We Loved Them Once

Upon the Centenary of DD Kosambi and Hiren Mukherjee
Everything for the cause
By Ashok Mitra (The Telegraph)

In this season of pragmatists and musclemen, thinkers are a distraction. It is therefore hardly surprising that centenaries of two outstanding ideologues — Damodar Dayananda Kosambi and Hirendra Nath Mukherjee — have passed almost unnoticed in the country: one or two tepid seminars, the rest is silence.

Kosambi was a mathematician who travelled to Marxism and stayed stuck. It was quite an extraordinary journey. Conferred a degree with summa cum laude from Harvard, Kosambi was a Phi Beta Kappa too. He could have opted for a comfortable existence in the United States of America, winning laurels after scholarly laurels, gaining great social eminence and rolling in wealth. Instead, he chose to return home to India, and spent years in research and teaching at the universities at both Benaras and Aligarh, perhaps to take a measure Everything for the cause Everything for the cause Everything for the cause Everything for the cause of orthodoxy and sectarianism of two different genres.

At some point in the late Thirties, he responded to the invitation from Pune’s Fergusson College where, under the tutelage of the Servants of India Society, the stress was on plain living and high thinking. Kosambi fitted snugly into the milieu and embarked on the most productive phase of his academic career. In 1942, Homi Bhabha invited him to join the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which became Kosambi’s abode for the next 17 years. His services were rudely terminated in 1962 in the wake of the anti-communist frenzy sparked by the border clashes with China. One of the greatest mathematicians the nation has produced since Srinivas Ramanujan was sent packing on the ground that he was an ideologue and, what a horrid thing, a Marxist.

Curiosity does not die down though: how could a pure mathematician of Kosambi’s genre end up, in the course of a bare few years, in the turgid terrain of Marxism? Albert Einstein’s introductory essay, “Why Socialism”, which launched Paul Sweezy’s Monthly Review 60-odd years ago, perhaps provides part of the answer to the riddle. A mathematician is engaged all the while in tackling problems of symmetry and asymmetry, of linearity and non-linearity, of equations and non-equations. He deals with complex variables and the boulevards of statics and dynamics and, in the process, the laws of motion are at the centre of his scholarly concern. As he stares out of his window, he easily discovers in the real world the empirical correlates of the symbols, numbers and puzzles he has been cogitating over. The universe of mathematics has its prototype in the multiplex known as society. Are not integration and differentiation daily issues of human existence, and does not social structure eerily resemble a matrix which is the staple of algebra?

The cognitive aspect apart, Kosambi’s journey to ideology was the denouement of a step-by-step progression, from mathematics to statistics, statistics leading to worrying over a riddle in numismatics, numismatics prodding him on to archaeology — and what could be more natural than archaeological enquiry to evoke an interest in social history, from there the logical final point being the arcadia of ideology? In due course, Kosambi was bowled over by Marx’s law of motion of society, it was precise, logical, coherent, encapsulating history, economics, sociology, anthropology, biology, literature and much else. Kosambi ambled into Marxism much in the natural manner a child learns to walk. At the same time, he possessed much too original a mind to be a conformist. Those whom he used to playfully address as Official Marxists felt uneasy with his somewhat unorthodox analysis of the class structure of Indian society in ancient times. Kosambi was unconcerned. Marxism was a science, it is the burden of science to challenge orthodoxy.

While steadfast in his faith, Kosambi did not care to join the communist party. Hiren Mukherjee, on the other hand, was very much an organization man, always with the party, even in moments when his conscience was tortured by particular party decisions, such as during the Communist Party of India’s vocal support of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency.

A brilliant historian, Mukherjee imbibed the Marxist faith early in his youth, and from then on, dialectical materialism jammed every stream of his consciousness. His oratory, whether English or Bengali or Urdu or, for the matter, Sanskrit, would reach unbelievably great heights. He was a prolific writer as well, ceaselessly at work on behalf of the cause. Each of these was a secondary element in his metabolism; his outstanding attribute was his passion. This passion was, very nearly, a physical phenomenon. One could almost touch it. It would reverberate within the precincts of the Lok Sabha when he was speaking; it would pour out in waves of quivering expressions when he declaimed at public rallies, it would spill over and beyond sentences and paragraphs of the essays on diverse issues he wrote in English and Bengali.

