UPSC Mains 2025 Anthropology Optional Question Papers with Model Answers
All 56 questions of the 2025 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 2025 Anthropology Paper I
Question 1 (50 marks)
Q1(a) · Human Genetics: Methods, Inheritance and Chromosomes · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Mendelian Genetics and Patterns of Inheritance in Man
Mendelian and non-Mendelian traits.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मेंडलीय तथा गैर-मेंडलीय तत्त्व ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(a)
Approach: Define both, give human examples of Mendelian traits and of each kind of non-Mendelian inheritance, and conclude on their relationship.
Mendelian traits are controlled by a single gene with clearly distinct alleles and segregate in predictable ratios following Mendel’s laws of segregation and independent assortment. Examples include ABO blood groups, PTC tasting ability, albinism, sickle-cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis and Huntington disease. Pedigrees show clear dominant, recessive or X-linked patterns.
Non-Mendelian traits do not follow simple ratios. They include: (i) polygenic and multifactorial traits such as stature, skin colour and diabetes, showing continuous variation; (ii) mitochondrial inheritance through the mother, as in Leber hereditary optic neuropathy; (iii) genomic imprinting, where expression depends on the parent of origin, as in Prader-Willi and Angelman syndromes.
(iv) anticipation through expanding trinucleotide repeats, as in fragile X and myotonic dystrophy; (v) linkage, which breaks independent assortment; (vi) incomplete penetrance and variable expressivity.
Most common human traits are non-Mendelian, but they still rest on Mendelian genes acting together and with the environment.Q1(b) · Kinship · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Kinship Terminology, Filiation, Descent and Alliance
Theoretical significance of Purum kinship-system.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पुरुम नातेदारी प्रणाली का सैद्धान्तिक महत्त्व ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(b)
Approach: Describe the Purum (T.C. Das) and explain why Needham's reanalysis made them a test case of Lévi-Strauss's generalized exchange, with the Homans-Schneider and Ackerman debate.
The Purum, a small Old Kuki group of Manipur, were described by T.C. Das (The Purums: An Old Kuki Tribe of Manipur, 1945) as having exogamous patrilineal sibs divided into lineages, with a preference for marriage with the mother's brother's daughter.
Rodney Needham (1958) reanalysed Das's data as a case of asymmetric prescriptive alliance, Lévi-Strauss's generalized exchange: lineages stand in fixed wife-giver and wife-taker relations, women flow one way, and terminology and symbolic classification follow this order.
The Purum thus became central to the debate with Homans and Schneider (1955), who explained the matrilateral preference by sentiment towards the mother's brother; Needham's Structure and Sentiment (1962) defended the structural explanation.
Charles Ackerman (1964) showed that a number of recorded Purum marriages broke the asymmetric rule, sharpening the question of prescription versus preference.
Like Leach's Kachin, the Purum made Indian ethnography a test of alliance theory and of the gap between models and practice.Q1(c) · Fossil Hominids · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Australopithecines and Plio-Pleistocene Hominids
Osteodontokeratik culture and its makers.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
अस्थिदंतशृंग संस्कृति और इसके निर्माता ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(c)
Approach: A short note: define the osteodontokeratic culture, give Dart's evidence from Makapansgat, then the taphonomic critique of C.K. Brain and the present view of its makers.
The osteodontokeratic culture (bone, tooth and horn) is the tool tradition Raymond Dart attributed to Australopithecus africanus, set out in his 1957 monograph on the Makapansgat Limeworks cave.
Dart's evidence: among thousands of animal bones there, antelope jaws, horn cores and limb ends were over-represented; he read jaws as cutting tools, horns as daggers and humerus ends as clubs, and linked depressed fractures on baboon skulls to blows from such clubs.
Its makers: for Dart the australopiths were hunting, killer apes, an image Robert Ardrey popularised in African Genesis (1961).
Critique: C.K. Brain's taphonomic work, The Hunters or the Hunted? (1981), showed that the bone selection matched the leftovers of leopards, hyenas and porcupines; a Swartkrans child's skull bears punctures matching a leopard's canines, so australopiths were often the prey.
The culture is now rejected as a hunting kit, though worn bone tools from Swartkrans, used to dig termite mounds by Paranthropus robustus or early Homo, show that some bone use occurred.Q1(d) · Primates · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Primate Adaptation, Behaviour and Fossil Primates
Smell as a signal among non-human primates.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
गैर-मानव प्राइमेट्स में संकेतक रूप में गंध ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(d)
Approach: A short note: explain why smell matters more in some primates, the anatomy involved, and the uses of olfactory signals (territory, reproduction, rank, recognition) with named species, and conclude on the trend of reduced smell.
Although reduced reliance on smell is a primate trend, olfactory communication remains important, especially in nocturnal strepsirhines and New World monkeys, which have a moist rhinarium, a larger olfactory area and a functional vomeronasal organ for detecting chemical signals.
Territory and identity: ring-tailed lemurs rub secretions from wrist and shoulder glands on branches, and males waft scented tails at rivals in so-called stink fights. Lorises and galagos practise urine washing.
Reproduction and rank: in marmosets and tamarins, scent from the dominant female helps suppress ovulation in subordinates; males of many species sniff and lick female genitals or urine to judge oestrus. The mandrill's sternal gland signals male rank.
Recognition: mothers and infants identify each other partly by smell.
In Old World monkeys, apes and humans, which are diurnal, vision and colour signals, such as the swollen sexual skin of chimpanzee females, largely replaced smell, and many olfactory receptor genes became non-functional. Smell signals thus show the shift from an olfactory to a visual world in primate evolution.Q1(e) · Culture and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Concept and Characteristics of Culture and Civilization
Culture and embodiment.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
संस्कृति तथा अवतारणा ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(e)
Approach: A short note: define embodiment, trace it through Mauss, Bourdieu and Csordas, give Indian and world examples of culture written on the body, and conclude on its value.
Embodiment is the idea that culture is not only in ideas and symbols but is lived and carried in the body: in posture, gesture, skills, perception and health.
Marcel Mauss, in his lecture on techniques of the body (1934, published 1935), showed that walking, swimming, sleeping or giving birth are learned differently in each society; Pierre Bourdieu's habitus (1977) described durable dispositions inscribed in the body by social position.
Thomas Csordas (1990), drawing on Merleau-Ponty, proposed embodiment as a paradigm in which the body is the existential ground of culture; Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) separated the individual body, the social body and the body politic.
Examples: squatting, eating with the right hand and touching elders' feet in India; purity and pollution rules that regulate bodily contact under caste; godna tattoos of Baiga and Gond women as marks of identity; disciplined bodies of soldiers and dancers.
Embodiment thus closes the gap between mind and body, and explains why cultural change is slow: habits learned through the body persist even when beliefs change.
Question 2 (50 marks)
Q2(a) · Primates · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Primate Adaptation, Behaviour and Fossil Primates
Discuss the Miocene hominoid remains and their significance in evolution.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
उद्विकास में मध्य नूतन कालीन होमोनोइड अवशेषों तथा उनके महत्त्व की विवेचना कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(a)
Approach: Set the Miocene as the age of apes, describe the main hominoid fossils region by region (Africa, Europe, Asia with the Siwaliks) with dates and features, discuss the Ramapithecus revision, and assess their significance for ape and human origins; a time chart helps.
The Miocene epoch (about 23 to 5.3 million years ago) is called the age of apes: dozens of hominoid genera spread across Africa, Europe and Asia before most became extinct as climates cooled and Old World monkeys spread.
Early Miocene Africa: Proconsul of Kenya (about 23 to 17 million years; skull found by Mary Leakey on Rusinga Island, 1948) had ape-like teeth and no tail but a monkey-like, quadrupedal body, so it sits near the base of the hominoids. Morotopithecus of Uganda may show early suspensory traits (its date is debated), and Afropithecus and Kenyapithecus (Fort Ternan, about 14 million years) had thick enamel for hard foods.
Middle and late Miocene Europe: Dryopithecus (about 12 to 9 million years), after which the Y-5 molar pattern is named, showed suspensory adaptations; Pierolapithecus of Spain (about 12 million years) had an upright trunk.
Asia and the Siwaliks: Sivapithecus (about 12.5 to 8.5 million years) of India and Pakistan has an orangutan-like face (GSP 15000, described by Pilbeam in 1982). Ramapithecus, described by G.E. Lewis in the 1930s, was once claimed by Simons and Pilbeam as the first hominid because of its small canines and thick enamel; fuller finds and molecular dating of the human-ape split (Sarich and Wilson, 1967) showed it to be a female or variant of Sivapithecus.
Diagram: a time chart from 23 to 5 million years placing Proconsul, Kenyapithecus, Dryopithecus, Sivapithecus and Sahelanthropus, with a branch to orangutans from Sivapithecus.
Significance: these fossils document the origin of the hominoid body plan, the Asian line leading to orangutans and the African background from which the gorilla, chimpanzee and human lineages split. The Ramapithecus episode shows how molecular evidence corrected fossil interpretation. Late Miocene Sahelanthropus (about 7 to 6 million years) and Orrorin mark the start of the hominins.Q2(b) · Anthropological Theories · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Culture and Personality, Neo-evolutionism and Later Theories
Compare and contrast the symbolic approaches of Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner to understand culture.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
संस्कृति को समझने में क्लीफोर्ड गर्टज़ तथा विक्टर टर्नर के प्रतिकात्मक दृष्टिकोणों की तुलना तथा भेद स्पष्ट कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(b)
Approach: Introduce symbolic anthropology, set out Geertz’s semiotic-interpretive and Turner’s processual approaches with their ethnographies, then compare them point by point and conclude.
Symbolic anthropology, which rose in the 1960s, treats culture as a system of symbols and meanings rather than of functions or adaptations. Its two leading figures, Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner, shared this premise but differed in emphasis.
Geertz: in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), following Weber, culture is webs of significance, public and shared, to be read like a text through thick description. Religion is a system of symbols that acts as a model of and a model for reality. His Balinese cockfight and studies of Javanese religion show how symbols express a whole ethos.
Turner: working among the Ndembu of Zambia (The Forest of Symbols, 1967; The Ritual Process, 1969), he saw symbols as operators in social process. Dominant symbols such as the milk tree are multivocal, with sensory and ideological poles. Building on van Gennep, he analysed liminality and communitas in rites of passage, and social dramas in village conflicts.
Contrasts: Geertz asks what symbols mean, Turner what they do; Geertz reads culture as text, Turner as performance and process; Geertz stays with meaning, Turner links symbols to conflict and change; Geertz draws on hermeneutics, Turner on British structural-functionalism of the Manchester school.
Both were criticised for neglecting power and history, but together they shaped the study of ritual, pilgrimage (Turner on Indian and Christian pilgrimage) and performance.Q2(c) · Ecological Anthropology, Epidemiology and Human Growth · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Ecological Anthropology and Bio-cultural Adaptation
How political economy is integrated with ecological and adaptability perspectives in bio-cultural anthropology ?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
जैव-सांस्कृतिक नृविज्ञान में राजनीतिक अर्थव्यवस्था को पारिस्थितिकी एवं अनुकूलनशीलता से कैसे एकीकृत किया जाता है ?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(c)
Approach: Explain the ecological and adaptability perspectives, the critique that led to integrating political economy (the new biocultural synthesis), and show with world and Indian examples how inequality shapes biological stress and adaptation.
Bio-cultural anthropology studies how biology and culture interact in human adaptation. The earlier adaptability approach, such as the International Biological Programme studies of the 1960s and 1970s and Paul Baker’s work on Andean highlanders, treated populations as adapting to natural stresses like hypoxia, cold and heat.
Critique: critics argued that this ecological view treated communities as closed systems and ignored how power, markets, colonialism and the state decide who is exposed to stress. Alan Goodman and Thomas Leatherman (Building a New Biocultural Synthesis, 1998) therefore called for integrating political economy, asking how inequality produces biological outcomes.
Integration: stresses are seen as socially distributed. Leatherman’s work in southern Peru showed that illness and undernutrition among highland farmers stemmed as much from land loss and labour migration as from altitude. Nancy Krieger’s idea of embodiment and Paul Farmer’s structural violence explain how social disadvantage becomes biological.
India: high stunting among Scheduled Tribe children, the deaths of Korku children in Melghat, and poor health of displaced Adivasi communities reflect forest loss, displacement and weak services, not only ecology or genes.
