Dharampal on Wikipedia

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Dharampal, is a Gandhian thinker, historian and major philosopher from India. He authored The Beautiful Tree, and Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century, among other seminal works. He was born in January 1922 in a rich Jat family of Kandhla, a small town in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh.

Among the established Indian historians, Dharampal has yet to find his place compared to the sheer significance of his contributions. His books are based painstakingly, and entirely, on colonial British documents of East India Company, and commissioned surveys, conducted in parts of India, before the annexation of India.
His writings are abundantly rich in written references and references, to documents outlining the deliberate colonization agenda of British imperialism. He shows the determination of British civil servants in colonizing India as per set patterns, often referred by Gandhi as "divide and rule" rationale.

Dharampal effectively dispelled colonial myths and facile untruths about Bharat, the deliberate underplaying of civilizational achievements, and at bringing out the real strength, structure and working of the Indian society. His complete works, were published a few years ago by Shri Claude Alvares of Other India Press, Mapusa, Goa, in six volumes.
Another major result of Dharampal's work among contemporary Indian thinkers, is how he was able to establish the intellectual connection, between Gandhi's ideas and his politics of non violence. Today, based on Dharampal's work, Gandhi can be seen as a visionary philosopher, while at the same time, an earthy political man, who understood the compulsions of the British, as well as the strengths of non violence as a strategy, appropriate for mainstream Indian freedom movement.
He passed away on October 24, 2006 at Sevagram (Gandhi’s ashram) near Wardha (Maharashtra).
He is survived by a son and two daughters. His son, David, lives in London and a daughter, Gita, is a professor of history at Heidelberg University of Germany. His wife died in London in 1986.

Shri Dharampal had no formal training in history, but maybe, precisely because of this, he was able to chart a new path in analysis and study of pre colonial Indian history. He effectively dispelled many colonial myths about the state of Indian society pre British, generated by a body of British and British universities trained and influenced Indian historians of recent times.
He took the focus away from Marxian and colonial interpretations of Indian history.

His body of writings, serve now as a seminal and powerful inspiration, for many foundational reinterpretations and interventions, in Indian society, and its rationale, in contemporary Indian thinking.

- External links
Dharampal, the Great Gandhian and Historian of Indian Science
http://www.dharampal.net/ : online repository of the works of Shri. Dharampal
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharampal"
Categories: New Imperialism History of Asia British rule in India

Dharampal Net Resources

Dear Friends and Associates of Shri Dharampal,

Today (19th February) is the date of birth of Shri. Dharampal. Since his demise there have been many discussions on how to take his work forward. We at Samanvaya have done what we know best, put together the material that we have in our collection in the form of a website.

We are happy to announce the new website www.dharampal.net which will be an online repository of Dharampalji's website. Among its features, it contains a downloadable version of some of his publications, a collection of unpublished archival compilations, his note on possible future work based on them, related initiatives, life sketch, etc.
Currently the site is hosted in the Samanvaya website. Some of the features are not currently available or fully ready yet. This we will have ready in very soon.
We have provided a few snippets of the material in the website at the end of this mail. It is our hope that this Endeavour will be found useful by not just his friends, but, also those who want to embark on a journey of a discovery of India anew.

We welcome your comments and participation. We wish to thank many friends of Dharampalji for their voluntary interest and association in this effort, without their guidance this effort would not have been possible.

Warm regards,
Ramasubramanian
Chief, Samanvaya
chief@samanvaya.com
mob : 9444957781
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Dharampal.Net --- Some of the current information include:

Work Ahead :
It may be worth mentioning that, these researches and studies were taken up by Dharampal in his individual capacity, also because he was not considered a scholar or a historian and did not even have a University degree. It may be mentioned that a question about his not having a degree was raised in the Bihar legislature during 1973.

Archival material :
"...The extent to which it has been carried throughout all the irrigated region of the Madras Presidency is truly extraordinary.
An imperfect record of the number of tanks in 14 districts shows them to amount to no less than, 43,000 in repair, and 10,000 out of repair, or 53,000 in all.
It would be a moderate estimate of the length of embankment for each to fix it at half a mile; and the number of masonry works, in sluices of irrigation, waste weirs, & e., would probably be not over-rated at an average of 6.
These data, only assumed to give some definite idea of the extent of the system, would give close upon 30,000 miles of embankments (sufficient " to put a girdle round the globe" not less than 6 feet thick) and 3,00,000 separate masonry works. The whole of this gigantic machinery of irrigation is of purely native origin ..."

India 1947 - 64 : Events and their background - "When I first read President Roosevelt’s advice on India to the British in August 1942 (India: The Transfer of Power, vol 3), I took his statement to imply that the British should "act in such a way that India stays in the western orbit", quite literally.
It was only years later that I understood that Roosevelt was not thinking in terms of his preference for the West or the USSR, but rather that they, he and the British, "should try to think of some arrangement by which India found its place in the European and American, i.e., western orbit, rather than the Asiatic."
Quite naturally, Roosevelt and his friends, could not conceive an India, run according to the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi.

Relevance of Dharampal :
... His interest in history or his work on the archives has been according to him, only an incidental outcome of his quest for understanding the reasons why the nation was in the state he found it in.
Perhaps that is why he never sought company among ‘historians’ and always seemed to befriend politicians, activists and such kind. His quest for understanding why things were so was obviously attached with the corollary why can’t things change from this situation...