User:Pranabganguly

Pranab Kumar Ganguly((1929-2014) was an anthropologist  who worked and published during the post-independence period of India.  He conducted  field works in Andaman and Nicobar Islands during 1950s and wrote  articles from a bio-cultural framework. Ganguly received his M.Sc. Ph.D and D.Sc. degrees from the University of Calcutta in 1951, 1966 and 1973 respectively. He joined the Anthropological Survey of India as an Anthropologist in 1969 and became its Deputy Director and subsequently, founded two new Anthropology Departments in India at Manipur (Manipur University) and West Bengal (Vidyasagar University). He retired from Vidyasagar University as professor in 1993. Ganguly was the elected president of the Anthropology and Archeology Section, Indian Science Congress during 1976–77. He received three prestigious medals in the same year, viz., Sir Asutosh Mookerjee Gold medal (1975), Bengal Immunity Research Prize and Gold Medal (1975) and Griffith Memorial Prize (1975) for his research on various topics in Anthropology. In addition he received the esteemed Bertillon Medal of France (1973)  (Directory of Anthropologists in India 1981:110-111)

Pranab Ganguly contributed in both the sub-fields of anthropology, viz. Physical anthropology and Social-Cultural anthropology. In Physical anthropology he published on anthropometry, dermatoglyphics, human genetics and dental anthropology (Ganguly 1960; Ganguly & Pal 1961, 1963 & 1974; Ganguly & Mukherjee 1964;Dutta & Ganguly 1965; Ganguly 1973, 1976, 1978 &1979; Chaudhuri & Ganguly 1983) while in Social-Cultural anthropology Ganguly published on material culture, religion,judicial systems,ethnic history and also on Lingustic anthropology(Ganguly 1961; 1966; 1973; Ganguly & Pal 1960;Roy & Ganguly 1961; Ganguly&Pal 1962).

One of the remarkable researches of Pranab Ganguly was on the gradual decline in average height (negative secular trend) in some tribal and caste populations in India. With Anadi Pal, Ganguly first wrote a short paper in a volume published by the University of Calcutta in 1974. In this paper the authors presented figures on the average height of 20 population groups( caste and tribes) measured by different authorities in an interval of at least 25 years and concluded that unlike many western and Asian countries the studied Indian populations had become shorter  since the late 19th and early 20th century(Ganguly & Pal 1974: 42-48). It was a remarkable finding. Ganguly pursued the work and made it global by publishing under his single authorship a whole chapter in a book edited by the famous anthropologist William Stini in World Anthropology series volume published by Mouton in 1979. Ganguly began this chapter by challenging the then scholarship in biological anthropology, which presumed that the progressive increase in stature was a universal phenomenon as it happened in many technologically advanced western and non-western countries. In this chapter he demonstrated with the help of simple anthropometric data that in India three groups out of every four have become shorter in varying degrees in course of one or two generations and it was not due to malnutrition or inbreeding but probably caused by a relaxation of natural selection against undersized individuals (Ganguly 1979: 315-337). In another pioneering study for which he had won the prestigious Bertillon Medal of France (in 1973) on the variation in physique in North India in relation to urbanization and economic status, Ganguly was able to show with the help of carefully controlled experimental design (rare in Indian physical anthropology) the relationship between various somatometric measurements and observations (e.g., height, weight and skin color) and some socio-economic parameters. For example, he found that among the Brahmin and Muslim populations of western Uttar Pradesh in North India, the well-to-do men are significantly taller and heavier and have absolutely broader hips and shoulders than the poor. The increases in different measurements observed in the well-to-do clearly reflected a general enlargement in the size of the body. In the circumferential measurements of limbs and torso, the differences between the economic classes were particularly pronounced. The well-to-do men had significantly larger heads, larger in both length and breadth dimensions, than the poor (Ganguly 1974a: 3-43). Ganguly’s interest in the study of the Onges of Little Andaman took its final shape during the mid-seventies when he published a full-length paper entitled ‘The Negritos of Little Andaman Island: a primitive people facing extinction’ published in the Indian Museum Bulletin in 1975. The paper covered almost every aspect of this small island tribe in the context of the global debate on the position of the anthropologists regarding the study of endangered and disappearing populations Ganguly also contributed in the field of social-demography. Interestingly his last article jointly written with Suvas Bose on the ‘Population trends in Midnapore district, West Bengal, 1872- 1981’ published in 1992 in the Vidyasagar University Journal of Social Sciences.It is a unique example of social demographic study of a district in India. In the article Ganguly covered almost all the aspects of socio-demography of the erstwhile Midnapore district by consulting the Census reports of India. The most interesting finding of Ganguly and Bose in this paper is the decline of the population in the older townships of Midnapore district. The authors observed that there were only four towns in Midnapore in 1872 which increased to 17 by 1981 but most of the towns in the district grew very slowly in population size(Ganguly & Bose 1992:10-13).

Pranab Ganguly visited Poland during June-July 1982 under Indo-Polish cultural exchange programme for studying research methodology and recent trends and advances in physical anthropology in Poland. He wrote an article entitled ‘Account of a visit to Poland’ which was published in 1983 in the official journal of the Anthropological Survey of India. Pranab Ganguly as a professional anthropologist belonged to post-colonial India who practiced intensive fieldwork and published in physical and socio-cultural anthropology with equal competence.