This synthesis keeps the biological rigour of adaptability studies while adding history and power, making bio-cultural anthropology useful for policy.
Question 3 (50 marks)
Q3(a) · Ecological Anthropology, Epidemiology and Human Growth · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Epidemiological Anthropology
How anthropologists assess the nutritional status of a community ? Discuss the significance of intersectionality of ecology, culture, and social inequality in the study of nutritional anthropology.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मानवशास्त्री किसी समुदाय की पोषण स्थिति का मूल्यांकन कैसे करते हैं ? पोषण मानव विज्ञान के अध्ययन में पारिस्थितिकी, संस्कृति तथा सामाजिक असमानता की प्रतिच्छेदनीयता के महत्त्व की विवेचना कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(a)
Approach: Two parts: first the methods of nutritional assessment (anthropometric, biochemical, clinical, dietary, plus ecological and household measures) with Indian data, then explain intersectionality of ecology, culture and inequality in nutritional anthropology with examples, and conclude.
Anthropologists assess the nutritional status of a community by combining standard biomedical methods, often summarised as the ABCD of assessment, with ethnographic study of food systems.
Anthropometry: weight and height compared with WHO Child Growth Standards (2006) give stunting (low height-for-age, chronic undernutrition), wasting (low weight-for-height, acute) and underweight; mid-upper arm circumference screens severe acute malnutrition; body mass index and skinfolds assess adults. NFHS-5 (2019–21) found 35.5 per cent of Indian children under five stunted and 19.3 per cent wasted, with higher levels among Scheduled Tribes. Biochemical tests measure haemoglobin, serum proteins and micronutrients; clinical signs include Bitot’s spots, goitre and oedema; dietary methods include 24-hour recall, food frequency questionnaires and weighed intake, with seasonal repetition.
Ethnographic additions: household food security, food taboos, intra-household distribution, seasonal calendars of food availability and market access.
Intersectionality: the term, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) for overlapping axes of disadvantage, helps explain why undernutrition clusters. Ecology sets the seasonal hunger gap before harvest, forest loss reduces wild foods, and malaria or diarrhoea drain nutrients. Culture shapes food taboos during pregnancy, the practice of women eating last, and weaning practices. Social inequality of caste, class, gender and displacement limits land and income: child deaths among the Korku of Melghat and anaemia among Adivasi women arise where all three intersect.
Thus nutritional anthropology moves beyond measuring bodies to explaining why particular groups are malnourished, guiding programmes such as ICDS, POSHAN Abhiyaan (2018) and the revival of millets in tribal diets.Q3(b) · Culture and Society · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Concept and Characteristics of Culture and Civilization
Critically examine the drawbacks in assuming culture as an 'integrated-closed' system in understanding of contemporary society.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समकालीन समाज को समझने में संस्कृति को एक 'एकीकृत-बंद' प्रणाली के रूप में मानने की कमियों की समालोचनात्मक जांच कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(b)
Approach: "Critically examine" the integrated-closed model: state where it came from and its merits, then its drawbacks for contemporary society (change, conflict, boundaries, global flows) with ethnographic critiques, and conclude with a better model.
The integrated-closed view treats a culture as a bounded, internally consistent whole, an idea rooted in Malinowski's functionalism, Radcliffe-Brown's equilibrium and Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934); it suited intensive fieldwork on small, apparently isolated societies such as the Trobriand Islanders or the Todas.
Neglect of change and conflict: Edmund Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954) showed Kachin communities oscillating between hierarchical gumsa and egalitarian gumlao forms, so a society need not be in equilibrium.
False boundaries: Fredrik Barth (1969) showed that ethnic groups persist through boundaries maintained amid flows of people; Eric Wolf (1982) criticised treating cultures as separate billiard balls and showed their links through trade and colonialism.
Global flows: Arjun Appadurai (1996) described ethnoscapes, mediascapes and other flows that cross borders; Indian tribal migrants, diasporas and digital media make cultures open and hybrid.
Internal diversity: Lila Abu-Lughod's 'Writing against culture' (1991) argued that the closed concept hides gender, class and individual dissent; in India, Sanskritization and the tribe-caste continuum show constant exchange.
Thus the model is useful as a heuristic for showing interconnections, but contemporary societies are better understood as open, contested and changing networks of meaning.Q3(c) · Culture, Communication and Research Methods · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Tools of Data Collection and Analysis
Differentiate between pedigree and genealogical analyses. Discuss the history and application of these methods in anthropological studies.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पेडीग्री तथा जीनिआलाजी विश्लेषणों के बीच अन्तर स्पष्ट कीजिए । इनके इतिहास तथा मानवशास्त्रीय अध्ययनों में इनकी उपयोगिता की विवेचना कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(c)
Approach: First distinguish the two (purpose, discipline, data, symbols), then trace the history of each and their applications in social and biological anthropology, with a pedigree diagram.
Both methods record relationships across generations, but they serve different ends. The genealogical method of social anthropology collects a person’s full network of kin, with names, kin terms, marriages, residence and clan, to understand social organisation. Pedigree analysis in human genetics traces the occurrence of a particular trait or disease through a family to infer its mode of inheritance.
Differences: genealogy is social and records all relatives and how they are addressed; a pedigree is biological, focuses on the proband and affected individuals, uses standard symbols (square male, circle female, shaded affected, half-shaded carrier) and is analysed for autosomal dominant, recessive or X-linked patterns.
History: Francis Galton studied family pedigrees of talent (Hereditary Genius, 1869); Archibald Garrod linked alkaptonuria to consanguineous marriages (1902), and the haemophilia pedigree of Queen Victoria’s descendants became a classic. W.H.R. Rivers developed the genealogical method on the Torres Strait expedition (1898), used it in The Todas (1906) and formalised it in 1910.
Applications: genealogies reveal marriage rules, exogamy, cross-cousin and uncle-niece marriage in South India, descent and inheritance, migration and demographic data. Pedigrees are used in genetic counselling and in studies of sickle-cell disease and thalassaemia among tribal communities of central India and of the effects of consanguinity.
Diagram: a three-generation pedigree with standard symbols showing an autosomal recessive trait appearing in children of a first-cousin marriage (double line).
The two methods converge in population genetics, where social genealogies help calculate inbreeding coefficients.
Question 4 (50 marks)
Q4(a) · Foundations of Anthropology · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Relationship with Other Disciplines
Anthropology provides a multidimensional understanding of human beings by bridging the gap between science and humanities. Elucidate.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विज्ञान तथा मानविकी की बीच की दूरी को पाटकर मानवविज्ञान मानव अध्ययन को बहुआयामी समझ प्रदान करता है । स्पष्ट कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(a)
Approach: Show anthropology's dual character: its scientific side (biological and archaeological anthropology, methods) and its humanistic side (interpretation, language, art, history), with examples of how it bridges the two, and conclude on its multidimensional view.
A.L. Kroeber called anthropology the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities. Studying humans as both biological organisms and makers of meaning, it bridges the natural sciences and the humanities.
Scientific side: biological anthropology uses genetics, anatomy and evolutionary theory, studying fossils such as the Taung child and Lucy, blood groups, the sickle-cell gene and human adaptation to altitude. Archaeology uses geology and physics, for example radiocarbon and potassium-argon dating, and statistics. Radcliffe-Brown saw social anthropology as a natural science of society that seeks general laws by comparison.
Humanistic side: Evans-Pritchard (1950) argued that social anthropology is closer to history because it interprets. Geertz treated culture as a web of meanings and ethnography as thick description, as in the Balinese cockfight. Linguistic anthropology studies myth, oral literature and speech, and the anthropology of art studies tribal painting such as Warli and Gond art.
The bridge: the biocultural approach links the two: lactase persistence spread where dairy herding was practised, and kuru among the Fore of Papua New Guinea was traced to mortuary cannibalism, joining medicine and ritual. Medical anthropology joins clinical science with local beliefs about illness, and ethnohistory joins oral tradition with archives.
Methods: anthropology combines measurement, sampling and laboratory analysis with participant observation, life histories and the emic view, so quantitative and qualitative data check each other.
Debates remain between scientific and interpretive camps, and specialisation sometimes divides the fields. Yet problems such as health, migration and climate adaptation need both, and anthropology's ability to hold biology and meaning together gives it its multidimensional understanding of human beings.Q4(b) · Prehistoric Archaeology · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Cultures
Write a note on Mousterian tool tradition, Mousterian culture and its makers.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मुस्तारी औजार परम्परा, मुस्तारी संस्कृति तथा इसके निर्माताओं पर टिप्पणी लिखिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)
Approach: Treat the three parts in order: the tool tradition (technique and types), the wider culture (subsistence, fire, burial, symbolism) and its makers (Neanderthals and early modern humans), with the Bordes–Binford debate; sketch a Levallois core and flake.
The Mousterian, named by Gabriel de Mortillet after Le Moustier in the Dordogne, France, is the main Middle Palaeolithic industry of Europe, West Asia and North Africa, from about 300,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Tool tradition: a flake industry, often using the Levallois prepared-core technique, in which a core is shaped so that a flake of planned form can be struck off. Typical tools are side scrapers, points, denticulates and small handaxes. François Bordes listed about 60 types and grouped assemblages into facies: Typical, Charentian (Quina and Ferrassie), Denticulate and Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition.
Culture: people hunted large game, controlled fire, hafted points with birch-bark tar, used pigments, and buried some of their dead, as at La Chapelle-aux-Saints and Shanidar; the healed injuries of Shanidar 1 suggest care for the disabled. The Shanidar flower burial and Neanderthal cave art remain debated.
Makers: in Europe, the Neanderthals; in the Levant, both Neanderthals (Kebara, Tabun) and early modern humans (Skhul, Qafzeh) made Mousterian tools, so the industry is not tied to one species.
Diagram: a Levallois core in plan and section with the preferential flake beside it.
Bordes saw his facies as different cultural groups, while Lewis Binford argued they reflected different activities; others stressed resharpening. India's equivalent is the Nevasian flake industry named by H.D. Sankalia. The Mousterian thus shows planning and a degree of social complexity before the Upper Palaeolithic.Q4(c) · Religion · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Religion, Magic and Science; Magico-religious Functionaries
Critically examine James Frazer's theory of evolutionism. Elucidate the place of religion in modernity.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
जेम्स फ्रेज़र के उद्विकास के सिद्धान्त का समालोचनात्मक परीक्षण कीजिए । आधुनिकता में धर्म के स्थान को स्पष्ट कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(c)
Approach: Two parts: state and critically examine Frazer's evolutionary scheme (magic, religion, science; sympathetic magic) with criticisms; then elucidate religion's place in modernity through the secularisation debate and its revival, with Indian examples.
Frazer's scheme: in The Golden Bough (1890) James Frazer argued that human thought passed through three stages: magic, religion and science. Magic rests on the laws of similarity (homeopathic) and contact (contagious); he called it a false science and an abortive art. When magic failed, people turned to religion, the propitiation of superior powers, and finally science returned to magic's faith in natural order, now tested by experiment.
Critique: Frazer worked from travellers' reports, an armchair method Evans-Pritchard (1965) mocked. Malinowski showed that Trobrianders use practical knowledge and magic together, applying magic only in uncertain open-sea fishing, so the stages coexist. Magic and religion are found side by side everywhere, and Lang and Schmidt found high gods among simple foragers. The scheme is ethnocentric, placing Western science at the top.
Religion in modernity: Weber spoke of the disenchantment of the world, and the secularisation thesis predicted religion's decline with science and urbanisation, which partly holds in Western Europe.
Yet Peter Berger later spoke of desecularisation (1999), and José Casanova (1994) of public religions: religion has revived in politics, identity, new movements, digital worship and healing. In India pilgrimage at the Kumbh Mela, Sanskritisation, the Sarna movement and the coexistence of science and ritual, as with ojhas consulted alongside hospitals, show religion adapting rather than disappearing.
Frazer's sequence has thus failed as history; modernity has transformed religion, not replaced it.
Question 5 (50 marks)
Q5(a) · Culture, Communication and Research Methods · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Fieldwork Tradition, Technique, Method and Methodology
Multispecies, Multi-sited and Critical Ethnography.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
बहुजातीय, बहुस्थानीय तथा आलोचनात्मक नृजाति वर्णन ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(a)
Approach: Define each of the three newer forms of ethnography with its originator and an example, and end with their common significance.
