UPSC Mains 2016 Anthropology Optional Question Papers with Model Answers
All 56 questions of the 2016 Civil Services Main Examination, Anthropology Paper I and Anthropology Paper II, with marks and a suggested time per part. Solve each part on paper first, then open the model answer, or send it to answer-writing practice for evaluation.
UPSC Mains 2016 Anthropology Paper I
Question 1 (50 marks)
Q1(a) · Foundations of Anthropology · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Relationship with Other Disciplines
Differences between Social Anthropology and Sociology
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक नृविज्ञान और समाजशास्त्र के बीच भिन्नताएँ
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(a)
Approach: A short note: state their common ground, then distinguish them on subject, method, perspective and history, ideally as a compact comparison, and note the present convergence.
Social anthropology and sociology both study social relations, institutions and change; Radcliffe-Brown even called social anthropology comparative sociology. Yet they differ in emphasis.
Subject: social anthropology began with small-scale, non-literate and tribal societies such as the Trobrianders, Nuer and Andaman Islanders, while sociology began with industrial, urban Western societies (Comte, Durkheim, Weber).
Method: anthropology relies on long-term fieldwork and participant observation by a single researcher, genealogies and the emic view; sociology relies more on surveys, questionnaires, statistics and secondary data.
Perspective: anthropology is holistic and comparative across cultures, studying a community as a whole; sociology tends to study one institution or problem, such as crime or stratification, within one society.
Convergence: the line is now blurred, especially in India, where Srinivas, Dube and Béteille studied villages and caste with fieldwork, and anthropologists now study cities. They are best seen as complementary disciplines rather than separate ones.Q1(b) · Culture and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
Cultural Relativism
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सांस्कृतिक सापेक्षवाद
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(b)
Approach: A short note with a different angle from a bare definition: define relativism against ethnocentrism, show its value for fieldwork and Indian tribal policy, and add the critique.
Cultural relativism, the opposite of ethnocentrism (Sumner, 1906), is the view that each culture has its own logic and values and must be understood from within; Boas and Herskovits made it a founding principle of American anthropology.
Value for fieldwork: it underpins participant observation and the emic view (Kenneth Pike's term, 1954); Horace Miner's 'Body Ritual among the Nacirema' (1956), describing American hygiene as exotic ritual, showed readers their own ethnocentrism.
Value for Indian policy: the Criminal Tribes Act (1871) and attempts to stop jhum cultivation reflected ethnocentric judgements; Nehru's Panchsheel, Elwin's protective approach and the hands-off policy towards the Jarawa and Sentinelese reflect respect for tribal ways.
Critique: taken as moral relativism it can excuse caste discrimination or violence against women, so scholars favour critical relativism.
Cultural relativism thus remains anthropology's essential method and ethic of respect, balanced by a commitment to human dignity.Q1(c) · Kinship · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Descent Groups: Lineage, Clan, Phratry, Moiety and Kindred
Lineage and Clan
हिंदी में प्रश्न
वंश और कुल
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(c)
Approach: Define lineage and clan, give Indian and world examples of each, and tabulate the differences; a nested-box diagram helps.
A lineage is a unilineal descent group whose members trace descent from a known common ancestor through demonstrable links. Evans-Pritchard (The Nuer, 1940) described Nuer maximal, major, minor and minimal lineages that unite or oppose by fission and fusion; among the Munda, the khunt of original village clearers holds khuntkatti land.
A clan is a unilineal group whose members believe in a common ancestor, often mythical or totemic, without tracing every link. Examples are the twelve exogamous Santal paris, Oraon totemic clans such as Ekka (tortoise) and Lakra (tiger) recorded by S.C. Roy (1915), and the matrilineal Khasi kur and Garo machong.
Differences: lineage descent is demonstrated, clan descent stipulated; lineages are shallower and often corporate and localised, clans larger, dispersed and mainly exogamous and ritual units; a clan usually contains several lineages.
Diagram: a clan box enclosing three lineage boxes, each enclosing family units, with exogamy marked at the clan boundary.
Both regulate marriage and identity, but they are weakening with individual land titles and migration.Q1(d) · Religion · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Forms of Religion in Tribal and Peasant Societies
Totemism
हिंदी में प्रश्न
गण-चिह्नवाद (टोटेमवाद)
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(d)
Approach: A short note: define totemism and its elements, give Australian and Indian examples, and summarise the main theories (McLennan, Durkheim, Goldenweiser, Radcliffe-Brown, Lévi-Strauss).
Totemism is a ritual and mystical relationship between a social group, usually a clan, and a natural species or object, the totem, often regarded as an ancestor or kin. The word comes from the Ojibwa (Algonquian) term ototeman.
Elements: the clan is named after the totem, members claim kinship with it, there is a taboo on killing or eating it, clan exogamy is practised, and myths and rites honour it.
Examples: the Arunta of Australia (Spencer and Gillen, 1899) with churinga and increase rites; in India, Oraon clans such as Ekka (tortoise) and Lakra (tiger), Munda killis, and totemic clans among the Santal, Bhil and Gond.
Theories: McLennan (1869–70) saw it as an early stage of religion; Durkheim (1912) as the clan worshipping itself; Goldenweiser (1910) as a cluster of separate traits; Radcliffe-Brown as ritual attitudes to useful species; and Lévi-Strauss (Totemism, 1962) argued that species are chosen because they are good to think.
Totemism today survives mainly as clan names and exogamy rules, which still regulate marriage.Q1(e) · Anthropological Theories · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Functionalism, Structural-Functionalism and Structuralism
Functionalism
हिंदी में प्रश्न
प्रकार्यवाद
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(e)
Approach: Define functionalism through Malinowski, explain the need theory and institutional analysis with the Trobriand example, distinguish it from Radcliffe-Brown’s version and conclude with criticism.
Functionalism is the approach, led by Bronislaw Malinowski in the 1920s, that explains every cultural item by the function it performs in a living, integrated culture, rather than by its supposed history.
Need theory: in A Scientific Theory of Culture (1944) Malinowski held that culture is an instrumental apparatus that satisfies basic biological needs (nutrition, reproduction, safety), derived needs (economic organisation, law, education) and integrative needs (religion, magic, art). Each institution has a charter, personnel, norms and material apparatus.
Example: among the Trobriand Islanders (Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 1922) the kula ring exchanged armshells and necklaces to build alliances and prestige, and magic relieved anxiety on dangerous open-sea fishing but was not used in the safe lagoon.
Unlike Radcliffe-Brown’s structural-functionalism, which related institutions to the social structure, Malinowski related them to individual needs. Critics found the theory tautological and blind to change and conflict, yet it gave anthropology participant observation and holism.
Question 2 (50 marks)
Q2(a) · Prehistoric Archaeology · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age
Delineate the salient features of Chalcolithic cultures.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
ताम्रपाषाणयुगीन संस्कृतियों के प्रमुख अभिलक्षणों का निरूपण कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(a)
Approach: Define the Chalcolithic, delineate its common features (technology, economy, settlement, pottery, burial, religion), illustrate with the regional cultures of India and world examples, and conclude on its place in the cultural sequence.
Chalcolithic (Greek chalkos, copper, and lithos, stone) refers to farming cultures that used copper alongside stone tools, before or beside the Bronze Age; world examples include the Halaf and Ubaid cultures of Mesopotamia and Ötzi the Iceman (about 3300 BCE) with his copper axe.
Technology: small copper tools (flat axes, chisels, fish-hooks, bangles), often smelted locally as at Ahar, used with microlithic blades and ground stone.
Economy: village farming of wheat, barley, rice, millets and pulses, with cattle, sheep, goat and pig, supplemented by hunting and fishing.
Settlement and pottery: rural villages of mud and wattle round or rectangular houses, sometimes fortified (Eran); distinctive painted wares such as black-and-red ware (Ahar) and black-on-red painted ware (Malwa, Jorwe).
Indian cultures: Ahar–Banas in Rajasthan (Ahar, Gilund, Balathal), Kayatha, Malwa (Navdatoli) and Jorwe in Maharashtra; Inamgaon (H.D. Sankalia and M.K. Dhavalikar) revealed an irrigation channel, granaries and a chief's house, and Daimabad a bronze hoard; in the east, Chirand and Pandu Rajar Dhibi; in the Ganga–Yamuna doab, the OCP and Copper Hoards.
Burial and belief: burials beneath house floors in Maharashtra, children in urns, and mother-goddess figurines and fire worship suggest fertility cults.
Chalcolithic villages formed the first farming communities over much of peninsular India and coexisted with Harappan cities and hunter-gatherers; many declined with increasing aridity around 1000 BCE.Q2(b) · Family · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Family and Social Change
Discuss the impact of urbanization and feminist movements on family in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में शहरीकरण और नारी अधिकारवादी आंदोलनों के परिवार पर हुए प्रभावों पर चर्चा कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(b)
Approach: Treat urbanization and feminist movements in turn, giving their effects on the structure and internal relations of the Indian family with studies, laws and data, and conclude that change is adaptive.
The Indian family, idealised as the joint family defined by Karve (1953) through co-residence, common hearth, property and worship, has been reshaped by urbanization and feminist movements, though change is adaptive.
Urbanization (31.1% urban in Census 2011): migration and wage jobs produce nuclear, neolocal households, smaller size, later marriage and lower fertility.
Yet Kapadia (1955) and I.P. Desai (1964) found jointness surviving in sentiment and obligations, Milton Singer (1968) found Madras industrialists using joint families in business, and A.M. Shah showed nuclear households are often a phase of the developmental cycle. Litwak's modified extended family appears in remittances and care of parents.
Costs include lonely elderly, childcare stress and split tribal households as Santal and Oraon migrants go to brick kilns and cities.
Feminist movements, through anti-dowry and anti-rape campaigns from the late 1970s, targeted violence within the family. Laws followed: amendments to the Dowry Prohibition Act in the 1980s, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 making daughters coparceners.
Rising female education and employment create dual-earner couples, more say for wives and more choice of spouse; Bina Agarwal (1994) linked women's status to land rights. But dowry, son preference and a child sex ratio of 918 (2011) show resilient patriarchy.
Indian families now combine nuclear residence with joint obligations (Patricia Uberoi): urbanization changed their form, feminism the relations within them.Q2(c) · Anthropological Theories · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Culture and Personality, Neo-evolutionism and Later Theories
According to Geertz, how does the cock-fight reveal aspects of Balinese culture?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
गीर्ट्ज़ के अनुसार, मुर्गा लड़ाना किस प्रकार बाली की संस्कृति के पक्षों का उद्घाटन करता है ?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(c)
Approach: Summarise Geertz’s “Deep Play” essay: the setting, betting system and deep play, how the fight mirrors status hierarchy, and his reading of it as a text; end with criticism.
In “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” (1972), Clifford Geertz used an illegal village pastime in Bali to show how a public event condenses the core values of a culture.
Setting: cockfights pit two roosters armed with steel spurs, usually to the death, before a crowd.
Cocks and men: the Balinese closely identify men with their cocks, so that, in Geertz’s reading, it is only apparently the cocks that fight; it is really the men. The cockfight is a status bloodbath.
Deep play: borrowing Bentham’s term for play in which stakes are irrationally high, Geertz distinguished the large centre bet between the owners and their allies, usually evenly matched, from smaller side bets. The deeper the match, between status rivals or kin groups, the more the money is a symbol of esteem, honour and dignity rather than gain, and people bet with their kin and village, never against them.
Culture as text: Geertz concluded that the cockfight is a Balinese reading of Balinese experience, a story they tell themselves about themselves, dramatising status hierarchy and controlled aggression beneath the calm surface of Balinese life. This exemplified his interpretive method of thick description.
