Friday, February 8, 2008

Thapar praises Kosambi for changing course of studying Indian history

PANJIM, Feb 6: Prominent Indian historian who principal area of study is ancient India, Romila Thapar, took time off a lecture-visit to Goa to look at hero-stones at the NIO, visit the village of Sancoale, and take a look at "what little is left" of Goa's commonlands.

But later on Wednesday evening, the 77-year-old historian delivered the Goan intellectual D.D.Kosambi's 'festival of ideas' lecture where she focussed on some ideas of the man "whose work provoked me into thinking beyodn the obvious in my work on ancient Indian history".

Thapar, in an erudite if academic lecture, touched on the work of Marxist historian Kosambi's in diverse spheres -- the relationship between tribe and caste, the links between Buddhism and trade, and the nature of feudalism in India.

Speaking to introduce Thapar, who has worked on the decline of the Mauryas and early India among other topics, businessman-social campaigner Datta Naik said she was an impressive thinker to interprete South Asia's past along with the Goan-origin Kosambi and Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya.

Naik stressed that Thapar played a key role in shifting the study of Indian hstory away from the "communal interpretation". It was she who had point out that there was a 'selective memory' and 'selective forgetting' of history.

Speaking earlier, author and academic Maria Aurora Couto of Aldona, who has played a key role in this 'festival of ideas', praised the intellectual honesty of Thapar.

She said Thapar had given her the nudge to go ahead with talking about contentious and today-politicised issues like religious conversions, when she (Couto) was writing her book "A Daughter's Story".

Couto said that Thapar was keen to visit the ancestral Kosambi visit of Sancoale which has "undergone radical demographic transformation in the past few years".

She said there was an idea to promote a regional research programme for Goa, and part of this would probably focus on the area of Sancoale too -- where Kosambi and his equally-prominent father, Dharmanand D. Kosambi, came from.

Incidentally, the Kosambi home has been largely forgotten in its ancestral village, and the achievements of its intellectuals recognised more across India and internationally rather than at home, a fate shared by many of the other intellectuals that tiny Goa has produced in big number.

Thapar stressed Kosambi's role in understanding India beyond just "dynastic history" and looking at the crucial social and economic history of the vast region. He had deployed archaeology, technology and even coins to interprete the past.

She expounded on the controversy of understanding varna, class and caste, besides tribal concerns. She said the 'hero-stones' in Goa may not focus so much on those defending villages against cattle-raiders (as in other parts of India), but those who had fought back "pirates in sea-battles".

She referred to Kosambi's views and her own on the gotra system among Brahmins, and the trade-Buddhism link which was not just coincidental.

The 'festival of ideas' is being held to mark the birth centenary of Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi (1907-1966), the Goan-origin mathematician, statistician, and polymath, who contributed to genetics by introducing Kosambi's map function.

He is well-known for his work in numismatics and for compiling critical editions of ancient Sanskrit texts. He was also a historian of ancient India who employed the historical materialist approach in his work.

Incidentally, Kosambi was critical of the policies of then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru which he believed promoted capitalism in the guise of democratic socialism. He was an enthusiast of the Chinese revolution and its ideals, and a peace movement activist. (*)

Source: [Goanet] NEWS: Romila Thapar praises Kosambi for changing course of studying Indian history Goanet News

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