Verrier Elwin

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Verrier Elwin
Tribes of India
Notable workThe Baiga (1939)
The Muria and their Ghotul (1947)
AwardsPadma Bhushan (1961)

Harry Verrier Holman Elwin (29 August 1902 – 22 February 1964)

North East Indian states especially North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) and settled in Shillong, the hill capital of Meghalaya.[3]

In time he became an authority on Indian

independence, he took up Indian citizenship.[3] Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed him as an adviser on tribal affairs for north-eastern India, and later he was Anthropological Adviser to the Government of NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh.[5] His philosophy towards the north-east was partially responsible in its disconnect from the modern world.[6]

The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the

English Language, given by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.[8]

Early life and education

Harry Verrier Holman Elwin was born on 29 August 1902 in Dover. He is the son of

MA, and DSc. He also remained the President of Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU) in 1925. He had a nice career at Oxford, where he took a Double First in English and in Theology, before being ordained a priest in the Church of England. He came to India in 1927, to join a small sect, the Christa Seva Sangh of Poona, which hoped to 'indigenise' Christianity.[citation needed
]

Career

In 1926, he was appointed Vice-Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and in the following year he became a lecturer at Merton College, Oxford. He went to India in 1927 as a missionary. Over the years, he was influenced by the philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. He quickly threw in his lot with the Congress, winning Gandhi's affection and becoming a camp follower and occasional cheerleader to the popular movement against British rule. Seeking fuller immersion in the toil, the sufferings, the poverty of India, he resolved to make his home among the Gonds. He first joined Christian Service Society in Pune. The first time he visited the central India, now the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and parts of eastern Maharashtra, was with an Indian from Pune, Shamrao Hivale. For the first time, he visited a remote village in the forests of Mandla district. Hivale and he were to spend some twenty years in Central India, living with and fighting for tribal rights. Their studies on the tribes are some of the earliest anthropological studies in the country. In January 1954, Elwin became the first foreigner to be accepted as an Indian citizen. In the same year, he was appointed anthropological adviser to the Indian Government, with the special reference to the hill tribes of the north east. Moving to Shillong, he served for a decade as a leading missionary of what he liked to call 'Mr Nehru's Gospel for tribes'. He died in 1964, a greatly esteemed public figure in his adopted land, the recipient of the Padma Bhushan and countless other medals and rewards. He participated in the Indian independence movement, and in 1930 Gandhi said he regarded Elwin as a son.[9]

He came out with numerous works on various tribal groups in India, the best acclaimed being those on Maria and Baigas.

After India attained independence in 1947, he was asked by Nehru to find solutions to the problems that emerged among the tribal peoples living in the far northeastern corner of India, the

North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). He was also a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.[10]

The historian Ramachandra Guha's biography Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India (1999) brought renewed attention in India to Elwin's life and career.

On Ghotul

Verrier Elwin wrote – "The message of the ghotul – that youth must be served, that freedom and happiness are more to be treasured than any material gain, that friendliness and sympathy, hospitality and unity are of the first importance, and above all that human love – and its physical expression – is beautiful, clean and precious, is typically Indian."[11]

Personal life

Elwin married a Raj

Gond tribal girl called Kosi who was a student at his school at Raythwar (Raithwar) in Dindori district in Madhya Pradesh on 4 April 1940. They had one son, Jawaharlal (Kumar), born in 1941. Elwin had an ex-parte divorce in 1949, at the Calcutta High Court, writing in his autobiography, "I cannot even now look back on this period of my life without a deep sense of pain and failure" [12] In 2006, Kosi was still living in a hut in Raythwar, their son Kumar having died. Kosi's second son, Vijay, also died young.[13] Elwin remarried a woman called Lila, belonging to the Pardhan Gond tribe in nearby Patangarh, moving with her to Shillong in the early 1950s. They had three sons, Wasant, Nakul and Ashok.[14] Elwin died in Delhi on 22 February 1964 after a heart attack.[15][16] His widow Lila died in Mumbai in 2013, aged about 80, shortly after the demise of their eldest son, Wasant.[17] His marriage to Lila connected Verrier to Jangarh Singh Shyam, the Gond artist.[18]

Works

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900–1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 143.
  2. ^ a b World of Verrier Elwin[permanent dead link] by K. L. Kamat, 8 August 2000.
  3. ^ a b Linebaugh, p. 162
  4. ^ Anthropological Survey of India Archived 11 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine Anthropological Survey of India, Kolkata, website.
  5. ^ "British scholar's Indian widow in penury". BBC News. 4 May 2006.
  6. JSTOR 45340743
    .
  7. ^ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 October 2015. Retrieved July 21, 2015.
  8. ^ "Sahitya Akademi Awards 1955–2007". Sahitya Akademi Award Official listing. Archived from the original on 11 June 2010.
  9. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.2.02a00140
    .
  10. ^ Science Academy, Indian National (1995). Biographical memoirs of fellows of the Indian National Science Academy, Volume 20. p. 101.
  11. ^ "Cgnet.in – Ghotul: 100 years behind or 100 years ahead ?". Archived from the original on 30 October 2007. Retrieved 13 February 2009.
  12. ^ The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin. An autobiography, Oxford University Press, Bombay, 1964, p. 138.
  13. ^ "British scholar's Indian widow in penury". BBC News. 4 May 2006. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
  14. ^ The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: an autobiography
  15. Indian Express
    , 5 March 1999.
  16. ^ "Elwin and Kosi were incompatible". The Indian Express. 10 March 1999.
  17. ^ Teresa Rahman, "Lila, wife of anthropologist Verrier Elwin, passes away", The Hindu, July 20, 2013. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/lila-wife-of-anthropologist-verrier-elwin-passes-away/article4933079.ece. Accessed 15 November 2016.
  18. ISBN 978-93-5311-387-2
    .

Sources

Further reading

External links

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