Critics (Crapanzano, Roseberry) argued that Geertz spoke for the Balinese without their voices, ignored women and political history, including the 1965–66 killings in Bali.
Question 3 (50 marks)
Q3(a) · Kinship · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Kinship Terminology, Filiation, Descent and Alliance
Describe the cardinal points of descent and alliance theories.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
वंशानुक्रम और गठबंधन थियोरियों के प्रमुख बिन्दुओं का वर्णन कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(a)
Approach: Describe descent theory and alliance theory point by point (scholars, regions, core propositions, examples), note the debate between them, and conclude on their complementarity; draw the exchange and segmentary diagrams.
Descent and alliance theories were the two main approaches to kinship from the 1940s to the 1960s, the first British and Africanist, the second French and Asianist. They differ on whether descent or marriage is the primary principle of social structure.
Descent theory (Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes, Evans-Pritchard, Goody) rests on African Political Systems (1940), The Nuer (1940) and Fortes's 'The structure of unilineal descent groups' (1953).
Its cardinal points: unilineal descent groups are corporate units holding property; in stateless societies they form the political order, as in Nuer segmentary lineages uniting by fission and fusion; descent is filiation extended through one line, and the other parent's kin are linked by complementary filiation (Fortes on the Tallensi); descent belongs to the politico-jural domain and filiation to the domestic domain; and marriage is secondary, a link between pre-existing groups, with bridewealth transferring rights.
Alliance theory (Lévi-Strauss, Leach, Needham, Dumont) began with The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949).
Its cardinal points: the incest taboo forces the exchange of women, so reciprocity and marriage constitute kinship; groups are defined by being wife-givers or wife-takers, as Kachin mayu and dama (Leach, 1954); elementary structures yield restricted, generalized or delayed exchange; and prescriptive alliance is encoded in terminology, as Dumont showed for Dravidian south India.
Diagram: on the left a Nuer segmentary tree (clan, maximal, major, minor and minimal lineages); on the right three groups A, B and C with women moving A to B to C to A and goods in reverse.
The two clashed: Leach (Rethinking Anthropology, 1961) reinterpreted complementary filiation as affinal alliance, and Homans and Schneider opposed Needham on prescription. They reflect different regions and emphases, vertical continuity versus horizontal exchange, and most scholars, following Robin Fox (1967), now treat them as complementary.Q3(b) · Political Organisation and Social Control · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Social Control, Law and Justice in Simple Societies
Discuss different social control mechanisms in simple societies.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सरल समाजों में, विभिन्न सामाजिक नियंत्रण प्रक्रियाओं (मकैनिज़्म) पर चर्चा कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(b)
Approach: Define social control and its types, then discuss the main mechanisms in simple societies, each with a named ethnographic example, and conclude on their effectiveness and change; a sanctions matrix may be drawn.
Social control (E.A. Ross, 1901) is the means by which a society makes members conform to its norms. Simple societies rely mostly on informal control, and Radcliffe-Brown distinguished diffuse, organised and ritual sanctions.
Socialisation: norms learned in childhood are the strongest control; youth dormitories such as the Muria ghotul (Verrier Elwin) teach discipline, cooperation and custom.
Public opinion: gossip, ridicule and shaming; the Inuit song duel let the community judge a quarrel through laughter.
Ostracism and fines: village councils impose fines and feasts, and the Santal outcast offenders against clan exogamy through bitlaha.
Supernatural sanctions: fear of ancestors, spirits and taboo; the Azande poison oracle detected witches (Evans-Pritchard, 1937), and Clyde Kluckhohn showed that Navaho fear of witchcraft accusations made people generous and modest.
Feud, compensation and mediation: among the Nuer the leopard-skin chief negotiated cattle compensation to end feuds, and the Ifugao go-between (monkalun) arranged settlements.
These mechanisms work because relations are face-to-face and multiplex, but they weaken with migration, markets and state courts and can turn oppressive, as in witch-hunting.
Diagram: a two-by-two matrix of positive and negative against diffuse and organised sanctions, with praise, gossip, a title and outcasting.Q3(c) · Religion · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion
Critically examine different Anthropological approaches to Religion.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
धर्म के प्रति विभिन्न नृवैज्ञानिक उपागमों का समालोचनात्मक परीक्षण कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(c)
Approach: Critically examine the approaches grouped by their question (origin, individual need, social function, meaning), giving the key scholar, an ethnographic example and a criticism for each, and conclude on their complementarity.
Religion, for Tylor, is belief in spiritual beings, and for Durkheim a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things that unites believers into a moral community. Anthropological approaches differ in which aspect they explain.
Origin (evolutionary): Tylor derived religion from dreams and death leading to the idea of the soul; Marett from awe at impersonal power (mana); Frazer placed magic before religion. Indian scholars such as D.N. Majumdar described Ho religion as bongaism. Criticism: conjectural and ethnocentric.
Individual need (psychological and Malinowskian): Malinowski showed Trobriand magic and mortuary rites relieving anxiety; Freud saw religion as illusion. Criticism: reduces religion to the individual and cannot explain variation between societies.
Social function: Durkheim's collective effervescence at Arunta totemic gatherings, Radcliffe-Brown's Andamanese ceremonies, and Evans-Pritchard's Nuer Religion (1956) show religion integrating society. Criticism: overlooks conflict, as Marx's view of religion as ideology stresses.
Meaning (structural and symbolic): Lévi-Strauss on myth, Turner on Ndembu symbols, Douglas on purity and danger, and Geertz on religion as a cultural system. Criticism: can ignore power and material conditions.
No single approach is sufficient; together they explain why religion arises, what it does for individuals and groups, and what it means to believers.
Question 4 (50 marks)
Q4(a) · Economic Organisation · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Production, Distribution and Exchange
Discuss the principles governing production, distribution and exchange in simple societies.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सरल समाजों में उत्पादन, वितरण और विनिमय का संचालन करने वाले सिद्धांतों की चर्चा कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(a)
Approach: Discuss the principles that govern each of production, distribution and exchange in simple societies, with ethnographic illustrations, and conclude on embeddedness and change; a table summarising the three can be drawn.
In simple societies the economy is, in Karl Polanyi's term, embedded in kinship, religion and politics, so production, distribution and exchange follow social principles more than market prices.
Production, principle of kinship and household: the household or lineage is the unit of production; Sahlins's domestic mode of production, drawing on Chayanov, shows that households produce to meet needs, not to maximise surplus. Labour is divided mainly by age and sex, technology is simple, and cooperative work-parties help at sowing, harvest and house-building.
Production, principle of common property: land, forest and water belong to the clan or village and are allotted for use, as in the Munda khuntkatti lands held by the founding lineage and the clan-owned jhum lands of the Garo and Naga. Production is also ritualised: Trobriand garden magic and the Baiga refusal to plough Mother Earth show that work is guided by belief.
Distribution, principles of sharing and redistribution: foragers share meat by generalized reciprocity (!Kung, Birhor), while chiefs and big men collect and give back, as in Trobriand yam tribute, the Kwakiutl potlatch (Boas) and Naga feasts of merit; status comes from giving rather than keeping.
Exchange, principle of reciprocity: Mauss's obligations to give, receive and return govern exchange; the kula (Malinowski) is balanced reciprocity, while barter (gimwali) with strangers tends to be negative reciprocity. Bohannan's Tiv kept separate spheres of exchange, and the jajmani system (Wiser, 1936) tied exchange to caste.
Moral economy: exchange is judged by fairness and subsistence needs, so hoarding and profiteering among kin are condemned.
These principles are not unchanging: markets, money and state law are drawing tribal economies into commodity exchange, but reciprocity and sharing still shape everyday life in villages of central and north-east India.
Diagram: a three-column table, production, distribution and exchange, listing for each its unit, principle and an ethnographic example.Q4(b) · Anthropological Theories · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Functionalism, Structural-Functionalism and Structuralism
How do the concepts of binary opposites and exchange figure in Levi-Strauss' structural analysis of kinship?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
बंधुता के लेवी-स्ट्रास के संरचनात्मक विश्लेषण में, द्विचर प्रतियोगियों और विनिमय की संकल्पनाएँ किस प्रकार दिखाई पड़ती हैं ?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)
Approach: Explain the linguistic roots of binary opposition, then show how opposition and reciprocity structure Lévi-Strauss’s theory of kinship (incest taboo, exchange, atom of kinship), ending with critique.
Lévi-Strauss borrowed from Saussure and from the phonology of Jakobson and Trubetzkoy the idea that meaning arises from contrasts. Just as phonemes are defined by binary oppositions (voiced/unvoiced), kinship terms and attitudes form a system of contrasts that the human mind produces unconsciously.
Exchange: following Mauss’s The Gift (1925), he argued in The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) that the incest taboo is the universal rule that obliges a man to give up his sister or daughter to another group, marking the passage from nature to culture. Marriage is therefore an exchange of women creating alliance and reciprocity between groups.
Forms of exchange: restricted (direct) exchange between two moieties, as in Australian section systems; generalised exchange through matrilateral cross-cousin marriage, where wife-givers and wife-takers form a circle, as among the Kachin; and delayed exchange through patrilateral marriage. Cross cousins are marriageable and parallel cousins are not, an opposition explained by exchange.
Opposition in the atom of kinship: in his 1945 essay he showed that if the brother-sister relation is warm, the husband-wife relation is reserved, and similarly the father-son and mother’s brother-sister’s son relations vary in opposite directions, as in the Trobriand and Cherkess cases.
Critique: Needham, Leach and Schneider found the models too abstract, women’s agency was ignored, and many societies lack prescriptive rules; still, the theory made alliance a central category.Q4(c) · Culture, Communication and Research Methods · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Fieldwork Tradition, Technique, Method and Methodology
Describe the evolution of fieldwork tradition in Anthropology.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
नृविज्ञान में क्षेत्र कार्य की परंपरा के विकास का वर्णन कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(c)
Approach: Describe the evolution as a sequence of methodological shifts (from reports to expeditions, to participant observation, to team, restudy and applied work, to reflexive and multi-sited fieldwork), each with its scholars.
The fieldwork tradition evolved through a series of methodological shifts, each correcting the weaknesses of the last.
From second-hand reports to direct observation: nineteenth-century evolutionists such as Tylor and Frazer depended on missionaries and travellers, guided by Notes and Queries on Anthropology (1874). The Torres Strait expedition (1898) under Haddon, with Rivers and Seligman, brought trained scientists to the field, and Rivers’s genealogical method gave a systematic tool.
From survey to intensive study: Boas insisted on long stays and native-language texts among the Kwakiutl; Malinowski, stranded in the Trobriands during the First World War, made a year or more of participant observation the standard. Radcliffe-Brown’s students produced the classic African monographs; Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer study combined observation with structural analysis.
From single scholar to team, restudy and applied work: the Manchester school’s extended case method, Redfield’s and Oscar Lewis’s contrasting studies of Tepoztlán, Sol Tax’s action anthropology (Fox Project, 1948) and, in India, village studies of the 1950s and Anthropological Survey of India projects such as People of India (1985 onwards).
From objectivity to reflexivity: feminist critiques, Malinowski’s diary (1967) and Writing Culture (1986) made the ethnographer’s position part of the analysis. Today multi-sited, digital, collaborative and ethically regulated fieldwork extends, rather than replaces, long-term immersion.
Question 5 (50 marks)
Q5(a) · Population Genetics, Race and Human Variation · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Genetic Markers and Physiological Variation
Rh-Blood Group
हिंदी में प्रश्न
आर.एच. रक्त समूह
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(a)
Approach: Give the discovery, genetics (genes, nomenclature, inheritance), clinical importance (haemolytic disease) and population distribution of the Rh system.