This is where the two ideologues walked away from each other. Kosambi’s Marxism was a package of cool deduction, carefully argued, the harvest of intellection honed over long years. He considered the analysis of social asymmetries as belonging to the category of scientific investigation, historical determinism revealed itself in the course of such explorations. Hiren Mukherjee’s starting point was Damodar Kosambi’s point of rest. To Mukherjee, an ideologue has to be, very nearly, a religious person, a proselytiser in the noblest sense of the term. To disseminate most effectively the seeds of faith, one must, he was convinced, carry along a load of honest passion. Spreading the message of the communist millennium that is a-coming is the most rightful of all causes; to ensure the success of this mission, one must avail of all possible resources, including the armoury of passion. Mukherjee would proceed even further. He would sternly remind his callers that, where Marxism was concerned, passion was more than an accessory, it was the principal thing. Ideology is passion; sans passion, ideology is an inert heap, a heap of abstruse theorizing bound to go over the heads of those whom it is intended to bring into the fold.

Beside the issue of passion, there was that other gulf, already mentioned, separating the two ideologues. Kosambi shunned the party apparatus, Mukherjee was unflinching in his party loyalty. With one exception: he was with the CPI but refused to toe its line of denigration of Josef Stalin. He would extol Stalin as much as he would extol Gandhi and Nehru, defending his position with passion and yet in a manner which did not compromise his ideology. His party was embarrassed, but could do nothing about it.

The middle decades of the 20th century were a golden age for romantics on the Left. A mathematician, otherwise a fanatic for the rigours of science, could still take pride in the philosophy of dialectical materialism he had arrived at, thinking and toiling on his own. An historian, born in the same year as the mathematician, only six months the junior of the other, had voyaged along a different route; his alma mater too was not Harvard, but Oxford, and his forte was not logic but passion. The divergence in the two trajectories hardly mattered. They gave their everything for the cause. The luckier of the two bade adieu before the catastrophe that struck international socialism. The other one lived longer and raged passionately against the dying of the day till his very last moment.

Both these noble ideologues belong, at this juncture, to the category of the discarded. Their centenaries have passed almost unnoticed. The eternal verities, it would seem, remain the patent of classics; consider this couple of lines from the lips of a Marlovian character: “I loved her once, but that was in another country./ And besides, the wench is dead.”

DD Kosambi on Sati

Farid Muttaquin writing on the Sati tradition among the Hindus in India quotes Kosambi:

Local castes of Indian Hindu communities have used the politics of sati to support their political goals. Narrayan describes the ruling caste of Kshatriya Rajput, the priestly caste of Brahmins and the wealthy mercantile caste of Banias as the three castes in Rajasthan that were involved in the politics of sati. The Brahmins, one of the most crucial of Hindu fundamentalist groups in India, used sati incidents “to reorganize religious events to commemorate and celebrate sati”. The Rajput used these events “to reinforce their status as a martial race who are historic defenders of ‘Hindu dharma’, at a time when their power and status is declining.” Furthermore, Rajput presumed this tradition as a privilege of this caste as a way to maintain nobility and courage befitting the “mother of a martial race.” Meanwhile, the Banias were seemingly the main financial source of the establishment of the ostentatious sati temples, faith and profit reinforcing each other (Narrayan, 71). For instance, according to Kosambi, Upreti mentions that the Rani Sati temple had 105 branches in different towns and cities and this provided great financial profits for the caste. Furthermore, Upreti (1991: 108-110) interestingly describes this phenomenon of using the sati tradition for economic interests as “the industry of sati” or “commercialization of widow burning.” In this regard, Narrayan finally concludes that the sati tradition in contemporary local Indian Hindu communities provides economic, political and cultural power for these local castes.

Final Episode of Documentary on Indian History

All the episodes of Arvind N Das's documentary based on DD Kosambi's works are now available on the video.google.com site. Here is the link to the last episode in the series.

The Way History Needs To Be Told

RS Krishnan offers a critical view of Arvind N Das's documentary (some excerpts have been carried on this blog earlier). He also links to a documentary on the Mughals.

While it was commendable of Arvind Narayan Das to make D D Kosambi's seminal book into a documentary series, many episodes were made with lot of factual inaccuracies not to speak of the analytical errors in them. To me particularly episode six on South India was shocking! This documentary, given its rather sombre tone may not appeal to children or even adults for that matter. Maybe the seriousness of the issues and themes raised merited such an approach - where history is not merely telling you something very empirical or perceptible from the past but focusing more on the underlying forces and socio-economic processes that shape the more visible aspect of our past. But here we have this wonderful documentary on Mughals titled "The Mughal Empire" under the series called Warrior empires shown on the History Channel, which even as it focuses on empirical history makes for compelling viewing and offers very revealing insights into the way Mughals fought their war, their architecture and lifestyle.

