Dharampal

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Dharampal (Hindi: ) (19222006), Gandhian
thinker,[1]

historian and political

philosopher[2]

Dharampal

from India.

He authored The Beautiful Tree(1983), Indian Science and

Technology in the Eighteenth Century (1971) and Civil
Disobedience and Indian Tradition(1971), among other
seminal works, which have led to a radical reappraisal of
conventional views of the cultural, scientific and
technological achievements of Indian society at the eve of
the British conquest.[3]
Dharampal was born on 19 February 1922 in Kandhala, a

Dharampal left with Rajiv Dixit.

Born

19 February 1922
Muzaffarnagar, Uttar
Pradesh,India

Gandhi's ashram), near Wardha, Maharashtra, which had

Died

24 October 2006 (aged 84)

been his main abode since the early 1980s. He has been

Nationality India

associated in various ways with the regeneration of India's

Religion

small town in the Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh,

and died on 24 October 2006 atSevagram (Mahatma

Hindu

diverse people and the restoration of their decentralised

Part of a series on

social, political and economic organisation manifested through

their local

communities.[4]

Hindu politics

Involvement in the Freedom Movement Dharampal was

inspired by Mahatma Gandhi throughout his life; he received
his first glimpse of Gandhiji at the age of seven, when he
accompanied his father to attend the 1929 Lahore Congress.
In March 1931, when Sardar Bhagat Singh and his colleagues

Concepts

[show ]

authorities, Dharampal recalls that many of his friends took to

Early figures

[show ]

the streets of Lahore, shouting slogans in protest. Yet

Political leaders

[show ]

remaining critical of this rebellious assertion, and despite the

Political parties

[show ]

influence of his semi-westernized education at school and

Independent authors

[show ]

were sentenced to death and executed by the British colonial

college, he was drawn towards the movement led by Mahatma

Hinduism

Gandhi: soon he started wearing khadi, a practice he followed

all his life. Mahatma Gandhis call for Individual Satyagraha in
October 1940 marked the beginning of his involvement in
national politics and the subsequent abandonment of his BSc in Physics. In August 1942, he was
present as a fervent spectator at the Quit India session of the Congress in Bombay, whereupon he
joined the movement and was active as an under-ground member of the AICC group run by Sucheta

VTE

Kriplani until his arrest in April 1943. After 2 months in police detention, he was released, but debarred
from Delhi. A year later in August 1944, being interested in village community work, he was introduced
to Mirabehn (the British born disciple of Mahatma Gandhi) and joined her soon after at the Kisan
Ashram, situated midway between Roorkee and Haridwar.
Contents [hide]
1 Engagement in national reconstruction, post 1947
2 Socio-Political Statements
3 Historical research into 18th and early 19th century Indian society
4 Other significant publications
5 Activities and influence in the public sphere
6 Legacy
7 Published Works
8 References
9 External links

Engagement in national reconstruction, post 1947

[edit]

At the time of Partition, he was put in charge of the Congress Socialist Party centre for the rehabilitation
of refugees from West Pakistan, and came in close contact with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and Ram
Manohar Lohia, as well as with numerous younger friends, such as L.C. Jain, in Delhi. He was also a
founding member of the Indian Cooperative Union set up in 1948. The following year he intended to visit
Israel for the purpose of studying its rural and community reconstruction programmes, but due to the
closure of the Suez Canal had to reschedule his route via England where he met and married Phyllis
who was English. On their way back to India by land, they stayed in Israel to study the communitarian
life-style in Degania Alif, the oldest kibbutz, set up by Russian Jews. In 1950, Dharampal resumed his
work with Mirabehn, and the community village of Bapugram near Rishikesh began to be formed.
However, disillusioned by the futility of this idealistic experiment in community development, which
seemed to have no impact on the Nehruvian mainstream, he left the village in 1954 to join his wife and
two small children in London where he spent three years, mostly working for Peace News, a journal
published by the War Resisters International, focusing on peace issues and nonviolent social change.
Dharampal returned to Delhi in late 1957 after a visit to several Buddhist and Hindu holy places in Sri
Lanka and South India. From 1958 to 1964 he was elected General Secretary of the Association of
Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development (AVARD), founded in 1958 by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya
who, a year later, passed on the couch of President to Jayaprakash Narayan(known as JP), with whom
Dharampal developed a very close relationship of mutual respect and appreciation.[5]

Socio-Political Statements

[edit]

