ABSTRACT
Most reviews about the modern anthropology of India focus on grand theories and their interpretation of symbolic and social systems, colonialism and globalization and other titanic topics. This book questions the primacy of the whole of India in relationship to its parts. In anthropology, as in other social and cultural sciences, the discourse about India assumes common features or qualities, and the interpretations of local societies subsequently appear in the light of this whole. We agree that the history of the subcontinent, of postcolonial India and of the processes of cultural identification, is more than the sum of its parts. At the same time, localities, regions and Union states exist in their own right and are more than variants of the whole. In our view, the complex and dialectical relationships of the whole and its parts are often overlooked. In Indian philosophy and in common local discourses an organic metaphor suggests that the parts receive their function and value in relationship to the whole. Most famously, the idea of society as a whole was formulated in the famous Purusha myth in the Rig Veda, where the varna originated in the body parts of the cosmic man. The contemporary political sovereignty of India supports the view of dependent parts and underestimates the contributions of the regions towards the greater entity. As anthropologists working in particular settings in India we claim that the idea of common cultural orientations, a shared value system or a collective history, has overshadowed the internal complexities of India’s regions.
