tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142380989786101978.post5509323903460531995..comments2024-03-04T17:45:39.712-08:00Comments on D.D. Kosambi: Monk, Mathematician, Marxistreaderswordshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05536082441634566406noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142380989786101978.post-43351191602803313082013-08-18T10:07:59.748-07:002013-08-18T10:07:59.748-07:00This is a very interesting article. Thanks, Ananya...This is a very interesting article. Thanks, Ananya Vajpeyi!<br /><br />It is unfortunate that so many of our visionaries and scholars have remained unknown, with even those who were able to gain some recognition in their time being neglected. So it is heartening to see such articles, especially those that seek to connect the lives and influences of those now past.<br /><br />It struck me, on reading this article, that my father's (Sunil Janah's) last book, Photographing India, published shortly after his death by Oxford University Press (India) in 2013, happens to contain photographs, taken by my father, of many of the people mentioned in this article.<br /><br />These include, of course, Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, along with many other politicians of the times -- from the 1930's to the 1990's. <br /><br />But there are also photographs of Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi (DDK -- the son) himself, and also of others mentioned here, such as B.R. Ambedkar, Ram Manohar Lohia, Rahul Sankrityayana, Jayaprakash Narayan and J.B. Kripalani.<br /><br />There are also non-Indians portrayed, including, relevantly to this discussion, Maria Montessori.<br /><br />My father, along with the painter Chittaprosad, was one of those who were set on their path of documenting the people and the peasant and labor movements of the subcontinent, commencing in the late 1930's, by the broad vision of P.C. Joshi, who was, for a short but highly productive period in the 1940's, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI).<br /><br />Most of my father's photographs, and his friend Chittaprosad's paintings, depict ordinary people going about their lives or involved in labor in the cities, villages and tribal areas.<br /><br />But others are documentations of the tumultuous events of the times, such as the famines, the peasant, labor and independence movements, the partition of the subcontinent and its independence -- along with portraits of the luminary cultural and political figures that were cast up.<br /><br />Thanks again for this illuminating article. I hope we will see more of its kind, perhaps telling us more about such scholars as Rahul Sankrityayana, whom my father speaks of with reverence as one of those whom he met and used to converse with while lodging and working at the CPI headquarters in what was then Bombay in the 1940's.Arjun Janahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08949984941582392261noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142380989786101978.post-75758887733720473202013-08-18T09:44:20.322-07:002013-08-18T09:44:20.322-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Arjun Janahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08949984941582392261noreply@blogger.com