31 Nationalism/Ethnography: Ramachandra Guha: Savaging the Civilised
Anindita Das
Ramachandra Guha, the leading historian, biographer, columnist and a prolific writer of contemporary India, is primarily interested in social, political, environmental and cricket history. Presently based in Bangalore, Guha was born in Dehradun on 29th April, 1958. He had his schooling in Doon School, Dehradun, studied degree in St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and did his masters from Delhi School of Economics. He taught in Yale and Stanford Universities and was visiting faculty in London School of Economics for the academic session 2011-2012. He was conferred the Sahitya Akademi award for his work India after Gandhi in 2011 and Bharat Bhushan in 2009. He has been contributing to the journals Caravan and Outlook as well as to the national dailies The Telegraph and Hindustan Times.
The oeuvre of Ramachandra Guha’s writing rests on his varied interests. For instance, The Unquiet Woods (1989) deals with the history of Chipko movement, as Guha, realised as a historian that nothing much has been studied about the peasants who are largely affected by the environment. He mentions in the preface of the book that as “The relationship between colonialism and ecological decline is neglected by the historians of modern India, who have been rather more aware of the social and political consequences of British rule”, made Guha endeavour to alter the trend by drawing a relation between social and ecological basis of the movement. On the other hand, An Anthropologist among the Marxist and other Essays is a collection of polemics and sketches of renowned Indians. His works render a critical perspective to the issues he deals with, which amply finds expression in his work India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy which throws light on the momentous occurrences in Indian history, emphasising the basis of its past and present together with its politics, culture and society. The book also provides an insight into the issue of a country like India, which is beset with discrimination based on caste, creed, religion and language has been able to emerge as the largest democracy of the world. Whereas, in Gandhi before India Guha explores the early life of Gandhi which were not much known to people, rendering a close look at the ideologies and philosophies which Gandhi followed in the early period of his life.
Ramachandra Guha’s Savaging the Civilised: Verrier Elwin and His Tribal Question is a biography which traces the extraordinary life of Verrier Elwin. Guha’s interest in Elwin’s life and works roused after going through Elwin’s writings during the academic and research periods of his life. In the preface of the biography, Guha dotingly mentions that it is his favourite book among the ones he has written so far and will remain so as getting in touch with Elwin had fascinated him to such an extent that he switched to Sociology from Economics for his doctoral research. It also inspired him to write the life history of that outstanding personality. More than twenty years of research has gone into the work. Once while answering the question in an interview as to the reason of devoting so much time to write Elwin’s biography, Guha said:
Guha travelled to all the places where Elwin had lived and worked in India as well as in England. He attempted to know Elwin from his writings too. He made use of archival materials available and also taken into account of what other people has written about Elwin. Guha quoted passages from Elwin’s autobiography The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin (1964) and a number of Elwin’s poems are incorporated in the biography.
A writer and ethnographer, Verrier Elwin was born in the year 1902. He was a devout Christian and had formal training to be a missionary as his father, who was an Anglican Bishop. Elwin had his education in London and following his family tradition, took his doctorate degree in theology. Though he was likely to become a priest after he had received the doctorate degree, it was through his associations and curiosity that he developed interest in India. It is since the time he was a student in the Oxford University, Elwin was fascinated by the exotic Indian culture, history, people and so on. Hence, in the year 1927, when he was twenty five years of age, decided to come to India after meeting J.C. Winslow, who had been working in India as a missionary and was on a recruitment drive in London to appoint young people for the mission.
