Indian Students in a German School of Racial Anthropology and Eugenics (1927–1945)

Pho­to: Irawati Karve (sit­ting in the mid­dle) tak­en around 1927–1930 in the KWI‑A’s doc­tor­al stu­dents’ room. Source: fam­i­ly archive (cour­tesy of Chan­da Nim­bkar, Nan­di­ni Nim­bkar-Raj­van­shi, and Urmil­la Deshpande).

Table of Con­tents
Intro­duc­tion | Irawati Karve  | P. C. Biswas | Archival Col­lec­tions  | Final Remarks  | End­notes

Introduction

This arti­cle exam­ines Ger­man archival doc­u­ments about Indi­an stu­dents who were researchers at the infa­mous Kaiser-Wil­helm-Insti­tut für Anthro­polo­gie, Men­schliche Erblehre und Eugenik (Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute for Anthro­pol­o­gy, Human Hered­i­ty, and Eugen­ics, KWI‑A), a cen­tre locat­ed in Berlin-Dahlem from 1927 until the end of World War II. Sev­er­al stu­dents and researchers, many of whom came from out­side of Ger­many, took class­es or devel­oped their projects at the KWI‑A, and sev­er­al were under the super­vi­sion of its pro­fes­sors. The sig­nif­i­cance of the KWI‑A for the pro­duc­tion of eugeni­cist and racial­iz­ing knowl­edge has been espe­cial­ly dras­tic in Europe, as the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of that knowl­edge cul­mi­nat­ed in Nazi geno­ci­dal poli­cies. But also due to the transna­tion­al cir­cu­la­tion of its researchers, the KWI‑A’s intel­lec­tu­al influ­ence was not only con­tained with­in Euro­pean bor­ders. There­fore, it is rel­e­vant to ask: to what extent has this site of sci­en­tif­ic research and train­ing left a mark in the intel­lec­tu­al for­ma­tion and lat­er work of its alum­ni, espe­cial­ly those with inter­na­tion­al tra­jec­to­ries? This is a ques­tion that I and a few oth­er schol­ars have start­ed to explore in the last years.[i]

Among the for­eign stu­dents and young researchers at the KWI‑A, there were at least three from India: Irawati Karve (1905–1970), Pro­ful­la Chan­dra Biswas (1903–1984), and Sasan­ka Sekhar Sarkar (1908–1969).[ii] In the fol­low­ing sec­tions, I trace a short panora­ma of the first two. Both were among India’s most influ­en­tial anthro­pol­o­gists in the decades fol­low­ing its inde­pen­dence in 1947, in a time when the dis­ci­pline was being insti­tu­tion­al­ized. I offer a glimpse of their pres­ence in the Archiv der Max Planck Gesellschaft (Archive of the Max Planck Soci­ety) in Berlin-Dahlem, which inher­it­ed the KWI-A-relat­ed doc­u­ments that were not destroyed at the end of World War II, as well as the Uni­ver­sität­sarchiv der Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin (Archive of the Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin), which inher­it­ed the doc­u­ments of its pre­de­ces­sor Friedrich-Wil­helms-Uni­ver­sität, where most of the stu­dents at the KWI‑A were enrolled. I also deploy a pic­ture found in the archives of the Karve fam­i­ly. This arti­cle draws from my research on Irawati Karve, which has been elab­o­rat­ed in sev­er­al out­puts.[iii]

Irawati Karve

Irawati Karve was India’s first woman to be appoint­ed as a soci­ol­o­gy and anthro­pol­o­gy lec­tur­er in the Dec­can Col­lege in Pune, where she became a pro­fes­sor and worked until the end of her life in 1970. Karve trained sev­er­al stu­dents with her holis­tic approach that com­bined social, cul­tur­al, phys­i­cal, and bio­log­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy, includ­ing racial anthro­po­met­ric meth­ods. While Karve’s vast and mul­ti­fac­eted work is most known in India today for its pro­gres­sive con­tri­bu­tions in the study of Indi­an cul­ture and gen­der,[iv] the phys­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal anthro­po­log­i­cal accents in her work were under­pinned by her train­ing in racial anthro­pol­o­gy in Berlin.

Excep­tion­al for a South Asian woman at the time, she trav­elled to Ger­many in 1927 to under­take her PhD in anthro­pol­o­gy. In Ger­many, Karve received a Hum­boldt Fel­low­ship, which was at that time with­in the Deutsch­er Akademis­ch­er Aus­tausch­di­enst (Ger­man Aca­d­e­m­ic Exchange Ser­vice, DAAD), a state agency for inter­na­tion­al scientific/academic exchange that was direct­ly linked to Germany’s for­eign min­istry. Karve’s doc­tor­al the­sis was super­vised by Eugen Fis­ch­er, an anthro­pol­o­gy pro­fes­sor and race sci­en­tist, who had made a career by apply­ing Mendelian genet­ics to the study of “mixed mar­riages” in Ger­man South-West Africa, present-day Namib­ia. Fis­ch­er gave her the task to com­pare the skull asym­me­try of human cra­nia of dif­fer­ent racial groups. This task was moti­vat­ed by a racist hypoth­e­sis: Skull asym­me­try (where­by the right side of the skull—the one alleged­ly respon­si­ble for cul­ture and rationality—was larg­er) was con­sid­ered an indi­ca­tor of the civ­i­liza­tion­al evo­lu­tion­ary achieve­ment of white Euro­peans, while Africans were sup­posed to have more sym­met­ri­cal skulls and thus be less rational.

Karve’s dis­ser­ta­tion was pub­lished in Ger­many in the same year that she went back to India, 1931, with the title Nor­male Asym­me­trie des Men­schlichen Schädels (Nor­mal Asym­me­try of the Human Skull).[v] Sur­pris­ing­ly to her super­vi­sor and KWI‑A col­leagues, Karve’s research con­clu­sion con­tra­dict­ed the racial the­o­ries of the place and time: she blunt­ly stat­ed that she could not observe any cor­re­la­tion between racial dif­fer­ences and the mea­sured skull asym­me­try shapes. Instead of sim­ply explor­ing the racist hypoth­e­sis that, as she empha­sized, Fis­ch­er assigned to her, Karve’s dis­ser­ta­tion explored the alter­na­tive hypoth­e­sis of whether a skull asym­me­try could result from an asym­me­try in the spinal col­umn instead. In this sense, instead of rest­ing on a racial expla­na­tion, she sug­gest­ed that skull asym­me­try could derive from anoth­er, pos­si­bly non-hered­i­tary and non-racial phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tic. She con­clud­ed that “[her] own [doc­tor­al research] inves­ti­ga­tions car­ried out on the skulls of dif­fer­ent racial groups show no such racial dif­fer­ences in asym­me­tries in struc­ture, which may war­rant the sup­po­si­tion that the asym­me­tries are a prod­uct of civ­i­liza­tion”.[vi]

As Karve’s files in the archives of the Hum­boldt Uni­ver­si­ty in Berlin demon­strate, Fischer’s writ­ten eval­u­a­tion of her PhD the­sis bare­ly touched upon the actu­al con­tent of her argu­ments and con­clu­sion: it briefly explained that Karve answered “no” to the hypoth­e­sis of cor­re­la­tion between skull asym­me­try and race, and it high­light­ed that Karve “then raised the ques­tion her­self whether asym­me­tries could be relat­ed to side­ways cur­va­tures of the spine”.[vii] His crit­i­cism focused on the dissertation’s struc­ture and suc­cinct for­mat, which, he argued, was also to blame on Karve’s “Fremd­sprach­lichkeit” (for­eign lan­guage-ness). Fischer’s sparse­ly artic­u­lat­ed cri­tique is enhanced by his severe grad­ing ver­dict: he eval­u­at­ed Karve’s dis­ser­ta­tion with Idoneum, the min­i­mal grade nec­es­sary for a doc­tor­al stu­dent to pass their exam.[viii]

As this sto­ry shows, Karve did not sim­ply absorb the racial­iz­ing knowl­edge she was taught in Berlin; instead she pushed back racist the­o­ries. How­ev­er, as I elab­o­rate in detail else­where,[ix] Karve also applied many racial the­o­ries and meth­ods for her lat­er stud­ies of caste and eth­nic groups in India. Karve’s work is per­me­at­ed by this ten­sion between, on the one hand, being root­ed in this Ger­man school of racial anthro­pol­o­gy and, on the oth­er, reflect­ing on its racist under­pin­nings. This ten­sion becomes most evi­dent in the last decades of Karve’s life, when she engaged with post-World War II dis­cus­sions on Nazi eugen­ics and racist effects of racial anthro­pol­o­gy at the same time that she adapt­ed her dis­course towards a mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ist stance that was typ­i­cal of the Nehru­vian “uni­ty in diver­si­ty” dis­course. A ques­tion worth ask­ing in this regard would be to what extent Karve’s knowl­edge pro­duc­tion in India was shaped by her intel­lec­tu­al, per­son­al, and affec­tive root­ed­ness in Ger­man phys­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy. While I have explored this ques­tion else­where,[x] in the fol­low­ing I high­light some insights from archives in Germany.

A few doc­u­ments found in the archives of the Max Planck Soci­ety in Berlin-Dahlem offer some insights to the per­son­al con­nec­tions between Karve and her Berlin pro­fes­sors. In the 1950s—decades after her doc­tor­al studies—she was still fond­ly remem­bered by KWI‑A direc­tors as a close stu­dent and col­league: She was men­tioned in two let­ters by Fis­ch­er to the eugen­ics researcher Otmar Frei­herr von Ver­schuer as a mem­ber of their “cir­cle” of researchers at the KWI‑A, who should be invit­ed for a par­ty that would com­mem­o­rate the KWI‑A’s open­ing anniver­sary.[xi] Ver­schuer planned this par­ty to coin­cide with Fischer’s 80^th birth­day in 1954. Karve respond­ed that she would not be able to make it and sent Fis­ch­er cor­dial birth­day greet­ings along with a sam­ple of her book Kin­ship Organ­i­sa­tion in India.[xii] Ver­schuer also wrote let­ters to Karve on the occa­sion of trips of his friends to India, but she did not meet them;[xiii] a re-encounter between the two seems to have nev­er tak­en place.

In 1959, on the occa­sion of Fischer’s 85^th birth­day, Ver­schuer col­lect­ed dif­fer­ent birth­day mes­sages by alum­ni and for­mer col­leagues. Karve sent a short anec­dote about Fis­ch­er in which she praised him with the sen­tence: “He was sci­en­tif­ic in his teach­ing, exact­ing but kind as a guide and always had a deep human­i­ty” (empha­sis added).[xiv] Karve’s stress­ing of Fischer’s human­i­ty might have had a deep­er mean­ing. In a per­son­al text writ­ten around the same time, Karve dwelt upon the human­i­ty of evil: her essay All that is you nar­rates her philo­soph­i­cal and per­son­al con­fronta­tion with the news of the Eich­mann tri­al.[xv] In the essay, she engages with the Hin­du philo­soph­i­cal con­cept of atma to come to terms with the fact that every­one in a giv­en soci­ety is entan­gled with—and respon­si­ble for—the evil that emerges in a giv­en soci­ety, and that evil, too, is an intrin­sic aspect of human­i­ty. Inter­pret­ed in light of this essay, Karve’s appraisal of Fischer’s human­i­ty in that birth­day greet­ing might also be a sign of her com­ing to terms with her affec­tion and bond vis-à-vis her Dok­tor­vater despite his close involve­ment with Nazi politics.

P. C. Biswas

P. C. Biswas was the first lec­tur­er and head of Del­hi University’s Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­o­gy, found­ed in 1947 just pri­or to inde­pen­dence, and a father fig­ure to the sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of anthro­pol­o­gists instruct­ed in this phys­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy-cen­tred school.