Since the 1990s ethnography has moved beyond the single bounded village and the human actor. Three newer forms illustrate this shift.
Multispecies ethnography, named by Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich (2010) and influenced by Donna Haraway, studies how humans live entangled with animals, plants, microbes and fungi. Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World (2015) followed matsutake mushrooms; Radhika Govindrajan’s Animal Intimacies (2018) studied human-animal relations in the Kumaon Himalaya.
Multi-sited ethnography, proposed by George Marcus (1995), follows people, things, metaphors, stories or conflicts across several locations linked by global processes, as Xiang Biao did with Indian IT workers moving between Hyderabad and Australia.
Critical ethnography, associated with Jim Thomas (1993) and D. Soyini Madison (2005), studies culture in order to expose power, inequality and injustice and to support emancipation, as in studies of displacement by dams or mining.
Together they widen the field, but raise issues of depth and the researcher’s position.Q5(b) · Reproductive Biology, Demography and Applied Anthropology · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Menarche, Menopause and Fertility Patterns
Evolutionary significance of menopause.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
रजोनिवृत्ति का उद्विकासीय महत्त्व ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(b)
Approach: A short note on why menopause evolved. Define it, then present the adaptive hypotheses (mother, grandmother) against the non-adaptive by-product view, with evidence.
Menopause is the permanent end of menstruation after depletion of ovarian follicles, at about 50 years; women then live decades after reproduction, a pattern otherwise known only in some toothed whales such as killer whales and short-finned pilot whales.
Mother hypothesis: George Williams (1957) argued that stopping early lets an older mother avoid the rising risks of late childbirth and survive to raise the children she already has, since human infants depend on care for many years.
Grandmother hypothesis: Kristen Hawkes and colleagues (1998), working among the Hadza of Tanzania, showed that post-reproductive women dig tubers that feed weaned grandchildren, raising their daughters' fertility and kin survival; a related idea is reproductive conflict between generations (Cant and Johnstone, 2008).
Non-adaptive view: menopause may be a by-product of a fixed stock of eggs combined with a recent rise in life expectancy; critics reply that hunter-gatherers who survive childhood often reach their sixties.
The debate is open, but most anthropologists link menopause to intergenerational care, a hallmark of human life history.Q5(c) · Prehistoric Archaeology · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Principles of Prehistoric Archaeology and Dating Methods
Fission track dating method and its applications.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विखंडन ट्रैक कालनिर्धारण प्रविधि एवं इसकी उपयोगिता ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(c)
Approach: State the principle (spontaneous fission of uranium-238 and track counting), materials and range, then list applications with examples and note limitations.
Fission track dating is a radiometric method developed in the 1960s by R.L. Fleischer, P.B. Price and R.M. Walker. It dates minerals and glasses that contain traces of uranium.
Principle: uranium-238 splits spontaneously at a constant, known rate, and the heavy fragments tear microscopic damage trails (fission tracks) through the crystal. After etching with acid, the tracks are counted under a microscope. Track density depends on age and uranium content, which is measured by neutron irradiation. Heating erases old tracks, so the clock starts at the last cooling, as at an eruption.
Materials and range: zircon, apatite, mica, volcanic glass and obsidian; from tens of thousands to billions of years.
Applications: Fleischer and colleagues dated pumice from Olduvai Bed I to about 2 million years (1965), confirming the potassium-argon age of early hominins. It cross-checks East African tuffs, dates heated obsidian artefacts and traces the thermal history.
Limitations: young or uranium-poor samples have few tracks, and partial heating erases tracks, so it is best used with other methods.Q5(d) · Fossil Hominids · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Neanderthal Man, Rhodesian Man and Homo sapiens
Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सूत्रकणिकीय डीएनए तथा मानव उद्विकास ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(d)
Approach: A short note: why mtDNA suits evolutionary study, the 1987 mitochondrial Eve study and its critique, what ancient mtDNA showed, and its limits.
Mitochondrial DNA is a small circular genome (about 16,569 base pairs) inherited only through the mother, without recombination and with a fast mutation rate, so it works as a molecular clock of maternal lines.
Mitochondrial Eve: Cann, Stoneking and Wilson (1987) compared mtDNA samples and found the deepest branches in Africans, tracing all lines to an African woman of about 200,000 years ago; she was not the only woman alive, only the one whose maternal line survives; its tree method was criticised, but later whole-mitogenome studies confirmed the African root.
Dispersal and ancient DNA: African haplogroups (L) contrast with M and N, carried out of Africa about 60,000 to 70,000 years ago; ancient M lineages of the Andaman Islanders support a coastal route (Thangaraj and colleagues, 2005); Neanderthal mtDNA (1997) lies outside modern variation.
Limits: it is a single maternal locus, so nuclear genomes later revealed about 1 to 2 percent Neanderthal ancestry in non-Africans that mtDNA had missed; it must be read with Y-chromosome and genomic data.Q5(e) · Ecological Anthropology, Epidemiology and Human Growth · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Human Growth, Development and Ageing
Foetal origin of adult diseases and contribution of David Barker.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
वयस्क रोगों की भ्रूण उत्पत्ति तथा डेविड बार्कर का योगदान ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(e)
Approach: State the foetal origins (Barker) hypothesis with its evidence, the thrifty phenotype and DOHaD, Indian findings, and the critique.
The foetal origins hypothesis, proposed by the British epidemiologist David Barker (1938–2013), holds that undernutrition and other stresses in the womb programme the body’s structure and metabolism, raising the risk of chronic disease in adult life.
Evidence: Barker and Osmond (1986) found that areas of England with high infant mortality in the early twentieth century later had high coronary heart disease; Barker’s Hertfordshire studies (1989) showed that men with low birth and infant weights had higher death rates from heart disease. People conceived during the Dutch Hunger Winter (1944–45) later showed more obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
With Nicholas Hales (1992) he proposed the thrifty phenotype: a poorly nourished foetus adapts for scarcity, but suffers when food becomes plentiful. The idea grew into the field of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD).
India: C.S. Yajnik’s Pune Maternal Nutrition Study described the thin-fat Indian baby, small but relatively fat, linked to later insulin resistance. Critics note confounding by socio-economic factors, but the hypothesis has reshaped maternal health policy.
Question 6 (50 marks)
Q6(a) · Population Genetics, Race and Human Variation · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Genetic Markers and Physiological Variation
What are genetic markers ? Discuss their applications in understanding population variation, disease association and forensics.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
आनुवंशिक मार्कर क्या होते हैं ? जनसंख्या भिन्नता, रोग संबंध और फोरेंसिक्स को समझने में उनके अनुप्रयोग पर चर्चा कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(a)
Approach: Define genetic markers and their essential properties, classify classical and molecular markers, then discuss applications in three blocks (population variation, disease association, forensics) with examples, and close with ethical cautions.
A genetic marker is a heritable, polymorphic character with a known mode of inheritance and chromosomal location, which can be reliably identified and used to trace individuals, families and populations. A good marker is simply inherited, polymorphic, environmentally stable and easily typed.
Types: classical markers include blood groups (ABO, Rh, MN, Duffy, Diego), serum proteins (haptoglobin, transferrin), red cell enzymes (G6PD, acid phosphatase), haemoglobin variants, HLA antigens and traits such as PTC tasting. Molecular markers include RFLPs, VNTRs (minisatellites), STRs (microsatellites), SNPs, mitochondrial DNA (maternal line) and Y-chromosome markers (paternal line).
Population variation: the Diego antigen is frequent in Mongoloid and Native American populations but nearly absent in Europeans; the Duffy-null allele is almost fixed in West Africa; mtDNA traced recent African origin (Cann and colleagues, 1987). In India, deep mtDNA lineages among the Andamanese and the Ancestral North and South Indian components (Reich and colleagues, 2009) revealed population history, and Y-haplogroup studies traced male-mediated migrations.
Disease association: HLA-B27 with ankylosing spondylitis; HLA-DQ2 with coeliac disease; blood group A with stomach cancer and O with duodenal ulcer (Aird and colleagues, 1953); HbS with malaria resistance; and GWAS SNPs mapping susceptibility to type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Forensics: DNA fingerprinting, developed by Alec Jeffreys (1984), first solved a double murder in England (the Colin Pitchfork case, 1988); today STR profiles at standard loci identify suspects, victims of disasters and parentage. In India Lalji Singh pioneered DNA fingerprinting at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, and the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics in Hyderabad performs forensic work.
Ethical cautions: informed consent from communities, privacy of DNA databases and avoidance of misuse in racial profiling must accompany these uses.Q6(b) · Foundations of Anthropology · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Main Branches of Anthropology
"The agenda of biological anthropology became more scientific from the middle of the twentieth century." Justify.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
"बीसवीं सदी के मध्य से शारीरिक मानव विज्ञान की कार्यसूची अधिक वैज्ञानिक बन गयी ।" पुष्टि कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(b)
Approach: Justify the statement by contrasting the older typological, anthropometric physical anthropology with the post-1950 evolutionary, genetic and population-based biological anthropology (Washburn 1951), with examples, and note continuing debates.
Until the 1940s physical anthropology was largely descriptive and typological: it measured skulls and bodies (anthropometry, the cephalic index) and sorted people into fixed racial types, as in H.H. Risley's use of the nasal index for Indian castes. Such work often served racist and colonial ends.
The turning point: after the modern synthesis of genetics and Darwinism (Dobzhansky, Mayr, Simpson), S.L. Washburn's paper 'The New Physical Anthropology' (1951) called for the study of evolutionary processes rather than classification. Populations, not types, became the unit of study.
Scientific agenda: population genetics (Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium, gene flow, drift), blood group and serological studies, and adaptation research, such as the sickle-cell gene and malaria (A.C. Allison, 1954) and high-altitude adaptation in Andeans and Tibetans. Primatology moved to field studies of living apes by Goodall, Fossey and Galdikas.
Molecular methods: from the 1980s mitochondrial DNA studies (Cann, Stoneking and Wilson, 1987) supported a recent African origin, and the Neanderthal genome (2010) revealed interbreeding.
Hence the discipline was renamed biological anthropology, with hypothesis testing, statistics and laboratory analysis, and UNESCO statements on race (from 1950) rejected biological race hierarchies.
Some description continues, and critics note that genetic ancestry studies can revive racial thinking, so the field now stresses ethics and a biocultural view. Overall, the statement is justified: since the mid-twentieth century the field has become an experimental, evolutionary science.Q6(c) · Culture, Communication and Research Methods · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Culture, Language and Communication
Describe briefly the theoretical perspectives in linguistic anthropology to explain the relationship of culture, language and thought.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
संस्कृति, भाषा तथा विचारों के संबंधों को समझने के लिए भाषाई मानवविज्ञान के सैद्धान्तिक दृष्टिकोणों का संक्षेप में वर्णन कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(c)
Approach: Briefly set out each major perspective on the culture-language-thought relationship (Boasian, Sapir-Whorf, structural, ethnoscience and universals, ethnography of speaking, neo-Whorfian), with one example each, and conclude.
Linguistic anthropology asks whether language merely reflects culture, shapes thought, or rests on universal mental capacities. Several perspectives have answered differently.
Boasian view: Boas held that language, race and culture vary independently, and that each language classifies experience in its own way, as the Inuit vocabulary of snow shows. Linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf): Sapir and especially Whorf argued that the grammar of a language shapes its speakers’ perception; Whorf claimed Hopi lacked English-like tenses and so conceived time differently, a claim later contested by Malotki (1983).
Structuralism: Lévi-Strauss, drawing on Saussure and Jakobson, saw language and culture as products of the same unconscious mind organised in binary oppositions.
Ethnoscience and universals: cognitive anthropologists (Goodenough, Conklin on Hanunoo colour and plant terms) studied native classification. Berlin and Kay (Basic Color Terms, 1969) found a universal ordering of colour terms, and Chomsky’s universal grammar stressed innate structures, limiting relativism.
Ethnography of speaking and sociolinguistics: Dell Hymes and Gumperz studied language in use, communicative competence and speech communities.
Neo-Whorfian research supports a weak relativity: speakers of Guugu Yimithirr in Australia, who use absolute directions, orient themselves differently (Levinson). Thus language, culture and thought influence each other within universal limits.
