Savaging the Civilised: Verrier Elwin and the Tribal Question in Late Colonial India

Author(s): Ramachandra Guha

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 31, No. 35/37, Special Number (Sep., 1996), pp.
2375-2380+2382-2383+2385-2389
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
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 Savaging the Civilised
Verrier Elwin and the Tribal Question in Late Colonial India
Ramachandra Guha

In the huge collection of the records of the All India Congress Committee, housed at the Nehru Memorial Museum
in New Delhi, one is hard put tofind a reference to tribals - this in contrast to the attention paid to women, untouchables
and religious minorities. Curiously, this absence in the official nationalist archive is reproduced by the radical
historiography of our times, which - like the Congress nationalists it sets itself in opposition to - has had scarcely
'a word to say about tribals, this in contrast to the dozens of exegeses, scholarly and polemical, it has provided on
the prehistory of the communal question, the caste question, or the women's question.
In addressing this neglect, the present essay approaches the tribal question in colonial India through the work
and writings of Verrier Elwin. By 1940 or thereabouts, Elwin had become the most important single influence through
whom urban Indians had got to know of their tribal countrymen: their culture, their way of life, their poverty and
their vulnerability. His work for the tribes was widely known and widely discussed, fervently praised as well as
vehemently attacked. This essay outlines Elwin's invention of the aboriginal and his forgotten but not necessarily
irrelevant debates with social workers, anthropologists and missionaries working on or with adivasis.

I Some British politicians saw the provisions adminster these areas than a responsible
as vital in protecting the tribals from their Indian Cabinet can".3 The concept- of
IN 1932, a radical English priest and writer Hindu neighbours. Conservative MPs, excluded areas was even mocked as a device
moved to a village in central India to supporting the clauses in the House of of anthropologists to protect aboriginals as
commence social work among Gond tribals. Commons, said they would save the tribes museum pieces for their science.4
A dissenter within his Church, an admirer from 'being converted from good Nagas or Without perhaps intending it, the
of Mahatma Gandhi who saw himself as a whatever they are into bad Hindus'. But the Government of India Act was thus to spark
'British-born Indian', Verrier Elwin had tribals were not to be deprived of the a wideranging debate on the future of
come to serve the most disadvantaged and 'decencies of Christian civilisation'. As one aboriginals in a free India. How could one
least visible of India's poor. In an early essay member, Colonel Wedgwood, put it, "the appropriately define aboriginals and
from his new home, Elwin called attention best hope for backward tribes everywhere understand their culture and way of life?
to the neglect by the national movement of are the missionaries. The missionaries and How were their interests to be best protected?
the predicament of the tribes. 'Hill and forest the British government together give these At what pace and in what way should the
tribes', he remarked, were a 'despised and people a chance". Winston Churchill, that state allow the contact of aboriginals with
callously ignored' group. Their problem was doughty opponent of freedom for subject the outside world? What were the respective
as urgent as that of the untouchables: society peoples, made common cause with these roles in this regard of administrators,
had sinned against them as grievously, ahd MPs. "I take as much interest in the fortunes politicians, anthropologists, missionaries and
yet of the white people in India", he remarked, social workers?

the one has become a problem of all-India

" as I would in these backward tribes. I feel These were the questions that lay behind

importance: the other remains buried in just as disturbed about their police and Verrier Elwin's own work between 1935,
oblivion. Indian national workers and security being handed over to a Government when the government of India Act was
which I do not trust as the anthropological
reformers - with the exception of the heroic passed, and 1947, when India became an
little band associated with the Bhil Seva party represented here... are aboutthe handingindependent nation.They are most evident
Mandal - have neglected the tribes over of the backward areas to a Government perhaps in The Aboriginals (1943), a
shamefully. The Congress has neglected they do not trust, so that we are almost in polemical tract directed at a wicder public,
them. The Liberals have neglected them.
the same party in this respect".2 yet Elwin' s more scholarly studies also close
The Khadi workers have neglected them.'
The creation of excluded areas, with their with appeals to the future rulers of free India.
Two years later, the British parliament motivations thus made explicit, raised a storm The Baiga (1939), a book that passionately
passed the Government of India Act of 1935.in nationalist circles. A meeting of the defends the rights of tribals who practice
This act was designed to hasten the transition Congress, held at Faizpurin September1936, 'bewar' (swidden agriculture), asks 'those
to self-government, in the first place through condemned it as "yet another attempt to who believe in Home Rule' to 'see to it that
the constitution of provincial legislatures divide the people of India into different the original owners of the country [i e, the
and ministries based on a limited franchise. groups, with unjustifiable and,discriminatory aboriginals] are given a few privileges'; in
But the act also contained two provisions treatment, to obstruct the growth of uniform this case, the full freedom of the forest. The
whereby certain tracts, with predominantly democratic institutions in the country". Whenlast paragraph of The Agaria (1941) - a
tribal populations, were to be known as the Congress formed provincial ministries sympathetic account of a tribe of charcoal
'Excluded' and 'Partially Excluded' areas. in 1937, it tried hard to abolish ordilute theseiron-smelters crippled by high taxes and the
These areas were to be insulated from the provisions. The Bombay legislative coming in of modem steel - commends to
control of the Indian legislatures and assembly, in a unanimous resolution, said Indian politicians the compassion shown to
ministries, and left in direct charge of the it was "outrageous to suggest that a forest tribes by the great Emperor Ashoka.
governor of the province (always British, constitutionally irresponsible Governor, Even The Muria and their Ghotul (1946) -
usually an ICS officer). almost certainly a non-Indian, can better unlike the other two books, in its theme far

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removed from matters of state policy - time Oxford don to formulate the tribal life he succeeded in throwing a halo of
suggests that the Indian ideal of human love question in its most striking and contentious sentiment over it. His personality also
lies equally behind the tribal dormitory fashion. underwent a transformation: once a
(ghotul) as it does behind ancient Hindu moralising ascetic, he came to absorb the
sculpture and painting - the hills and forests II gaiety and zest for life of the people he lived
where the ghotul held sway "hold a rich with. The creeds of the Anglican Church and
human treasure, natural to [India's] soil, part "The noble savage of North America is the Hindu Mahatma were both rejected in
of her great culture".5 a very different character from the poor favour of a whole-hearted identification with
But in the run-up to Indian independence, squalid Gond of central India: and not even the culture of the tribes.
it was not Elwin alone who was concerned the genius of a Longfellow or a Fenimore A self-taught and self-trained anthro-
with the tribes. After the elections of 1937, Cooper could throw a halo of sentiment over pologist, Elwin ranged widely over the Indian
Congress governments, while urging the the latter and his surroundings". Thus wrote heartland, studying and writing about tribes
scrapping of 'Excluded Areas', com- James Forsyth, the soldier, forester and in the British-ruled terfitories of Orissa, Bihar
missioned a series of reports on the condition amateur ethnologist who roamed the hills of and the Central Provinces, as well as the
of the tribes, in belated recognition of a long the Central Provinces in the middle decades large tribal chiefdom of Bastar. His travels
neglect. Christian missionaries anduniversity of the last century.' Verrier Elwin, who bore fruit in a series of ethnographies and
anthropologists also contributed to this spurt travelled in the tracks of Forsyth and often folklore collections for 'academic'
of interest, while in Bihar a militant quoted him, was at first inclined to go along consumption, and in numerous policy
movement to distinguish aboriginals from with this assessment. His early sketches of pamphlets, reports, and newspaper articles
Hindus was taking shape under Jaipal Singh, village life are conspicuous for their absence for a more general audience (he also published
a tribal who had been up at Oxford at the of sentiment, their stress on what the two novels). Through all of this work runs
same time as Elwin. Here were many differentaboriginal' lacked rather than what he a contrast between the 'pure' and the
points of view with regard to the tribes, and possessed. Take these verses from a poem 'decayed' aboriginal, the latter corrupted by
many different social agendas. It was a written in the early 1930s, about a four-year- contact with civilisation. Elwin himself does
situation that lent itself to conflict and old Gond girl who cannot go to school but not offer, in any one place, a succint definition
controversy, as Elwin was to find out. must work from dawn to dusk in the fields: of the first type, whom he both admired and
The controversies of the 1940s were to identified with. In constructing a picture of
The luscious sweet she cannot taste,
bring to centre stage the predicament of a No joy she'll ever see; Elwin's 'pure' aboriginal, I haverelied almost
people till that time ignored by social workers A scanty rag about her waist exclusively on his writings in the years
and politicians alike. In the huge collection Is her sole finery. leading up to Indian independence (roughly,
of the records of the All India Congress 1939 to 1947). This was a time when he
And once I saw her stagger home
Committee, housed at the Nehru Memorial came to regard himself as a spokesman not
Beneath a load of wood
Museum in New Delhi, one is hard put to merely of the Gonds of Mandla, but of the
Laid on her back, so burdened that
find a reference to tribals - this in contrast As though upon the Rood 20 million tribals of central India.
to the attention paid to women, untouchables
Before that little child I saw
and religious minorities. Likewise, Pattabhi III
The form of one who bowed
Sitaramayya's golden jubilee History of the
Beneath another load, and walked Mr Verrier Elwin
Indian National Congress (published in
Amidst an angry crowd.' Deserves and may well win
1935) contains no more than a fleeting
Renown in the world of letters
reference or two to tribals, although the Elwin's first writings from Mandla are
For recording the life of our
problems of women, lower castes and marked by this Christian belief that the meek
moral betters.
communal harmony are covered in depth. shall inherit the earth. The Gonds are
Bombay journalist, c 1940
Curiously, this absence in the official dignified, if at all, by their suffering and
nationalist archive is reproduced by the quiet courage in the face of adversity. For Perhaps the first thing that distinguished
radical historiography of our times, which this Englishman had come to the forest as Verrier Elwin's aboriginal was his love of
-like the Congress nationalists it sets itself an Improver, attempting to 'teach a primitive Nature. The forest provided him food, fruit,
in opposition to - has had scarcely a word group the best things about civilisation'."1 medicine; materials for housing and
to say about tribals, this in contrast to the His agenda borrowed freely from Gandhism agriculture; birds and animals for the pot.
dozens of exegeses, scholarly and polemical, and from European traditions of social work, The significance of the forest was economic
it has provided on the prehistory of the incorporating temperance, education, health as much as cultural, practical as well as
communal question, the caste question, and and sanitation - premised on the belief that symbolic. All tribals had an intimate
the women's question. the Gonds had all to learn and little to teach.
knowledge of wild plants and animals; some
In addressing this neglect, the present But the more he lived with and among tribals, could even read the great volume of Nature
essay approaches those old, forgotten but the more Elwin came to view their culture like an 'open book'. Swidden agriculturists,
not necessarily irrelevant debates through in positive terms. Behind this transition lay for whom forest' and farm shaded
the work and writings of Verrier Elwin. By a growing familiarity with their language, imperceptibly into each other, had an especi
1940 or thereabouts, Elwin had become the a fuller appreciation of their life and thought, bond with the natural world. -Both the Baig
'most important single influence' through and perhaps most decisively, his marriage, and the Muria liked to think of themselves
whom urban Indians came to know of their in April 1940, to one of them. Within a as children of 'Dharti Mata', Mother Earth
tribal countrymen: their culture, their way decade of his move to Mandla, Elwin had fed and loved by her. The forest was also
of life, their poverty and their vulnerability.6 put in place his incisive critique of modern a setting for romance, the ideal trysting-
His work for the tribes was widely known civilisation - and corresponding regard for place for lovers. The Gond's idea of heaven
and widely discussed, fervently praised as tribal values - that was to become his was 'miles and miles of forest without any
well as vehemently attacked. In one of trademark. Although he remained deeply forest-guards'; his idea of hell, 'miles and
those paradoxes in which the history of pessimistic about its future, there is little miles of forest without any mahua trees'.
anthropology abounds, it fell to this one- doubt that in his later portrayals of aboriginal Elwin' s ethnographies are peppered with

