‘This book has been living in my mind for 25 years’: Ramachandra Guha

In the first half of the 20th century, British-born Indian anthropologist Verrier Elwin became the voice for the tribals of India. In those years — the 1940s — his life underwent multiple changes in succession. He denounced the clergy to work with Mahatma Gandhi, then parted ways to champion tribal communities, and became the first foreigner to be granted Indian citizenship.

Much after Elwin’s passing, historian Ramachandra Guha comes across Elwin’s autobiography and his life, like Elwin’s, undergoes metamorphosis, albeit on a smaller scale. He reads the autobiography and leaves the academic knot he had tied with economics to chase a life in sociology and history. Cut to June 2023, Guha, already a globally revered historian, wins the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography for his 2022 book Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India’s Freedom. A book which has been “living in his mind for 25 years”.

“Reading Elwin basically changed my whole life. I became a scholar because of him. I had even written a biography on him in 1999 (Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals and India). Since then, I had always thought I would write a companion to that book. The Elwin book was about one individual who fascinated me, but this book, after narrowing it down, came to be about seven people,” he says about the origins of Rebels Against the Raj.

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