The Rh blood group was discovered by Karl Landsteiner and Alexander Wiener in 1940, using antibodies raised against rhesus monkey red cells.
Genetics: two closely linked genes on chromosome 1, RHD and RHCE, control it. Fisher and Race described three linked loci with alleles C/c, D/d and E/e (the CDE notation), while Wiener proposed multiple alleles at one locus. Clinically, the presence of the D antigen makes a person Rh positive (DD or Dd), while Rh negative people (dd) lack the RHD gene product, so Rh positive behaves as dominant.
Clinical importance: an Rh negative mother carrying an Rh positive foetus can be sensitised at delivery, and her anti-D antibodies may destroy foetal red cells in later pregnancies, causing haemolytic disease of the newborn. Anti-D immunoglobulin given after delivery prevents this.
Distribution: Rh negative frequency is about 15 per cent among Europeans, highest among the Basques, about 5 per cent in India and very low in East Asians and Native Americans.Q5(b) · Fossil Hominids · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Neanderthal Man, Rhodesian Man and Homo sapiens
Rhodesian Man
हिंदी में प्रश्न
रोडेशियाई मानव
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(b)
Approach: A short note on a fossil: discovery, features, the revised date and its taxonomic status.
Rhodesian Man (Kabwe 1) is a nearly complete cranium found by the miner Tom Zwiglaar in 1921 at the Broken Hill mine, Kabwe, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia); Arthur Smith Woodward named it Homo rhodesiensis the same year.
Features: cranial capacity about 1,250 to 1,300 cc; among the heaviest brow ridges of any hominin; a long, low vault with a receding forehead but a more modern occipital region; a large face; the teeth show extensive caries and abscesses, among the earliest known.
Date: once thought about 125,000 years old, it was dated in 2020 (Grün and colleagues) to about 299,000 years.
Status: once called an African Neanderthal, it is now grouped with Homo heidelbergensis or kept as H. rhodesiensis, along with Bodo (Ethiopia) and Saldanha (South Africa), a group many place near the ancestry of H. sapiens.
Its new date makes it a contemporary of Homo naledi and the early H. sapiens of Jebel Irhoud, showing that several human lineages coexisted in Middle Pleistocene Africa.Q5(c) · Prehistoric Archaeology · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age
Neolithic Cultures of India
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत की नवपाषाणयुगीन संस्कृतियाँ
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(c)
Approach: A short note on the defining traits of the Indian Neolithic and its regional variants with key sites and dates.
The Neolithic in India is marked by polished stone axes (celts), pottery, domesticated plants and animals and settled village life; it developed regionally at different times rather than as a single wave.
North-west: Mehrgarh (Baluchistan, Jean-François Jarrige) from about 7000 BCE, with barley, wheat, goat, sheep and zebu cattle. Kashmir: Burzahom (T.N. Khazanchi) and Gufkral, from about the third millennium BCE, with pit dwellings, bone tools, harvesters and dogs buried with humans.
Vindhyas and Ganga plain: Koldihwa and Mahagara in the Belan valley and Lahuradewa with early rice (very early dates debated); Chirand (Bihar) with abundant bone tools. North-east: Daojali Hading (Assam) with cord-marked pottery and shouldered celts, showing South-east Asian links.
South: the Southern Neolithic (about 3000 to 1200 BCE) of Karnataka and Andhra, with cattle-dung ash mounds (Utnur, Budihal) and sites such as Sanganakallu, Brahmagiri and Piklihal.
Regional diversity shows multiple centres of early farming in India.Q5(d) · Reproductive Biology, Demography and Applied Anthropology · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Menarche, Menopause and Fertility Patterns
Fertility and Fecundity
हिंदी में प्रश्न
प्रजनन शक्ति और बहुप्रजता (फिकंडिटी)
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(d)
Approach: Distinguish the two terms clearly, with measures, factors and examples, and show how culture creates the gap between them.
Fecundity is the physiological capacity of a man, woman or couple to produce a live child; fertility is actual reproductive performance, the number of live births. Fecundity is potential and cannot be measured directly, while fertility is observed and measured by the crude birth rate and total fertility rate.
Fecundity is shaped by age (peaking in the twenties), nutrition, disease such as genital tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections, and genetic conditions; its monthly measure is fecundability, about 0.2 to 0.25 in young couples.
Fertility is shaped by culture: age at marriage, contraception, breastfeeding and postpartum taboos. The Hutterites of North America, with near-universal marriage and no contraception, averaged about ten children, close to maximum fecundity, while India's TFR fell to 2.0 in NFHS-5 (2019–21) through deliberate control.
So a fecund woman may have low fertility, but no woman can be fertile without fecundity; the gap between the two measures the effect of social and cultural behaviour.Q5(e) · Reproductive Biology, Demography and Applied Anthropology · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Applications of Anthropology
Forensic Anthropology
हिंदी में प्रश्न
न्यायिक (फॉरेंसिक) नृविज्ञान
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(e)
Approach: A short note: definition, the biological profile and other tasks, an Indian example and one limitation.
Forensic anthropology is the branch of applied physical anthropology that analyses human skeletal and decomposed remains for legal purposes; Wilton Krogman's The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine (1962) helped found it.
Tasks: deciding whether remains are human; building the biological profile of sex (pelvis, skull), age (teeth, epiphyses, pubic symphysis), stature (long-bone formulae) and ancestry; finding individualising traits; estimating time since death; analysing trauma; and supporting facial reconstruction, superimposition and DNA identification.
Indian examples include the Roopkund lake skeletons, shown by ancient DNA (2019) to belong to distinct groups, and the Ajnala well remains linked to 1857 sepoys (2022); it is also used in disaster victim identification and age estimation of juveniles.
Its main limitation in India is the use of Western reference standards and the shortage of trained specialists.
Question 6 (50 marks)
Q6(a) · Human Evolution: Theories and Concepts · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Biological and Cultural Factors in Human Evolution
Elucidate the biological and cultural factors in human evolution.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मानव विकास में, जैविक और सांस्कृतिक कारकों को स्पष्ट कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(a)
Approach: Elucidate by first listing the biological factors with fossil evidence, then the cultural factors with archaeological evidence, and end with their interaction (Washburn) and a gene-culture example.
Human evolution was driven by two kinds of factors: biological changes in the body, produced by mutation, selection and drift, and cultural innovations that changed how hominins lived and that fed back on the body.
Biological factors: (1) bipedalism, from Sahelanthropus and Orrorin to Lucy and the Laetoli footprints; (2) the opposable thumb and precision grip; (3) encephalisation, from about 450 cc in australopiths to about 1,350 cc in modern humans; (4) reduction of canines, jaws and face; (5) a long life history with helpless infants and long childhood; (6) loss of body hair and many sweat glands for cooling.
Cultural factors: (1) tool making, from Lomekwi (about 3.3 million years) and the Oldowan to Acheulian handaxes; (2) control of fire and cooking; (3) hunting, scavenging and food sharing; (4) a sexual division of labour and pair bonding; (5) language and symbolism, seen in Blombos Cave engravings and Upper Palaeolithic art such as Lascaux.
Interaction: Washburn (1960) argued that tool use favoured larger brains and better bipedalism, and Wrangham (2009) that cooking allowed smaller teeth and guts and freed energy for the brain.
Culture still affects biology: dairying selected for lactase persistence, and farming in malarial zones raised the sickle-cell allele, as in some central Indian tribes. Human evolution is therefore biocultural.Q6(b) · Population Genetics, Race and Human Variation · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Race and Racism
Explain the role of heredity and environment in the formation of races.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
प्रजातियों के विरचन में आनुवंशिकता और पर्यावरण की भूमिका को स्पष्ट कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(b)
Approach: Explain population differentiation as the joint result of heredity (mutation, drift, isolation, gene flow, sexual selection) and environment (natural selection by climate, disease, altitude; developmental plasticity), with examples and the ecological rules.
Whatever term is used, the formation of geographically distinct human populations results from the interaction of heredity, which supplies and transmits variation, and environment, which selects and moulds it. Coon, Garn and Birdsell (Races, 1950) and Dobzhansky treated race formation as a population-genetic process.
Heredity: mutation creates new alleles; genetic drift and isolation, as in island and forest groups such as the Andamanese, fix distinctive frequencies; gene flow blends neighbouring groups, producing clines; and sexual selection and cultural preference may reinforce some traits.
Environment through natural selection: skin pigmentation correlates with ultraviolet radiation, dark skin protecting folate in the tropics and light skin aiding vitamin D synthesis at high latitudes (Jablonski and Chaplin, 2000); body form follows Bergmann’s rule (larger, stockier bodies in cold climates, as among the Inuit) and Allen’s rule (shorter limbs in cold, long limbs among East African Nilotes); Thomson and Buxton’s nose rule links narrow noses to cold, dry air; malaria selected HbS and thalassaemia; high altitude selected EPAS1 variants in Tibetans.
Environment through plasticity: Boas’s immigrant head-form study, Shapiro’s Japanese migrants in Hawaii and the secular rise in stature show that nutrition and climate alter phenotype within a generation without genetic change.
Thus population differences are neither purely hereditary nor purely environmental; they are adaptations and histories written jointly by genes and environment.Q6(c) · Ecological Anthropology, Epidemiology and Human Growth · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Human Growth, Development and Ageing
Discuss different factors affecting growth and development in human beings.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मानवों में संवृद्धि और विकास को प्रभावित करने वाले विभिन्न कारकों पर चर्चा कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(c)
Approach: Define growth and development, then classify and explain the factors: genetic, hormonal, nutritional, socio-economic, disease, environmental (climate, altitude, season, pollution), psychosocial and secular, with examples and Indian data, concluding on their interaction.
Growth is the increase in size and mass of the body; development is the progression towards maturity in function and form. Both result from a genetic programme expressed in an environment, as J.M. Tanner emphasised.
Genetic factors: parental size predicts child size; twin studies show high heritability of stature; sex determines timing and pattern; population differences exist, as between the small-bodied Mbuti and tall Nilotes; and chromosomal and single-gene disorders (Down, Turner syndromes, achondroplasia) limit growth.
Hormonal factors: growth hormone, thyroid hormones, insulin, and sex steroids at puberty; deficiency of growth or thyroid hormone causes dwarfism or cretinism.
Nutrition: the most important environmental factor. Undernutrition causes stunting and delayed puberty, and iodine and iron deficiency impair development. NFHS-5 (2019–21) recorded stunting in 35.5 per cent of Indian children under five, higher among Scheduled Tribes. Over-nutrition causes obesity and earlier maturation.
Socio-economic status, disease and environment: wealthier, educated families have taller children; repeated diarrhoea, worm infestation and malaria slow growth; high altitude slows growth and lowers birth weight; climate, season and pollution also act; urban children are usually taller than rural ones.
Psychosocial and other factors: emotional deprivation causes psychosocial dwarfism; maternal age, birth order, family size and physical activity matter; and the secular trend shows environmental improvement increasing size over generations.
These factors interact: genes set the potential and environment decides how far it is realised, which is why growth is used as an index of a community’s health and welfare.
Question 7 (50 marks)
Q7(a) · Human Genetics: Methods, Inheritance and Chromosomes · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Mendelian Genetics and Patterns of Inheritance in Man
Critically discuss the Mendelian principles and their application to human populations.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मेन्डेलीय सिद्धांतों और मानव समष्टियों पर उनके अनुप्रयोग पर समालोचनात्मक चर्चा कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(a)
Approach: State Mendel’s principles, then critically discuss how far they apply to human populations: supporting examples, the special difficulties of human study, and the many extensions and exceptions, ending with their applications.