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references to the aboriginal's love for the fell apart on the first night, among the Muria
the village or tribe taken by consensus rather
forest, a 'world which is as varied as human both husband and wife, finely trained by the than by a single spokesman. Here too the
life'. Contact with the abundance and variety ghotul in the sexual arts and virtues, were ghotul was a microcosm of a wider belief,
of nature might, indeed, still human feelings fully prepared when they crossed the where "everyone is equal, rich or poor, the
of competition and envy. In one of his novels, threshold. Moreover, tribal practice tended son of priest, headman or landlord, all are
a group of villagers go on an expedition to to confirm the position of the woman. Where one in this fellowship which knows no
pick wild mangoes from the jungle. At day's in Europe sex was regarded as the man's wealth-distinction or privilege of inherited
end, 'half the village was sucking mangoes; privilege and the woman's duty, in aboriginal rank".'9
the voice of envy and scandal was hushed; India sex was more often the man's obligation Equality, yes, but not a dull uniformity.
there were no quarrels that day; the witches and the woman's right, her 'compensation The cultural richness of tribal life was
rested from their labours; they were possessed for the embarassment of menstruation and manifest in their varied forms of recreation
by the wild free spirit of the forest, filled the pains of child-bearing'. - numerous games of their own devising,
with delight in the most precious of its The exuberant love of children also marked story-telling, poetry, art, and, above all, music
fruits' .12 out the aboriginal from the Hindu and the and dance - all of which "enliven village
The high place of their women also set European. 'The child is the God of the life and redeem it from the crushing
the aboriginals apart from more civilised house', said a Baiga woman. 'The greatest monotony that is its normal characteristic in
societies. Among the Mandla Gonds (whom love in the world is the love of children', other parts of India". The Muria of Bastar
Elwin knew best of all), the woman was 'the said a Baiga man. Fathers were often to be might appear poor to the outside eye, but
real ruler of the house'. As for the Baiga seen carrying a child in their arms, kissing in fact they had a "full rich life: every day
woman, "she generally chooses her husband and fondling it. The child of the forest grew brings its delightful and absorbing pursuits;
and changes him at will; she may dance in up to dread not the father (who was no kind at least twice a month there is a sharp break
public; she may take her wares to the bazaar of tyrant) but forest guards, police officials, in the monotony, the colour and music of
and open her own shop there...; she may and ghosts.The tribals' demonstrative love a festival, the excitement of a hunt, the
drink and smoke in her husband's presence" for children, and their tolerance of romance of a dancing expedition - and all
- freedoms all generally denied to the caste misbehaviour, were in contrast to the austere the time, if you are young, there is the ghotul
Hindu woman.'3 Here the Baiga were no aloofness of the European adult. Nor did the which you would not exchange for any offer
exception, for in most tribal societies tribals have any of the Hindu's passionate of material wealth".20
longing for boys, adoring, equally, babies The gaiety of aboriginal life came through
the woman holds a high and honourable
of either sex. As for the children themselves,most vividly in their love of the dance. The
place. She goes proudly free about the
they exhibited, early on, the absence of the dance was in itself an index of the vitality
countryside. In field and forest she labours
acquisitive instinct. Arriving in a village of tribal life: without it, wrote Elwin,
in happy companionship with her husband.
with a box of toys, the anthropologist found
She is not subjected to early child-bearing; tribal life sinks into utter monotony... The
she is married when she is mature, and if that "none of the Gond children show signs
tribesmen like their recreation to have a kick
her marriage is a failure (which it seldom of wanting to possess toys for themselves, in it, and they find small consolation in
is) she has the right of divorce. The but the more sophisticated Hindu children, missionary tea-parties or Congress meetings
lamentable restrictions of widowhood do however, weep vociferously on finding they to discuss agricultural reforms. Without the
not await her: should her husband die, she can't have them'.'7 dance, the tribesmen is overwhelmed with
is allowed,.even enjoined, to remarry: and The anthropologist was also attracted by boredom; he is swallowed by his work and
in many tribes she may inherit property. Her the fundamental longing for unity and his anxieties: there is no tower into which
free and open life fills her mind with poetrysolidarity which permeated aboriginal life. he can escape.2'
and sharpens her tongue with wit. As a This was expressed in the great festivals These are then the core elements in Elwin's
companion she is humourous and interesting;
where the tribals ate, drank, sangand dancedcelebration of tribal life: the identity with
as a wife devoted; as a mother, heroic in the
together, and in other ways too. The Baiga Nature, the honoured place of women, a
service of her children.'4
village, where all houses were built around joyful attitude towards sex, the love of
This, apparently, was a feminism almost a common square, exemplified for Elwin thechildren, a strong sense of community and
fully realised. It explained in turn the open,'friendly, open-hearted, honest communistic equality, gaiety and variety in forms of
unaffected atttitude of the aboriginal towards nature of the tribe'. The Muria ghotul was recreation. This celebration was at the same
sex. Working with the Baiga, Elwin was a 'compact, loyal, friendly little republic', time an indictment both of modem Western
struck by the absence of sexual dreams. He its members united by a 'large, generous civilisation and Hindu caste society, cultures
traced this to the culture of the tribe, where corporate romance'. Forthe aboriginal, tribalcharacterised by the oppression of women,
'the fine and delicate perceptions and delights solidarity was the 'supreme good', social hierarchy, the spirit of competitiveness,
of a moderate sexuality are preserved', this individualism the 'great sin'. Thus the aggression, and sexual repression. As Elwin
in contrast to the 'middle class, Puritan absence of theft, adultery, quarrel or the wrote in 1943, Indian tribesmen-
European atmosphere in which Freud formed shirking of work, of anything that might
threaten orunderminetheunity andcollective
his theory of repression and the interpretation do not cheat and exploit the poor and the
of dreams'. I interests of the community.'8 weak. They are mostly ignorant of caste and
race prejudice. They do not prostitute their
These themes are developed more fully In the aboriginal India of Verrier Elwin's
women or degrade them by foolish laws and
in the 700 pages of The Muria and their presentation, fraternity went hand in hand
customs. They do not form themselves into
Ghotul. Here the anthropologist presented with equality. "In the spirit of economic
armies and destroy one another by foul
the village dormitory - to civilised eyes a fellowship and the tradition of communal
chemical means. They do not tell pompous
bed of sin and promiscuity - as the ideal living", he once remarked, "some primitive
lies over the radio. Many of their darkest
preparation for stable, adult marriage. In the villages are a hundred years ahead of the sins are simply the result of ignorance. A
ghotul, sex was playful, the best of all games; modern world". Economic assets like land few of them are cruel and savage, but the
neither too intense, nor defiled by were, in general, equally distributed or held majority are kind and loving, admirable in
possessiveness and jealousy. Unlike in more in common. More striking was the spirit of their home, steadfast in their tribal loyalties,
complex societies where many marriages political equality, with decisions affecting manly, independent, honourable.22

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This is in fact the last paragraph of a book George Boas as the 'discontent of the civilised
life as they conceive it, than to any other
on murder and suicide among the Maria with civilisation, or with some conspicuous cause.
Gonds of Bastar. When dealing with the and characteristic feature of it' .25 Primitivism Bronislaw Malinowski
darker side of tribal life, Elwin liked to put has of course been one of the most enduring At the time of which I write, the 1940s,
matters in perspective, by contrasting strands in European thought; in the words the 'primitive' and the 'civilised' were not
aboriginal practices with civilised ones. For of a recent commentator, Tzvetan Todorov, merely two alternate worldviews, but two
him, the rigour of the witch-hunt or the it is 'less the description of a reality than social systems coming into continually closer
punishment for witch-craft among the Baiga the formulation of an ideal'.26 contact. This was a hopelessly one-sided
(usually a beating) could not 'match the Elwin's own espousal of cultural encounter, in which the aboriginal stood to
savagery of the Middle Ages in Europe'. primitivism was not, of course, wholly an lose his lands and his forests, his culture and
Likewise, the punishment for violating the invention. For one thing, the Gond, the Baiga his self-esteem.
rules of the ghotul merely involved the loss and the Agaria all believed that the past had Whtr6ver he roamed in Bastar, the Central
of dignity with only a little discomfort: absentbeen better than the present, that there had Provinces or in Orissa, Verrier Elwin
was the 'sharp, abrupt sting of corporal truly once been a Golden Age when their discovered deep differences between tribal
punishment so familiar to the European kings ruled, theirpowers of magic and healing
communities relatively untouched by the
schoolboy', intolerable to the gentle Muria were unimpaired, their beloved bewar and outside world and those that had been
would be 'the catastrophic decisiveness of iron smelting freely pursued. Elwin's attack radically affected by it. In the Orissa districts
a flogging'. Again, where in modern society on civilisation was also splendidly timed, of Ganjam and Koraput he found one class
murders were overwhelmingly for gain, for with the long shadow of Nazism cast of aboriginals who were "poor, miserable
among Indian aboriginals they originated in across the warring nations of Europe, the anddiseased ... They have lost their standards;
disputes over rights and privileges (whether primitivistcould effectively challenge a view they no longer have the beauty and dignity
over land or women), 'rather than as a desire of human progress in which savages in the of an ordered coherent culture to support
for possession'. In a characteristic comment forest were placed at the bottom of the them; they are adrift in a modem world that
on the hypocricy of the civilised, he notes: hierarchy and modern European society at so far has done little to afford them
"We today regard it as a great crime to kill the apex. anchorage". But travelling in the interior
our own fathers and children: but even the Most of all, Verrier Elwin is to be hills one got "a very different picture. Here
most civilised European nation - whichever -distinguished from other primitivists in
we that
find living in almost unfettered freedom
that might be - regards it as rather glorious hie actually lived with the communitiesand
whose
in the enjoyment of ancient and
to kill the fathers and children of others in culture he so vigorously celebrated. For the characteristic institutions some of the most
war". 23 narrator of primitivist reveries has always ancient people of India... These people have
To the civilised mind, primitive society had the choice 'to return, at the end of his maintained their morale and their will to
is violent in the extreme - plagued by endemic
sojourn, to the highly civilised countries he happiness. Geographical factors have
strife, lacking the orderly rules of conduct came from'. From Vespucci to Chateaubriand protected them and still contribute much to
and humane values believed to be the down to the anthropologists of the 20th their well-being".
hallmark of our own society. Writing in the the European traveller in search of
century, Sometimes one found this contrast amongst
midst of the most savage war in human the exotic invariably goes back to where he different sections of the same tribe. Thus
history, Elwin could neatly turn conventional came from.27 But Elwin was a different typeamong the Baiga it was
wisdom on its head. In his view the aboriginal altogether, who lived with -the primitives,
most instructive to go straight from a bewar-
was more likely to be peaceful and- un- loved with them, and therefore defended
cuttingjungle village in the wilds of Pandaria
contentious, modem man more predisposed them. Strikingly, Elwin recognised both the
to a village by the roadside in Mandla or
to killing and brutality. Thus the Nagas tradition hecame from as well as his departure
Niwas. In the former, tribal life and
shared with the advanced nations of Europe from it. He once remarked, with regard to organisation still retains its old vitality; you
the customs of head-hunting and human the fascination for the primitive of European enter the village and at once you feel the
sacrifice, with this difference: 'that the poor
poets and philosophers, that "not many of stir and throb of communal energy; tribal
aboriginal sacrifices only one or two human those who wrote so eloquently of the return life is an integrated whole, it makes sense,
beings in the name of his gods, while the to nature were prepared, however, to take there are no gaps in it, it has no insulated
great nations offer up millions in the name the journey themselves, at least not without spots, everything is related and functions in
of empire and enlightenment'. In his study a return ticket".2x He was one of the very its proper place. The people are vigorous,
of primitive iron-smelting, published in 1942, few who did. independent, happy. But go to a semi-
Elwin contrasted the 'millions of tons of civilised Baiga village in Balaghat, Mandla
death-dealing steel employed in modern IV or Niwas. The people mightbelong to another