Kosambi on Nags

The Nags are said to have been associated with almost all great civilization- Mesapotamia, Rome, Greece and Egypt (Tavalkar,1979).D.D Kosambi (1965:86) states that Naga was a generic name for food gathering forest tribe and were a very respectable people.He further states (ibid. 93) apparently Naga became a generic term for forest aborigines,not necessarily connected or interrelated.who had a cobra (Nag) totem or worshipped the cobra as so many Indians aborigines (and not only aborigines) still do.The particular ‘Naga’ were in adjacent jungle at the time Kuru land was first settled by Aryans.Food gathering was much easier in Gangetic forest than in the open,semi desert basin or the foothills o the punjab.The same dense forest made it impossible to conquer the Nag or to reduce them otherwise to the status of tribals slaves, as had been possible with Dasa and Audra of the west.Naga line was friendly to and in some special relation with the Kurus,though not to the Pandavas.The term ‘Naga’ was not in vogue in vedic age for ethnic group (ibid,120),here it indicated aboriginal blood or at least aboriginal cult.And for that matter,Kolians the neighbours of Sakyan to whom Buddha belonged (ibid 109) were often counted among the aboriginals with the generic label ‘Naga”.So the term ‘Naga’ in all intent and purposes, denoted tribal groups or totemic groups of the tribals. ‘Pundra’ or ‘Pundarika’ is another term which is associated either to the name of ethnic group or to area of their habitation and has relevancy to the present enquiry.

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Scholars Without Borders on Kosambi

It is a great pity that when the JNU Library system was gifted the collection of D D Kosambi's personal books, they eventually chose not to keep them together in a single physical location. What were the books that a mind such as his found interesting? What were the crucial influences that allowed him, throughout his intellectual life, to contribute to mathematics, as well as to sanskrit studies, numismatics and to Indian history? And what was the reason for the daily commute on the Deccan Queen? All that might have been learned by seeing the physical evidence of the man's taste will now have to remain in the realm of mere speculation.

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Kosambi on Subhasitaratnakosa

Subhasitaratnakosa is an anthology of Sanskrit verses compiled by a Buddhist scholar named Vidyakara who lived in Bengal from the latter half of the 11th century AD to c 1130 AD. The first edition of this anthology, containing over a thousand verses, was prepared by Vidyakara shortly before 1100 AD. This first edition's palm leaf manuscript was discovered at the Ngor monastery in central Tibet. A second edition of the Subhasitaratnakosa (treasury of well turned verse), increased in size by about one third, containing 1738 verses, was compiled by Vidyakara himself not later than 1130 AD. A paper manuscript of this expanded edition was found in the private collection of the Nepalese Rajaguru, Pundit Hemaraja. The researches of DD Kosambi have shown that an anthology of Sanskrit verses published by FW Thomas in 1912 under the conjectural title Kavindravachanasamuchchaya from a fragment of a palm leaf manuscript represents the second edition of Subhasitaratnakosa.

About Vidyakara, the compiler of the Subhasitaratnakosa, no details are known. Researches of DD Kosambi have shown that Vidyakara was a monk at the Jagaddala monastery (in varendra) and in the compilation of his anthology he used the manuscripts kept in the library of that monastery.

Link

Atomic Energy for India

(This is the unabridged text of a talk by Professor

D.D. Kosambi to the Rotary Club of Poona, on July 25, 1960.)


Atomic Energy for India


The word energy is associated in the minds of most of you with steam engines, electric supply, diesel or petrol motors, water-turbines and perhaps windmills. The word evokes others like horsepower, kilowatts, and calories; perhaps also electricity and petrol bills, price per ton of coal, and increased taxes for the Five-year Plans. I want only to point out to you that these technical, social and economic considerations go very deep, down to the foundations of human society. With the coming of atomic energy, they have reached a stage, which is critical for the whole of mankind, far above mere personal considerations.

