Savaging the Civilized [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2017] RAMACHANDRA GUHA Paperback

Dr Elwin has indeed been very brave in his presentation of the hill tribes of India, and their lifestyle which is completely at odds to our tradtional Western culture. And not only our Western culture, but that of the rest of the world.

I do think that this is an excellent book about quite an extraordinary man.I had not heard of Verrier Elwin until a friend of mine recommended this book to me. I started to read it, and when I did I was hooked.Now, some reviewers have referred to Ramachandra Guha as having a Nehruvian hangover, and that this book is a whitewash of a most unscrupulous character, namely Verrier.Indeed, Verrier Elwin was not a trained anthropologist, but he did live amongst the tribals for many years, and almost became one of them. He did, in my view, great service to the tribals by studying them and writing about them. His contributions to NEFA, later Arunachal Pradesh, are immense.The book traces his life from school through to the early years in India, his fascination with Gandhi, and then his journey towards becoming an expert on tribals; towards becoming an Indian, and then an Indian government servant.That a man like this is largely forgotten is a tragedy, and it is indeed a great service that Ramachandra Guha has done us by bringing his story to us in a readable, unbiased book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A fine study of the "philanthropologist" Verrier Elwin, who went from Oxford cleric to tribal scholar/activist, living among various groups of 'aboriginal' Indians and taking up their causes. Elwin was the first Englishman to gain Indian citizenship after independence, but constantly wrote against those in power (at a state or a national level) who attempted to destroy tribal ways of life. Extremely interesting discussion of the delicate negotiation of a suitable rhetoric in the overheated debates around such issues. Deftly illuminates the contradictions of nationalism and the postcolonial state, where hegemonic identity politics attempts to dominate those on the margins, all in the name of 'liberation'. Important and NECESSARY corrective to simple assumptions about what postcoloniality involves. I recommend it highly. A good read!

This is a very well-written and sympathetic biography of a great human being who struggled through many of his human impulses yet he remained true to himself till the end, the courage to live with enormous integrity.The author has taken pains to give us glimpses of an another world within India, and what possibly motivated (and continues to motivate)the citizens of that world. A world which even the "greats" of India's freedom movement did not care to emphatise with.The book is all the more important as it tells us of the work of a man who respected the tribals of India, literally lived like them, and not as an outsider, and sang and danced with them.And that at a time when tribal life style in India is either being show cased or relegated to the background by the dominant middle class culture.The author's style is engaging, without ever being patronising, and the prose is very readable without ever being difficult. A brilliant tour de force.Chinu