Paternity tests by academic inference

I have been fascinated with Elwin since my college days and hoped that I would track down his family one day. I did not know of Kosi then. When the research methodology of participant observation was taught, the principal example offered was Elwin, who went to the extent of marrying a tribal. This month when I went to Madhya Pradesh to do some stories on reconversion, I met Kosi, who narrated her story. Guha callsit gross simplification of a complex story, a partisan account, politically motivated — and holds that Elwin and Kosi were incompatible.

Understandably, in his love for Elwin, Guha completely missed the point that Kosi was a `paradox’ of his research. No doubt, Elwin was a great anthropologist and has done seminal work. Also, the kind of life Kosi is living does not detract from the mark Elwin has left in academia. But one cannot disregard the reality of Kosi by putting the word of the renowned anthropologist against the word of a tribal woman.

A bad character certificate to Kosi will not help create an Elwin-can-do-no-evil image. At least, concede that what Kosi is saying is her truth. On December 12, 1955, in her affidavit to the Office of the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee, she said: “Elwin had unceremoniously left me saying that he was going abroad and I should stay with a servant, Beharilal. But he started living in Shillong. He had taken one son, Jawahar, along with him, whileleaving another, Vijay, here.” She categorically told me that she was not aware of any divorce. “I had gone with him to Calcutta and Bombay, but I do not know about divorce. I don’t remember if my signature was taken on any paper,” she said.

The question of Elwin and Kosi’s incompatibility arises only if a `compatible’ relationship ever existed. Elwin was 40 when he offered marriage to the 13-year-old tribal girl. Immediately after the marriage in 1941, she along with him shifted to Bastar, where he wrote one of his best books — Maria Murder and Suicide — acknowledging her role.

Since Guha has painstakingly researched Elwin’s life, he must have read A Buried Cause by Dom Moraes. Elwin was a friend of Dom’s father Frank and Dom was guardian to Jawahar while studying in a Bombay boarding school. Years later when Moraes travelled to MP, he set out to locate Jawahar.

There Moraes met one Baiganbai, whom he described as “Elwin’s first mistress, like Kosi a Pradhan woman”. He writes:“She (Baiganbai) was a slight, very dark woman in a colourful sari, with chiselled features that could once have been beautiful but which time and experience had eroded into a look of infinite sadness. She was accompanied, to my surprise, by a tall, gawky man with grey hair, who looked very embarrassed.” “This is Rajen. He is a tailor by profession. He is her son by Elwin,” he was told.

“Baiganbai had met Verrier at Tikzratola, his first settlement after he came to MP. She had been hired as an unskilled worker to help build his house. She became close to Elwin from about 1935. In 1937 this man, Raj Kumar, was born. In the gathering gloom, I became aware of the arrival of another person. He introduced himself as R.P. Baghel, who had worked with Verrier, and assumed the task of translation. `Mr Elwin used to play with the child,’ he explained, `but he never cared for him. Then in 1941 he met Kosi and married her. In 1942 he forced Baiganbai to leave and made a settlement. Then he had her married to atailor.”’

This reference is enough to drive home a point that it was not just Kosi, there was Baiganbai also. Both appear paradoxes of Elwin’s research. And if Guha finds Vijay’s situation poignant, I don’t know what he will say about Rajen. Without a DNA test, merely on circumstantial evidence and the colour of his skin, Vijay has been dubbed Kosi’s son from a Muslim. This warrants further research devoid of the presumption that Elwin was a hero, with others just complementing this image.