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Paper short abstract

The paper argues that Aadhaar biometrics in India act as racial surveillance, reviving colonial anthropometry and deepening caste–tribe exclusions. Using multi-scalar, decolonial, and PAR-based anthropological methods, it proposes community-led, anti-racist alternatives to current ID policies.

Paper long abstract

Aadhaar's biometric system (12-digit ID linked to fingerprints, iris scans, and facial recognition) functions as racial surveillance in India by systematically encoding, monitoring, and differentially controlling bodies marked by caste, tribe, religion, and ethnicity—reinforcing India's colonial racial legacies under a digital guise. Due to this Aadhaar, there is a major issue arising again and again that is Enrolment Barriers in which the Poor lack clean fingerprints (manual labor), lack of stable addresses (migrants), lack of knowledge and accessibility to smartphones for updating data by the poors where as the Rich have access to smartphones, urban centers/private kiosks. And finally, these barriers lead to hunger/starvation deaths in poor families.

Aadhaar revives 19th-century anthropometry (e.g., Risley's Tribes and Castes of Bengal) where biometrics measured skulls/noses to racialize Indians (upper caste = Aryan; lower = Dravidian/Aboriginal). Modern facial algorithms inherit this flawed taxonomy.

Multi-Scalar Analysis needs to be used in this case, where Macro analysis, like policy-level criticism, is essential, where we can say that Aadhaar biometrics is a racial surveillance. Instead of this we can advocate for prioritizing community-defined categories by using Decolonial and Critical Race Theory, which view race as a social construct with no biological basis.

In such a situation, anthropologists by using both qualitative and quantitative research methodology like; Participant observation and case study collection, along with Participatory Action Research (PAR) can co-create anti-racist interventions with communities, which can further help both academicians and civil society organizations for advocacy and government as well to revise their policies.