much scepticism but he also made a novel attempt to synthesize the ideas of ancient Indian philosophers with western anthropological concepts. Panchanan Mitra,(1892 –1936) who was a professor of ancient Indian history,culture and anthropology during 1919-29 and 1930-36 at the University of Calcutta, and a contemporary of S.C.Roy also held similar views as regards the importance of the Indian philosophy towards the development of an Indian anthropological tradition. Panchanan Mitra was among the first Indians to study at Yale University and conducted several anthropological expeditions in India and abroad.He was the head of the department of anthropology of the University of Calcutta and is mostly known for his pioneering book, Prehistoric India, as early as 1923. Another notable Indian anthropologist of the pre-independence period was Bhupendranath Datta (1880 – 1961) who was the younger brother of the famous Hindu revivalist social reformer Swami Vivekananda. He joined the anti-British struggle and sent to prison by the colonial government in India, and later earned an M.A. in sociology from Brown University, USA and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Hamburg, Germany in 1923. His books Dialectics of Hindu Ritualism (1950) and Studies in Indian Social Polity (1963) although published much later, can be regarded as pioneering works on Indian society and culture from a Marxist perspective. Datta's scholarship was not limited to his specialised area in biological anthropology in which he did his doctorate but was as vast as to include sociology, history, law, philosophy, statistics and literature.Some of his remarkable books were Bharater Ditiya Swadhinatar Sangram(1949), Bharatiyo Samaj Padhyati(1958), Amar Amerikar Abhijnata(1933), Baishnab Sahitye Samajtatta(1945), Banglar Itihas(1963), , Hindu Law of Inheritance(1957), Dialectics of Land Economics of India(1952) and Swami Vivekananda: Patriot-Prophet—a study (1954). Gradually, universities in Lucknow, Delhi, Madras, Pune, and Ranchi also developed strong traditions of anthropological research and teaching and the largest governmental organisation, the Anthropological Survey of India was established by Dr.B.S.Guha which also began with the holistic framework of anthropology and added interdisciplinary collaborations with other biological and social sciences, like biochemistry, geography and linguistics. A report of the University Grants Commission(UGC) of India in 2001 revealed that anthropology as an independent discipline of teaching and research emerged in colonial India and before 1960 there were only nine anthropology departments in the country.The report further observed that more than 60 percent of anthropology departments were created after 1960 and they were mainly established in