
































Ethnography of an Ethnographer: A Post-Colonial History of Caste and 

Other Issues 

Review by Abhik Ghosh

Autobiography of an Archive: A Scholar's Passage to India 

by Nicholas B. Dirks

Columbia University Press, 2015

In India, the tradition of colonial and post-colonial studies has often dominated the world of many of

the history departments in a number of Universities. However, very few of them have actually teamed

up with the work done in anthropology departments. This is what is so refreshing about the work of

Nicholas Dirks. Dirks is a historian as well as an anthropologist who has done his major work in the

Indian context. It would be difficult to state where the historian lets go and the anthropologist takes

over.

In a beautifully written piece as an initial chapter, Dirks begins by writing an ethnography of an

archive, somewhat similar to that mentioned in In An Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh. However, Dirks

pulls in a lot of evidence to show how the archive itself has its own history and therefore the evidence

within it is structured, organised and mirrors the collector of the evidence. Through the ethnography of

the archive,  Dirks  displays  an  archive  within the  archive.  The collection of  Colin Mackenzie was

collected using a different set of rules. The colonial government began by using history as a mode and

justification  for  ruling  over  India.  It  went  on  to  use  anthropology  as  a  mode  and  means  for  the

continuance of their rule. So, Dirks says, “History constructed a glorious past for the nation in which

the present  was the inevitable  teleological  frame;  anthropology assumed histories  that  necessitated

colonial rule. History told the story of the nation; anthropology explained why a nation had not yet

emerged” (40).

Continuing with this line of thought, Dirks goes on to explain how Colin MacKenzie used and



acknowledged the work of native researchers, not only for collection but also for their ideas in analysis,

something that Prinseps and others who manned the Asiatic Society in later years did not. MacKenzie

had  a  deep  knowledge  of  local  customs,  politics  and  economics.  Later  researchers  became  very

structured in collecting, annotating and creating sources for use by the colonial government.

The essays written in this book span over twenty five years, and also become an annotated

addition and commentary on other works by Dirks. So, it is a kind of history and an auto-ethnography

of Dirks. When he writes about The Hollow Crown (2007), he comments that reviewers have taken note

of  issues  that  interested  them,  which  showed  how  our  reading  are  still  held  within  disciplinary

boundaries.  Dirks  comments  on  the  “well-traveled”  corridor  between  anthropology  and  history.

Perhaps, this corridor is not as “well-traveled” as Dirks would like us to suppose, from his perspective,

especially since his mentor was Bernard Cohn. Cohn’s presence perhaps ensured that Dirks saw a well-

traveled pathway between anthropology and history all around him. Through his pathway to culture by

analyzing its politics, Dirks gives us his take on what this kind of analysis really entails. Through this

passage,  Dirks  gives  his  own idea of  a  definition of  culture,  something crucial  to  anthropological

analysis, and a problematic for Dirks. Having said that, it would be necessary for us to note, whether

this methodology is any different from those of the post-colonialist and post-modernist studies of his

time.

My argument about politics, however, is always somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, I

insist that I am giving priority to the cultural construction of power; on the other, I follow

that construction through the referential narratives of a historical field where the political

becomes a mobile sign of struggle and change. Nevertheless, it was, and is, my conviction

that the strength of this work builds on the recognition of the necessity of contradiction, the

relentless  transitivity  of  text  and  context,  of  meanings  exposed  and  concealed  –  in  this

instance,  a  sense  that  politics  is  neither  available  as  a  transparent  analytic  category  nor

contained solely within the cultural statements that ground any analysis of meaning. Culture,

in other words, is never an autonomous or a stable category of analysis. Culture, as well as

the other key terms, politics and history, exist as “supplements” – adding only to replace, or

insinuating themselves in place of the original, only then to become the original that in turn

becomes written  over and replaced  again.  Supplementarity  suggests  why structures  must

remain open, why no synthesis can be anything more than provisional. [74-75]

Based on the above principles, one sees the basic ideas for his previous book Castes of Mind (2001) as

a set of “multiple and contextually determined” principles that form the referents for identity, different

sets of them being significant at different locations or times (88). It is then entirely logical for Dirks to



see ritual, not only as a site of order as seen by most anthropologists, but also as a site of resistance in

chapter five of Autobiography of an Archive.

One of these traditions in South India forms the focus of Dirks’ interest – that of hook-swinging.

Of course, hook-swinging – a means by which iron hooks embedded in the skin of the back were used

to swing an individual from tall poles at certain festivals – is also found in other parts of the country

including in the Eastern Indian provinces, even today. The use of the practice as a means of looking at

the Indian population as requiring the civilizing experience of the British was seen by Dirks as a means

of using colonial power to undervalue Indian traditions. Simultaneously, this outlook of the colonial

government attempted to divorce hook-swinging from “mainstream” or “book view” approaches of

Hindu religion, so that it could be shown as an event that was not being supported by a majority of the

Hindus. It was a private event done to satisfy pecuniary interests and to satisfy temple priests. This

would thus open the way to its abolishment. For Dirks, This was a way of understanding how the

colonial  government  looked  at  Indian  society,  substituting  a  colonial  version  of  Hindu  religion

manufactured by them as opposed to the kind of religion which was actually lived.

Dirks then moves on to the historical formation of Empire by a colonial government. Through a

wealth of detail involving the case of Warren Hastings and the prosecution carried out by Edmund

Burke, Dirks contrasts the idea of an Imperial Sovereignty as opposed to a peculiarly local National

Sovereignty as seen through the operations of the colonial government and administration. The idea

that the colonial government itself was the root source of corruption, as exposed by Burke, was another

idea that was developed by Dirks as one of the pathways to Empire. This showed how the Company

used corruption to gain access to  useful  pieces of  property,  objects  of  power and personal  riches.

