Colonial Ethnography of the Kandha: 'White Man's Burden' or Political Expediency?

The Kandha of Orissa have been enshrined in the ethnographic literature as practitioners of human sacrifice and female infanticide in the past, and the British are credited with suppressing these 'cruel customs'. A re-examination of the colonial sources exposes the fact that ethnographic reports were designed to justify the brutal repression of the indigenous people's fierce resistance struggle against colonial invasion and oppression.