Question 7 (50 marks)
Q7(a) · Marriage · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Types and Functions of Marriage
How the study of variation in forms of marriage led to rethinking on the concepts of social reproduction, kinship and family ?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विवाह के रूपों में भिन्नता के अध्ययन ने सामाजिक प्रजनन, नातेदारी तथा परिवार की अवधारणा को कैसे प्रेरित किया ?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(a)
Approach: Show how ethnographic variation in marriage (Nayar, Nuer, Toda) undermined universal definitions and led to new ideas of kinship as social, marriage as a bundle of rights and reproduction as social reproduction; organise by the three concepts named.
Early definitions treated marriage as a durable union of a man and a woman for procreation (Westermarck, 1891) and the nuclear family built on it as universal (Murdock, 1949). Comparative ethnography of varied marriage forms unsettled each assumption.
Kathleen Gough (1959) showed that a Nayar girl underwent a tali-tying rite with a ritual husband and later took visiting sambandham partners who had no rights over children, who belonged to the matrilineal taravad. She redefined marriage as a relationship giving a child full birth-status rights, shifting the focus to legitimacy.
Nuer woman-marriage and ghost marriage (Evans-Pritchard, 1951), where a barren woman or a dead man is the pater, and Toda polyandry, where the bow-and-arrow rite fixes social fatherhood (Rivers, 1906), separated pater from genitor: kinship became a social, not biological, fact.
Leach (1955) concluded that marriage is a bundle of rights (paternity, sexual access, labour, property and affinity) combined differently in each society, so no universal definition exists.
On social reproduction, Jack Goody (Production and Reproduction, 1976) linked bridewealth and dowry to modes of production and property transmission, and Meillassoux (1975) showed elders reproducing lineage society by controlling the circulation of wives. Marriage became a mechanism for reproducing groups, property and status, not only persons.
On the family, Spiro's kibbutz and R.T. Smith's matrifocal households showed that residence, economy and child-rearing can be separated. Schneider (1984), Carsten's idea of relatedness and Kath Weston's chosen families (1991) extended the point to same-sex unions and assisted reproduction.
Thus variation moved anthropology from fixed, biological definitions to seeing marriage, kinship and family as cultural arrangements for reproducing society.Q7(b) · Prehistoric Archaeology · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age
What are the major theories proposed in support of the origin of food production ? How the change in subsistence economy brought revolution during this period ?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
खाद्य उत्पादन की उत्पत्ति के समर्थन में प्रस्तावित प्रमुख सिद्धान्त क्या हैं ? इस अवधि के दौरान निर्वाह अर्थव्यवस्था में परिवर्तन ने किस प्रकार क्रान्ति ला दी थी ?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(b)
Approach: Part one sets out the main theories of the origin of food production with their proponents and critique; part two explains how the shift transformed economy and society (Childe's Neolithic Revolution), with examples and a balanced conclusion.
Food production, the domestication of plants and animals, began about 11,500 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and arose independently in China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, New Guinea and Africa.
Theories of origin: V. Gordon Childe's oasis theory held that post-glacial drying pushed people, plants and animals together near water. Robert Braidwood's hilly flanks theory placed it where wild ancestors grew, once culture was ready. Lewis Binford (1968) and Kent Flannery (1969) linked it to population pressure in marginal zones and a broad-spectrum diet, and Mark Cohen (1977) to a global food crisis. Social theories stress competitive feasting (Brian Hayden) or a symbolic change preceding farming (Jacques Cauvin), supported by Göbekli Tepe, built by hunter-gatherers about 9500 BCE.
No single cause fits all centres; climate change at the end of the Pleistocene, sedentism and population growth probably worked together.
The revolution: Childe called the shift the Neolithic Revolution because of its consequences. Storable surplus allowed permanent villages, as at Jericho and Mehrgarh, and population growth. New technologies followed: polished stone tools, pottery, weaving and mud-brick houses.
Surplus supported craft specialists, trade in obsidian, shell and turquoise, property and inheritance, and social ranking; religion turned to fertility and ancestors.
Yet early farmers often had poorer health, more dental caries and greater workload than foragers. The change was gradual, but its effects were revolutionary, paving the way for cities and states.Q7(c) · Fossil Hominids · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Neanderthal Man, Rhodesian Man and Homo sapiens
Critically discuss the centrality of the African continent in the narrative of human evolution.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मानव उद्विकास की गाथा में अफ्रीकी महाद्वीप की केंद्रियता की आलोचनात्मक विवेचना कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(c)
Approach: "Critically discuss" needs both sides: fossil, archaeological and genetic evidence for Africa's centrality, then the finds outside Africa and the admixture that complicate a purely African story; conclude with a balanced view.
Darwin (1871) predicted an African origin for humans because our closest relatives live there, and Raymond Dart's Taung child (1925) began a century of finds that made Africa central to the human story.
Fossils: every hominin older than about 2 million years is African, from Sahelanthropus (Chad, about 7 to 6 million years) through the australopiths to the earliest Homo (Ledi-Geraru, about 2.8 million years); the oldest H. sapiens are also African (Jebel Irhoud, about 315,000 years; Omo Kibish; Herto).
Archaeology and genetics: the oldest tools (Lomekwi 3, about 3.3 million years), the Acheulian and early symbols such as the engraved ochre of Blombos Cave are African; Africans hold the greatest genetic diversity and the deepest mtDNA and Y roots, and diversity falls with distance from Africa (serial founder effect).
Critique: Dmanisi (about 1.8 million years) and tools at Shangchen, China (about 2.1 million years) show very early exits; Asia had its own lineages (H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis, Denisovans); non-Africans carry about 1 to 2 percent Neanderthal DNA, so the story is not pure replacement; and Scerri and colleagues (2018) argue that H. sapiens arose across many linked African regions, not one cradle.
On balance Africa remains the main stage for the origin of hominins, Homo and modern humans, while Eurasia added later chapters through dispersal, local lineages and interbreeding.
Question 8 (50 marks)
Q8(a) · Anthropological Theories · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Culture and Personality, Neo-evolutionism and Later Theories
How the theories of postmodernism are relevant in promoting social justice and empowerment of marginalised communities ?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
उत्तर आधुनिकता के सिद्धान्त सामाजिक न्याय को बढ़ावा देने और हाशिये पर खड़े समुदायों के सशक्तिकरण में कैसे प्रासंगिक हैं ?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(a)
Approach: Define postmodernism and its key ideas (Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida, Writing Culture), show how each supports voice, representation and empowerment of marginalised groups with Indian examples, then note limits and a balanced conclusion.
Postmodernism, in Jean-François Lyotard’s phrase, is an incredulity toward metanarratives (The Postmodern Condition, 1979): a distrust of grand, universal theories of progress and truth. In anthropology it arrived with Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus, 1986), which showed ethnography to be a partial, authored text shaped by power.
Relevance to social justice: (i) Michel Foucault’s idea of power/knowledge exposes how classifications produced by states and experts control people. Colonial ethnography labelled whole communities criminal under the Criminal Tribes Act 1871, and the Census ranked castes under Risley; deconstructing such categories helped the denotified tribes and Dalit movements challenge stigma. (ii) Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and the Subaltern Studies historians showed how the colonised were represented by others, opening space for self-representation.
(iii) Polyphony and reflexivity: postmodern ethnography gives space to many voices and asks who speaks for whom. This supports collaborative and indigenous research, tribal writers and oral histories, and recognition of traditional knowledge, as in community claims under the Forest Rights Act 2006 or Niyamgiri’s Dongria Kondh asserting their sacred hill in the 2013 gram sabha consultations.
(iv) Gender and identity: deconstruction of fixed binaries supports feminist, queer and transgender rights, echoed in India’s NALSA judgment (2014) recognising a third gender.
Limits: critics such as Ernest Gellner and Melford Spiro argue that radical relativism undermines universal human rights and the factual claims needed in policy; Gayatri Spivak warned that the subaltern’s voice may still be mediated by elites, and suggested strategic essentialism for political mobilisation.
Postmodernism thus empowers mainly by questioning who defines the marginalised; its value is greatest when combined with empirical evidence and rights-based action.Q8(b) · Human Genetics: Methods, Inheritance and Chromosomes · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Methods of Studying Human Genetics
'Genome-wide Disease Association Studies (GWAS) advanced our understanding of health and disease.' Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'जीनोम-व्यापी रोग संबंध अध्ययन (GWAS) स्वास्थ्य एवं रोगों पर हमारी समझ विकसित करते हैं ।' विवेचना कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(b)
Approach: Define GWAS and its method, set out what it has contributed to understanding disease (with examples), then discuss limitations, especially for Indian populations, and conclude.
A genome-wide association study (GWAS) scans hundreds of thousands to millions of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the genomes of many people with a disease (cases) and without it (controls), to find variants that occur more often in cases. It became possible after the Human Genome Project (2003); an early landmark found the CFH gene in age-related macular degeneration (2005), and the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium studied seven common diseases in 2007.
Contributions: (i) thousands of loci have been linked to common complex diseases such as type 2 diabetes (TCF7L2), coronary artery disease, Crohn’s disease, schizophrenia and height, confirming that these traits are polygenic; (ii) they revealed new biological pathways and drug targets; (iii) polygenic risk scores now estimate individual susceptibility.
Limitations: most variants have tiny effects and explain only part of heritability (the missing heritability problem); associated SNPs often only mark, rather than cause, the effect; and most participants have been of European ancestry, so results transfer poorly to Indians. Projects such as GenomeIndia, which sequenced about 10,000 genomes from diverse communities, aim to correct this, since endogamy in Indian groups creates distinct founder variants.
Ethical issues include privacy, consent of tribal donors and possible misuse of risk scores. GWAS has thus advanced understanding greatly, but it must be combined with functional and environmental studies.Q8(c) · Reproductive Biology, Demography and Applied Anthropology · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Applications of Anthropology
Examine the utility of human remains in forensic analysis. Discuss the facial reconstruction technique.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
फोरेंसिक विश्लेषण में मानव अवशेषों की उपयोगिता का परीक्षण कीजिए । चेहरा पुनर्निर्माण तकनीकी की विवेचना कीजिए ।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(c)
Approach: Two parts: what human remains reveal in forensic analysis (the biological profile and more), and the methods of facial reconstruction with their limits.
Forensic anthropology applies osteology to legal questions; when soft tissue has decayed, burnt or been mutilated, bones and teeth are often the only evidence of who a person was and how they died.
Utility of remains: establishing whether bones are human; the biological profile of sex (pelvis and skull), age (dental development, epiphyseal fusion, pubic symphysis), stature (Trotter and Gleser's long-bone formulae) and ancestry; individualising marks such as healed fractures and dental work; time since death from decomposition and taphonomy; trauma analysis separating blunt, sharp and gunshot injury; and DNA and isotopes for identity and origin. The Roopkund skeletons (2019 ancient DNA study) and the Ajnala well remains of 1857 soldiers (2022) show these uses in India.
Facial reconstruction rebuilds a likeness on the skull to prompt recognition. The Russian anatomical method of Mikhail Gerasimov models muscles one by one; the American method places tissue-depth markers at standard landmarks and fills between them (Krogman, Gatliff and Snow); the Manchester method of Richard Neave combines both. Computer methods now use CT scans and digital tissue-depth databases.
Limits: ears, lips, hair and skin colour cannot be read from bone, and tissue-depth tables are population-specific, so Indian standards are needed. Reconstruction aids investigation, but identity must be confirmed by DNA, dental records or superimposition.
UPSC Mains 2025 Anthropology Paper II
Question 1 (50 marks)
Q1(a) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Prehistoric Cultures of India
'Soanian cultural' tradition
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'सोहन संस्कृति' परम्परा
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(a)
Approach: A short note: the Soanian discovery, tool types and terraces, then the modern reassessment of its status.
The Soanian is a Lower Palaeolithic pebble-tool tradition named after the Soan (Sohan) river of the Potwar plateau, now in Pakistan. It was defined by Helmut de Terra and T.T. Paterson after the Yale-Cambridge expedition of 1935, published in 1939.
Tools: choppers (flaked on one face) and chopping tools (flaked on both faces) made on river pebbles, with flakes; Early Soan had pebble tools, Late Soan more flakes, some of prepared-core type. Tools were tied to river terraces, which were correlated with a now-outdated scheme of Himalayan glaciations.
