Blog dedicated to the life and works of the path breaking Indian historian and mathematician.
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Confusing history with myth: Why ICHR should stick to history
Scholars have written copiously on the foolishness of discounting the role that myths play in understanding life and society, and the value of fiction, stories and tales passed on.
Written by Seema Chishti | New Delhi | Updated: August 18, 2016 8:38 pm
In legendary historian DD Kosambi’s excellent work on ancient India titled ‘Myth and Reality’ (1962), he writes about his essays, almost as if for 2016 India; “they are based upon the collation of field-work with literary evidence. Indian critics, whose patriotism outstrips their grasp of reality are sure to express annoyance or derision at the misplaced emphasis..”
Broadly defined as a story of the past, history has come to mean much more. In a society which is so diverse, it has often come to mean very different things to different people. History is a story that needs to be told cautiously sometimes but nevertheless must be told, taught and studied.
The bid of the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) to announce that it is now going down the route of collecting detailed “folklore”, “custom” and “only documenting what is heard”, about the very distant past, appears fraught with monumental issues.
Scholars have written copiously on the foolishness of discounting the role that myths play in understanding life and society, and the value of fiction, stories and tales passed on. To be unmindful of prevalent legends would leave us the poorer in comprehending much harder material truths. But problems begin, when legends, myths and history are all sought to be confused.
The function of recording, teaching or studying History, is surely to learn lessons from the past, to be familiar with compatriots, to learn and unlearn about other lives, or at least that is the purpose we hope history serves for us, when taught in schools and beyond.
Historiography is serious and contested terrain but ground rules about what constitutes evidence and what hearsay suggests that it is very important that the difference be maintained.
There is no harm therefore in knowing about myths and legends, but to be able to tell clearly what a piece of pottery, jewellery, a grave or a monument or cooking utensils tell you about people long gone before us should be a priority in a vast and old civilisation like ours.
History is more important, when governments are involved in writing (and rewriting) textbooks. Textbooks being among the most useful ammunition to control young minds. The1980s phase in our neighbouring state of Pakistan survives uptil today in dangerously altered textbooks, or how history is studied in middle-schools. A recent project by two Pakistani scholars, Qasim Aslam and Ayyaz Ahmed, studies how differently Indian and Pakistani textbooks, learn about exactly the same facts. Not that India has got it all right, but the necessity of feeding myths to Pakistan was such a dominant idea there, that History was firmly pushed out of the frame.
Myths, being privileged over history writing, have been known to serve a useful political purpose. The myth of Aryan supremacy would have been a useful account to spin support for the Nazi view of the world in its time. When the ‘superiority’ of White-skinned plunderers in Africa had to be established, myths and legends, hearsay and anecdotes over years would have been a useful tool to establish why it was the way things should be. Which of us has not heard a story whispered at a monument which says the exact opposite of what we have known to be a recorded fact about the monument/area/people?
If only to avoid history from repeating itself, either as tragedy or a farce, it may be well worth the while of institutions like ICHR, tasked with serious historical research to do exactly that. Myths have a place, but for India to have a functional present and future, they must not be confused with history.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
‘Kosambi memory’ today
Source: The Hindu
The Centre for Gandhian and Peace Studies, Manipal University, in association with Centre for Vedic and Linguistic Inquiry will organise a seminar titled ‘Kosambi memory’ here on July 2 in memory of the late D.D. Kosambi, historian, mathematician, numismatist, and statistician.
A press release here on Thursday said that the seminar was being organised on the occasion of Prof. Kosambi’s 50th death anniversary.
The speakers will include K.P. Rao, founder-director, Centre for Vedic and Linguistic Inquiry, Manipal, Surendra Rao, retired professor of History, Mangalore University, and Varadesh Hiregange, Director, Centre for Gandhian and Peace Studies.
The seminar will begin at 10.30 a.m. at LH 1, first floor, Old TAPMI building.
