(a) Make a critical appraisal of Megalithic tradition in India with special reference to North-East India. 20 (b) Assess the…

Indian anthropology encompasses a dynamic trajectory transitioning from colonial racial classifications to functional village monographs and ethno-archaeological inquiries into prehistoric material culture.

Megalithic Tradition in India with Special Reference to North-East India

The Megalithic tradition in India encompasses monuments constructed of large stones, functionally classified into sepulchral (cist burials, dolmenoid cists, urn burials, cairn circles) and non-sepulchral or commemorative types (menhirs, alignment stones, stone seats). While peninsular Indian megaliths (e.g., Brahmagiri, Adichanallur) are extinct, Iron Age archaeological horizons associated with Black-and-Red Ware, North-East India presents a globally significant "living megalithic culture."

Among the Khasi, Jaintia, and Naga (particularly Angami and Maram) communities, megaliths remain actively integrated into socio-religious life. As documented by colonial ethnographers like P.R.T. Gurdon (among the Khasi) and J.H. Hutton (among the Nagas), menhirs (Mawbynna or Mawlong) and dolmens (Mawkjat) serve as bone-deposition repositories (Mawbah), clan alliances, and markers of status earned through Feasts of Merit.

A critical appraisal reveals severe empirical and theoretical challenges in North-Eastern megalithic studies. First, unlike peninsular megaliths, several North-Eastern sites lack an explicit association with iron or diagnostic pottery, creating stratigraphic ambiguities. Second, absolute chronology remains problematic; recent Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating challenges uniform antiquity, showing chronologies ranging from the late prehistoric to the modern ethnographic present. Third, an unresolved debate persists between diffusionist models—which link North-East megaliths to Southeast Asian Austronesian/Mon-Khmer migrations—and indigenous evolution models emphasizing local ecological adaptations. Thus, while peninsular studies rely purely on archaeological inference, North-East India provides an indispensable ethno-archaeological bridge, demonstrating that megalithism is a cultural process rather than a static chronological marker.

S. C. Dube's Contributions to Indian Village Studies

S.C. Dube fundamentally reshaped Indian rural sociology by moving beyond colonial notions of the village as an isolated, self-sufficient "little republic." Through his seminal monographs Indian Village (1955), based on field studies in Shamirpet (Telangana), and India's Changing Villages (1958), Dube pioneered a comprehensive structural-functional approach.

Methodologically, Dube broke new ground by utilizing interdisciplinary teams and demonstrating how Shamirpet was tied to wider regional social fields through economic ties, kinship networks, religious pilgrimages, and political structures. In India's Changing Villages, he engineered a vital shift from pure functionalism to applied anthropology, critically evaluating planned change under the Community Development Programme (CDP).

However, Dube’s contribution warrants critical scrutiny. His analysis of social change overemphasized a top-down developmental perspective, assuming bureaucratic state interventions would smoothly modernize rural stratification. Furthermore, Dube contested M.N. Srinivas’s overarching concept of Sanskritization, arguing that it failed to capture the multifaceted nature of status mobility, which also drew upon Western, localized, and non-Brahmanical reference models. Ultimately, Dube’s lasting legacy lies in grounding village studies in empirical, policy-oriented applied anthropology.

Herbert Risley's Racial Classification and its Critiques

Sir Herbert Hope Risley pioneered colonial racial classification using systematic anthropometry, detailed in The Tribes and Castes of Bengal (1891) and The People of India (1908). Risley’s primary methodology relied on physical measurements, notably the nasal index (breadth divided by height) and cephalic index, supplemented by standardized ethnographic photography. Based on these metrics, he classified the Indian population into seven morphological types: Turko-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Scytho-Dravidian, Aryo-Dravidian, Mongolo-Dravidian, Mongoloid, and Dravidian. Risley formulated a rigid caste-race equation, postulating that a group's social position varied inversely with its nasal index.

Risley’s framework faced severe scientific invalidation. His methodology was driven by scientific racism designed to legitimize colonial governance through divide-and-rule. His core premise committed circular reasoning by taking socially constructed caste hierarchies to validate biological racial divisions. Furthermore, Risley treated cranial and nasal traits as fixed genetic markers, completely ignoring Franz Boas’s demonstrations of environmental plasticity. Later anthropologists such as B.S. Guha and D.N. Majumdar thoroughly rejected Risley’s seven-fold taxonomy, demonstrating significant sampling biases and measuring errors. Modern population genetics (e.g., Reich et al.) has conclusively refuted his racial typology, demonstrating that Indian genetic structure is characterized by Ancestral North Indian (ANI) and Ancestral South Indian (ASI) ancestral clines shaped by endogamy rather than discrete, unmixed racial types.

Conclusion

Indian anthropology’s progress is marked by its decisive departure from Risley’s flawed biological determinism toward Dube's rigorous functional and applied analyses, while the living megalithic traditions of North-East India continue to dismantle rigid colonial distinctions between prehistoric archaeology and contemporary ethnography.