चार्ल्स डार्विनचे हिरो अलेक्झांडर व्हॉन हुम्बोल्डटना क्रूर ब्रिटिशांनी भारतात कसे पाऊल टाकू दिले नाही... Alexander von Humboldt Longed for India

When Alexander von Humboldt was told that a tree from India was named after him -

Humboldtia laurifolia: ‘isn’t that fabulous!!’

Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, October 2015:
"...“In eight days of reading books, one couldn’t learn as much as what he gives you in an hour,” Goethe said of Humboldt, whom he counted as a good friend. When Darwin finished his own Humboldtian travelogue, “The Voyage of the Beagle,” he nervously sent his hero a copy. “You have an excellent future ahead of you,” the older man reassured him...."

Nathaniel Rich, NYRB, October 2015:

"Humboldt’s hog-nosed skunk, the Humboldt penguin, the Humboldt squid, and more than a hundred other animal species; Humboldt’s Lily, Humboldt’s Schomburgkia, and three hundred other plant species; the minerals Humboldtit, Humboldtilith, and Humboldtin; Humboldt Limestone, Humboldt Oolite, the Humboldt Formation, the Humboldt Current; Humboldt Redwoods State Park, Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Parque Nacional Alejandro de Humboldt; Mont Humboldt, Humboldt Mountain, Humboldt Peak, and Humboldt ranges in China, South Africa, and Antarctica; Humboldt Falls, Humboldt Glacier, Humboldt Bay, the Humboldt River, the Humboldt Sink, the Humboldt Salt Marsh; four Humboldt counties and thirteen Humboldt towns in North America alone, the Humboldt crater and Mare Humboldtianum on the moon, and asteroid 54 Alexandra, orbiting the sun.

The Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) is all around us. Yet he is invisible. “Alexander von Humboldt has been largely forgotten in the English-speaking world,” writes Andrea Wulf in her thrilling new biography. “It is almost as though his ideas have become so manifest that the man behind them has disappeared.” Wulf’s book is as much a history of those ideas as it is of the man. The man may be lost but his ideas have never been more alive...."

 
वि दा सावरकर, १९०३: "... फुलबाग मला हाय पारखा झाला..."

अँड्रिया वूल्फ (Andrea Wulf) यांच्या  'The Invention of Nature:  Alexander von Humboldt's New World', २०१५ पुस्तकाची सर्वत्र प्रशंसा झाली.

हुम्बोल्डट यांच्या बद्दल मी १९व्या शतकातील मराठी लेखनात काहीच वाचल नाहीय. (१९व्याच काय, आत्तापर्यंत नाहीय, पण ते माझे अज्ञान असू शकते.)  पण वूल्फ यांच्या पुस्तकात हुम्बोल्डट यांनी भारतात येण्यासाठी, १९व्या शतकाच्या पहिल्या भागात, कितीवेळा आणि कितीतऱ्हेचे प्रयन्त केले याचे सविस्तर वर्णन आहे.

हुम्बोल्डट भारतात यायला तडपत होते - अक्षरशः 'सागरा प्राण तळमळला' याची आठवण यावी इतपत. शेवटी रशियातून खुष्कीच्या मार्गाने यायची पण त्यांची तयारी होती. (त्यामुळे ब्रिटिश आणखी संशयी झाले असणार हे अलाहिदा.)

"... While SIMÓN BOLÍVAR fought bloody battles to break the colonial chains, Humboldt was trying to convince the British to let him travel to India. In order to complete his Naturgemälde of the world, Humboldt wanted to investigate the Himalaya to collect the data he needed to compare the two majestic mountain ranges. No scientist had ever climbed the Himalaya. Since the British had arrived on the subcontinent, it hadn’t even occurred to them to measure these magnificent mountains, Humboldt said. They had just ‘thoughtlessly looked at them without even asking themselves how high these colossal Himalaya were’. Humboldt intended to determine heights, understand geological features and examine plant distribution there – just as he had in the Andes...."