We rarely think of the simplest and most familiar type of energy, namely that derived from food – though far too many in this world still have to think of food as the one overwhelming need for their lives. Man needs from 2000 to 4000 calories of nutritional energy per day, according to the climate, conditions of work, and type if food taken. In our ordinary discussions of a balanced diet vitamin etc. this elementary fact is often forgotten; namely that the value of food depends upon the amount of energy it can release in the human or animal body. To make this energy available in the digestive system, man needs to have his food cooked by fire, which means another form of energy obtained by burning fuel. The history of mankind begins with the first steps above the animal stage, when man learned to control fire, and began to produce food instead of just gathering it.

The next step, the formation of human society proper, with division of labour and differentiation of social functions, was made possible only by more power: that of animals such as cattle or horses for agriculture and transport. Human labour-power was also used in greater quantity, whether slave labour or that of paid drudges. Other sources such as windmills and water wheels helped. The industrial revolution could not have been realised before the discovery and the extensive use of the steam engine, in the early 19th century. Man succeeded in the conversion of fire-energy into mechanical work. Electricity came later in that century. It could be generated with or without the steam engine, as for example waterpower or the windmill; its chief advantage lay in the transmission of energy to places distant from the point of generation. The steam engine used directly meant chains, driving rods, gears, cables, or some such mechanical transmission. You know how much human society has been changed by electricity in a single lifetime, say the life-time of Edison.


What is the ultimate source of all such power? Food- grains, fruit, nuts etc. store their energy from sunlight, which is absorbed by the living plant, along with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, water vapour and other substances. Cellulose thus made is also the main source of the energy stored in firewood. Coal and oil are simply organic matter converted by deep burial in the earth for millions of years. Hence, all these forms of energy come from the sun, the difference being in the method by which the energy is stored. The chemical processes involved may be described as molecular change. The breakdown of the energy in food and fuel is also chemical and molecular. The molecules may change, their atoms do not. For wind-power, the sun heats up some of the air, which rises, and is replaced by other, cooler air. These air-currents drive the windmill. Water- power is similarly drawn from the sun without chemical change. The water evaporated by the sun's heat rises, forms clouds, and comes down again as rain. What we utilise is the how of rainwater from a higher to a lower level.

The electric energy, which appears on out monthly bills (in the few Indian homes fortunate enough to have the supply) is measured in kilowatt-hours. One-kilowatt hour is equivalent to one horsepower for about an hour and twenty minutes. It is also equivalent to a little more than 860,000 calories of heat. But these are the equivalents when nothing is lost in the change from one form to the other. In practice, something is always lost. No transformation of energy is a hundred percent efficient, and most of them are decidedly inefficient. The machine loses a good deal of energy in friction; electricity is lost in transmission, and by leakage; heat is radiated away. These losses are physically inevitable, and a fundamental property of matter. But energy is also a fundamental property of matter, apart from the chemical changes and mechanical processes. Matter cannot be destroyed by ordinary mechanical or chemical processes. But if it could be annihilated in some way, an equivalent amount of energy must appear. This was finally proved by Einstein, who summed it up in the formula E = mc2 which gives the absolute energy available from a given amount of matter.

Atomic energy is fundamentally different from molecular energy. For the first time in history, man has been able to duplicate the solar processes for himself on earth. Solar energy depends upon the breakdown of the atomic nucleus, with the resultant emission of heat, x-ray radiation, longer electric waves, and particles such as electrons, neutrons and the like. These last correspond to the smoke and ashes of ordinary fuel, but are much more dangerous to man. The electricity cannot be utilised directly. The main useful output of atomic nuclear reactions is still the heat, which has then to be converted into power like any other source of best. This might seem wasteful, but is much less wasteful than other forms of conversion. The animals, including man, cannot convert more than a limited amount of food per individual into energy, and that too not without considerable waste. Not only is the animal power plant quite inefficient, but it has to be stoked and fed all the time, whether any energy is utilised or not. You all know the low efficiency of coal and oil fuel. Hydro-electricity is better, but limited by lack of flexibility, and restriction to certain favourable localities.

