Talk:The People of India

how to cite The People of India as a source

Currently there exist references to one or another individual volume of this series which provide no dates at all, while I think it would help readers evaluate the source by seeing a date. One citation elsewhere that I can find is in this Google book at page 826, as:

• Singh, K.S., ed. for Anthropological Survey of India. People of India. National Series, 10 vols. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990-1994.

When any specific volume in the National Series or the state series is used, it would be good to know which year of publication applies. but that seems not easily found. Oxford University Press's webpages seem not to mention the series, or at least I couldn't find a publication list by searching at http://www.oup.co.in/advanced-search/. I don't see a publication list within "The Anthropological Survey of India"'s offical webpages at http://www.ansi.gov.in/people_india.htm.

According to "A note on the Series, People of India - Anthropological Survey of India" by K.S.Singh, undated, the project conducted its fieldwork during 1985-1992 and its "observations relate to this limited time frame and to the universe of the ethnographic project titled People or India." K.S.Singh died before the publications were completed. In his note he states the plan for publication (which was to include 11 not 10 National volumes):

We are presenting the material published under the People of India project in two parts which are interrelated. The first consists of the eleven volume national series, which contains an abstract on all communities across the length and breadth of the country. The data generated in this respect has been strengthened by the addition of information from census and other secondary sources. The volumes include two on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, prepared as part of the celebration of Dr B.R. Ambedkar's birth centenary; three on all the communities of India; and two containing data on the languages and biological structure of India's population. The remaining volumes contain the quantitative profile, social segments, listings of communities, etc.

The second part comprises the state: union territory volumes based on a detailed write-up on each community of India. The contributors to the national volumes on the SC. ST and all communities are listed in Volume VI. The Glossary given in Volume VI is common to all the national volumes. At the end of each account -we have given references to the texts from which we have quoted, or references for further reading. This is only illustrative. An exhaustive bibliography appears at the end of the national volume, Volume VI.

The Oxford University Press is publishing the national volumes. A consortium of publishers has been set up to publish the material on the states and union territories. Seven volumes each for the northern states, southern states and the islands, the central and, western states are being published respectively by Messrs 1lanohar Publishers and distributors (New Delhi), Messrs Affiliated East-`Vest Private Limited (Madras) and Messrs Popular Prakashan Private Limited (Bombay). The eleven volumes on the north-eastern and eastern states are being published by Messrs Seagull Books Private Limited (Calcutta), which has already published the introductory national volume.

I am left wondering if a complete list of citations for all the volumes can be found, to be able to improve citations in Wikipedia articles, such as here, for one example. --doncram 16:03, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Read the article and don't cite the States series, which is what is used in the article to which you refer. That series is useless. And, please, can we not get into a long debate about this? Read Sanskritisation, note that it was a political exercise, and note the numerous lack of attributions to the plagiarised, inept Raj sources that are contained within those volumes. - Sitush (talk) 16:19, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

@Doncram:: The worldcat listings, would be a good place to get bibliographical data on how to cite these works.

@Sitush: Are there concerns with the methodology, ideology, or credibility of the work in these volumes, similar to the problems with the Raj era gazetteers and other sources? Have these volumes been reviewed in any academic journals, or cited by academicians in their published works? (I know I can search jstor etc to answer those questions myself, but you may have already done the legwork and are generally better informed about caste-related sources) That should help guide us as to if and when to cite these works at all.

Abecedare (talk) 18:00, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

They have been discussed at various venues, including somewhere on RSN. There are a couple of rather too lengthy quotes in the article already. You won't find many (if any) academics citing them (I've never seen one in all of my reading, but I suppose there might be an exception here or there). Most of the writing in the states series is lifted out of the Raj "ethnographies", sometimes word for word even though the attribution is vague and in many cases not present at all. Since the Raj ethnographies are almost always unacceptable, so too are these books. Please note also that the publishing history of the States series is extremely chequered: they had to change publisher because Oxford refused to do it (concerns about lowering their standards), and I think there were problems even after that, hence Popular Prakashan, Manohar and perhaps some other outfits all had a bite at the cherry.

All of this has been said before, I'm sure. - Sitush (talk) 18:23, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the overview.

Have added Laura Jenkins's lengthy review to my to-read list. Not very positive at a quick glance. Sample quote:

The current project justifies the notion of a unified people of India by drawing on methods such as nasal indexes and trait counting, as well as colonial-era assumptions, such as the essential communal nature of India.... The danger of this official nationalist anthropology is that certain categories receive both a scientific and official stamp of approval, while, at the same time, some persistent disparities between these categories are swept under the carpet.

And for completeness, here is the RSN discussion Sitush mentioned above. Abecedare (talk) 18:59, 27 March 2015 (UTC)