पण ब्रिटिशांनी त्यांना कधीही परवानगी दिली नाही.  अँड्रिया वूल्फ लिहतात:

"... The first volume of the Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain had been published in English in 1811, and Humboldt’s fierce attack on Spanish colonialism had not gone unnoticed in London. What were they to think of a man who talked of the ‘cruelty of the Europeans’? It can’t have helped that Humboldt, in his constant effort to find correlations, had many times compared Spanish rule in Latin America with that of the British in India. The history of conquest in South America and India, Humboldt wrote in the Political Essay of New Spain, was an ‘unequal struggle’, or – again pointing at Britain – the South Americans and ‘Hindoos’, he accused, ‘have long groaned under a civil and military despotism’. Reading these remarks can’t have enamoured the directors of the East India Company to Humboldt’s travel plans...."

त्या विरहामुळे हुम्बोल्डटना  रडू यायचे आणि आपल्याला वेड लागेल  का अशी भीती वाटायची.

"... In London, Humboldt was introduced to botanists, explorers, artists and thinkers. He met Captain William Bligh (of the infamous mutiny on the Bounty), and Joseph Banks, Cook’s botanist on his first voyage around the world, and by now the president of the Royal Society, the most important scientific forum in Britain. Humboldt admired the beguiling paintings and sketches that William Hodges, the artist who had joined Cook’s second voyage, had brought back. Wherever Humboldt turned, new worlds were conjured up. Even in the early mornings, the first things he saw when he opened his eyes were the framed engravings of the East India Company ships that decorated the bedroom walls in his lodgings. Humboldt often wept when he saw these painful reminders of his unfulfilled dreams. ‘There is a drive in me,’ he wrote, ‘that often makes me feel as if I’m losing my mind.’..."

'Portrait of Alexander von Humboldt', 1806 

Artist:  Friedrich Georg Weitsch

courtesy : Wikimedia Commons

स्मशानांवरही 'हाऊस फुल्ल' चे फलक झळकू लागले...1918 Flu Pandemic @100

#1918flupandemicat100

'The first victim diagnosed with the new strain of flu' was, Wikipedia informs, on Monday, March 11, 1918'. The pandemic went on to kill 3 to 5% of world population. As many as 17 million died in India, about 5% of India's population at the time.

W. H. Auden:

"...Unendowed with wealth or pity,

Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city..."

 
चिंतामण गणेश कोल्हटकर (श्रीपाद कृष्ण कोल्हटकरांच्या नाटकाचा प्रयोग बसवताना ,  पावसाळा  १९१८, मुक्काम मुंबई): "... पूर्णांशाच्या फलप्राप्तीसाठी नव्या नाटकाचा प्रयोग करण्याच्या तयारीत आम्ही गुंतलो असता परमेश्वरी योजनेची नव्या प्रयोगाची सिद्धता होऊन चुकली होती. तीही एक यशस्वी दुःखांतिकाच होती. त्या नव्या नाटकाचे नाव होते 'इन्पल्युएंझा. त्याचे तंत्र अगदी नवीन होते. या परमेश्वरी दुःखान्तिकेची लोकप्रियता इतकी पराकोटीला पोहोचली, की स्मशानांवरही 'हाऊस फुल्ल' चे फलक झळकू लागले. प्रतिदिनी बाराशे-तेराशे माणूस मृत्युमुखी पडू लागले. नवागतांना जागा देण्यासाठी अर्धेमुर्धे दहन झालेले देह ढोसून समुद्रात लोटून द्यावे लागत. हल्लकल्लोळ उडाला. सर्वांच्या तोंडचे पाणी पळाले..."
(पृष्ठ: १३३, 'बहुरूपी', १९५७)

सेतु माधवराव पगडी: ".... १९१८ची इन्फ्लुएंझा साथ मला चांगलीच आठवते. स्मशानाकडे जाणारी वाट आमच्या घरावरून असे. रोज पाच पंचवीस तरी प्रेते घरावरून जात. आम्ही मुले घाबरून जात असू... "
(पृष्ठ २८, 'जीवनसेतु', १९६९)"

Gravin Francis, London Review of Books, January 25 2018:
"... Although there was no effective treatment for the virus, aspirin was taken by the tonne (its German manufacturer, Bayer, was suspected of spreading flu through its pills); aspirin poisoning possibly killed some who would otherwise have survived. Across the world communities adapted traditional remedies: in China, public sweat baths, opium and herbal extracts; in India, hill tribes moulded figures out of flour and water, and waved them over the sick...

