Department Of Anthropology

Social movements are a part of the curriculum of Anthropology and Sociology in higher education institutions in India. Traditionally, these courses are taught via snippets of some major social movements accompanied by theoretical texts by acclaimed scholars and there is little scope for individual teachers to change course content. While these texts are valuable, teaching these courses I found students struggled to make initial engagement with many of the prescribed texts and often became tense or anxious about the material. Students viewed social movements with antipathy and as a hindrance to stability, influenced by the political narratives and media representation of social movements as a disruption to solidarity. They often struggled to connect to the themes and issues of the Social Movement course, positioned within their own prisms of religion, caste, class, gender, and political sympathies. This created a gap in understanding for these students in an Indian classrooms. In this article, I vindicate the use of Animal Farm by George Orwell as a heuristic tool, taught alongside the standard texts, to help students grasp the nature of social movements in theory as well as in praxis. Teaching and learning social movements require a certain amount of empathy and openness to untangle students from their own biases. Turning to fiction can help because students can connect and become invested in the story, after which point parallels to the academic texts or real-life social movements can be drawn. With its subtle literary techniques, Animal Farm elaborates on the social, political, and economic background for a social movement. Set in the animal world, it is a parable that is equidistant to human orientations and consequently makes an excellent starting point to distance students from their biases and preconceived ideas. This in turn helps them develop a reflexive understanding from which to engage with the core texts.

Names play a significant role in everyday life. Names are layered with
multiple cultural meanings. Not everything is named and things that are
named have some value. The process of naming is inherent to culture. Names are important bearers of culture. The aim of the article is to study the perspective of people on the process of renaming. It looks at the ways people comprehend the renaming of the ghats. The article highlights the strategies of maintaining the subaltern names of the ghats. The article looks at the performing functions of names. It examines the process of renaming of the ghats. It explores the process of renaming which represents community mores and values. The aim is to study such kind of appropriation which compromises with the existing meaning and creates a new identity for the ghats. It looks at
the renaming of the ghats as a socio-political intention to naturalize the place with a new name, wipe out the past and establish an authority over it. The article analyses struggle for renaming and sustaining subaltern names. Through this article, I seek to present the ways in which subaltern spaces are recognized. It elaborates on the conscious practices which are directed to reinforce and sustain the subaltern ghat names. I have primarily focused on two ghats, the Nishad Raj ghat and the Galli Baba ghat for the study. Though other ghat names have been mentioned, but the aim is to see people’s perspective on change of names. The primary focus of the article is to highlight the ways the subaltern ghat names survive among the hegemonic Brahmincal and patronized places.

Social movements are a part of the curriculum of Anthropology and Sociology in higher education institutions in India. Traditionally, these courses are taught via snippets of social movements accompanied by theoretical texts and there is little scope for individual teachers to change course content. While these texts are valuable, I found students struggled to make initial engagement with many of the prescribed texts and often became tense or anxious about the material. Students viewed social movements with antipathy and as a hindrance to stability, influenced by the political narratives and media representation of social movements as a disruption to solidarity. They often struggled to connect to the themes and issues of the Social Movement course, positioned within their own prisms of religion, caste, class, gender, and political sympathies. In this article, I vindicate the use of Animal Farm by George Orwell as a heuristic tool, taught alongside standard texts, to help students gr...

India being the habitat of a vast diversity of linguistic,
socio-cultural and ethnic groups provides ample
opportunities to study genetic variation. However, a
significant regional heterogeneity is also found in ABO
and RhD blood group allele frequencies (Bhasin et al.,
1994, 1996; Giblett, 1969). In the present study, an attempt
is made to estimate the allele-frequency distribution of
ABO and Rh(D) systems among Rajput and Brahmin
populations of the Kasauli district of Himachal Pradesh.

In the winter of 1990 the first set of Kashmiri Pandits migrated from the valley of Kashmir to different parts of India and abroad under tensed political circumstances; eventually, a dozen such migrations took place which led to around 1,40,000 Kashmiri Pandits leaving the valley. In the decades to come Kashmiri Pandits would make claims on the Indian state to 'rehabilitate' them in their host regions. These included, among others, reservations in various educational and executive institutions. Following directives from Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. many educational institutions across India provide for reservation for Kashmiri migrants in various undergraduate courses in diverse disciplines. Also, a substantial number of jobs were announced by the government of Jammu & Kashmir especially for Kashmiri Pandits This paper seeks to analyse the case of affirmative action in favour of a historically privileged community in a region which has been marred by deep socioeconomic divisions. Further, it juxtaposes state measures planned for other migrant groups such as Namasudras of Bengal with those for Kashmiri Pandits to draw comparisons between communities that lie at different rungs of the social structure, although nominally equal as per the constitution of India. The paper draws largely from secondary sources along with the ethnographic data collected during the author's fieldwork in the valley of Kashmir and in Jammu region between 2012 and 2017.

