Dharampal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.