...The virus is currently held in a high-security facility in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2016, around 1.7 million people died from tuberculosis, around a million from HIV/Aids, and around half a million from malaria. Computer modelling suggests that if the 1918 H1N1 virus were to break out of the facility in Atlanta it would cause around thirty million deaths."

 
माझ्या लहानपणा पासून फ्लू हा  शब्द किरकोळ थंडीतापाला वापरला जातो पण मी ही पोस्ट लिहू शकलो कारण माझे दोन्हीकडचे आज्जी आजोबा १९१८च्या फ्लू मध्ये बळी पडले नाहीत! एकतृतीयांशाहून जास्त भारतीयांना त्याची लागण झाली होती आणि,  विकिपीडियाच्या म्हणण्या प्रमाणे, १.७ कोटी लोक त्यात बळी पडले.  आज तशी भयंकर लागण झाली तर भारताच्या लोकसंख्येच्या ५% , म्हणजे साधारण ६.६ कोटी लोक दगावू शकतात!

Shashi Tharoor:

"... During the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, 125 million cases of ‘flu were recorded (more than a third of the population), and India’s fatality rate was higher than any Western country’s: 12.5 million people died. As the American statesman (and three-time Democratic presidential candidate) William Jennings Bryan pointed out, many Britons were referring to the deaths caused by plague as ‘a providential remedy for overpopulation’. It was ironic, said Bryan, that British rule was sought to be justified on the grounds that ‘it keeps the people from killing each other, and the plague praised because it removes those whom the Government has saved from slaughter!’.

Arguably, epidemics existed before colonialism as well, and cannot be said to have been caused or worsened by colonial policy; so they are not comparable, for the purposes of my argument, with famines. But their persistence, and the tragically high human toll they exacted remain a severe indictment of the indifference to Indian suffering of those who ran the British Raj. This is all the more true because ‘marked improvements in public health’ are often cited by defenders of British rule in India. There is not a great deal of evidence for this claim, which rests largely on the introduction of quinine as an anti-malarial drug (though its principal use was in the tonics with which the British in jungle outposts drowned and justified their gin), public programmes of vaccination against smallpox (so inadequate that it was only well after Independence that a free India eradicated this scourge from the country) and improvements in water supplies (done so ineffectually, in fact, that cholera and other waterborne diseases persisted throughout the Raj). It is also telling that there were no great hospitals established by the Raj anywhere in the country: strikingly, every one of the major modern medical establishments of British India was established by the generosity of Indian benefactors, even if, for understandable reasons, these Indian donors often named their hospitals after British colonial grandees...."

 ('An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India', 2016)

ज्या सांगली जिल्ह्यात मी बालपण घालवले , त्यात कॉलेज , नदीवरचा पूल 'साहेबाच्या' नावान आहे पण कुठल हॉस्पिटल नाही. ज्या हॉस्पिटलचे आम्ही कुटुंबीय कृतज्ञ आहोत, ज्यात लक्ष्मीबाई टिळकांनी नोकरी करायचा प्रयत्न केला, ते कनेडीयन/ अमेरिकन मिशनराच्या (वानलेस) नावाने आहे.

Artist: Peter C Vey, The New Yorker, January 2018

लिंकनवध आणि महाराष्ट्रातील म. गांधीवधा नंतरच्या घटना....Deaths of A. Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi

आज जानेवारी ३० २०१८ रोजी म. गांधी हत्येला ७०वर्षे पूर्ण होत आहेत. 

