The Gond tribes of Adilabad district believe he is God; they deify him and the younger generation remembers him as their saviour. That was Prof. Christoph Von Furer Haimendorf (1915-1995) who lived among them at Marlawai. Haimendorf was an eminent social anthropologist who taught at the University of London. He had spent many years in India with the tribes of the northeast and nearer home, the Chenchus and the Gonds. His study of and advocacy of the Gond rights had made him part of their pantheon of gods. He was adviser to the Nizam’s Hyderabad Government until the 50s.
Suave and soft-spoken by nature, Prof. Haimendorf was a different man when it came to the culture and rights of the tribesmen. I met him at Rock Castle Hotel in Banjara Hills for an interview in early 1987.
“It is a pity that human species has not been classified as wildlife. Chenchus are as much wildlife as the tiger alongside which they had lived for centuries. In Bastar, they evicted Maria Gonds in 32 villages to make room for wild buffaloes. People who do not know the conditions there make decisions. Mundas and Orans of Ranchi (in Jharkhand) lost their lands forcibly acquired to set up industries.’
‘You can accuse me of being anti-progress if progress means displacing people and destroying their culture. Progress is no progress if it does not improve the quality of life. It has only destroyed their (tribesmen) lifestyle. Gandhiji said the peace of the villages and the lifestyle of the people cannot be sacrificed for modern industrial development.’
Prof CVH, as he was also known, was concerned about people who had left their homes to make room for irrigation projects and about turning over forests to paper mills or corporate houses. “Beautiful bamboo forest is leased out to Sirpur paper mills in Adilabad. Now we hardly see any bamboo trees there. Natural forest beneficial to tribesmen is disappearing and instead economic species like eucalyptus are raised’. Vattivagu project submerged several Gond villages. People at the lower contour benefitted at the cost of the Gonds who lost their land.
He had voiced fears that the Polavaram project would submerge all villages of Konda Reddis upwards of Polavaram to Bhadrachalam. ‘Their culture will be destroyed. Money may compensate for loss of homes, but not for damage to culture’.
He rounded off his interaction saying ‘Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad are my first love.’
Tail-piece: Betty, his wife, and co-researcher, died while attending a conference in Hyderabad and as per her wishes, the last rites were conducted by Gond tradition in Marlawai village in Adilabad district. I travelled to Marlawai for the occasion. Her son, who came from the UK, patiently went through the rituals like any Gond.
