Anthropological Developmentalism: Furer-Haimendorf and the Making of Social Policy in Hyderabad State

1. Some parts of this article are based on my book, Bhangya Bhukya, The Roots of the Periphery:A History of the Gonds of the Deccan India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017).

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Abstract

Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf has left a formidable legacy on the social policy of Hyderabad state, which was ruled by an Indian ruler during British colonial rule. As a field anthropologist, administrator and professor at Osmania University, Haimendorf played an important role in designing Adivasi development policies that were mainly rooted in a paternalistic and evolutionistic approach—what I call anthropological developmentalism—which was designed to overturn the political aspirations of the Adivasi communities. This approach neither empowered the Adivasis nor protected them from outsiders. Yet, Haimendorf and his legacy have been celebrated by the Adivasis in particular, and the state in general. This article explores this paradox by examining the intellectual and contextual role of Haimendorf’s anthropological ideas and their application to Hyderabad state.

Keywords:

• Adivasis
• anthropological developmentalism
• development anthropology
• Furer-Haimendorf
• Gonds
• Hyderabad state
• Komaram Bheem

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Some parts of this article are based on my book, Bhangya Bhukya, The Roots of the Periphery: A History of the Gonds of the Deccan India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017).

2. I visited Marlavai village on March 20, 2017, for a field study.

3. The burra katha was translated into English by Haimendorf himself, and both versions were published by the Social Service Department of the Nizam’s government: School of Oriental and African Studies library, Papers of Professor Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, PP MS 19 (hereafter, SOAS, Haimendorf papers, PP MS 19): 78.

4. For a detailed discussion, see Bhangya Bhukya, Subjugated Nomads: The Lambadas under the Rule of the Nizams (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2010).

5. For instance, see Talal Asad, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (London: Ithaca Press, 1973); Abhijit Guha, Nation-Building in Indian Anthropology: Beyond the Colonial Encounters (New York: Routledge, 2023); Bhangya Bhukya, ‘The Mapping of the Adivasi Social: Colonial Anthropology and Adivasis’, Economic & Political Weekly 43, no. 39 (2008): 103–09; Patrica Uberoi, Nandini Sundar and Satish Deshpande, ed., Anthropology in the East: Founders of Indian Sociology and Anthropology (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2008).

6. Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002): 125–228.

7. Ramachandra Guha, Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals and India (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

8. Sangeeta Dasgupta, ‘The Journey of an Anthropologist in Chotanagpur’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 41, no. 2 (2004): 165–98.

9. See Uday Chandra, ‘Liberalism and Its Other: The Politics of Primitivism in Colonial and Postcolonial Indian Law’, Law & Society Review 47, no. 1 (2013): 135–68.

10. Ibid., 138–39; see also Vanita Damodaran, ‘Colonial Constructions of Tribe in India’, Indian Historical Review 33, no. 1 (2006): 44–76.

11. See, for example, Crispin Bates, ‘Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India: The Early Origins of Indian Anthropometry’, in The Concept of Race in South Asia, ed. Peter Robb (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996): 219–59.

12. Ajay Skaria, ‘Shades of Wildness: Tribe, Caste and Gender in Western India’, The Journal of Asian Studies 56, no. 3 (1997): 726–45.

13. Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, The Tribes of India: Struggle for Survival (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

14. Veena Das and Deborah Poole, ed., Anthropology in the Margins of the State (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2004).

15. Lewis David, ‘Anthropology and Development: The Uneasy Relationship’, in A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, ed. James G. Carrier (Cheltenham: Elgar, 2005): 472–86, accessed February 26, 2024, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/253/.

16. John Clammer, Anthropology and Political Economy: Theoretical and Asian Perspective (New York: Macmillan Press, 1985): 167.

17. See, for example, Syamalkanti Sengupta, ed., Applied Anthropology: Meaning and Necessity (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1977).

18. Arturo Escobar, ‘Anthropology and the Development Encounter: The Making and Marketing of Development Anthropology’, American Ethnologist 18, no. 4 (1991): 661–63; also see Talal Asad, ed., Anthropology & the Colonial Encounter (London: Ithaca Press, 1975): 15–18.

19. Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001): 44.

20. Tilley shows how the colonial state used the colony as a laboratory to experiment with new science and development schemes in South Africa: see Helen Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Development and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870–1950 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

21. Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, The Aboriginal Tribes of Hyderabad, Vol. I: The Chenchus (London: Macmillan & Co., 1943): 1.

22. See K. De B. Codrington’s ‘Foreword’, in Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, The Raj Gonds of Adilabad (London: Macmillan & Co., 1948): xv–xvii.

23. Haimendorf had done extensive studies on the indigenous communities of Hyderabad state, north-east India and Nepal. His major publications include The Naked Nagas (1939), The Chenchus (1943), The Reddis of the Bison Hills (1945), Tribal Hyderabad (1945), The Raj Gonds of Adilabad (1948), The Sherpas of Nepal (1964), The Konyak Nagas (1969), Morals and Merit (1967), The Tribes of India: Struggle for Survival (1982) and Life among Indian Tribes: The Autobiography of an Anthropologist (1990). Many of his writings and collections of photos and videos are preserved at the SOAS library in London University.

24. Peter Berger, ‘Remembering, Representing, and Forgetting: Christoph von Furer Haimendorf and the Anthropology of India’, in Soziale Ästhetik, Atmosphäre, Medialität: Beiträge aus der Ethnologie, ed. Philipp Zehmisch et al. (Berlin: Lit, 2018): 197–206.

25. Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, Tribal Hyderabad: Four Reports (Hyderabad: Revenue Department, Government of H.E.H. the Nizam, 1945): 2.

26. For instance, see Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, The Raj Gonds of Adilabad (London: Macmillan & Co., 1948): 40–44, in which he inserted half-naked pictures of Gond men and women.

27. Berger, ‘Remembering, Representing, and Forgetting’, 197–206.

28. SOAS, Haimendorf papers, PP MS 19: iv.

29. Interview with Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf by Alan Macfarlane, at Lode, Cambridge, June 1983, accessed March 24, 2023, https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/449/haimendorf.doc?sequence=4.

30. Haimendorf, Tribes of India, 57.

31. For more details, see Saagar Tewari, Debating Tribe and Nation: Hutton, Thakkar, Ambedkar, and Elwin (1920–1940s), NMML Occasional Paper, History and Society (New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, 2017): 1–30.

32. Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, Life among Indian Tribes: The Autobiography of an Anthropologist (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990): 22–23.

33. Bhukya, Roots of the Periphery, 139–40.

34. The 12 villages were Jodeghat, Pafnapur, Bhabijhery, Murikiloka, Nassapur, Kallegam, Chelbaradi, Toikan Movadam, Bhiman Gondi, Ankusapur, Demiguda, and Gogin Movadamz: Shahu and Allam Rajaiah, Komaram Bhim (Telugu) (Hyderabad: Revolutionary Writers Association, 1993): 169.

35. Letter from First Taluqdar of Asafabad to the Secretary to Government, Judicial, Police and General Dept., dated 6.2.1350 F., Telangana State Archives, Home Dept., Confidential File no. 15/PA/1349F (1940), f. 133; Haimendorf, Tribal Hyderabad, 125.

36. Interview with Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, 2.

37. Haimendorf, Life among Indian Tribes, 5–6.

38. Interview with Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, 7.

39. Haimendorf, Life among Indian Tribes, 120–23.

40. Letter from Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf to Professor Frans M. Olbrechts, coordinator of Third Session International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Science, Brussela & Tervuren, dated April 7, 1948, SOAS, Haimendorf papers, PP MS 19: 35.

41. Syed Khaja Mahboob Husain, who worked with Haimendorf, has explained how colonial anthropology influenced the social policies of the Nizam’s government: see Syed Khaja Mahboob Husain, ‘New Deal for Hyderabad Aboriginals’, Indian Journal of Social Work 12, no. 3 (1951–52): 270–71; also see Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, Progress and Problems of Aboriginal Rehabilitation in Adilabad District (Hyderabad-Deccan: Government Central Press, 1946): 56–57.

42. Haimendorf, Life among the Indian Tribes, 122.

43. Haimendorf papers, PP MS 19: 7–8; Husain, ‘New Deal’, 271–72.

44. Haimendorf papers, PP MS 19: 4; Husain, ‘New Deal’, 279.

45. Haimendorf, Life among Indian Tribes, 81.

46. Ibid., 89–92.

47. A total of seven textbooks were published by the government, namely Gondi Reading Chart for Adults No. 1, 2 &3, Gondi Primer, First Reader for Adults, First Reader for Children, and The Myth of Manke: see Social Service among the Tribes and Backward Class in Hyderabad (Hyderabad: Government Press, 1951): 29.

48. Ibid., 28–36.

49. Census of India 1961, Vol. II, Andhra Pradesh, Part V B (I), Ethnographic Notes, A Monograph on Gonds, Hyderabad, Director of Census Operation, A.P.: 32.

50. Ibid., 13.

51. Haimendorf, Life among Indian Tribes, 26–27; W.V. Grigson, The Challenge of Backwardness (Hyderabad-Deccan: Government Press, 1947): 40.

52. The areas notified as tribal areas included the whole of Utnur taluk, 72 villages in Adilabad taluk, 74 villages in Kinwat taluk, 46 villages in Both taluk, 87 villages in Asifabad taluk, 18 villages in Lakshetipet taluk, 58 villages in Rajura taluk and 29 villages in Sirpur taluk: see Haimendorf, Life among Indian Tribes, 126.

53. Social Service among the Tribes and Backward Class in Hyderabad, 29.

54. Ibid., 30–32; Grigson, Challenge of Backwardness, 45.

55. For a much broader debate, see David Hardiman, Missionaries and Their Medicine: A Christian Modernity for Tribal India (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008).

56. Social Service among the Tribes and Backward Class in Hyderabad, 33.

57. Grigson, Challenge of Backwardness, 41–45.

58. Social Service among the Tribes and Backward Class in Hyderabad, 34; also see Grigson, Challenge of Backwardness, 41.

59. Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, Progress and Problems of Aboriginal Rehabilitation in Adilabad District (Hyderabad Deccan: Government Central Press, 1946): 1–63.

60. Purushotham gives an illuminating account of the violent politics in Hyderabad state from 1946 to 1952: see Sunil Purushotham, From Raj to Republic: Sovereignty, Violence and Democracy in India (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021).

61. Bhukya, Roots of the Periphery, 164–66.

62. Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989): 58.

63. Haimendorf, Tribal Hyderabad, 125.

64. Damodaran has underlined how colonial anthropology advocated a paternalistic protective approach concerning the Adivasis: see Vinita Damodaran, ‘Indigenous Agency: Customary Rights and Tribal Protection in Eastern India, 1830–1930’, History Workshop Journal 76 (2013): 85–110.

65. For a detailed discussion, see Bhukya, Roots of the Periphery.