07-31-2008, 03:42 AM
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/31/stories/...850900.htm
<b>
Kosambi and the discourse of civilization</b>
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
The polymathâs most enduring and wide-ranging contribution to the interpretation of Indian history was his approach to the idea of India as a civilization.
â Photo courtesy: Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Chairman, ICHR
D.D. Kosambi ⦠remembered today chiefly for his work as a historian.
D.D. Kosambi (1907-1966) was a polymath who made original contributions in diverse areas including pure mathematics, quantitative numismatics, Sanskrit studies, and ancient Indian history. But he is remembered today chiefly for his work as a historian. That is not without reason. That is where he made an enduring impact even if some details of his findings and observations may be open to question in the light of later research. If we try to situate his contribution to the interpretation of history, the most enduring and wide-ranging in significance appears to be his approach to the idea of India as a civilization.
When he wrote in 1965 his last major work, The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India, he gave a central place to the notion of civilization. He began with the question: what unifies Indian civilization amidst cultural diversities within? He goes on to ask: what explains âthe continuity we find in India over the last three thousand yearsâ? He underlines the importance of the âmaterial foundation for Indian culture and civilizationâ and, in the concluding chapter, explores the reason why, in his judgment, the ancient civilization was destined to stagnate.
In posing such wide-ranging questions about the civilization in India, Kosambi differed from the general run of academic historians of his times for they rarely engaged in the discourse of civilizations. He was swimming against the current. The specialised and fragmented view in the academic historiansâ professional writings did not usually add up to that vision of totality that the notion of civilization demands. The fact that Kosambi was never given his due by them in his lifetime can be, arguably, ascribed to their disdain for a non-professional who was not only an avowed Marxist, but also given to talking about a dubious entity called âcivilization.â
On the other hand, when Kosambi talked about the Indian civilization, he entered a discourse of civilization that was developed by some of the most creative minds of twentieth century India, including Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The questions that engaged such minds were roughly the same as those Kosambi grappled with. What kept India together as a civilization through the millennia? Was it a Hindu civilization, as some would have us believe? Is it possible to discern a continuity in this civilization from the prehistoric to colonial times? How does a notion of an âIndian civilizationâ accommodate the immense diversities in the constituent communities and cultures? Is it necessary, even if it were possible, to talk of an âIndian civilizationâ? How did Kosambiâs intervention relate with the nationalist discourse of civilization?
It is interesting to recall that about two years after the birth of Kosambi (July 31, 1907), M. K. Gandhi, not yet the Mahatma, published his very first political tract, Hind Swaraj (1909). It was an unusual political tract in that it was mainly about Indiaâs civilization. âIt is my deliberate opinion that India is being ground down not under the English heels, but under that of modern civilizationâ (chapter VII). In a chapter entitled âWhat is civilizationâ Gandhi poses a choice between what he considered to be true Indian civilization and the âmaterialisticâ civilization of Europe, for that choice would determine the outcome of the clash between the two. Gandhi virtually subordinates the political agenda before India to the cultural agenda and goes so far as to say our goal was not the expulsion of the English: âWe can accommodate them. Only there is no room for their civilizationâ (chapter XIV).
Gandhiâs denunciation of Europe and idealisation of the non-materialistic tradition in India was, of course, distant from Kosambiâs emphasis on the material basis of Indiaâs attainment of a high level of civilization. On the other hand, consider the fact that throughout the text of Hind Swaraj Gandhi never talks of a Hindu civilization. He talks of an Indian civilization. And the seminal notion of syncretism as the key to comprehending Indian civilization is already there in this very first piece of political statement by Mahatma Gandhi. He speaks of Indiaâs âfaculty of assimilation.â
Between this approach and Kosambiâs there are close parallels. Kosambi begins his treatise on The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India with the statement that India displays âdiversity and unity at the same time.â And he deploys the notion of syncretism in Indian civilization in explicating the absorption of peripheral tribal groups into the mainstream, âtheir merger into general agrarian society,â in terms of the accommodation of their religious belief systems within the Brahmanic scheme of things. He saw a âprocess of syncretismâ in the absorption of âprimitive deities,â a âmechanism of acculturation, a clear give and take,â which allowed âIndian society to be formed out of many diverse and even discordant elementsâ (chapter 7).
The idea of a syncretism in the construal of Indiaâs civilizational unity was of crucial importance in the nationalist discourse. The absence of the European concept of nationhood in the pre-colonial past, despite the substantial evidence of the existence of an indigenous notion of patriotism at the regional and sometimes also at the supra-regional level, was undeniable. The intellectual response to this perception was the idea of Indiaâs civilizational unity, cutting across and over-riding all diversities.
