Editing Dharmanand Kosambi (section)

== Ideas ==
Kosambi's socialism had its start in America, and he said so himself: in a clarification of 1937–38 he wrote that until May 1910 he had no idea what socialism was.<ref>M. Kosambi (2010), Selection 2 (''Khulasa'', 1937–38), §2. He recalled that he first heard of it from a Dutch businessman on the voyage, read about it at Boston socialist societies, and bought books at the Socialist Book Depot; he could not follow ''Capital'' but understood its outline from other authors, and he sent basic books on socialism to N.C. Kelkar of the ''Kesari''. Socialism explained to him why Indian princes had failed against the British, and he concluded that real political strength lies in the union of workers.</ref> The first result was a letter to the nationalist ''Kesari'' of 1910, written at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in answer to an editorial that found no representative system in Buddhism. Kosambi argued that the Buddhist sangha rested on "collective ownership which is the highest stage of democracy": monks owned only eight requisites, the viharas belonged to the whole sangha, offences were tried by the whole sangha, and the Buddha, who "never showed respect for monarchy" (in the translator's words), could not have built such a body had he not been born in a republic.<ref>M. Kosambi (2010), Selection 5 (letter of 19 September 1910, published 25 October 1910); the passage is quoted in Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 232–233, who cites Kosambi (2010), pp. 313–15 for it. The letter relies on Rhys Davids for the republics and on the seven conditions of Vajji prosperity, and it defines socialism as establishing national ownership over privately owned property.</ref> Ober reads the thesis as one of the most persuasive and enduring arguments about modern Indian Buddhism, but also as a modernist claim comparable to Dayananda Sarasvati's claim that the Vedas contained modern science; he adds that Kosambi, unlike some contemporaries, never held that Buddhism was identical to Marxism or superseded it.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 233–234.</ref> In a four-part article of the same year Kosambi advocated reform and not revolution: compulsory free primary education, municipal housing and meals, and appeals to the capitalists who gave to temples while workers lived in chawls.<ref>M. Kosambi (2010), Selection 6 (''Subodha Patrika'', 23 October–4 December 1910). The article also cites a 1910 resolution of the American Federation of Labor against Asian immigration and blames Indian workers' ignorance and disunity for their position, a view that a modern reader may question.</ref> His editor argues that his writings of 1910–16, including a lecture on Karl Marx in Pune in May 1912, make him the first to explain Marx and socialism to Maharashtra in Marathi, ahead of Tilak's reproductions of 1881 and the communists of the 1920s; this priority claim is the editor's own argument and was not checked.<ref>M. Kosambi (2010), Introduction, endnotes 24–34. The lecture of 1916 on socialism and the war was chaired by Kelkar.</ref>

The fullest statement is Part V of ''Hindi Sanskriti ani Ahimsa'' (1935), translated by Meera Kosambi as "Civilization and Non-violence". Ober describes the book as following a Marxist scheme of primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, within which Buddhist and Jain non-violence is the thread of progress.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 237; M. Kosambi (2010), Selection 7 (printed pp. 327–357 according to Ober (2023), n. 12, p. 331). Ober worked from the Hindi translation of the whole book for the earlier parts and cites it by that edition's pages.</ref> In the last chapter Kosambi asks why India could not follow the Bolsheviks, who had freed Russia's workers by destroying aristocrats and landowners, and he takes Marx's economic analysis to be right as far as it goes; he congratulates the followers of Marx on their treatment of women, defends the Soviet maternity provisions, calls the collective ownership of land, factories, banks, and railways the only thesis that benefits mankind, and rejects Gandhi's trusteeship as handing the keys of the safe to a thief.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 238, citing Kosambi (1935) 2010, p. 168 in the Hindi translation; M. Kosambi (2010), Selection 7 (the passages on women and on the Communist Manifesto, on collective ownership, and on trusteeship).</ref> He also criticized Marx. Marx, he wrote, never considered the usefulness of non-violence and was limited by a European culture that demands an adversary, and the class struggle merely replaces hostility between nations with hostility between bourgeoisie and workers, "removing a thorn with another thorn".<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 240–241, citing Kosambi (1909–49) 2010, pp. 355–357; M. Kosambi (2010), Selection 7.</ref> Only a non-violence accompanied by the wisdom of the socialists, he concluded, would lead to the welfare of mankind. He also read the Marxist account of exploitation through the Buddhist teaching on craving, explained the decline of the sangha in India by its accumulation of land, women, and slaves, and wrote that if religion is an opiate, "nationalism is liquor".<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 238–239, citing Kosambi (1935) 2010, pp. 176, 182–183 (Hindi translation) and Kosambi (1909–49) 2010, p. 354.</ref> Ober concludes that the loom of Kosambi's thought is Marxist but the final weave a "democratic Buddhist socialism", in which Buddhist non-violence takes precedence over the Marxist emphasis on exploitation, whereas the editor of his collected writings calls his position a new and eclectic doctrine of Buddha, satyagraha, and Marx that changed gradually in view of the violence of the Russian Revolution and of Marxist thinking.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 241; M. Kosambi (2010), Introduction (the editor credits Sadanand More for the point about the gradual change). Ober (p. 236) adds that Kosambi's Soviet visits overlapped with Stalin's turn against religion, which disillusioned him.</ref>