As Biswas explains in the Cur­ricu­lum Vitae attached to his dis­ser­ta­tion, he stud­ied anthro­pol­o­gy in Cal­cut­ta, where he obtained his Mas­ter of Sci­ence diplo­ma in 1931. There­after he con­duct­ed some research in India under the super­vi­sion of Pan­chanan Mitra, who was head of the anthro­pol­o­gy depart­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­cut­ta. In August 1934, the month Adolf Hitler became Germany’s head of state, Biswas moved to Berlin with a Hum­boldt fel­low­ship. Like Karve, Biswas’ doc­tor­al research was super­vised by KWI‑A’s found­ing direc­tor Eugen Fis­ch­er, who in 1933 had become rec­tor of the Friedrich Wil­helm Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin, also thanks to his affil­i­a­tion and intel­lec­tu­al prox­im­i­ty to the Nazi par­ty. Biswas’s doc­tor­al the­sis was enti­tled Über Fin­ger- und Han­dleis­ten von Indern [On fin­ger and hand rip­ples of Indi­ans].[xvi] Based on the analy­sis of fin­ger­prints and hand­prints, his the­sis argued that Indi­ans are racial­ly clos­er to Euro­peans than to East Asians[xvii]—an argu­ment high­light­ed by Eugen Fis­ch­er in his over­all pos­i­tive assess­ment of Biswas’ the­sis, which was grad­ed with the sec­ond-best mark: “good”.[xvi­ii]

Biswas fin­ished his dis­ser­ta­tion in 1936 and soon returned to India, where, before being appoint­ed to the impor­tant uni­ver­si­ty posi­tion in Del­hi, he was affil­i­at­ed with his alma mater in Cal­cut­ta.[xix] Biswas’ doc­tor­al train­ing cement­ed his inter­est in com­par­a­tive der­mato­glyph­ics research, a field he con­tin­ued to work on in India. In India, Biswas also wrote in favour of eugeni­cist pop­u­la­tion con­trol poli­cies, argu­ing that India “should learn from the eugen­ics poli­cies of the Nazi Ger­man state”.[xx] He praised the eugeni­cist endeav­ours of Nazi Ger­many and argued that India should elab­o­rate poli­cies of mass ster­il­iza­tion and mar­riage restric­tions for peo­ple of cer­tain groups, which he con­sid­ered to be genet­i­cal­ly infe­ri­or or degen­er­ate, like crim­i­nals and the men­tal­ly ill.[xxi] In the depart­ment that he once led, Biswas is remem­bered by some old­er fac­ul­ty for his appraisal of Hitler (he alleged­ly took praise of wear­ing a jack­et that he also wore when he met Hitler, as I was told in an inter­view).[xxii]

Although cur­rent pro­fes­sors and stu­dents at Del­hi Uni­ver­si­ty might not remem­ber Biswas or be crit­i­cal of his work, Biswas did have a large influ­ence in the depart­ment he led and lec­tured at. He shaped his Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­o­gy close­ly in line with the anthro­pom­e­try-based tra­di­tion he was trained in in Berlin. Although many anthro­pol­o­gy depart­ments in India fol­low anthropology’s four-field mod­el, which com­pris­es bio­log­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy, the promi­nence of this spe­cif­ic field at the Del­hi Uni­ver­si­ty is quite striking—and also remounts to Biswas’s lega­cy.[xxi­ii] He was a big influ­ence on the fol­low­ing gen­er­a­tion of Del­hi anthro­pol­o­gists, many of whom fol­lowed Biswas’s tra­jec­to­ry and got a Hum­boldt schol­ar­ship to go to Ger­many to be skilled in the racial tra­di­tion of phys­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy, also after 1945. One of these stu­dents was Indera Paul Singh, who lat­er also taught at the same depart­ment as Biswas and pub­lished in 1968 the wide­ly read Anthro­pom­e­try: A Lab­o­ra­to­ry Man­u­al on Bio­log­i­cal Anthro­pol­o­gy,[xxiv] which is a sum­ma­rized trans­la­tion of a famous Ger­man text­book of phys­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy[xxv] includ­ing racial tax­onomies. [xxvi] Singh’s text­book is still used in many phys­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy cours­es in dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties in India today.

While Biswas is only briefly men­tioned among KWI-A-relat­ed doc­u­ments in the Archiv der Max-Planck Gesellschaft (my analy­sis here also draws from my own inter­views in India and sec­ondary lit­er­a­ture), doc­u­ments relat­ed to his doc­tor­al studies—including his PhD assess­ment by Fischer—can be found in the archive of the Hum­boldt Uni­ver­si­ty in Berlin.

