Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India by Ramachandra Guha (PDF)

Description

Verrier Elwin (1902-1964) was unquestionably the most colorful and influential non-official Englishman to live and work in twentieth-century India. A prolific writer, Elwin’s ethnographic studies and popular works on India’s tribal customs, art, myth and folklore continue to generate controversy.Described by his contemporaries as a cross between Albert Schweitzer and Paul Gauguin, Elwin was a man of contradictions, at times taking on the role of evangelist, social worker, political activist, poet, government worker, and more. He rubbed elbows with the elite of both Britain and India, yet found himself equally at home among the impoverished and destitute. Intensely political, the Oxford-trained scholar tirelessly defended the rights of the indigenous and, despite the deep religious influences of St. Francis and Mahatma Gandhi on his early career, staunchly opposed Hindu and Christian puritans in the debate over the future of India’s tribals. Although he was ordained as an Anglican priest, Elwin was married twice to tribal women and enthusiastically (and publicly) extolled the tribals’ practice of free sex. Later, as prime minister Nehru’s friend and advisor in independent India, his compelling defense of tribal hedonism made him at once hugely influential, extremely controversial, and the polemical focal point of heated discussions on tribal policy and economic development.Savaging the Civilized is both biography and history, an exploration through Elwin’s life of some of the great debates of the twentieth century: the future of development, cultural assimilation versus cultural difference, the political practice of postcolonial as opposed to colonial governments, and the moral practice of writers and intellectuals.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Ramachandra Guha has taught at Yale University, the Indian Institute of Science, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he was Indo-American Community Chair Professor in 1997 and 1998.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Dr Elwin has indeed been very brave in his presentation of the hill tribes of India, and their lifestyle which is completely at odds to our tradtional Western culture. And not only our Western culture, but that of the rest of the world.

⭐I do think that this is an excellent book about quite an extraordinary man.I had not heard of Verrier Elwin until a friend of mine recommended this book to me. I started to read it, and when I did I was hooked.Now, some reviewers have referred to Ramachandra Guha as having a Nehruvian hangover, and that this book is a whitewash of a most unscrupulous character, namely Verrier.Indeed, Verrier Elwin was not a trained anthropologist, but he did live amongst the tribals for many years, and almost became one of them. He did, in my view, great service to the tribals by studying them and writing about them. His contributions to NEFA, later Arunachal Pradesh, are immense.The book traces his life from school through to the early years in India, his fascination with Gandhi, and then his journey towards becoming an expert on tribals; towards becoming an Indian, and then an Indian government servant.That a man like this is largely forgotten is a tragedy, and it is indeed a great service that Ramachandra Guha has done us by bringing his story to us in a readable, unbiased book.

⭐I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A fine study of the “philanthropologist” Verrier Elwin, who went from Oxford cleric to tribal scholar/activist, living among various groups of ‘aboriginal’ Indians and taking up their causes. Elwin was the first Englishman to gain Indian citizenship after independence, but constantly wrote against those in power (at a state or a national level) who attempted to destroy tribal ways of life. Extremely interesting discussion of the delicate negotiation of a suitable rhetoric in the overheated debates around such issues. Deftly illuminates the contradictions of nationalism and the postcolonial state, where hegemonic identity politics attempts to dominate those on the margins, all in the name of ‘liberation’. Important and NECESSARY corrective to simple assumptions about what postcoloniality involves. I recommend it highly. A good read!

⭐This is a very well-written and sympathetic biography of a great human being who struggled through many of his human impulses yet he remained true to himself till the end, the courage to live with enormous integrity.The author has taken pains to give us glimpses of an another world within India, and what possibly motivated (and continues to motivate)the citizens of that world. A world which even the “greats” of India’s freedom movement did not care to emphatise with.The book is all the more important as it tells us of the work of a man who respected the tribals of India, literally lived like them, and not as an outsider, and sang and danced with them.And that at a time when tribal life style in India is either being show cased or relegated to the background by the dominant middle class culture.The author’s style is engaging, without ever being patronising, and the prose is very readable without ever being difficult. A brilliant tour de force.Chinu

⭐My main reason for buying the book was because I wanted to read about the different tribal cultures. At first I thought I would skip over the beginning, which gave a short history of the family background of Verrier Elwin. But the author’s style is so charming and entertaining that I ended up reading the entire book from cover to cover along with introduction, appendixes, epilogue and all.This is the biography of a man who is very much a part of the history of the country, both before and after Independence, beautifully blended into accounts of the events of his time. It is written in a way that evokes a kaleidoscope of mental images as though looking through a photograph album. Though his life was short, it was filled with all the aspects of adventure; physical, intellectual and spiritual. It follows a young man as he faced the challenges in his path and matured into a person who offered most of his life in service to others who had been long forgotten by the world he lived in. By the time I was nearing the end, it was as if I had known the man himself and the people close to him so well that I felt sorry it was coming to a close.The author has also given an update and answers to all the questions that crossed my mind in the stories of those who were nearest Mr. Elwin- friends, enemies and family who lived on after his departure. There were many pages that made me laugh out loud, and some that made me cry, pages that made me think and some that helped me to understand what I see and hear around me every day in India. Most of all, it is the story of a man who lived his life the way he meant to, who felt a strong sense of love for all humanity and who left his words in the hearts of a lot of people and his footprints in the soil of the country he loved more than any other.

⭐I think he is the prose writer in fiction we have currently. The book is a must for anybody interested in the tribes of india and how their current status came about and should we reconsider their evolution.

⭐It’s a well written biography and the subject is immensely interesting. An excellent coverage of the life, work and struggles of Verrier Elwin and gives one a glimpse of the tribal people of India.

⭐Must read for students and researchers of social sciences. Nicely written with lots of inputs. I would say one of the best work of Ramachandra Guha…

⭐Refreshing read!

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