Profiling the profiloscope: facialization of race technologies and the rise of biometric nationalism in inter-war British India

Mukharji, Projit Bihari

doi:10.1080/07341512.2015.1127459

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…He produced “[r]egular census surveys and detailed handbooks that essentially decomposed and classified colonial subjects by castes, tribes, occupations and racio-ethnic descriptions along with sample photographs” (Raval 2019, 3). Mahalanobis (1927, 1933b, 1934) delved into the Risley data repeatedly with aims “to work out how distinctive social groups were physically related and he called these measurements ‘caste distances’” (Mukharji 2015, 383).…”

Section: Caste and Statistics: Creating The Mahalanobis Distance In C...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We demonstrate that the Distance Function is a statistical method, originating to make anthropometric caste distinctions, with two key features: (i) it is a technical standard; and (ii) it propels a trajectory of racialized techniques of machine learning applications, while hiding its discrimination potentials (Cavazos et al 2019; Scheuerman et al 2020). 3 As Mukharji argues, the racial origins of the Mahalanobis Distance Function that produce various machine decision acts today, “have been completely obliterated” (Mukharji 2015, 383).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Artificial Intelligence from Colonial India: Race, Statistics, and Facial Recognition in the Global South

Taylor

Gulson

McDuie‐Ra

2021

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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This article examines the history of a similarity measure—the Mahalanobis Distance Function—and its movement from colonial India into contemporary artificial intelligence technologies, including facial recognition, and its reapplication into postcolonial India. The article identifies how the creation of the Distance Function was connected to the colonial “problem” of caste and ethnic classification for British bureaucracy in 1920-1930s India. This article demonstrates that the Distance Function is a statistical method, originating to make anthropometric caste distinctions in India, that became both a technical standard and a mobile racialized technique, utilized in machine learning applications. The creation of the Distance Function as a measure of “similitude” at a particular period of colonial state-making helped to model wider categories of classification which have proliferated in facial recognition technology. Overall, we highlight how a measurement function that operates in recognition technologies today can be traced across time and space to other racialized contexts.

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Section: Caste and Statistics: Creating The Mahalanobis Distance In C...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Artificial Intelligence from Colonial India: Race, Statistics, and Facial Recognition in the Global South

Taylor

Gulson

McDuie‐Ra

2021

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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“…Majumdar considered this finding to be proof that anthropometry was a valid science, since it produced results that were in accordance with “the scheme of social precedence” (Ibid, p. 309). Operating within a network of “ideological trends” and “political developments”, such studies contributed to a dynamic, anti‐essentialist 6 and yet racialized nationalism, where the nation “was not a collection necessarily of individuals” but “of other, seemingly older, social groups” (Mukharji, 2015, p. 392). The composition and hierarchy of these social groups, as Majumdar noted, was scientifically proven since anthropometric analysis found that “the correspondence between physical pattern and social stratification is not merely fortuitous” (Majumdar et al., 1958, p. 309) but were based on racial histories.…”

Section: Race and Scientific Knowledge‐production In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Race in South Asia: Colonialism, nationalism and modern science

Ghoshal

2021

History Compass

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Unlike caste and religion, race has not been considered a primary lens for reading the formative histories of the different communities in colonial India. “Race” in South Asia holds a prominent place primarily in the history of medicine. Largely, this scholarship can be considered situated within the more generalized framework of race being the determinant of colonial difference. Beyond that, however, the significant role “race” played in producing knowledge about the difference between communities within the subcontinent, has been underexamined. In the early‐mid 20th century, despite critiquing European race science, several Indian scholars continued to use “race” as a scientific object in order to trace racial difference and affinity between various communities—particularly, Dalits, Muslims, and Adivasis. This anticolonial, nationalist science which derived from certain European methods (viz., anthropometry), without conceding to all conclusions predominant in Europe (viz., the existence of racial purity), contributed to the production of upper‐caste Hindus as the hegemonic population of India. This article argues that much insight remains to be gained by focusing on how race played a fundamental role in producing the notion of the upper caste Hindu population as hegemonic, in distinction to its others, like Scheduled Castes and Muslims.

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“…The biometric state markedly departed from the tenets of traditional states in Europe and was inherently racial. Flipping the use of biometric for nation‐building, Mukharji () highlighted the ambiguity of nationalisms that pragmatically co‐opted the very technologies used to racially profile colonized people. Mukharji used the profiloscope, an instrument developed by Indian scientist Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in the 1930s, to discuss the significance of the face in creating “biometric nationalism” (Mukharji, ) .…”

Section: Embodiment and Corporeal Inscriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Flipping the use of biometric for nation‐building, Mukharji () highlighted the ambiguity of nationalisms that pragmatically co‐opted the very technologies used to racially profile colonized people. Mukharji used the profiloscope, an instrument developed by Indian scientist Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in the 1930s, to discuss the significance of the face in creating “biometric nationalism” (Mukharji, ) . The profiloscope was a “race technology” produced essentially for reading measurements and statistics of people's facial profiles to determine racial identities.…”

Section: Embodiment and Corporeal Inscriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The historian beneath the skin: Embodiment as methodology in colonial India

Topdar

2019

History Compass

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While the pioneering historians of medicine and sexuality in colonial India have left us a rich scholarly legacy, this article contributes to the history of the body by examining recent historiographical trends outside these realms. I provoke and ask: in what other imaginative ways can we understand our body, its meanings, and its engagement with culture and self. I use embodiment as an analytical category and pedagogical device that offers promising possibilities to access wider social, economic, and epistemological shifts in history. When intersected with other critical concepts such as gender, race, nation, class, caste, and sexuality, embodiment becomes a bridge to the past for understanding how key moments were experienced and lived. Embodiment provides a point of convergence at which both the discursive body and its experiences are given equal attention in order to understand histories. I begin this article with an overview of foundational moments in the historiography of embodiment as a category of historical analysis. Subsequently, I explore three main axes of historiographical pursuits keeping embodiment as the pivot: first, social inscriptions on the body; second, the performance of gender; and third, embodiment as experience.

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Profiling the profiloscope: facialization of race technologies and the rise of biometric nationalism in inter-war British India

Cited by 12 publications

References 12 publications

Artificial Intelligence from Colonial India: Race, Statistics, and Facial Recognition in the Global South

Artificial Intelligence from Colonial India: Race, Statistics, and Facial Recognition in the Global South

Race in South Asia: Colonialism, nationalism and modern science

The historian beneath the skin: Embodiment as methodology in colonial India

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