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Dharampal - A Profile
Shri. Dharampal - Thinker historian
who redefines "history"!
Dharampalji - extraordinary thinker, historian,
philosopher, activist leader; there are many ways of describing him. One
cannot refuse the fact that he always makes a deep impression on all those
who have had the opportunity to spend time with him or work with him.
He has altered lives of individuals, institutions, organisations, and
has been the inspiration in creating some.
He redefines the history
as we have studied it in school and gives it a different dimension. His
faith in the ordinary Indian and his observations and understanding of
their life is unique. Currently, Dharampalji is based in the Sewagram
Ashram at Wardha, Maharashtra. We have had the opportunity to work with
him for a few years now and can say that his presence, thoughts and ideas
have given a new direction for us in our work and view of the world. It is
our privilege to continue to be associated with his work.
LIFE SKETCH
"What
is great about India?...we need to understand this...the greatness
of this country is that the ordinary people in this country have
a certain understanding, that everything in nature is connected...and
they have built their lives around this understanding...this is
the greatness of this country." - Dharampalji in conversation,
Jan 2002
Born in 1922, Dharampal had his first glimpse of Mahatma Gandhi around
the age of eight, when his father took him along to the 1929 Lahore Congress.
A year later, Sardar Bhagat Singh and his colleagues were condemned to
death and executed by the British, Dharampal still recalls many of his
friends taking to the streets of Lahore, near where he lived, and shouting
slogans in protest.
Though he underwent western
education and college, he started moving towards the swaraj option of
Gandhiji and in 1940 started wearing khadi - a practice he followed all his life. In 1942,
he was present as a fervent spectator at the Quit India Session of the Congress in Bombay and he thereafter
joined the Movement. He was active in it till arrested in Apr. 1943. After 2 months in police
detention, he was released but externed from Delhi.
In August 1944, he was introduced
to Mirabehn by his friends. He joined her soon thereafter, at what came
to be known as the Kisan Ashram, situated midway between Roorkee and Haridwar.
He was closely associated with her work from then onwards and met her
last 2 weeks before her death in 1982. On that day they discussed various
issues for about 6 - 8 hours in the woods of Vienna.
In 1947- 48, he had come
in close contact with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia
and with numerous younger friends in Delhi. He was a member of the Indian
Cooperative Union which was founded in 1948. The following year while
in England, he got married to Phyllis who was English. Afterwards, they
both decided to live in India. On their way back, they spent some time
in Israel and visited a few other countries as well. In 1950, the community
village of Bapugram near Rishikesh began to be formed. Dharampal and Phyllis
lived in it till 1953 before moving to London again.
He was back in Delhi again
from early 1958 to 1964. He now took up the post of General Secretary
of the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development (AVARD).
For about 2 years, he also was the Director of Research of All India Panchayat
Parishad and spent more than a year in Tamilnadu collecting material that
was later published as THE MADRAS PANCHAYAT SYSTEM. Earlier, in 1962,
he had already published a smaller book containing the proceedings of
the Indian Constituent Assembly relating to the discussion on the subject
of "The Panchayat as a Basis of India's Polity". From Madras
he had to move to London in early 1966 for family reasons.
By then he was also keen
on a detailed study of the Indo-British encounter during the 18th - 19th
centuries. This time he stayed on in London till 1982, but visited India
in between. In England, he did not have much of an income. There was also
a family to support. But notwithstanding all this, he became a regular
visitor to the India Office and the British Museum and spent most of his
time pouring over the archives. Photocopying required money. Oftentimes,
old manuscripts could not be photocopied. So, he copied them in long hand,
page after page, millions of words, day after day. Thereafter, he would
have copied notes typed. He thus retrieved and accumulated thousands of
pages of information from the archival record. When he returned to India,
these notes - which filled several large trunks and suitcases - proved
to be his most prized possessions.
From around 1958, he had
developed an association with the Sevagram Ashram, Wardha where he lives
now. He first started writing based on his archival material in Sewagram
in 1967, again in 1980 - 81, he spent time there to finish THE BEAUTIFUL
TREE. From 82 to 87 he was mostly in Sewagram with occasional sojourns
in Madras. He was the President of the PPST group and also closely associated
with the Centre of Policy Studies, Chennai. His wife died in London in
1986.
(The above note is condensed
from biographical note by Claude Alvares in the Collecter Writings of
Dharampal Series, 2000)
MAJOR WORKS OF DHARAMPAL IN ENGLISH:
1. Indian Science and Technology in
the Eighteenth Century
2. Panchayat Raj and India's Polity
3. The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian
Education in the Eighteenth Century
4. Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition
5. Bharatiya Chitta, Manas, Kaal
6. The British Origin of Cow Slaughter
in India (recently published)
7. Despoliation and Defaming of India:
The early Nineteenth Century British Crusade
8. Many lectures periodically published
on Indian Tradition, Recovery and Freedom
Dharampalji's collected writings
have been published by Other
India Press, you can buy them on-line.
A few of Dharampalji's articles are available
on-line:
-Against
large scale slaughter of Cattle in India
-The Common
Grounds of Slavery and Modern Science
-The Census
of India 1881 - 1931
-Excerpts from: India
Before British Rule and the Basis for India's Resurgence. 1998. Gandhi
Seva Sangh, Sevagram: Wardha, Maharashtra
