The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin

I had made few notes from Verrier Elwin's book

The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin many years back. Recently I found that scrap book and here I share with you some of the points I noted down:


The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin
Oxford University Press, London, 1964
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Now in relation to India I remembered how my family had made money, such as it was, out of India and my countrymen had gone to India to exploit it and to rule.
I though, therefore that I might go to India as an act of reperation, 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 had helped to dominate and subdue (p.36).
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For my first long stay there I was lucky to get a room in Gandhi's own house. From the cottage I looked out across the great expanse of sand and water of the Sabaramati river. On the further bank I could see in panorama many of the forces against which Gandhi was in revolt. There were the tall chimneys of the factories which were helping to destroy the hand- spinning industry. There was the palace of the Collector, syumbol of foreign domination which had sapped the manliness of India. There was the railway which, In Gandhi's view had done so much to ruin the quiet peasant life of the villages. Opposite were the low rooms of the simple dwellings of the ashram. The forces of the world and the forces of the spirit were here in vivid symbol arrayed against one another- machine force against soul- force, force of arms against love force (p.52).
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Bapu regarded her (Mirabehn- Ms.Slade) as his daughter and I was greatly escited one day in 1930 when he said to me, 'As Mirabehn is my daughter, so you shall be my son.' From that day I regarded myself as a citizen of India (p.55).
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This is the one great cultural interest of the people. A girl dancer is compared by the Gonds to a lovely tree moving to the unseen power of nature, and one of their riddles asks, 'There is a dumb bird that sits on a beautiful tree; shake the tree and bird awakes and sings'. The answer is, 'the anklets on the feet of a girl who goes to the dance' (p.104).
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The attitude of the Gonds and Baigas to the war was interesting. an old woman put it very well. 'This', she said, 'is how God equalizes things. Our sons and daughters die young, of hunger or disease or the attacks of wild beasts. The sons and daughters of the English could grow in comfort and happiness. But God sends madness upon them and they destroy each other and so in the end their great knowledge and their religion is useless and we are all the same' (p.121).
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I found the people talking poetry. An old woman speaks of fire as a flower blossoming on a dry tree, of an umpress as a peacock with one leg. Children playing around the fire at night ask each other riddles which are sometimes real poems; a lamp is a little sparrow that scatters its feathers about the house. A man speaking of his pregnant wife, says to me, 'She must be treated as a flower, or the light may fade from her bosom. The poorest copt has legs of gold and a frame of jewels when a lovely girl is sleeping on it' (p.144).
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The Baigas are very fond of pigs. One day a man came to me complaining that his wife had run away with some one else. 'That', he said, 'I could have borne, but they took away my favourite pig' (p.149).
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To the people a dance is not just an extra, a luxury to be indulged in or not as one feels inclines; where it has remained, it is an essential force in life, as natural as breathing or eating, and always done with passionate delight. The Acholi dancers never smiled; they were too intent, too keyed up; they were at serious business, they were entranced (p.216).
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Verrier Elwin
Verrier Elwin, one of the most interesting Englishmen to have worked in India this century, came to his adopted country when he was only 25. A few years later, he moved to a tribal village in the heart of India. He lived most of the rest of his life among the tribals of India, whom he loved and worked for, and about whom he wrote beautifully, intensely and extensively.
Read more about him:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=160678&sectioncode=6

But why he treated his tribal wife Kosi, the way he did? Read more about it:
http://www.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/19990305/ige05051.html