Administration and Anthropology in India

Abstract

THE leading article in NATURE of Nov. 22 appears at a critical moment and must be deeply appreciated by everyone who knows anything of the present state of affairs in India, political or academic. It rightly stresses the literary bias of research in India, in answer to which it may be pointed out that, whereas the older universities teach Indian languages, the University of London is the only English university to accept Indian cultural studies for the B.A. degree (Hons. Archæology, Sect. H). It is true that field-work is non-existent in India, and that, therefore, the bulk of the anthropological research carried out must be more or less arid, because it is at second-hand and divorced from the facts. As an outcome of this, we are now faced by the peculiar prospect of listening to a lengthy debate, and of accepting willy-nilly a decision of sorts, upon a subject that is nothing else than a problem in applied anthropology, that is, the organisation of a federal India; and we are forced to do so with the knowledge that the facts are not accessible. Whatever is done must, therefore, be done in the dark. The action taken will be political and not scientific. One would have liked to have heard Huxley's views on such a state of affairs!