While at AVARD, Dharampal made regular contributions to the AVARD Newsletter, often taking to task
governmental planning and development projects. In 1962, he published a small monograph containing
the proceedings of the Indian Constituent Assembly relating to the discussion on the subject of
Panchayat Raj as the Basis of Indian Polity which highlighted the failure of the Constitution to
incorporate indigenous administrative and political structures. In November 1962, incensed by the
debacle of the Indo-Chinese war, Dharampal wrote an open letter to the members of the Lok Sabha

asking for Jawaharlal Nehru's resignation on moral grounds. For this act of protest, Dharampal (along
with two friends, Narendra Datta and Roop Narayan, who were co-signatories of the letter) was arrested
and imprisoned in Tihar jail. After some months, the three satyagrahis were released after Lal Bahadur
Shastri, the then Home-Minister, and JP had intervened. Towards the end of 1963, Dharampal was
appointed Director of Study and Research of the All India Panchayat Parishad and spent more than a
year in Tamil Nadu collecting historical material that was later published as The Madras Panchayat
System: A General Assessment (1971) in which not only the destruction of the indigenous panchayatbased polity due to the colonial land revenue system, compounded with systematic political and
bureaucratic intervention, is underscored, but also its replacement in the 19th century by a colonial
bureaucratic apparatus which has continued even after Independence, more or less unchanged, despite
its debilitating influence.

Historical research into 18th and early 19th century Indian society

[edit]

Convinced about the urgent need for an objective understanding about Indias past, before the
onslaught of colonial rule, Dharampal, from the mid-1960s, living in London for family reasons, decided
to embark on an exploration of British-Indian archival material, based on documents emanating from
commissioned surveys of the East India Company, lodged in various depositories spread over the British
Isles.[6] His pioneering historical research, conducted intensively over a decade, led to the publication of
works that have since become classics in the field of Indian studies.[7] The first book on Indian Science
and Technology in the Eighteenth Century (1971), containing detailed empirical data on sophisticated
Indian astronomy, medical science and practice, the technologies of iron and steel, of ice making, and
agricultural implements, created quite a stir in academic and political circles, and with subsequent
extensive research a new perspective on the development of Indian science and technology could have
emerged, if substantial institutional backing had been forthcoming. Dharampal's second book on Civil
Disobedience and Indian Tradition (1971) foregrounds the Indian roots of Gandhian satyagraha by
focusing on British administrative reports of a major protest against the imposition of a house-tax in
Varanasi and neighbouring regions which took place between 18101811. The documentation
exemplifies, firstly, how socio-political popular assertions, governed by deeply rooted conceptions of
justice, explicitly aiming to safeguard the interests of the governed, were simultaneously attempting to
redress the balance of power between the rulers and the ruled. Secondly, it underscores that colonial
intervention changed the hitherto practised "rules of the game" with regard to negotiating political
asymmetries of power. This was achieved, on the one hand, by illegalising such traditionally exercised
"trials of strength", and on the other, by redefining relationships between social groups. Consequently,
the starkly rigid asymmetry between colonial authority and the colonised became the hallmark of the
socio-political arena. Dharampal's third major work entitled The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian
Education in the Eighteenth Century (1983) provides evidence from extensive early British
administrators reports of the widespread prevalence of educational institutions in the Bengal and
Madras Presidencies as well as in the Punjab, teaching a sophisticated curriculum, with daily school
attendance by about 30% of children aged 615, where those belonging to communities who were
classed as Shudras or even lower constituted the majority of students, and in some areas, for instance
in Kerala, where Muslim girls were quite well represented.
The impressive picture of early colonial India that emerges from this pioneering historical research is
supplemented by an extensive collection of essays in which Dharampal stresses the need for further

investigation, firstly, into the sophisticated societal, economic, and cultural mechanisms that had
facilitated these accomplishments, and secondly, into understanding the processes by which these
institutions declined and gradually fell into oblivion, and thirdly, into how knowledge generated in India
had been appropriated, refined and integrated into early modern British and European scientific and
cultural institutions, and fourthly, a rigorous study of the mechanisms by which Indian society had been
shattered and cognitively colonised under the impact of British rule.

Other significant publications

[edit]

An incisive understanding of the Indian cultural ethos, and the manner in which it differs from modern
conceptions, is presented in a slim volume in Hindi entitledBharatiya Chitta, Manas and Kala (1991,
English translation: 1993).
The British Origin of Cow-Slaughter in India (2002), besides providing historical evidence about
the genesis of mass cow-slaughter under British auspices, presents extensive documentary material
about one of the most significant resistance movements in India against kine-killing by the British during
the years 18801894. By highlighting the support given by some prominent Muslims during phases of
this mass protest as well as by emphasising the crucial fact that it was the British and not the Muslims
who were the main consumers of beef, Dharampal is able to dispel one of the deep-seated myths
perpetuated in the interest of reinforcing divisive colonial strategies.
Understanding Gandhi (2002) is a profoundly insightful portrayal of the unfolding of Mahatma
Gandhis genius in leading the Indian struggle for Swaraj.
A complete listing of his published works is compiled below.[8]

Activities and influence in the public sphere

[edit]

