ABSTRACT
While in India on a research trip in the mid-1990s, I met a British anthropologist also doing field research in Udaipur District in Rajasthan. Because of our shared interests and the chance contiguity of our residences we spent a great deal of time together, endlessly discussing our respective research projects. By this time I had immersed myself in the theories and debates around Bhil and tribal identities, historically and in contemporary life. My colleague made an intriguing offer: if I collect hair samples from Bhils in the communities in which I was doing fieldwork, she would send them to a human genome laboratory where a researcher was analyzing the genetic histories of people identified as Bhil and Rajput (the dominant caste of Rajasthan). This DNA-based research, the genetic scientists were suggesting, would resolve the highly contentious and political debates over the time depth of Bhil residence in the district, and their genetic distinction from, or alternatively close genetic connections to, other identity groups in the district. In retrospect, this proposed undertaking resonates with the racialized narratives of Bhil identity roundly rejected by most anthropologists, but still present in the quest for genetic evidence of presumed identity markers. Years later, the hair samples I collected and carefully labeled remain in a desk drawer, unopened and unstudied.