battle' to the 'few thousand tons smelted

race. Servile, obsequious, timid, of poor
physique, their tribal life is all to pieces.
annually in the clay fumaces of central India', The undermining of old-established
Parts of it, like the right to hunt and practice
used to make ploughs and harrows that raised authority, oftribal morals and customs tends
bewar, have been torn out by the roots. Some
rich crops in the Maikal Hills. "This on the one hand completely to demoralise
of their simple and innocent dances, under
aboriginal iron has brought the law of plenty the natives and to make them unamenable
Hindu influence, have been given up. The
to the jungle", he remarked, while "that to any law or rule, while on the other hand,
souls of the people are soiled and grimy with
by destroying the whole fabric of tribal life,
civilised iron is bringing the law of the the dust of passing motor-buses. In the
it deprives them of many of their most
jungle to the lands of plenty".24 village, you are in the midst not of a living
cherished diversions, ways of enjoying life,
The Baiga, remarked Elwin in his great community but of a collection of isolated
and social pleasures. Now once you make
book on that tribe, 'know little of civilisation units. Tribal life and tradition appear slightly
life unattractive for a man, whether savage
and think little of it'. He himself knew a great or civilised, you cut the taproot of his vitality. ludicrous, even to the tribesmen themselves.
deal about civilisation, and yet thought little The rapid dying out of native races is, I am And once that point is reached there is no
of it. In this sense he might be said to hope for the tribe.3"
deeply convinced, due more to wanton
exemplify the ideology of 'cultural interference with their pleasures and normalIt was only the tribal isolated in- the
primitivism', defined by A 0 LovejDoy and to the marring of their joy highlands
occupations, of who really lived; his religion

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characteristic and alive, his social black, our boys and girls are like monkeys, economic loss, moral degradation, and
organisation unimpaired, his traditions of art degraded) remarked a Muria of Narayanpur, psychic despair.
and dance unbroken, his mythology still a comment that sums up Elwin's owIn view Elwin' position with regard to this last,
vital. "It has been said", wrote Elwin in July of the clash of cultures in aboriginal India. most numerous class is never very clear:
1943, "that the hoot of the motor-horn would whether to turn the clock back, or allow their
sound the knell of the aboriginal tribes as V fuller assimilation into the dominant culture.
such; but now petrol rationing has stepped At any event, he saw his work as being the
in to delay the funeral". In the "old days But how tired I get of this abominable protection of the 'real primitive' from the
when there were neither roads nor motor- civilisation. I often read that the next war inroads of civilisation. Thus, in the closing
cars", he was told by a Bastar tribal, "the will mean the end of European civilisation.
pages of The Baiga he proposed the creation
Well, will that mnatter!
Muria were honest, truthful and virtuous'. of a National Park, where the Baiga would
Verrier Elwin. in a letter to his mother,
Even where their souls were not soiled have the freedom to hunt, fish and practice
August 22, 1935.
with the grime of passing motor-buses, the bewar, with the entry of non-aboriginals
aboriginals were assaulted by civilisation in prohibited. The term 'National Park' was
By the early 1940s, Verrier Elwin had
numerous other ways. British economic unfortunate, for it led critics to immediately
emerged as an eloquent spokesman for the
policies, favouring individual titles to accuse him of wanting to put the tribe into
tribal communities of the Indian heartland.
property and creating a market for land, had a zoo, to which the anthropologist, alone
He had by now realised his own unfittedness
helped dispossess thousands of tribal families among outsiders, would have privileged
for social work. Providing education and
and placed many others in a position of access. As this criticism has dogged the
medical relief was not his line; these were
bondage to money-lenders. Forest and game appreciation of Elwin's work right down to
best left to his colleague Shamrao Hivale,
laws had sharply reduced the access of the the present,36 his own answer is worth taking
who ran on his own the schools and hospital
aboriginal to the fruits of nature, and in some note of. "One of the more foolish things that
they had set up in Mandla. "The pen is my
instances (as where shifting cultivation was has been said about us recently", wrote Elwin
chief weapon with which I fight for my
banned) deprived them of their livelihood in March 1942,
poor", Elwin had written to an Italian friend
altogether. The suppression of the home
in March 1938. He hlad just completed his is that we want to keep the aboriginal in a
distillery, forcing the tribal to buy alcohol
book on the Baiga, with its daring and zoo. This is particularly ungenerous in our
liquor only from outlets licensed by the
controversial proposals for creating a case. For what is the meaning of putting an
state, had brought him into contact with a
National Park to protect the tribe from the animal in the Zoo? You take it away-from
most 'degraded type of alien', the liquor its home, you deprive it of its freedom, and
corruptions of civilisation.34 That work was
contractor. The Indian Penal Code and the you rob it of its natural diet and normal
only the first in a series of rich ethnographies
Indian Forest Act formed two pillars of a existence. But my whole life has been devoted
and pamphlets through which Elwin fought
massive, alien system ofjurisprudence which to fighting for the freedom of the aboriginals,
for his poor. the voiceless tribals of central
ran counter to tribal custom, subjecting them to restore to them their ancestral jungle and
India. His mission is best explained in the
to endless harassment at distant courts, at mountain country which is their home and
preface to the most famous of his books,
the hands of lawyers, lawyer's touts, and ill- to enable them to live their own lives, to have
Thle Muria anid their Ghotul. It was A E
informed judges.32 their own diet, and to refresh themselves
Housman's ambition, wrote Elwin, with their traditional recreations.37
Where colonial policy worked thus to
impoverish the aboriginals, Hindu society,
that one day a copy of The Shropshir-e LadElwin's plea, then, was for civilisation to
taken into battle should stop a bullet aimed
where it did penetrate tribal areas, attacked allow the aboriginals to live their lives in
at a soldier's heart. I have a similar desire
their culture with equal ruthlessness. the way they knew best. This meant providing
for this, as for all my other books, that in
Extended contact with Hindus crushed the the battle for existence which the Indian them security of land, the freedom of the
aboriginals' love of art, music and dance; forest, and protection from landlords, money-
abor-iginal nlow has to wage, it may protect
taught them to worship alien gods and have him from some of the deadly shafts of lenders, and subordinate officials. He quotes
contempt for their own; introduced child- exploitation, interference and repression with relish an Orissa aboriginal who told
marriage; constricted their 'generous hearts' that civilisation so constantly launches at
him: "We love our hills: we have always fed
with the practice of untouchability; and his heart. If this book does anything to help
on fruit and roots and we don't want to
encouraged them to put their free andl happythe Muria to continue as they are today, change. We care nothing for hospitals and
free and innocent. I shall be content.35
women in purdah.33 schools; all we want is our hills".3" This was
This collective deprivation had resulted in The Muria themselves were on-ie of the tribesa ffeedom denied by the British and the
an acute psyschological trauma, a 'loss of Elwin felt to be in most Uracrit need of
Congress, bult not by the more sympathetic
nerve'. Facing economic decline and the protection. At this timne, he divided Indianof Indian princes. The anthropologist's model
aboriginals into three broad groupings. The
hostility of the state, the Agaria dreamt that was the chi efqom of Bastar, whose officials
when he dug for iron he came up with stones smallest class comprised the' tribal elite: were respectful of tribal custom, where forest
instead. The Baiga attributed the decline of aristocrats; lawyers and legislators, who had laws were liberal, and where local self-
his powers of magic to having to take, effectively won the battle of culture-contact,government (as in the village panchajat
forcibly, to the plough and 'settled' assimilating themselves into civilised life system) was firmly in place. For Elwin; the
without degradation or loss of dignity. At
cultivation. Most cynically of all, the Mandla prophylactic and remedial measures taken
Gond believed that when the railway came, the other end of the spectrum were the by the Bastar administration had kept thei-r
"Annadeo, the God of food, ran away from isolated commuLnities. the pure aboriginals tribesmen a dignified and noble people' .3
the jungle. He sat in the train and went to who retained the characteristic elements of
He himself found it "most refreshing to go
Bombay, and there he makes the [cityl people tribal life - these were the people who to Bastar from the reform-stricken and
fat". This was a world in which the livelihood knew little of civi lisation, antld thought barren
little districts of the Central Provinces".
of the aboriginals had been taken away, theirof it. In between these two extremes lay Everytime he entered the state from British
culture crushed, and where even the gods the v1st majority of tribals, long subject
territory, he seemed to hear the whole
had turned against them. 'Abika raj kala~u,to the inroads of civilisationl yet unequippedcountryside bursting inlo song around
larka larki malau' (The world of1 today is to come to terms with it; plagued by him.4'

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 Elwin's theory of the state was simple and founded by the great Poona nationalist, wings, Thakkar Bapa did a good deal of
straightforward: all governments are bad, Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Here Thakkar his flying in motor buses and third-class
although some of their officials might be worked on various tasks assigned to him carriages.45

good. It was by keeping out the state, and by the Society, especially famine relief. An This was spoken in November 1939.
-puritan reformers, that Elwin hoped to protectextended tour of western India in 1921-22 Within the year, Elwin and Thakkar were
his beloved aboriginal from the shafts that brought him face to face with the poverty embroiled in an heated exchange of letters.
civilisation continually thrust at him. Here of Bhil tribals. Soon afterwards, he founded A private disagreement at first, this was to
the pen was his chief, perhaps sole weapon; the Bhil Seva Mandal, a welfare organisation go public in the columns of The Times of
his life with the tribals, his justification. run and staffed by Indians. It ran schools India. His affection for Thakkar notwith-
Others, then and now, might question his and dispensaries for the Bhils, interceded standing, 10 years in central India had
authority to speak for 20 million Indians. on their behalf with moneylenders and convincedElwin that his friend's philosophy,
One who acknowledged it fully was his officials, and promoted khadi and if not his practice, was deeply misguided.
friend and fellow anthropologist, W G temperance.42 Thakkar's own views are summarised in
Archer. The poem which follows nicely Mahatma Gandhi, when once asked why his R R Kale memorial lecture, delivered in
captures Elwin's own contrast between the he had paid little attention to the tribes, September 1941 at Poona's Gokhale Institute
world of the primitive and the world of the replied: "I have entrusted that part of our of Politics and Economics. Here he defined
civilised, and his preoccupation with work to A V Thakkar".43 Universally known two distinctive points of view with regard
protecting one from the inroads of the as 'Bapa' (Father) Thakkar was undoubtedly
other: to the tribes, 'Isolation' and 'Assimilation',
a man of great integrity, courage and that were to gain wide currency. Isolation
For Verrier Elwin
by W G Archer commitment. Thakkar Bapa, wrote an was characteristic of anthropologists and
Beyond the white fantastic mountains admirer in 1928, was ICS officials, who wished to keep the
The war is fracturing the foreign cities aboriginals 'untouched by the civilisation of
a friend of the poor, the untouchable and the
The Western style makes toys of the dead aborigine. The cry of torment, anguish and the plains', fearing that culture-contact would
And in the little brittle churches torture attracts him from one remote corner undermine tribal solidarity and expose them
The girls are praying with long hair to the other. Whether it be a famine calamity
to the evils of caste and purdah. Thakkar
For the hours of the future and the sexless or a flood devastation, official persecutionrejected isolation, hoping instead that a
houses. or temperance work, khaddar organisation'healthy comradeship' would develop
Among your burning hills, the lonely jungle or opening wells and tanks for untouchables,
between tribals and non-tribals. By a policy
Roars in the summer. The sterile land you cannot miss the mark and the guiding
Rests; and news comes up like clouds of assimilation, he wrote
and unerring hand of Amritlal. The theatre
While you are active in the needs of peace of his activities is among the depressed and The aborigines should form part of the
Saving the gestures of the happy lovers the oppressed in out-of-the-way places or civilised communities of our country not for
The poems vivid as the tiger among forest tribes in the hills." the purpose of swelling the figures of the
Faced with destruction from the septic plains followers of this religion or that, but to share
And with your love and art delay It was Thakkar who was to be the 'first
with the advanced communities the
The crawling agony and the death of the inspirer' of Verrier Elwin's mission to the
privileges and duties on equal terms in the
tribes.4' Gonds. In the beginning, his Gond Seva general social and political life of the country.
Mandal followed the Bhil Seva Mandal in Separatism and isolation seem to be
VI its programme of khadi, temperance work dangerous theories and they strike at the root
and basic education, but over the years the of national solidarity. We have already
Convinced that humanity and variety are divergences became more apparent. A enough communal troubles, and should we
synonymous, Elwin has always condemned skepticism of Thakkar's philosophy and a add to them instead of seeing that we are
the busybodies who, be it in the name of high regard for his person come together in all one and indivisible? Safety lies in union
religion or at the behest of politics, would a speech delivered by Elwin at a public not in isolation.46
impose on primitive innonence the
meeting in Bombay to mark his mentor's For Elwin, of course, 'assimilation' merely
standardised sophistications of modern
70th birthday. He first honoured Thakkar as spelt 'degeneration'. On questions of
civilisation, and just as in the old days he
aroused the active hostility of many a British
an angel who "attended to everything - practical policy too he found himself at odds
official by his open association with the whether it was a Prime Minister, a hungrywith his one-time mentor. Where Elwin
movement for Indian independence, so nowchild or a broken bridge", but then gloried in theirjoyful attitude to sex, Thakkar
his disapproval of cumulative encroachments proceeded, in a more two-edged, ironic upbraided the aboriginals for their "crude
on the integrity of primitive culture may mode, to recall marital relations and promiscuity in sexual
seem suspect to champions of militant
the famous pronouncement of Sam Weller matters" (he had been horrified by what he
nationalism.
regarding MrPickwickthathewas a 'regular, read in The Baiga). Where the anthropologist
Sudhindranath Dutta defended the tribal's love of drink, the
thoroughbred angel' though he wore
Verrier Elwin's indictment, in November breeches and garters. If there could be reformer
an wished gradually but firmly to
1933, of Indian nationalists for their neglect angel in breeches, I do not see why there
introduce prohibition. And where Elwin
should not be one in a dhoti or a Gandhi wished for protection to be given to shifting
of the tribes had allowed for one exception:
cap, though I have no reliable information cultivation, Thakkar prescribed that the
'the heroic little band of workers associated
that the wearing of khaddar had been made plough everywhere replace swidden, which
with the Bhil Seva Mandal'.
compulsory in heaven. It may not be quite he condemned as a 'wasteful' form of
The Bhil Seva Mandal was started by
proper too, to compare Thakkar Bapa to Mr
Amritlal (A V) Thakkar in 1923. Thakkar, Pickwick because of the latter's opinion on cultivation which only encouraged the
who was born in 1869, two months after Prohibition, but they had certain angelic tribal's 'proverbial' laziness.
Mahatma Gandhi and in the same state of virtues in common, such as being good to These differences first surfaced in

Gujarat, had first been trained as an engineer.people in every way without being pompous September 1940, when Elwin received a
In 1914 he left his job in the Bombay and patronising. The only difference letter from Thakkar proposing the creation
municipality to join the Servants of India of a non-political, all-India association to be
between an angel and Thakkar Bapa in this
Society, the social welfare organisation respect was that while an angel flew on called the 'Indian Aborigines Friends

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Society'." The provisional aims of the suggesting that the civilised had much to Thakkar chose not to reply to this 'long
Society were learn from the primitive. He was thus sermon'." But echoes of ilhe exchange are
'profoundly shocked' by Thakkar's visible in his Poona lecture of September,
I To study the living conditions of the
suggestion that the proud, free aboriginal where his categories of 'Isolation' and
members of the Hill and Forest Tribes who
of the hills be brought nearer to the 'Assimilation' are merely transpositions of
live an isolated life, to bring them nearer
decayed, degraded, Hinduised tribal ofthe 'Protection' and 'Intervention', the categories
to their own tribals living in the plains and
to be familiarwith theircustoms and manners. plains. originally used by Elwin to distinguish their
2 To organise, co-ordinate and assist welfare Elwin went on to suggest an alternate set respective positions. The two sets of terms
work conducted for their benefit, such as of six aims for the new association. Three accurately reflect each man's set of values.
schools, dispensaries, sanitation and hygiene, clauses are versions of those drafted by Isolation implies the keeping away of tribals
which, it is always understood, is conducted Thakkar - the need to study tribal life, from the modern world and what it had to
on huLmanitarian lines only [that is, without undertake welfare work, and intercede on offer, Protection a heroic defence of the
a view to religious coonver-sion]. their behalf with government - but taking pure aboriginal from the shafts civilisation
3 To represent to the Provincial Governments care to remove all phrases smacking of continually thrust at him. Likewise,
concerned their disabilities and to suggest 'uplift'. A fourth called for the devising of Intervention connotes an aggressive and
schemes for their moral, cultural, economic
means of economic progress with the unwarranted tampering with tribal culture,
and political uplift with a view to bring thlem
minimum of dislocation and distress. A fifth Assimilation a gentle easing of that culture
on a par with the advanced classes in the
asked for special protection for the into the bosom of its mother civilisation.
community.41
aboriginals from their traditional exploiters The debate went public in October 1941,
Elwin welcomed the idea of a countrywide - "oppressive landlords, grasping when The Titmes of India carried a unsigned,
association t'or aboriginal welfare, yet moneylenders [and] corrupt officials" - as joint review of Thakkar's Kale lecture and
worried that it might come to be dominated well as from "ignorant politicians [and] Elwin's recently published pamphlet, Loss
by 'Congress minded Hindus'. He saw a proselytising missionaries of any religion..." of Nerve, a review in which the comparison
deep divergence of opinion emerging His own preferences were expressed most was all to the anthropologist s fiavour. Where
between what he called the Interventionist clearly in the last clause, which asked the Thakkar presented his material ex cathedra,
and Protectionist points of view. Himself an association wrote the critic, without much supporting
'out and out Protectionist', Elwin wanted to evidence, Elwin made practically no
To do everything possible to revive and
safeguard the Indian aboriginal t'rom the f'ate encourage all that is good and that has statement unsupported by fact. And where
of aboriginal peoples in other parts of the the reformer was beset with prejudice against
survival-value in the traditional tribal culture.
world. For in Afirica, Australia, and the This will include the revival of aboriginal sex, the 'drink evil', and shifting cultivation,
Americas, degradation had everywhere village industries, restoration of hunting the anthropologist countered these ill-
followed the rapid contact with civilisation: rights, stimulation of dancing and singing informed criticisms of tribal life with a body
through the collapse of tribal religion and and the worship of ancient gods.49 of scientific evidence. Writing in a newspaper
social organisation, the extinction of villageThakkar's reply to this letter is lost. But a owned by Europeans and long hostile to the
industry, the weakenling of moral fibre, and, few months later, in June 1941, he sent Indian national movement, the reviewer
very otften, extermination itself. Elwin a copy of a report that he had submittedcould not resist this last, telling crack:
The Protectionist was also distinguished to the Orissa government on tribal policy. It is peculiar that Mr Elwin, representative
by his love and reverence for the aboriginal. Elwin disagreed with most of the of the 'exploiting foreigner', should produce
'He does not regard him as being on a lower recommendations, and focused on what was a thesis which is instinct with liberalism
level. He recognises that his hionesty, his (from his point of view) the most drastic: against MrThakkar's authoritarian nostrums,
courage, his simplicity, his truthfulness are the curbs on swidden cultivation or bewar. well-intentioned though the latter
undoubtedly are.52
f'ar- superior to the normal level of honesty His response, once again, was vehement, in
and truth in civilised society. He regards as a letter written with "my whole life, all my Thakkar had previously been subject to a
intolerable the suggestion that he should interests, my bones and my blood behind it". hostile editorial in the same newspaper;
'uplif't' him. He admires his culture and For years, he told Thakkar, attacked once again, he was moved to
religion and would like to preserve all that respond. In a letter to The Times of India,
I have been striving to get the Imperialist
has 'survival-value.' he drew attention to the different angles of
Government to allow a few human rights to
The Interventionist, on the other hand, 'is vision from which the tribals were being
the aboriginals. First and foremost among
all for uplift'. 'In his heart he looks down viewed. Anthropologists like Elwin, he
those rights is that of shifting cultivation.
on the aboriginial" regarding him "as being Just as a certain impression has been created, remarked, might even countenance adultery,
on a lower soclial and cultural level than the fruit of hour after hour of patient and witchcraft, human sacrifice - in the belief
himself'. The Interventionist had strong ideas often weary work, you come and cut the that the 'original culture' of the tribals should
of what was good for men, applying them ground underneath my feet... not be "tainted by the so-called alien culture
universally regardless of cultural differences. And in whose interests would you stop of the Indian nationalists". Other Indians
That the two men had sharp differences bewar? The forests belong to the aboriginal.
wished to copy the 'good customs' of the
is clear, although the intensity of Elwin's I should have thought that anyone who was tribals (truthfulness and simplicity of life)
a Nationalist would at least advocate swaraj while at the same time "educating the
reply was not unrelated to his marriage, but
for the aboriginal! It is a sad and grievous aboriginals to the level of the rest of the
six months previously, to a tribal girl quite
thing for someone like yourself arguing...
proud ot' her own culture - a culture which population". But the anthropologists
in favour of taking away from the poor yet
he saw no reason to change (still less 'uplift') "evidently desire to keep them isolated and
another of their treasured rights. I am
at all. But Elwin was also contesting the untouched by civilisation, as if they are
absolutely convinced that the policy you
beliet', pervasive in 19th century anthro- ashamed of their [own] civilisation".3
have set in the Orissa Report will lead to
pology and in 20 century social work, that nothing but the degradation, the decay, the Replying from his field station in Bastar,
cultures could be arranged hierarchically, in demoralisation of these poor people, and Elwin would not accept that there was any
an evolutionary sequence. In somle respects conflictbetween his science and nationalism.
chilIdren yet unborn will curse your honoured
he even tried to invert this hierarchy, in name.5" Indeed, "since the anthropologist is

