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NOTES AND NEWS

I. NOTES

1. Verrier Elwin (1902-1964)

THE death of Verrier Elwin on February 22, 1964 came as a loss not only to Indian anthropology but also to governmental and private organizations which for years had been dependent on his knowledge, experience and advice for dealing with the problems of India's tribal populations. Even vast numbers of the simpler folks of India mourned his death, for they had lost in his death a true friend. Born in 1902 as the son of an Anglican bishop of Sierra Leone, Verrier Elwin rose to heights of achievements in a series of major pursuits. He attained a dis- tinguished scholastic record and in 1926 became Vice-President of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and soon thereafter Chaplain of Merton College. He abandoned a prospective academic career in England in favour of religious searchings, and came to India and joined a small Anglican order at Poona. Soon he was drawn to the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi and began participating in the Indian inde- pendence movement. For his sympathies for the Indian nationalist cause, he was even taken to task by the British Government when he was on a short visit to England. He withdrew from practical politics but directed his humanitarian zeal toward independent social work in India. The great turning point in his career came when, on the advice of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Verrier Elwin directed the rest ofhis life's activities to working among tribal peoples. It was as an academic anthropologist and also as anthro- phogical adviser that Verrier Elwin reached the peak of his achievements. It is also true that Elwin's scholarship, religiosity, humanitarianism, and practicali- ty had all combined to make him significantly different from the stereotype of a professional anthropologist or of a mechanical bureaucrat; through his academic and administrative activities he expressed his profound human love for the simplest, the unsophisticated, and the downtrodden among the millions of India. Verrier Elwin was a "humanitarian anthropologist." Elwin produced twenty-six anthropological works, mostly on the tribal peoples of India. Of these, fourteen are monographs of a high order of academic excellence, seven are general writings, two are novels, two are anthropological studies written in collaboration with his old friend Shamrao Hivale, and his autobiography. The autobiography appeared shortly before his death. As the autobiography reveals, Elwin did not gear his writings to the theory of any professional anthropologist. He mastered the theoretical and methodological questions of anthropology, but made use of them only in so far as they were found to be meaningful in the context of the subjects of his study as well as the intel- 162

lectual perspective he had developed. As Elwin put it, he came to anthropology through poetry, which enabled him to view anthropology from an integral and humanitarian perspective. In his words, "the essence and art of anthropology is love. Without it, nothing is fertile, nothing is true." Among the well-known writings of Elwin are: Leaves from the Jungle ( 1936), Phulmat of the Hills ( 1937), A Cloud that's Dragonish ( 1938), The Baiga ( 1939), The Agaria (1942), Loss of Nerve ( 1942), Maria Murder and Suicide ( 1943), Folk- Tales of Mahakoshal ( 1944), Folk-Songs of the Maikal Hills ( 1944), Folk-Songs of Chattisgarh (1946), The Muria and their Ghotul (1947), The Myths of Middle India (1949), The Tribal Art of Middle India (1951), Bondo Highlanders (1952), Myths of the North-EastFrontier of India ( 1958), The Art of India's North-EastFrontier ( 1959), India's North-East Frontier in the Nineteenth Century ( 1959), A Philosophy for NEFA (1959), The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin : An Autobiography ( 1964) . These writings include monographs on individual tribes, studies of Indian folklore, documen- tation of folk art, statement of tribal policy, etc. In addition, Elwin published numerous articles. Many valuable contributions were made through the articles in Man in India during the years 1943-1948 when he edited the journal jointly with W. G. Archer. Verrier Elwin was undoubtedly one of the most prolific writers in contemporary anthropology, so much so that it has been observed that "he produced the largest corpus of data on Indian ethnography which has come from a single hand" (Mandelbaum). Among the official positions he held were: Anthropologist to the Govern- ment of Orissa in 1944, Deputy Director of the Department of Anthropology of the Government of India from 1946 to 1949, and from 1954 Adviser for Tribal Affairs to the North-East Frontier Agency. Among the honours and academic awards Elwin received were: Wellcome Medal (1943), S.C. Roy Medal (1945), Rivers Memorial Medal (1948), Annandale Medal (1952), Campbell Medal (1960), Dadabhai Naoroji Prize (1961), and Padma Bhusan (1961). He served on numerous tribal commissions. As an expert on tribal affairs, as a scholar, and as a person ofgenial temperament, he was held in high esteem and confidence by government personages, including Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and by many others he worked with. The foreword which Nehru wrote for Elwin's Philosophy for NEFA bears testimony to the far-reaching influence which Elwin exerted on Nehru's view on tribal affairs as well as on tribal welfare policies of the Government of India, particularly in the post-independence period. As C. von Fürer-Haimendorf has put it : "He was one of the great romantics of anthropology and the most inspired chronicler of India's tribal people." And this tribute to the memory of Verrier Elwin would remain incomplete without acknowledging Elwin's contributions to one of the fundamental ideals of modern India - the development of Indian nationhood. His massive studies of the tribal populations of India, many of which were presented in literary form accessible to non-anthropological readers, enlightened the minds of the dominant social groups in the essential oneness of the peoples of India, notwithstanding their diversities on particulars of social life. His liberal and imaginative approach to tribal development enabled the Government of India to formulate a tribal policy which combined the merits of idealism and realism in the contemporary socio-cultural life of India, and thereby helped to affect a synthesis of the tra- ditional and the modern elements of India's life and thought in the new Indian nation. Elwin's contributions will for a long time to come be cherished as in-