Birth anniversary of first foreigner to get citizenship of independent India

Not many Englishmen who visit India do so out of a sense of guilt and to atone for the sins of their ancestors. A notable exception was Oxford-educated Verrier Elwin, born on August 29, 1902, in Dover, England, who was driven by this noble ideal.

“The Catholic religion lays stress on a spiritual ideal known as reparation. Christ made reparation for the sins of world. Now, in relation to India, I remembered how my family had made its money, such as it was, out of India and my countrymen had gone to India to exploit it and to rule. I thought, therefore, that I might go to India as an act of reparation, that from my family somebody should go to give instead of to get, to serve with poorest people instead of ruling them, to become one with the country that we had helped to dominate and subdue,” Elwin, the first foreigner to be given citizenship of Independent India, wrote in his autobiography.

With that resolve, guilt-ridden Elwin came to India when he was mere 25 years old. He became a member of the Christa Seva Sangh, a religious order founded by Jack Winslow, who had broken away from the church to identify himself more closely with the poor and Indian nationalism and culture.

Elwin came under the charismatic spell of Gandhi when he visited the Sabarmati Ashram in January 1928 to attend a conference organised by the Inter-Religious Fellowship. Elwin knew about Gandhi and considered himself a ‘sympathetic fellow-traveller’ of the great man, but a meeting changed it. Soon, he became a disciple of ‘Bapu’.

During his time in India, Elwin also met Jamnalal Bajaj, the founder of the Bajaj Group of Industries, at Dhule jail, where he was lodged as a class 3 prisoner. Influenced by Gandhi’s ideals, Bajaj had thrown open the doors of his family temple to the ‘untouchables’ and left his palatial home to live in a small, crowded bungalow. It was Bajaj, who, while driving through the streets of Ahmedabad with Elwin and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel one day, suggested Elwin to go to Central India and work among the Gond tribals.

With the passage of time, Elwin, who had dissociated himself from the church in 1935, became an authority on tribal lifestyle and culture, especially of the Gonds.

When the Anthropological Survey of India was formed in 1945, Elwin was appointed its Deputy Director. Later, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed him adviser on tribal affairs for North-eastern India, and then, Anthropological Adviser to the Government of NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh).

People of Arunachal Pradesh still hold Elwin close to their hearts. ‘We fondly remember Verrier Elwin for his timeless work, ‘A Philosophy for NEFA’, where he advocated that the tribals of Arunachal should develop along the lines of their own genius. It is a pleasure today to meet his son, Shri Ashok Elvin ji, accompanied by his wife and daughter’, Pema Khandu, CM of Arunachal Pradesh, wrote on X after meeting Elwin’s family members, who had come to Itanagar to accept a citation presented by the state government, felicitating Elwin posthumously.

In 1961, the Government of India awarded Elwin the Padma Bhushan — the third highest civilian honour. His autobiography, ‘The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin’, interspersed with wit, humour and deep insights, won him the 1965 Sahitya Akademi Award in English.

He breathed his last on February 22, 1964, in India — the adopted nation his heart bled for.