2382 Economic and Political Weekly Special Number September 1996

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concerned to record many phases of national independence, community spirit, morality, University of Bombay. With Geddes'
culture and to reveal it in its true synthesis treatment of women, and so on.-7 encouragement Ghurye was awarded a
and beauty any intelligent national movement Here were two quite distinct angles of scholarship to England, where he earned a
will use him to the full". Alongside this vision regarding the tribes. The vulnerability
Ph D in social anthropology at Cambridge.
defence of anthropology went a defence of of Elwin's own position, its moral force and On his return hejoined Bombay University's
aboriginal life that was (as Thakkar had basis in experience notwithstanding, was department of sociology, a department he
noted) proof of Elwin's misgivings about underscored in some comments on the presided over with stern authority for more
civilisation. The 'real problem' in his view exchange by the social worker and nationalist,
than 30 years.6"
was "not the possible defects of primitive P Kodanda-Rao. Rao acknowledged Elwin's Where Elwin's writings drew abundantly
culture, but the very obvious defects of our 'unrivalled knowledge' of tribal life, his on his life among the tribals,Ghurye abhorred
own". The Congress would be making a deep devotion to their cause. Nonetheless, fieldwork, hardly ever leaving Bombay. But
'profound mistake' if it were to disregard he charged that the Englishman was "more he was a formidable textual scholar, with a
the warnings of anthropology and follow a than a descriptive anthropologist; he is a capacity to synthesise materials collected by
'reactionary policy of oppression and politician with a policy to propound and other writers. He was also an able polemicist,
interference' in tribal areas. If it did, there propagate" - indeed, his proposals amounted with a lawyer's skill in systematically and
might even be rebellion and bloodshed. Elwin to nothing less than the creation of an relentlessly arguing his case.
claimed that the Konds of Orissa, bearing 'Aboriginalisthan', a special protectorate to The arguments of The Aborigines -- So
the burden of Thakkar's report, had be ruled by anthropologists like himself.5" Called - and their Futture are developed in
"threatened to offer a human sacrifice to the The reference was chillingly clear. With the three, closely-related stages. Ghurye first
'New God Gandhi' so that they will not be Pakistan movement for the partition of India demonstrated that, strictly speaking, the
deprived of any more of their elementary gaining ground, Elwin was being accused aboriginals are not aboriginals at all. For
human rights".54 of hastening the further division of India onElwin it was an article of faith that his tribals
In his final letter to The Tilnes of Ithdia. communal lines. were autochtones. The Aboriginals
Elwin wrote of his reluctance "to continue concluded with these words:
any controversy with my old and honoured VII The aboriginals are the real swadeshi
friend, Mr A V Thakkar". By now the debate products of India, in whose presence
had acquired a momentum ot its own, to be The universalism of the assimilator is everyone is foreign. These are the ancient
carried on by other people in other forums. generally a thinly disguised ethnocentricism. people with moral claims and rights
- Tzvetan Todorov thousands of years old. They were here first:
Evelyn Wood, a Bombay businessman and
friend of Elwin' s, wrote a sharp and personal In 1942, his arguments with Elwin just they should come first in our regard.62
attack on Thakkar, accusing him of concluded, A V Thakkar was visited by a This was at the time an uncontroversial
'misinformation', 'infinite condescension', young anthropologist from Bombay position: even A V Thakkar accepted the
and of being isolated by "a retinue ot chelas University. The scholar had finished a tribals as the 'original sons' of the soil,
from the people among whom, no doubt, he 'older and more ancient' than the Hindus.
dissertation on the bhils, and wished to work
used to work in close contact".55 A more with Thakkar. The old man, by now heartily But in Ghurye' s opinion, "to adjust the claims
considered intervention, this time from the sick of anthropologists, told him: "You can of the different strata of the Indian society
join me if you drop your science. I don't
side of social reform, appeared in the January on the ground of the antiquity or comparative
1942 number of the Social Service Quarterly, want science but humanism and morality".59 modernity of their settlement [was] a
a Bombay journal linked to the Servants of Science had been Elwin's trump card in formidably difficult task". For Indian history
India Society. This charged Elwin of hiding had been characterised by a great deal of
his exchange with Thakkar and his ilk: it also
provided the underpinning of his tract Theinternal migration within the subcontinent.
behind the cloak of science. Thus his defence
of drink, as a tonic and relaxation to the Aboriginals, published in July 1943, whichMany tribal groups had come to their present
aboriginal's otherwise comfortless existence,
presented protection as the 'scientific' habitat from elsewhere - for instance, the
was characterised as "neither science nor Paharia of Bihar very likely came originally
solution to the tribal situation.6' Two months
common sense, but sheer poetry". More later was published The Aboriginies - So from Karnataka, the Konds of Orissa from
Called - anid their Fiutuire, a scholarly. 240-the Tamil country - and could not properly
generally, Thakkar was described as a 'hard-
page book by the foremost Indian sociologist, be called the 'original owners of the soil'.
headed practical social reformer', Elwin as
one who was "simply sentimental and sees G S Ghurye of Bombay University. Elwin Chattisgarh, the h6me of the Gonds, had
the primitive culture and life of the aboriginalis the often named and sometimes unnamed itself been dominated by Hinduism before
with a poet's eye and imagination".6 antagonist of this work. Ghurye's title was the emergence of the great Gond kingdom
This was intended (at least in part) as a very likely a riposte to the recently printedin the medieval period. Nor could the tribes
compliment. Replying in turn, Elwin The Aboriginals, although his critique is as a whole be regarded as the autochtones
acknowledged the work for aboriginal directed primarily at The Baiga and Loss of India, for studies on the peopling of the
welfare of the Servants of India Society. of Nerve, the two studies of which that subcontinent suggested that the speakers of
With that kind of disinterested work, the pamphlet was a distillation. A masterful Dravidian and Kherwari tongues (who
aboriginal could indeed be assimilated blend of learning and polemic, Ghurye's included numerous tribal groups) were an
without loss of livelihood or self-esteem. attack was to mark Elwin for life. immigrant people as much as the Indo-
Sadly, for the most part culture-contact was Ghurye' s background and orientation were Aryans.63
a process over which the aboriginal had little very different from Elwin's. Born in 1893, If tribals were not autochtones, argued
control. Elwin went on to compare, under a saraswat brahmin from the west coast of Ghurye, they were not so culturally distinct
18 heads, the condition of the 'Isolated' Maharashtra, he was first trained as a either. He demonstrated, through a range of
aboriginal with the 'assimilated' one. This Sanskritist, earning a gold medal in his examples,
M the adoption of Hindu customs
was an elaboration of his familiar contrast A. He then came under the influence of by tribal groups, and the close parallels
between the pure and decayed tribal, in Patrick Geddes, the great Scotch educationist, between Hindu religion and belief systems
which the former was found superior in biologist and town planner, who was at the that colonial census officials had erroneously
every respect; with regard to his truthfulness,
time holding a chair in sociology at the classified as 'Animist'. Thus tribals widely