During his Oxford days Elwin had the notion that Indians were not capable of governing themselves. It was after meeting Bernard Aluviher that he came to know about the true picture. From him Elwin heard about ‘the internationalist culture’ of Rabindranath Tagore and ‘non-violent idealism’ of Mahatma Gandhi. Aluviher also gave him a few books to read on Indian philosophy and tenets of Hinduism. Those books helped Elwin to change his outlook towards India. He did not support the suppression of the Indians by the British. Therefore, his coming to India was a gesture to compensate for the damage that his countrymen had caused to India. He thus said …That from my family somebody should go to give instead of to get, to serve with the poorest people instead of ruling them, to become one with the country that we have helped to dominate and subdue. It was his sense of responsibility towards the subjugated and downtrodden Indians that he chose to work among them. He began a lot of development programmes in India for the tribes. Without being a trained anthropologist, his interaction with the tribes turned him to be a proficient fieldworker. His dealings with the tribes, who were ignored by the British to be outside the mainstream India, made him realise the plight of the marginalised status that they had at that period. It also endowed him with the scope to apprehend their life’s magnificence, rationality and greatness. His writings on the adivasis of the various parts of India exhibit an intense sense of compassion and affection for their existence. At the time when the nationalists of the country including Mahatma Gandhi were talking about eradication of untouchability, emancipation of women and Hindu –Muslim union, the specific needs and requirements of the adivasis were not taken into account by the ones “who shaped political discourse” in the later part of colonial India. Guha in this context notes that “Elwin’s work underscores the failures of Indian nationalism in understanding the predicament of the adivasis”. The adivasis were exploited strategically and were excluded politically. Elwin’s writings, Guha believes, can still be referred in terms of the adivasis.
Elwin’s first encounter with Mahatma Gandhi was in Sabarmati Ashram, when he visited it for the first time in January 1928. He was totally mesmerised by the Mahatma and got himself completely involved in the Ashram and began to spin wheel and deliver sermons. Mahatma Gandhi was regarded as the “unacknowledged Christ of Hinduism” by Elwin. He wrote a pamphlet Christ and Satyagraha which appeared in the year 1930. Elwin took part in the Indian independence movement with Gandhi. In the year 1930 Gandhi adopted him as his son. Elwin, on the advice of Thakkar Bapa, Sardar Patel and Jamanalal Bajaj worked with the tribes of central India. He began to work with the Gond tribes and with the support of Shamrao Hivale opened a school and a dispensary. Mahatma Gandhi, in the year 1932, secretly sent him to the North-West frontier to acquire an evaluation of the political situation of that place. In the I940s, however, an ideological clash between Elwin and Gandhi crept in.
Elwin had his own reason regarding this issue, as he mentions in his memoir:
He alienated himself form Gandhi as he realised that Gandhian ideals were not suitable for the tribals’ way of life. On the other hand, Elwin considered his ideas to be more in sync with Jawaharlal Nehru. He was influenced by Nehru’s method of developing the tribes, keeping in mind their customs and traditions. He was keen on initiating change in their lives without affecting the good old values. The Elwin- Nehru association from then onwards became instrumental in the formation of many development policies for the tribals.
Guha notes that Elwin wrote extensively not only about tribal customs of India, but also on art, myth and folklore of the country, that too in diverse genres. From editorials, reviews, monologues, pamphlets, travelogues to poems and novels, Elwin’s competence as a writer is exhibited. His autobiography, which he wrote in the last days of his life, is however considered as the best among all. In The Truth About India: Can We Get It? (1932) Elwin has given an account of Congress, advocating its ideals. In the year 1932, Guha mentions, after he went to Gond, his interest shifted from politics to social work, which reflected through another of his works Leaves from the Jungle (1936), which is the record of his activities of the early period in Mandla. Elwin further talks in it about the necessity to safeguard some of the Gond culture, and also “celebrates the irreverent and irrepressible gaiety of the Gonds”. However, realising the fact that he could help the tribals by writing about them, Elwin left the rest of the work such as education and medical relief to Shamrao Hivale. In Guha’s words “Writing was for him a more natural medium than giving injections or running schools”. He also transcribed and translated the poems written by the tribals thinking those would make the urban readers consider them as “real people, real as themselves”. In the year 1937 his novel Phulmat of the Hills was published, which narrates the story of a Pardhan girl who is abandoned by her lover as she suffered from leprosy. The other novel The Cloud That’s Dragonish is about witchcraft. The Baiga (1939) and The Agaria (1942) are his works based on the lives of two tribal communities. Guha express his wonder about Elwin’s “unusual ability” to observe tribal life so closely. His two other works The Aboriginals (1943) and The Muria and their Ghotul (1946) according to Guha are “evocative portrayals of tribal cultures”. Maria Murder and Suicide (1943), is based on his observation of the murders and suicide that took place among the ‘Bison-Horn’ Maria, who was considered to be a very violent community. He tried to find out the actual causes of the occurrences by visiting the village where it happened. Elwin expected that his work would influence the judgement against the accused aboriginals.