Gregor Mendel’s experiments on garden peas (published 1866, rediscovered in 1900 by de Vries, Correns and Tschermak) yielded the principles of dominance, segregation (the two alleles of a gene separate into different gametes) and independent assortment (genes for different traits are inherited independently).
Application to humans: many traits follow these laws. Albinism and sickle-cell anaemia segregate in a 1:2:1 genotypic ratio among children of two carriers; Huntington disease shows dominant transmission to half of the offspring; Garrod (1902) recognised alkaptonuria as a Mendelian recessive.
Difficulties: humans cannot be crossed experimentally, generations are long, families small and records incomplete, so inheritance is inferred from pedigrees and population statistics.
Critique, extensions and exceptions: codominance (blood group AB, HbAS); incomplete dominance; multiple alleles (ABO); epistasis (the Bombay phenotype); pleiotropy (Marfan syndrome); incomplete penetrance and variable expressivity (polydactyly); linkage, discovered by Morgan, which violates independent assortment; sex linkage (haemophilia); polygenic traits such as stature; and non-Mendelian mitochondrial inheritance, imprinting and anticipation.
Applications: genetic counselling and risk estimation, carrier screening, paternity and forensic testing, and population genetics through the Hardy-Weinberg principle. Mendel’s principles remain the foundation, though human genetics shows they are a starting point rather than the whole story.Q7(b) · Human Genetics: Methods, Inheritance and Chromosomes · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Chromosomes and Chromosomal Aberrations
Explain the significance of screening and counselling for genetic disorders.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
आनुवंशिक विकारों के लिए, परेक्षण (स्क्रीनिंग) और उपबोधन के महत्त्व को स्पष्ट कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(b)
Approach: Define genetic screening and counselling, explain the types of screening and the steps of counselling, show their significance with examples (including Indian programmes), and note ethical issues.
Genetic screening is the systematic testing of populations or groups to identify people with, or at risk of, a genetic disorder; genetic counselling, a term coined by Sheldon Reed in 1947, is the communication process that helps individuals and families understand the risk, its implications and their options.
Types of screening: newborn screening (phenylketonuria, congenital hypothyroidism, G6PD deficiency); carrier screening (thalassaemia, sickle-cell trait); prenatal screening and diagnosis (ultrasound, maternal serum tests, non-invasive prenatal testing, chorionic villus sampling and amniocentesis); and preimplantation diagnosis.
Counselling involves pedigree construction, diagnosis, risk estimation, explanation of options and support, given in a non-directive way.
Significance: carrier screening and counselling in Cyprus and Sardinia sharply cut births of children with thalassaemia major; in India, the National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission (2023) screens people in tribal areas and the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (2013) screens children for birth defects. Early detection allows treatment, avoids marriages between two carriers where communities accept this, and reduces family and public health burden.
Ethical issues: consent, confidentiality, stigma of carriers, and misuse of prenatal tests for sex selection, prohibited by the PCPNDT Act 1994. Screening must therefore be voluntary and linked to counselling.Q7(c) · Ecological Anthropology, Epidemiology and Human Growth · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Epidemiological Anthropology
Describe the scope of Epidemiological Anthropology in the study of infectious and non-infectious diseases.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
संक्रामक और ग़ैर-संक्रामक रोगों के अध्ययन में जानपदिक नृविज्ञान की परिधि (क्षेत्र) का वर्णन कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(c)
Approach: Define epidemiological anthropology and its bio-cultural method, then set out its scope in infectious diseases (kuru, malaria, Ebola, HIV, TB) and non-infectious diseases (diabetes, hypertension, cancer, mental illness, genetic disorders), with Indian applications.
Epidemiological anthropology studies the distribution and determinants of disease in human populations by combining the quantitative methods of epidemiology with the ethnographic, cultural and evolutionary perspectives of anthropology. It asks not only how many fall ill, but why particular groups do, and how behaviour, ecology and society shape risk.
Infectious diseases: (i) kuru among the Fore of Papua New Guinea was traced by Carleton Gajdusek and anthropologists Shirley Lindenbaum and Robert Glasse to mortuary cannibalism, mainly by women and children; it declined when the practice stopped, revealing prion disease; (ii) malaria and yam cultivation favoured the sickle-cell gene in West Africa (Livingstone, 1958); (iii) during the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic, anthropologists helped redesign safe burials that respected funeral customs; (iv) studies of sexual networks, stigma and migration guide HIV prevention; (v) beliefs and access barriers explain tuberculosis treatment failure.
Non-infectious diseases: (i) high type 2 diabetes among the Pima Indians and rapidly modernising groups led to Neel’s thrifty genotype hypothesis; (ii) the Tokelau Island Migrant Study linked migration to New Zealand with rising blood pressure and diabetes; (iii) cancers linked to diet and habits, such as oral cancer with betel quid and tobacco chewing in India; (iv) culture-bound and mental disorders; (v) genetic disorders such as sickle-cell disease and thalassaemia in endogamous Indian groups.
In India the approach informs malaria control in tribal belts, the sickle-cell mission (2023), community health workers (ASHA) and culturally sensitive nutrition programmes.
Its scope therefore extends from understanding causes to designing acceptable, effective interventions.
Question 8 (50 marks)
Q8(a) · Reproductive Biology, Demography and Applied Anthropology · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Applications of Anthropology
Describe the role of Anthropology in designing defence and other equipments.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सुरक्षा संबंधी और अन्य उपकरणों का डिज़ाइन तैयार करने में नृविज्ञान की भूमिका का वर्णन कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(a)
Approach: Describe how anthropometric and ergonomic knowledge shapes defence equipment (with examples) and civilian equipment, stressing population-specific data.
Applied physical anthropology contributes to equipment design through anthropometry and ergonomics. The need became clear in the Second World War, when aircraft and tank controls designed without body data caused errors and accidents.
Defence equipment: sizes of uniforms, boots, helmets and body armour; gas masks fitted to face dimensions; cockpit layout, ejection seats and visibility for pilots of different sitting heights; tank and submarine interiors with limited space; weapon grips and load-carrying systems. The US Army's ANSUR surveys (1988, and ANSUR II in 2012) are standard references; in India the armed forces and the Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Bengaluru have used aircrew anthropometry because Western data misfit Indian personnel.
Other equipment: vehicle and railway seating, industrial workstations, tractor controls and hand tools for Indian farm workers (CIAE Bhopal data), school furniture, hospital equipment and aids for the disabled.
Principles: design for the 5th to 95th percentile, provide adjustability, consider both sexes as women join combat roles, and update data for the secular trend in stature.
Anthropology thus improves comfort, safety and combat efficiency, and indigenous defence production under Atmanirbhar Bharat makes Indian anthropometric databases more important.Q8(b) · Ecological Anthropology, Epidemiology and Human Growth · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Ecological Anthropology and Bio-cultural Adaptation
Discuss the genetic and non-genetic factors in the bio-cultural adaptations of human beings to different environments.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विभिन्न परिवेशों के प्रति मानवों के जैव-सांस्कृतिक अनुकूलनों में आनुवंशिक तथा ग़ैर-आनुवंशिक कारकों पर चर्चा कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(b)
Approach: Introduce bio-cultural adaptation, then discuss genetic factors (selection-based adaptations) and non-genetic factors (physiological acclimatization, developmental plasticity, cultural and technological responses) across environments (heat, cold, altitude, disease, diet), showing their interplay, with examples.
Humans have colonised environments from the Arctic to the tropical forest and the Tibetan plateau. Their success rests on bio-cultural adaptation: genetic change through natural selection, together with non-genetic plasticity and culture.
Genetic factors: (i) skin pigmentation varies with ultraviolet radiation, dark skin protecting folate in the tropics, light skin favouring vitamin D synthesis at high latitudes; (ii) body build follows Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules, stocky Inuit versus linear Nilotes; (iii) high-altitude genes such as EPAS1 in Tibetans; (iv) disease resistance genes such as HbS, thalassaemia and G6PD deficiency in malarial zones, including central Indian tribes; (v) dietary genes such as lactase persistence among herders and extra copies of the salivary amylase gene in starch-eating populations.
Non-genetic factors: (i) short-term physiological responses: sweating, vasoconstriction, shivering and hyperventilation; (ii) acclimatization: heat acclimatization within weeks, haemoglobin rise at altitude, cold tolerance in fishermen’s hands; (iii) developmental plasticity: larger chests of children raised in the Andes, and the taller stature of migrants’ children (Boas, Shapiro); (iv) cultural and technological responses: fire, clothing, igloos, thick-walled desert houses, food processing such as cooking cassava to remove cyanide, and medical care.
Interplay: culture can relax selection, for example clothing reducing cold stress, or intensify it, as when yam cultivation in West Africa created breeding pools for mosquitoes and favoured the sickle-cell gene (Livingstone, 1958), and dairying favoured lactase persistence in a gene-culture coevolution.
Non-genetic responses act quickly and flexibly within a lifetime, while genetic adaptation is slow but heritable; together they explain human success and variation.Q8(c) · Primates · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Comparative Anatomy of Man and Apes and Erect Posture
Explain the skeletal changes due to erect posture and their implications.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
ऊर्ध्व संस्थिति (इरैक्ट पौस्चर) के कारण पैदा हुए कंकालीय परिवर्तनों को और उनके निहितार्थों को, स्पष्ट कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(c)
Approach: Describe the skeletal changes due to erect posture from skull to foot, then explain their implications (benefits, costs, obstetric and evolutionary), with a pelvis and femur sketch.
Erect posture required the skeleton to balance the body over two limbs, producing a chain of changes from skull to foot that distinguishes hominins from apes.
Skull and spine: the foramen magnum moved forward and faced downward so the skull balances on the spine, with smaller neck muscles and a reduced nuchal area; the spine gained an S-shape with cervical and lumbar lordosis, bringing the centre of gravity over the hips, and lumbar vertebrae became larger towards the base.
Pelvis: the ilium became short, broad and curved into a bowl that supports the abdominal organs, and gluteus medius and minimus became abductors that stop the trunk tipping during single-leg support; the sacrum widened.
Lower limb and foot: the femur angles inward (bicondylar angle about 8 to 11 degrees), placing the knees under the body; the knee locks in full extension; the legs lengthened; the foot gained longitudinal and transverse arches, a large heel bone and an aligned, non-opposable big toe.
Diagram: front views of a tall narrow ape pelvis with vertical femurs beside a short broad human pelvis with femurs slanting inward to the knees.
Implications: freed hands, efficient walking and later endurance running, which favoured tool making and dispersal; but also back pain, disc problems, hernias, flat feet and varicose veins. A narrow birth canal made childbirth difficult, encouraging helpless infants and assisted birth (the obstetric dilemma, now debated by Holly Dunsworth).
These changes, seen already in Lucy and the Laetoli footprints, made bipedalism the foundation of later human evolution.
UPSC Mains 2016 Anthropology Paper II
Question 1 (50 marks)
Q1(a) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Prehistoric Cultures of India
Significance of Mesolithic findings from Belan Valley
हिंदी में प्रश्न
बेलन घाटी से प्राप्त मध्यपाषाण उपलब्धियों का महत्त्व
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(a)
Approach: A short note: location, the Belan sequence, Mesolithic features at Chopani Mando, and why it matters.
The Belan valley, a tributary of the Tons in the Vindhyan hills south of Prayagraj, was explored by G.R. Sharma of Allahabad University with J. Desmond Clark in the 1970s.
It gives a rare continuous sequence from the Lower Palaeolithic through Middle and Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic and Neolithic, preserved in river sections and sites.
The key Mesolithic site, Chopani Mando, has three phases: early non-geometric microliths, then geometric microliths, and finally late Mesolithic levels with circular huts marked by post-holes, hearths, ring stones, querns, wild rice and some of the earliest hand-made, cord-impressed pottery in South Asia.
Significance: it documents the shift from mobile foraging to semi-sedentary life and from wild-grain use to the rice-growing Neolithic of nearby Koldihwa and Mahagara, supporting local rather than imported origins of farming, though its early dates are debated.Q1(b) · Demographic Profile and the Traditional Indian Social System · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Ethnic and Linguistic Elements in the Indian Population
Linguistic elements in Indian population
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय जनसमुदाय में भाषिक तत्त्व
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(b)
Approach: A short note: India's linguistic diversity by Census 2011 figures, the four families with shares and tribal examples, and its significance.
India's linguistic diversity is vast: Census 2011 grouped 19,569 raw returns into 1,369 mother tongues and 121 languages (22 scheduled), and George Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India (1894–1928) first mapped it.
Indo-European (78.07 percent): Indo-Aryan languages of the north, west and east, including tribal Bhili and Halbi. Dravidian (19.64 percent): the south, with tribal Gondi, Kurukh and Kui in central India.
Austro-Asiatic (1.11 percent): Munda languages such as Santali and Ho, Khasi in Meghalaya and Nicobarese. Tibeto-Burman (1.01 percent): Bodo, Garo, Mizo, Meitei and the Naga languages of the north-east and Himalaya. The Andamanese languages form a separate group, and Nihali of central India is an isolate.
Tribes speak languages of every family, so language does not coincide with race or religion; long contact has produced shared features across families, making India a 'linguistic area' (Murray Emeneau, 1956).Q1(c) · Caste System and Religions in Indian Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Caste: Structure, Varna and Theories of Origin
Relevance of caste in contemporary Indian politics
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समकालीन भारतीय राजनीति में जाति की प्रासंगिकता
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(c)
Approach: Explain how caste operates in politics today (vote bank, caste parties, reservations, Mandal) and how politics changes caste, ending with a balanced note.
Rajni Kothari (Caste in Indian Politics, 1970) argued that democracy did not abolish caste but politicised it, while politics in turn was 'casteised'.
Caste provides ready-made networks for mobilisation. M.N. Srinivas coined the term vote bank for blocs delivered by caste leaders. Dominant castes such as the Jats, Marathas, Reddys and Vokkaligas have long shaped state politics.
The Mandal Commission's recommendations, implemented in 1990, brought OBC parties to power in north India, while the Bahujan Samaj Party (1984) built Dalit political assertion in Uttar Pradesh. Demands for quotas by Patidars, Jats and Marathas, and the Bihar caste survey (2023), show caste's continuing electoral weight.
Yet caste alone does not decide elections. Development, welfare, leadership and religion cut across caste, and rising class differences within castes weaken bloc voting.
Politics has made caste an instrument of empowerment for lower castes, but it can also deepen divisions. Caste thus remains highly relevant, though in a changed, competitive form.Q1(d) · Caste System and Religions in Indian Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Sacred Complex, Nature-Man-Spirit Complex and the Impact of Religions
Impact of Jainism on Indian society
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय समाज पर जैनवाद का प्रभाव
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(d)
Approach: A short note: core teachings in one line, then impact on ethics, economy, culture and society, with one limitation.
Jainism, systematised by Mahavira, teaches liberation of the soul through the three jewels and the five vows, above all ahimsa, along with anekantavada, the many-sidedness of truth.
Ethics: Jain non-violence and vegetarianism shaped Indian food habits and influenced Gandhi through Shrimad Rajchandra. Economy: avoiding agriculture, Jains specialised in trade and banking, and their ethic of honesty and thrift supported the commerce of Gujarat and Rajasthan.
Culture: Jains enriched Prakrit, Apabhramsha and Kannada literature and built the Dilwara, Ranakpur and Palitana temples and the Gommateshwara statue at Shravanabelagola. Anekantavada encouraged tolerance of multiple viewpoints.
Society: Jain philanthropy funds schools, hospitals and animal shelters. However, Jains developed endogamous caste-like groups such as the Oswal and Porwal. Jains, notified as a minority in 2014, remain small in number but influential.Q1(e) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Palaeo-anthropological Evidence and Ethno-archaeology in India
Ethno-archaeological evidences for the survival of hunting-gathering traditions in India
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में आखेटक-संग्रहण परम्पराओं की उत्तरजीविता के नृजाति-पुरातात्त्विक प्रमाण
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(e)
Approach: A short note: communities that still hunt and gather, the parallels with prehistoric evidence, and the caution against 'survival' thinking.
Several Indian communities still practise hunting and gathering, wholly or partly, offering ethno-archaeological evidence of how prehistoric foragers may have lived.
Examples include the Jarawa, Onge and Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands (pig hunting, fishing, shellfish collection and shell middens); the Birhor of Jharkhand (net hunting and rope-making); the Chenchu of the Nallamala hills (honey, tubers and bow hunting); and the Kadar and Paliyan of the Western Ghats (forest produce).
Parallels: Andamanese middens resemble coastal Mesolithic sites; small mobile camps and seasonal rounds explain the scatter of Mesolithic and Upper Palaeolithic sites; honey collection scenes in Bhimbetka rock art mirror Chenchu practice; and bow hunting explains microlithic arrowheads.
These groups are contemporary peoples who trade, use iron and interact with states, so they show parallels, not unchanged survivals; many are PVTGs whose rights and habitats need protection.
Question 2 (50 marks)
Q2(a) · Anthropology in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Scholar-Administrators and the Beginnings of Indian Anthropology
Write about the contribution made by Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf to tribal anthropology in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत के जनजाति-नृविज्ञान में क्रिस्टोफ वॉन फ्यूरर-हाइमेन्डॉर्फ के योगदान के बारे में लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(a)
Approach: Introduce Haimendorf, then cover his ethnographies (Naga, Hyderabad tribes, Apatani and NEFA), his applied work as adviser in Hyderabad, his later studies of tribal decline, his approach, and an assessment.
Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (1909–1995), an Austrian-born anthropologist trained in Vienna and later professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, spent some five decades studying the tribes of India and the Himalaya.
Naga studies: his fieldwork among the Konyak Nagas (1936–37) produced The Naked Nagas (1939), a vivid account of head-hunting, village organisation and morung (men's house) life.
Hyderabad tribes: his trilogy The Aboriginal Tribes of Hyderabad covered the food-gathering Chenchus (1943), the shifting cultivators in The Reddis of the Bison Hills (1945) and the settled cultivators in The Raj Gonds of Adilabad (1948). Together they showed the range of tribal economies from foraging to plough agriculture.
Applied anthropology: after the Gond unrest associated with Komaram Bheem (1940), the Nizam's government appointed him adviser for tribes and backward classes. He promoted the assignment of land to Gonds, Gondi-medium schooling with a trained Gond teacher cadre, and protection from moneylenders, an early example of anthropology shaping tribal welfare.
Himalayan and NEFA work: Himalayan Barbary (1955) and The Apa Tanis and their Neighbours (1962) described the Apatani's intensive wet-rice cultivation and their exchanges with neighbouring tribes; he also wrote on the Sherpas of Nepal (1964).
Tribes in decline: returning to Adilabad in later decades, he documented in Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival (1982) how Gonds lost land to immigrant settlers despite protective laws, and criticised the failure of the state to enforce them.
Assessment: his long-term, comparative fieldwork, attention to economy and ecology, and advocacy made him a bridge between colonial and post-colonial anthropology. Critics note a romantic, protectionist streak and a descriptive rather than theoretical style, but his record of change over half a century remains unmatched.Q2(b) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Palaeo-anthropological Evidence and Ethno-archaeology in India
Delineate the salient characteristics of 'Narmada Man' and examine its phylogenetic significance.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'नर्मदा मानव' के प्रमुख लक्षणों का चित्रण कीजिए तथा इसके जातिवृत्तिक महत्त्व का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(b)
Approach: Delineate the characteristics of Narmada Man (context, anatomy, capacity, associated finds, date), then examine its phylogenetic significance in the light of competing classifications.
Narmada Man was discovered by Arun Sonakia of the Geological Survey of India on 5 December 1982 in the cemented gravels of the Surajkund formation at Hathnora, on the north bank of the Narmada in Hoshangabad (now Narmadapuram) district, Madhya Pradesh.
Characteristics: a fairly complete right half of a calvaria (frontal, parietal, part of the temporal and occipital); a thick vault, a prominent supraorbital torus with a post-orbital constriction, and a low forehead; but a cranial capacity estimated at about 1,155 to 1,421 cc and expanded parietals. Associated finds include late Acheulian tools and Middle Pleistocene fauna (Stegodon, Palaeoloxodon namadicus, hippopotamus and wild cattle); A.R. Sankhyan reported two clavicles (1997) suggesting a short, stocky build.
Phylogenetic significance: Sonakia's Homo erectus narmadensis placed it in the Asian erectus line; Kennedy and colleagues (1991) saw archaic Homo sapiens; Cameron, Patnaik and Sahni (2004) and Athreya (2007) linked it with Middle Pleistocene Homo heidelbergensis-like hominins of Africa and Europe. Its mosaic of archaic and advanced traits fits the regional diversity of Middle Pleistocene Homo.
Diagram: a lateral sketch of the calvaria showing the thick vault, brow ridge and low forehead, labelled with the cranial capacity range.
As the only accepted Middle Pleistocene hominin of the subcontinent, it shows that South Asia lay on the route of archaic human dispersals and links the Acheulian to its makers, though its single, undated specimen limits firm conclusions.Q2(c) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Harappan Civilization and Tribal Contributions to Indian Civilization
Discuss how cultural diversity of Indian tribes has enriched its plural traditions.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय जनजातियों की सांस्कृतिक विविधता ने किस प्रकार से अपनी बहुल परम्पराओं को संवर्धित किया है, विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(c)
Approach: Show the diversity of Indian tribes (ecological, linguistic, economic, social, religious) and explain how each strand has enriched India's plural traditions, with examples and concepts of exchange.
India's 705 Scheduled Tribes (Census 2011), from the Andaman foragers to Himalayan pastoralists, are themselves enormously diverse, and this diversity has fed the country's plural traditions rather than standing outside them. K.S. Singh's People of India project (1985 onward) documented wide sharing of traits across tribal and non-tribal groups.
Linguistic plurality: tribes speak languages of all four families, Munda (Santali, Ho), Dravidian (Gondi, Kurukh), Tibeto-Burman (Bodo, Mizo) and Indo-Aryan (Bhili), plus the Andamanese languages, keeping India multilingual. Economic plurality: foraging (Birhor), shifting cultivation (Garo, Naga), pastoralism (Toda, Gaddi), settled farming (Gond, Oraon) and crafts add varied food systems and knowledge.
Social plurality: matrilineal Khasi and Garo, polyandrous Toda, youth dormitories of the Muria (ghotul) and Naga (morung), and bride price widen the range of Indian family forms. Religious plurality: Sarna faith, sacred groves, village deities and syncretic cults such as Jagannath, along with tribal Christianity and Buddhism in the north-east.
Arts: Warli, Gond and Saura painting, Dhokra metalwork and dances such as Bihu and Chhau have become national symbols. Through Sanskritization (Srinivas), universalisation and parochialisation (Marriott) and the Hindu method of tribal absorption (N.K. Bose), these elements flowed both ways.
Constitutional safeguards such as the Fifth and Sixth Schedules and Article 29 protect this diversity; preserving tribal languages and autonomy is thus essential to India's pluralism.