What can humanity do with atomic energy? We must distinguish between what is now technically possible and what might theoretically be achieved in the very distant future. The most that has actually been done is to break down uranium nuclei, and to use the energy liberated. Other atomic nuclei can be broken down, but generally the process eats up more energy than it liberates. You know that this process has been misused. The atomic age arrived with a bang at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the form of a most deadly bomb. Its main use since then has been as a military and political weapon in the cold war, with which certain powers have tried to cow their opponents. The sun gets most of its energy from fusion. Four nuclei of hydrogen are squeezed together under immense heat and pressure to form one of Helium. A certain amount of mass left over in the process is converted directly into energy, by Einstein's Law. This has been done on earth in the hydrogen bomb. No materials known on earth can withstand the temperatures of fusion energy. If the available uranium were properly shared, we could convert many deserts into veritable gardens, industrialise the densest Amazon jungles, and free mankind from the worst forms of drudgery. This is no longer a technical problem, but a social one. A few pounds (about 8) of uranium sufficed to run a great submarine for seventy days. Automatic power plants could in theory be built which could be refuelled by air once every few months. Half a dozen trained men could run them. These plants could be located in any part of the world, without railways, waterways, or even road communication. But is the world prepared for this? The main question that most of you will ask is: What is the investment value of atomic energy? If the preliminary research and refining is to be done, there is virtually no investment value, for the private sector. The whole affair is fantastically costly. Those who say that atomic energy can compete with thermal or hydro-power, carefully omit to mention the fact that the preliminary costs have always been written off to someone else's account usually that of some government. Only in some socialist countries, where uranium is relatively plentiful, and new lands have to be opened up, is it possible to utilise atomic energy properly. Even there, military considerations play a considerable part, because of the cold war.

It is true that the known resources of radioactive material in the world exceed those known for coal. But the cost of uranium is artificially high. Then there is also the question of by-products. Animal by-products are good fertilisers; the skins and meat can also be used. For human beings, the by-products are taken care of by a good sewage system and the dead bodies by funerals. In industrial countries, the average temperature over cities (e.g. London) goes up by a couple of degrees Fahrenheit, due to the use of coal. There is also the smoke, acid deposits that corrode buildings, carbon monoxide poisoning of the air by petrol fumes, and smog. These are trifling in comparison with the waste products of atomic power plants. The pile has to be very heavily shielded to screen harmful radiation. No one knows where to put the radioactive wastes from uranium piles. Every possible mine or pit is being rapidly filled up in the USA; the sea is unsafe, the rivers even more so. This is best brought out by the effects of atom-bomb tests. The fallout is found ah over the world. The Bikini tests made grass in California radioactive and poisoned fish that would otherwise have fed Japanese a few thousand miles away. Excessive doses of radioactivity always came serious changes in all living organisms. Some of these changes lie in the mechanism that enables the organism to breed. Most of these hereditary changes are lethal; that is, they kill the organisms born in the next generation. The Japanese have followed up persons exposed to atomic radiation at Hiroshima. Many of the children born to women who have been so exposed can hardly be called human; but they do not live to grow up. The real danger lies in the minute genetic change that does not show itself for some generations. It is known from experiments on smaller animals that these changes, when fully developed, may lead to incurable mental derangement within a few generations. By the time we know what the effect on mankind is going to be, it will be far too late to do anything about it. The changes will have been bred into millions of human beings of that generation and remain thereafter. This is not a disease, or an infection that I am talking about, but hereditary insanity, physical degeneracy, and worse. The only cure is to stop all atomic tests immediately, and to take great care that the waste pro- ducts of atomic power stations for peaceful purposes will be safely isolated. The advanced countries have quietly reduced their atomic power programs. The prestige of having atomic power stations does not compensate the extra expenditure or the extra danger involved,

Where does that leave us in India? We do need every available source of power quickly. Can we utilise atomic power for national progress? This question has already been answered in the affirmative by the high command. The papers inform us that another hundred crores or more are to be devoted to this purpose beyond undisclosed millions already spent. It was announced in August 1956 that India had joined the ranks of the atomic-energy producing countries. Actually, we were not then producing any atomic power. Though a second reactor costing another ten crores of rupees has gone into operation, and the staff has reached over two thousand highly trained graduates, we still, produce no utilisable atomic power. The setting up of atomic power stations in other countries is now quite easy. Even China has one giving 7000 kilowatts since last year, and may build more. The USA, UK, USSR, France, Canada and some other countries could build one or more for us--if we are willing to pay the cost. The question is whether this cost is worthwhile.

I do not propose to answer this question, because all of you here are intelligent to work out the answer for yourselves. But I do wish to point out that the main work in producing atomic energy has already been done without coat to India by a permanent source, which has only to be utilised properly. This generous source is the sun, which goes on pouring its blasting rays into every tropical country, at an uncomfortable rate. Can solar energy be used directly?