Kosambi was not an ‘official Marxist’, says historian
Kosambi was not an ‘official Marxist’, says historian
K.P. Rao, software expert and Director of Centre for Vedic and Linguistic Inquiry, speaking at a seminar on D.D. Kosambi in Manipal.
B. Surendra Rao, retired Professor of History, Mangalore University, has said that though the late D.D. Kosambi used Marxist notions of history, he was not a reductionist.
He was speaking on ‘D.D. Kosambi’s contribution to history’, a seminar organised by the Centre for Gandhian and Peace Studies, a constituent of Manipal University, and the Centre for Vedic and Linguistic Inquiry, here on Saturday.
According to a press release issued here on Sunday, Prof. Surendra Rao said that Kosambi considered himself a Marxist, but “official Marxists” did not consider him as a Marxist. In this context, the differences between Kosambi and S.A. Dange were worth noting, he said.
A historian was one who looked at the present rooted in the past. Myth was a different order of reality. Socialism would not be redundant so long as there was socio-economic injustice.
In his ‘Exasperating Essays’ and ‘Myth and Reality’, Kosambi was precisely trying to make use of this perspective. Eminent historians such as Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib had profusely acknowledged Kosambi’s contribution to history, Prof. Rao added.
K.P. Rao, software expert and Director of Centre for Vedic and Linguistic Inquiry, said that about five decades ago, Kosambi argued in favour of solar energy against atomic energy even while working with nuclear scientist Homi J. Bhabha.
Recalling his memories and association with both Kosambi and Bhabha, Prof. K.P. Rao said that Kosambi was then itself quite concerned about the “rise in temperature” of the world. It was Kosambi’s hope that sun being the “natural source of energy” was the way forward. On this point, he parted ways with Bhabha in Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, he said. Responding to the view that Kosambi was a Marxist, Prof. K.P. Rao said, “If this is Marxism, then Marxists are welcome.”
Varadesh Hiregange, Director of Gandhian and Peace Studies, who delivered a lecture on Prabhaker Acharya’s essay on Kosambi’s thesis with regard to ‘Urvasi myth of Rigveda’, said Kosambi’s approach to Rigveda was anthropological.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Make hay while the sun shines!
Source: The Hindu 13th May 2016
D.D. Kosambi’s essays aptly titled “Adventures into the Unknown” reveal how the scientist pushed for solar power more than half-a-century ago when the world was busy playing with atoms
Believe it or not, India has set an ambitious target of adding 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2022. Before the Paris Climate Summit, it had pledged that by 2032, it would increase its share of non-fossil fuels to 40 per cent of the total power generation capacity. These decisions have come many years after India under the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had signed the controversial civil nuclear agreement with the United States with a view to meet its energy requirements. So, clearly, solar energy is the flavour of the season.
This reminds me that there was a time in the 1950s and early 1960s when those who advocated solar energy could be pitted against the scientific and technological establishment of the country and viewed with suspicion. D. D. Kosambi, a polymath genius who made seminal contributions in pure mathematics, quantitative numismatics, Sanskrit studies and the study of ancient Indian history and culture, was one such individual who came in direct conflict with the Department of Atomic Energy because of his strong views against the use of nuclear energy as he favoured solar energy in its place. He also had to cross swords with Homi Jehangir Bhabha, widely recognised as the father of the Indian atomic energy programme.
It was Bhabha who had invited Kosambi in 1945 to join the recently established Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and help set up the School of Mathematics. In the initial years their relations were very cordial (as it is clear from Kosambi’s scribble on the newspaper cartoon that he forwarded to Bhabha) but soon differences cropped up as Kosambi emphasised that a country like India that received sunshine in abundance must place greater reliance on solar energy. That he was a die-hard Marxist, who was very active in the international peace movement, did not help matters.
In the 1950s, the Department of Atomic Energy had started funding TIFR and Kosambi’s continuance there became untenable. Moreover, the fact that he had also emerged as a major historian who had brought about a paradigmatic shift in the study of ancient Indian society also made his fellow scientists view him with suspicion as his non-scientific interests were not considered compatible with his senior position in TIFR.