Through these pathways, Dirks showed that the corrupt practices of Hastings was the backdrop for the

change  of  power  from the  Company  to  the  British  government.  Once  this  change  of  power  was

established,  Hastings  was  exonerated,  since  different  practices  of  acceptance  became  the  norm.

Eventually, these views were carried forward by Lord Wellesley and Lord Dalhousie.

The essays in this volume show Dirks moving from peculiarly local anthropological pursuits to

larger  arenas  through to  a  historical  perspective  of  the  Indian  scenario.  Yet,  having learned much

through these pursuits, he then begins focusing first on the disciplines that he works so hard to link

together, history and anthropology, the very academic arenas that he is a part. In other words, having

learned  of  the  world  through  his  academic  wisdom,  he  comes  back  home  to  use  the  same

methodological focus on the areas closest to him.

Whatever Dirks discusses, he does not let go of his enthusiasm for linking and problematizing

the relationship between history and anthropology. He is also concerned about the position of culture in



this  scenario.  For  Matthew  Arnold,  the  Victorian  view  of  culture  showed  it  to  be  “tamed”  and

“harnessed” to the use of the state in controlling the unruly mobs “that threatened the pretensions and

peace of a democratizing and secularizing England” (236). Culture was thus a ruin, in terms of being

both “material” and “ethereal,” “history” and “memory,” “achievement” and “failure,” “reality” and

“representation,” inspiring life as well as death (240-241). Using this as a background, a short  but

insightful analysis of the work of G.S. Ghurye shows Dirks'  own personal,  political  and academic

biases and leanings.

He then goes on to discuss the historical account of the beginning of “area studies” within

American  Universities  and the  teaching  and  academic  interest  in  the  South  Asian  region.  This  is

especially seen through the many academic specialists who were known in this field of study, but he

focuses on some in much greater detail. He shows how McKim Marriott and Robert Redfield get in

touch with each other and begin their collaboration at the University of Chicago in the late 1940s, and

how Singer became an important part of the Ford Foundation program in this area in 1951 (272). He

traces this to current associations through the introduction of Bernard Cohn into the program. Using the

analyses described earlier, he showed how post-colonial academic research incorporated colonial ideas

with minor modifications as a core part of their work, using this (“flawed”?) background to interpret

the general principles of the country’s politics, policies, economics and other institutions (274-275).

When he talks of the contributions of academics from India, Dirks makes the mistake of attributing the

flow of other academic disciplines through anthropology departments as a sign that those who worked

there were all to be considered as anthropologists, like the mention of Veena Das (285). All academic

anthropologists in India are clear about the fact that Das may have written about anthropological issues

but remains a sociologist, from a premier institute of sociology, who had come into academic work

through courses in sociology. In hindsight, then, this muddling of specialized disciplinary boundaries

may be one of the things Dirks was always very happy to find.

The book begins with an introduction, which shows how the “area studies” program was begun

in American universities through an interest in gathering intelligence through the Office of Strategic

Services and then the CIA, mediated by the Fulbright program. This is further elaborated in detail

showing how this kind of work took precedence in many of the premier universities in America. The

problematic  relationship of  Franz Boas with the government  was also made clear,  since he was a

member of the Friends of India Association. Dirks went on to join the Boas chair in Anthropology at

Columbia University and thus began a period of learning about the work and commitments of Franz

Boas and his relationship with the government. In fact, Boas became quite unpopular because he did

not support many government interests in South Asian countries, thus becoming labeled as giving a



“German” view of society. He was to leave Columbia University for Barnard for a decade before being

invited back again in 1929 on this account. This account then goes on to visit the various kinds of

scholars who became spies for the government through a variety of programs, a prelude to the Human

Terrain  systems conflict  going on in  anthropology more  recently.  However,  in  all  his  accounts  of

academia, one misses out on the inclusion of the context of gender within this picture. Through these

pathways Dirks shows how the American public were gradually treated to an increasing array of a

variety of cultures, lives, zones, areas and minds.

This is an incredible book, a work that needs to be relished slowly, repeatedly and with different

perspectives in  mind.  It  encourages thought  and fresh ideas.  Yet,  sometimes,  one nagging thought

remains. Is it actually true that all these categories, especially the basic ideas of caste that we have

learned about, and their emphases, are colonial constructs? In fact, a nagging suspicion is that these

categories  relating  to  caste  differed  from person-to-person  and  from area-to-area  as  well  as  from

community-to-community. This is true of all concepts gleaned as ethnographic products. It is also true

that our writings and the social context of these writings affect the outcome of these issues. In the

historical genealogy of these concepts (like caste), unraveling their complex journey of ontology and

meaning would itself be “good to think.” Was there, then, no indigeneity in all of these “categories of

the mind” described by Dirks?

References Cited

Dirks, Nicholas

2007.  The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Ghosh, Amitav

1992. In An Antique Land. New Delhi: Ravi Dayal Publisher.

Abhik Ghosh is Professor in Social Anthropology and at present Chairperson at the Department of

Anthropology,  Panjab University,  Chandigarh.  He has worked in  India,  mainly  in the eastern and

north-western  regions,  on  tribal  symbolism,  ecology,  health  and  medicine,  policy  analyses  and

insurgency.

© 2015 Abhik Ghosh


