In one of his book (vol 5) there is a lecture on Bharatiya Chitta, Manas and Kala (i think he means Kaal though he spells kala) which is amazing. It wouldnt be fair if i were to quote parts of it but just to give some idea (not that this is the best part) ..
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->We have to find some way out of such a state of rootlessness. We have to somehow find an anchor again in our civilisational con-sciousness, in our innate chitta and kala. Some four or five years ago, the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust had organised an interna-tional gathering of scholars to deliberate on the fundamental questions of Indian identity. In that gatheringâit is reportedâa European scholar had suggested that the only way out for India was in her taking to Christianity in a big way.
This, of course, is not an entirely new thought. For at least the last two hundred years, the Christianisation of India has been seriously thought of as an option for taking India out of what had seemed to many, especially in Britain, as the morass of her civilisational memory; giving her a more easily understand-able identity. There have also been large scale governmental efforts to help in this direction. And the so-called Westernisa-tion of India, which even the governments of independent India have been pursuing with such seeming vigour, is not very differ-ent from Indiaâs Christianisation.
If all these efforts had led to a thoroughgoing Westernisation of the Indian mind so that the people of India on their own could start associating themselves with the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries of the West, then that perhaps would have been some sort of a solution of Indiaâs problems. If that change of Indian civilisational consciousness had taken place, then the ordinary Indian today would think and behave more or less like the ordinary man of Europe and America, and his priorities and seekings would have become similar.
Indians would then have also lost the peculiarly Indian belief, which even the most ordinary of the ordinary Indians harbours in his heart: that he is a part of the ultimate Brahman, and by virtue of this relationship with Brahman, he too is completely free and sovereign in himself. In place of this feeling of free-dom and sovereignty, that so exasperates those who seek to admin-ister or reform India, the Indian too would have then acquired the Western manâs innate sense of total subordination to the prevailing system, a subordination of the mind that man in the West has always displayed irrespective of whatever the system was in any particular Western phase: whether a despotic feudal oligarchy, a slave society like that of ancient Greece and Rome, a society of laissez faire, or of Marxist communism, or the currently ascendant society of market forces.
Notwithstanding the prosperity and affluence that the West has gained during the last forty or fifty years, the innate con-sciousness of the Western man seems to have remained one of total subordination to the given system. At the level of the mind, he is still very much the slave of the imaginary Republic of Plato, and the very real empire of Rome. The consciousness of the Indian people would have also been moulded into the same state of subor-dination as that of the Western man, if the attempts of the last two hundred years to Westernise or Christianise India had reached anywhere. And, even such slavery of the mind might have been a way out of the present Indian drift.
But perhaps such simple solutions to civilisational problems are well nigh impossible. It does not seem to be given to man to completely erase his civilisational consciousness and establish a new universe of the mind. Not even conquerors are able to so metamorphose the mind of the conquered. The only way such meta-morphosis can be achieved is by completely destroying the conquered civilisation, eliminating every single individual, and starting afresh with an imported population. This is what oc-curred, more or less, in the Americas and Australia. India has so far been saved this denouement at the hands of Europe, though not for any lack of trying.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
He ends the lecture with this..
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Once we seriously get down to the task, it may not turn out to be too difficult to find a new direction for the Indian civilisa-tion. To redefine our seekings and aspirations, our ways of thought and action, in a form that is appropriate and effective in todayâs world may not be too hard a task after all. Such re-assertions and re-definitions of civilisational thrust are not uncommon in world history. For every civilisation, there comes a time when the people of that civilisation have to remind them-selves of their fundamental civilisational consciousness and their understanding of the universe and of Time. From the basis of that recollection of the past, they then define the path for their future. Many civilisations of the world have undergone such self-appraisal and self-renewal at different times. In our long history, many times we must have engaged in this recollection and re-assertion of the chitta and kala of India. We need to undertake such an exploration into ourselves once again.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-rajesh_g+Dec 24 2005, 10:19 AM-->QUOTE(rajesh_g @ Dec 24 2005, 10:19 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-kautilya+Dec 23 2005, 09:11 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(kautilya @ Dec 23 2005, 09:11 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Is there some place where the books by dharampal can be bought?
[right][snapback]43713[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Kautilya,
Welcome back. Please check..
http://multiversitylibrary.com/rules.jsp?a...tring=Dharampal
[right][snapback]43718[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hi Rajesh_g
Thanks a lot!. I was able to download the books from that link. This is a great service that they are providing. I will reading these books over the holidays.
