Research Catalog

Title

Savaging the civilized : Verrier Elwin, his tribals, and India / Ramachandra Guha.

Author

Guha, Ramachandra.

Publication

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [1999], ©1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

x, 398 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• "Verrier Elwin (1902-1964) was unquestionably the most colorful and influential non-official Englishman to live and work in twentieth-century India. A prolific writer, Elwin's ethnographic studies and popular works on India's tribal customs, art, myth and folklore continue to generate controversy.".
• "Described by his contemporaries as a cross between Albert Schweitzer and Paul Gauguin, Elwin was a man of contradictions, at times taking on the role of evangelist, social worker, political activist, poet, government worker, and more. Intensely political, the Oxford-trained scholar tirelessly defended the rights of the indigenous and despite the deep religious influences of St.
• Francis and Mahatma Gandhi on his early career, staunchly opposed Hindu and Christian puritans in the debate over the future of India's tribals.".
• "Savaging the Civilized is both biography and history, an exploration through Elwin's life of some of the great debates of the twentieth century, the future of development, cultural assimilation versus cultural difference, the political practice of postcolonial as opposed to colonial governments, and the moral practice of writers and intellectuals."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• Elwin, Verrier, 1902-1964
• Anthropologists > India > Biography
• Poets, Indic > 20th century > Biography
• Baiga (Indic people) > Social life and customs
• Gond (Indic people) > Social life and customs

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [353]-385) and index.

Contents

I. Evangelical Ghetto -- II. Oxford Rebellion -- III. Between Christ and the Congress -- IV. Breaking Ranks -- V. An Ashram of One's Own -- VI. Defending the Aboriginal -- VII. Going Gond -- VIII. Anthropologist at Large -- IX. Staying On -- X. An Englishman in India -- XI. A Sahib (Sometimes) in the Secretariat -- XII. Nehru's Missionary -- XIII. An Englishman for India -- XIV. Outsider Within: The Worlds of Verrier Elwin.

ISBN

• 0226310477 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0226310485 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 9780195647815
• 0195647815

LCCN

98037666

OCLC

• 39887010
• ocm39887010
• SCSB-4133627

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries