Cultural Profile of Calcutta
Edited by Surajit Sinha
Published by The Indian Anthropological Society, Calcutta, 1972. First Edition. Very good hardcover, in good price-cipped dustjacket. Tight binding, solid spine, clean unmarked text. 8vo, index, 283 pages.
Sinha, a prominent anthropologist and director of the Anthropological Survey of India, compiled this 283-page volume as the outcome of a January 1970 seminar titled "Cultural Profile of Calcutta." Published during a turbulent period in the city’s history—marked by the Naxalite movement, political violence, and the 1971 influx of refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)—the book captures Calcutta’s complex identity amid social upheaval. The Indian Anthropological Society, supported by a grant from the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), aimed to document the city’s cultural dynamics, reflecting a broader 1970s trend of urban anthropology in India.
The volume, an 8vo hardcover, features a cloth binding with a dustjacket designed by Purnima Sinha, which attempts to graphically depict the seminar’s spirit. It includes contributions from a diverse group of scholars—Ajita Chakraborty (psychiatry), Alokeranjan Dasgupta (Bengali literature), Benoy Ghose (social history), and Dikshit Sinha (anthropology), among others—covering topics from urban elites and business executives to goondas (thugs) and slum-dwellers. The book examines Calcutta’s “furious creative energy,” a phrase Sinha uses to describe the city’s vibrant yet volatile cultural landscape, shaped by its history as the British Raj’s capital (1772–1911) and its post-independence struggles with deindustrialization and migration.
The collection portrays Calcutta as a “problem-ridden volatile metropolis,” exploring its cultural gestalt through an anthropological lens. It delves into the city’s social fabric, highlighting the interplay of communities—Marwaris, Punjabis, Hindi speakers, and South Indians—whose social worlds the Society later studied with ICSSR funding. Contributors like Dikshit Sinha, in his paper on slum kinship, emphasize the need for stable incomes to empower the urban poor, drawing on eight months of fieldwork (1968–1969) with the Anthropological Survey of India. The book positions Calcutta as a “maidan” (open field) of cultural exchange.
A pioneering effort in urban anthropology, a “unique contribution” to understanding Calcutta’s cultural spectrum, as noted in contemporary reviews.
Appealing to collectors of Indian anthropology, urban studies, and Bengali cultural history. An early attempt to anthropologically frame Calcutta’s cultural identity.
Loc: E16
Cultural Profile of Calcutta
Edited by Surajit Sinha
Published by The Indian Anthropological Society, Calcutta, 1972. First Edition. Very good hardcover, in good price-cipped dustjacket. Tight binding, solid spine, clean unmarked text. 8vo, index, 283 pages.
Sinha, a prominent anthropologist and director of the Anthropological Survey of India, compiled this 283-page volume as the outcome of a January 1970 seminar titled "Cultural Profile of Calcutta." Published during a turbulent period in the city’s history—marked by the Naxalite movement, political violence, and the 1971 influx of refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)—the book captures Calcutta’s complex identity amid social upheaval. The Indian Anthropological Society, supported by a grant from the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), aimed to document the city’s cultural dynamics, reflecting a broader 1970s trend of urban anthropology in India.
The volume, an 8vo hardcover, features a cloth binding with a dustjacket designed by Purnima Sinha, which attempts to graphically depict the seminar’s spirit. It includes contributions from a diverse group of scholars—Ajita Chakraborty (psychiatry), Alokeranjan Dasgupta (Bengali literature), Benoy Ghose (social history), and Dikshit Sinha (anthropology), among others—covering topics from urban elites and business executives to goondas (thugs) and slum-dwellers. The book examines Calcutta’s “furious creative energy,” a phrase Sinha uses to describe the city’s vibrant yet volatile cultural landscape, shaped by its history as the British Raj’s capital (1772–1911) and its post-independence struggles with deindustrialization and migration.
The collection portrays Calcutta as a “problem-ridden volatile metropolis,” exploring its cultural gestalt through an anthropological lens. It delves into the city’s social fabric, highlighting the interplay of communities—Marwaris, Punjabis, Hindi speakers, and South Indians—whose social worlds the Society later studied with ICSSR funding. Contributors like Dikshit Sinha, in his paper on slum kinship, emphasize the need for stable incomes to empower the urban poor, drawing on eight months of fieldwork (1968–1969) with the Anthropological Survey of India. The book positions Calcutta as a “maidan” (open field) of cultural exchange.
A pioneering effort in urban anthropology, a “unique contribution” to understanding Calcutta’s cultural spectrum, as noted in contemporary reviews.
Appealing to collectors of Indian anthropology, urban studies, and Bengali cultural history. An early attempt to anthropologically frame Calcutta’s cultural identity.
Loc: E16