Economic and Political Weekly Special Number September 1996 2383

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participated in Hindu religious ceremonies noted in a perceptive foreword to the book, he found himself in the same room as Elwin,
- often in key roles - visited Hindu places Hindu exploitation of tribals was a secondary in a seminar at the Asiatic Society, he turned
of pilgrimage and were influenced by Hindu phenomenon, enabled precisely by the to a friend and whispered: "Do you see his
sectarian movements such as the Kabirpanth. primary phenomenon of British dominion. face? He has the mouth of a sexual pervert".68
With the exception of very small sections It was the establishment and consolidation Were this a scholarly debate conducted in
living in "the recesses of hills and the depths of British rule that had "brought about a (say) 1920 in the pages of a journal of
of forests", the so-called aboriginals, sharing revolution in the nature and extent of the anthropology, Elwin might well have
common interests in matters of faith and contact with the aborigine". The problem of shrugged it off as a dispute between Oxford
livelihood, had lived in "fairly intimate tribal poverty was inseparable from the larger and Cambridge, the Protectionist and the
contact with Hindus over a long time". The history of colonial exploitation, a connection Interventionist, the Aesthete and the Puritan,
sociologist concluded that the "only proper which had escaped Isolationists like Elwin.65 the Fieldworker and the Library Worm. But
description of these people" is that they are In a sustained critique of the National Park this was India in 1943, a nation on the eve
"the imperfectly integrated classes of Hindu idea, Ghurye dismissed Elwin as a 'no- of independence, struggling to come to terms
society". Hence his own preference for the changer' and 'revivalist', one who wished with the problems of its vast and diverse
term 'backward Hindu' insteadof'aborigine' to see "the aborigines' reinstated in their old population. This was a time of rising
or 'aboriginal' .64 tribal ways, irrespective of any other patriotism, but also of a growing confusion
Ghurye next looked at the process of consideration".66 Ghurye's own values and division within the ranks of a once
culture-contact, which, again, he viewed quite emerge at various points in his book. He had united national movement. The claims of the
differently from Elwin. He accepted that a strong aversion to drink, which he saw as Congress to represent all of India were being
tribal encounters with Hindus sometimes led a curse on tribal life - leading to unsteadiness, strongly challenged by the Muslim League,
to distress, but disputed the claim that dissipation of energy and indolence -as well which accused it of being a party of the
economic loss was followed by psychic as a distaste for pre-marital sex. Ghurye was Hindus, and a little less successfully by
despair, an alleged 'loss of nerve'. At the both a puritan and an 'improver', whose untouchables and socialists, who charged it
same time, contact with Hindus might also interpretation of tribe-Hindu relations flowed
with representing the interests of uppercastes
benefit the tribals; by exposing them to logically into an enthusiasm for reform. and capitalists. The thesis of tribal autonomy
better methods of cultivation, or curing them Ghurye's polemic was extended by his and distinctiveness put forward by Elwin
of drunkenness. Noting that "everything pupil M N Srinivas in a review of The appeared, in the circumstances. to be yet
savouring of the Hindu upsets Elwin", Aboriginals. Elwin's invocation of 'loss of another blow to the unity of a nation in the
Ghurye disposed of the four reasons why nerve' was dismissed by the young scholar making. Faced with the prospect of Pakistan
Elwin wished to restrict Hindu influence on as a 'conveniently vague expression', a and growing tension within Hindu society,
tribal life - namely, that it would mean the misleading application in the Indian context the national movement could ill afford the
acceptance of the status of untouchables, a of the idea of a loss of interest in life, which merest thought, let alone the creation, of an
lowering in the position of women, the the anthropologist W H R Rivers had 'Aboriginalisthan'. Like Mohammad Ali
introduction of child marriage, and the developed in Melanesia - where it had a Jinnah of the Muslims and B R Ambedkar
suppression of their song and dance. For the solid and verifiable basis in depopulation, of the untouchables, Elwin was being cast
prevalent mood was one of equality: popular disease and starvation. Srinivas also exposed as a 'betrayer' of the cause of a greater,
movements among Hindus themselves, Elwin's claim that the policy of protection united India.
against untouchability and for the was based on the authority of science. To It was here that Ghurye's attack was at
emancipation of women, would not the argument that the importation of plough-
its most telling. With A V Thakkar. the
countenance tribal entry at the bottomcultivation
of the would prove fatal to the bewar- Bombay sociologist spoke in the name ot
caste hierarchy or the exploitation of their loving Baiga, Srinivas responded: "Elwin a u iitary stream of nationalism, while Elwin
women. Likewise, the growing interest in here forgets a fact which every tyro in appeared to be on the other side of the fence,
folk culture and folk dance might even work Anthropology knows: cultures are never politically speaking, forcing wide open
to protect at least some aspects of tribal song through his work the cracks in the Indian
static, but dynamic. Old traits are thrown off
and dance, which would come to form part or modified and new ones adopted. And that social fabric. The sociologist also pointed
of "the total complex which is arising called is life. Of course a certain immigrant trait to the convergence between the views of
Indian culture". On the question of child may be disastrous to the group. But that has Elwin and the work of ICS officials with a
marriage, Ghurye was not convinced that it to be proved in every case. There is nothing special interest in the tribes. Far more
would be harmful in the tribal context; on to prove that the Baigas are incapable of effectively than in Thakkar's Kale lecture,
the contrary, it might temper their sexual 'Isolation' was identified as aquintessentially
taking to [plough] agriculture. We may have
licence, check the spread of venereal disease, to do it with special caution and slowness, English, even colonial project. And these
and enhance marital stability. but that is quite different from maintainingcriticisms came from the pen of- a highly
In Ghurye's view, British imperial rule that it can't be done at all".67 regarded scholar, not a social worker whom
was the larger, so to speak structural cause In an interview with this writer, M N Elwin could dismiss as being unfamniliar
of tribal discontent. For it was the inroads Srinivas recalled that he was specifically with the methodology and findings of
of the British system of law and revenue thatasked by his teacher to take on The 'science'.
had, in the first place. created the conditions Aboriginals (a best-selling pamphlet which Elwin most keenly felt the force of
for the erosion of tribal solidarity. The appeared too late for Ghurye to take account Ghurye' s attack. Two comments in his friend
establishment of individual property rights of in his own book). There is little question Shamrao Hivale's book SchIolaCr GypsY are
inland, the creation of a land market, stringent that Ghurye had a deep animus against Elwin. revealing. One refers to a "very unfair book"
forest laws, and an exploitative excise policy He was jealous of Elwin's popularity and, by a"Bombay scholar": the other, identifying
had all worked to impoverish the tribals, as a puritan, deeply disapproving of his the scholar by name, talks of Elwin's
pushing them into the clutches of landlords,personal life (or what he imagined it to be). admiration for Ghurye' s intellect and power
moneylenders and liquor contractors. As the Ghurye never forgave one of his students, of stimulating research in his pupils, but
economist D R Gadgil (like Ghurye, a Durga Bhagwat, for taking Elwin's advice continues- "unhappily he lacks the social
Cambridge man but passionate nationalist) before doing fieldwork with the Gonds. When gifts".69 But it was in a letter to W G Archer

Economic and Political Weekly Special Number September 1996 2385

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that he most fully revealed his feelings. among the Mandla tribals, the freedom with Europe. The aboriginals of India themselves
Ghurye's book, he told his friend, was an which the Gond woman could change had "their own life, their own art and culture
"odious book written by [an] anthropological partners. They wanted the government to [and] their own religion, to which they are
Quisling": were it not refuted, it might do pass a law which would provide: "(a) an easy deeply attached and which is by no means
"incalculable harm to the aboriginals and to and inexpensive way of restitution of to be despised".
our whole cause". He wanted to set aside conjugal rights, both for men and women; All over the world, wrote Elwin,
an issue of the journal Mani in Inidia (which
(b) quick punishment of the man a married conversion of tribals by missionaries had
the two of them then edited) to "putting woman runs away to". The priests claimed undermined traditional political institutions,
Ghurye in his place", with reviews of The that the love of the Gond for the 'karma' intensified personal rivalries, and implanted
Abor-iginzes - So Called - anzd their- Future
dance was instrumental in the break-up of a false sense of prudery and sin. The change
commissioned from W V Grigsonl of the tribal marriages. For the missionaries, the of religion, in Indiaas in AfricaorMelanesia.
ICS, the Austrian expert on the tribes, C von f irst reason why women deserted their "destroys tribal unity, strips the people of
Furer Haimendorf, and the Indian husbands was "the excessive sexual excite- age-old moral sanctions, separates them from
anthropologist B S Guha - all men likely ment caused by frequent singing and dancing the mass of their fellow-countrymen and in
to come down on Elwin's side. On Archer's of karma with its obscene songs and drink many cases leads to a decadence that is as
advice, though, Matn in Intdiai took the more
throughout the night".72 pathetic as it is deplorable".
prudent and politic course of simply ignoring Elwin. married to an accomplished gond Moreover, the methods used by mis-
the book.7" dancer himself, was to react sharply to these sionaries in Mandla were quite unacceptable.
judgments. He defended the karma dance as These included the exploitation of aboriginal
VIII being a marker of the high social status of poverty and of the great wealth of the Catholic
the gond woman. The forbidding of the church to bribe tribals into being baptised;
It is well known that Mr Verrier Elwin has dance, in his view, might actually lead to the terrorising of Gonds and Baigas through
a bee in his bonnet. The bee gives the wax more rather than less adultery, for it would threats, abuse and beatings; and the use of
of anthropology with the honey of romance make lile intolerably dull for the woman. the prestige of the dominant race and of state
and it has a sting which is specially reserved
Karma was "the sole surviving instrument power in support of their activities - for
for Missionaries. The wax and the honey are
of gond culture; it is a symbol of the freedom instance, by interfering in court cases and
welcome, but all fair-minded people must
and independence of the gond woman; it is fostering the belief that their schools were
object to the sting, particularly when it turns
a source of a living art and poetry, in Mandla government schools.
venomous.
especially its tunes and rhythms are some As ever, Elwin resorted to his favourite
Father F Correia-Afonso, S J,
July 1944.
of the most beautiful in India". He urged trope - the analogy across cultures - to drive
Grigson to be "very cautious about publishing home the point. Suppose, he wrote,
The debate with Thakkar had pitted one missionary allegations against the morals of
a Hindu mission went to England, spread
style of social work with another: Ghurye's the aboriginals", which, if made public, itself over the peaceful villages of Cornwall,
attack, one style of anthropology versus would lead to "considerable and very proper threatened the people with prosecution and
another. In a third controversy Elwin, a indignation amTong educated Gonds of thisbeating if they did not attend temples...,
lapsed Christian priest himself, took on a wholesale and partly false indictment of interfered in the civil and criminal cases
group of Dutch Catholics who still zealously their community".73 before the courts, indulged in vicious
pursued their faith. The argument resumed when Elwin propaganda against the local Christian
leaders - for how long would the British
Elwin's hostility to the Dutch priests was returned from Bastar late in 1943, after
Government permit themr to remain'? But
an indication of how far his identification spending close to three years in that chiefdom.
today in Mandla this is exactly what is
with the tribals had distanced him from While he was away, the Catholics had been
happening, not only with the compliance but
Christianity. He had o course been opposed making steady progress among the Gonds. with the active support of the authorities.75
from the first to convcrsion work. In 1933, There were nlow 35 Dutch priests in the
Elwin's most effective attack on the Catholics
soon after he moved to M andla, C F Andrews district, working with a large body of
was an essay which appeared in theHitidustan
admonished him for not proselytising the Christian clerks and teachers brought from
Times on June 14, 1944. Both the timing
Gonds, to thus help free the primitive mind
Ranchi in Bihar, an old centre of missionary
- months after Ghurye had mauled him -
from fear and superstition. Four years later, work among tribals. Their activities expanded
and the place of publication - the foremost
by which time Elwin had left the Church of enormously in the war years, helped by
nationalist newspaper - are significant. So
England, he was invited by the World massive, if covert, government funding. To
too is the imagery, an unmistakably Hindu
his horror, Elwin counted more than 100
Missionary Conference to contribute an essay
one. The priests in Mandla, claimed Elwin
on aboriginal tribes, with special reference schools run by the Catholics: schools that
to 'the menace of Hinduism'. In a sharp bore "little resemblance to educational are the Chindits of the Christian Army.
response, Elwin pointed out that "there can institutions" but were "simply centres of Compared to them, most other missionaries
be little doubt that Christian civilisation is proselytisation". get to work like Italian infantrymen. These
Fathers are from Holland. Fortified by the
more destructive to primitive tribal life and In a polemic circulated for support early
philosophia perennis, inspired not only by
morals than any other form of culture".7' in 1944, Elwin criticised missionary work
a divine love of souls but by the remarkable
In 1940, just before he left for Bastar, on three counts. First, it was an anachronism:
Dutch instinct for colonial expansion. they
Elwin had a brief and indirect skirmish with no one could believe any longerthat salvation are busy turning Mandla into a Dutch
the Catholics. W V Grigson, then writing was to be found only in the Catholic Church, colony... Within 10 years Mandla - the
a report on aboriginals for the Central an institution that had fathered the Inquistion ancient home of the Rishis, former kingdom
Provinces government, asked Dutch priests and had a long history of supporting dictators. of the Gonds, whose fields are blessed by
working in Mandla for their opinion of Gond Free countries did not permit their the sacred Narmada - will be virtually a
culture. Their reply combined a concern populations to be proselytised, and India, on Dutclh colony with a hundred thousand
Catholic converts.76
with gond poverty with a low opinion of the verge of its own independence, was not
their morality. The priests were especially a ' savage' or ' heathaen ' country but had Three weeks later, Elwin sent in an update
worried by the looseness of the marriage tie religious traditions far older than Catholic on the situation in 'the occupied territory ot