More than seventy communities constitute the social structure in the Indian-Occupied Kashmir, yet the popular notions about its population relegate the entire 7+ million people into the paired oppositions of Pandit-Muslim, Shi'a-Sunni, Sufi-Salafi etcetera. A sustained engagement with the members of the Kashmiri society compels one to ask what lies beyond the simplistic and popular binaries of religions, sects and denominations that have come to dominate the discourse on Kashmir's social composition? The current paper decentralises such an understanding through scrutinizing the oppositional construction along religious and sectarian identities. It does so by foregrounding the significance of caste identities that govern, to a large extent, access to social, material and cultural resources and make religion and sectarian identities more complex than what appears on the surface. This paper is part of a larger research that approaches the Kashmiri society through the vantage point of a small endogamous community of houseboat owners known as Houseboat-Hanjis. At the same time, it keeps the idea of holism at its core, thus looking at the various communities, organisations and institutions that constitute the society and navigating through them to understand how communities are arranged in a system of graded inequality. Apart from the historical and archival methods that have been utilised through this work, the research for the paper draws from the ethnographic fieldwork conducted intermittently between 2014 and 2018 mostly in Budgam and Srinagar districts of the Indian-Occupied Kashmir.

For three decades the narrative of Kashmiri Pandit migration has developed it as the exceptional event that ruptured the centuries old secularist traditions of Kashmir. It becomes pertinent to locate this discourse in the local as well as the 'national' developments that have shaped it and at the same time been impacted by it. The current paper problematizes terminologies such as communalism, secularism and nationalism in the context of Kashmiri society and Kashmiri Pandit migration and deploys that framework to discuss Indian occupation of Kashmir and disenfranchisement emerging from class and caste-based marginalization among societies in the subcontinent.

The recent amendment in article 370 of the Indian constitution has led to a renewed focus on the socio-cultural and economic relationship between Kashmir and India. A wholesome understanding of these relationships requires a fundamental knowledge of the very entities being referred to here: India and Kashmir. What is India made up of and how do different parts of its makeup relate to the occupation of Kashmir and its people? The current paper addresses the latter two aspects by following the discourse on culture-making institutions in India. It does so by highlighting the functioning of textile production in India, its historical development postindependence, and its role in the political projects of occupation and control. Further, the paper problematises concepts such as consciousness, community, and appropriation in the context of culture-making and their import in a society based on the principles of caste. The paper uses quantitative and qualitative data to demonstrate aspects of representation and historical participation in culture-making in general and textile production in particular, and how those correspond with values, cultures, and social structure of regions forcefully subsumed into the political entity called India.

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper documents how ordinary digital technologies, such as WhatsApp, were (re)appropriated for communication and pandemic coordination at a time when face-to-face meetings were impossible. However, there was also an emergent ‘dark’ side to its use. In the context of India’s democratic backsliding, middle-class Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) deployed everyday technologies to (re)configure exclusionary digital socio-spatial boundaries through practices of ‘grassroots authoritarianism’. The paper documents how the national government co-opted RWAs in the implementation of COVID-19 rules and examines their role as an extension of the state within a longer history of middle-class power in India’s cities. We evidence how the ‘WhatsApp panopticon’ was mobilized as a tool of everyday community care and surveillance to shape morality regimes and influence the compliance of residents with national and locally enforced rules. We argue that digital socio-spatial practices of securitization, fear and compliance represent forms of ‘grassroots authoritarianism’ that echo and ensconce state-led ideological change in India. Building on ‘everyday authoritarianism’ we show how digital technologies and middle-class organizations are mediating India’s authoritarian shift from below.

This article is a conversation elaborating on the arguments made by Naren Bedide (Kuffir) regarding the condition of farmers in India and elsewhere. Drawing from a range of sources on the historical and current understanding of agricultural discourses, we argue that agriculture is an absurd economic activity with no possibilities of liberation or exit for farmers. The inherent vulnerability of crops combined with the unpredictability of environmental factors and society's enforced production processes together create enslavement realities for large sections of humans within the practice of agriculture. The farmer's occupation has no element of choice, it will always be pre-modern and cannot be equated to careers or professions with stable incomes and benefits.