In India similar assemblages occur along the Siwalik frontal belt in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Jammu (the Beas-Banganga valley and Hoshiarpur), studied by B.B. Lal and G.C. Mohapatra.
Reassessment: it was once seen as a separate culture opposed to the peninsular Acheulian (Madrasian) handaxe tradition, echoing Movius's line; but handaxes occur in the Siwaliks, pebble tools occur in Acheulian sites, and many terrace dates are insecure, so most scholars now treat the Soanian as a raw-material and activity facies rather than a distinct culture.Q1(b) · Caste System and Religions in Indian Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Dominant Caste, Caste Mobility, Jajmani System and the Tribe–Caste Continuum
Caste domination, factionalism and political power
हिंदी में प्रश्न
जातिगत वर्चस्व, गुटबंदी एवं राजनैतिक शक्ति
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(b)
Approach: Link Srinivas's dominant caste to village factions and to democratic politics, using village studies (Rampura, Rani Khera) and state-level examples.
M.N. Srinivas defined a dominant caste as one that is numerically strong, owns much of the land and wields economic and political power, even if its ritual rank is not the highest, as with the Okkaligas of Rampura.
Domination works through patronage: landowners control employment, credit and dispute settlement, so dependants follow their lead. Yet dominant castes are rarely united. Factions are vertical alliances of patrons and clients that cut across caste lines; Oscar Lewis (Village Life in Northern India, 1958) found Jat-led factions organising life in Rani Khera.
With universal franchise and panchayati raj, numbers became a source of political power, and dominant castes turned their village base into control of cooperatives, panchayats and state legislatures, as the Jats in Haryana and the Reddys and Kammas in Andhra Pradesh did.
Reservation in panchayats (73rd Amendment, 1992) and the rise of Dalit and OBC parties have since challenged this dominance. Caste domination, factionalism and political power are thus intertwined but changing.Q1(c) · Tribal Administration and Applied Anthropology · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Anthropology and Regionalism, Communalism and Ethnic Movements
Regionalism and Autonomy
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्षेत्रवाद तथा स्वायत्तता
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(c)
Approach: A short note defining regionalism, explaining why it leads to demands for autonomy, the forms autonomy takes in India, examples and the state's response.
Regionalism is loyalty to a region and the political assertion of its linguistic, cultural or economic interests; when regional identity is strong, it often becomes a demand for autonomy, meaning self-government over land, resources and culture within the nation.
Causes: uneven development and a sense of internal colonialism (Michael Hechter, 1975), 'sons of the soil' fears of migrants (Myron Weiner, 1978), distinct language or ethnicity, and elite mobilisation (Paul Brass).
Forms of autonomy in India: new states (Nagaland 1963, Jharkhand 2000, Telangana 2014); Sixth Schedule councils (Bodoland Territorial Region, 2020); special provisions under Article 371 (371A for Nagaland); and demands such as Ladakh's for Sixth Schedule status after 2019 and Gorkhaland in West Bengal.
State response: India's federal flexibility has accommodated many demands through reorganisation and accords, which anthropologists see as reducing conflict, while refusing secession.
Regionalism expressed through autonomy can thus strengthen national integration when demands are met democratically.Q1(d) · Tribal Administration and Applied Anthropology · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Tribal Administration, Policies and PVTGs
Verrier Elwin's philosophy with respect to Arunachal Pradesh
हिंदी में प्रश्न
अरुणाचल प्रदेश के संदर्भ में वेरियर एल्विन का दर्शन
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(d)
Approach: A short note on Elwin's philosophy for NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh): its principles, how it was applied in administration, and its assessment.
As Adviser for Tribal Affairs in the North-East Frontier Agency (now Arunachal Pradesh) from 1954, Verrier Elwin set out his approach in A Philosophy for NEFA, whose 1959 edition carried Nehru's foreword stating the tribal Panchsheel.
Principles: tribes should develop along the lines of their own genius; their land and forest rights must be respected; local people should be trained to run administration; areas should not be over-administered; and progress should be judged by human character, not money spent.
Application: the Inner Line was retained to keep out land-grabbers and traders; administration worked through village councils such as the Adi kebang; local arts, dress and architecture were encouraged; officers of the Indian Frontier Administrative Service were trained in local languages and customs; change was to be gradual, 'Indianisation without Hinduisation'.
Assessment: Arunachal largely avoided the land alienation and insurgency seen elsewhere, and its tribes kept their institutions; critics argue the approach slowed education and infrastructure, which the 1962 war exposed.
Elwin's NEFA philosophy remains the model of development with dignity.Q1(e) · Indian Village, Minorities and Social Change · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Processes of Socio-cultural Change
Characteristics and communication between Little and Great Traditions
हिंदी में प्रश्न
लघु तथा बृहद् परम्पराओं के लक्षण एवं उनके बीच संचार
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(e)
Approach: A short note: define both traditions (Redfield), give their characteristics, then explain the channels of communication between them (Marriott's universalisation and parochialisation, Singer's cultural media).
Robert Redfield (Peasant Society and Culture, 1956) distinguished the great tradition of the reflective few, written, Sanskritic, systematised and carried by priests and scholars, from the little tradition of the unreflective many, oral, local and practised by village folk through village deities, folk rites and festivals.
The two are interdependent and constantly communicate. McKim Marriott, in Kishan Garhi (1955), described universalisation, the upward movement of local elements into the great tradition, as when a village goddess is identified with Lakshmi, and parochialisation, the downward localisation of great-tradition elements, as when an all-India festival takes on local meanings.
Milton Singer, studying Madras, identified cultural media and specialists such as temples, pilgrimages, festivals, katha recitation, Harikatha performers and later radio and film as channels linking the two.
Together these concepts explain how Indian civilisation maintains unity amid diversity.
Question 2 (50 marks)
Q2(a) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Palaeo-anthropological Evidence and Ethno-archaeology in India
Discuss the palaeoanthropological significance of Siwaliks of India giving its subdivisions, fossil primate fauna and major primate fossil localities.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में शिवालिक के पुरामानवशास्त्रीय महत्त्व की इसके प्रविभागों, प्राइमेट जीवाश्म प्राणिजातों तथा प्रमुख प्राइमेट जीवाश्म स्थलों सहित विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(a)
Approach: Discuss the Siwaliks: geology and subdivisions with approximate ages, the primate fauna (hominoids, small apes, monkeys, prosimians), major localities, and the palaeoanthropological significance including the Ramapithecus story. Draw a map and stratigraphic column.
The Siwaliks are the outermost foothills of the Himalaya, from the Potwar plateau of Pakistan through Jammu, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand to Nepal. They are made of river sediments eroded from the rising Himalaya between roughly 18 and 1 million years ago, and are among the world's richest Neogene mammal-bearing sequences.
Subdivisions: Lower Siwaliks (Kamlial and Chinji formations, about 18 to 11 million years), Middle Siwaliks (Nagri and Dhok Pathan, about 11 to 5 million years) and Upper Siwaliks (Tatrot, Pinjor and the Boulder Conglomerate, about 5 to 0.6 million years); ages are approximate and vary by section.
Primate fauna: the great ape Sivapithecus (named by Guy Pilgrim in 1910; species indicus, sivalensis and parvada, about 12.5 to 8.5 million years), which absorbed Ramapithecus (G.E. Lewis, 1934); the giant ape Gigantopithecus bilaspurensis described by Simons and Chopra (1969), now often called Indopithecus; small apes such as Kapi ramnagarensis, a possible early gibbon relative reported in 2020; the adapiform Sivaladapis and lorisids; and Upper Siwalik monkeys such as macaques and Procynocephalus at Pinjor.
Localities: Haritalyangar (Bilaspur-Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh), Ramnagar (Udhampur, Jammu), the Pinjor area near Chandigarh, Nurpur in Kangra, and in Pakistan the Chinji, Nagri and Dhok Pathan villages of the Potwar plateau, source of the 1982 Sivapithecus face (GSP 15000).
Diagram: a map of the Siwalik belt marking Potwar, Ramnagar, Haritalyangar and Pinjor, beside a column of Lower, Middle and Upper Siwalik formations with ages.
Significance: the Siwaliks document Miocene ape diversity and their dispersal into Asia, the origin of the orang-utan lineage, and faunal turnover as forests gave way to grasslands about 8 to 7 million years ago, when Sivapithecus disappeared. The rise and fall of Ramapithecus as the earliest hominid is a classic lesson in how fragmentary fossils and molecular evidence change interpretation.Q2(b) · Demographic Profile and the Traditional Indian Social System · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Ethnic and Linguistic Elements in the Indian Population
Delineate the major features of S. S. Sarkar's classification of Indian populations. Was his classification better than Risley? Explain.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
एस० एस० सरकार द्वारा किए गए भारतीय जनसमूहों के वर्गीकरण के प्रमुख लक्षणों का निरूपण कीजिए। क्या उनका वर्गीकरण रिजले से बेहतर था? स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(b)
Approach: Delineate the main features of S.S. Sarkar's classification (basis, elements, distinctive positions), then compare it with Risley's and judge which was better, with reasons.
S.S. Sarkar (Sasanka Sekhar Sarkar) of the Anthropological Survey of India presented his scheme in The Aboriginal Races of India (1954) and later writings.
Features: it was based mainly on the cephalic index, supported by stature, nasal index, other measurements and blood groups; it found India predominantly long-headed with notable broad-headed elements; and it recognised six ethnic elements: Australoid, Indo-Aryan, Irano-Scythian, Mundari-speaking, Far Eastern and Mongolian. He treated the Australoid (Veddid) element as the autochthonous base of the tribal population, from which Dravidian speakers later developed, and his team's study of the Kadar (1959) found no Negrito element on the mainland.
Risley's scheme (Census 1901; The People of India, 1908) gave seven types, Turko-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Scytho-Dravidian, Aryo-Dravidian, Mongolo-Dravidian, Mongoloid and Dravidian, based chiefly on the nasal index, and linked caste rank to nose form.
Was Sarkar better? Largely yes: he used more traits including serology, gave the tribal (Australoid) substratum its due place, avoided Risley's race-caste equation, and tested claims such as the Negrito with field data. But he still used typological racial categories, mixed language with race ('Mundari-speaking'), and relied heavily on one index whose plasticity is now known.
Sarkar's scheme was thus an advance on Risley's, but both are now historical; genetic studies of ANI-ASI admixture give a far better picture of Indian diversity.Q2(c) · Religion and Tribes; Tribe and Nation State · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Impact of Religions on Tribal Societies
Evaluate the impact of Christianity on Scheduled Tribe societies of North-East India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
उत्तर-पूर्व भारत की अनुसूचित जनजातियों पर ईसाई धर्म के प्रभाव का मूल्यांकन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(c)
Approach: Evaluate means weighing positive and negative effects: give the missionary history and census figures, then assess the impact on education, social customs, language, politics and identity in the north-east, ending with a judgement.
Christianity came to the north-eastern hills in the nineteenth century: Welsh Presbyterians among the Khasi (Thomas Jones, 1841), American Baptists among the Nagas (E.W. Clark among the Ao from 1872) and missionaries in the Mizo hills from 1894. By 2011 Christians formed 87.9% of Nagaland, 87.2% of Mizoram and 74.6% of Meghalaya.
Education and literacy: mission schools gave the region some of India's highest literacy rates (Mizoram 91.3% in 2011) and an English-educated professional class.
Language and literature: missionaries wrote Khasi, Mizo, Garo and Naga languages in the Roman script and translated the Bible, creating written literatures that now carry tribal identity.
Social customs: headhunting, feasts of merit, animal sacrifice and youth dormitories such as the Naga morung declined; churches became the centre of village life; prohibition, as in Nagaland's 1989 Act, reflects church influence.
Politics and identity: Christianity gave scattered tribes a shared identity and organisation, which supported Naga and Mizo ethno-nationalism; yet churches also mediated peace, as the Nagaland Baptist Church Council did in launching the 1964 Peace Mission, and civil bodies such as the Young Mizo Association (1935) sustain social order.
Costs: loss of oral traditions and indigenous rituals, divisions between denominations, and tensions with revivalist faiths such as Seng Khasi and Heraka.
On balance Christianity modernised north-eastern societies while becoming indigenised, so that it is now part of tribal identity rather than opposed to it.
