Breaking down the question
The question asks you to reconstruct Verrier Elwin's position on how much freedom tribal communities should enjoy, and by implication to locate it within the wider isolation-versus-assimilation debate. It is largely expository, but a 10-mark answer must also show why his views mattered and how they evolved.
The key is to grasp that Elwin's early plea for tribal freedom was a plea for protection from exploitative outside contact, later softened into a more integrationist stance. Present both phases rather than caricaturing him as a permanent isolationist.
How to approach it
Open by placing Elwin as a British-born anthropologist and administrator who lived among the Baiga and Gond and became the foremost advocate of tribal welfare. State his central concern — that unregulated contact with plains society brought land alienation, debt, disease and cultural loss.
Then present his prescription: a measure of autonomy allowing tribes to develop at their own pace. Note the "National Park" phrase associated with his early view, the critique it drew from G. S. Ghurye, and Elwin's later revision. Our note on tribes, integration and autonomy develops this debate.
Model answer
Verrier Elwin, an anthropologist who spent decades among the Baiga, Gond and the tribes of the North-East, became the most influential voice for tribal freedom in twentieth-century India. His views arose from close fieldwork and a conviction that tribal societies possessed a coherent, dignified way of life that reckless contact with mainstream society was destroying.
In his early phase Elwin argued that tribes needed to be shielded from exploitation by moneylenders, traders, landlords and missionaries. Contact, he observed, brought land alienation, indebtedness, alcoholism, disease and the erosion of tribal art and religion. He therefore favoured a policy of protective isolation, giving tribes freedom to preserve their culture and evolve at their own pace within demarcated areas. Critics compressed this into the charge that he wished to keep tribes as museum specimens in a "National Park".
G. S. Ghurye led the attack, describing tribes as "backward Hindus" already integrated into the wider civilisation and warning that isolation would perpetuate backwardness and separatism. Under this criticism, and with the responsibilities of shaping policy in independent India, Elwin's position matured. He came to accept that isolation was neither possible nor desirable and that some development and contact were inevitable.
His revised view, reflected in his work on the North-East Frontier Agency, was one of controlled, sympathetic integration. Tribes should be helped to develop but along the lines of their own genius, without being overwhelmed. This thinking fed directly into Jawaharlal Nehru's tribal Panchsheel, which insisted that tribes should advance according to their own traditions, that their rights in land and forest be respected, and that they be neither isolated nor forcibly assimilated.
Thus Elwin's notion of freedom shifted from protective isolation to autonomy within integration. Freedom meant not abandonment to market forces, nor forcible absorption, but the right of tribes to change on their own terms with the state as guardian rather than exploiter.
Examiner's perspective
At 10 marks the examiner rewards a candidate who shows that Elwin's views changed. A script that presents only the isolationist "National Park" caricature misses the analytical core; the strongest answers trace the movement from protective isolation to integration on tribal terms.
Anchoring the answer in the Ghurye-Elwin debate and linking it to the Nehruvian Panchsheel demonstrates command of the syllabus. Precise attribution, British spelling and a clear two-phase structure secure the higher band within the tight word count.