Recently, Three Essays Collective brought out a collection of Kosambi’s essays titled “Adventures into the Unknown”. Ram Ramaswamy, Professor of Physics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, has edited this volume that contains hitherto unpublished material. In his preface, Ramaswamy informs that in 1960 Kosambi gave a talk to the Rotary Club of Poona and the text has been published here as “Atomic Energy for India”. In this essay, he underlines the need for research and development in the field of solar energy, a need to which our government seems to have woken up only recently. “Solar energy,” Kosambi says, “is not something that any villager can convert for use with his own unaided efforts, at a negligible personal expenditure, charkha style. It means good science and first-rate technology whose results must be made available to the individual user.” Nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima have proved visionaries like Kosambi right.
In 2013, Prof. Meera Kosambi, the sociologist daughter of D. D. Kosambi, edited a book that contained writings of her as well as on her father. Titled “Unsettling the Past”, it was published by Permanent Black. It also contains two other essays of Kosambi on the question of solar energy that were written between 1957 and 1964. In “Sun or Atom?”, Kosambi draws our attention to the fact that scientific and technological research in the developed world is inextricably tied to the military-industrial complex and therefore solar energy was being ignored.
He says, “The research is of no use for war purposes. That is why it attracts some of us, but does not attract those who control the funds.” In another essay “Solar Energy for Underdeveloped Areas”, Kosambi cites another reason why significant technological advances were not being made to solve the problem of storage of solar energy: “The lands where technology is most advanced are just those which have very little sunlight as compared to India and Africa and where conventional forms of energy are highly developed.” However, he was quite confident that ultimately solar energy would become affordable and gave the example of aluminium. “But extracting this metal was a most costly process and aluminium was, a century ago, costlier than gold. Technology has made the metal cheap…”
As India finally turns to solar energy, it is very refreshing to read these essays that were written more than half-a-century ago.
The writer is a senior literary critic
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Government revises D D Kosambi Research Fellowship scheme
TNN | Apr 26, 2016, 10.46 AM IST
Panaji: The state government has revised the D D Kosambi Research Fellowship scheme. The objective of the scheme is to encourage Goan scholars to undertake research in the field of Goan history, culture, arts, social studies and related areas. Three fellowships, under the scheme, will be awarded every year by the state - at the junior level, at the senior level and at the post-doctoral level.
"Only topics that are closely connected to Goa will be accepted. However, authentic topics pertaining to Goa may also be considered for the fellowship depending upon the decision taken by the expert committee," the revised scheme document reads.
An individual who has completed post-graduation and is 35 and younger will be eligible to undertake research in the junior category. For the senior category an individual who has completed post-graduation and is above the age of 35 will be eligible. And for eligibility at the post-doctoral level, the individual will have to have completed PhD. There is no age bar for the third category.
"In case of exceptionally talented scholars of proven record with authentic work to their credit, the rules regarding educational qualifications may be relaxed, if recommended by the selection committee. The fellowship shall be awarded to any scholar only once in his lifetime under each category," the scheme states.
Eligible scholars for junior category will be awarded a fellowship up to Rs 10,000 per month for a maximum period of two years, on case-to-case basis. Scholars in the senior and post-doctoral category will be awarded a fellowship of Rs 20,000 per month for a maximum period of two years, again on case-to-case basis.
Every year, the department of art and culture will release an advertisement inviting applications for the "D D Kosambi Research Fellowship" for scholars and a selection committee constituted by the government will select scholars for the fellowship.