Question 3 (50 marks)
Q3(a) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Prehistoric Cultures of India
Describe the distinctive features and distribution of Upper Palaeolithic of India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में उच्च पुरापाषाण के विशिष्ट लक्षणों एवं विस्तार का वर्णन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(a)
Approach: Describe the distinctive technological, economic and artistic features of the Indian Upper Palaeolithic, then its regional distribution with key sites and dates; end with significance and a map.
The Upper Palaeolithic in India, roughly 45,000 to 10,000 years ago, falls in the last glacial phase, when the subcontinent was drier and cooler. It is associated with anatomically modern humans, though the makers of the earliest blade assemblages are debated.
Distinctive features: parallel-sided blades struck from prepared cores, burins, backed blades, end scrapers and points, often in fine-grained silica rocks; the first bone tools (Kurnool caves); ornaments and art, such as ostrich eggshell beads and the engraved eggshell from Patne (about 25,000 years); a possible shrine at Baghor I in the Son valley (Kenoyer, Clark and colleagues, 1983); and early microblades at Mehtakheri in Madhya Pradesh, dated to about 45,000 years.
Economy: hunting of deer, wild cattle and antelope and gathering of plants by mobile bands using river valleys, rock shelters and dune or lake margins.
Distribution: Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh (Belan and Son valleys, Baghor, Bhimbetka, Mehtakheri); Maharashtra (Patne, Inamgaon area); Andhra Pradesh (Renigunta, Yerragondapalem, the Kurnool caves of Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi and Billa Surgam, Jwalapuram 9 rock shelter); Karnataka (Shorapur Doab); Rajasthan and Gujarat (Budha Pushkar, Visadi); and Odisha. Sites are rare in the Ganga plain, Kerala and the north-east, partly because of sediment burial and limited survey.
Diagram: an outline map of India marking Belan, Baghor, Bhimbetka, Mehtakheri, Patne, Renigunta, Kurnool caves, Jwalapuram and Budha Pushkar, with a sketch of a blade and a burin.
Unlike Europe, the Indian Upper Palaeolithic shows no sharp break: blades appear gradually and microliths emerge early, as at Jwalapuram and Mehtakheri, so it is best seen as a phase of continuity leading into the Mesolithic, marking the arrival of symbolic behaviour in South Asia.Q3(b) · Tribal Situation and Problems in India · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Problems of Tribal Communities
Examine the environmental and biocultural factors influencing the health of tribals of India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय जनजातियों के स्वास्थ्य को प्रभावित करने वाले पर्यावरणीय एवं जैव सांस्कृतिक कारकों का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(b)
Approach: Separate environmental factors (ecology, malaria, water, displacement, climate) from biocultural ones (genetics, diet, customs, beliefs and healing systems, gender), with examples and data, then suggest culturally sensitive interventions.
Tribal health indicators are worse than the national average, as the Expert Committee on Tribal Health (Abhay Bang, 2018) found; the causes lie in the interaction of environment, biology and culture.
Environmental factors: forest and hill habitats are endemic for falciparum malaria, which accounts for a large share of India's malaria cases in tribal districts of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand; unsafe water and poor sanitation spread diarrhoea; remoteness keeps hospitals far away; and deforestation and displacement reduce access to wild foods, worsening nutrition, as among the Korku of Melghat. Mining brings silicosis and pollution.
Biocultural factors: genetic traits such as the sickle-cell gene, G6PD deficiency and thalassaemia, maintained by malaria selection and endogamy; dietary change from diverse forest foods and millets to polished rice from the public distribution system; alcohol and tobacco use; early marriage and high fertility; and gendered food norms that leave women and girls anaemic.
Beliefs that attribute illness to spirits or witchcraft lead people first to traditional healers (ojha, bhagat); these healers also hold valuable herbal knowledge. Distrust of hospitals and language barriers delay treatment.
Effective care requires local tribal health workers, integration of trusted healers, nutrition programmes using millets and forest foods, malaria control, sickle cell screening (2023 mission) and services in tribal languages.Q3(c) · Anthropology in India · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Indian Anthropologists and Tribal and Caste Studies
Highlight the significant contributions of B. S. Guha, Irawati Karve and S. R. K. Chopra to Indian Anthropology.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय मानवविज्ञान में बी० एस० गुहा, इरावती कर्वे तथा एस० आर० के० चोपड़ा के महत्त्वपूर्ण योगदान पर प्रकाश डालिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(c)
Approach: Give each scholar a balanced paragraph: Guha (racial classification, Anthropological Survey), Karve (kinship zones, caste studies, literature), Chopra (Siwalik palaeoanthropology), then a one-line comparison.
These three scholars built the biological and social foundations of Indian anthropology after the colonial period.
B.S. Guha (1894–1961), trained in physical anthropology at Harvard, gave the racial classification of the Indian population used in the 1931 Census: Negrito, Proto-Australoid, Mongoloid, Mediterranean, Western brachycephals and Nordic. His claim of a Negrito element in south India has been debated. As first Director of the Anthropological Survey of India (1945) he built the national institution for physical and social research.
Iravati Karve (1905–1970), of Deccan College, Pune, wrote Kinship Organization in India (1953), dividing India into northern, central, southern and eastern kinship zones. Her anthropometric and serological studies of Maharashtra castes suggested that castes were separate endogamous groups of local origin rather than racial strata, and Hindu Society: An Interpretation (1961) developed this view. Her Yuganta (1967) reread the Mahabharata anthropologically.
S.R.K. Chopra of Panjab University, Chandigarh, led palaeoanthropological research on the Siwalik hills; with Elwyn Simons he described Gigantopithecus bilaspurensis (1969), and his team studied Miocene primates such as Sivapithecus, placing India in the study of hominoid evolution.
Guha shaped racial and institutional anthropology, Karve kinship and caste studies, and Chopra fossil primate research, together widening Indian anthropology across its branches.
Question 4 (50 marks)
Q4(a) · Caste System and Religions in Indian Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Dominant Caste, Caste Mobility, Jajmani System and the Tribe–Caste Continuum
What are the different types of caste mobility in India? Highlight the various factors responsible for it.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में विभिन्न प्रकार की जाति गतिशीलताएँ क्या हैं? इनके उत्तरदायी विभिन्न कारकों पर प्रकाश डालिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(a)
Approach: Classify caste mobility (individual and group; upward and downward; cultural, economic, political, protest and exit), illustrate each with an Indian case, then list the factors behind it and conclude on positional versus structural change.
Caste mobility is the movement of a caste, or of its members, to a higher or lower position in the local hierarchy. In caste, mobility is mostly collective, because rank belongs to the group, and M.N. Srinivas called it positional rather than structural change.
Types: (i) Sanskritization, adopting the customs of higher castes, as among the Coorgs (Srinivas, 1952); (ii) Kshatriyization or Rajputization, as among Bhumij chiefs (Surajit Sinha) and the Nadars, who rose from toddy tapping to a prosperous community (Hardgrave, 1969); (iii) economic mobility, as when Bisipara's distiller castes bought land with trade profits (Bailey, 1957); (iv) political mobility through caste associations and parties; (v) protest and exit, such as the Jatavs of Agra (Owen Lynch, 1969) and the Mahars who followed Ambedkar into Buddhism in 1956; (vi) downward or 'backward' claims, where groups seek OBC or ST status for its benefits.
Factors: economic change such as trade, cash crops and the Green Revolution; Western education and urban jobs; colonial census ranking, which prompted caste petitions after 1901; democratic politics and caste associations (the Rudolphs); reservations under Articles 15(4) and 16(4); reform movements such as those of Jyotiba Phule and Narayana Guru; migration and remittances; and conversion.
Obstacles remain: dominant castes resist the claims of untouchable castes, as Bailey saw when Bisipara's Panos tried to rise, and endogamy keeps groups bounded.
Caste mobility has thus moved from imitation of upper castes to assertion and competition. It changes the position of particular castes, but only education, economic independence and law can change the hierarchy itself.Q4(b) · Demographic Profile and the Traditional Indian Social System · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Demographic Profile of India
Elucidate the role of demographic and social factors for population growth in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत की जनसंख्या वृद्धि में जनसांख्यिकीय तथा सामाजिक कारकों की भूमिका स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(b)
Approach: Elucidate two sets of factors behind India's population growth: demographic (mortality decline, fertility, age structure, momentum, migration) and social (marriage, son preference, education, religion and region, economy), with data, then a conclusion.
India's population rose from about 36 crore in 1951 to 121.09 crore in Census 2011, and by UN estimates India became the most populous country in 2023; decadal growth fell to 17.7 percent in 2001–11, the lowest since independence.
Demographic factors: after 1921, the 'year of the great divide', death rates fell with famine relief, disease control and vaccines while birth rates stayed high, as Kingsley Davis (1951) showed; high infant mortality encouraged insurance births; a young age structure gives population momentum, so numbers keep rising even though the TFR fell to 1.9 (SRS 2023); and growth is almost wholly natural increase, with migration redistributing people between states.
Social factors: near-universal and early marriage (NFHS-5: 23.3 percent of women aged 20–24 married before 18); son preference rooted in patriliny, dowry and the son's role in shraddha and repaying pitri rina; low female literacy and autonomy; the economic value of children in agrarian and tribal households, which Mamdani's Khanna study (1972) highlighted; and religious and regional norms, with fertility differences narrowing once education is held constant.
Regional contrast shows the role of these factors: Kerala and Tamil Nadu reached low fertility through female education and health care, while Bihar's TFR remained the highest at 2.8 (SRS 2023).
Demographic factors explain the speed of growth and social factors its persistence; continued investment in girls' education, health and old-age security will bring stabilisation.Q4(c) · Tribal Situation and Problems in India · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Tribal Situation in India
Critically examine the concept of Scheduled Tribe (ST) and mention the limitations of administrator's criteria.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
अनुसूचित जनजाति (एस० टी०) की अवधारणा का समालोचनात्मक परीक्षण कीजिए तथा प्रशासकों द्वारा निर्दिष्ट मानकों की सीमाओं का उल्लेख कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(c)
Approach: Explain the constitutional concept of Scheduled Tribe (Articles 342 and 366(25)) and the administrative criteria (Lokur, 1965), contrast it with the anthropological concept of tribe, then list the limitations of the criteria with examples.
'Scheduled Tribe' is a legal-administrative category. Article 366(25) defines STs as the communities specified under Article 342, by which the President notifies tribes state-wise after consulting the Governor, and only Parliament can amend the lists. Census 2011 counted 10.43 crore STs (8.6%) in over 700 notified communities.
Since the Constitution gives no criteria, the Lokur Committee (1965) proposed five: primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large, and backwardness. Anthropologists, by contrast, define a tribe as a relatively self-contained, kin-based society with its own territory, language and culture (Imperial Gazetteer, 1911; Beteille).
Limitations of the criteria: (i) terms such as 'primitive' and 'shy' are evolutionist and stigmatising; (ii) isolation no longer exists for most tribes, which live in villages with castes, as the tribe-caste continuum shows; (iii) the criteria are applied inconsistently, so a community is ST in one state but not in a neighbouring one, as with the Gonds or Santals in some states; (iv) they are open to political pressure, as seen in demands by the Gujjars, Meiteis and Kurmis; (v) advanced sections of large tribes capture benefits while PVTGs lag; (vi) they ignore self-identification, which international law emphasises.
The Xaxa Committee (2014) and later reviews urged clearer, non-stigmatising criteria. A balanced approach would combine socio-economic deprivation, distinct identity and self-identification.
Question 5 (50 marks)
Q5(a) · Weaker Sections, Ethnicity and Tribal Change · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Social Change in Contemporary Tribal Societies
Impact of urbanization and industrialization on tribal communities of India
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत के जनजातीय समुदायों पर शहरीकरण तथा उद्योगीकरण के प्रभाव
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(a)
Approach: A short note on how urbanisation and industrialisation have changed tribal economy, society and culture, with Chotanagpur examples, both positive and negative effects, and a closing judgement.
Only about 10% of Scheduled Tribes lived in urban areas in 2011, yet industry and towns have reshaped tribal life, above all in the mineral belt of Chotanagpur and Odisha.
Economic effects: steel plants and mines at Jamshedpur, Rourkela, Bokaro and Ranchi (HEC) took tribal land; Walter Fernandes estimated that about 40% of people displaced by development projects since 1947 were tribals. Many became wage labourers, while a few gained factory and government jobs.
