Savaging the civilized
Subtitle: Verrier Elwin, his tribals, and India
By: Ramachandra Guha.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 398
Subjects: 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.
Description: "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."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [353]-385) and index.