Nationalism and knowledge: Othering and the disciplin(e)ing of anthropology in India

ABSTRACT

This essay is about how Indian anthropology-sociology has historically theorized Islam and Muslims. In it, I demonstrate how anthropologists’ discourse on Islam and the majoritarian Hindu discourse on nation – Muslims being its constitutive other – dovetail into each other. Three main catalogues through which anthropology has dealt with Muslims are: silence, alienness and erasure. Against anthropology’s self-perception as the most reflexive discipline, I argue how Indian anthropology has been intertwined with nation-state as both an ideology and a set of practices. I also identify connections between symbolic violence of anthropology-sociology manifest in the othering of Islam and anti-Muslim political violence in postcolonial India. Discussing influential texts, schools of thoughts, departments, individuals, institutions, professional association in a framework that comparatively alludes to the ‘anomaly’ of Jews vis-à-vis German anthropology, this essay also charts out a different genealogy of anthropology in India, one that remains hushed in the regnant accounts. In so doing, it maps the discipline’s trajectory from its moment of formation to the present. One key aim of the essay is to unveil the theory behind methodological nationalism to discuss the (im)possibility of writing an alternative anthropology-sociology of India.

KEYWORDS:

• Methodological nationalism
• Hinduism
• Islam
• Ghurye
• Geddes
• violence

Acknowledgements

I presented earlier versions of this article, in the making for over a decade, at a number of places: workshop titled ‘Studying Spaces of Non-Existence: Methodological Concerns’, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia (2010); the inaugural Australia-India Institute seminar, Melbourne (2010); Anthropology department seminar, Australian National University (2010); Anthropology Colloquium, Macquarie University, Sydney (2011); Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen, Germany (2011); Sociology department seminar, University of Hyderabad, India (2014) and American Anthropological Association Conference, San Jose (2018). I am thankful to Assa Doron (Australian National University), Chris Houston (Macquarie University), Vinod Jairath (University of Hyderabad), Barak Kalir (University of Amsterdam) and Peter van der Veer (Max Planck Institute, Gottingen) for the invitation. My utmost gratitude goes to the anonymous readers of History and Anthropology for their probing, constructive comments, as it extends to David Henig, the editor, for offering a set of valuable suggestions that have significantly enhanced the quality, style and structure of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Hindu children and ascetics are not burnt (Das 1976, 255) as are Hindus meeting “bad death,” e.g. those killed in accidents. Imperfect body like that of a leper is immersed in the Ganges (Parry 1994, 163). Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam buried their fighters.

2 In West, anthropology’s distinction lay in studying “primitive”, “savage” or “simple” societies (Kuper 1983) and sociology’s in what Durkheim (1982, 209) called “the great civilized societies of the West.” Indian anthropologist disavowed that distinction, arguing that diversity of India included forms of life from nomadism to modern towns (Beteille 2002). Veena Das-edited volume was thus titled The Oxford Indian Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology (2003). This position, however, assumes a monolithic West. Thus, in Europe, the US and Australia, modes of lives of the white settlers, aboriginals, Roma Gypsies and slaves were no less diverse than what Srinivas, Shah and Ramaswamy (1979, 1) claimed about India.

3 Unlike its eighteenth century use connoting, as Williams (1983, 58) noted, modernity with the “spirit of the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on secular and progressive human self-development,” for Hindu nationalists and anthropologist alike, the golden Indian civilization flourished only in ancient times, well before the “Muslim” era. To anthropologist Singer (1955, 23, 34–35), India was an “indigenous”, “total” civilization marked by “cultural continuity” and “essential similarities of mental outlook” transmitted by Brahmins through Hindu scriptures and sacred centers. In Singer’s conceptualization, there was no Islamic or non-Hindu traditions. Nearly all influential sociologists, including Ghurye, Srinivas, McKim Marriott and others (see Mukerjee 1958; Singh 1986) shared Singer’s rendition of civilization.

4 For an anthropological account of Hinduisation of Dalits, with Muslims as the other, see Narayan (2009). Also, see Guru (1991) and Dalit Voice (2002).

5 As there are three Mukerjees here – Radhakamal, Dhurjati Prasad and Ramkrishna – I use their first names to ward off confusions.

6 During the 2009 American Anthropological Conference in Philadelphia, one afternoon I was having coffee in the almost empty cafe on the ground level. A middle-aged person repeatedly smiled and waved at me from a distance. Embarrassed when I responded, he came to me to ask what my profession was. Knowing that I was an anthropologist, he told me that he needed “smart, intelligent” people like me in Afghanistan. My economic condition, he promised, would improve. He gave me his business card with association to the US army.

7 Writing about anthropology in Europe, Hann (2005, viii) notes how it has been “deeply marked” by “nationalism”. Even when Marxist theories influenced national anthropologies, he avers, “continuities [with nationalism] remain substantial”.

8 A comparative study of how India’s double Partition (Mufti 2007) shaped sociology in the subcontinent is awaited.

9 The three volumes commissioned by Indian Council of Social Science Research to survey researches and developments in Indian sociology from 2003 to 2010 (see Singh 2014) fall under the catalogue of silence for none of them have a specific chapter on Muslims. Sociological works verily take Muslims as a statistical entity. That they represent traditions irreducible to “national culture” and “national security” is seldom theorized (Ahmad 2017a). The ICSSR volumes did not even mention author’s monograph (Ahmad 2009), one of the few anthropological works on Muslims published within the ICSSR time frame. Nor did Sociological Bulletin, journal of the Indian Sociological Society publish its review. I mention these facts qua facts.

10 Called “Christ of the Indian Renaissance” and “the first Indian liberal”, Rammohun Roy (1772–1833) viewed the English not as “conquerors, but … as deliverers” from Muslim rule (in Dhar 1987). Contemporary liberals like Amartya Sen too see no problem in Roy’s liberalism (Ahmad 2017a).

11 To ascertain the impact of books by sociologists like Singh on the public life, some data are in order. Singh's Modernization of Indian Tradition, Dube's Indian Society, Srinivas' Social Change are all translated into Hindi and read by thousands of students who prepare for the civil service exams at federal and provincial levels. At Jawahar bookshop in Delhi alone, every year at least 1,000 copies of these three books are sold (excluding their photocopies). Around 300 copies of Madan's Religion in India (see below) are annually sold. This note is based on interview (in February 2011) with the owner, Jawahar, of Jawahar bookshop, established in 1969, at JNU.

12 In her 2004 account of Indian anthropology, Das (2004, 33) simply mentioned this debate without connecting it to the present. This non-connection was, to say the least, puzzling for the Global War on Terror had made knowledge about Muslims both globally and nationally pivotal (Ahmad 2013b).

13 Due to word constrain, I cannot discuss other works on Muslims such as by Mayaram (1997) and Mehta (1997). They also do not add to this essay’s argument. Under the banner of “liminality”, Mayaram too effaces the Muslim difference.

14 Here I do not include Binoy Kumar Sarkar’s (1914) The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology, as it does not figure in mainstream accounts of sociology’s history. Historian Zachariah (2015, 651) recently noted Sarkar’s connection with European fascism.

15 A minor exception to the orientation of Indian sociology is Oommen (1996; 1986).

16 With remarkable consistency, Das’ (1985, 1990, 1995) multiple writings over time describes the 1984 anti-Sikh political violence as “riot”, not “pogrom” or “massacre”.