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Articles on The Beautiful Tree

A Tribute to

        

Shri Dharampal (1922 - 2006)
Author of "The Beautiful Tree" and "Indian Science And Technology in Eighteenth Century"

   It altered my perception of India forever.
   - Claude Alvares on "Science And Technology in Eighteenth century"

... thanks to the pioneering book, The Beautiful Tree by Dharampal, we now have an idea of it before the coming of the British.
   - Dr Subhash Kak, Delaune Distinguished Professor, Louisiana State University

   Today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or hundred years ago.
   - Gandhiji at the Royal Institute of International Affairs , London, Oct 1931

   The British administrators instead of looking after education and other matters which had existed began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that and the beautiful tree perished.
   - Gandhiji at the Royal Institute of International Affairs , London, Oct 1931

   Dharampal's sources appear unimpeachable
   - Dr Subhash Kak, Delaune Distinguished Professor, Louisiana State University

   By the actions of the British the true education of the Punjab was crippled, checked and is nearly destroyed; opportunities for its healthy revival and development were either neglected or perverted.
   - Dr Leitner, an English college principal at Lahore

   The British would like us to believe that it was very, very backward, but their own records show that this was far from the case.
   - Makarand Paranjape, Professor of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Dharampal - a Profile
"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" - Dharampal

Pre-British Indian Education
The Beautiful Tree
...and the only conclusion is that 250 years ago the Indian basic education system was functional. Indeed, it may have been more universal than what existed in Europe at that time.

India's Schoolbook Histories
For example, before the British arrived, Indians had a system of inoculation against smallpox; year-old live smallpox matter was used, and it was very effective.
Macaulay's programme to estrange Indians from their culture has been so successful that most textbook authors are not even aware of the Kerala school, or of Pingala and Panini's scientific contributions.

Dharampal, the Great Gandhian and Historian of Indian Science
Individuals who worry that mainstream western historians of science have completely ignored the great contributions that India has made in the fields of science and technology acutely realize the importance of the path-breaking work of Dharampal.

Beautiful Tree, Indian Education in the 18th century
First it was the British who told Indians how they civilized them by bringing education to India. Today Christian missionaries and some Indian Christians (converts) keep on reminding Hindus of the pioneering role played by the Christian community in the field of education. I wondered!

Centuries of Discrimination Reality or Myth
... The Madras Presidency and Bengal-Bihar data are a revelation.

Decolonizing English Studies: Attaining Swaraj?
Another example is inoculation. In Bengal there were people who toured the countryside inoculating adults and children against small pox. In the early 18th century, the British were learning from them.

Education in Pre-British India
He [William Adam], in his observations found that there existed about 1,00,000 village schools in Bengal and Bihar around the 1830s.

India Before British Rule and the Basis for India's Resurgence
The British themselves felt both around 1800 as well as during 1857-1858 that the tax on land "was collected by them at the point of the bayonet".

Note Of Shri Dharampal, Chairman
Some 24 years later in 1917 Mahatma Gandhi speaking on the cow in Bihar, stated that around 30,000 cows were being slaughtered by the British every day.

The Destruction of the Indian System of Education
Perhaps many of us do not know that India was the richest land till the British came here.

Census (1881 - 1931)
It seems that even before they arrived in India and began to build exclusive settlements or factories the British were given to surveys of the places they settled in, to the carrying of censuses within them, and to the surveying and estimating of the wealth and military potential of the regions in which these settlements or factories were established.

The Brahmin and the Hindu
Dharampal (The Beautiful Tree) has effectively debunked the myth that Dalits had no place in the indigenous system of education.

India - Once Plentiful
Records reveal British schemes diminished crops and dismantled a native system of abundance

Interview with Dharampal
A noted Gandhian historian, Dharampal, has enquired into various facets of pre-British Indian society. He has authored several books, including Indian Science and Technology in the 18th Century and The Beautiful Tree. In a conversation with Max Martin in Delhi recently, he spoke on India's achievements in agriculture and science, the efficacy of indigenous systems of local governance and the deleterious effects of British rule.

Download - The Beautiful Tree from MultiversityLibrary.com

Download - Indian Science and Technology in Eighteenth Century from MultiversityLibrary.com

Download - Decolonising History from MultiversityLibrary.com

Download - All five volumes

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