Question 3 (50 marks)
Q3(a) · Caste System and Religions in Indian Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Caste: Structure, Varna and Theories of Origin
Examine the structural and cultural theories of caste system in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में जाति व्यवस्था के संरचनात्मक एवं सांस्कृतिक सिद्धान्तों का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(a)
Approach: Classify theories into cultural (ideational: Hocart, Dumont, Bouglé, Srinivas) and structural (material and power-based: Bailey, Beteille, Berreman, Gough, Marxists), explain each with evidence, and compare them.
Theories of caste fall into two broad families. Cultural theories explain caste by the ideas and values that give it meaning, while structural theories explain it by the relations of land, labour and power among groups.
Cultural theories: Célestin Bouglé (1908) identified hierarchy, hereditary specialisation and repulsion as the spirit of caste. A.M. Hocart (Caste, 1950) traced caste to ritual roles around the sacrificial king. Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, 1966) argued that the opposition of pure and impure orders the whole system and that status encompasses power.
McKim Marriott's transactional approach, based on food exchanges in Kishan Garhi, and Srinivas's concept of Sanskritization also stress shared cultural values that people accept and imitate.
Structural theories: F.G. Bailey (Caste and the Economic Frontier, 1957) showed that in Bisipara, Odisha, new trade wealth allowed the distiller castes to buy land and rise, so economic change reshaped rank. André Beteille (Caste, Class and Power, 1965) found in Sripuram that caste, class and power were separating. Srinivas's dominant caste concept also links rank to land and numbers.
Gerald Berreman compared caste to racial stratification and stressed resistance by low castes. Kathleen Gough and Marxist scholars saw caste as a way of organising agrarian labour and surplus, with ideology justifying exploitation.
Comparison: cultural theories explain why caste persists in ritual, marriage and food, but they risk presenting hierarchy as consensual and timeless. Structural theories explain change, conflict and mobility, but cannot account for purity rules that persist despite economic change.
Most anthropologists now combine both. Caste is a system in which ideology and material power support each other, which is why it survives even as its economic base changes.Q3(b) · Demographic Profile and the Traditional Indian Social System · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Ethnic and Linguistic Elements in the Indian Population
Give a critical assessment of 'Negrito Problem' in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में 'नेग्रीटो समस्या' का आलोचनात्मक मूल्यांकन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(b)
Approach: Critically assess the 'Negrito problem': the claim, who supported and opposed it, the evidence (morphological, serological, genetic), and a balanced conclusion.
The Negrito problem is the question whether a short, dark-skinned, frizzy-haired population, like the Negritos of South-East Asia (Semang, Aeta), formed the earliest racial layer of India beyond the Andaman Islands.
The claim: the Onge, Jarawa, Great Andamanese and Sentinelese clearly show Negrito traits. B.S. Guha (1944) placed the Negrito first among India's racial elements and reported traces among the Kadar and Irula of the south, and J.H. Hutton reported frizzy hair among some Angami Nagas.
The counter-evidence: S.S. Sarkar's team (1959) studied the Kadar through anthropometry, blood groups, dermatoglyphics and hair and found no Negrito element, grouping them with Australoid tribes such as the Paniyan; frizzy hair in a few individuals may arise from local variation or admixture; and Sarkar held that mainland tribes are Australoid.
Genetic evidence: the Andamanese carry deep mitochondrial lineages (M31 and M32; Thangaraj and colleagues, 2005) from an early coastal dispersal out of Africa; Reich and colleagues (2009) found that the Ancestral South Indian component of mainland Indians is distantly related to the Andamanese, but not specifically 'Negrito'; and genomic work suggests that Negrito-like features in South-East Asia and the Andamans may reflect convergent adaptation to tropical forests rather than one race (debated).
Negritos are thus certain in the Andamans but unproven on the mainland; genetics reframes the 'problem' as one of early migration and shared deep ancestry.Q3(c) · Indian Village, Minorities and Social Change · 15 marks≈ 11 min
The Indian Village
Describe the traditional patterns of settlement of Indian villages.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय ग्राम अधिवास के परम्परागत प्रतिरूपों का वर्णन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(c)
Approach: Describe the traditional principles that shaped village layout (environment, caste and purity, religion, defence) and the main types, with regional and tribal examples, and add a sketch.
Traditional Indian villages were laid out according to physical environment, means of livelihood, need for defence and, above all, the social order of caste and religion.
Types: large compact or nucleated villages grew on the fertile, well-watered plains of the north, where defence and cooperative farming encouraged clustering; hamleted villages with separate tolas or paras for different castes were common in the Ganga plains and Bengal; dispersed homesteads marked hills, forests and deserts, such as the Bhil falias and Rajasthan dhanis; and linear villages followed rivers and coasts, as in Kerala.
Caste and purity: space mapped hierarchy. Brahmins lived near the temple, often in a separate agraharam street in south India; peasant and artisan castes surrounded them; and untouchable castes lived in a separate hamlet at the edge, with their own well and cremation ground. Béteille's Sripuram had Brahmin, non-Brahmin and Adi-Dravida quarters.
Sacred and common spaces: the temple, village shrine, tank, chaupal or meeting place, grazing commons and sacred groves were central features.
Tribal settlements: Munda and Oraon villages are grouped around the sarna grove and dhumkuria dormitory; Naga villages occupy defensive hilltops with morungs; Toda munds are small hamlets near grazing lands.
Diagram: a sketch showing the temple and tank at the centre, Brahmin street beside it, peasant and artisan quarters in a ring, the Dalit hamlet with a separate well outside, and grazing commons and fields around the edge.
Question 4 (50 marks)
Q4(a) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Harappan Civilization and Tribal Contributions to Indian Civilization
Give a detailed appraisal of skeletal remains from Chalcolithic culture of undivided Punjab.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
अविभाजित पंजाब से प्राप्त ताम्रपाषाणीय संस्कृति के कंकालीय अवशेषों का विस्तृत मूल्यांकन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(a)
Approach: Appraise skeletal remains from the Harappan (Chalcolithic) sites of undivided Punjab, chiefly Harappa (Cemetery R37, Cemetery H) and Ropar: burial context, morphology, racial typology versus modern biological views, palaeopathology and ancient DNA.
Undivided Punjab contains Harappa on the Ravi (Sahiwal district, now Pakistan) and Ropar on the Sutlej (Punjab, India), whose cemeteries give the largest skeletal series of the Bronze Age Chalcolithic of the subcontinent.
Cemetery R37 (mature Harappan) has extended burials, head to the north, with pottery, ornaments and occasionally mirrors, including a wooden coffin burial. Cemetery H (late Harappan) has fractional or pot burials in painted urns with peacock and other motifs, a change in burial custom. At Ropar, excavated by Y.D. Sharma (1953–56), Harappan burials include one with a dog.
Morphology: the Anthropological Survey of India studies (P. Gupta, P.C. Dutta and A. Basu, 1962) described mostly long-headed (dolichocranial), medium-statured people with fairly narrow faces and noses; R.B.S. Sewell and B.S. Guha (1931) had divided the Mohenjo-daro crania into Proto-Australoid, Mediterranean, Mongoloid and Alpine types, reflecting the racial typology of that era.
Modern reassessment: Kenneth Kennedy and Brian Hemphill's dental and cranial studies found close affinity between Cemetery R37 and Cemetery H populations, arguing for biological continuity rather than replacement by invaders, and placed Harappans within the range of later South Asians. Palaeopathology: dental caries and enamel hypoplasia point to a cereal diet and childhood stress; Robbins Schug and colleagues (2012) reported more trauma and infectious disease, including leprosy, in late Harappan burials, suggesting urban decline and social stress.
Diagram: a sketch of an extended R37 burial with pots near the head beside a Cemetery H painted burial urn.
Ancient DNA from Rakhigarhi (2019), east of Punjab, now shows the Harappans' Iranian-related and South Asian hunter-gatherer ancestry. Together these data replace old racial typing with a picture of a mixed, locally continuous population whose health declined in the late phase.Q4(b) · Caste System and Religions in Indian Society · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Dominant Caste, Caste Mobility, Jajmani System and the Tribe–Caste Continuum
How is process of tribe-caste continuum different from Sanskritization? Comment.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
जनजाति-वर्ण सांतत्यक प्रक्रम, संस्कृतिकरण से कैसे भिन्न है? टिप्पण प्रस्तुत कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(b)
Approach: Define both concepts, then compare them point by point (nature, unit, direction, mechanisms, scholars), with examples, and conclude on how they relate.
The tribe-caste continuum (Bailey, 1961; Surajit Sinha, 1965) is a model that places groups on a scale between tribe and caste according to land access, social structure and integration with the wider society. Sanskritization (Srinivas, 1952) is the process by which a low caste or tribe adopts the customs, rituals and beliefs of a higher, often twice-born, caste to claim higher rank.
Nature: the continuum is a structural and classificatory concept, while Sanskritization is a cultural process of imitation. Scope: the continuum concerns tribes and their relation to caste society; Sanskritization applies to castes as well as tribes.
Mechanisms: movement along the continuum may come through state formation and Rajput claims (Bhumij chiefs), dependence on landowners for land (Bailey's Konds and Oriyas), gradual adoption of Hindu occupations and priests (Bose's Juang) or Christianisation; Sanskritization is only one of these routes.
Direction: the continuum is two-way, since tribes may also assert a distinct identity or 'retribalise', as in the Sarna movement; Sanskritization is upward imitation of a higher model.
Thus Sanskritization is one mechanism that can move a tribe along the tribe-caste continuum, but the continuum is a wider frame that includes economic, political and religious change.Q4(c) · Anthropology in India · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Indian Anthropologists and Tribal and Caste Studies
Compare the contribution of L. P. Vidyarthi and D. N. Majumdar to the study of Indian tribes.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय जनजातियों के अध्ययन में एल० पी० विद्यार्थी तथा डी० एन० मजूमदार के योगदान की तुलना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(c)
Approach: Write a point-by-point comparison (tribes studied, theoretical focus, key concepts, applied work, institutions), with a short closing judgement, rather than two separate biographies.
D.N. Majumdar (1903–1960) of Lucknow and L.P. Vidyarthi (1931–1985) of Ranchi both made the tribes of Bihar and Jharkhand central to Indian anthropology, but from different angles.
Tribes and fieldwork: Majumdar studied the Ho of Kolhan in A Tribe in Transition (1937) and The Affairs of a Tribe (1950); Vidyarthi studied the Maler of the Rajmahal hills (The Maler, 1963) and later surveyed tribal India as a whole in The Tribal Culture of India (1976, with B.K. Rai).
Theoretical focus: Majumdar emphasised culture contact and acculturation; in The Fortunes of Primitive Tribes (1944) he traced how contact with outsiders brought tribal decline and argued against isolation. He also combined serology and anthropometry with social study in Races and Cultures of India. Vidyarthi took an ecological and civilisational approach, proposing the nature-man-spirit complex and, for Hindu centres, the sacred complex (Gaya, 1961).
Applied work: both favoured applied anthropology. Majumdar advised on tribal welfare in Uttar Pradesh and founded The Eastern Anthropologist (1947); Vidyarthi promoted action anthropology, studied industrialisation at Hatia near Ranchi (1970), mapped five tribal zones, and presided over the international anthropology congress held in India in 1978.
Majumdar laid the foundations of acculturation and bio-social study of tribes, while Vidyarthi built a distinctive Indian framework linking tribes to ecology and civilisation; together they shaped tribal studies in eastern India.