The project report in the form of two hard copies and a soft copy will have to be submitted within a period of 30 days after the completion of two years of the fellowship. The project submitted will be exclusively the property of department of art and culture, as per the scheme guidelines.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Reality and Myth
Reproduced from: And Then, a blog by Ram Ramaswamy
by Ram Ramaswamy
Some years ago, a friend of mine at JNU proudly told me about a book that he had picked up from the library “sale”, a book that had once belonged to D D Kosambi (DDK). Apparently it had not been checked out for years, and was therefore deemed unworthy of staying on in the library, as if finding a place on the library shelf was just some sort of evolutionary game, a survival of the fittest and no more…
The JNU had, at some point in time, acquired Kosambi’s personal collection of books, that was, according to Mr R P Nene (DDK’s friend and assistant, in an interview in June 1985) “sold by his family after his death to the JNU at the cost of Rs. 75, 000.” Details of how this happened are not too clear- Kosambi died in 1966, the JNU was founded in 1969, and the initial seed of the JNU library was that of the “prestigious Indian School of International Studies which was later merged with Jawaharlal Nehru University.” Our website goes on to say that the “JNU Library is a depository of all Govt. publications and publications of some important International Organisations like WHO, European Union, United Nations and its allied agencies etc. The Central Library is knowledge hub of Jawaharlal Nehru University, It provides comprehensive access to books, journals, theses and dissertations, reports, surveys covering diverse disciplines.”
The amount paid suggests that the books were viewed as very valuable: Rs 75K in the late 1960’s was a huge sum of money. And given that, it was quite amazing that the collection had not been kept as one, but the books had apparently been shelved by subject (!) and were then like any other books, and so subject to the periodic culling that most libraries undertake to clear shelves and make space for new books. (In some sense I was not too surprised, having myself bought a book that had been owned by AnandaKentish Coomaraswamy and that had somehow made its way to Princeton. The initials AKC were pencilled in on the first page, but apart from the bookplate, there was little else to show that it had been his. Unfortunately that book is no longer with me, and in hindsight, I think that when libraries acquire collections from scholars of note, they should make some attempt to keep the collections intact. Mercifully the JNU has done that now with more recent acquisitions..).
Nevertheless, a chance conversation shortly thereafter on the vagaries of libraries and the nature of intellectual inheritances started me off on my exploration of Kosambi and his mathematics. The idea was, on the face of, a simple one. What was the extent of Kosambi’s mathematical contributions compared to, say, his contributions to history or numismatics. How would the math stack up? Having been in TIFR before I came to JNU, I had also heard of how he travelled from Pune to Bombay every day on the Deccan Queen, how he was fired from TIFR, etc. etc. But I also found out that precious little was known of DDK’s other life by the historians. That the mathematics was too different and far too difficult is all too true, but still.
To start with, I thought it would be good to put together his life mathematical, namely all his math and stats papers. Much of that was on the web, except that it was in bits and pieces, and all over the place. No single bibliography was accurate, and no matter where I looked, there were gaps. Many of the Indian journals where he published were not (and still are not) digitized. Some of the names that were given in the existing lists were incomplete or incorrect, many papers were missing. The Rendiconti della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei or the Sitzungsberichten der Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Physikalisch-mathematische klassewere both uncommon journals that were impossible to locate anywhere in India, for instance. I went to the Ramanujan Institute in Chennai in late 2009, looking for copies of the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society and Mathematics Student where DDK had published a lot of his work in the 1930’s and 1940’s. It’s too depressing to recount that visit… Nothing could be located, and I left empty-handed after a wasted morning.
In 2010, though, I was visiting professor at the University of Tokyo for a month, and luckily, the Komaba campus where I was located, housed the mathematics department and more importantly, its library. It took a few hours spread out over several days, but before long, I not only had the bulk of DDK’s papers in photocopy or in digital form, but I also discovered, via MathSciNet, of DDK’s nom de plume S. Ducray, under which name he had written four papers. I also had access to the reviews of many of his mathematical papers by others, and could see many very famous names among the reviewers. As an aside, I should add that the library of Tokyo University is one of the few that have the complete sets of Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society and Mathematics Student, including the volumes published during the World War II years, when Japan and India were on different sides…Wednesday, February 10, 2016
'Classroom is the worst place to teach science'
A news report from Panaji where the ongoing DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas. Arvind Gupta has been an inspiration and a big time contributor in keeping DD Kosambi's writings available on the internet, including via this blog.