The answer is yes. The USA, Russia or England, for example do not receive so much direct solar radiation as India. There is no reason why we should ape them in all things, including the development of atomic energy at a fantastic cost with low-grade Indian uranium. On an average day, every hundred square metres (1100 square feet) of area will receive about 600-kilowatt hours of heat. This comes to over 160 pounds of high-grade coal, or more than 16 gallons of petrol, in energy equivalent. If it could all be utilised at 100% efficiency, we could evaporate some 240 gallons of water per day. At present, the best known efficiency of utilisation is by solar batteries, which are between 11% and 15% efficient. The Americans are already using such batteries to boost telephone currents in long-distance lines. If I could use such batteries on my own bungalow roof, it means 7 kilowatts for every hour of average sunshine, say 60-kilowatt hours per day. This would give my family enough power for all cooking, lights, hot water gadgets, (vacuum cleaner, fridge) air-conditioning, and still leave enough for an electric automobile run on storage batteries. The Russians produce enough steam power from solar energy to supply all the needs of a modern town of over 15,000 inhabitants in the southern USSR. Even as early as 1876, a 2.5-horsepower steam pump was run on solar heat in Bombay. A striking instance of the immense reach of solar power comes from the space-satellites, which send their information to earth by radio transmitters that run on solar batteries. The best of them continued to communicate with our globe from well over 20 million miles away.

It seems to me that research on the utilisation of solar radiation, where the fuel costs nothing at all, would be of immense benefit to India, whether or not atomic energy is used. But by research is not meant the writing of a few papers, sending favoured delegates to international conferences and pocketing of considerable research grants by those who can persuade complaisant politicians to sanction crores of the taxpayers' money. Our research has to be translated into use. The catch in solar energy is its storage. The current you may want at night can be produced irregularly in the daytime. This is not an insoluble difficulty. Quite efficient forms of storage batteries are known. It is possible to combine several uses with mechanical storage. For example, water could be pumped up into 50-foot village towers during sunlight hours, and then allowed to run out for irrigation, or home use, through low-pressure turbines that generate electricity whenever wanted. This is not very efficient at the second stage, but the main purpose of augmenting our poor water supply will have been efficiently served, village-by-village.

The most important advantage of solar energy would be decentralisation. To electrify India with a complete national grid would be difficult, considering our peculiar distribution of hydropower and thermal resources. With solar energy, you can supply power locally, with or without a grid. Solar power would be the best available source of energy for dispersed small industry and local use in India. If you really mean to have socialism in any form, without the stifling effects of bureaucracy and heavy initial investment, there is no other source so efficient. Take the simple problem of reforestation, which alone on change India's agriculture, preserve her rapidly eroding soil, and increase production. This problem is insoluble unless people have cheap fuel for cooking, so that they need not cut down trees. The solar cooker if it worked, would have been the answer. We know that the cooker produced some years ago with such fanfares and self-congratulations is useless. Even a schoolboy should have known that the pot at the focus of the solar cooker, being nickelled and polished, would reflect away most of the heat. But our foremost physicists and research workers, who rushed to claim personal credit and publicity, did not realise this. That is the result of paper research and research for advertisement. If we get over this fundamental hurdle, we have the real cost-free source of atomic power, the sun, at our disposal, for more than eight months of the year.

Solar energy 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. The solar water heater is the simplest to manufacture a black absorbing grid like an automobile radiator, and an insulated storage-tank. No moving parts are involved. The water can be delivered much hotter than needed for a bath, but below the boiling point. Such heaters are already used successfully in Israel and elsewhere, and would save a great deal of fuel by themselves in the Indian household. For the steam engine, it is necessary to concentrate the sun's rays, usually by a light silvered concave re- hector which moves with the sun. These are also quite practicable, and in use. Direct conversion of sunlight into electricity is familiar to many of us as the photoelectric cell, and the photometer used for correct exposure. These are very simple and efficient to use, but cost more money to make. The technique has now been simplified and the cost reduced by careful study of semi-conductors. The most effective solar battery of which I have any knowledge is based upon silicon-zinc crystals. Their production, too, is commercially successful, but needs still more research--which continues uninterrupted in other countries. The Chinese use semi-conductors directly to produce enough electricity even from the waste heat of an ordinary kerosene lamp to run a radio set; their appliances are on the international market now. What India could use best in this way still remains to be determined. The principle involved in the use of atomic energy produced by the sun as against that from atomic piles is parallel to that between small and large dams for irrigation. The large dam is very impressive to look at, but its construction and use mean heavy expenditure in one locality, and bureaucratic administration. The small bunding operation can be done with local labour, stops erosion of the soil, and can be fitted into any corner of the country where there is some rainfall. It solves two fundamental problems: how to keep the rain-water from flowing off rapidly into the sea, unused; and how to encourage local initiative while giving direct economic gain to the small producer. The great dams certainly have their uses, but no planners should neglect proper emphasis upon effective construction of the dispersed small dams. What is involved is not merely agriculture and manufacture, but a direct road to socialism.

