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DHARAMPAL • COLLECTED WRITINGS Volume V ESSAYS ON TRADITION, RECOVERY AND FREEDOM 1 DHARAMPAL • COLLECTED WRITINGS Volume I Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century Volume II Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition Volume III The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century Volume IV Panchayat Raj and India’s Polity Volume V Essays on Tradition, Recovery and Freedom 2 ESSAYS ON TRADITION, RECOVERY AND FREEDOM by Dharampal Other India Press Mapusa 403 507, Goa, India 3 Essays on Tradition, Recovery and Freedom By Dharampal This work is published as part of a special collection of Dharampal’s writings, by: Other India Press Mapusa 403 507, Goa, India. Copyright © (2000) Dharampal Cover Design by Orijit Sen Distributed by: Other India Bookstore, Above Mapusa Clinic, Mapusa 403 507 Goa, India. Phone: 91-832-263306; 256479. Fax: 91-832-263305 OIP policy regarding environmental compensation: 5% of the list price of this book will be made available by Other India Press to meet the costs of raising natural forests on private and community lands in order to compensate for the partial use of tree pulp in paper production. ISBN No.: 81-85569-49-5 (HB) Set ISBN No.:81-85569-50-9 (PB) Set Printed by Sujit Patwardhan for Other India Press at MUDRA, 383 Narayan, Pune 411 030, India. 4 Publisher’s Note Volume V comprises five essays by Dharampal which not only deal with some of the themes covered in the earlier volumes, but also place them within a broad philosophical perspective. Some of these essays are actually lectures delivered by him before audiences in Pune, Bangalore and Lisbon. Wherever possible, the original informal style and tone of the lecture has been retained. These pieces have all been published in one form or another; in scholarly journals, popular print media, in booklet form, and in different languages. The merit of the present collection is that it brings these wide-ranging essays for the first time together within a single volume. Dharampal has written and spoken richly and wisely on other areas and aspects of Indian society and culture as well, including some lively and insightful articles on Mahatma Gandhi. Hopefully, these will also be published as a separate volume in the not-so-distant future. In the meantime, the interested reader can find a comprehensive bibliography of Dharampal’s writings (including articles on him and his work) in a small booklet called India Before British Rule and the Basis for India’s Resurgence, published in 1998 by the Gandhi Seva Sangh, Sevagram, Wardha 442 104, Maharashtra. 5 Contents Some Aspects of Earlier Indian Society and Polity and Their Relevance 1 Indigenous Indian Technological Talent and the Need for its Mobilisation 50 The Self-Awakening of India: The Context of the Past, the Present, and the Future 69 India’s Polity, its Characteristics and Current Problems 109 Bharatiya Chitta Manas and Kala 145 6 I SOME ASPECTS OF EARLIER INDIAN SOCIETY AND POLITY AND THEIR RELEVANCE TO THE PRESENT (Some Aspects of Earlier Indian Society and Polity and their Relevance to the Present consists of three lectures delivered on Jan 4–6, 1986 under the auspices of the Indian Association for Cultural Freedom at Pune. These were later published in New Quest [Nos. 56, 57 and 58] and also translated into Hindi and published in Jansatta in 12 parts during March- April 1986. They were also translated from English into Tamil a year later and published in book form. Soon thereafter, the pieces published by Jansatta were brought together in book form under the title, Angrejon se Pahle ka Bharat by Satabdi Prakasan, Vidisha, 1988. These lectures were also published in Marathi as Paramparik Bharatiya Samajik Va Rajkiya Vyavastha Ani Nava Bharatachi Ubharani as well as in Malayalam in somewhat briefer versions. The compilations of lectures in Hindi continues to be published now and then in a few journals like Himalaya Rebar as well as in book form by the Azadi Bachao Andolan, Allahabad.) The theme of these talks relates largely to the society and polity of India as it appears to me to have existed just before the beginning of British rule (i.e. around 1750), and in many of the areas which came under direct British occupation or protection later (till around 1820). That the basic concepts and fabric of the society and polity I am describing did not come into being just around 1750 but had existed from much earlier times is obvious. I begin today’s talk with an account of how I came to be personally aware of our archival material. From this, I move to a brief reference to our present general understanding of what our society is assumed to have been like around 1750, or in the decades and centuries preceding it. Next I make some reference to the institutions and manners of British polity in the 18th and early 19th century, and I end today’s talk with some mention of 1 the economic differential in Indian Society and of life in India at the top levels before the beginning of British rule, as also what it became soon after we began to be ruled by Britain The second talk is devoted to a description of Indian society and polity, some of it in detail along with some tabulated data. I also briefly touch on certain other aspects of this society: education, technology, the practice of civil disobedience, etc. In the third and final talk I will attempt to explain why my presentation may seem so contrary to prevalent understanding and belief about the nature and functioning of Indian society and polity before British rule. Then I move on to our present public and institutional frame, most of which I believe—and with which most of you will perhaps agree—is a continuation of what we have inherited from the way the British ruled India. At the end I suggest a few steps which may possibly deserve consideration and discussion. My hope is that such a discussion, (though not necessarily restricted to what I propose), may possibly help our society to come into its own. To begin with, I want to mention to you a certain disquiet I feel about ourselves. This disquiet, I expect, is partly a product of my involvement with archival material. Going through most of it is, for me, like reading high drama, or modern mystery or detective stories: it leads me to an overcharged imagination. Thus, the disquiet I feel may, to a large extent, be without any basis. I find, however, that many of the points which I am later going to mention to you seem to have been discussed and published in the 1920s and 1930s. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi’s Young India in the early 1920s published a great deal on indigenous Indian education in the late 18th and early 19th century; on the various crafts of India; on Indian social conditions before the British and on the impoverishment of Indian society during it; on the relatively superior status which the so-called pariahs of South India or the Mahars of Maharashtra had till about 1800, etc. The writers of such articles included not only those who were Gandhiji’s followers or admirers but also men like Sir Sankaran Nair, a member of the British Viceroy’s council, who expressed similar views. According to Sir Sankaran Nair, the major erosion in the socio-economic status of the pariahs or the social and cultural life in general took place during the previous century and a half. I expect there is much more material of this 2 kind in our early 20th century newspapers, journals and scholarly as well as other works. It is perhaps true, that though this information had come to the notice of many 50–60 years ago, it was not brought together then to form an integrated picture of Indian society. Even when the latter might have been attempted, it was probably done cursorily or in what looked like a highly romantic idiom. Gandhiji, in most of his writings, and even more so in Hind Swaraj (which he wrote in 1909), tried to give a fairly integrated picture of Indian society and polity as he understood it to have functioned during its long past. As many here may recollect, while writing in Hind Swaraj on passive resistance he had indicated that this practice had always existed in India, and he had also then given an illustration of it. It is my belief that it is such an understanding of the working of the Indian mind and society which enabled Gandhiji to commune with it with such great ease, and pave the way for the adoption of much of what he suggested, by the Indian people. As he said in 1944, what he did when he returned to India was to provide a voice to what the people themselves felt and basically already knew. It is true that it was not only this communion between the people and Gandhiji but also his organisational and related skills which could bring about what India was able to do and achieve under his leadership. Yet, despite what Gandhiji said in Hind Swaraj and what was written by many in Young India, and elsewhere, about the earlier Indian society and polity, little of it seems to have got internalised and expressed in the institutions which have been managing India since the regaining of freedom. What continues in the governmental as well as the non-governmental spheres is in a great measure that which the British created during the period of the demolition of Indian institutions and structures between 1760 and 1830; or is modelled on the structures they imported and imposed on India for the consolidation of their rule.