From foreward by JP. Interesting contrast.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I should like, as a sort of a footnote (this is not the appro¬priate place for elaboration) to the old debate, to emphasise that the question involved is not only that of decentralisation. As I look at it, there are two entirely different concepts of society involved here. Even though not clearly expressed, this is implic¬it throughout Gandhijiâs discussion on the subject. One concept is that put forward by Dr Ambedkar, and accepted as the basis of the Constitution: namely, the atomised and inorganic view of society. It is this view that governs political theory and practice in the West today. The most important reason for this is that Western society itself has become, as a result of a certain form of industrialisation and economic order, an atomised mass society. Political theory and practice naturally reflect this state of affairs, and political democracy is reduced to the counting of heads. It is further natural in these circumstances for political partiesâbuilt around competing power-groupsâto be formed, leading to the establishment, not of government by peo¬ple, but of government by party: in other words, by one or another power-group.
The other is the organic or communitarian view, that puts man in his natural milieu as a responsible member of a responsible community. This view treats of man not as a particle of sand in an inorganic heap, but as a living cell in a larger organic entity. It is natural that in this view the emphasis should be laid more on âresponsibilityâ than on ârightâ, just as in the inorga¬nic view it is natural that it should be the opposite. When the individual lives in community with others, his rights flow from his responsibilities. It cannot be otherwise. That is why, in Gandhijiâs sociological thought, the emphasis is always laid upon responsibility.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->SHRI H.V. KAMATH (C.P. & BERAR: GENERAL)
...The other day Shrimati Vijayalakshmi while addressing the United Nations General Assembly in Paris observed with pride that we in India have borrowed from France their slogan of liberty, equality and fraternity; we have taken this from England and that from America, but she did not say what we had borrowed from our own past, from our political and historic past, from our long and chequered history of which we are so proud.
On one thing I join issue with Dr Ambedkar. He was pleased to refer to the villagesâI am quoting from a press report in the absence of the official copyâas âsinks of localism and dens of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalismâ; and he also laid at the door of a certain Metcalfe our âpathetic faithâ in village communities. I may say that is not owing to Metcalfe but owing to a far greater man who has liberated us in recent times, our Master and the Father of our nation, that this love of ours for the villages has grown, our faith in the village republics and our rural communities has grown and we have cherished it with all our heart. It is due to Mahatma Gandhi...that we have come to love our village folk. With all deference to Dr Ambedkar, I differ from him in this regard. His attitude yesterday was typi¬cal of the urban highbrow; and if that is going to be our atti¬tude towards the village folk, I can only say, âGod save us.â If we do not cultivate sympathy and love and affection for our village and rural folk I do not see how we can uplift our coun¬try. Mahatma Gandhi taught us in almost the last mantra that he gave in the best days of his life to strive for panchayat raj. If Dr Ambedkar cannot see his way to accept this, I do not see what remedy or panacea he has got for uplifting our villages. In my own province of C.P. and Berar we have recently launched upon a scheme of Janapadas, of local self-government and decentralisa¬tion; and that is entirely in consonance with the teachings of our Master. I hope that scheme will come to fruition and be an example to the rest of the country. It was with considerable pain that I heard Dr Ambedkar refer to our villages in that fashion, with dislike, if not with contempt. Perhaps the fault lies with the composition of the Drafting Committee, among the members of which no one, with the sole exception of Sriyut Munshi, has taken any active part in the struggle for the countryâs freedom. None of them is therefore capable of entering into the spirit of our struggle, the spirit that animated us; they cannot comprehend with their heartsâI am not talking of the head it is compara¬tively easy to understand with the headâthe turmoiled birth of our nation after years of travail and tribulation. That is why the tone of Dr Ambedkarâs speech yesterday with regard to our poorest, the lowliest and the lost was what it was. I am sorry he relied on Metcalfe only. Other historians and research scholars have also given us precious information in this regard. I do not know if he has read a book called âIndian Polityâ by Dr Jayaswal; I do not know if he has read another book by a greater man, âThe Spirit and Form of Indian Polityâ by Sri Aurobindo. From these books we learn, how our polity in ancient times was securely built on village communities which were autonomous and self-contained; and that is why our civilisation has survived through all these ages. If we lost sight of the strength of our polity we lost sight of everything. I will read to the House a brief de¬scription of what our polity was and what its strength was:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->At the height of its evolution and in the great days of Indian civilisation we find an admirable political system, efficient in the highest degree and very perfectly combining village and urban self-government with stability and order. The State carried on its workâadministrative, judicial, financial and protectiveâwithout destroying or encroaching on the rights and free activities of the people and its constituent bodies in the same department. The royal courts in capital and country were the supreme judicial authority co-ordinating the administration of justice throughout the kingdom.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is so far as village republics are concerned. I believe the day is not far distant when not merely India but the whole world, if it wants peace and security and prosperity and happiness, will have to decentralise and establish village republics and town republics, and on the basis of this they will have to build their State; otherwise the world is in for hard times...
