Nehru and Elwin on Tribal Development: A contrasting perspectives

Verrier Elwin, a citizen of Great Britain, came to India in 1927 as a Christian missionary. Exactly a year later he got the chance to meet Mahatma Gandhi and become attracted to his philosophy, woven around the reformation of grassroots society in India. Gandhi’s vision on emancipation of the oppressed was so persuasive and practical that it worked like magic in transforming Elvin from a religious man to a ‘phi anthropologist’. At the beginning of his career he was tempted to work among the untouchables, but he could not stick to this decision for long. Once, in an interaction, Jamnalal Bajaj mentioned tribes and hinted their unique social system and economic life. Elvin now become fascinated by tribes and shifted his interest from the untouchables to the tribes, from the people suffering from hierarchy-based inequality to the people facing disadvantage of isolation. From then he never deviated from this focus, rather he went on studying tribes throughout his life, first in central India and then in the North-East. In the course of his study he was able to understand many aspect of the tribal life, ranging from the socio-cultural domain to their poverty and depletion of their livelihood. He took Indian citizenship in 1954. Jawaharlal Nehru, then prime mister of India, appointed him Anthropological Advisor to the government of India and assign him the task of implementing the tribal welfare program, particular in the North-East. Both Nehru and Elwin, one as an architect of modern India and other as an anthropologist-cum-philanthopolist, contributed diversely to the discourse on tribal development.

To develop the proper understanding about the tribal development in India, we need to understand these negative and positive experiences which will provide a complementary view of the development process. So that here we are focusing and analyzing the Nehruvian and Elwin approaches in the context of tribal development in India.

The debate between Nehru and Elwin on tribal development gained grounded after independence, and, therefore, claimed an intrinsic link with the national development discourse. To the extent that Nehru was an extreme nationalist, Elwin was the moderate nationalist; the trend of national development was more pronounced in Nehru’s approach whereas Elwin’s concern was confined to the welfare of the tribes, a segment of the nation. In other world, Nehru modeled his approach on the lines of the western paradigm and unequivocally proposed uniform application on this model for the development of all section of people, irrespective of gender, cast, tribe or religious background. The areas of his vision of development were wider and more diverse from fostering human dignity, world peace, democracy, planning and development, socialism, secularism, Indian national hood, science and technology to overall change through consent and non violence. In specific context of tribes, he recognized the importance of education, health and stable subsistence as the important means for their development.

Elwin more or less referred the same things, but differ with Nehru in approach. In his disputed isolationist approach, Elwin insisted that the tribes should maintain a selective distance from the mainstream socio-political-economical system, which was, however, not accepted to Nehruvian patriotism. It might be possible that Elwin had changed his approach from isolationist to integrationist under the influence of a Nehru.

Regarding tribal development, Nehru said “ I have no doubt that development and changed so-called progress will come to them, because it is becoming increasingly difficult for any people to live their isolated life cut off from the rest of the world. But let this development and change be natural and be in nature of self development with all the help one can give in the process”. To active this ideology of development, Nehru borrowed the western paradigm and set it in a tribal context. He was, however, against understanding tribal social and cultural identity in this development process. It is noticeable that by exposing colonial rule as responsible for the misery and backwardness of the tribes, Elwin initiated decolonization of the tribal development approach earlier than Nehru. Nehru later reshaped the decolonization process with the inclusion of modern technology, market forces and scientific outlook as added means for their development.

Nehru aimed to wipe out the gap between the rich and the poor, to offer equal opportunity of development to all, and ensure equal participation in the development process. Elwin did not pay attention to the persisting discrepancy among classes, his concern was confined to the gap between the ‘savage’ and ‘civilized’ between the so called modern people and innocent tribes. Elwin discarded the theory about the threshold of pain; that the ‘savage’ are internally stronger and better able to bear pain that the civilized that are more delicate and wound be hurt more.

The Nehruvian approach could not retain it uniformity in ideology and practice. Nehru subscribed to principle to the principles of not interfering and not uprooting tribes during the introduction of new development prorgammes, but in practice almost all the large scale industries and big dams planned during his lifetimes were established in tribal areas, causing massive displacement. Nehru may have been right in introducing such development programmes from the larger perspective of national development, but he was equally wrong for not devising an acceptable mechanism to confirm tribal participation in that development process.

The approaches of both of these stalwarts were not free from their respective political interests. Nehru showed special political favors for NEFA tribes, more than for tribes of living in the rest of India. Nagaland became full state in 1963 on his approval. After his death, his successor Indira Gandhi offered separate statehood to Manipur and Meghalaya and raised the status of Arunanachal Pradesh and Mizoram to full-fledge states. Till this period, none of the central or southern tribal regions ever got such a privilege, either in the form of separate statehood or as autonomous councils, although they had tribal populations about four times higher than in the north-east.

The political maneuvering in Elwin‘s approach is evident in the shifting of his concerns from the central tribal region to the north-east in the later part of his life. He gained his first hand experience of vulnerability of tribes after his studies in central region and also developed his isolationist approach on this basis; but he applied it in north-east, not in the central tribal region. One could not blame Elvin for this, because he did seek the support of Gandhi to apply this approach to the tribes of central region, but Gandhi never acceded to his appeal. He shifted to the north-east when Nehru provided a political base to apply his ideas.

The major drawback in Elwin and Nehru’s approaches was that they were confined to certain region and particular tribes; they could not provide an all India framework for the development of tribes. At the same time, they left enormously valuable feedback for tribal policy for the 21^st century in that they showed that neither complete isolation nor large scale and sophisticated development programme minus tribal participation was feasible. We need a revised formula of decentralization and lager participation of the tribes in development policy and implementation.