Herbert Hope Risley
| Sir Herbert Hope Risley KCIE, CSI, MA | |||||||||||
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| Born | 1851 | ||||||||||
| Died | 1911 | ||||||||||
| Residence |
1 Lowenstrasse, Hanover [1889] Bengal Secretariat, Calcutta [1894] Calcutta [1903] 24 Oxford Terrace, Hyde Park, W. [1909] [no address in 1910] | ||||||||||
| Occupation | civil service | ||||||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
RAI Council 1909 President
RAI Council 1910 President
House Notes
superintendent of ethnography for India
proposed 29 Oct. 1889 Indian Civil Service
elected President 25 Jan. 1910; letter of resignation due to ill health accepted 7 Mar. 1911
death noted in the report of the council for 1911: Through the untimely death of Sir Herbert Risley the Institute has lost one who hoped to devote many years to furthering its interests, and whose charming personality as President is still vivid in the memories of Fellows. A sympathetic account of his life and work will be found in Man, 1912, 1.
Obit: Man 12 (1912)
Notes From Elsewhere
Sir Herbert Hope Risley KCIE CSI (4 January 1851 – 30 September 1911) was a British ethnographer and colonial administrator, a member of the Indian Civil Service who conducted extensive studies on the tribes and castes of the Bengal Presidency. He is notable for the formal application of the caste system to the entire Hindu population of British India in the 1901 census, of which he was in charge. As an exponent of race science, he used the ratio of the width of a nose to its height to divide Indians into Aryan and Dravidian races, as well as seven castes.[1][2]
Risley was born in Buckinghamshire, England, in 1851 and attended New College, Oxford University prior to joining the Indian Civil Service (ICS). He was initially posted to Bengal, where his professional duties engaged him in statistical and ethnographic research, and he soon developed an interest in anthropology. His decision to indulge these interests curtailed his initial rapid advancement through the ranks of the Service, although he was later appointed Census Commissioner and, shortly before his death in 1911, became Permanent Secretary at the India Office in London. In the intervening years he compiled various studies of Indian communities based on ideas that are now considered to constitute scientific racism. He emphasised the value of fieldwork and anthropometrical studies, in contrast to the reliance on old texts and folklore that had historically been the methodology of Indologists and which was still a significant approach in his lifetime.
Aside from being honoured by his country, including by the award of a knighthood, Risley also became President of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Born Akeley, Buckinghamshire; died Wimbledon, Surrey. Served in India in various capacities 1873-1910. CIE 1892; CSI 1904; KCIE 1907. Honorary Director of Ethnography for India. Numerous major publications on India.
Publications
External Publications
House Publications
Related Material Details
RAI Material
notebook MS 134/3
Other Material
RGS: 1 box 1908 Collection of notes on the history of Tibet, Sikkim, etc; British Library: corresp and papers