TNN | Feb 3, 2016, 10.23 AM IST
Panaji: Play is very serious business. If there is no play, there is no learning taking place, said IITian Arvind Gupta, well-known for his movement to popularise science among children by making toys from everyday waste. He also said that like Finland, India, too, should give its teachers a status equivalent to IAS officers, to turn its faulty education system around.
Gupta, who was the guest speaker on day two of the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas being held at Kala Academy.
In his lecture on Tuesday Gupta awed the audience with demonstrations of some science experiments for which he used every day and inexpensive objects. "Barbies, He-Mans and such toys are very sexist and very expensive. Hopefully, they will become extinct like the dinosaurs," said the 'toy-inventor' who maintained that the Goa science centre and 36 similar centres established by the central government across states are unimaginative in their displays. "These science centres do nothing besides occupying five acres of state land," Gupta said.
Gupta also criticised the government's Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan mission and the NCERT syllabus, calling them ineffective.
"The classroom is the worst place to teach children science as all the science is outside the classroom. If children see the science that exists in real life, they will be hooked," he said. Gupta said that adding achieving learning through experiments is possible in a state like Goa, where the target size is small. He said that each private school in the country needs to lend its teachers for a few days to a government school to trigger a big movement in experimental learning.
Paying tribute to the genius of D D Kosambi, Gupta said, "He was spared the Indian childhood because his father, the great acharya Kosambi, had left for Harvard in the 1920s. Had he been sent to one of our schools he would not have excelled." He said that Kosambi was not given due recognition for his work during his lifetime after he wrote a critique of Jawaharlal Nehru's book 'The Discovery of India' and "exposed Nehru's lack of knowledge of Indian history."The Goa government, Gupta said, could consider making a comic strip on the lines of the Amar Chitra Katha series on the life of Dr Kosambi to inform young generations about his genius.
Responding to an audience question, Gupta said that he did not want students to make joining IITs their top priority, rather they should follow their passion, no matter what it was.
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
A confluence of ideas
A confluence of ideas
The 9th D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas will be held from February 1 to February 5 at Kala Academy, Campal, Panaji. This year, Sudha Murthy (author), Arvind Kumar Gupta (toy maker), George Papandreou (former prime minister of Greece), Poonam Khetrapal Singh (regional director of WHO South-East Asia Region), Richard Schechner (theatre director, author), will share their thoughts and Ideas with the people of Goa
NT BUZZ
The 9th D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas will be held from February 1 to February 5 at Kala Academy, Campal, Panaji. It is truly a platform of sharing thoughts and mutual interaction. Young students, along with people from various social strata participate in this festival.
This year, Sudha Murthy(chairperson of the Infosys Foundation in India and trusty of the Infosys Foundation USA, a prolific writer in Kannada and English), Arvind Kumar Gupta (toy maker), George Papandreou (former prime minister of Greece), Poonam Khetrapal Singh (regional director of WHO South-East Asia Region), Richard Schechner (theater director, author, editor of TDR, and University Professor at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University), will share their thoughts and Ideas with the people of Goa.
The inaugural address is by Sudha Murty who will speak on ‘The Circle of Life’; on February 2 Arvind Kumar Gupta will speak on ‘Nurturing Scientific Spirit in Children’, on February 3 George Papandreou will speak on ‘Intercultural Dialogue for Humanising Globalisation’, on February 4 Poonam Khetrapal Singh will speak on ‘Sustainable Development Goals, the Challenges and Opportunities for Health’. The concluding lecture will be held on February 5 where Richard Schechner will speak on the topic- How to perform the 21st century.
All these lectures will be held at 5 p.m. at Dinanath Mangueshkar Kala Mandir, Kala Academy, Panaji
The Directorate of Art and Culture had initiated the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas to commemorate the birth Centenary of the legendary Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi the Indian mathematician, statistician, historian, 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. D D Kosambi was also a Marxist historian specialising in ancient India who employed the historical materialist approach in his work. He is described as the patriarch of the Marxist school of Indian historiography. He was an enthusiast of the Chinese revolution and its ideals, and, in addition, a leading activist in the World Peace Movement.
