man society by drawing inputs from physi-
cal sciences. Societies and people were
classified with a view to explaining the
norms and patterns of social order. The
evolutionist idea of progress formed the
basis of classification upon assumed in-
trinsic traits. Castes and tribes were viewed
as primitives, located in the lower rungs
of the evolutionary ladder. As these soci-
eties were essentialised in terms of origi-
nal, static characteristics, their social
change was seen as possible only through
the civilising mission of Europeans. Sub-
sequently, the critical anthropologists,
who distanced themselves from the
modernist episteme, historicised and
deconstructed the traditional concepts and
pointed to their problematic nature.
Anthropologists now employ concepts like
ethnicity that are free of essentialism and
fixity that was characteristic of earlier
categories like tribe, and forge refresh-
ingly new notions like tribalism to under-
stand the present ideological location of
these communities.
The section ‘Social Anthropology of
North-East India’ is bounded by the
modernist episteme. The paper ‘Tribal
Social Organisation’, for instance, defines
tribal organisation on assumed essential
traits. The episteme limits the scope of
other papers too wherein novel themes like
the Indian anthropological establishment
and community management of natural
resources are discussed. The paper on
agrarian relations traces the historical
trajectory of land rights but fails to
anthropologise the question by examining
the shifts in people’s relation with land
and its bearing on their social lives.
The discussion on the status of tribal
women details the negative consequences
of Indian military presence on the lives of
women but disregards the radical as-
sertion of women in the context of new
subjectivity and identity constituted
within the structure of domination and
oppression.
A common lacuna of the papers is dis-
regard to theory, including their own. This
prevents them from addressing the rich
nuances of their otherwise interesting
empirical observations and drawing the
attention of the larger scholarly com-
munity. Admittedly, the scant attention
to theory is considerably true of the
anthropology curriculum in the country as
a whole. This has costly consequences. It
perpetuates the subordination of non-
western anthropologists of being native
Economic and Political Weekly
informants to the western anthropologists,
enabling the latter to construct grand theo-
ries – an outcome unhealthy for the de-
velopment of the discipline, in the west
or the east.
Moving Ahead
The book raises some important ques-
tions like colonialism and anthropology
and brings to focus certain issues like
ecology that are just beginning to gain the
attention of Indian anthropologists. Yet,
there is little to cheer about. Despite its
claims otherwise, the present volume like
most other textbooks in circulation, fails
to reflect the new concerns and debates in
anthropology. There are several interest-
ing questions that may be raised in the
specific context of the north-east but
scarcely addressed in the present volume.
How was modernity conceived, experi-
enced, resisted and embraced by the local
people? What precisely has been the
relationship between capital and the com-
munity? How did the local and the global
interact? How did notions of gender,
sexuality, and family change during the
colonial period and after? What did con-
version to Christianity mean for the local
people? How did the communities respond
to the making of the nation-state of India?
How did the internal structures of power
change in the postcolonial times? How can
one understand inter-ethnic conflict,
anthropologically speaking? How do
people negotiate with the Indian state and
global cultures? A new textbook on the
region might advantageously look into at
least some of these questions. That would
make it more contemporary and dialogical
and therefore more interesting to the
students of north-east India to whom the
book is primarily intended. This calls for
more sensitive anthropology, especially
important in the context of competing
regimes of representation. EPW
Email: sureshm72@yahoo.co.in
rammohan@cds.ac.in
[We are obliged to S Preetha Nair, Tathagatan,
and Bhawani Cheerath for their comments on an
earlier version of this review essay.]
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January 14, 2006