Kosambi's caste-related writing is less developed. In his lectures of 1910 he held that the Buddha made no caste distinction, that the sangha had Brahmins like Sariputta and a Chandala like Sopaka, and that nobody is a Chandala or Brahmin by birth.<ref>M. Kosambi (2010), Selection 4 (lectures of 1909, published in 1910 as ''Buddha, Dharma ani Sangha'').</ref> After hearing that Singaravelu, then secretary of the Madras Maha Bodhi Sabha, had warned Sinhalese laymen that Brahmans of Hindustan were cunning and that Kosambi, however simple he looked, was a Brahmin, Kosambi wrote that this showed how caste distinction (जातिभेद) obstructs the love of country (देशप्रीति) of educated Indians.<ref>Kosambi (1924), निवेदन ''Nivedan'', pp. 110–111.</ref> He defended the Buddhist past against the claim of S.V. Ketkar, in a series in the ''Kesari'' of 1913, that the Buddha reinforced caste, and in 1937 against Rajendra Prasad's view that Buddhism was a Hindu sect.<ref>M. Kosambi (2010), Introduction (Ketkar's series of August–November 1913 and Kosambi's rejoinders of 26 August and 18 October 1913; the reply to Prasad of 1937). Bagade, in Gokhale, Pradeep P. (Ed.) (2021). ''Classical Buddhism, Neo-Buddhism and the Question of Caste''. Routledge, ch. 9, p. 162, also describes his defense against attacks of Ketkar's kind.</ref> He wrote almost entirely in Marathi and Gujarati, which Ober connects with a commitment to "democratizing" and "vernacularizing" Buddhist knowledge.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 102, citing M. Kosambi (2010), pp. 415–417 for a list of his publications.</ref>

His life of the Buddha is a rationalist and this-worldly retelling. ''Bhagavan Buddha'' (1940) holds that the Buddha's name was Gautama and never Siddhartha, that he was a landowner's son and not a king, that the story of the palaces is a myth, and that he left home out of distaste for violent quarrels like the dispute of the Sakyas and Koliyas over the river Rohini; in the lectures of 1910 Kosambi had still accepted the three palaces but denied that they were a prison.<ref>M. Kosambi (2010), Introduction and Selection 4. The editor dates the change of view to the later works.</ref> His play ''Bodhisattva'' (published in 1949) invents a Koliya character, Subhadra, to dramatize the Rohini dispute, and Ober remarks that it shows the renunciation as caused by imminent war and not by the sights of sickness, old age, and death.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 241 and n. 13 (p. 331), where the translation of the play is placed at Kosambi (1909–49) 2010, pp. 358–408; Geetha (2021), n. 46, gives pp. 348–402. The preface of the play says that scenes 4 and 5 have no basis in the Tripitaka (M. Kosambi (2010), Selection 8).</ref> Ober also reports that Kosambi supported the Gandhian thesis that India fell because it failed to live up to the Buddha's message of non-violence, not because it accepted it.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 172.</ref>

Kosambi's Bahujan Vihara shows how Hindu leaders absorbed Buddhist revival into the Hindu fold. When Gandhi asked B.G. Kher to oversee Birla's donations, Kher replied that he could not serve on a Buddhist vihara committee and asked whether all the participants were going to become Buddhists, and Gandhi answered that the vihara was no different from a temple of Rama or Krishna and part of the Hindu revival.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 182–183 (Kher's letter of 24 August 1936 and Gandhi's reply, both citing the ''Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi'' 69: 318–319); Ober (p. 183) adds that Birla also supported the Buddhist activism of [[Rahul Sankrityayan]], Jagdish Kashyap, Anand Kausalyayan, and Kosambi, who were then writing sharp criticisms of Hindu scriptures and of the Hindu Maha Sabha.</ref> Ober suggests that Ambedkar's distance from the vihara may have stemmed from his reluctance to accept anything financed by the Birlas and from Kosambi's being a Brahmin and a committed Gandhian.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 216; the reasons are described as unclear.</ref>

The question of Kosambi's place in [[BR Ambedkar|Ambedkar]]'s Buddhism is contested. Geetha describes him as being as resolute as Ambedkar in humanizing the Buddha, and Gokhale reports that Ambedkar accepted the account of the renunciation that Kosambi constructed from the Pali canon; the Samata Sainik Dal staged plays based on Kosambi's ''Buddhalila'' in the 1940s.<ref>Geetha (2021), n. 46 (pp. 290–291); Gokhale (Ed.) (2021), ''Classical Buddhism'', ch. 13 (P. Gokhale), p. 268; Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 218, citing Moon (2001), pp. 127–133.</ref> The editor of his writings states that Ambedkar's ''The Buddha and His Dhamma'' (1957) accepts Kosambi's reading of the renunciation without naming him or any other source, and that Ambedkar's lost Introduction may have contained a reference, as Kasbe suggests. Moon's list of sources (1995), as reported by the editor, cites Kosambi's ''Bodhisattva'' for the life of Gautama only, and Anand Kausalyayan says that the two men covered different ground.<ref>M. Kosambi (2010), Introduction, endnotes 70–72 (the editor's assertions); Kausalyayan, Bhadant Anand (1980). ''An Intelligent Man's Guide to Buddhism''. Buddha Bhoomi Prakashan (2nd ed., 1992), pp. 23, 110–111 (Questions 34–35 and 165). The renunciation account in Ambedkar's book is at ''Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches'' 11: 24–32.</ref> The sources do not settle how much Ambedkar owed to Kosambi.