Shortly before Gandhi wrote famously of India as a civilization, Rabindranath Tagore articulated the idea of syncretism in some less-known essays. âWe can see that the aim of Bharatavarsha has always been to establish unity amidst differences, to bring diverse paths to a convergence, and to internalize within her soul the unity within severalty, that is to say to comprehend the inner unity of externally perceptible differences â without eliminating the uniqueness of each element.â Tagore wrote thus and much more in that vein in 1902 in an essay, âHistory of Bharatvarsha,â which was reproduced many times during the Swadeshi agitation in Bengal from 1905. More prominent in the public mind were of course the pronouncements of the nationalist leadership.
While Kosambi shared this perception, while he underlined the unity within apparent diversity, he went on to make a point that was not often made in the nationalist discourse of civilization. âThe modern Indian village gives an unspeakable impression of the grimmest poverty and helplessness,â he writes in 1965 in the book cited earlier (chapter 1). âThe surplus taken away from people who live in such misery and degradation nevertheless provided and still provides the material foundation for Indian culture and civilization.â This evaluation was a radical departure from the oft-heard paeans of praise of the civilization.
Another new note struck by Kosambi was that stability of a civilizational unity was secured at the cost of stagnation and subjection to a regime of superstition and primitiveness. In this regard he follows Marxâs tendency of thought and at one point he even quoted Marx on âthe idiocyâ of rural existence. Kosambi argues that syncretism allowed the admission of many a âprimitive local god or goddessâ and religious beliefs into the ancient Brahmanic system, along with the merger of different social groups with their own belief-systems and cultures. But he adds: âBrahmanism thus gave some unity to what would have been social fragments without a common bond. The process was of crucial importance in the history of India, first in developing the country from tribe to society and then holding it back, bogged down in the filthy swamp of superstition.â
His notion of the âprimitiveâ and the implicit idea of progression to âhigherâ stages may be open to question today. In fact that approach is not so pronounced in his earlier essays on this theme, for example Myth and Reality (1962). However, the point for the present is that, contrary to the usual nationalist position with regard to the virtues of syncretism, he was critical of the consequences in terms of the obscurantism that enveloped the Indian mind.
The most famous exposition of the theme of the unifying Indian civilization in Kosambiâs lifetime was Jawaharlal Nehruâs Discovery of India (1946). Nehru commences with the question, âwhat is this India, apart from her physical and geographical aspects?â (p.36) He goes on to hazard a bold generalisation: in Indiaâs past âdisruptive tendencies gave rise immediately to attempts to find a synthesis. Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization.â He returns to this theme through the entire work time and again. He ends the book with reflections on the same question: India is âa cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threadsâ¦She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasiveâ (p. 378).
The idea that India was held together by bonds of unity rooted in the past of Indian civilization was not of course new. What was new was its assertion at a time when that unity was threatened by a communal divide that was soon to bring about the Partition of 1947. In the face of the threat, Nehru speaks of a dream of Indian unity. In early 20th century that unity appeared as an undeniable reality to Gandhi or Tagore; to Nehru in 1946 it was a dream, although it was in some ways also a reality. To Kosambi that unity possibly appeared as an enduring fact of history.
But when Kosambi reviewed this book, in Science and Society, he did not comment upon this aspect of it. Actually he found Nehru to be a poor historian so far as ancient India was concerned; he added however that he was âan admirer of the authorâ and he could see how difficult it was for Nehru, sitting in jail, to get the sources he needed. His critique was directed mainly against Nehruâs failure to attempt class analysis in understanding modern developments in India (Exasperating Essays, 1957). In this regard Kosambi was consistent in that he made class analysis the basis of his analysis of changes and continuities in Indian civilization when he turned to that theme in 1965.
That raises finally another question. What explanatory weight is to be assigned to Kosambiâs Marxian method in our effort to understand and contextualise his approach to the civilizational discourse? In a letter to his old friend Daniel Ingalls, an Indologist at Harvard, he wrote in 1953: âThe world is divided into three groups: (1) swearing by Marxism, (2) swearing at Marxism, (3) indifferent, i.e. just swearingâ¦I belong to (1), you and your colleagues to (2).â Perhaps Kosambiâs adherence to Marxism was to its use as a method, not as a source on par with empirical sources of knowledge.
He allowed that in some respects there was a poor fit between Indian history and the classical Marxian scheme. But he consistently used Marxâs method as a tool. Hence his scorn for âtheologicalâ tendencies in Marxism. In his Introduction to Exasperating Essays he writes: âIndian Official Marxists hereafter called OMâ were often displeased with him but he could not but protest their âtheological emphasis on the inviolable sanctity of the current party line, or irrelevant quotations from the classics.â In using Marxist method in his own lights, in his effort to construe the civilization in India, in the convergences and divergences between his approach and the nationalist discourse of civilization, D.D. Kosambi has left much for us to try and understand and evaluate.
(Dr. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya is Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research and a former Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. This article is based on his Kosambi Birth Centenary Address at the University of Mumbai.)