Archival Collections

While many doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the KWI‑A were destroyed at the end of World War II, the Archiv der Max Planck Gesellschaft (Archive of the Max Planck Soci­ety) in Berlin-Dahlem holds sev­er­al doc­u­ments and let­ters relat­ed to the Insti­tute and its for­mer staff, includ­ing (in fact, most­ly) doc­u­ments and let­ters dat­ing after 1945. The Nach­lass Ver­schuer (relat­ed to KWI‑A’s Depart­ment Direc­tor Ottmar Frei­herr von Ver­schuer) con­tains let­ter exchanges between Ver­schuer and Karve and her hus­band Dhon­do (Abteilung III, Reposi­tur 86A, Nr. 412, 413) as well as let­ters between Fis­ch­er and Ver­schuer, in which KWI‑A alum­ni are men­tioned (Abteilung III, Reposi­tur 94, Num­mer 69–10), and Karve’s birth­day greet­ings to Fis­ch­er (Abteilung III, Reposi­tur 86A, Num­ber 52, 53). In the same archive, Fischer’s hand­writ­ten mem­o­ries briefly men­tion the inter­na­tion­al stu­dents at the KWI‑A (Abteilung III, Reposi­tur 94, Num­mer 45).

Since the KWI‑A was linked to the Friedrich-Wil­helms-Uni­ver­sität (the PhD stu­dents who researched at the KWI‑A were usu­al­ly reg­is­tered there), the Uni­ver­sität­sarchiv der Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin is also rel­e­vant. It con­tains the PhD files (Pro­mo­tion­sak­te) of the stu­dents before 1945 of its pre­de­ces­sor insti­tu­tion, the Friedrich-Wil­helms-Uni­ver­sität; the files being orga­nized by fac­ul­ty (see end­notes 7 and 18). Both Karve’s and Biswas’s PhD files are avail­able there, con­tain­ing doc­u­ments relat­ed to their stud­ies includ­ing their super­vi­sors’ assess­ments.[xxvii]

Final Remarks

Doc­u­ments in Ger­man archives can be an impor­tant source for explo­rations on the racial under­pin­nings of anthro­po­log­i­cal and oth­er sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge pro­duc­tion about human diver­si­ty in India. While a lot of the lit­er­a­ture on this sub­ject has high­light­ed the impact of British colo­nial­ism and its actors, I argue that this schol­ar­ship needs to con­sid­er oth­er transna­tion­al and trans­colo­nial con­nec­tions.[xxvi­ii] As the place where racial and eugeni­cist sci­ences reached an espe­cial­ly bru­tal polit­i­cal apex, Ger­many was a cru­cial site for the pro­duc­tion and transna­tion­al cir­cu­la­tion of racial­iz­ing the­o­ries and meth­ods. As I have argued else­where, the transna­tion­al­iza­tion of Ger­man sci­ences of race and eugen­ics played an impor­tant role in the racial­iza­tion of caste, reli­gion, and eth­nic­i­ty in India.[xxix] Germany–India con­nec­tions in the sci­en­tif­ic objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of human diver­si­ty are wor­thy of fur­ther exploration. 

Endnotes

[i] Bar­bosa, Thi­a­go P. et al, “Remem­ber­ing the Anthro­po­log­i­cal Mak­ing of Race in Today’s Uni­ver­si­ty: An Analy­sis of a Student’s Memo­r­i­al Project in Berlin”. Etno­foor 30, no. 2 (2018): 29–48; Huang, Weicheng, “Rasse Als Transna­tionales Kon­strukt: Die „Mischling“-Studie Des Anthro­polo­gen Tao Yun-Kuei in Deutsch-Chi­ne­sis­chen Kon­tex­ten”. MA the­sis, Otto-Suhr-Insti­tut für Poli­tik­wis­senschaft, Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin, 2022; Birkalan-Gedik, Hande, “Trav­el­ing The­o­ries, Trav­el­ing The­o­rists: Seni­ha Tunakan,  ‘die kleine Türkin’ at the KWI‑A at Ihnes­traße 22–24 and at Ankara Uni­ver­si­ty”. Jour­nal of Folk­lore Research (forth­com­ing).

[ii] On Sarkar, see: Mukhar­ji, Pro­jit B., Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Sci­ence in India, 1920–66. Chica­go: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press, 2023.