Question 5 (50 marks)
Q5(a) · Weaker Sections, Ethnicity and Tribal Change · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Ethnicity, Tribal Unrest, Regionalism and Pseudo-tribalism
The role that regionalism plays in demand for autonomy among Indian tribes
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय जनजातियों में स्वायत्तता की माँग में क्षेत्रवाद की भूमिका
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(a)
Approach: A short note on how regional identity drives tribal autonomy demands (statehood, Sixth Schedule, councils), with examples and the state's responses.
For tribes, regionalism means attachment to an ancestral territory and the demand that its land, resources and culture be governed by its own people. Because tribes are territorially concentrated, regionalism readily becomes a demand for autonomy.
Statehood: regional deprivation of the Naga Hills, Mizo Hills and Chotanagpur produced Nagaland (1963), Mizoram (1987) and Jharkhand (2000); demands for Bodoland and Greater Tipraland continue.
Sixth Schedule and councils: the Bodoland Territorial Council (2003, enlarged as the Bodoland Territorial Region in 2020), and Ladakh's demand for Sixth Schedule protection after it became a Union Territory in 2019.
Drivers: fear of land loss to outsiders, unequal sharing of mineral wealth, cultural marginalisation and elite mobilisation (Brass), as well as 'sons of the soil' sentiment (Weiner).
Autonomy has often channelled regionalism into constitutional politics, though overlapping claims, as in Manipur, show its limits.Q5(b) · Tribal Situation and Problems in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Tribal Situation in India
Bio-genetic variability of Indian tribes
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय जनजातियों की जैव आनुवंशिक विविधता
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(b)
Approach: A short note on the racial elements, genetic markers and population-genetic processes that make Indian tribes biologically diverse.
Indian tribes show wide bio-genetic variability, reflecting different migrations and long isolation in small endogamous groups.
Older racial classifications (B.S. Guha, 1931) placed the Andamanese as Negrito, most central and southern Indian tribes such as the Munda, Santal, Oraon, Gond and Bhil as Proto-Australoid, and Himalayan and north-eastern tribes as Mongoloid. Genetic studies refine this: the Onge and Great Andamanese carry the ancient mitochondrial haplogroups M31 and M32, Munda speakers share the Y-chromosome haplogroup O2a with Southeast Asia, and Reich et al. (2009) found that tribal groups carry more 'Ancestral South Indian' ancestry than most caste groups.
Small, endogamous populations experience genetic drift, founder effects and inbreeding, raising the frequency of particular genes. The sickle-cell gene (HbS), G6PD deficiency and beta-thalassaemia are common in malarial tribal belts, an example of balanced polymorphism.
This variability matters for health policy, as in the National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission (2023), and shows that tribes are not one race.Q5(c) · Tribal Situation and Problems in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Development Projects, Displacement, Forest Policy and Tribals
Impact of industrialization on scheduled tribe population of Jharkhand
हिंदी में प्रश्न
झारखण्ड के अनुसूचित जनजाति जनसमुदाय पर उद्योगीकरण का प्रभाव
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(c)
Approach: A short note: industrial growth in Jharkhand's tribal belt, its benefits and its costs (displacement, influx, detribalisation), with Vidyarthi's Hatia study and data.
Jharkhand, rich in coal and iron ore, became a centre of industrialisation: Tata Steel at Jamshedpur (from 1907), the Bokaro steel plant, the Heavy Engineering Corporation at Ranchi and many coal mines lie in the Munda, Ho, Santal and Oraon homeland.
Some tribals gained wage jobs, education and urban exposure, and a small tribal middle class emerged. But large areas of land were acquired; L.P. Vidyarthi's study of Hatia (1970) showed displaced tribals becoming unskilled labourers while skilled jobs went to outsiders.
The influx of non-tribals reduced Jharkhand's ST share to 26.2% by 2011, and slums, alcoholism, exploitation of women, pollution and loss of language and customs followed, a process often called detribalisation.
These grievances fed the Jharkhand movement, which led to statehood in 2000, and continue to drive demands for land protection under the CNT and SPT Acts.Q5(d) · Tribal Situation and Problems in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Tribal Situation in India
Tribe as a colonial construct
हिंदी में प्रश्न
जनजाति, एक औपनिवेशिक संरचना के रूप में
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(d)
Approach: A short note presenting the argument that 'tribe' is a colonial construct (census, evolutionism, law), the counter-arguments, and a balanced view.
Several scholars argue that the category 'tribe' in India is a colonial construct: British administrators, guided by evolutionist anthropology, separated 'tribes' from 'castes' as more primitive peoples.
Census operations from 1872 classified communities as 'forest tribes', 'animists' and in 1931 'primitive tribes'; laws such as the Criminal Tribes Act (1871) and the Scheduled Districts Act (1874) and the excluded areas of 1935 fixed these labels. Bernard Cohn and Nicholas Dirks showed how colonial knowledge objectified fluid identities, and the Xaxa view stresses that the term arrived with colonial administration.
Critics reply that forest and hill peoples were recognised as distinct long before, such as the atavikas (forest peoples) of Ashoka's edicts, and that communities such as the Nagas or Santals had clear identities of their own. Surajit Sinha's tribe-caste continuum shows real differences in degree.
The balanced view is that colonial rule hardened and systematised the category, which later passed into the constitutional term 'Scheduled Tribe'.Q5(e) · Tribal Administration and Applied Anthropology · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Anthropology and Regionalism, Communalism and Ethnic Movements
Anthropological interpretation of ethnic and political movements
हिंदी में प्रश्न
नृजातीय एवं राजनैतिक आन्दोलनों की नृविज्ञानी व्याख्या
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(e)
Approach: A short note on how anthropology interprets ethnic and political movements: definitions and typologies (M.S.A. Rao, K.S. Singh), the main theories, and Indian examples.
A social movement is sustained collective mobilisation guided by an ideology; M.S.A. Rao (Social Movements in India, 1978 to 1979) classified movements as reformist, transformative or revolutionary, and K.S. Singh divided tribal movements into political-autonomy, agrarian and forest-based, socio-religious and cultural types.
Primordial interpretation: Geertz saw attachments of language, religion and region driving movements such as the Dravidian or Naga movements.
Instrumental interpretation: Paul Brass showed elites selecting cultural markers to compete for power, as in the Jharkhand movement's shift from Adivasi to regional identity.
Boundary and constructivist views: Barth's boundaries and census categories explain why groups such as the Bodo mobilise against neighbours with whom they share much culture.
Deprivation and colonialism: relative deprivation and Hechter's internal colonialism explain movements in resource-rich but poor regions.
Anthropology combines these views and adds fieldwork on leaders, rituals and rumours, showing movements as both identity and interest politics.
Question 6 (50 marks)
Q6(a) · Indian Village, Minorities and Social Change · 20 marks≈ 14 min
The Indian Village
Explain Indian village as a social system with suitable examples.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक तंत्र के रूप में भारतीय ग्राम की उपयुक्त उदाहरणों सहित व्याख्या कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(a)
Approach: Define a social system, then show the village's sub-systems (caste and jajmani, kinship and family, economy, polity, religion) and their integration with examples, add the wider links and critiques, and conclude on change.
A social system is a set of interrelated parts, such as groups, roles and institutions, that together maintain a whole. Village studies by S.C. Dube (Shamirpet, 1955) and M.N. Srinivas (Rampura, 1955) treated the Indian village as such a system.
Caste and jajmani: castes are the basic units, linked by hereditary exchange of services and grain, as Wiser described in Karimpur (1936). Rank is expressed in food transactions and residence.
Kinship and family: joint families and lineages organise property, labour and ritual; clan and village exogamy in north India, as in the khap areas, links each village to others through marriage.
Economy and polity: land ownership underpins power; the dominant caste, such as the Okkaligas of Rampura, controls land, settles disputes and leads the caste and village panchayats. Factions, studied by Oscar Lewis in Rani Khera, organise competition for power.
Religion: village deities, festivals and shrines express village unity, as when all castes join a village goddess festival, each with its prescribed role.
Dube stressed that these parts are integrated: a villager's status depends at once on caste, land, wealth, age and office, and Srinivas spoke of vertical (inter-caste) and horizontal (intra-caste) unity.
Limits: Redfield saw the village as a part-society, and Dumont and Pocock (1957) argued that caste and kinship extend far beyond it, so the village is an open, not closed, system.
Roads, markets, migration and panchayati raj have loosened these ties, but the village still functions as a social system linked to region and nation.Q6(b) · Indian Village, Minorities and Social Change · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Processes of Socio-cultural Change
Examine the nature of interplay of little and great traditions in the context of globalization.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
वैश्वीकरण के संदर्भ में लघु तथा बृहद् परम्परा के पारस्परिक प्रभाव की प्रकृति का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(b)
Approach: Recall the concepts of little and great traditions, then show how globalisation affects their interplay (homogenisation, revival, commodification, diaspora, media), with examples, and conclude.
Redfield's little and great traditions, and Marriott's universalisation and parochialisation, describe a two-way flow between local folk culture and Sanskritic civilisation. Globalisation adds a third, global, level and speeds up the flow through media, markets and migration.
Universalisation through media: local deities and festivals now reach national and global audiences; Santoshi Ma became a pan-Indian goddess after the film Jai Santoshi Maa (1975), and regional festivals such as Chhath and Ganesh Chaturthi are celebrated by migrants across India and abroad.
Homogenisation: television serials, standardised rituals and pilgrimage tourism spread a uniform version of the great tradition, sometimes displacing local variants and oral epics.
Revival and commodification: globalisation also revives little traditions as identity and heritage, such as tribal art (Gond and Warli painting) sold in global markets, folk music on digital platforms, and the Kumbh Mela, inscribed by UNESCO in 2017, marketed to international visitors.
Diaspora: Indian communities abroad recreate both traditions, building temples and staging folk festivals, which in turn influence practice at home.
Globalisation has thus intensified rather than ended the interplay, producing a 'glocal' culture in which little and great traditions are reshaped for new audiences.Q6(c) · Tribal Situation and Problems in India · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Development Projects, Displacement, Forest Policy and Tribals
Explain the difficulties experienced by scheduled tribes with regard to implementation of the 'Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2006'.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'वन अधिकार मान्यता अधिनियम, 2006' के क्रियान्वयन में अनुसूचित जनजातियों को जिन कठिनाइयों का सामना करना पड़ा, उनका वर्णन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(c)
Approach: Classify the difficulties (awareness and procedure, institutional resistance, evidence and verification, community rights, legal and policy conflicts, vulnerable groups) with examples and data, and suggest solutions.
The Forest Rights Act (2006) promised to undo historical injustice, but tribals face many difficulties in claiming rights; by May 2025 only about half of 51 lakh claims had been granted.
Awareness and procedure: many tribals, especially PVTGs and women, do not know their rights; claim forms, evidence rules and the three-tier committees (gram sabha, sub-divisional and district) are complex, and gram sabhas are often convened at panchayat rather than hamlet level, contrary to the rules.
Institutional resistance: forest departments, which lose control, often obstruct claims, insist on satellite evidence, or plant trees on claimed land; revenue and tribal welfare departments lack staff.
Evidence and verification: claimants without documents face rejection, though the Act allows oral testimony of elders; many rejections are made without reasons or appeal, and titles cover less land than claimed.
Community rights neglected: attention has gone mainly to individual titles, while community forest resource rights, PVTG habitat rights and grazing rights of pastoralists lag.
Legal conflicts: wildlife conservation cases, such as the Supreme Court's 2019 eviction order (stayed), and diversion of forest land under the forest conservation law, amended in 2023, create insecurity. Solutions include awareness campaigns, hamlet-level gram sabhas, review of rejections, support for community rights and accountability of officials.