Now what is a State for? The utility of a State has to be judged from its effect on the common manâs welfare. The ultimate con¬flict that has to be resolved is this: whether the individual is for the State or the State for the individual. Mahatma Gandhi tried in his life time to strike a happy balance, to reconcile this dwandwa ( ) and arrived at the conception of the Panchayat Raj. I hope that we in India will go forward and try to make the State exist for the individual rather than the individual for the State. This is what we must aim at and that is what we must bring about in our own country.
...While supporting the motion I would like to make it clear to you that I do not have at present the enthusiasm with which such a motion should be supported.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->SHRI MAHAVIR TYAGI (U. P. GENERAL)
...Then, a word about the villages. Dr Ambedkar said that he was happy that the âDrafting Committee has not accommodated the village.â He characterised it as âa sink of localism and a den of communalismâ. It is these sinks of slavery that were facing all sorts of repression in the freedom struggle. When these sinks of slavery that were being charred, burnt and tortured in Chimoor, the pyramids of freedom were applying grease on the back of the Britishers. Unless I raise my voice against the remarks which Dr Ambedkar has made against villages, I cannot face my village people. Dr Ambedkar does not know what amount of sacrifice the villagers have undergone in the struggle for freedom. I submit that villagers should be given their due share in the governance of the country. If they are not given their due share, I submit that they are bound to react to this...
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Friends,
I do not know whether list members are aware that Dharampalji, the author of
"The Beautiful Tree" and "Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth
Century", among other works, passed away about a week ago, after a brief
coma. No English newspaper, to my knowledge, carried the news. I will revert
once I have more details.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Shri Dharampal passed away</b>
Shri Dharampal, the author of "The Beautiful Tree" and "Indian Science
and Technology in the Eighteenth Century", among other seminal works,
passed away on 24th October at Sevagram (Gandhi's ashram) near Wardha
(Maharashtra). The cremation was held at Sevagram on the 26th.
His books are based on British documents of surveys conducted in
India. He excelled at dispelling colonial myths about India and at
bringing out the real strengths, achievements and working of the
Indian society. His complete works were published a few years ago by
Other India Press, Goa, in six volumes.
"Today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or hundred years ago."
- Gandhiji at the Royal Institute of International Affairs , London, Oct 1931
"The British would like us to believe that it [India] was very, very
backward, but their own records show that this was far from the case."
- Makarand Paranjape, Professor of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University
A collection of online articles on Shri Dharampal, his work and books
is available at:
http://www.eshiusa.org/TheBeautifulTreeArticles.htm.
For more information about Shri Dharampal and his seminal work, please
contact Center for Indian Knowledge System ( http://www.ciks.org),
Samanvaya ( http://www.samanvaya.com/) or Sevagram, Wardha.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->From a review of Dharam Pal's works.
<b>Not many know the Indian past he had discovered!</b>
Thursday November 16 2006 09:31 IST
S Gurumurthy
"What is it that keeps the country down", asked the speaker. A young man in the audience replied unhesitatingly: "Undoubtedly the institution of caste that kept the majority low castes and the society backward" and added "it continues".
The speaker replied, "May be". But, pausing for a moment, he added, "May not be". Shocked, the young man angrily asked him to explain his "may-not-be" theory.
The speaker calmly mentioned just one fact that clinched the debate. He said, "Before the British rule in India, over two-thirds - yes, two-thirds - of the Indian kings belonged to what is today known as the Other Backward Castes (OBCs).
"It is the British," he said, "who robbed the OBCs - the ruling class running all socio-economic institutions - of their power, wealth and status." So it was not the upper caste which usurped the OBCs of their due position in the society?
The speaker's assertion that it was not so was founded on his study - unbelievably painstaking study for years and decades in the archives in India, England and Germany. He could not be maligned as a 'saffron' ideologue and what he said could not be dismissed thus. He was Dharampal, a Gandhian in ceaseless search of truth like his preceptor Gandhi himself was, but a Gandhian with a difference. He ran no ashram on state aid to do 'Gandhigiri'.
Admitting that "he and those like him do not know much about our own society", the young man who questioned Dharampal - Banwari is his name - became his student. By meticulous research of the British sources over decades, Dharampal demolished the myth that India was backward educationally or economically when the British entered. Citing the Christian missionary William Adam's report on indigenous education in Bengal and Bihar in 1835 and 1838, Dharampal established that at that time there were 100,000 schools in Bengal, one school for about 500 boys; that the indigenous medical system that included inoculation against small-pox.