Social effects: joint families gave way to nuclear ones, clan and village councils lost authority, youth dormitories declined, and seasonal migration to towns and brick kilns exposed women to exploitation.
Cultural effects: markets, schools and media spread Hindi and consumer culture, but towns also produced an educated tribal middle class that led identity movements such as the Jharkhand movement.
The impact is thus double-edged: detribalisation and dispossession on one side, mobility and new political consciousness on the other, which is why rehabilitation and benefit-sharing are essential.Q5(b) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Palaeo-anthropological Evidence and Ethno-archaeology in India
Taxonomic status of Ramapithecus in the light of Ramapithecus-Sivapithecus controversy
हिंदी में प्रश्न
रामापिथेकस-शिवापिथेकस विवाद की रोशनी में रामापिथेकस की वर्गिकी प्रस्थिति
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(b)
Approach: A short note: the claim for Ramapithecus as a hominid, the evidence that overturned it, and its present taxonomic status.
Ramapithecus was named by G. Edward Lewis (1934) from an upper jaw fragment he collected near Haritalyangar in the Siwaliks in 1932. In the 1960s Elwyn Simons and David Pilbeam argued it was the earliest hominid, about 14 million years old, citing small canines, thick enamel and a reconstructed parabolic dental arcade.
Controversy: Vincent Sarich and Allan Wilson's molecular clock (1967) put the human-ape split at about 5 million years; more complete jaws showed a V-shaped arcade; the small specimens could be females of a sexually dimorphic Sivapithecus; and Pilbeam's 1982 description of a Sivapithecus face (GSP 15000) from Potwar showed orang-utan-like features.
Present status: Ramapithecus is regarded as a junior synonym of Sivapithecus (the older name has priority), a Miocene great ape on or near the orang-utan lineage, not a hominid; some Siwalik specimens once called Ramapithecus are assigned to Sivapithecus species such as S. sivalensis.
The episode shows the risk of building phylogenies on teeth and jaws alone and the value of combining fossil and molecular evidence.Q5(c) · Weaker Sections, Ethnicity and Tribal Change · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Ethnicity, Tribal Unrest, Regionalism and Pseudo-tribalism
Tribalism and Pseudotribalism
हिंदी में प्रश्न
जनजातिवाद तथा छद्म-जनजातिवाद
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(c)
Approach: Define tribalism (as identity and as political loyalty) and pseudo-tribalism (false or contested claims to tribal status), give Indian examples and legal responses, and add a balanced comment.
Tribalism means strong loyalty to one's tribe as the main basis of identity and political action. In African urban studies, Max Gluckman and J. Clyde Mitchell (The Kalela Dance, 1956) showed that tribal identity was re-formed in towns as a category for organising relations among strangers. In India it appears in tribe-based parties and autonomy demands.
Pseudo-tribalism (a loosely used term) refers to claims to tribal identity by groups that lack the recognised attributes of a tribe, usually to obtain reservation, and to the use of false ST certificates by non-tribals.
Examples: the Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan (2007 to 2008) for ST status, the Meitei demand in Manipur and demands by six Assam communities, all opposed by existing STs.
Legal response: Kumari Madhuri Patil (1994) required scrutiny committees for certificates, and FCI v. Jagdish Balaram Bahira (2017) refused protection to jobs obtained on false certificates; ethnographic reports by Tribal Research Institutes help test claims.
Both show tribal identity as a political resource, so objective, ethnography-based criteria are essential.Q5(d) · Demographic Profile and the Traditional Indian Social System · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Varnashrama, Purushartha, Karma, Rina and Rebirth
Varnashrama and its contemporary relevance
हिंदी में प्रश्न
वर्णाश्रम एवं इसका समकालीन औचित्य
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(d)
Approach: A short note: define varnashrama, then judge what remains relevant today and what has been rejected, with examples.
Varnashrama dharma is the Dharmashastra scheme of duties fixed by varna (Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, traced to the Purusha Sukta, Rig Veda X.90) and by ashrama, the four life stages of brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha and sannyasa; it was a normative ideal, not a description of how all Indians lived.
Varna today: birth-based ranking conflicts with Articles 14–17 of the Constitution, which abolish untouchability, and with the critiques of Phule and Ambedkar; the real units are jatis, as Srinivas stressed, though varna still frames claims to status through Sanskritization and appears in matrimonial and political discourse.
Ashrama today: the life-course idea remains meaningful: education as a stage of discipline, the householder as the economic and social pivot, and withdrawal in old age resembling retirement and pilgrimage, though few follow vanaprastha or sannyasa literally.
The relevance of varnashrama now lies in its ethic of duty and life-stage balance, not in hierarchy; anthropologists treat it as ideology to be compared with field reality.Q5(e) · Evolution of Indian Culture and Civilization · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Harappan Civilization and Tribal Contributions to Indian Civilization
Lothal dockyard and international trade relations
हिंदी में प्रश्न
लोथल गोदीबाड़ा तथा अंतर्राष्ट्रीय व्यापारिक संबंध
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(e)
Approach: A short note: the Lothal dockyard (description and the debate over its function) and evidence of Harappan international trade.
Lothal, near the Gulf of Khambhat in Gujarat, was excavated by S.R. Rao of the Archaeological Survey from 1955 to 1960. Its eastern side has a brick-lined basin about 219 by 37 metres with an inlet and a spillway, which Rao identified as a dockyard linked by a channel to the Sabarmati estuary.
The interpretation is debated: Lawrence Leshnik (1968) argued it was a freshwater reservoir for irrigation and drinking, but marine microfossils and the nearby warehouse support a maritime role for many scholars.
Trade evidence: a warehouse with clay sealings bearing seal impressions, a bead factory working carnelian and agate, shell-working, standard weights, and a circular Persian Gulf-type seal; Mesopotamian texts refer to ships from Meluhha (probably the Indus region), Dilmun (Bahrain) and Magan (Oman), and Sargon of Akkad (about 2300 BCE) boasted of Meluhhan ships at his capital.
Lothal thus shows the Harappans as a maritime people linked to the Gulf and Mesopotamia, and its bead-making tradition survives in the agate workshops of Khambhat.
Question 6 (50 marks)
Q6(a) · Indian Village, Minorities and Social Change · 20 marks≈ 14 min
The Indian Village
"The village was not merely a place where people lived; it had a design in which were reflected the basic values of Indian civilization." Who said this? Elaborate.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
"गाँव मात्र ऐसा स्थान नहीं था जहाँ लोग रहते थे; यह ऐसा अभिकल्प था जहाँ भारतीय सभ्यता के आधारभूत मूल्य प्रतिबिंबित होते थे।" यह कथन किसका था? इस कथन की विस्तारपूर्वक व्याख्या कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(a)
Approach: Identify the author (André Béteille, 1980), then elaborate how the village's layout, institutions and relations embodied civilisational values (hierarchy, purity, interdependence, religion), and close with critiques and change.
The statement is André Béteille's, from his essay 'The Indian Village: Past and Present' (1980). Béteille, who studied Sripuram in Tamil Nadu (Caste, Class and Power, 1965), meant that the village was a physical and moral order expressing the principles of Indian society, especially hierarchy.
Spatial design: in Sripuram the Brahmins lived in the agraharam around the temple, non-Brahmins in separate streets and Adi-Dravidas (Dalits) in the cheri outside the main settlement. Similar layouts, with upper castes at the centre and untouchable hamlets at the edge and separate wells, are found across India, so space itself mapped the opposition of pure and impure.
Institutions: the jajmani system tied service castes to landowning patrons (Wiser, Karimpur, 1936); caste panchayats enforced endogamy and commensal rules; the dominant caste, such as the Okkaligas of Rampura (Srinivas), acted as arbiter. These expressed the values of interdependence within hierarchy.
Religion and ritual: village deities, festivals and the temple linked the little tradition of the village to the great tradition of Sanskritic Hinduism, as Marriott showed in Kishan Garhi through universalisation and parochialisation.
Critiques: Dumont and Pocock (1957) warned that the village is only a locality and caste and kinship cross its boundaries; Ambedkar saw the village as a den of localism and caste oppression rather than a design of values. Béteille himself rejected the colonial myth of self-sufficient little republics.
Change: roads, migration, panchayati raj and Dalit assertion have loosened this design, though segregated settlement persists. Béteille's statement thus captures the traditional village as a mirror of civilisational values, including their inequality.Q6(b) · Tribal Administration and Applied Anthropology · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Role of Anthropology in Tribal and Rural Development
Discuss the role of NGOs in the socioeconomic and political development of weaker sections and the manner in which they facilitate other stakeholders.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
कमजोर वर्गों के सामाजिक-आर्थिक एवं राजनैतिक विकास में गैर-सरकारी संगठनों की भूमिका तथा अन्य हितधारकों को सुसाध्य बनाने के तरीकों की विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(b)
Approach: Discuss NGO roles in the socio-economic and political development of weaker sections (SCs, STs, women, the poor) with named examples, and explain how they facilitate other stakeholders (state, communities, markets, researchers), with limitations.
Non-governmental organisations are voluntary, non-profit bodies working between the state, market and community. For weaker sections (SCs, STs, women, the landless) they act as service providers, mobilisers and advocates.
Socio-economic development: SEWA (1972) organised informal women workers; PRADAN (1983) built women's self-help groups and livelihoods among tribals in Jharkhand and Odisha; SEARCH and Ekjut reduced newborn deaths; Safai Karmachari Andolan campaigned against manual scavenging.
Political development: MKSS (Rajasthan) led the movement that produced the Right to Information Act (2005) and social audits; NGOs train SC, ST and women panchayat members and help gram sabhas claim forest rights.
Facilitating the state: NGOs pilot models later scaled up (home-based newborn care shaped ASHA; SHGs shaped the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, 2011), implement schemes and run social audits.
Facilitating communities and markets: they link producers to markets and credit (Van Dhan clusters, SHG-bank linkage), and give legal aid against atrocities and displacement.
Facilitating knowledge: they document local conditions and partner with researchers, as in randomised trials published in The Lancet.
Limitations: donor dependence and FCRA restrictions (2020), uneven accountability, elite capture and co-option by the state; their role should complement, not replace, public provision.Q6(c) · Weaker Sections, Ethnicity and Tribal Change · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Exploitation of SCs, STs and OBCs and Constitutional Safeguards
Trace the history and describe the methods of formulating the lists of OBCs, both at the State and National levels.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
अन्य पिछड़े वर्गों की सूची बनाने की प्रविधियों तथा इसके इतिहास के अनुरेखण का राज्य तथा राष्ट्र के स्तर पर वर्णन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(c)
Approach: Trace the history of OBC identification from colonial lists to the Kalelkar and Mandal Commissions and recent amendments, then describe the methods (criteria, surveys, commissions) used for the central and state lists.
Other Backward Classes are the 'socially and educationally backward classes' of Articles 15(4), 16(4) and 340. Their lists are prepared by commissions using empirical criteria.
History: Mysore (Miller Committee, 1918) and Madras (from 1921) had early backward-class lists. The first Backward Classes Commission under Kaka Kalelkar (report 1955) listed 2,399 castes, but the Union rejected caste as the basis. The second commission under B.P. Mandal (report 1980) identified 3,743 castes (about 52% of the population); its 27% quota came in 1990.
Judicial and constitutional steps: Indra Sawhney (1992) upheld 27% and led to the National Commission for Backward Classes Act, 1993. The 102nd Amendment (2018) gave the NCBC constitutional status (Article 338B) and inserted Article 342A; the 105th Amendment (2021) restored states' power to keep their own lists.
Methods at the national level: the Mandal Commission used 11 indicators (four social, three educational, four economic); the NCBC now examines requests for inclusion in and exclusion from the Central List. A creamy-layer ceiling (8 lakh rupees since 2017) excludes the better-off.
Methods at the state level: state commissions such as Havanur (Karnataka, 1975) and Mungeri Lal (Bihar, 1976) used surveys and ethnographic data; the Bihar caste survey (2023) and the Rohini Commission on sub-categorisation (report 2023) refine lists.
The lists show the shift from ascribed ritual status to measurable backwardness. Regular revision based on a caste census would make them fairer.
