Paper 14; Module 33; E Text (A) Personal Details
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1 Paper 14; Module 33; E Text (A) Personal Details Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator Prof. Tutun University of Hyderabad Mukherjee Paper Coordinator Prof. Asha Kuthari Guwahati University Chaudhuri, Content Writer/Author Anindita Das Guwahati University (CW) Content Reviewer (CR) Dr. Manasi Bora Dept. of English, Guwahati University Language Editor (LE) Dr. Dolikajyoti Assistant Professor, Guwahati Sharma, University (B) Description of Module Item Description of module Subject Name English Paper name Indian Writing in English Module title RAMACHANDRA GUHA: SAVAGING THE CIVILISED: VERRIER ELWIN, HIS TRIBALS AND INDIA Module ID Module 33 2 MODULE 33 SAVAGING THE CIVILISED: VERRIER ELWIN, HIS TRIBALS AND INDIA BY RAMACHANDRA GUHA 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 3 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: A biographer is an 'artist under oath'. You have to get the balance right at several levels: between the life and the work, and between the individual and society. You also have bring in all the minor characters. Besides it takes a certain amount of doggedness in chasing letters and manuscripts kept in different locations. Then there was the actual writing process. I usually never do more than two drafts but this one took five or six. 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 4 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 5 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 6 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: For Gandhi my affection never wavered. But I allowed the differences between us to keep me away from him. I suffered a great disillusion when I discovered that the khadi programme was not suitable for our tribes. I have been a strong supporter of handloom weaving, but spinning for every poor people and in places where cotton did not grow, seemed to me artificial and uneconomic.....Gandhi’s emphatic views on prohibition (which I considered damaging to the tribes), his philosophy of sex-relations, especially as exaggerated by some of his followers, ......and what seemed to me a certain distortion of values ---the excessive emphasis on diet, for example, further separated me from him.