APPENDIX B

Pioneer Biographies
of the Indian Period from 1947

Shasanka Sekhar Sarkar (1908-1968)

S.S. Sekhar belongs to the earliest generation of anthropological scientists trained in the ways of western science. He was born in West Bengal and his was the first DSc degree in anthropology issued by Calcutta University. He was attached to the Archaeological Survey of India and participated in the excavations of the important Indus Civilization sites of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. In 1935 Dr. Sarkar joined the Bose Research Laboratory and became a Research Fellow in anthropology in 1935.

Rather surprisingly (the Nazi regime did not think highly of Asian people, to put it mildly), Dr. Sarkar in 1938 received the Humboldt scholarship from Berlin University. He took the chance and went to Germany, working under Prof. E. Fischer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology at Berlin. One can only surmise that his invitation was a deliberate attempt by the Nazi regime to cock and snook at the British who were at that time still the rulers of India. Whatever the reasons, Dr. Sarkar profited from this unique chance to further his education and broaden his horizons. On his return to India he joined the Anthropological Survey of India and worked mostly in physical anthropology. His publications contain a number of important papers on the Andamanese, both Onge and Jarawa as well as a number of papers on Negritoid traces on the Indian mainland.

After Indian independence, Dr. Sarkar presided over the anthropological and archaeological sections of the 1951 Indian Science Congress. He was awarded the Griffiths Memorial Prize of Calcutta University for his work on blood groups.

Dr. Sarkar was a member of many scientific bodies, among them the National Institute of Sciences in India, the Asiatic Society of Calcutta and the International Society of Human Biologists of Paris, France. He was for many years associated with the Department of Anthropology of the University of Calcutta, being Reader at the university at the time of his death on 9th March 1969.

As the Anthropological Survey of India itself states, his contribution in guiding a devoted team of researchers, both in the Anthropological Survey of India and at Calcutta University, is widely recognized.

 was far more worried about the Bush police than the elephants. 

 

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