Revision summary
The Negrito problem asked if Andamanese and some southern foragers were a first Indian race. Risley and Guha framed it with hair and stature. Looks do not prove African Pygmy kinship or an all-India stratum. Andaman history is isolation and colonial shock. Drop the race problem; keep forager ethnography.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
- The Negrito problem was a racial puzzle: whether short, dark, curly-haired groups in India, especially Andamanese and some southern hill people, were a leftover first race. The problem was badly posed.
Body
How it was framed
- Risley, Guha, and earlier travellers used hair and stature to invent a Negrito stratum under Dravidian and Aryan types.
- Andaman Islanders were the type case. Kadar and other southern foragers were sometimes pulled in.
Critique
- Hair and height are not a people. Siwalik apes and later genetics show deep mix, not stacked races.
- Andamanese history is island isolation plus colonial violence, not a museum of all-India origins.
- Linking them to African Pygmies by look is nineteenth-century analogy, not phylogeny.
- Ghurye and later anthropologists already doubted that caste and tribe are frozen races.
What remains
- The useful residue is a research question on Andaman and southern forager diversity, not a ‘problem’ of a missing race.
- Ethno-archaeology of hunt is a better frame than Negrito stock.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD R[Risley Guha types] --> N[Negrito problem] N --> X[Look-alike not phylogeny] A[Andaman foragers] --> D[Diversity not stock]
Conclusion
The Negrito problem was a colonial racial leftover. Assess it as a failed classification. Keep the Andaman and forager file without the race ladder.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Give a detailed appraisal of skeletal remains from Chalcolithic culture of undivided Punjab
Next question on this syllabus topic (2016 · Q4(a)). View answer →
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Did a Negrito race people all of India?
There is no good evidence for a subcontinental Negrito stratum.
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Should the term be used in answers?
Use it to criticise the old problem, not as a living classification.
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