[iii] Bar­bosa, Thi­a­go P., “Racial­iz­ing a New Nation: Ger­man Colo­nial­i­ty and Anthro­pol­o­gy in Maha­rash­tra, India”. Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence 30, no. 1 (2022): 137–66; Bar­bosa, Thi­a­go P., and Urmil­la Desh­pande. Iru: The Remark­able Life of Irawati Karve. New Del­hi: Speak­ing Tigers Books, forth­com­ing; Bar­bosa, Thi­a­go P., Racial­iz­ing Caste: Anthro­pol­o­gy between Ger­many and India and the Lega­cy of Irawati Karve (1905–1970). De Gruyter, forth­com­ing. See also: Sun­dar, Nan­di­ni, “In the Cause of Anthro­pol­o­gy: The Life and Work of Irawati Karve”. In: Patri­cia Uberoi, Nan­di­ni Sun­dar and Satish Desh­pande (eds.) Anthro­pol­o­gy in the East: Founders of Indi­an Soci­ol­o­gy and Anthro­pol­o­gy. Cal­cut­ta: Seag­ull, 2008, pp. 360–416.

[iv] See, for exam­ple: Karve, Irawati, “The Indi­an Women in 1975.” Per­spec­tive, sup­ple­ment to the Indi­an Jour­nal of pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion, no. 1 (1966): 103–35; Karve, Irawati, Hin­du Soci­ety: An Inter­pre­ta­tion. Poona: Dec­can Col­lege, 1961; Karve, Irawati, Yugan­ta: The End of an Epoch. Hyder­abad: Ori­ent Black­Swan, 2017.

[v] Karve, Irawati, Nor­male Asym­me­trie des men­schlichen Schädels: Inau­gur­al-Dis­ser­ta­tion. Leipzig: Schwarzen­berg & Schu­mann, 1931.

[vi] Karve, Irawati, “The Nor­mal Asym­me­try of the Human Body”. The Jour­nal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bom­bay VI, Part I (1937): 73.

[vii] Fis­ch­er, Eugen, Refer­at [Eval­u­a­tion of Karve’s Doc­tor­al The­sis]. Philosophis­che Fakultät, Lit­tr. 5, No. 4, Vol. 511, 722. Uni­ver­sität­sarchiv der Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Bar­bosa, Racial­iz­ing Caste (forth­com­ing).

[x] Bar­bosa, Thi­a­go P., “Indi­an Soci­ol­o­gy and Anthro­pol­o­gy Between a Decolonis­ing Quest and the West”. Revue d’his­toire des sci­ences humaines, no. 41 (2022): 181–211.

[xi] Fis­ch­er, Eugen, [Let­ter to Ver­schuer]. III Abteilung, Reposi­tur 94, Bestell­num­mer 69–10. Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem; Fis­ch­er, Eugen, [Let­ter to Ver­schuer]. III Abteilung, Reposi­tur 94, Bestell­num­mer 69–10. Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem.

[xii] Karve, Irawati, [Let­ter to Ver­schuer]. III Abteilung, Reposi­tur 086A, Bestell­num­mer 052, (Nach­lass Ver­schuer). Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem; Karve, Irawati, Kin­ship Organ­i­sa­tion in India. First Edi­tion. Poona: Dec­can Col­lege Research Insti­tute, 1953.

[xiii] Ver­schuer, Otmar F. von, [Let­ter to D. & I. Karve]. III Abteilung, Reposi­tur 086A, Bestell­num­mer 413 (Nach­lass Ver­schuer). Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem.

[xiv] Karve, Irawati. [Aned­cote About Eugen Fis­ch­er]. III_86A, Nr. 53 (Nach­lass Ver­schuer). Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem.

[xv] Karve, Irawati, “‘All That Is You’: An Essay.” In: Eleanor Zel­liot and Max­ine Berntsen (eds.)The Expe­ri­ence of Hin­duism: Essays on Reli­gion in Maha­rash­tra. Del­hi: Sri Sat­gu­ru, 1992, pp. 213–22.

[xvi] See: Biswas, P. C., “Über Hand- Und Fin­ger­leis­ten Von Indern”. Zeitschrift für Mor­pholo­gie und Anthro­polo­gie 35, no. 3 (1936): 519–50.