<b>
Kosambi and the discourse of civilization</b>
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
The polymathâs most enduring and wide-ranging contribution to the interpretation of Indian history was his approach to the idea of India as a civilization.
â Photo courtesy: Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Chairman, ICHR
D.D. Kosambi ⦠remembered today chiefly for his work as a historian.
D.D. Kosambi (1907-1966) was a polymath who made original contributions in diverse areas including pure mathematics, quantitative numismatics, Sanskrit studies, and ancient Indian history. But he is remembered today chiefly for his work as a historian. That is not without reason. That is where he made an enduring impact even if some details of his findings and observations may be open to question in the light of later research. If we try to situate his contribution to the interpretation of history, the most enduring and wide-ranging in significance appears to be his approach to the idea of India as a civilization.
When he wrote in 1965 his last major work, The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India, he gave a central place to the notion of civilization. He began with the question: what unifies Indian civilization amidst cultural diversities within? He goes on to ask: what explains âthe continuity we find in India over the last three thousand yearsâ? He underlines the importance of the âmaterial foundation for Indian culture and civilizationâ and, in the concluding chapter, explores the reason why, in his judgment, the ancient civilization was destined to stagnate.
In posing such wide-ranging questions about the civilization in India, Kosambi differed from the general run of academic historians of his times for they rarely engaged in the discourse of civilizations. He was swimming against the current. The specialised and fragmented view in the academic historiansâ professional writings did not usually add up to that vision of totality that the notion of civilization demands. The fact that Kosambi was never given his due by them in his lifetime can be, arguably, ascribed to their disdain for a non-professional who was not only an avowed Marxist, but also given to talking about a dubious entity called âcivilization.â
On the other hand, when Kosambi talked about the Indian civilization, he entered a discourse of civilization that was developed by some of the most creative minds of twentieth century India, including Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The questions that engaged such minds were roughly the same as those Kosambi grappled with. What kept India together as a civilization through the millennia? Was it a Hindu civilization, as some would have us believe? Is it possible to discern a continuity in this civilization from the prehistoric to colonial times? How does a notion of an âIndian civilizationâ accommodate the immense diversities in the constituent communities and cultures? Is it necessary, even if it were possible, to talk of an âIndian civilizationâ? How did Kosambiâs intervention relate with the nationalist discourse of civilization?
It is interesting to recall that about two years after the birth of Kosambi (July 31, 1907), M. K. Gandhi, not yet the Mahatma, published his very first political tract, Hind Swaraj (1909). It was an unusual political tract in that it was mainly about Indiaâs civilization. âIt is my deliberate opinion that India is being ground down not under the English heels, but under that of modern civilizationâ (chapter VII). In a chapter entitled âWhat is civilizationâ Gandhi poses a choice between what he considered to be true Indian civilization and the âmaterialisticâ civilization of Europe, for that choice would determine the outcome of the clash between the two. Gandhi virtually subordinates the political agenda before India to the cultural agenda and goes so far as to say our goal was not the expulsion of the English: âWe can accommodate them. Only there is no room for their civilizationâ (chapter XIV).
Gandhiâs denunciation of Europe and idealisation of the non-materialistic tradition in India was, of course, distant from Kosambiâs emphasis on the material basis of Indiaâs attainment of a high level of civilization. On the other hand, consider the fact that throughout the text of Hind Swaraj Gandhi never talks of a Hindu civilization. He talks of an Indian civilization. And the seminal notion of syncretism as the key to comprehending Indian civilization is already there in this very first piece of political statement by Mahatma Gandhi. He speaks of Indiaâs âfaculty of assimilation.â
Between this approach and Kosambiâs there are close parallels. Kosambi begins his treatise on The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India with the statement that India displays âdiversity and unity at the same time.â And he deploys the notion of syncretism in Indian civilization in explicating the absorption of peripheral tribal groups into the mainstream, âtheir merger into general agrarian society,â in terms of the accommodation of their religious belief systems within the Brahmanic scheme of things. He saw a âprocess of syncretismâ in the absorption of âprimitive deities,â a âmechanism of acculturation, a clear give and take,â which allowed âIndian society to be formed out of many diverse and even discordant elementsâ (chapter 7).
The idea of a syncretism in the construal of Indiaâs civilizational unity was of crucial importance in the nationalist discourse. The absence of the European concept of nationhood in the pre-colonial past, despite the substantial evidence of the existence of an indigenous notion of patriotism at the regional and sometimes also at the supra-regional level, was undeniable. The intellectual response to this perception was the idea of Indiaâs civilizational unity, cutting across and over-riding all diversities.
