Fifty years ago Verrier Elwin left for the heavenly abode. His demise brought in a mixed feeling in the anthropological world of India. His contemporaries namely Nirmal Kumar Bose, Dhirendranath Majumdar, Iravati Karve, Tarak Chandra Das, Khitish Prasad Chattopadhyay, Stephen Fuchs, Shyama Charan Dube and others were renowned by that time. His senior Govind Sadashiv Ghurye, probably his greatest rival at the ideological level, was almost a father figure for all anthropologists of that time. His juniors Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas, Surajit Chandra Sinha, Prabodh Kumar Bhowmick, Lalita Prasad Vidyarthi and others were gaining footage at the academic world then. Professor Vidyarthi attended his funeral at Shillong with a batch of post graduate students which transcended to our generation in later days through one of his illustrious students, Professor Awadhesh Coomar Sinha, now a septuagenarian. His friend Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was alive then who incidentally left for the heavenly abode a couple of months later on May 27, 1964. So Elwin's demise brought in a debatable legacy of his way of doing anthropology in India then. One can ascribe it as 'Verrier Elwin: His legacy and the contemporary debate'. At the same time it is almost an acceptable fact to all the scholars of anthropology-both past and present - that Harry Verrier Holman Elwin had been veritably the eyes and ears to India's first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. This is ratified because of the even more undisputable fact that Elwin interpreted Nehru's vision of what should be the model of 'development' for more than 500 mosaics of colourful Scheduled Tribes woven in the cultural tapestry of highly stratified and ecologically diverse panoramic land that we call India. Elwin's anthropological applications for tribal development still remain a landmark since it had direct government support. A great deal of his recommendations emerged from the first hand fieldwork carried out by a number of Indian anthropologists who were associated with him. One of his remarkable contributions was his forthright position to work within emic categories rather than to follow etic categories for tribal development. The world of anthropology becomes ever alive while discussing the question relating to tribe and other categories of people. While one is aware of the debate between Ghurye and Elwin one cannot also be over simplistic in the categories upheld by the constitution of India. It was Ghurye's point of view that the tribal people are backward Hindus differing only in degrees from the other segments of Hindu society yet, Elwin argued vehemently for the adequate recognition of separate social and cultural identity of tribal people. Both of them had their strong and reasonably thought out opinions to be held supported by their own stand points. Yet, one cannot forget the fact that the Government of India gives tacit recognition to these identity markers while keeping alive debates on similar issues that fall under the ambit of the constitution of our country.
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