Nevertheless, working with the tribals made Elwin come into terms with many facts related to them illuminating a lot of their socio-cultural practises. He realised in the course of his association with them that there was no uniformity between the tribal communities. They have their own distinct customs, laws and beliefs. Elwin established an ashram in Karanjiya village. In order to understand the tribals better, he began to live with them. He made effort to remove superstitions and ignorance from their minds. Everything about them, such as their rituals of birth and death, system of marriage, sexual practises, food habit, music and dance, magic, regulatory system etc. became familiar to him. Elwin got much closer to these people in spite of all the harassment imposed upon him for indulging in anti-establishment activities by the British Government as well as by the ecclesiastical authority. He even got married to Kosi, a young Gond girl, in the year 1940, following all the tribal rituals. Later, he married a Pardhan girl named Lila from Patangarh.
Elwin had a strong association with North-East India. In the year 1952, he expressed his desire to Jawaharlal Nehru to visit Assam. Elwin wanted to make a study of the objects of the region to write the sequel of his work Tribal Arts of Middle India. He was allowed to do so by the then Governor of Assam Jairamdas Daulatram, on the recommendation of Jawaharlal Nehru. But Daulatram thought that Elwin could be of much better use for him and his Government. So, he asked him to prepare a report on the tribes of the region, specifically those who were likely to rebel against the authority. Elwin was then offered the directorship of Anthropological Survey by the education minister of the Government of India. On the other hand, Nehru was so pleased with the report of Elwin that he sent it to all the states’ chief ministers. The report emphasised on the fact that any kind of imposition over the tribals would make them apprehensive of the developmental programmes meant for them. Subsequently, in the year 1953 Elwin was made the Tribal Adviser to the administration of NEFA (North East Frontier Agency) by Nehru. Elwin travelled extensively to all the tribal areas of the region, including the disturbed Naga Hills. He was utterly disheartened by the condition of the Tagins, who were suffering from dermatitis. There had been a lot of other challenges that Elwin had to face in the region. He had been witness to the Chinese invasion of NEFA and during and after that period his philosophy of NEFA was completely denounced by all the sections of the society. Ghurye, an Indian anthropologist, criticised him immensely in print. Another incident that occurred at that time was the Tagins killing of a number of Assam Rifles employees. But Elwin very delicately handled the matter saying that at such situations military help was required to pacify the agitated tribals. His attitude towards the tribals has always been sympathetic all throughout.
The manner in which Guha has traced the life of Verrier Elwin is hugely appreciated. For instance, in a review of the biography in India Today Swapan Dasgupta mentions that:
It thus becomes apparent that Guha got “under Elwin’s skin” and endeavoured to render a comprehensive account of Elwin as a man, missionary, Gandhian, writer, social worker, tribal-activist, ethnographer, and anthropologist. Yet, critics have read Elwin from their own perspective raising queries on some pertinent issues. K.C Baral in the essay “Ethnography and Fiction: Verrier Elwin’s World” deals with the issue of Elwin being torn between an ethnographer and a fiction writer, which placed him somewhere in the middle of a contradictory position. Similarly, P.K Mishra argues in his essay “Some Thoughts on Elwin and Tribe-Non-tribe Relationship in Indian Civilisation” by saying that while drawing the relationship between tribes and non-tribes, Elwin had adopted a Eurocentric approach, which reflected his lack of adequate understanding of Indian Civilisation. The subject, according to Misra, had been treated very plainly. The tribes have played an essential part in Indian history, resulting in intricate socio-political formation, and thus articulating anything related to them must be based on concrete facts. But Guha clearly states that his narrative in the biography is purely anchored in the “central character” and it will lose its real meaning if interpreted theoretically. He also mentions that he had been very particular about facts in documenting the life of Elwin and did not hold back at all from expressing his own views. His objective was to project Elwin ….as a serial bridge-builder—between Christianity and Hinduism, the forest and the city, India and England, elite and subaltern, the locality and the globe, and it seems Guha has succeeded in achieving his goal.