Question 7 (50 marks)
Q7(a) · Weaker Sections, Ethnicity and Tribal Change · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Exploitation of SCs, STs and OBCs and Constitutional Safeguards
Examine the factors responsible for the exploitation of scheduled castes in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में अनुसूचित जातियों के शोषण के लिए उत्तरदायी कारकों का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(a)
Approach: Examine the ideological, economic, social, political and institutional factors behind SC exploitation, each with evidence, and conclude with how they can be countered.
Exploitation of Scheduled Castes means the appropriation of their labour, land and dignity by dominant groups, sustained by the caste order. Ambedkar (Annihilation of Caste, 1936) described caste as a 'graded inequality', and the factors behind exploitation are interlinked.
Ideological factor: the ideology of purity and pollution, analysed by Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, 1966), places SCs at the bottom and associates them with polluting work such as scavenging, leather work and removing carcasses; this stigma justifies segregation and denial of temple, water and housing access.
Economic factor: historical denial of land rights made most SCs landless agricultural labourers dependent on landowners; the jajmani system, described by W.H. Wiser (1936), bound them to patrons, and bonded labour persisted until the 1976 Act; today they are concentrated in informal, low-paid work, including about 58,000 manual scavengers identified in a 2018 survey.
Educational factor: exclusion from learning for centuries and continuing discrimination in schools limit mobility; despite progress, SC literacy (66.1% in 2011) remains below the national average.
Social factor: endogamy and village segregation into separate hamlets keep SCs socially isolated; social boycott punishes defiance; Dalit women face caste, class and gender oppression together, including sexual violence.
Political and institutional factor: dominant castes control panchayats, police and local administration; low conviction rates under the Prevention of Atrocities Act weaken deterrence.
Modern factors: privatisation reduces reserved employment, and labour-market discrimination continues, as Thorat and Attewell's 2007 study of job applications showed.
These factors can be countered by land redistribution, quality education, strict enforcement of the 1955 and 1989 Acts, Dalit political mobilisation and social reform against untouchability; anthropology shows that legal measures succeed only when the ideology of hierarchy itself is challenged.Q7(b) · Religion and Tribes; Tribe and Nation State · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Impact of Religions on Tribal Societies
Discuss the impact of Islam on scheduled tribes of India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में अनुसूचित जनजातियों पर इस्लाम के प्रभाव की विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(b)
Approach: Identify the Muslim Scheduled Tribes and the routes of contact with Islam, then discuss the impact on religion, family and law, economy and status, with examples such as Lakshadweep, Gujjar-Bakarwal, Ladakhi Shia tribes and Siddis.
Islam's influence on Indian tribes is narrower than that of Hinduism or Christianity, but significant in particular regions. It spread through maritime trade on the west coast, Central Asian and Sufi contact in the north, and the medieval Sultanates and Mughal states in central India.
Muslim tribes: the islanders of Lakshadweep, almost wholly Muslim and Scheduled Tribe; the Gujjar and Bakarwal pastoralists of Jammu and Kashmir (STs since 1991); the Shia Balti and Purigpa of Kargil in Ladakh; the Muslim Tadvi Bhils of Khandesh; and many Siddis of Gujarat, a community of African descent.
Religious impact: Islam replaced animistic worship with monotheism, the mosque and Islamic festivals, but saint veneration at Sufi shrines and local customs persisted, an example of syncretism.
Family and law: Islamic law blended with custom; Leela Dube (Matriliny and Islam, 1969) showed that Lakshadweep islanders kept matrilineal descent and taravad property alongside Islamic inheritance for self-acquired property.
Economy and stratification: Lakshadweep society was ranked into Koya, Malmi and Melacheri strata, showing caste-like ranking within Islam; Gujjar-Bakarwal transhumance continues but faces forest restrictions.
Historical contact: the Gond kingdoms interacted with Mughal power, as when Rani Durgavati of Garha-Mandla fought the Mughals (1564).
Muslim tribes often face a double minority position, religious and tribal, so their inclusion in welfare and FRA rights for pastoralists remain important issues.Q7(c) · Weaker Sections, Ethnicity and Tribal Change · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Social Change in Contemporary Tribal Societies
Describe how various tribal development programmes and plans have impacted the process of social transformation among tribes.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
जनजातियों के सामाजिक रूपान्तरण प्रक्रम को विविध जनजाति विकास कार्यक्रमों एवं योजनाओं ने किस प्रकार प्रभावित किया, वर्णन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(c)
Approach: Outline the main phases of tribal development planning, then describe how they have transformed tribal economy, society, polity and culture, giving both positive and negative effects and a conclusion.
Planned tribal development moved from Community Development (1952) and Special Multipurpose Tribal Blocks (1954) to the Tribal Sub-Plan with Integrated Tribal Development Projects (1974 to 1975), PVTG programmes, PESA (1996), the Forest Rights Act (2006), PM-JANMAN (2023) and the Dharti Aaba Abhiyan (2024).
Economic transformation: roads, irrigation, credit and markets shifted many tribes from shifting cultivation and gathering to settled farming, cash crops (Araku coffee in Andhra Pradesh) and wage work; LAMPS and TRIFED (1987) reduced dependence on traders, but large projects also caused displacement.
Social transformation: schools, ashram schools and scholarships raised ST literacy from 8.53% (1961) to 58.96% (2011) and created a salaried tribal middle class; at the same time internal stratification grew, as benefits went to better-off households and advanced tribes.
Political transformation: reserved seats, panchayats and PESA gram sabhas created new leaders, sometimes in tension with traditional heads, as in the Pathalgadi movement (2017 to 2018), where villages used PESA to assert autonomy.
Cultural effects: exposure to the mainstream brought Hindi, new consumption and decline of dormitories and some rituals, but also revival of languages and scripts such as Ol Chiki.
Programmes thus produced uneven transformation, with progress in infrastructure and education but limited control by tribals over their own development, which the Xaxa Committee (2014) also stressed.
Question 8 (50 marks)
Q8(a) · Weaker Sections, Ethnicity and Tribal Change · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Exploitation of SCs, STs and OBCs and Constitutional Safeguards
Write in detail various provisions provided by the Constitution of India for the scheduled tribes under Vth and VIth Schedules.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत के संविधान में पाँचवीं तथा छठी अनुसूची के तहत अनुसूचित जनजातियों के लिए प्रदान किए गए विभिन्न प्रावधानों का विस्तार से वर्णन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(a)
Approach: Write in detail on the Fifth Schedule (scheduled areas, Governor, Tribes Advisory Council, regulations) and the Sixth Schedule (district and regional councils, powers, finances), then compare briefly and assess.
Article 244 provides two models of tribal area administration, shaped in the Constituent Assembly by the A.V. Thakkar sub-committee (Fifth Schedule) and the Gopinath Bordoloi sub-committee (Sixth Schedule).
Fifth Schedule, Scheduled Areas: the President declares Scheduled Areas by order (criteria: preponderance of tribal population, compactness, under-development and economic disparity); they now lie in ten states, covering 97 districts.
Governor and Tribes Advisory Council: the Governor may direct that any Act of Parliament or the state shall not apply, or shall apply with modifications, and may make regulations for peace and good government, in particular to prohibit or restrict transfer of land by or among STs, regulate allotment of land and regulate moneylending; regulations need the President's assent and prior consultation with the Tribes Advisory Council (up to 20 members, three-fourths ST MLAs); the Governor reports annually to the President.
Sixth Schedule, councils: tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram are divided into ten Autonomous District Councils, each with up to 30 members (26 elected, four nominated), and may have regional councils.
Powers: legislative powers over land, non-reserved forests, jhum cultivation, village administration, inheritance, marriage and social customs (with the Governor's assent); judicial powers through village councils and courts; executive powers over primary schools, markets and roads; and financial powers to collect land revenue and certain taxes, with a District Fund and grants under Article 275(1).
Assessment: both face problems: Governors rarely use their regulation-making powers and TACs meet irregularly; district councils suffer from weak finances and conflict with state governments. The 125th Amendment Bill (2019) to strengthen councils is pending.
Effective use of the Governor's powers, PESA-style village democracy and fiscal strengthening of district councils would realise the Constitution's promise of self-rule.Q8(b) · Religion and Tribes; Tribe and Nation State · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Impact of Religions on Tribal Societies
Critically examine the role of NGOs and missionaries in transformation of scheduled tribes in Central India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मध्य भारत की अनुसूचित जनजातियों के रूपान्तरण में एन० जी० ओ० तथा धर्मप्रचारकों की भूमिका का समालोचनात्मक परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(b)
Approach: Critically examine the roles of Christian missions, Hindu organisations and secular NGOs in transforming central Indian tribes (education, health, livelihood, rights, identity), weigh benefits against criticisms, and conclude.
Central India's tribal belt has been a field of intense work by missionaries and voluntary organisations, filling gaps left by the state.
Christian missions: the Gossner Mission (1845) and the Jesuits (from 1885) built schools, colleges and hospitals, helped Munda and Oraon cultivators against landlords, and produced a tribal elite; but they were accused of using services for conversion, and the Niyogi Committee (1956) led to anti-conversion laws in Odisha (1967) and Madhya Pradesh (1968).
Hindu organisations: the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (1952) and the Ramakrishna Mission at Narainpur in Abujhmarh run schools, hostels and health centres; critics see a project of Hinduisation and 'ghar wapsi' that sharpens Christian-Sarna and Hindu-Christian tensions.
Secular NGOs: PRADAN (1983) built women's self-help groups and livelihoods in Jharkhand; Ekjut's women's groups cut newborn deaths (The Lancet, 2010); SEARCH in Gadchiroli and Jan Swasthya Sahyog in Bilaspur provide community health care; Ekta Parishad mobilised landless tribals for land rights.
Criticisms: competition for converts, dependence on foreign funds (tighter FCRA rules in 2020), urban leadership, weak accountability, and violence such as the murder of the missionary Graham Staines in Keonjhar (1999).
Assessment: both missionaries and NGOs have raised literacy, health and rights awareness and acted as brokers with the state, but religious agendas have also divided tribal communities.
Partnership with gram sabhas, transparency and respect for tribal choice should guide their future role.Q8(c) · Tribal Administration and Applied Anthropology · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Role of Anthropology in Tribal and Rural Development
Describe how anthropological knowledge and methods are useful in rural development.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
ग्रामीण विकास में नृविज्ञानी ज्ञान तथा प्रविधियाँ कैसे उपयोगी होती हैं, वर्णन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(c)
Approach: Describe what anthropological knowledge (concepts of village social structure, culture and change) and methods (fieldwork, participatory tools) contribute to rural development, with Indian examples.
Rural development aims to improve livelihoods, services and participation in villages. Anthropology contributes both knowledge about village society and methods for working within it.
Knowledge of social structure: village studies by M.N. Srinivas (dominant caste), S.C. Dube (Indian Village, 1955) and others show how caste, faction, kinship and gender decide who gains from programmes; Dube's evaluation of Community Development (1958) found benefits captured by richer and upper-caste farmers.
Knowledge of culture and change: George Foster (1962) identified cultural barriers, such as beliefs and status concerns, and stimulants to innovation; studies of hot-cold food beliefs guide nutrition messages; research on purity and pollution informs sanitation campaigns under the Swachh Bharat Mission.
Methods: participant observation and key informants reveal hidden practices; genealogies trace land and kinship networks; case studies explain success and failure; participatory rural appraisal (Robert Chambers), with village mapping, seasonal calendars and wealth ranking, lets villagers plan; focus groups capture women's voices.
Applications: social audits under MGNREGA, self-help group design, watershed planning, panchayat training and evaluation of housing and drinking-water schemes.
Anthropology thus makes rural development culturally appropriate, equitable and participatory, provided planners use it from the design stage.