Kosambi on Marxist approach to Indian History

DD Kosambi on Marxist approach to Indian history.

When serious scholars like D.D. Kosambi tried to apply Marxian approach to Indian history, they found themselves in great difficulty. In 1951, Kosambi tried to examine Marxist approach to Indian chronology (Annals of Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 31 pp. 258-66) as presented by a Russian scholar D.A. Suleiken in 1949 and found it ‘dangerously misleading’ (Kosambi’s Omnibus, OUP 2005, p. 49). In his seminal work, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (first published in 1956, sixth reprint 1993) Kosambi rejected many of Marx’s statements about India. Kosambi wrote: “India had never a classical slave economy in the same sense as Greece or Rome” (p. 11). Kosambi was at a loss what to make of Marx’s famous theory of the “Asiatic Mode of Production”. He says, “What Marx himself said about India cannot be taken as it stands.” Kosambi, who is considered to be the father of Marxist historiography on India, emphatically rejects Marx’s view of Indian history. He writes: “We cannot let pass without challenge Marx’s statement, “Indian society has no history at all… unchanging (village) society.” Kosambi says, “In fact, the greatest periods of Indian history, the Mauryans, the Satavahanas, the Guptas owed nothing to intruders, they mark precisely the formation and spread of the basic village society, or the development of new trade centers” (ibid, pp 11-12). Kosambi was of firm view, that: “The adoption of Marx’s thesis does not mean blind repetition of all his conclusions (and even less, those of the official party line Marxists at all times)” (p. 10).

DD Kosambi Centenary

Manipal Institute of Communications is hosting a one- day seminar on 22nd July (Sunday), a week or so before the birth centenary of the great historian and mathematician. Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi was born on 31st July 1907.

A one-day seminar in English will be held at Manipal Institute of Communication on 22nd July 2007. Some well-known historians and distinguished scholars in other disciplines are participating in the seminar. Discussions and presentations would include the life, work and vision of Prof. Kosambi. The relevance of Professor Kosambi’s work today and the paradigm changes his line of thought introduced into Numismatics, History, Culture and Scientific temperament would be discussed.

A few episodes of a 13 part serial named “India Invented” produced by Dr. Arvind N Das and dedicated to Prof. Kosambi would also be screened...

Review of Study of Indian History

Kosambi is a master of all he surveys in this book - his dexterity, scholarship and decisive judgments reminded me of Eric Hobsbawm. The book is fascinating in many respects - the choice of photographs, the detailed endnotes, the insistence on deducing historical information from observing ritual and practice among the various castes and tribes in India, the obvious comfort with the ancient history of Iran and the near east, the deep knowledge of Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature, Kosambi's scientific studies of coin hoards etc. His contempt for poor scholarship is expressed without reservation and with caustic precision. His writing is terse and elegant. It often rises to the eminently quotable:

• Chapter 1, Note 11, on sources of information about castes and tribes:

The Indian decennial Census reports are useful before 1951, when the whole idea of classification by caste was officially abandoned as a Canutian method of abolishing caste distinctions.

• Chapter 3, Section 3.1, p.51, describing the blocks of 12' x 20' two-room tenements discovered during excavations at Mohenjodaro and Harappa:

These were called 'coolie lines' by the excavators, whose ingenuity had found modern names for the streets, but rarely any explanation beyond the mental reach of an Imperial Briton.

read on

A Touching Dedication

I was reading an anthology of a Indian historian- cum- mathematician- cum- statistician: D.D. Kosambi. The book is called "Combined methods in Indology and other writings". The first chapter is an introduction to how Mr. Kosambi worked and how his work is important in the present day context with respect to Indology. Then comes the part of the personality of Mr. Kosambi, where his love and care for his family members, friends, and peers are brought out. In writing that the author takes out a dedication of Mr. Kosambi. Here goes that dedication.

"At a time when my health and finances were both ruined, and the work would have been suspended, she put at my disposal, unsolicited, the meagre savings of a lifetime devoted to the service of her children. To these funds, given without condition in the disappointed hope that I should use them to improve my health, this edition owes its very existence. A matron in the noblest Indian tradition, one to whom even Bhaasa's broken hero of the shattered thigh, abandoned on the field of
battle, might pray with his dying breath, 'If merit be mine and rebirth fall to my lot, be thou again my mother', she deserves to have a far better work dedicated to her, just as she deserves a far better son. However, if she will condone the shortcomings of the book as she has those of the child, both are hers."

source

Kosambi on Jnaneshwar

As the historian D. D. Kosambi wrote, “Though an adept in yoga as a path towards physical immortality and mystical perfection, there was nothing left for [Jnanesvar] except suicide.” The ideas were glorious, but there was no institutional platform to realize them.

Letter to an American Hindu

Kosambi on Dange

Secondly we were also aware of the most fundamental criticism made by Professor. D.D. Kosambi on Mr. S.A. Dange in connection with the latter’s work ‘India primitive communism to slavery’. Professor Kosambi wrote that in order to defend Engels he had to deny Dange. Dange’s work was unquestionably a caricature of Engel’s work. Further the communist party too never bothered to examine Dange’s credentials as a Marxist. That it could not do so also was not in any way a surprise.

That was precisely because none of its leaders could be called a Marxist. The leadership neither had the ability to teach nor the humility to learn. Further we also did not like the insolent manner Dange answered. Finally Kosambi called Dange a bourgeoisie peddler. Very soon (1955) we arrived at the conclusion that the Indian Communist party for all intents and purposes had abandoned the very idea of a popular revolution. It was just nominally a communist party. It is so
to this date.

read more at Eastern Voice

Sham Lal on DD Kosambi

Braveheart reads Sham Lal's writings on DD Kosambi.

That night when I flipped through the pages, I saw how the high and mighty in the world of ideas and politics had been made into mince meat in the books. I vividly remember reading the acidic remarks on Marxist historian D D Kosambi's book - Introduction to the Study of History:

"We need not dilate too long on the slant or the bias in Kosambi's judgments. All that he wants to tell us is that all we have is the earth. The sky is there, but its deep blue is a fiction... Those who look for the heartbeats of an age not in its wage bills and sale deed but in its art and religion may at times get impatient with Kosambi...Those who look for poetry in history itself will search in vain."

India Invented Part 2

Kosambi on the Role of Gita

Aniruddha Kulkarni, while reading The Last Mughal thinks that the controversy behind calling the events of 1857 as a Mutiny or the first War of Indian Independence is meant to hide the
suffering of the ordinary people during those days.

Therefore, you wonder if D D Kosambi amongst all is closest to the truth when he says: “It seems to me that Gita philosophy, like so much else in India’s ‘spiritual’ heritage, is based in the final analysis upon the inability to satisfy more than the barest material needs of a large number”

There could be many Quixotian solutions to this. Use politically correct language. Stop calling poor, poor! Stop calling third class compartment, third class. That is what Indian Railway did when one day they just erased one line from III to make it II!

Essay on 'Indian Feudalism'

Read DD Kosambi's essay on 'Indian Feudalism' at google books (in Rural Sociology in India by AR Desai).

Indian Feudalism differs so much from its European counterpart, at least as regards superficial manifestations, that the very existence of feudalism in India has sometimes been denied, except to describe the Muslim and Rajput military hierarchies.