Question 7 (50 marks)
Q7(a) · Tribal Administration and Applied Anthropology · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Role of Anthropology in Tribal and Rural Development
Identify the contemporary limitations in the process of tribal development. How can anthropological knowledge contribute in this process?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
जनजातीय विकास की प्रक्रिया में समकालीन सीमाओं की पहचान कीजिए। इस प्रक्रिया में मानवशास्त्रीय ज्ञान का योगदान कैसे हो सकता है ?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(a)
Approach: Identify contemporary limitations of tribal development (structural, administrative, cultural, ecological, political) with evidence, then explain specific ways anthropological knowledge and methods can address each, ending with a participatory vision.
Despite seven decades of planning, from the Tribal Sub-Plan (1974 to 1975) to PM-JANMAN (2023) and the Dharti Aaba Abhiyan (2024), tribal development faces serious limitations.
Structural limitations: displacement by mines, dams and industries; land alienation; and an extractive growth model; Walter Fernandes estimated that about 40% of people displaced since 1947 were tribals.
Administrative limitations: diversion and under-use of DAPST funds, poor convergence, staff shortages, slow PESA rules (Jharkhand only in 2026) and high rejection of Forest Rights Act claims, as the Xaxa Committee (2014) found.
Cultural limitations: uniform, top-down schemes that ignore language, kinship and ecology, such as schooling in alien languages or housing unsuited to forest life.
Inequality: benefits captured by advanced tribes and elites, while PVTGs lag.
Anthropological contributions: baseline ethnography and social impact assessment before projects, using Michael Cernea's impoverishment-risks model for resettlement; mapping customary boundaries and community forest resources for FRA claims; recognising rational systems such as jhum, as Nagaland's NEPED project did; mother-tongue multilingual education; health programmes built on local beliefs, as SEARCH and Ekjut showed; group-specific plans for PVTGs; and understanding customary councils to make PESA work.
Methods: participant observation, emic perspectives, participatory rural appraisal (Robert Chambers) and Sol Tax's action anthropology let communities define their own goals.
Institutions: strengthening Tribal Research Institutes and involving anthropologists in planning, monitoring and grievance redress.
Anthropology can turn tribal development from something done to tribals into something done with and by them, as Panchsheel envisaged.Q7(b) · Weaker Sections, Ethnicity and Tribal Change · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Ethnicity, Tribal Unrest, Regionalism and Pseudo-tribalism
Discuss the rising ethnic conflicts in India and propose their possible remedial measures.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में बढ़ते हुए नृजातीय संघर्षों की विवेचना कीजिए तथा इनके संभावित उपचारी उपायों को प्रस्तावित कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(b)
Approach: Explain why ethnic conflicts are rising in India using anthropological theories and current cases (Manipur, Assam, the north-east, Jharkhand), then propose remedies at constitutional, political, economic and social levels.
An ethnic conflict is a dispute between groups defined by a belief in common descent, culture or territory (Weber), in which ethnic identity becomes the line of mobilisation. India's recent record shows the persistence of such conflicts.
Recent cases: the Meitei-Kuki-Zo violence in Manipur from 3 May 2023, which killed over two hundred people and led to President's Rule in February 2025; Bodo-Muslim clashes in Kokrajhar (2012); tensions over ST status claims in Assam; and inter-tribal territorial disputes such as the Naga claim to a greater Nagalim.
Causes: competition for land, jobs and reservation (instrumentalism, Paul Brass); fear of demographic change through migration (Myron Weiner's 'sons of the soil'); overlapping homeland claims; boundaries hardened by social media rumours and armed groups (Barth's boundary maintenance); and weak, sometimes partisan, state institutions.
Constitutional and political remedies: negotiated accords on the model of the Mizo Accord (1986) and the Bodo accord (2020); flexible use of the Sixth Schedule and Article 371 for territorial autonomy without new borders; impartial policing.
Economic remedies: development that reduces competition, secure land records and benefit-sharing.
Social remedies: civic associations across communities, which Ashutosh Varshney found prevent riots; women's peace groups such as the Naga Mothers' Association; and truth-telling and rehabilitation of the displaced.
Recognising diversity while building shared civic interests is the most durable remedy.Q7(c) · Religion and Tribes; Tribe and Nation State · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Tribe and Nation State
Critically evaluate the concept of Nation-State and describe its impact on indigenous societies.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
राष्ट्र-राज्य की अवधारणा का समालोचनात्मक मूल्यांकन कीजिए तथा देशज समाजों पर इसके प्रभाव का वर्णन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(c)
Approach: Define the nation-state and critically evaluate it from an anthropological view (Weber, Gellner, Anderson, Clastres, Scott), then describe its impact on indigenous societies worldwide and in India, ending with a balanced view.
A nation-state is a sovereign state with fixed territory whose population is imagined as one nation; Max Weber stressed its monopoly over the legitimate use of force, Ernest Gellner tied nationalism to industrial society's need for a common culture, and Benedict Anderson called nations 'imagined communities' (1983).
Critical evaluation: the model assumes one nation for one state, but most states contain many peoples. Pierre Clastres (Society Against the State, 1974) showed that many tribal societies deliberately prevent coercive power, and James C. Scott (The Art of Not Being Governed, 2009) described hill peoples of 'Zomia' who evaded lowland states. The nation-state thus tends to homogenise language, law and land.
Impact on indigenous societies: in settler states, removal and assimilation: the US Indian Removal Act (1830) and Dawes Act (1887), Canada's residential schools, Australia's terra nullius and Stolen Generations. Later came recognition: Mabo (1992), the Waitangi Tribunal (1975), Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015).
India: the state adopted integration with protection (Fifth and Sixth Schedules, PESA, FRA), but development by eminent domain displaced tribals, and north-eastern movements contested the nation itself.
Global framework: ILO Convention 169 (1989) and UNDRIP (2007) now affirm self-determination and free, prior and informed consent.
The nation-state can coexist with indigenous peoples when it moves from homogenisation to plural, federal and rights-based arrangements.
Question 8 (50 marks)
Q8(a) · Tribal Situation and Problems in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Tribal Situation in India
Describe the nature of traditional socioeconomic interdependence among the Toda, Kota, Kurumba and Irula tribes of Nilgiri Hills. Highlight the changes occurring in these interrelationships.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
नीलगिरि पर्वतों की टोडा, कोटा, कुरुम्बा तथा इरूला जनजातियों की परम्परागत सामाजिक-आर्थिक परस्पर निर्भरता की प्रकृति का विवरण प्रस्तुत कीजिए। इन अन्तर्सम्बन्धों में आए परिवर्तनों पर प्रकाश डालिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(a)
Approach: Describe each group's economic specialisation and the exchanges among them (with the Badaga), using Rivers, Mandelbaum and Walker, perhaps as a diagram, then explain the changes since colonial times and their causes.
The Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu sheltered a classic regional system of interdependent communities, described by W.H.R. Rivers (The Todas, 1906), David Mandelbaum (on the Kota) and Anthony Walker (The Toda of South India, 1986). The Toda, Kota, Kurumba and Irula are all PVTGs today.
Specialisations: the Toda were pastoralists whose life centred on sacred buffaloes and dairy temples; the Kota were artisans (blacksmiths, potters, carpenters, leather workers) and musicians; the Kurumba lived in the forested slopes, collecting honey and forest produce and feared as sorcerers; the Irula, on the lower slopes, gathered forest produce, cultivated and caught snakes and rats. The Badaga, a non-tribal farming community, grew grain on the plateau.
Interdependence: the Toda gave ghee, milk and buffaloes and received tools, pots and music at funerals from the Kota and grain from the Badaga; the Kota received dairy products, grain and the carcasses of sacrificed buffaloes; the Kurumba provided forest products and magical protection against disease and wild animals, and played ritual roles at Badaga ceremonies; the Irula supplied forest goods and labour. These exchanges were hereditary, partly ritual and ranked, resembling a regional jajmani-like system without caste in the strict sense.
Diagram: four circles labelled Toda, Kota, Kurumba and Irula around a central circle labelled Badaga, with arrows showing dairy products from Toda, tools and music from Kota, grain from Badaga, and forest produce and magical services from Kurumba and Irula.
Changes: after the British founded Ootacamund in the 1820s, roads, tea and vegetable plantations, settlers and markets broke the system. Land alienation and conversion of grasslands to plantations eroded Toda pastoralism; the Badaga prospered and stopped paying grain dues; Kota reformers abandoned music and other services they considered demeaning; cash and markets replaced exchange; and the Kurumba and Irula became plantation and wage labourers. The Irula Snake Catchers' Industrial Cooperative (1978) shows a new livelihood built on old skills.Q8(b) · Indian Village, Minorities and Social Change · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Linguistic and Religious Minorities
Define minority. Elaborate the patterns of linguistic and religious minorities in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
अल्पसंख्यक की परिभाषा दीजिए। भारत में अल्पसंख्यकों के भाषाई तथा धार्मिक प्रतिमानों की विस्तारपूर्वक व्याख्या कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(b)
Approach: Define minority (Wirth, Capotorti, Indian constitutional usage), then describe the patterns of religious minorities (size, distribution, notification) and linguistic minorities (state-wise, causes), with Census 2011 data, and conclude.
Louis Wirth (1945) defined a minority as a group singled out for unequal treatment because of physical or cultural traits, which regards itself as an object of collective discrimination. Francesco Capotorti (UN, 1977) stressed numerical inferiority, a non-dominant position and a shared ethnic, religious or linguistic identity. The Indian Constitution uses the term without defining it.
Religious minorities: under the National Commission for Minorities Act (1992) the Union notified Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis (1993) and Jains (2014). Census 2011 counted Muslims at 14.2%, Christians 2.3%, Sikhs 1.7%, Buddhists 0.7% and Jains 0.4%. Their distribution is uneven: Muslims are a majority in Lakshadweep and Jammu and Kashmir and large in Assam, West Bengal and Kerala; Christians are majorities in Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya; Sikhs in Punjab; and Buddhists mainly in Maharashtra.
Linguistic minorities: after the linguistic reorganisation of states (1956), each state has a majority language and minorities speaking others; the Supreme Court in T.M.A. Pai (2002) held that minority status is judged state by state. Examples include Telugu speakers in Tamil Nadu, Marathi and Kannada speakers across the Belagavi border, Bengali speakers in Assam, and speakers of tribal languages such as Santali and Gondi in every central Indian state.
Minorities in India are thus layered: a group may be a majority in one state and a minority in another, which shapes their rights and politics.Q8(c) · Tribal Administration and Applied Anthropology · 15 marks≈ 11 min
Tribal Administration, Policies and PVTGs
What are the identifying criteria for PVTGs in India? Examine their current status, nomenclature and distribution.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में पी० वी० टी० जी० की पहचान के क्या आधार हैं? इनकी वर्तमान प्रस्थिति, नामावली तथा विस्तार का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(c)
Approach: State the four identifying criteria for PVTGs, then examine their current status (population, problems, programmes), the change in nomenclature from PTG to PVTG, and their distribution across states.
Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups are the most marginalised among Scheduled Tribes. The Dhebar Commission (1960 to 1961) first noted the wide inequality between tribes, and from 1975 to 1976 the government began identifying such groups.
Criteria: a pre-agricultural level of technology (hunting, gathering or simple shifting cultivation), a low level of literacy, economic backwardness (a subsistence economy), and a stagnant or declining population.
Nomenclature: they were called Primitive Tribal Groups; the number reached 75 by 1993, and in 2006 the government renamed them Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups because 'primitive' was evolutionist and stigmatising.
Distribution: 75 PVTGs live in 18 states and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; Odisha has the most (13), including the Bondo, Dongria Kondh, Juang and Lanjia Saura; others include the Toda and Kurumba (Tamil Nadu), Baiga and Sahariya (Madhya Pradesh), Birhor and Asur (Jharkhand), Chenchu (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), Katkari (Maharashtra) and the Jarawa and Onge (Andaman Islands).
Current status: the PM-JANMAN habitation survey was reported in 2026 to have counted about 48.5 lakh PVTG members; groups range from the large Sahariya to tiny island populations; malnutrition, anaemia, low schooling and land insecurity persist. PM-JANMAN (2023, 24,104 crore rupees) and Conservation-cum-Development plans address these gaps.
A uniform list hides great diversity, so habitation-level planning and periodic review of the list are needed.