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Progress of Human Geography in India : a Status Report

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Progress of Human Geography in India : a Status Report Japanese Journal of Human Geography 60―6（2008） Progress of Human Geography in India : A Status Report Shanmugam Pillai SUBBIAH I Introduction II Spread of Geography and Geographic Research in India III Ph. D Th eses submitted and the Progress of Human Geography IV Research Papers published and the Progress of Human Geography （1） ICSSR Journals of Abstracts and Reviews : Geography （2） The Indian Geographical Journal V Progress on Some Fronts of Geography in India （1） Progress on Urban Geography （2） Progress on Agricultural Geography Key Words : Human Geography, Progress of Geography, Landuse, Agriculture, Urban Geography, Social Geography I Introduction Running for 3,200 km from the Himalayas in the north to Kanyakumari on the shores of Indian Ocean in the south, and 3,000 km from west to east in its maximum width in the vicinity of 23 degree parallel, and spreading over an area of 3.3 million sq. km, and supporting a massive population of about 1,030 million living in 5,161 towns and 593,7311） villages, and speaking 22 officially―recognized languages, India has been known for its unfathomable diversities, complexities and historicities. To map and understand these unfathomable attributes of India, Geography is naturally the choice of tool, and temporal and spatial progression of these complexities further argues for the need of Geography. Also, India with its diversities and complexities provides a rich laboratory for Geographers to experiment and explore the logics of Geography. But the sad and hard reality is that Indian Geography had a very late beginning and is yet to achieve its due recognition among the Social Sciences. Imperial Gazetteer, the write―ups done for each district of India by the British traveler―authors in 1881 based on detailed field visits and meticulous observations, may be the beginning of Geography in India. With the adoption of British model of school system in India, geography was first taught in schools under civics or social studies ; at the university level, it was introduced much after the establishment of the universities. As such, geography teaching and research in India has a very limited history. The first university was established in 1857, and the first department of geography was instituted in 1931 at Aligarh Muslim University at Aligarh, a small town in the state of Uttar Pradesh in the Gangetic Plain. Geography had thus a colonial beginning, and its spread far and wide and its acceptance as a University―level subject for teaching and research happened only after Independence. In 1947, there were 17 universities but ― 21 ― 502 人文地理第60巻 第 6 号（2008） only five universities, Aligarh, Kolkata, Varanasi, Allahabad and Agra（ all in the Gangetic belt）, had geography departments. Two―thirds of the present geography departments in the universities got established during 1950―1970. Progress of Geography was a little more quick and wide―spread in 2） north India during Colonial and post ―Independence periods. South India has been traditionally clamouring for science subjects, and geography, though kept both in arts and science streams, is not readily accepted or treated as science by academic world. For long, the university departments were providing geography degrees both in arts and science streams, and currently most of the universities switched over to science stream because of the notion that it might fetch more grant and support for the subject from the government institutions. In south India, geography is taught normally in government colleges, and private institutions never supported geography teaching. On the contrary, in north India, private institutions too participated in promoting geography. Geography, though it is crazy to make tens of branches affixing a plethora of adjectives, was traditionally used to be divided into two, Physical and Human Geographies, and certainly this duality may be more logical too. However on the advent of Industrial Revolution in Europe and the subsequent spread of colonization, Economic and Regional Geographies became more relevant, of course, to accelerate the exploitation of the colonized countries ; and thus there came into existence two more branches in Geography. In Indian universities where the seeds of Geography were laid down by colonial rulers, these four branches were popular for long. However, it is normally accepted that Human Geography includes economic and regional geographies and all other sub―branches other than Physical and Environmental Geographies, what we have now. Progress of Human Geography in India may be traced by consulting the professional journals brought out by different associations for geography, the Ph. D theses submitted to various universities, research projects undertaken by the geography faculty, the books published by geographers, and the content of syllabus at the university level. Assembling the relevant data from these sources for assessing the progress is not easy and is almost impossible for an individual scholar, because of the size of the country, poor maintenance of records during the post―Independence period, and non―availability of comparable data and at a single location. As such, progress of Human Geography in India in the last 50 years or so is sketched in the present paper from sources immediately available to the author, and the correspondence and contact that the author was able to make with a number of fellow― geographers from different parts of the country in the last a few months ; and thus, here is an over view on what is happening to Indian Geography since Independence. II Spread of Geography and Geographic Research in India It is counted that there are now about 450 institutions of higher education including 238 universities in India3）. However geography is now taught only in 78 universities in the country. In the southern four states, it is available only in 11 universities. In Delhi, the capital of the country, all the three universities have geography departments. There were only 17 departments till 1950s, and it increased to 48 during 1960 and 1980. Between 1991―2000, no new department was added to Indian universities4）. As mentioned earlier, Geography started its journey in India from Aligarh and by 1980, it had representations in all parts of the country. During the Colonial time, scholars who got trained in UK were responsible for developing geography. Legacies of British geographers ― exploration and ― 22 ― Progress of Human Geography in India : A Status Report（SUBBIAH） 503 expeditions, regional studies, field observations and map interpretations, historical studies, and social, economic and political geographies― continued to have thus attracted Indian geographers for long5）. Sir Dudley Stamp’s influence was quite dominant in the beginning on land use studies in India6）. After Independence, those who had got trained in USA, returned and took up university positions, resulting in American imprints. Aligarh Muslim University at Aligarh, Kolkata University at Kolkata, and Banares Hindu University at Varanasi were the major centres of Geography till 1970. Department in Aligarh was known for landuse studies, and in Varanasi, known for settlement studies. Physical Geography was the leading branch in Kolkata University, and Prof. S. P. Chatterjee of Kolkata Geography was instrumental in establishing the National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organization（ NATMO） in Kolkata in 1956 ; and faculty in Kolkata department still works more actively on geomorphology, climatology, hydrology and cartography. However, directions of research in Geography in rest of the country before and after 1970 were largely guided by Aligarh and Varanasi schools of Geography, because of their scholars after their Ph. D in Geography having got university positions in different parts of the country. For instance, university departments in Chennai, Madurai and Bangalore in south India became more active after got chaired by Varanasi―trained scholars. Russian influence on Indian Geography, though not much, was routed through India’s Five Year Plans which were originally based on socialist beliefs7）. By late Seventies and Eighties, the Centre for the Study of Regional Development at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi became another centre of influence for Indian Geography ; with Prof. Moonis Raza, a socialist geographer, in chair, this Centre provided to Indian Geography a new orientation with an emphasis on social responsibilities of the subject and regional dimensions in inclusive growth and development. As Gosal8） points out, in Sixties and Seventies, geographers were more attracted towards systematic geography wherein population geography, agricultural geography, geography of settlements and urban geography got wider attention of the researchers in Geography. Regional geography was not much attended to ; there were attempts of applying quantitative methods, more simpler ones ; computer applications were not known ; secondary data available with different departments of the government both at the Centre and the States, were extensively mined for research. By late 1990s, GIS and Remote Sensing became a popular tool for geographers, and University of Madras at Chennai established the first GIS lab in the country at its Geography department under a linkage programme with the University of Waterloo, Canada. University Grants Commission（ UGC）, the apex body for managing higher education in India, and the Indian Council for Social Science Research （ICSSR）, the policy―making and funding agency for social science research, including
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