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VERRIER ELWIN

Verrier Elwin came to India as a Christian preacher, but took up anthropology as a primary interest. He was an ethnographer and in 1932 began to work among the Baiga tribe of Madhya Pradesh. This was later published as The Baiga in 1939. This was introduced by Hutton. It was cited often but it contained the first citation of his statement on isolationism for tribals. He had noted that the Baigas were being destroyed by the landlords and the missionaries. To protect them from exploitation he suggested that the State should prevent or control their interaction with outsiders.     Verrier Elwin has always been associated with the issue of the integration of tribal societies with the greater Indian society. Such an integrationist stance was initially opposed by him, when he proposed that tribals should be left alone instead of being constantly interfered with and acculturated. This gave him the reputation of being a person who advocated separate ‘reserved national parks’ for tribals. Such national parks he also called ‘Tribal Reserve Area.’ Such a stance was also being used at the time by the United States government. After this, Elwin went on to study the Murias of the Bastar region. He devoted one book to the study of the youth dormitories among the Murias there. It was seen from his work that such youth dormitories were an indispensable part of many other tribal societies as well. It was responsible for training the youth in various social activities and for initiating them into sexual activities. This led others to work on the activities of the youth dormitories in other tribal societies. He went on to publish many more works on tribal and other cultures. He published one on the religion of the tribes, their folklore, myths of origin, etc. In a study of the Borneo highlanders he again supported isolationism. This was criticized by several nationalist leaders and proassimilation anthropologists. Finally, when Elwin wrote A Philosophy For NEFA he propagated a more assimilationistic stance in collaboration with the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In his integrationist model of the tribe, he propagated the idea, following Nehru’s panchsheel that the tribes should be allowed to develop according to their own dictates. Elwin went on to become a member of several committees on tribal affairs and also an editor of Man in India. His house in Shillong now houses his wife and son, and a host of memorabilia that exhibit his travels among the tribals of India. Many of the photographs that he took now adorn the walls of the Museum and Department of Anthropology, NEHU, Shillong.     RAI BAHADUR SARAT CHANDRA ROY Yet, within this history and culture of anthropology in India is a history of interaction between anthropologists and tribals and its effects in the last one hundred years. S. C. Roy started his work among the tribals of Chotanagpur in the early years of this century. S. C. Roy never talked of Anthropology without it being contextualized within India. “From our Indian view-point the ulterior object of the science of Man is, or should be, to understand the meaning and goal of human existence, – the trend, direction and aim of human culture and civilization, the eternal spiritual reality behind life and society, the Sat behind the at, and to ascertain, as far as possible, the laws that govern the thought and behaviour of man in Society.” (Roy; 1937: 243) Anthropology is frequently accused of being the study of ‘Primitive Society.’ Yet, this is because “primitive society exhibits the ground-plan on which the more complex structure that we call civilization has been built up” (Roy; 1937: 249). Such studies should be followed by studies of complex and advanced societies. Different cultures at various levels of complexity should be analyzed, compared and comprehended (Roy; 1937: 249). On the issue of charismatic figures, he says: “It is on these horses of thought, action and feeling, who with their kindling ideas and throbbing words, and inspiring message and example, act as levers to lift society to higher levels by introducing new ideals and viewpoints, it is on them that the measure and standard of a people’s culture depend.” (Roy; 1937: 252) According to Roy (1937) anthropology is for use, for nation-building in a positive sense, for fellow-feeling among human beings and for writing the eternal history of humankind. S. C. Roy was no objective anthropologist. He began with the idea of helping the oppressed tribals of the region. In order to reframe the way outsiders manipulated them, he had to prepare an outline of their customary laws. In order to do so, he had to study their oral and mythical history, their social and cultural life, at first hand. The only discipline that suited him was that of the anthropologist. He wished anthropology to be there as a subject in all Universities and also as a requirement of officers in administration and bureaucracy. It soon became apparent that early accounts of Indian tribes were mostly written by British authors. Out of 100 articles on anthropology published between 1784 to 1883, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, only 3 articles were by Indians. In Calcutta Review, there were 53 articles on anthropology published between 1843-1883, only three by Indians (Roy; 1992: 13). There were no monographs on tribes by Indian authors. Sarat Chandra Roy took care to learn the dialects of the various tribes of the region. He had no formal training, yet he managed to create a good rapport by his ability and knowledge. At the time there were very few roads. Photos exist in his house showing his travels on elephantback through jungles. A large map also exists showing all the villages of the area. S. C. Roy marked all the villages he had visited with a red circle. The entire map was a mass of red. Few villages survived being marked. During his later years he frequently talked of his work to Nirmal Kumar Bose and to his youngest daughter, Mira Roy, who died in February 2006. According to him, all his works needed to be revised to include individual differences that occur in each of the different villages. As a first step, he made notebooks for each thana and tehsil where he numbered and noted down one village on each page. On these pages, he noted whatever information he knew regarding the villages. This was a remarkable attitude of collecting local data, which is only now becoming popular. Yet, Roy’s work must also be seen in the context of the everyday life of the Oraon which did not have (and still does not have) a structuralized behaviour pattern for behaving with outsiders. S.C. Roy was also one of the ‘diku’ yet clearly was never called such names. Further, the researcher in his attempt to gain intimacy becomes a ‘friend’, a term which an Oraon well understands. This deep effect of the anthropologist on tribal society was well observed by D.N. Majumdar: “How far this was true was seen by us in 1921, when some of us, then students of anthropology at Calcutta visited the Munda country with Dewan Bahadur L.K. Anantakrishna Iyer, Reader in Anthropology, Calcutta University. We visited hamlet after hamlet, we went into the interior villages of the Munda country, we enquired about the intimate social life of the people and everywhere we visited we felt the invisible presence of Roy. Every village we passed through, we were greeted with shouts of Sarat Babu Ki Jay. It is no wonder that Roy represented the tribal people of his district in Bihar Legislature for successive terms.” (in Roy; 1980: 210) It is the social-ness of the work of S. C. Roy that is his main advantage. His house had a set of rooms prepared for his tribal clients so that those who came from far-off villages could stay on while his case was being fought in court. Ultimately, S. C. Roy was thinking not just in the tribal language but in terms of their own worldview. An incident that shows this side of him relates to the construction of a bridge over a river at Lohardaga: “The river side had Hindu and Oraon settlements. Since the bridge was washed out twice earlier, the contractor wanted to placate the Gods of both the villages. He repaired an old dilapidated temple of Hindus and presented a flag with a railway engine painted on it to the Oraon which was a symbol of power to that parha of Oraons in the Jatra festival. But envious of this, one of the neighbouring parha made a same kind of flag having the emblem and led [to] trouble at the annual Jatra festival at Bhasko. Two persons were killed. Fearing similar trouble next year, Roy was consulted by the sub-divisional Magistrate and he then presented a flag emblemed with an aeroplane and explained the superiority of it to the senior members of the parha of the latter village next year. A happy solution came out and no trouble occurred at the jatra that year.” (Roy; 1980: 215-216) In the last years of his life he was very ill. He found no strength to get up from his bed. He slept straight with his feet pointing through the doorway to the length of his study. He would request his servants to turn his book-shelves towards him so that he could look at his beloved books all day. Once, in a moment of sadness he told his daughter that if he were to die, to be re-born in another place, he only wished he retained the memories of all the books he had read intact. His vision and his genius were his alone. None after him was ever able to put together a plausible worldview of the various tribals of the region into a whole. When he died on 30th April, 1942 on the holy day of Buddha Purnima, he left a yawning emptiness. His students often berated his constant delays and re-corrections of his own articles since it kept him from writing more. He wrote much but he took away much more. Notes on improvements of his various books abound, ignored and forgotten in that sprawling empty house of his where only his youngest daughter stayed till her death in 2006. A museum, a library, a table and a chair exactly as he left it and whole generations of anthropologists and tribals who come to buy his books and copies of the journal that he started now frequent the house where anthropology began in this part of the world.  

