Romila Thapar credits D.D. Kosambi (1907-66) for affecting a ‘paradigm shift’ in Indian studies. According to her, such paradigmatic changes had occurred only twice before in Indian historiography. These were done by James Mill and Vincent Smith. James Mill, whose book History of India (1818-23) set the parameters for history writing on India, was contemptuous towards the Indian society. He considered the pre-colonial.

Indian civilization as backward, superstitious, stagnant and lacking in most respects as a civilization. He was an unabashed admirer of the British achievements in India and relentless critic of pre-British Indian society and polity. He divided the Indian history into three parts – the Hindu, the Muslim and the British. This division, according to him, was essential to demarcate three different civilizations.

Vincent Smith’s The Oxford History of India (1919) provided another break in Indian historiography as it avoided the sharp value judgments and contemptuous references to the pre-British period of Indian history contained in Mill’s book. He instead tried to present a chronological account of Indian history and focused on the rise and fall of dynasties.

Kosambi viewed history completely differently. For him, Mill’s religious periodisation and Smith’s chronological accounts of dynasties were of no value. He believed that the ‘Society is held together by bonds of production’. Thus he defines history ‘as the presentation, in chronological order, of successive developments in the means and relations of production’. This, according to him, is ‘the only definition known which allow a reasonable treatment of pre-literate history, generally termed “pre-history”. He further argues that history should be viewed in terms of conflict between classes:

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‘The proper study of history in a class society means analysis of the differences between the interests of the classes on top and of the rest of the people; it means consideration of the extent to which an emergent class had something new to contribute during its rise to power, and of the stage where it turned (or will turn) to reaction in order to preserve its vested interests.’

He describes his approach to history as ‘dialectical materialism, also called Marxism after its founder’. However, Kosambi was flexible in his application of Marxism. He argued that ‘Marxism is far from the economic determinism which its opponents so often take it to be’. He further asserts that the ‘adoption of Marx’s thesis does not mean blind repetition of all his conclusions (and even less, those of the official, party-line Marxists) at all times’. He, instead, considered Marxism as a method which could be usefully applied for the study of Indian society and history.

The paucity of relevant data for the early period of Indian history was one factor which prompted him to analyze the broad social formations rather than small-scale events. He thought that the use of comparative method would balance out the absence of reliable historical sources.

He, therefore, adopted an inter-disciplinary approach in his studies of Indian society. This enabled him to view the reality from various angles in order to get a full picture of it. These ideas are evident in his four major books: An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1956), Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method (1957), Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture (1962) and The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline (1965).

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Kosambi’s non-dogmatic approach to history is clear when he rejected two key Marxist concepts – the Asiatic Mode of Production and Slavery – as inapplicable to ancient Indian society. Although he accepted the concept of feudalism in Indian context, he denied the existence of serfdom. According to hire, it would be more rewarding to view the early Indian society in terms of the transition from tribe to caste. He argues that the ‘pre-class society was organized into tribes’.

The tribes were small, localized communities and ‘for the tribesman, society as such began and ended with his tribe’. The beginning and development of plough agriculture brought about a radical change in the system of production. This destabilized the tribes and the clans and gave rise to castes as new form of social organization. This was an extremely crucial development. Kosambi writes:

‘The Entire Course of Indian History Shows Tribal Elements being fused into a General Society.This phenomenon, which lies at the very foundation of the most striking Indian social feature, namely caste, is also the great basic fact of ancient history.’

Kosambi tried to relate the intellectual and cultural production with the prevailing social and economic situation. Thus, according to him, the teachings of Bhagavad Gita can be understood only with reference to the feudal society in which it originated. It, therefore, preaches the ideology of the ruling class which emphasized ‘the chain of personal loyalty which binds retainer to chief, tenant to lord, and baron to king or emperor’.

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Similarly, he considers the Bhakti movement as preaching a sense of loyalty to the lord which, in the earthly sense, translates into loyalty and devotion to the rulers. His detailed study of the poetry of Bhartrihari, the 7th-century poet, reflects a similar approach. He describes Bhartrihari as ‘unmistakably the Indian intellectual of his period, limited by caste and tradition in fields of activity and therefore limited in his real grip on life’. In his study of the myths, he contended that they reflected the transition of society from matriarchy to patriarchy.