Reconsidering a British scholar's quarter-century-old work on caste-ethnic relations in east Nepal, a Nepali social scientist finds reason to make a case against "biased anthropology".
Western scholars have always been fascinated with South Asian anthropology. During the Raj, when this branch of study was developed as an offshoot of British colonial rule with "utilitarian purposes", it was limited to understanding the history and culture of the selected so-called "primitive peoples" such as the Onge, Naga, Khasi, Miri, Kachin, Lakher, Swat Pathan and Kandyan Sinhala. However, with the end of British rule, Western scholars were greatly restricted in terms of access to areas of research, particularly in India and Pakistan.
Even as the decolonised Subcontinent closed up to anthropological research, however, never-colonised Nepal, with its incredible diversity of caste and ethnic groups, opened up to welcome social scientists of various disciplines. Picking up where British residents and representatives like Hamilton, Kirkpatrick, and Hodgson had left off, Western ethnographers began conducting detailed studies of Nepal´s many population groups.
Four decades of anthropological research has left a considerable amount of literature on Nepal, and more is being generated every year. There has been an academic free-for-all as unbelieving scholars found the subject of their research, hill tribes, largely untouched by modernisation. What resulted was anthropology both good and bad.