Abstract:
Medicinal plants are highly valuable to human livelihood. Medicinal plants are wealth of the rural as well as urban societies is well recognized as unique feature. However, we also know that plant and man are very much interdependent on each other and with the surrounding environment. The influence of plant and human upon one another is of considerable importance. Human beings are directly or indirectly dependent upon medicinal plant. The effects of climate change on medicinal plant are particularly significant due to their value within traditional systems of medicine. There are evidences that climate change is causing noticeable effect on the medicinal plant species. However it is largely unclear about the climate change effects on medicinal plant. In this perspective of research is given much attention recently. So, an attempt is being made here to review the work done on these important issues with Indian perspective.
Key words:  Climate change, Medicinal plant, conservation, vulnerable.

Abstract:
Dhemaji district of Assam is very prone to flood and siltation because of various hydro-meteorological and topographical characteristics of the basin in which it is situated. Jiadhal the main river of Dhemaji district has long been considered as a problematic river in the history of Assam due to re- current and extensive flooding and siltation. Flood and siltation in the Jiadhal basin is characterized by their extremely large magnitude, high frequency and extensive devastation. An extensive field study has been done along the river Jiadhal. Household survey was carried out with detailed and exhaustive questionnaire. Statistical methods were applied to understand the intensity of impact of the river on socio- economic activities of the population. It has been found that the extensive flood and siltation in the basin has changed their socio economic status and have adapted and coped with the new environmental change in the riverine areas of the Dhemaji district. These hazards posed threat to the local people who lived along the river. Losing of residential and agricultural land are main issue and problematic issue. The exploitation of the land, proper management and control of water resources are of vital importance for bringing prosperity in the pre dominantly agro based economy of this district. The paper light on the overview of socio economic impact of the siltation and flood on the population in the area near the river Jiadhal to understand household’s, mapping method which local people have used to mitigate and to protect siltation and flood and to suggest some suitable measure.
Key words:  Flood, Siltation, Socio-Economic, Hazards

Biodiversity plays an important role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. For example, in contexts where deforestation is responsible for an average of 20% of human-induced carbon dioxide emissions, the conservation of natural habitats can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Additionally, the conservation of mangroves and drought-resistant crops can reduce the impacts of climate change such as flooding and famine. In the rural area, women and men are highly dependent on biomass, such as wood, agricultural crops, wastes and forest resources for their energy and livelihoods. However, due to climate change, the ability of women and men to obtain these indispensable resources is reduced. This is to be note that the declining biodiversity does not solely impact the material welfare and livelihoods of people, it also cripples access to security, resiliency, social relations, health, and freedom of choices and actions. The majority of the biodiversity decline has a disproportionate impact primarily on poor rural people in developing countries. To give a few examples, declining fish populations have major implications for artisanal fishers and communities that depend on fish. Moreover, in many parts of the country, deforestation has meant that wood-the most widely used solid fuel-is located further away from the places where people live. In poor communities in most developing countries, women and girls are responsible for collecting traditional fuels, a physically draining task that can take from 2 to 20 or more hours per week. As a result, women have less time to fulfil their domestic responsibilities, earn money, engage in politics or other public activities, learn to read or acquire other skills, or simply rest. Girls are sometimes kept home from school to help gather fuel, perpetuating the cycle of disempowerment. Moreover, when environmental degradation forces them to search farther afield for resources, women and girls become more vulnerable to injuries from carrying heavy loads long distances, and also face increased risk of security. Biodiversity also comes in the form of the wealth of knowledge on the environment that indigenous people and communities possess. Indigenous knowledge comprises: an understanding of wild ancestors of food, medicinal plants and domestic animals, symbiotic relations with ecosystems, an awareness of the structure of ecosystems and the functionality of specific species, as well as the geographic ranges of species. In order to further preserve biodiversity and limit its degradation, indigenous people can and should play a leading role in the global response to climate change. This should be particularly emphasised with regards to indigenous women who play a vital role for natural resources. A greater inclusion of indigenous communities and indigenous women further validates the significance of their knowledge. Climate change has significant impacts on fresh water sources, affecting the availability of water used for domestic and productive tasks. The consequences of the increased frequency in floods and droughts are far reaching, particularly for vulnerable groups, including women who are responsible for water management at the household level. All over the developing world, women and girls bear the burden of fetching water for their families and spend significant amounts of time daily hauling water from distant sources. The water from distant sources is rarely enough to meet the needs of the household and is often contaminated, such that women and girls also pay the heaviest price for poor sanitation. To give an example, in cases where the arsenic contamination of groundwater is prominent, increased flood levels intensify the rate of exposure among rural people and other socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. The resulting health problems include: lesions, the hardening of skin, dark spots on hands and feet, swollen limbs and the loss of feeling. Arsenic exposure also manifests itself in the form of skin lesions that usually have negative social repercussions for arsenic-poisoning victims—the situation is particularly worse for women who can be shunned, excluded, and