Archival ethnography and ethnography of archiving: Towards an anthropology of riot inquiry commission reports in postcolonial India

Salah Punathil

doi:10.1080/02757206.2020.1854750

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the challenges and possibilities of combining archival and ethnographic methods in the field of ‘communal’ violence studies in India. Drawing insights from debates among historians and anthropologists on the multifarious interactions between archives and ethnography and reflecting on the empirical case of persistent violence between Muslims and Christians in southern India, it argues for a creative synthesis of these two modes of inquiry for an adequate understanding of ‘communal’ violence and riot inquiry commissions in India. First, the paper critiques how colonial and postcolonial Indian archival reports problematically inscribe violence between any religious communities (such as Muslims and Christians) in the same narrative as the predominant case of Hindu-Muslim conflict. Second, it illuminates how archival ethnography can be an effective way of studying violence between religious communities and thus transcend conventional disciplinary boundaries. Finally, the paper introduces a nuanced approach, called ‘ethnography of archiving’, to detail the judicial and nonjudicial discourses and bureaucratic manoeuvring involved in the creation of an archival report, thereby unravelling the power relations, mediating processes, manipulations and bureaucratic performances that make commission reports problematic even today.

Highlights

The complex relationship between archives and ethnography has been a central concern of social science for the past few decades, and there is an exciting body of literature, especially from historians and anthropologists, that addresses the limits, possibilities and necessities of using them together to study a range of issues across times and locations (e.g. Axel 2002; Bennett 2014; Camaroff and Camaroff 1992; Carminati 2019; Cohn 1987; Cunha 2006; van der Veer 2001; Zeitlyn 2012)
This paper has aimed to extend the debate on the synthesis of archive and ethnography to ‘communal’ violence and riot studies in India, offering the example of a nuanced methodological intervention for a better understanding of riots and of riot inquiry commission reports in India
It first reflected upon the problems in archival representations of violence, such as colonial genealogy and the pervasive effect of generalized ideology on government reports in strikingly specific contexts, such as Christian–Muslim violence in coastal south India

Summary

Introduction

The complex relationship between archives and ethnography has been a central concern of social science for the past few decades, and there is an exciting body of literature, especially from historians and anthropologists, that addresses the limits, possibilities and necessities of using them together to study a range of issues across times and locations (e.g. Axel 2002; Bennett 2014; Camaroff and Camaroff 1992; Carminati 2019; Cohn 1987; Cunha 2006; van der Veer 2001; Zeitlyn 2012). Central to the difference between these two major strands of studying riots is a series of conventional binaries in social science: interpretation versus explanation, objectivity versus subjectivity, macro versus micro. Going beyond these dualisms, this paper brings forth the intricacies involved in a creative combination of archives and ethnography for a better anthropological understanding of riots and their inscription by the inquiry commissions set up by the government after riots in postcolonial India.

Objectives

Conclusion