"The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Vol. 4" is the final volume of a comprehensive study of the various tribes and castes that inhabited the central provinces of India during the colonial period. The book was written by R.V. Russell, a British civil servant and ethnographer. Volume 4 of the book focuses on the religious practices of the various tribes and castes of the region. Russell notes that religion played a central role in the lives of people in the region and had a profound impact on their social and cultural practices. He describes how the arrival of Islam and Christianity in India led to the emergence of new religious practices and syncretic beliefs. Russell also discusses the role of religion in politics and society, noting how religious identities often intersected with caste identities and influenced political allegiances. He notes that religion was often used as a tool for social and political control, particularly by the British colonial administration. Overall, "The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Vol. 4" provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of the religious practices and beliefs of the various tribes and castes of the region during the colonial period. Russell's meticulous research and detailed descriptions of religious practices continue to be studied and referenced by scholars today.
R. V. Russell was a British civil servant who lived from August 8, 1873, to December 30, 1915. He was best known for his job as Superintendent of Ethnography for what was then the Central Provinces of British India, where he oversaw the production of books about the people who lived there. During the 1901 Census of India, Russell was in charge of how the census was done. Charles Robert Tilden Russell, Russell's father, was an officer in the Royal Navy. He went to Winchester College for schooling and then to Trinity College in Cambridge. In 1893, he joined the Indian Civil Service Russell put together The Castes and Tribes of the Central Provinces with the help of an amateur archaeologist named Rai Bahadur Hira Lal. It was similar to his other works of the same type, but it was different in that it relied more on Vedic literature than on the anthropometric methods and theories of Herbert Hope Risley and his supporters to find out where caste comes from in terms of race. Russell died on December 30, 1915, when the SS Persia was hit by a torpedo and sank off the coast of Crete.