Guha writing about an Englishman has also stirred criticism in certain quarters. For instance Arundhati Roy has said that she would rather opt to write a biography of Kosi Elwin than the Englishman Elwin. Nevertheless, reading of Savaging the Civilised would make one ponder whether Elwin had not done something that an Indian would do. He left his homeland and made the forests in India his home, defied the puritanical ideas of his own religion for the sake of the tribals, abandoned his mission as he never converted a single Indian and dedicated his entire life protecting the tribals of India despite all odds. As a Gandhian he even fought against the British Rulers of India. He got married in India, had played an integral part in the reshaping of the country. Guha has mentioned in the biography that Elwin was the first Englishman to acquire an Indian citizenship. In his autobiography Elwin mentions that:
It indicates how much Elwin had been possessive about the tribals, whom he thought to be his own people and always considered him one with them. Nothing could be a barrier in his arduous zeal to work for the betterment of them, be it money, religion, his upsetting divorce with Kosi, hostile views against him and so on. Perhaps for that reason Guha has written
Thus, reading of Savaging the Civilised gives a fair idea of the fact that it is not a mere biography as Guha blends history while telling the life of Verrier Elwin as in an interview Guha remarks that Savaging the Civilized was written “for anyone interested in 20th century India and Adivasis. For anyone who is interested in Nehru and Gandhi. In celibacy. In the history of Christianity in India”. Through the work, Guha also looks into some of the serious debates of twentieth century such as future of development, cultural assimilation and difference, postcolonial and colonial government etc. while exploring Elwin’s life. Guha did not only narrate the life Elwin had lived in the biography, he tried to track the legacies that Elwin had left after his death in the year 1964. First of all, he talks about the “Disputed Legacies”, as in 1964 there was a report in the Times of India that Government of India would award a fellowship in the memory of Verrier Elwin to the one who wished to work in the inaccessible corners outside India. But the matter was not pursued anymore, and it remained only a report in the newspaper. Guha further notes that:
Things have changed since Elwin died. Elwin’s apprehension regarding the tribals who would be the target of economic development came true. The forests had been encroached, dams were made and lands destroyed by mines. But Elwin’s effort to retain the identity of the tribes is apparent in some places, as Guha’s visit to Mandla provides him with the experience of the Gond tribes still practising their customs and traditions with the same fervour as before. However, many development projects have uprooted the lands and villages of the tribals. They have also become the victim of globalisation and liberalisation policies. Nevertheless, Guha also met all his family members, including his two wives and children and provides an account of their whereabouts. Elwin undoubtedly lived a remarkable life. He had been very consistent all throughout regarding his association and responsibility towards the tribals. On the other hand, he also had been non-conformist and unconventional at times. He had admirers as well as rivals, his works were appreciated and at the same time attacked too. Guha, in Sunil Janah’s words:
Therefore, Savaging the Civilised further opens many avenues to explore various issues. The meticulously drawn facts, skilfully used materials and weaving it to a narrative of a exclusive kind make Guha’s biography of Elwin a classic one.
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Reference
- Elwin, Verrier., The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: An Autobiography, New York: Oxford University Press, 1964
- Gupta, Das, Sanjukta., Basu, Raj, Sekhar., Narratives from the Margins: Aspects of Adivasi History in India, New Delhi: Primus Books, 2012
- Mehrotra, Arvind, Krishna., An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003
- Subba, T, B., Som, Sujit., Between Ethnography and Fiction: Verrier Elwin and the Tribal Question in India New Delhi: Orient and Longman Private Limited, 2005
- http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/book-review-of-ramachandra-guha-savaging-the- civilised/1/253638.html
- http://pahar.in/mountains/1964-tribal-world-of-verrier-elwin-an-autobiography-by-elwin- s-pdf/
http://suniljanah.org/sjanah/publications/v-elwin.htm - http://www.anitanair.net/profiles/profile-ramachandra-guha.htm
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- http://www.prasantadas.com/?p=1740