Every notable advance in man's control over new sources of energy has been hampered by outworn superstition or obsolete social forms. Fire is regarded today as a convenient tool it the service of humanity. Primitive man thought ii necessary to worship fire as a god. Agni received human and animal sacrifice; vestal virgins might be dedicated to his service. Is it less miserable a superstition that calls for the sacrifice of millions of men and animals, living or as yet unborn, to atomic tests and radio- active fallout? It seemed inevitable to Victorian England that dreadful industrial slums should accompany the first large scale use of the steam engine; it also seemed necessary to conquer many colonies for supply of raw materials and as market for the finished goods of the factories that the steam engine first made possible. We claim to know better now. If so, has the time not come to change society so that the new discoveries will serve the needs of all mankind rather than the perverted greed of the few? Then, and only then, will it be possible to determine how much effort should be spent relatively on the development of the various.

The Marxist Historian

A short newspaper bio of DD Kosambi.

By Prajal Sakhardande

Mr Antonio Pereira Dangui, a friend from Benaulim lamented that we had forgotten a great Goan, Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi and it is very pertinent I pay a tribute to this great Goan Marxist historian on the occasion of the birth centenary year of this man who stands tall in the realm of ancient history.

Born at Kusman-Quepem, a beautiful village located on the banks of the river Kushawati, the late D D Kosambi, as he is popularly known, would have completed hundred on July 31. He was born on July 31, 1907.

Recently I had the fortune of buying a copy of D D Kosambi’s book titled ‘Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture’, at a bookstalls in Poona. As a student of the refresher course in History I was the student of D D Kosambi’s daughter Ms Meera Kosambi a well-know historian herself. As students of history at the Goa University we attended the D D Kosambi Memorial lectures. The History Department of the Goa University should organise lecture series to commemorate the birth centenary year of this great Goan historian. That would be a befitting tribute to D D Kosambi. His books on ancient Indian History include: ‘An introduction to the Study of Indian History’, ‘The Culture and Civilization of ancient India - a Historical Outline’, and ‘Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture’. Mr J Clement Vaz writes of Kosambi describing him as a renowned Indologist who pioneered the theory of finding the period of a civilization from analysis of ancient coins found without any inscriptions or date markings or legends. By a statistical study of the weights of the coins, he was able to establish the period of time they were in circulation and could accordingly date them. His historical writings provide an insight to his contribution to the new approach to history in which he would depend also on collected material through pioneer work in archaeology and ethnography. His wide study of ancient Sanskrit texts was truly remarkable as was his translation of Kautilyas Arthashastra the ancient treatise on political economy written in the 4th century BC.

Damodar D Kosambi was a scholar of international repute. He was invited by reputed international academic institutions to deliver lectures especially in the US and UK. In India in 1946 Dr Homi Bhabha invited him to join the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research as Professor of Mathematics where he worked for 26 years and did commendable work in that period. His autobiographical essay, ‘Steps in Science’, reveals him as a brave non-conformist who stood up against all forms of obscurantist orthodoxy. His father the great Buddhist-Pali scholar Dharmanand Kosambi is a well-known name in Sri Lanka. The son Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi or D D Kosambi lived up to his fathers name and achieved great heights as a scientist, mathematician, numismatist and Marxist historian. Let us celebrate this great Goan. History teachers in schools, colleges, and universities should make their students aware of the contributions of this eminent scholar. On June 29, 1966 he passed away at Poona at the age of 59. His mothers name was Balabai, wife was Nalini, daughter Meera and sisters Manik and Manorama.

Kosambi on Chanakya

But who was Chanakya or Kautilya? We know nothing about his personal life. We have some details about Chandragupta Maurya from Greek sources, who refer to him as Sandrokottos. But even these reports survive as fragmented quotations in other works- the original is untraceable. As D D Kosambi points out, as far as Chanakya is concerned, we only have legends fictionalized through the famous Sanskrit play, Mudra Rakshasa, written by Visakhadatta in the fourthcentury AD.

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