Dharampal

Dharampal

Dharampal left with Rajiv Dixit.

Born 19 February 1922

Muzaffarnagar, Uttar

Pradesh,India

Died 24 October 2006 (aged 84)

Nationality India

Religion Hindu

Part of a series on

Hindu politics

Hinduism

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Dharampal (Hindi: ) (19222006), Gandhian

thinker,[1] historian and political philosopher[2] from India.

He authored The Beautiful Tree(1983), Indian Science and

Technology in the Eighteenth Century (1971) and Civil

Disobedience and Indian Tradition(1971), among other

seminal works, which have led to a radical reappraisal of

conventional views of the cultural, scientific and

technological achievements of Indian society at the eve of

the British conquest.[3]

Dharampal was born on 19 February 1922 in Kandhala, a

small town in the Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh,

and died on 24 October 2006 atSevagram (Mahatma

Gandhi's ashram), near Wardha, Maharashtra, which had

been his main abode since the early 1980s. He has been

associated in various ways with the regeneration of India's

diverse people and the restoration of their decentralised

social, political and economic organisation manifested through

their local communities.[4]

Involvement in the Freedom Movement Dharampal was

inspired by Mahatma Gandhi throughout his life; he received

his first glimpse of Gandhiji at the age of seven, when he

accompanied his father to attend the 1929 Lahore Congress.

In March 1931, when Sardar Bhagat Singh and his colleagues

were sentenced to death and executed by the British colonial

authorities, Dharampal recalls that many of his friends took to

the streets of Lahore, shouting slogans in protest. Yet

remaining critical of this rebellious assertion, and despite the

influence of his semi-westernized education at school and

college, he was drawn towards the movement led by Mahatma

Gandhi: soon he started wearing khadi, a practice he followed

all his life. Mahatma Gandhis call for Individual Satyagraha in

October 1940 marked the beginning of his involvement in

national politics and the subsequent abandonment of his BSc in Physics. In August 1942, he was

present as a fervent spectator at the Quit India session of the Congress in Bombay, whereupon he

joined the movement and was active as an under-ground member of the AICC group run by Sucheta

Concepts [show ]

Early figures [show ]

Political leaders [show ]

Political parties [show ]

Independent authors [show ]

Kriplani until his arrest in April 1943. After 2 months in police detention, he was released, but debarred

from Delhi. A year later in August 1944, being interested in village community work, he was introduced

to Mirabehn (the British born disciple of Mahatma Gandhi) and joined her soon after at the Kisan

Ashram, situated midway between Roorkee and Haridwar.

Contents [hide]

1 Engagement in national reconstruction, post 1947

2 Socio-Political Statements

3 Historical research into 18th and early 19th century Indian society

4 Other significant publications

5 Activities and influence in the public sphere

6 Legacy

7 Published Works

8 References

9 External links

Engagement in national reconstruction, post 1947 [edit]

At the time of Partition, he was put in charge of the Congress Socialist Party centre for the rehabilitation

of refugees from West Pakistan, and came in close contact with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and Ram

Manohar Lohia, as well as with numerous younger friends, such as L.C. Jain, in Delhi. He was also a

founding member of the Indian Cooperative Union set up in 1948. The following year he intended to visit

Israel for the purpose of studying its rural and community reconstruction programmes, but due to the

closure of the Suez Canal had to reschedule his route via England where he met and married Phyllis

who was English. On their way back to India by land, they stayed in Israel to study the communitarian

life-style in Degania Alif, the oldest kibbutz, set up by Russian Jews. In 1950, Dharampal resumed his

work with Mirabehn, and the community village of Bapugram near Rishikesh began to be formed.

However, disillusioned by the futility of this idealistic experiment in community development, which

seemed to have no impact on the Nehruvian mainstream, he left the village in 1954 to join his wife and

two small children in London where he spent three years, mostly working for Peace News, a journal

published by the War Resisters International, focusing on peace issues and nonviolent social change.

Dharampal returned to Delhi in late 1957 after a visit to several Buddhist and Hindu holy places in Sri

Lanka and South India. From 1958 to 1964 he was elected General Secretary of the Association of

Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development (AVARD), founded in 1958 by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya

who, a year later, passed on the couch of President to Jayaprakash Narayan(known as JP), with whom

Dharampal developed a very close relationship of mutual respect and appreciation.[5]

Socio-Political Statements [edit]

While at AVARD, Dharampal made regular contributions to the AVARD Newsletter, often taking to task

governmental planning and development projects. In 1962, he published a small monograph containing

the proceedings of the Indian Constituent Assembly relating to the discussion on the subject of