दुर्गा भागवत, 'अक्ष्रर', दिवाळी अंक १९९१, 'भावसंचित', २०१५:
"...गांधीहत्येनंतर ब्राह्मणांना मारहाण झाली. घरेही जाळण्यात आली. पण त्यावेळीही आम्हाला जराही उपद्रव पोहोचला नव्हता. पण आता वाढत्या जातीच्या वाढत्या हिंस्त्र दुराभिमानाच्या काळी मात्र प्रत्येक जात-जमात स्वतः काही न करता हिंसाचार मुकाटपणे स्वीकारायला शिकू पहाते आहे. त्यामुळे हिंसक कृत्यांचा विपरीत परिणामही आम्ही 'आमच नशीब' नि 'नित्याचच झाल' असे म्हणून मिळेल तेवढे सुख मिळेल तसे पदरी पाडून घेतो. आणि हिंसेचे दार बंद करू धजत नाही."

नरहर कुरुंदकर, 'शिवरात्र', साधना प्रकाशन, १९७०:

(कृतज्ञता : कुरुंदकरांच्या साहित्याचे कॉपीराईट होल्डर्स)

मी मिरजेला १९६१-१९८१ काळात राहिलो. १९८५ साली आम्ही मिरज कायमचे सोडले. .

मिरजेत गांधीवधानंतरच्या, १९४८ फेब्रुवारी,  झालेल्या घटना नेहमी थोड्या वयाने मोठ्या लोकांकडून ऐकू येत. अगदी आमच्या समोरच राहणाऱ्या हिंदु कुटुंबातील एक व्यक्ती जाळपोळ आणि लूट (arson and looting) करणाऱ्या जमावाच्या अग्रस्थानी कशी होती हे सांगितल जात असे. ती व्यक्ती आम्ही नेहमी पहात असू  (आणि थोडी भीती सुद्धा वाटत असे).

त्यानंतर गांधीवधानंतरचे ब्राह्मणांवरचे हल्ले अनेक ठिकाणी वाचनात आले, प्रामुख्याने भालजी पेंढारकरांचे आत्मचरित्र, वगैरे....काही जळलेली, अजूनपर्यंत खुणा सांगणारी, ठिकाण पण पहिली आहेत.

य दि फडक्यांनी या विषयाबाबत लिहल आहे. सगळ्यात लक्षात राहिलय दुर्गा भागवंताच्या चरित्रकार प्रतिभा रानडे यांचा लेख. त्यावेळी त्या कोल्हापुरात होत्या. आसाम मध्ये रहात असताना आम्ही जी उल्फा उग्रवाद्यांची   भीती कित्येक महिने अखंड अनुभवली ती श्रीमती रानड्यांनी, काही दिवस का होईना, कोल्हापुरातच, आपल्या घरात राहून अनुभवली.

हाच प्रकार इंदिरा गांधी हत्येनंतर शिखांबाबत झाला. अमेरिकेत डॉ॰ मार्टिन लूथर किंग, जूनियर यांची हत्या झाल्यावर बऱ्याच ठिकाणी हिंसाचार झाला. 

म. गांधींचा वध हा त्यांच्या देशवासीयाने गोळ्या मारून केला. आपल्या परमप्रिय लाडक्या नेत्याच्या असा हिंसक मृत्यू झाल्यानंतर त्याचा राग एखाद्या जाती / जमाती वरती अत्यंत क्रूरपणे काढण हे भारतात या वधानंतरच सुरु झाल का? हे भारतात किती वेळा झालय? हे भारतात कुठून आल?

१९४८ पर्यंत, १९व्या आणि २०व्या शतकात अनेक राजांच्या, राष्ट्राध्यक्षांच्या, उमरावांच्या, नोकरशहांच्या, राष्ट्रीय नेत्यांच्या, प्रमुखांच्या  हत्या जगात झाल्या होत्या. पण त्या लांबलचक यादीत म. गांधी इतका लोकप्रिय नेता फक्त एकच असावा: प्रे. एब्राहम लिंकन. दोन्ही नेते राष्ट्रपिता.

खालील परिच्छेद वाचा.