2386 Economic and Political Weekly Special Number September 1996

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Mandla'. with more evidence of conversion satisfaction that the advance of the Dutch religion and ethnicity were reckoned as
through coercion and bribery. His missionaries in Mandla "had been halted spurious and illegitimate. Through the 1 950s
comparisons were characteristically focused and their work greatly constricted"?."2 and 1960s, ideologists of dalit resurgence
and most carefully chosen. The priests, he The struggle with the missionaries thus and Hindu militancy were on the retreat; so,
reported, had given the tribals medals to kiss allowed Elwin to patch up with Thakkar by the same token, were defenders of the
morning and evening. On one side of each and beyond that, to reaffirm his Indian aboriginals. Ambedkar had been assimilated
medal was embossed the image of the Queen identity, an identity that had sharply been into the government of India (his last defiant
of Heaven, on the other "the unprepossessing called into question by Hindu social gesture towards Buddhism being regarded,
features of the Italian potentate who blessed workers and by sociologists. Elwin was in at the time, as symbolic rather than
Badoglio's armies on their way to the rape principle opposed to both Catholic priests substantial); Jaipal Singh had joincd the
of Abysinnia. It was not indeed, a bad symbol and 'Congress minded Hindus', but asked Congress; the RSS had been driven
for the conquest of Mandla - for the (or forced) to choose, there was little doubt underground, its ideology finding few takers.
aboriginals and Hindus of the district are as which side he would come down on. For one In an atmosphere suffused by a unitied
simple and as defenceless against foreign thing, he saw the Congress as a slightly and unitary nationalism, Elwin was further
aggression as were the ill-armed less intrusive force: he acknowledged constrained by his official position, for
Abysinnians".77 aboriginal religion to have some affinity between 1954 and 1964 he was the adviser
Elwin's attack brought forth a wideranging with Hinduism, none at all with Christianity. on tribal affairs to the north-east frontier
response from his adversaries. In three For another, he was keenly aware of their agency. Prudence now demanded a more
separate replies in the Hindustan Times, the rising influence with the coming of Indian carefully guarded advocacy of tribal rights.
priests acknowledged their intention of independence. Deeply marked by the fights of the 1940s,
making converts. but denied any coercion." Elwin's moves were tactical and Elwin was in his later work to reject the two
A well-attended meeting, held at the Catholic opportunistic, but not in a narrowly personal extremes of 'Protection' and 'Intervention'
Institute in Nagpur, recorded the protest of sense. By allying with the nationalists, he in favour of the middle way of 'Integration',
the Christians of the Central Provinces at thought he might more effectively protect defined as a process whereby tribals would
Elwin's challenge to "the inherent and his tribals. The aim of the movement against not be submerged but integrated with full
fundamental Christian right of absolute the missionaries, he wrote, "is to awaken honour and respect into the new nation.
freedom to propagate the Gospel of Christ the Hindu community to its duty towards Even this cautiously euphemistic formulation
in any part of India". One speaker warned the aboriginal". He thus urged "on all was attacked as divisive of national unity,
"Hindu friends that any move to restrict Hindu organisations interested in this added reason for Elwin to banish the battles
freedom to propagate religion would come problem to pass resolutions accepting the of the I 940s from the pages of his
back on them like a boomerang".79 This major aboriginal communities as Kshatriyas autobiography."s
was mere bravado. The Dutch Catholics which is what they are and what they claim So far as I can tell, the only printed refere
canvassed far and wide, but the tide was to be, to stop talking of them as 'backward' to those old debates occurs in an essay
against them. A tribal convert from Ranchi and 'depressed' [and] to drop the horrible written for the Delhi journal, Seminiar. In
published a rejoinder to Elwin, which seems word 'uplift' from their vocabulary'"3 1959, G S Ghurye brought out a revised
to have fallen still-born from the press." The edition of his book, which retained almost
priests even made contact with Leo Amery, Ix all the original (and derisive) references to
the secretary of state for India, arch Christian Elwin, but without once referring to his
and arch imperialist, asking him to deport The three controversies I write of here writings in the interim. Elwin now accused
Elwin to Britain. Amery wrote hopefully to were all omitted from Verrier Elwin's the Bombay scholar of "flogging a dead
Lord Wavell, the viceroy, who answered autobiography, a book, published in 1964, horse". By this he meant that the times had
that to interfere in the 'unedifying dispute' in which the author would not allow old changed, and he with them; Elwin went on
between Elwin and the priests would only arguments to disturb the smooth recountingto refer Ghurye to his espousal of
"arouse suspicion both between the various of a life spent in and for India. "In the 'Integration' as an effective and acceptable
communities and against the British"."' story of my life", he was to write, "I have alternative to the old polarities they had once
Meanwhile, Elwin had also been seeking deliberately played down its difficulties". disagreed upon."
help. By his own admission, he had been The arguments of the 1940s are dismissed Thirty-five years later, in a political (and
out of touch with the 'Gandhi-people' for in this solitary sentence: "'A lot of people intellectual) climate that is radically altered,
years, but with the transfer of power at were down on me in those days and, for one might think that the horse is not so dead
hand, they now appeared as his natural an ordinary person, I had a rather dis- after all. When the claims ol unitary
allies in "the deliverance of the aboriginalproportionate volume of notice in the press, nationalism are being assailed from all sides,
from political, religious and economic some of it extravagantly kind, some bitterly when sectarian identities of dalits, backward
exploitation...". Among those whose support hostile".4 castes and Hindus are being aggressively
he sought were the industrialist, An autobiography is to be studied both crafted, the tribal question is once again
Purshottamdas Thakurdas, the veteran for what it contains and for what it leaves emerging in its most starkly polarised form.
Congress leader Bhulabhai Desai, and his out; thus Elwin's silence might be linked to For the encounter between tribals and the
old mentor and more recent adversary, A V his desire, as an Englishman in newly outside world is yet conducted on grossly
Thakkar. After visiting Mandla in March independent India, to distance himself from unequal terms: the loss of land and forests
1944, Thakkar deputed his associate P G a past that had at times called into questionbeing joined by the loss of the adivasi's
Vannikar to organise a Gond Sevak Mandal his fidelity to his adopted land. For the living space, as tribals come to form a very
in co-operation with Shamrao and Verrier. patriotism promoted by the ruling Congresslarge proportion of the millions displaced
They were soon joined by a Hindu service would not easily allow partisan stances on by steel mills, coal mines, and dams. In
organisation, the Arya Dharma Seva Sangh. behalf of any one segment of the nation; cultural terms, movements that assert tribal
In a short while, the three groups were able while calls for mobilisation according to autonomy and distinctiveness (as in the
to close down 25 mission schools. By the class and (at a pinch) language were reinvigorated Jharkhand movement) have
end of 1946, Elwin could report with grudgingly tolerated, the claims of caste, been met by counter-movements, helped

Economic and Political Weekly Special Number September 1996 2387

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along by the Sangh parivar, which hope Notes India (London, 1871), p 182.
to more fully assimilate tribals into the 8 This essay uses the terms 'aboriginal' and
Hindu way of life. Meanwhile, competing [This essay was written while I held a Senior 'tribal' interchangeably. The former term has
Fellowship at the Centre for Contemporary been rather discredited by later
valuations of adivasi culture, as well as
Studies of the Nehru Memorial Museum and anthropologists, but since it was preferred
bitter conflicts over resource access, have
Library, New Delhi. I am indebted to Rukun both by Elwin and his adversaries (with but
been vividly brought to the surface by the one exception, as explained below), I have
Advani, Aijaz Ahmad, Keshav Desiraju, Vasuda
long struggle over the building of the Sardar let it stand here.
Dhagamwar, Gopal Gandhi and Aditi lyer for
Sarovar dam."7 help of-various kinds.] 9 Verrier Elwin, 'Window'd Regardless',
The Elwin-Ghurye, Elwin-Thakkar, and typescript in Mss Eur D 950/26, India Office
Elwin-Missionary arguments might I Verrier Elwin, 'Gonds', Modernl Reviewv, Library and Records (hereafter IOL). 'Rood'
November 1933, pp 547-48. is a synonym for the Cross.
constitute a largely forgotten chapter in the
2 Hotuse of Comminons Debtates, March 22, 10 Clipping from News Chroniicle, London,
intellectual history of modern India, but
1935. undated (probably 1933 or 1934) Mss Eur F
their echoes are still being heard. Consider, 3 Bombay Chr^onlicle, November 12, 1938. 950/6, IOL.
last of all, the reportof the Bhuria Committee, 4 Verrier Elwin, Loss of Nerve: A Comparative I1 See Verrier Elwin, Tihe Baiga, pp 58, 65, 81,
the most recent and in some ways the most Study of the Contact of Peoples in the 257; The Agaria, p 121; The Muria and their
authoritative statement of the renewed Aboriginal Areas of the Bastar State acnd the Ghotul, p 181; Mario Murder and Suicide
movements for tribal self-rule. Tribal Centrcal Provinces of Intdia (Bombay, 1941) (Bombay, 1943), pp 14-15; Leaves from the
societies, suggests the report, "have been pp 5-9. Jungle (London, 1936), p 22.
5 The Baiga (London 1939), p 519; The Agaria 12 Phulmat of the Hills (London, 1937),
practising democracies, having been
(Bombay, 1941), p 270; The Muria and their pp 91-102.
characterised by [an] egalitarian spirit" -
Ghotul (Bombay, 1946), pp 663-64. 13 The Baiga, p 235.
this "communitarian and co-operative spirit 6 See S C Dube, review of The Tribal 14 The Aboriginals (Bombay, 1943), pp 18-19.
visible in many undertakings like shifting World of Verrier Elwin, in The Eastern 15 The Baiga, pp 215, 418-21.
cultivation [and] house construction". And Antthropologist. Volume 12, No 2, 1964, 16 The Muria and their Ghotul, pp 419, 440,
again: "Tribal life and economy in the not pp 134-36. Dube, one of the most distin- 615-16, 635-36.
too distant past bore a harmonious relation- guished of Indian anthropologists, had in the 17 Ibid, p 324; The Baiga, pp 223, 230, 419.
1 940s come to study the tribes through Elwin. 18 Ibid, pp 22, 383; The Muria anid their Ghotlul,
ship with nature and its endowment. It was
7 James Forsyth, The Highlands of Central pp 222, 400, 431.
an example of sustainable development. But
with the influx of outside population it
suffered grievous blows". To reverse this
process the committee recommends that
"tribal communities should be respected as C__I
in command of the economic resources",
with gram sabhas placed in charge of land, I~~~~~~~ e
forests, and minerals, with larger tribal
regions given 'sub-state' status, and with
AGRO-CLIMATIC REGIONAL
"traditional tribal conventions and laws [to]
continue to hold validity"."
PLANNING IN INDIA
In its understanding of what tribals are, Editors
in its identification of their main enemies, D. N. Basu, G.S. Guha and S.P. Kashyap
in the solutions it offers for their protection,
Volume One: Concept and Applications Volume Two: Themes and Case Sttidies
the Bhuria Committee follows the trail laid
Foreword by: Pranab Mukherjee Foreword by: Jayant Patil
down by Verrier Elwin in his writings of
the 1930s and 1940s. Some may see this Hardbound 1996 in Two Voluwes Rs. 1200 per set
as an unconscious echo. others (in my
view more accurately) as a revival and
The Agro-Cliniatic Regionial Planninig Project (ACRP) of the Planning
reaffirmation of a strand of adversarial Commissioin was initiated with a view to provide teclhniical alnd scielntific inipuits
thought suppressed by the world-view for the Agriculture & Allied sectors durinig the VIII plani. The ACRP recogniize
dominant during the first decades of Indian in an explicit maniner the nature of the local resource endowinmentts and
independence. For, as the poet Wallace conistrainits of the agro-climiatically hliomogenious regioiis, which in most cases cut
Stegner once pointed out,
across the states.
The tracing of ideas is a guessing game. We
Contributors: D.N. Basu o G.S. Gulia Li S. P. Ghosh o F. K. Wadia o T.V.S.
can't tell who first had an idea; we can only
tell who first had it influentially, who Rao Li V. Rajgopalan Li S.P. Kashyap Li T.K. Ghosh Li K. Rajan Li Kanchan
formulated it in some form, poem or equation Chopra Li R. C. Panda ci V. M. Rao Li Y. K. Alagh ci S.R. Hashiim D S. P.
or picture, that others could stumble upon Kashyap Li V. Rajgopalan o S. N. Joslii u T.V.S. Rao Li Dilip K. Dasgupta o R.
with the shock of recognition.89
S. Deshpainde ci H. P. Khomnd o Niti Mathur o S. P. Kashyap Li U.K. Mandavia
In this game, the tracing of the intellectualc SR. Subraminiam
origins of the popular movements of
contemporary India, Verrier Elwin would Published by: Ph.: 5504042, 5554042
be placed alongside Jotiba Phule and B R
Ambedkar (two other defenders of the rights CONCEPT PUBLISHING COMPANY
of subordinated peoples) as the man who A/15-16, Conunercial Block, Mohan Garden,
first articulated - intluentially - the idea
NEW DELHI - 110059 (INDIA)
that tribals might not be wholly or fairly
represented in the (once) hegemonic Cable: CONPUBCO Fax: (01 1) 5598898
ideology of Indian nationalism.

