I am interested in reading / researching about the background and authentic history of AIT theory. Can you kindly help me/re-direct me reg where to start, and what are some of the key resources, dwelling light on:
<span style='color:blue'>
- Why is Indian leftists so much stuck on this?</span>
References in the first argument has material for this questions.
Kosambi is the first marxist historian who decided that Indian force of history will follw the Islamic path and there is no need for regeneration of the Hindu civilization after 1947.
WITHIN the first decade of India's Independence, studies on early Indian history moved away from the humdrum style of documenting political and dynastic events. Interest in the routine melange of dates and events, wars and conquests, and the "achievements and failures" of individual potentates started dwindling when two very significant works came out in the 1950s. A.L. Basham's The Wonder That Was India (1954) and D.D. Kosambi's An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1956) epitomised this shift. The first one is the work of a professional historian and the second is from an "amateur Indologist".
A doyen among Indologists, Basham romanticised the vast sweep of India's history. He pleaded for a new emphasis on the cultural history of India. The Wonder... was written to interpret ancient Indian civilisation to the ordinary Western reader who had little knowledge but some interest in the subject. This kaleidoscope of early India's social structure, cults and doctrines, and arts and languages was such an engrossing venture that it won for Basham the love and appreciation of scholars and laymen alike, both in India and outside. It is regrettable, however, that his fascination for the inclusive aspects of Hinduism has been completely distorted and turned upside down to read like an account of "glorious Hindu India" by some self-appointed guardians of Indian cultural traditions.
Kosambi's Introduction is an iconoclastic Marxist critique of the undulating path of historical change. For him "the subtle mystic philosophies, tortuous religions, ornate literature, monuments teeming with intricate sculpture, and delicate music of India all derive from the same historical process that produced the famished apathy of the villager, senseless opportunism and termite greed of the 'cultured' strata, sullen un-coordinated discontent among the workers, the general demoralisation, misery, squalor, and degrading superstition. The one is the result of the other, the one is the expression of the other." <span style='color:red'>Such an understanding not only enabled Kosambi to question the stereotypes of the colonialist-imperialist and the so-called "nationalist" historiography but also focus on a more positive and constructive approach to comprehend the prime movers of history. </span>
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1918/19180720.htm
The making of an Indologist
D.D. Kosambi: Combined Methods in Indology and Other Writings; compiled, edited and introduced by Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya; Oxford University Press, 2002; pages xxxvii+832; Rs.995.
It is perhaps not a mere coincidence that two of the most renowned living historians of early India, Professors R.S. Sharma and Romila Thapar, received their doctoral blessings from Basham (who had guided a generation of historians from India at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in the 1950s and the 1960s) and were either closely associated with or inspired by Kosambi.
Known among professionals for his pioneering mathematical research (his formula for chromosome distance occupies a central place in classical genetics), Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi had developed serious interests in Indology, history, archaeology, anthropology and several other disciplines rather early in his life. He also had an amazing skill in languages. A polyglot, he knew well more than a dozen languages, both Indian and foreign, modern and classical. He died rather young, not quite 60. It is a measure of his intellectual impact that three commemorative volumes were issued within 10 years of his death.
<span style='color:blue'>
- Why is Indian leftists so much stuck on this?</span>
References in the first argument has material for this questions.
Kosambi is the first marxist historian who decided that Indian force of history will follw the Islamic path and there is no need for regeneration of the Hindu civilization after 1947.
WITHIN the first decade of India's Independence, studies on early Indian history moved away from the humdrum style of documenting political and dynastic events. Interest in the routine melange of dates and events, wars and conquests, and the "achievements and failures" of individual potentates started dwindling when two very significant works came out in the 1950s. A.L. Basham's The Wonder That Was India (1954) and D.D. Kosambi's An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1956) epitomised this shift. The first one is the work of a professional historian and the second is from an "amateur Indologist".
A doyen among Indologists, Basham romanticised the vast sweep of India's history. He pleaded for a new emphasis on the cultural history of India. The Wonder... was written to interpret ancient Indian civilisation to the ordinary Western reader who had little knowledge but some interest in the subject. This kaleidoscope of early India's social structure, cults and doctrines, and arts and languages was such an engrossing venture that it won for Basham the love and appreciation of scholars and laymen alike, both in India and outside. It is regrettable, however, that his fascination for the inclusive aspects of Hinduism has been completely distorted and turned upside down to read like an account of "glorious Hindu India" by some self-appointed guardians of Indian cultural traditions.
Kosambi's Introduction is an iconoclastic Marxist critique of the undulating path of historical change. For him "the subtle mystic philosophies, tortuous religions, ornate literature, monuments teeming with intricate sculpture, and delicate music of India all derive from the same historical process that produced the famished apathy of the villager, senseless opportunism and termite greed of the 'cultured' strata, sullen un-coordinated discontent among the workers, the general demoralisation, misery, squalor, and degrading superstition. The one is the result of the other, the one is the expression of the other." <span style='color:red'>Such an understanding not only enabled Kosambi to question the stereotypes of the colonialist-imperialist and the so-called "nationalist" historiography but also focus on a more positive and constructive approach to comprehend the prime movers of history. </span>
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1918/19180720.htm
The making of an Indologist
D.D. Kosambi: Combined Methods in Indology and Other Writings; compiled, edited and introduced by Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya; Oxford University Press, 2002; pages xxxvii+832; Rs.995.
It is perhaps not a mere coincidence that two of the most renowned living historians of early India, Professors R.S. Sharma and Romila Thapar, received their doctoral blessings from Basham (who had guided a generation of historians from India at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in the 1950s and the 1960s) and were either closely associated with or inspired by Kosambi.
Known among professionals for his pioneering mathematical research (his formula for chromosome distance occupies a central place in classical genetics), Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi had developed serious interests in Indology, history, archaeology, anthropology and several other disciplines rather early in his life. He also had an amazing skill in languages. A polyglot, he knew well more than a dozen languages, both Indian and foreign, modern and classical. He died rather young, not quite 60. It is a measure of his intellectual impact that three commemorative volumes were issued within 10 years of his death.