History and Anthropology in South Asia: Rethinking the Archive
Author(s)
Mathur, Saloni
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between history and anthropology in South Asia during the past two decades, a relationship that has done much to shape the emerging intellectual practices of postcolonial anthropology. After locating the current conjuncture in an earlier moment of American anthropology in South Asia – village studies of the 1950s – the article reviews a body of interdisciplinary scholarship published during the 1980s and 1990s, paying specific attention to the impact of debates in Indian historiography generated by subaltern studies. The article goes on to identify five interlinked sets of themes in the literature for discussion: the “problem” of Europe, the interpenetration of power and knowledge in the colonial archive, the search for indigenous forms of knowledge, the phenomenon of violence and ethnic conflict, and the specific concerns of gender and feminist criticism. It argues that it is no longer feasible to do anthropology in South Asia without attending to one or more of these five themes. Any concern with contemporary transnational or cultural configurations in South Asia, or with the future of the postcolonial nation state, must be considered in relation to colonial history and the specific formations of modernity it generated.