2388 Economic and Political Weekly Special Number September 1996

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19 Ibid, pp 361, 364, etc; The Aboriginials, pp Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge. ts, prob from early 1940s), both in Box II,
18-19; The Baiga, p 201. 49 Elwin to Thakkar, October 5, 1940, in Box Hyde Papers.
20 Ibid, pp431,489; The Mu-iaa andtheirGhotul, VIII, Hyde Papers. 74 Undated typescript entitled 'Bhumijan Seva
pp vii, 23-4, 556 f. 50 Elwin to Thakkar, July 7, 1941, P Kodanda Mandal' in Elwin correspondence, Bhulabhai
21 'The Dance in Tribal India, Part 1', The Rao Papers, NMML. Desai papers, NMML; Elwin to E S Hyde,
Illustrated Weekly of India, May 22, 1955. 51 'He has written it with great feeling. So I do July 6, 1944, Box I1I, Hyde Papers.
22 Maria Murder aind Suicide, p 220. not wish to reply for some time' (Thakkar to 75 VerrierElwin, 'Missionaries and Aboriginals',
23 Ibid, pp 52, 98-9, The Baiga, p 371; The P Kodanda Rao, July 17, 1941). undated typescript (probably written in 1944)
Muria and Their Ghotul, pp 408-10. 52 The Times of Inidia (Bombay), October 28, in Bhulabhai Desai Papers, NMML.
24 The Aboriginals, p 20; The Agaria, pp xx-xxi.1941. 76 The Hindustan Times (New Delhi), June 14,
25 Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism and Related 53 The Times of Itdia, November 4, 1941. 1944.
Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935). 54 See The Times of lndia, November 22, 1941, 77 The Hindustan Times, July 8, 1944.
26 Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, January 30, 1942, and March 6, 1942. 78 The Hindustan Times, July 8, 1944.
Racism and Exoticism in Frencl Thought, 55 Evelyn Wood, joint review of The Problem 79 As reported in The Guardian (Madras),
translated by Catherine Porter (Cambridge, of Aborigines in India and Loss of Nerve, December 7, 1944.
Massachusetts 1993). in Journal of the University of Bombay 80 Simon Bara, Aboriginals and Missionaries:
27 See Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivissm, pp 7-8; (History, Economics and Sociology), A Rejoinder to Verrier Elwin (Ranchi, 1944).
Todorov, On Human Diversity, pp 312, 316, New Series, Vol 10, No 4, January 1942, 81 Wavell to Amery, December 3, 1944 in
etc. pp 187-9 1. Nicholas Mansergh (ed), The Transfer of
28 From page 84 of the typescript of The Tribal 56 P G Kanekar, 'Isolation or Assimilation?', Power, 1942-47, Volume V (London, 1974),
World o?f Verrier Elwin, Oxford University The Social Service Quarterly (hereafter SSQ), pp 263-64.
Press Archives, Bombay (emphasis supplied Vol 28, No 3, January 1942. 82 Undated circular letter (prob 1945 or 1946)
by me). 57 Verrier Elwin, 'The Problem of Culture- from Elwin; Elwin to P Thakurdas, January
29 'Dr Verrier Elwin's report on tribals of Ganjam Contact', SSQ, Vol 28, No 4, April 1942. 2, 1945; circular letter from P Thakurdas of
and Koraput', dated April 1945, in File 58 P Kodanda Rao, 'Directed Assimilation', January 15, 1947, all in File 337, Thakurdas
Number 145, Elwin Papers, Nehru Memorial SSQ, Vol 29, No 1, July 1942; idem, Papers, NMML.
Museum and Library, New Delhi (hereafter Aboriginalisthan: Anthropologist's 83 The Guardian (Madras), November 23, 1944.
NMML). Imperium', SSQ, Vol 30, No 2, October 1943. 84 The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: An
30 The Baiga, p 514. 59 As reported in Durga Bhagwat,Athavale Tase Autobiography (Bombay and New York,
31 The Aboriginals, p 8; The Muria and their ('As I Remember It'), in Marathi (Bombay, 1964), pp 137-38. Elwin died in February
Ghotul, p 368. 1991), p 160 f. The anthropologist who went 1964; the book was published in May, having
32 Loss of Nerve, pp 35-36. to meet Thakkar was D P Khanapurkar. gone to press the previous October.
33 Loss of Nerve, p 44; Note on education by 60 Verrier Elwin, The Aboriginals, Oxford 85 Elwin's important writings of this period
Elwin reproduced in W V Grigson, The Pamphlets on Indian Affairs, Number 14 include A Philosophy tor NEFA (second
Aboriginal Problem in the Central Provinces(Bombay 1943). edition, Shillong, 1960); A Philosophy o?f.
(Nagpur, 1943), pp 399-403. 61 G S Ghurye, I anid Other Explorations Love (New Delhi, 196 1); Report of the
34 Elwin to Sorella Maria, dated March 15, (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1973). See also Committee on Special Multipurpose Tribal
1938, Mss Eur D 950/10, IOL. M N Srinivas, 'Itineraries of an Indian Social Blocks (New Delhi, 1960), this a home
35 The Muria and their Ghotul, p xii. Anthropologist', Interncational Social Science ministry committee chaired by him; and A
36 Most recently in Vinay Srivastava, 'The Journal, Volume 25, Nos I and 2, 1973; and New Deal for Tribal India (New Delhi,
Ethnographer and the People: Reflections on DhirendraNarain, Govind Sadashiv Ghurye: 1963), this a precis, under his own name,
Field Work' in two parts, Economic and Reminscences' mA R Momin (ed), The Legacy, of the Report of thle Sclheduled Area aind
Political Weekly, 1-8 and June 15, 1991, an of G S Ghurye: A Cenitennial Festschrift Scheduled Tribes Committee (otherwise
account of a 1987 visit to the Baigas in the (Bombay, 1996). known as the Dhebar Committee, after its
tracks of Elwin. 62 The Aboriginals, p 32. chariman, but with Elwin as its most vocal
37 Bhumijan Seva Mandal, Bulletin Number 1, 63 G S Ghurye, The Aboriginies - So Called and articulate member). The debates these
March 1, 1942, Mss Eur D 950/17, IOL. - and their Futuire (Poona, 1943), pp 7-13. works engendered are unfortunately outside
38 Verrier Elwin, Report of a Tour in the Bonai, This book, like Thakkar's pamphlet on the the scope of this essay; suffice it to note
Keonjhar aind Pal Laharia States (privately problem of the aborigines, was published that Elwin's later adversaries included men
printed and circulated: printed by The British by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and of calibre and influence such as Ram
India Press, Bombay, in 1942), p 8. Economics. Manohar Lohia and Nirmal Kumar Bose, as
39 Untitled, undated note by Elwin on the 64 Ibid, esp pp 14-21. well as numerous lesser politicians and
administration of Bastar State, in Box VIII, 65 Ibid, pp 210 ff; D R Gadgil, 'Foreword' in anthropologists.
File A, Hyde Papers, Centre for South Asian ibid, esp pp ix-x. 86 Ghurye, The Scheduled Tribes (Bombay,
Studies, Cambridge. 66 lbid, pp 188-98. 1959); Elwin, 'Beating a Dead Horse',
40 Muria acnd their Ghotlul, p 521. 67 M N Srinivas, review of The Aboriginals, Seminar, Number 14 1960. Ghurye's vendetta
41 WGArcher, 'For VerrierElwin' (poem written in Journcal o' the University of Bombay continued until long after his opponent's death
in 1942 or 1943), Mss Eur D 950/23, IOL. (History, Economics and Sociology), New and till shortly before his own. In 1980, aged
42 Thakkar's life, work and writings are well Series, Volume 12, Number 4, January 1944, 86, he published a book called The Burninig
covered in T N Jagadishan and Shyamlal, pp 91-94. Cauldron of North-East India, which
editors, Thakkar Bapa Eightieth Birthday 68 Interview with M N Srinivas, Bangalore, attributed the problem of insurgency and
Commemoration, Volume (Madras, 1949). August 1994. secessionist movements largely to the
43 Quoted by Elwin in a note of November 17, 69 Hivale, Scholar Gypsy: A Study of Verrier malevolent influence of Elwin.
1961, File 69, Elwin Papers, NMML. Elwin (Bombay, 1946), pp 187, 194. 87 Cf Amita Baviskar, In the Belly of the River:
44 H P Desai, 'A V Thakkar: the Man and his 70 Elwin to W G Archer, January 6, 1944, Mss Tribal Conflicts over Development in the
Work', The Modern Review, January 1928. Eur F 236/262, IOL. Narmnada Valley (New Delhi, 1995).
45 As reported in the Bombay Chronicle, 71 HughTinker, The Ordeal of Love: CFAndrews 88 See Report of thle High Level Coinmittee to
November 30, 1939. and India (Delhi 1979), pp 270-71; Hivale, Make Recommendations on the Salient
46 A V Thakkar, The Problem of Aborigiines in Scholar Gypsy, pp 105-09. Features o f the Law for Extencding
India (Poona, 1941), pp 23-26. 72 'Report of Some Catholic Priests of Mandla Provisions of the Cotnstitutional (73rd)
47 In Hindi, 'Bharatiya Adimjati Sevak Sangh', District in Connection with the Questionnaires Amendment Act 1992, to Scheduled Areas
the Sevak connoting 'social worker' or 'helper' Issued by the Aboriginal Tribes Enquiry (New Delhi, 1995).
rather than friend. Officer', Box II, Hyde Papers. 89 Wallace Stegner, Whe e the Bluebird Sings
48 Circular letter from A V Thakkar of September 73 Elwin to W V Grigson, December 6, 1940; to the Lemonaude Spring,?s: Living alnd Writing,
12, 1940, in Box VIII, File D, Hyde Papers, Elwin, "Note on the Gond 'Karma"' (undated in the West (New York, 1992), pp 124-25.

Economic and Political Weekly Special Number September 1996 2389

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