Anthropology has developed different national traditions and schools during the last one hundred years or so. There are well-documented records of regional/national trends available already. However, the history of anthropology in India is largely undeveloped. L.P. Vidyarthi in 1978 assembled two volumes on important works of Indian anthropologists and K.S. Singh published two books on ASI in 1991 and 1994.There are a few other attempts. The decennial survey conducted by ICSSR partly contributes toward historical reconstruction.
S.C. Dube had sought 'indigenizing' the social sciences in India in 1973. Similarly, Surajit Sinha had stressed the need for 'decolonizing' anthropology in India in 1971. These two scholars as well as Nirmal Kumar Bose, Iravati Karve, D.N. Majumdar, A. Aiyappan, M. N. Srinivas and many other anthropologists had scripted the history of humanist and civic anthropology in India. They have variously contributed to profile the connection between the state and people of India and thus they have shaped a broad outline of intellectual indigenisation.
The abstract (concept note) of this panel has fittingly surmised that ‘Establishment of Anthropological Survey of India had accentuated the nation’s intellectual search for diversities in human existence in different parts of India’. This is a demonstrative deduction of the multifaceted character of ASI and which needs to be explicated. In order to do so this author intends to re-evaluate the research trajectory of the Anthropological Survey of India and critique some specific studies of ASI from the prism of decolonisation discourse and swadeshi engagement.