Panchayat Raj as the Basis of Indian Polity which highlighted the failure of the Constitution to

incorporate indigenous administrative and political structures. In November 1962, incensed by the

debacle of the Indo-Chinese war, Dharampal wrote an open letter to the members of the Lok Sabha

asking for Jawaharlal Nehru's resignation on moral grounds. For this act of protest, Dharampal (along

with two friends, Narendra Datta and Roop Narayan, who were co-signatories of the letter) was arrested

and imprisoned in Tihar jail. After some months, the three satyagrahis were released after Lal Bahadur

Shastri, the then Home-Minister, and JP had intervened. Towards the end of 1963, Dharampal was

appointed Director of Study and Research of the All India Panchayat Parishad and spent more than a

year in Tamil Nadu collecting historical material that was later published as The Madras Panchayat

System: A General Assessment (1971) in which not only the destruction of the indigenous panchayat-

based polity due to the colonial land revenue system, compounded with systematic political and

bureaucratic intervention, is underscored, but also its replacement in the 19th century by a colonial

bureaucratic apparatus which has continued even after Independence, more or less unchanged, despite

its debilitating influence.

Historical research into 18th and early 19th century Indian society [edit]

Convinced about the urgent need for an objective understanding about Indias past, before the

onslaught of colonial rule, Dharampal, from the mid-1960s, living in London for family reasons, decided

to embark on an exploration of British-Indian archival material, based on documents emanating from

commissioned surveys of the East India Company, lodged in various depositories spread over the British

Isles.[6] His pioneering historical research, conducted intensively over a decade, led to the publication of

works that have since become classics in the field of Indian studies.[7] The first book on Indian Science

and Technology in the Eighteenth Century (1971), containing detailed empirical data on sophisticated

Indian astronomy, medical science and practice, the technologies of iron and steel, of ice making, and

agricultural implements, created quite a stir in academic and political circles, and with subsequent

extensive research a new perspective on the development of Indian science and technology could have

emerged, if substantial institutional backing had been forthcoming. Dharampal's second book on Civil

Disobedience and Indian Tradition (1971) foregrounds the Indian roots of Gandhian satyagraha by

focusing on British administrative reports of a major protest against the imposition of a house-tax in

Varanasi and neighbouring regions which took place between 18101811. The documentation

exemplifies, firstly, how socio-political popular assertions, governed by deeply rooted conceptions of

justice, explicitly aiming to safeguard the interests of the governed, were simultaneously attempting to

redress the balance of power between the rulers and the ruled. Secondly, it underscores that colonial

intervention changed the hitherto practised "rules of the game" with regard to negotiating political

asymmetries of power. This was achieved, on the one hand, by illegalising such traditionally exercised

"trials of strength", and on the other, by redefining relationships between social groups. Consequently,

the starkly rigid asymmetry between colonial authority and the colonised became the hallmark of the

socio-political arena. Dharampal's third major work entitled The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian

Education in the Eighteenth Century (1983) provides evidence from extensive early British

administrators reports of the widespread prevalence of educational institutions in the Bengal and

Madras Presidencies as well as in the Punjab, teaching a sophisticated curriculum, with daily school

attendance by about 30% of children aged 615, where those belonging to communities who were

classed as Shudras or even lower constituted the majority of students, and in some areas, for instance

in Kerala, where Muslim girls were quite well represented.

The impressive picture of early colonial India that emerges from this pioneering historical research is

supplemented by an extensive collection of essays in which Dharampal stresses the need for further

investigation, firstly, into the sophisticated societal, economic, and cultural mechanisms that had

facilitated these accomplishments, and secondly, into understanding the processes by which these

institutions declined and gradually fell into oblivion, and thirdly, into how knowledge generated in India

had been appropriated, refined and integrated into early modern British and European scientific and

cultural institutions, and fourthly, a rigorous study of the mechanisms by which Indian society had been

shattered and cognitively colonised under the impact of British rule.

Other significant publications [edit]

An incisive understanding of the Indian cultural ethos, and the manner in which it differs from modern

conceptions, is presented in a slim volume in Hindi entitledBharatiya Chitta, Manas and Kala (1991,

English translation: 1993).

The British Origin of Cow-Slaughter in India (2002), besides providing historical evidence about

the genesis of mass cow-slaughter under British auspices, presents extensive documentary material

about one of the most significant resistance movements in India against kine-killing by the British during

the years 18801894. By highlighting the support given by some prominent Muslims during phases of

this mass protest as well as by emphasising the crucial fact that it was the British and not the Muslims

who were the main consumers of beef, Dharampal is able to dispel one of the deep-seated myths

perpetuated in the interest of reinforcing divisive colonial strategies.

Understanding Gandhi (2002) is a profoundly insightful portrayal of the unfolding of Mahatma

Gandhis genius in leading the Indian struggle for Swaraj.

A complete listing of his published works is compiled below.[8]

Activities and influence in the public sphere [edit]

Founder General Secretary of the Indian Cooperative Union (ICU) of which Smt. Kamladevi

Chattopadhyay was the Founder Chairperson; the ICU, established in the early 1950s by a group of

freedom fighters, played a vital role in the post-Independence period

At the behest of Jayaprakash Narayan, Dharampal was appointed a Fellow of the A. N. Sinha Institute,

Patna during 197273.

