Museums were introduced in India, partly as a component of the ‘civilizing ‘ project undertaken by the British, targeting the English speaking Indian elite and as part of the pedagogic project to initiate and educate British administrators about the country that they were expected to rule. At the same time, in the context of the evolutionary theory that was being used to justify colonization, many native objects and practices were seen as doomed to extinction, being part of the stages of evolution that precede ‘civilization’. The post-colonial state in India more or less followed in the footsteps of their colonial predecessors, but now in the garb of ‘nationalism’ and patriotism. The government of India is investing millions in making state of the art Tribal museums all over India, even as the people represented in these museums are being ruthlessly persecuted and killed, and their land taken over for mining and dams. In this talk, anthropologist Subhadra Channa will explore how museums in India—in spite of their pedagogical efforts—have created an illusion of preservation while internal colonization and domination continue unabated.

Subhadra Mitra Channa is a professor emerita of Anthropology at the University of Delhi. Her areas of interest are marginalization and identity, gender, religion and cosmology, ecology and landscapes. She has authored more than eighty scholarly papers and is the author/editor of eight books, including Gender in South Asia (Cambridge); The Inner and Outer Selves (Oxford) and Dhobis of Delhi: An Ethnography from the Margins (Oxford). She was previously the President of the Indian Anthropological Association and editor of the Indian Anthropologist, the Senior Vice-President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and chaired the Commission on Marginalization and Global Apartheid and the Commission on Anthropology of Women. She was awarded the S.C. Roy memorial gold medal by the Asiatic Society for life time contribution to cultural anthropology.

Tuesday, December 3, 12:15 pm