Shortly before Gandhi wrote famously of India as a civilization, Rabindranath Tagore articulated the idea of syncretism in some less-known essays. âWe can see that the aim of Bharatavarsha has always been to establish unity amidst differences, to bring diverse paths to a convergence, and to internalize within her soul the unity within severalty, that is to say to comprehend the inner unity of externally perceptible differences â without eliminating the uniqueness of each element.â Tagore wrote thus and much more in that vein in 1902 in an essay, âHistory of Bharatvarsha,â which was reproduced many times during the Swadeshi agitation in Bengal from 1905. More prominent in the public mind were of course the pronouncements of the nationalist leadership.
While Kosambi shared this perception, while he underlined the unity within apparent diversity, he went on to make a point that was not often made in the nationalist discourse of civilization. âThe modern Indian village gives an unspeakable impression of the grimmest poverty and helplessness,â he writes in 1965 in the book cited earlier (chapter 1). âThe surplus taken away from people who live in such misery and degradation nevertheless provided and still provides the material foundation for Indian culture and civilization.â This evaluation was a radical departure from the oft-heard paeans of praise of the civilization.
Another new note struck by Kosambi was that stability of a civilizational unity was secured at the cost of stagnation and subjection to a regime of superstition and primitiveness. In this regard he follows Marxâs tendency of thought and at one point he even quoted Marx on âthe idiocyâ of rural existence. Kosambi argues that syncretism allowed the admission of many a âprimitive local god or goddessâ and religious beliefs into the ancient Brahmanic system, along with the merger of different social groups with their own belief-systems and cultures. But he adds: âBrahmanism thus gave some unity to what would have been social fragments without a common bond. The process was of crucial importance in the history of India, first in developing the country from tribe to society and then holding it back, bogged down in the filthy swamp of superstition.â
His notion of the âprimitiveâ and the implicit idea of progression to âhigherâ stages may be open to question today. In fact that approach is not so pronounced in his earlier essays on this theme, for example Myth and Reality (1962). However, the point for the present is that, contrary to the usual nationalist position with regard to the virtues of syncretism, he was critical of the consequences in terms of the obscurantism that enveloped the Indian mind.
The most famous exposition of the theme of the unifying Indian civilization in Kosambiâs lifetime was Jawaharlal Nehruâs Discovery of India (1946). Nehru commences with the question, âwhat is this India, apart from her physical and geographical aspects?â (p.36) He goes on to hazard a bold generalisation: in Indiaâs past âdisruptive tendencies gave rise immediately to attempts to find a synthesis. Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization.â He returns to this theme through the entire work time and again. He ends the book with reflections on the same question: India is âa cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threadsâ¦She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasiveâ (p. 378).
The idea that India was held together by bonds of unity rooted in the past of Indian civilization was not of course new. What was new was its assertion at a time when that unity was threatened by a communal divide that was soon to bring about the Partition of 1947. In the face of the threat, Nehru speaks of a dream of Indian unity. In early 20th century that unity appeared as an undeniable reality to Gandhi or Tagore; to Nehru in 1946 it was a dream, although it was in some ways also a reality. To Kosambi that unity possibly appeared as an enduring fact of history.
But when Kosambi reviewed this book, in Science and Society, he did not comment upon this aspect of it. Actually he found Nehru to be a poor historian so far as ancient India was concerned; he added however that he was âan admirer of the authorâ and he could see how difficult it was for Nehru, sitting in jail, to get the sources he needed. His critique was directed mainly against Nehruâs failure to attempt class analysis in understanding modern developments in India (Exasperating Essays, 1957). In this regard Kosambi was consistent in that he made class analysis the basis of his analysis of changes and continuities in Indian civilization when he turned to that theme in 1965.
That raises finally another question. What explanatory weight is to be assigned to Kosambiâs Marxian method in our effort to understand and contextualise his approach to the civilizational discourse? In a letter to his old friend Daniel Ingalls, an Indologist at Harvard, he wrote in 1953: âThe world is divided into three groups: (1) swearing by Marxism, (2) swearing at Marxism, (3) indifferent, i.e. just swearingâ¦I belong to (1), you and your colleagues to (2).â Perhaps Kosambiâs adherence to Marxism was to its use as a method, not as a source on par with empirical sources of knowledge.
He allowed that in some respects there was a poor fit between Indian history and the classical Marxian scheme. But he consistently used Marxâs method as a tool. Hence his scorn for âtheologicalâ tendencies in Marxism. In his Introduction to Exasperating Essays he writes: âIndian Official Marxists hereafter called OMâ were often displeased with him but he could not but protest their âtheological emphasis on the inviolable sanctity of the current party line, or irrelevant quotations from the classics.â In using Marxist method in his own lights, in his effort to construe the civilization in India, in the convergences and divergences between his approach and the nationalist discourse of civilization, D.D. Kosambi has left much for us to try and understand and evaluate.
(Dr. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya is Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research and a former Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. This article is based on his Kosambi Birth Centenary Address at the University of Mumbai.)