He also proved by reference to other materials that Adam's record was 'no legend'. He relied on Sir Thomas Munroe's report to the Governor at about the same time to prove similar statistics about schools in Madras. He also found that the education system in the Punjab during the Maharaja Ranjit Singh's rule was equally extensive. He estimated that the literary rate in India before the British was higher than that in England.
Citing British public records he established, on the contrary, that 'British had no tradition of education or scholarship or philosophy from 16th to early 18th century, despite Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Newton, etc'. Till then education and scholarship in the UK was limited to select elite. He cited Alexander Walker's Note on Indian education to assert that it was the monitorial system of education borrowed from India that helped Britain to improve, in later years, school attendance which was just 40, 000, yes just that, in 1792. He then compared the educated people's levels in India and England around 1800. The population of Madras Presidency then was 125 lakhs and that of England in 1811 was 95 lakhs. Dharampal found that during 1822-25 the number of those in ordinary schools in Madras Presidency was around 1.5 lakhs and this was after great decay under a century of British intervention.
As against this, the number attending schools in England was half - yes just half - of Madras Presidency's, namely a mere 75,000. And here to with more than half of it attending only Sunday schools for 2-3 hours! Dharampal also established that in Britain 'elementary system of education at people's level remained unknown commodity' till about 1800! Again he exploded the popularly held belief that most of those attending schools must have belonged to the upper castes particularly Brahmins and, again with reference to the British records, proved that the truth was the other way round.
During 1822-25 the share of the Brahmin students in the indigenous schools in Tamil-speaking areas accounted for 13 per cent in South Arcot to some 23 per cent in Madras while the backward castes accounted for 70 per cent in Salem and Tirunelveli and 84 per cent in South Arcot.
The situation was almost similar in Malayalam, Oriya and Kannada-speaking areas, with the backward castes dominating the schools in absolute numbers. Only in the Telugu-speaking areas the share of the Brahmins was higher and varied from 24 to 46 per cent. Dharampal's work proved Mahatma Gandhi's statement at Chatham House in London on October 20, 1931 that "India today is more illiterate than it was fifty or hundred years ago" completely right.
Not many know of Dharampal or of his work because they have still not heard of the Indian past he had discovered. After, long after, Dharampal had established that pre-British India was not backward a Harvard University Research in the year 2005 (India's Deindustrialisation in the 18th and 19th Centuries by David Clingingsmith and Jeffrey G Williamson) among others affirmed that "while India produced about 25 percent of world industrial output in 1750, this figure had fallen to only 2 percent by 1900." The Harvard University Economic Research also established that the Industrial employment in India also declined from about 30 to 8.5 per cent between 1809-13 and 1900, thus turning the Indian society backward.
PS: This great warrior who established the truth - the truth that was least known - that India was not backward when the British came, but became backward only after they came, is no more. He passed away two weeks ago on October 26, 2006, at Sevagram at Warda.
Comment: gurumurthy@epmltd.com
http://www.newindpress.com/column/News.asp...ate=&Sub=&Cat=&
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
forwarded email:
http://www.esamskriti.com/html/readers.htm Click on this link and get links to 5 books of Dharampal OR click below.
1. Indian Science and Technology in the 18th Century by Dharampal
http://www.vidyaonline.net/arvindgupta/dharampal1.zip
2. Civil Disobedience and Indian Society by Dharampal
http://www.vidyaonline.net/arvindgupta/dharampal2.zip
3. Panchayat Raj and India's Polity by Dharampal
http://www.vidyaonline.net/arvindgupta/dharampal4.zip
4. Essays on Tradition, Recovery & Freedom by Dharampal
http://www.vidyaonline.net/arvindgupta/dharampal5.zip
5. The Beautiful Tree by Dharampal
http://www.vidyaonline.net/arvindgupta/dharampal3.zip
--
Lots of new material has been added at http://www.dharampal.net
Look in
- Archival Compilations
- articles, speeches and interviews.
02-19-2007, 11:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-19-2007, 11:29 PM by Bharatvarsh.)
This guy is one of the few Gandhians I respect, the rest are all frauds of the likes of Nirmala Deshpande.
came via email..
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The website http://www.dharampal.net as an online repository of all the published and unpublished materials of Dharampalji was launched earlier this year to coincide with his birthday. Currently the website has been further enhanced with more archival compilations and also a photo album. With the current update all the unpublished archival compilations of Dharampalji compiled over a period of six years since 2000 (since when we have been involved with this efforts) have been made available online. These are all in different stages of compilation and perhaps about five of these are in a pre-publishing stage with just the Introduction alone to be written.
We will keep adding further features to the website and a few more of his published articles and books soon along with information on possible research projects and association.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
|