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CHRISTOPH VON-FUHRER HAIMENDORF

Christoph von-Fuhrer Haimendorf was responsible for many tribal studies. Initially, he began his work in the Naga hills. He accompanied J. P. Mills on his tours in the region. At the time Mills was a Political Agent. He wrote a travelogue in 1938 entitled The Naked Nagas as a result of his tour. In this work, a very subjective account was written about the Konyak Nagas, about which the world knew very little at the time.   Later, he went on to study the Chenchus of Andhra Pradesh, a hunting-gathering community. He also went on to make a detailed study of the Gonds of Adilabad. He described the social life of both these tribal communities and paid special attention to their problems. He suggested separate development programmes for them. He then went on to study the Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh. He made an extensive study and was favourably impressed by their stage of development. The Apatanis were welleducated and were able to compete for posts in the bureaucracy.   Using this comparative background study of the tribes of India, he proposed a developmental future for these communities based on their isolation from other communities. This has been called isolationism. In 1984, in a D. N. Majumdar lecture, he argued that the Gonds were being deprived of their lands and were becoming poorer due to their contact with outsiders. The Apatanis were isolated because of their houses being in difficult terrain. This has resulted in their faster development. Development in this area reached the grass root level and was not taken over by outsiders. The Indian governmental policy of not allowing people into this region has also contributed to this state. In fact, by 1985, his book on the Tribes of India clearly states the Indian government policy of state terrorism against the tribals protesting for their own land to be left to them instead of being repeatedly usurped by outsiders and taken over. This was based on a postscript in the book on the planned shooting down of unarmed Gond tribals on 20 April 1981 at Indravelli, Adilabad. A quote from the magazine Olympus that he quotes is very clear in its denouncement: “Tribals are fighting a grim battle for survival. The depredation of forest contractors has upset their economic life. And now their lands are sought to be snatched away by the new ‘voortrekkers.’ The plainsmen with the power of the modern state behind them are moving in.” (Furer-Haimendorf; 1985: 326)   He has also written on the morals and merits in South Asian societies. Haimendorf has also worked on communities in Nepal. He retired as a Professor from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. In 1976, he retired from the Chair of Asian Anthropology at the University of London. He is well-known for his many meticulously detailed ethnographies but is not so well-remembered for the few theoretical approaches that he used.