Of Darwin & Dhrupad

Felix Padel, a descendant of Charles Darwin, shares his concerns about the ethnic tribes of India and his love for Hindustani classical music.

Who would have thought that one would get to hear strains of Dhrupad in a bookstore? But that’s exactly what’s happened. The mezzanine floor of the Oxford Bookstore on Park Street, Kolkata, resonates with beautiful music as noted anthropologist and author Felix Padel breaks into a song invoking Mother Goddess while playing on his violin. The mix of scribes, academics and bookworms sit spellbound as this great great grandson of Charles Darwin effortlessly belts out Bhawani Dayani in chaste Dhrupad style.

This unexpected beginning sets the mood for the rest of the evening. After entertaining the audiences with a mellifluous melody, Padel begins to share his concerns about the impact of mining on the indigenous communities and ecosystems. Clad in a shirt embellished with the traditional ikkat designs from Orissa, this affable 56-year-old seems more Indian in his thoughts and values than many in the gathering. His conversation is often peppered with Hindi and Oriya phrases and as he freely quotes from the Arthashastra, Padel shares his love and appreciation for the traditions of India’s ethnic tribes. Having spent 32 years in this country, out of which 17 were spent in eastern Orissa, he is extremely concerned about the marginalisation of the country’s tribes and the degeneration of the environment caused by excessive industrialisation.

One can’t help but wonder what led this London-bred, Oxford educated Brit to make India his home, thus becoming a champion of the country’s ethnic tribes. “It was in 1979, while studying social anthropology at Oxford, that my classmate Amitav Ghosh suggested that I also spend some time studying at the Delhi University. So I came to India and joined the Delhi School of Economics,” recalls Padel. Having satiated his academic hunger, Padel’s love for music took him to the Banaras Hindu University where he learnt Hindustani classical music for twelve years, specialising in the Dhrupad style. So besides being an author of two books, Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape and Out of this Earth: East India Adivasi and the Aluminium Cartel, Padel is also a performing musician.

His strong empathy for the tribes of India is nothing new; he has been appreciative of their culture since his student days. He even found his soul mate from one of the tribes in Orissa and married her soon after. “They have a sense of non-dualism and equality at every level, in contrast to the western individualism,” he explains. Padel acknowledges them as “saints who consume little, share everything and waste nothing.”

Being a descendant of Darwin, how does he correlate the theory of evolution and one of its keystones, ‘survival of the fittest’, to these tribes? Although he believes that Darwin was one of the greatest scientists of the era, Padel concedes that the theory is “out of order” and that “survival of the fittest” needs to be rephrased. “There is no one path of development for species. Backward as they seem, tribal societies are actually highly evolved in terms of their kinship relations, systems of cultivation, knowledge of forests, and even their legal tradition which is based on reconciliation rather than contest,” emphasises Padel. Having said this, Padel returns to his other love — music — and wraps up the evening with a soulful rendition of the Raag Bhairavi on his violin.