Founder General Secretary of the Indian Cooperative Union (ICU) of which Smt. Kamladevi
Chattopadhyay was the Founder Chairperson; the ICU, established in the early 1950s by a group of
freedom fighters, played a vital role in the post-Independence period
At the behest of Jayaprakash Narayan, Dharampal was appointed a Fellow of the A. N. Sinha Institute,
Patna during 197273.
From the mid-1970s onwards Dharampal articulated his views most forcefully in public venues,
academic conferences and Indian national papers.
In the 1980s, Dharampals historical research and understanding of Indian society served as an
inspiration for a group of young scientists called the Patriotic and People-oriented Science and
Technology (PPST) Group to engage in serious research into indigenous scientific and technological
traditions with a view to underpinning their civilisational anchorage, technical sophistication and
contemporary relevance.
During 19902006, he was Emeritus Fellow of the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai
In early 1990s, he was elected Member of the Indian Council of Historical Research for two terms and
for a third term during 19992001.
In 2001, he was appointed Chairman of the National Commission on Cattle set up by the Government
of India

Legacy

[edit]

Whereas Dharampals published oeuvre, in dispelling colonial myths about Indias recent past, serves as
a seminal and powerful inspiration for engaging in crucial reinterpretations about the nature of Indian
society, the enormous portent of his research (much of which in the form of extensive notes and typed
extracts of documents from British and Indian archives still remains in manuscript form) has yet to impact
more extensively on radically transforming conventional historiography of modern India. Copies of
Dharampals extensive archival collection are lodged in the library of the Gandhi Seva Sangh,
Sevagram, Wardha and at the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai.

Published Works

[edit]

1. Dharampal, Panchayat Raj as the Basis of Indian Polity: An Exploration into the
Proceedings of the Constituent Assembly (with a foreword by Jayaprakash Narayan), AVARD,
New Delhi, 1962.
2. Dharampal, Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some
Contemporary European Accounts (with a foreword by Dr. D.S..Kothari and Introduction by Dr.
William A.Blanpeid), Impex India, Delhi, 1971; reprinted by Academy of Gandhian Studies,
Hyderabad 1983.
3. Dharampal, Civil Disobedience and Indian Tradition: with Some Early Nineteenth Century
Documents (with a foreword by Sri Jayaprakash Narayan), Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan,
Varanasi, 1971.
4. Dharampal, The Madras Panchayat System, Vol II: A General Assessment, Impex India, Delhi
1972.
5. Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century,
Biblia Impex Private Limited, New Delhi 1983; reprinted by Keerthi Publishing House Pvt Ltd.,
Coimbatore 1995.
6. Dharampal, Some Aspects of Early Indian Society and Polity and their Relevance to the
Present, Indian Association for Cultural Freedom, Pune 1988; Hindi translation published as
Angrazon se Pehale ka Bharat Shatabdi Prakashan, Vidisha 1988; Tamil Translation, by
K.Ramasubramanian, published as Mundeya India Samudayam, Arasamaippu, Sila Amsanga:
Avattrin Inreya Poruttam, Cre-A, Chennai 1992.
7. Dharampal, Bharatiya Chitta, Manas va Kala (Hindi), Pushpa Prakashan, Patna and Centre for
Policy Studies, Chennai 1991; English translation (with a Preface and Glossary) by Jitendra Bajaj,
published as Bharatiya Chitta, Manas and Kala, Centre for Policy Studies, Madras 1993; Kannada
translation, by S. R. Ramaswamy, published as Bharatiya Chitta, Manasikate, Kala, Rashtrotthana
Sahitya, Bangalore 1996.
8. Dharampal, Bharat ka Svadharma (Hindi), Vagdevi Prakashan, Bikaner 1994.
9. Dharampal, Despoliation and Defaming of India: The Early Nineteenth Century British
Crusade, Bharat Peetham, Wardha, 1999.
10. Dharampal and T.M.Mukundan, The British Origin of Cow-Slaughter in India: with some
British Documents on the Anti-Kine-Killing movement 18801894, Society for Integrated
Development of Himalayas, Mussoorie 2002.
11. Dharampal, Understanding Gandhi, Other India Press, Mapusa 2003; Tamil translation, by

Janakipriyan, published as Gandhiyai aridal, Kalachuvadu Pathippagam, Nagercoil 2010.

12. Dharampal, Rediscovering India: Collection of Essays and Speeches (19561998),
Society for Integrated Development of Himalayas, Mussoorie 2003.
Nos. 17 above, along with a few other articles by Dharampal, published asDharampal: Collected
Writings, 5 Volumes, Other India Press, Mapusa 2000; reissued in 2003 and 2007. Gujarati translation
of 112 above, along with a few other articles by Dharampal, published as Dharampal Samagra
Lekhan, 11 volumes, edited by Indumati Katdare, Punarutthan Trust, Ahmedabad 2005. Hindi
translation of 112 above, including other articles by Dharampal, in 10 volumes,Dharampal Samagra
Lekhan, Edited by Indumati Katdare, Punarutthan Trust, Ahmedabad 2007.