From the mid-1970s onwards Dharampal articulated his views most forcefully in public venues,

academic conferences and Indian national papers.

In the 1980s, Dharampals historical research and understanding of Indian society served as an

inspiration for a group of young scientists called the Patriotic and People-oriented Science and

Technology (PPST) Group to engage in serious research into indigenous scientific and technological

traditions with a view to underpinning their civilisational anchorage, technical sophistication and

contemporary relevance.

During 19902006, he was Emeritus Fellow of the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai

In early 1990s, he was elected Member of the Indian Council of Historical Research for two terms and

for a third term during 19992001.

In 2001, he was appointed Chairman of the National Commission on Cattle set up by the Government

of India

Legacy [edit]

Whereas Dharampals published oeuvre, in dispelling colonial myths about Indias recent past, serves as

a seminal and powerful inspiration for engaging in crucial reinterpretations about the nature of Indian

society, the enormous portent of his research (much of which in the form of extensive notes and typed

extracts of documents from British and Indian archives still remains in manuscript form) has yet to impact

more extensively on radically transforming conventional historiography of modern India. Copies of

Dharampals extensive archival collection are lodged in the library of the Gandhi Seva Sangh,

Sevagram, Wardha and at the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai.

Published Works [edit]

1. Dharampal, Panchayat Raj as the Basis of Indian Polity: An Exploration into the

Proceedings of the Constituent Assembly (with a foreword by Jayaprakash Narayan), AVARD,

New Delhi, 1962.

2. Dharampal, Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some

Contemporary European Accounts (with a foreword by Dr. D.S..Kothari and Introduction by Dr.

William A.Blanpeid), Impex India, Delhi, 1971; reprinted by Academy of Gandhian Studies,

Hyderabad 1983.

3. Dharampal, Civil Disobedience and Indian Tradition: with Some Early Nineteenth Century

Documents (with a foreword by Sri Jayaprakash Narayan), Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan,

Varanasi, 1971.

4. Dharampal, The Madras Panchayat System, Vol II: A General Assessment, Impex India, Delhi

1972.

5. Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century,

Biblia Impex Private Limited, New Delhi 1983; reprinted by Keerthi Publishing House Pvt Ltd.,

Coimbatore 1995.

6. Dharampal, Some Aspects of Early Indian Society and Polity and their Relevance to the

Present, Indian Association for Cultural Freedom, Pune 1988; Hindi translation published as

Angrazon se Pehale ka Bharat Shatabdi Prakashan, Vidisha 1988; Tamil Translation, by

K.Ramasubramanian, published as Mundeya India Samudayam, Arasamaippu, Sila Amsanga:

Avattrin Inreya Poruttam, Cre-A, Chennai 1992.

7. Dharampal, Bharatiya Chitta, Manas va Kala (Hindi), Pushpa Prakashan, Patna and Centre for

Policy Studies, Chennai 1991; English translation (with a Preface and Glossary) by Jitendra Bajaj,

published as Bharatiya Chitta, Manas and Kala, Centre for Policy Studies, Madras 1993; Kannada

translation, by S. R. Ramaswamy, published as Bharatiya Chitta, Manasikate, Kala, Rashtrotthana

Sahitya, Bangalore 1996.

8. Dharampal, Bharat ka Svadharma (Hindi), Vagdevi Prakashan, Bikaner 1994.

9. Dharampal, Despoliation and Defaming of India: The Early Nineteenth Century British

Crusade , Bharat Peetham, Wardha, 1999.

10. Dharampal and T.M.Mukundan, The British Origin of Cow-Slaughter in India: with some

British Documents on the Anti-Kine-Killing movement 18801894, Society for Integrated

Development of Himalayas, Mussoorie 2002.

11. Dharampal, Understanding Gandhi, Other India Press, Mapusa 2003; Tamil translation, by

Janakipriyan, published as Gandhiyai aridal, Kalachuvadu Pathippagam, Nagercoil 2010.

12. Dharampal, Rediscovering India: Collection of Essays and Speeches (19561998),

Society for Integrated Development of Himalayas, Mussoorie 2003.

Nos. 17 above, along with a few other articles by Dharampal, published asDharampal: Collected

Writings, 5 Volumes, Other India Press, Mapusa 2000; reissued in 2003 and 2007. Gujarati translation

of 112 above, along with a few other articles by Dharampal, published as Dharampal Samagra

Lekhan, 11 volumes, edited by Indumati Katdare, Punarutthan Trust, Ahmedabad 2005. Hindi

translation of 112 above, including other articles by Dharampal, in 10 volumes,Dharampal Samagra

Lekhan, Edited by Indumati Katdare, Punarutthan Trust, Ahmedabad 2007.