Embedded Files
D D Kosambi made an indelible mark on world history both through his research, as well as his work in the World Peace Movement.
Pioneer in the Study of Ancient History
Pioneer in the Study of Ancient History
D.D. Kosambi was known as a pioneer in the study of ancient history all over the world. He would regularly write for international journals published in America, the UK, China, the Soviet Union and others. Through his study of India, he laid the foundation for the study of ancient non-European societies. He came up with innovations in concepts to explain Indian history such as 'living prehistory'. He came up with a new methodology to study Indian history using 'combined methods', which combined history with statistics, archeology, anthropology and sociology.
His work spanned the study of ancient coins, the study of the poetry of Sanskrit poet Bharthari, as well as the emergence of myths and legends of religion among Indian people. Kosambi stressed the scientific study of Indian history and beliefs, including religion, tying their development to the underlying state of technology and social relations in society at the time. Further, he stressed that history was not complete in a telling of empires, kings and their wars, but needed to address the state of living of ordinary people. He conceptualized history as the story of the ordinary worker and man, as 'presentation in chronological order of successive changes in the means and relations of production'. In turn, he also believed that ordinary people made history. His work would give rise to an independent Indian school of Indian history that could challenge Western colonial academics.
Kosambi would undertake extensive field trips with a group of students and scholars to understand Indian archeological sites and village life when he lived in Pune. He had first begun this practice during his time in Aligarh when he took trips to the surrounding Tarai area. In his words, ‘In the light of our definition of history, Indian history can be seen written every where in the villages in minute details. One must, however, have an appropriate outlook and awareness.’
In 1962 Kosambi was requested by the Cuban government to write an entry on ancient India for their encyclopedia. For this Kosambi wrote in clear and simple language. The project had to be eventually scrapped due to a hurricane in Cuba which demanded a redirection of resources. Cuba offered Kosambi an honorarium to compensate the hard work he had put in which Kosambi requested be used for the World Peace Movement. Kosambi published his research for this project in the form of his seminal book, ‘Culture and Civilization of Ancient India.’
Peace Activist and World Citizen
Peace Activist and World Citizen
Kosambi was one of the founders of the Indian Peace Council, along with freedom fighters Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew, Pandit Sundarlal, Romesh Chandra, film personalities Prithviraj Kapoor, Balraj Sahni, writers Krishan Chander, Rajendra Singh Bedi, poets Vallathol, S. Gurbaksh Singh, among many others. They adopted the motto, 'Peace is everybody's business'.
As a part of the peace movement, Kosambi attended several peace conferences, including in America, China, the Soviet Union among others. At the 1949 Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace in New York City, Kosambi was the only delegate from Asia. In his address, he connected the struggle against hunger and famine to the struggle for world peace.
In 1952, Kosambi headed a 60 member Indian delegation to Asian and Pacific Regions Peace Conference in Beijing. In 1956 he was invited by the Academia Sinica of Beijing to advise them on statistical methods in the study of agriculture and industry. He would visit China again in 1960, when he also published a scientific paper in Chinese. In two of his visits he met and spoke with Zhou Enlai.
In 1955, he headed the Indian delegation to the World Peace Conference in Helsinki. The conference in Helsinki was chaired by another scientist, Frederic Joliot Curie and was attended by J.D. Bernal. Kosambi led the 90 person delegation from India along with Romesh Chandra. He was invited the same year to lecture at the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
This is a report written by Kosambi on the preparatory meeting for 1952 Peace Conference of the Asian and Pacific Regions held in Beijing, to which he headed the Indian delegation. The full report can be read here in the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois.
Career as a Mathematician
Career as a Mathematician
As a mathematician, Kosambi published in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian journals. His career began at Benaras Hindu University. His first research paper, "Precessions of an Elliptic Orbit’ was published in 1930 in the Indian Journal of Physics. Later he moved to Aligarh Muslim University to work with Andre Weil, who was head of the mathematics department there. There he published several papers in path spaces and differential geometry.
In 1933 he joined the Deccan Education Society’s Ferguson College in Pune to teach mathematics. He followed in his fathers footsteps, accepting a lower salary for more freedom in his intellectual work. The salary he got in Ferguson was just Rs.130/- a month. Kosambi remained at Ferguson College for 12 years.
While working in Numismatics, learning Sanskrit language and Bhartruhari’s poetry, he also worked on the science of heredity and wrote an article titled ‘The Estimation of Map Distance from Recombination Values’. This was published in the journal Annals of Eugenics in the year 1944. He derived a formula for determining the distances between genes or gene groups. Till then Haldane’s formula proposed in 1919 was being used. His map came to be known as 'Kosambi's Genetic Map Function.'
In 1945, Kosambi was invited by Bhabha to join him at the newly started Tata Institute of Fundamental Research as Professor of Mathematics, where he remained at TIFR till 1962. In 1947, the 34th session of the Indian Science Conference was held in January. Jawaharlal Nehru presided over the conference and Kosambi led the broad discussion on mathematics.
Kosambi spent the winter of 1949 in Chicago as a Visiting professor in Path Geometry, after which went to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton where he had extensive discussions with Einstein.
After leaving TIFR in 1962, Kosambi was completely independent and free to pursue his historical research. He was appointed as a Scientist Emeritus of the CSIR affiliated to the Maharashtra Vidnyanvardhini in Pune. Though no more a professor of mathematics and involved in research work in history, Kosambi’s work in mathematics continued without interruption. To his long list of articles in mathematics he added two more in each year 1963 and 64 and one more in 1965. This work was in the field of statistics and number theory, including his article ‘Sampling Distribution of Primes’, ‘Probability and Prime Numbers’ and ‘Statistical Methods in Number Theory.’
The information above about Kosambi's life and work has been taken from C.D. Deshmukh's biography of Kosambi which can be found here, as well as Meera Kosambi's account of his life in The Many Careers of D.D. Kosambi: Critical Essays. Other sources include the following:
http://prchistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/3_GHOSH.pdf
Special Issue of EPW on Kosambi: https://www.epw.in/d-d-kosambi-man-and-his-work
Images courtesy: Unsettling the Past
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse