Gleanings

Two Great Indians

‘Recluse’ has the following in "A Bandra Diary" (Indian Social Reformer of 20th March 1943):

"The Bombay Law Journal for March contains a full report of the proceedings at the opening of the Kirtikar Law Library presented by M. R. Jayakar to the Advocates Association of Western India.

The gift has a significance exceeding the benefaction to the present and future generations of lawyers and students. It means that Mr. Jayakar, with many years before him for lucrative practice of his profession if he followed the common example, deliberately renounces the opportunity in order to devote himself to public service. This is in strict accord with the Hindu system of Ashramas which prescribes as the third stage in life the voluntary retirement from worldly activities.

The spirit which moved Mr. Jayakar is in the air and is moving others as well. I received a few days ago a pamphlet and a letter from the well-known industrialist and financier, Mr. Ram Krishna Dalmia, expounding his views on the ultimate causes of the present world situation and asking for suggestions for a movement which he is launching, to promote the spirit of brotherhood among men of all races, nations and religions. I met Mr. Dalmia casually once or twice at the late Sir Akbar Hydari’s Bombay residence and, if he will pardon my saying so, thought of him as a man of business with no ideas outside cement and sugar and other enterprises. His letter opened my eyes to the fact that, amidst and behind his industrial and financial interests, Mr. Dalmia had a world outlook transcending all narrow limitations. "I feel," he writes, "that there is a great need for a revaluation of what we have hitherto considered be unchanging verities and I intend launching a movement for universal brotherhood, with a movement to it up from every corner of the world. I propose to name the organization ‘ONE’. Though in working it out, difficulties apparently insurmountable, will present themselves, there nothing which cannot be accomplished with His blessings and guidance". Mr. Dalmia undertakes to arrange, if necessary, a sum of one or two crores of rupees and even more for the purpose of furthering the scheme. What more, he intends devoting his time, energy and "even sacrifice this perishable body" to attain the goal. The grandeur of the idea and the earnestness of Mr. Dalmia, appealed to me with considerable intensity. "India", as I said in my reply, "is the land in which such a movement should originate, because it is in India that the quest after the Reality, the one behind the manifold phenomena, has been longest and most persistently pursued from ancient times." At the present time many voices are raised for the development of material ends by utilising the shadow prosperity created by the War. It is cheering to find one, himself an industrialist and financier, tell us that not the lack of material possessions but the starvation of our spiritual being is the cause of the present chaos and carnage overwhelming humanity. Mr. Dalmia sees, as every thinker and writer on the present troubles does, that the root cause is the disproportionate development of machine power and the practical stagnation of the moral and spiritual elements in human life.

Uday Shankar’s Shadow Play

In the February issue of the Modern Review Sri Harin Chattopadhyaya gives an interesting account of Uday Shankar’s experiment:

Ramaleela was staged as a Shadow Play before a huge audience which numbered over twenty thousand……Uday Shankar’s name is as familiar all over this part of the country among the masses as though it were the name of one who was bringing a lost light the faded splendour of the gods, to these Himalayan heights…….I felt that art, for the first time, while retaining its new inspiration was keeping pace with the modern tempo and standards of finish, was serving the purpose of filling the life of the people with rare colour and beauty, thus uplifting them from merely the religious sentiment to one of cultural progress….

A giant stage, which has evolved in three successive years in size and technical qualities, stood on 140 vertical shafts planted into the ground which slopes at a sharp gradient. With a total frontage of 60 feet and an effective opening of 45 feet, it gave a depth of 40 feet and a height varying from 45 in the front to 30 at the .

Shanker had to put in, all told, about nine months’ work to produce his two and a half hour play.

This form of shadow play is Shankar’s invention, and, I believe, that it has a capacity all its own to produce such emotions as not the theatre nor even the cinema is capable of doing. It has only just been inaugurated.

…..There is something eternal about a shadow, there is something that grips the deepest vision in us when we come face to face with shadow which is suggestive, all the time suggestive of the mighty drama set afloat by some hidden light behind. ….Shankar has done the country an immense national service not only by his dances but by this most important invention of the shadow play.

The Late Dr. Sukthankar

The passing away of Dr. Sukthankar in January so soon after the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute celebrated its Silver Jubilee, has been a grievous loss to the cause of Indian Scholarship. In the course of a biographical sketch in the Bombay Chronicle, P. V. R. wtites:

"Dr. Sukthankar...was born on 4th May, 1887. After studying a the Maratha High School and the St. Xavier’s College, he went to England for the I. C. S. examination, but did not succeed. A wiser Fate has ordained otherwise……He was an M.A. of Cambridge and a Ph.D. of Berlin. …..On return from Europe he was for some time Assistant Superintendent, of Archaeology in India, Western circle....The Bhandarkar Oriental Institute started over twenty years ago, the project of publishing a critical edition of the great national epic of India, the Mahabharata. It was a colossal undertaking. Western scholars had once thought of undertaking this great task, but had given it up. It was in the fitness of things that such a critical edition of an Indian epic should be prepared in India and under Indian auspices. In 1925 he was appointed the General Editor of the oritical edition of the great epic based on hundreds of Mss. scattered throughout the length and breadth of India written in numerous scripts.

….The first fasciculus of the Adiparva appeared in 1927 and it was hailed with a chorus of applause from all orientalists of the East and the West for the soundness of the method, the clarity and the succinctness with which the vast manuscript material was presented and the high critical acumen displayed. Since then, slowly but steadily, the whole of the Adi, Sabha, Vana, Virata and Udyoga ‘parvans’ have been published and collections of Mss. for the other ‘parvans’ have been almost competed".

Plea for a School of Indian Architecture

The Hindu (Feb. 2, 1943) publishes the following:

The establishment of a School of Indian Architecture under the auspices of the Calcutta University was recommended by a gathering of engineers held at the Engineering Club in Calcutta. Mr. H. P. Bhowmic, Chairman of the Bengal Centre of the Institution of Engineers, presided and various organisations of engineers were represented by their presidents and secretaries. The resolution urged that there should be facilities for undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate standards of study and that special importance should be given to the study of Indian architecture.