‘The Bad Stock’: Nazi Eugenics and the Growth of Anthropology in Delhi

Abstract

This article examines connections between biological anthropology in India and Nazi German anthropology, particularly through Profulla Chandra Biswas (1904–84), a Nazi sympathiser and founding head of the University of Delhi’s Department of Anthropology. Influenced by his PhD supervisor, Nazi anthropologist Eugen Fischer, Biswas propagated eugenics ideologies and used them to advance his academic career and determine foundational priorities for one of the largest anthropology departments in the Indian subcontinent. Ethnographic fieldwork from a kinship perspective demonstrates that although they are often forgotten by present-day anthropologists, efforts to ‘cut off’ these intellectual genealogies merely allow their intellectual and ethical legacies to continue without critical reflection.