About the speakers
Sudha Murthy: Sudha Murthy was born in 1950 in North Karnataka. She started her career as an engineer with TELCO (now Tata Motors) and is now the chairperson of Infosys Foundation. A prolific writer in English and Kannada, her books have been translated into all major Indian languages and have sold over four lakh copies around the country. She is a columnist for English and Kannada dailies with 25 books and 156 titles to her credit – including novels, non-fiction, travelogues, technical books, and memoirs.
Arvind Kumar Gupta: Arvind Gupta graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (1975) with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He has written 24 books on science activities, translated 175 books into Hindi and presented 125 films on science activities on Doordarshan. His first book ‘Matchstick Models & Other Science Experiments’ was translated into 12 Indian languages and sold over half a million copies. He has received several honors, including the inaugural National Award for Science Popularization among Children (1988). For 11-years he worked in a Children’s Science Center located at the Inter-University Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Pune. He shares his passion for books and toys through his popular website www.arvindguptatoys.com
Saturday, January 9, 2016
A Scholar in his time: The contemporary views of Kosambi the mathematician
Thanks to Arvind Gupta for sending this paper.
A SCHOLAR IN HIS TIME: CONTEMPORARY VIEWS OF KOSAMBI
THE MATHEMATICIAN
RAMAKRISHNA
RAMASWAMY
University of Hyderabad,
Hyderabad, TS 500 034
“Kosambi introduced a new method into historical scholarship,
essentially by application of modern mathematics.” J. D. Bernal [1], who
shared some of his interests and much of his politics, summarized the unique
talents of DDK [2] in an obituary that appeared in the journal Nature, adding,
“Indians were not themselves historians:
they left few documents and never gave dates. One thing the Indians of all
periods did leave behind, however, were hoards of coins. [...] By statistical
study of the weights of the coins, Kosambi was able to establish the amount of
time that had elapsed while they were in circulation . . . ”
The facts of DDK’s
academic life, in brief are as follows. He attended high–school in the US, in
Cambridge, MA, and undergraduate college at Harvard, graduating in 1929. Returning
to India, he then worked as a mathematician at Banaras Hindu University (1930-31),
Aligarh Muslim University (1931-33), Fergusson College, Pune (1933-45), and the
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (1945-62), after which he held an emeritus
fellowship of the CSIR until his death at the age of 59, in 1966.
Today the significance
of D. D. Kosambi’s mathematical contributions [3–71] tends to be underplayed,
given the impact of his scholarship as historian, and Indologist. His work in
the latter areas has been collected in several volumes [72] and critical commentaries
have appeared over the years [73, 74], but his work in mathematics has not been
compiled and reviewed to the same extent [75, 76, 77, 78]. Indeed, a complete
bibliography is not available in the public domain so far [79]. This asymmetry
is unfortunate since, as commented elsewhere [75], an understanding of Kosambi
the historian can only be enhanced by an appreciation of Kosambi the mathematician
[80].
DDK is known for
several contributions, some of which like the Kosambi-Cartan-Chern (KCC) theory
[81], carry his name, and some like the Karhunen–Loève expansion [37, 39, 82],
that do not. The Kosambi mapping function in genetics [40] continues to be used
to this day [83], but the path geometry that he studied for much of his life
[84] has not found further application. DDK’s final years were mired in controversies,
both personal and professional. His papers on the Riemann hypothesis (RH) [65,
66] brought him a great deal of criticism and not a little ridicule, while his
personal politics put him in direct conflict with Homi Bhabha and the Department
of Atomic Energy. This contributed to his eventual and somewhat ignominious
ouster from employment at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. His early
and passionate advocacy of solar energy was practical and based on sound
scientific common sense. In some of his arguments, he seems even somewhat
Gandhian, and although this was a contrary position to hold in the TIFR at that
time, the essential validity of his argument remains to this day [85].
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