[xvii] Inves­ti­ga­tions on the ori­gins of Indi­an pop­u­la­tions and their sim­i­lar­i­ties to Euro­peans have had a long­stand­ing curios­i­ty among Indi­an and Euro­pean schol­ars, at least since 18^th cen­tu­ry the­o­ries of Aryan migra­tion. See: Bar­bosa, Racial­iz­ing Caste (forth­com­ing).

[xvi­ii] Fis­ch­er, Eugen, Refer­at [Mel­dung zur Pro­mo­tion­sprü­fung / Eval­u­a­tion of Biswas’ Doc­tor­al The­sis]. Philosophis­che Fakultät, Lit­tr. P, No. 4, Vol. 619, 823. Uni­ver­sität­sarchiv der Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin.

[xix] Ban­deh-Ahma­di, Nurol­ho­da, “‘The Bad Stock’: Nazi Eugen­ics and the Growth of Anthro­pol­o­gy in Del­hi”, South Asia: Jour­nal of South Asian Stud­ies (2024): 1–18.

[xx] Ban­deh-Ahma­di, “‘The Bad Stock’: Nazi Eugen­ics and the Growth of Anthro­pol­o­gy in Del­hi”, Ibid., p. 4.

[xxi] Ban­deh-Ahma­di, “‘The Bad Stock’: Nazi Eugen­ics and the Growth of Anthro­pol­o­gy in Del­hi”, Ibid., pp. 4–5.

[xxii] Inter­view with Pooran Chand Joshi, New Del­hi, 5 Sept 2017. In addi­tion, Bandeh-Ahmadi’s assess­ment con­firms this mem­o­ry of Biswas. See: Ban­deh-Ahma­di, “‘The Bad Stock’: Nazi Eugen­ics and the Growth of Anthro­pol­o­gy in Del­hi” (2024).

[xxi­ii] Ban­deh-Ahma­di, Nurol­ho­da, “Anthro­po­log­i­cal Gen­er­a­tions: A Post-Inde­pen­dence Ethnog­ra­phy of Aca­d­e­m­ic Anthro­pol­o­gy and Soci­ol­o­gy in India”. Doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, 2018; Ban­deh-Ahma­di “‘The Bad Stock’: Nazi Eugen­ics and the Growth of Anthro­pol­o­gy in Del­hi” (2024).

[xxiv] Singh, Indera P., M. K. Bhasin, Anthro­pom­e­try: A lab­o­ra­to­ry man­u­al on bio­log­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy, Del­hi: Kam­la-Raj Enter­pris­es, 1989 [1968].

[xxv] Mar­tin, Rudolf, Lehrbuch der Anthro­polo­gie in sys­tem­a­tis­ch­er Darstel­lung. Jena: Gus­tav Fis­ch­er, 1914.

[xxvi] Inter­view with B. V. Bhanu, Pune, 20 Sept 2017.

[xxvii] See also, Razak Khan’s Reflex­i­con arti­cle based on his research on South Asian stu­dents in Berlin which, among oth­ers, also relies on the files in the Uni­ver­sität­sarchiv der Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin. Khan, Razak. “Entan­gled Insti­tu­tion­al and Affec­tive Archives of South Asian Mus­lim Stu­dents in Ger­many.” MIDA (2018). Retrieved 12 June 2024 from https://www.projekt-mida.de/reflexicon/entangled-institutional-and-affective-archives-of-south-asian-muslim-students-in-germany/, 2020.

[xxvi­ii] For a dis­cus­sion on trans­colo­nial con­nec­tions in the his­to­ry of sci­ence, see: Mukhar­ji, Pro­jit B., Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Sci­ence in India, 1920–66. Chica­go: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press, 2023; Schär, Bern­hard C., Tropen­liebe: Schweiz­er Natur­forsch­er und nieder­ländis­ch­er Impe­ri­al­is­mus in Südostasien um 1900. Frank­furt am Main: Cam­pus, 2015; Bar­bosa, Racial­iz­ing Caste (forth­com­ing).

[xxix] Bar­bosa, “Racial­iz­ing a New Nation: Ger­man Colo­nial­i­ty and Anthro­pol­o­gy in Maha­rash­tra, India” (2022); Bar­bosa, Racial­iz­ing Caste (forth­com­ing).

Thi­a­go Pin­to Bar­bosa, Uni­ver­sität Bayreuth