Indian Anthropology (Updated & Revised)

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This book meets the long felt need of a quality book on Indian Anthropology. Though written with Central Civil Services Examination Syllabus in mind, the book covers the entire gamut of Indian Anthropology-from Prehistoric past to the Present day Indian society, from the growth of Indian Anthopology to the history of tribal administration and from ancient Indian social system to the contemporary tribal culture.

The book contains, interalia, an up-to-date and critical discussion on the growth of Indian Anthropology. Various concepts viz. Nature Man-Spirit-Complex, Tribe-caste continuum, Great and Little Traditions, Universalization and Parochialization, Dominant Caste, Sacred Complex, Sanskritization etc. have been lucidly and comprehensively described. The discussion on Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, and Other Backward Classes is complete and up to date. So is the presentation of demographic profile of India and Indian Population policy.

The book is a must for Civil Services examinees as well as students and teachers in anthropology, sociology and other social sciences. Intelligent laymen and administrators of tribal areas will find the book opening new horizons for them. This is a unique blend of text book and reference book. Simply indispensable.

Vijoy S. Sahay is the former Head, Department of Anthropology, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj. He obtained his Ph.D. degree for his fascinating research work on the Nicobar Archipelago under the supervision of Prof. L.P. Vidyarthi. He has been passionately teaching anthropological theories and conducting field researches among the most primitive tribal groups of the country. Author of a number of books and over fifty research papers Prof. Sahay is editor-in-chief of the Internationally renowned research journal the Oriental Anthropologist. Two of his recent books are, vis., Experiencing Anthropology in the Nicobars Archipelago and Anthropological Thought: From Evolutionism to Post-modernism and Beyond. Prof. Sahay has been visiting fellow to several universities in India and abroad.

Naresh Kumar Vaid (b. 1954) has been living anthropology for the last almost 5 decades. After completing B.Sc. (Hons.) and M.Sc. (Hons.) in anthropology from Panjab University, Chandigarh, he shifted to Delhi and conducted extensive bio cultural researcamong Bhotia (Johari, Rang, Tolcha, Marchha and Jaad) and Rajis of Uttarakhand under the guidance of Prof. S.C. Tiwari. He has also conducted extensive action research among Birhor of Jharkhand and Kamar of Chattisgarh. A former journalist and a prolific writer, he has contributed several newspaper articles and research papers in various journals. He has enriched anthropology through his books, including Economy & Social Relations, Who Cares for Tribal Development, The Truth about Caste, Tribal Education & Health, as also Tribes of India-Jan, Jangal, Jameen (in Press). Recently, he has initiated a project to start an International Free, Residential school for tribals of central India and neighbouring states in district Raisen, Madhya Pradesh.

Ujjwala Gupta (Ph.D, MPH, PGDRD, UGC-NET) is a Doctorate graduate in Development Studies and a Public Health faculty member in Yenepoya (Deemed to be University) at Mangalore in Karnataka, India. She has over a decade of research experience in community based family planning, and maternal and child healthcare. Dr Gupta is a member of the International Sociological Association-ISA and the United Anthropological Association of India Forum-UAIF. She is the recipient of the prestigious International Fellowships-Shastri Indo Canada Doctoral Research Fellowship and the Policy Communication fellowship Population Reference Bureau (USAID)

Pradip K. Singh, M.Sc. (Gold Medalist) and Ph.D. in Anthropology, Prof. Singh is the former head of the Department of Anthropology and Dean, Faculty of Social Science, Ranchi University, Ranchi. Prof. Singh restudied the Maler tribe after 20 years of Prof. Vidyarthi's work Maler: A Study in Nature - Man Spirit Complex. In this study Prof. Singh proposed altogether a new dimension to the concept through a mathematical computation that Nature Man Spirit Concept is constant.

The first edition of Indian Anthropology was published in 1998. It had coincided with the completion of the 50th anniversary of India's independence. Exactly after 25 years, and just after the completion of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsava, when India celebrated 75th year of her independence; we are happy to bring out the revised and updated edition of the book in 2025. The success of the first edition of the book was so overwhelming, that within a year of its publication, over a thousand copies of the book were sold, and it became out-of-print. Since then, the authors were repeatedly requested by the publisher, many of our professional colleagues in the discipline, and hundreds of graduate and postgraduate students of anthropology, who also aspired for the Civil Services, to get the volume reprinted; but on one pretext or the other, it lingered on till date. It is also to be noted that the first original edition of this book was written by Vijoy S. Sahay and Pradip K. Singh. In this edition Dr. Ujjwala Gupta and Dr. Naresh K. Vaid both contributed their inputs to enhance the quality of the book.

Much water has flown down the Ganges ever since Sir William Jones laid down the foundation of Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, and at the behest of the 'Father of Indian Ethnography' Late Rai Bahadur Sarat Chandra Roy, the then Vice-Chancellor Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, opened the Department of Anthropology in Calcutta University in 1920.

During the 1920s, while the Indian Anthropology at the University level was in its nascent form, the 'British Social Anthropology' and 'American Cultural Anthropology' had attained considerable heights. Radcliffe-Brown's 'Structuralism' and Malinowski's 'Functionalism' had by then gained unchallenged control over the anthropological establishments throughout the British-empire, and after the 'Culture Area Approach', Franz Boas and his young pupils were busy in discovering the impact of 'Culture' on 'Personality", and vice versa.

In India, the Asiatic Society and the Department of Anthropology. Calcutta University both have already celebrated their Bi-Centenary Year and Diamond Jubilee Years, respectively. The Anthropological Survey of India, being the largest anthropological organization in the world has also celebrated its Golden Jubilee Year. It is, therefore, the high time to take a stock of the growth and achievement of Indian Anthropology. However, it is not the proper place to satiate the academic quest by indulging into anthropological discussions.

The book has been primarily written to meet the felt-need of a quality book on Indian Anthropology. Though, written with Central Civil Services Examination syllabus in mind, it covers the entire gamut of Indian anthropology-from prehistoric to the present Indian society; from the growth of Indian Anthropology to the history of tribal administration and from ancient Indian social system to the contemporary tribal culture.

The book contains, inter alia, an up-to-date and critical discussion on the growth of Indian Anthropology. Various Concepts viz. Nature-Man-Spirit Complex, Tribe-Caste-Continuum, Great and Little Traditions, Universalization and Parochialisation, Dominant Caste, Sacred Complex, Sanskritization etc. have been lucidly and comprehensively described. The discussion on Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes is complete and up-to-date. So is the presentation of Demographic Profile of India and Indian Population Policy.

In a way, Civil Services Examination in the recent years have made greater contribution to the popularity of Anthropology in India than many of the Anthropological Organisations and Departments in the country. Due to inclusion of the subject as an optional paper in these examinations, anthropology has become tremendous popular among the young graduates of the universities.