Decades before Aadhaar entered our lexicon and became the world's largest biometric identification system, scientist and applied statistician PC Mahalanobis delved into science of human differences. In the 1930s, Mahalanobis created the profiloscope, an instrument that enabled accurate determination of people's racial identities by focusing on their facial profiles. His race research involved, for instance, studying the head size of Anglo-Indians in Kolkata. The profiloscope was primarily a modified version of a camera, with Mahalanobis even convincing German optical instrument maker Carl Zeiss to create custom lenses.
This episode of The Intersection looks at how the now-forgotten apparatus attempted to assimilate India on the basis of national identity, in a scientific manner.
This is the latest episode of The Intersection, a fortnightly podcast on Audiomatic. For more such podcasts, visit audiomatic.in.