लिंकन यांच्या मृत्यनंतर अमेरिकेतील दाक्षिणात्यांच्या विरुद्ध मोठा हिंसाचार होवू शकला असता, पण केवळ नशिबाने झाला नाही. ह्यामुळे मला अस वाटत की ही हिंसाचाराची कल्पना भारतात अमेरिकेतून आली. (अर्थात हे ही ध्यानात ठेवले पाहिजे की २०व्या शतकातील इतर घटना - रशियन ऑक्टोबर क्रांती, दोन महायुद्धे आणि रक्तरंजीत भारताची फाळणी- पण याला कुठेतरी जबाबदार होत्या.)

Richard White, ‘The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 ‘, 2017:

“...On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died the next day. For a country inclined to see the war as God’s judgment on the national sin of slavery, the shooting on the day the Christian savior died was deeply symbolic. William Dean Howells was then a young journalist and aspiring novelist. He had written a campaign biography of Lincoln and been rewarded with the post of consul in Venice. Lincoln’s death, he thought, fell “upon every American like a personal calamity.” It blackened the national future, “but thank God they cannot assassinate a whole Republic: the People is immortal.”1

The People might be immortal, but who counted as “the People” was open to question. Not everyone mourned. Many Southerners, at least privately, rejoiced, and so did some Northern Copperheads, though public celebration was dangerous. That there would be vengeance was certain, but whether it would extend beyond the assassins was unclear. Calls for the extermination of the traitors were common, and most Southerners fell within the net of treason. Gen. Carl Schurz thought the Confederates should be grateful that most of their troops had already surrendered because if the Union army were still on the march the slaughter would have rivaled that of Attila the Hun. Mary Butler in Pennsylvania called for “death to all traitors,” and she included among them her cousin and suitor Frank. But calls for vengeance quickly narrowed first to the Southern leadership and then to the assassins themselves.

With rage focused on Booth and his fellow conspirators, real and imagined, the nation gave way to grief. “A Nation in Tears” read the Chicago Tribune’s headline on April 17. The trial and execution of Booth’s accused co-conspirators would be far less than fair, but despite the nation’s fury, there was little violence against Confederate sympathizers....”

Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois, draped in mourning. Library of Congress,

...पण टारझन दाढी केव्हापासून करायला लागला?...Tarzan Movies @100

#TarzanMoviesAt100 

१०० वर्षांपूर्वी , २७ जानेवारी १९१८ रोजी, पहिला टारझन सिनेमा- टारझन ऑफ दि एप्स- प्रदर्शित झाला. 

आयुष्यात सिनेमा आवडायला सुरवात झाली त्याचे एक प्रमुख कारण म्हणजे जॉनी वेसमुल्लर (Johnny Weissmuller) यांचे टारझन सिनेमा....

' Tarzan of the Apes' is considered the most faithful to the novel of all the film adaptations.

Artist: Joe Dator, The New Yorker, 2014

ursula k. le guin 1929-2018

#ursulakleguin

मराठी सिनेमात रावण केंव्हाच handsome dude झाला....ACK's Ravana is NOW a Handsome Dude

सौजन्य : अमर चित्र कथा

'दी हिंदू' मध्ये डिसेंबर १६ २०१७रोजी श्री प्रीती डेव्हिड यांचा हा लेख पहिला: "And now, a dapper Ravana: Amar Chitra Katha undergoesmakeover". 

 "...And if you pick up a comic today, you will notice that Ravana is now a handsome dude, Rama has a six-pack, and the Vanara army has both fair and dark characters...."

 ....रावण आत्ता handsome dude झाला? 

मराठी सिनेमात तर हे केंव्हाच झालं होत... 'रम्य ही स्वर्गाहून लंका'... ह्या अप्रतिम गाण्यातील (चित्रपट: स्वयंवर झाले सीतेचे १९६४) कै चंद्रकांत मांडरे  यांचे व्यक्तिमत्व पहा. यापेक्षा कोणी dude handsome असूच शकत नाही...

 सौजन्य: कॉपीराईट होल्डर्स , Ultra 

तीच गोष्ट कै. बाबूराव पेंढारकरांच्या किचकाची,  गाणं - 'धुंद मधुमती रात रे' चित्रपट : 'किचकवध', १९५९

सौजन्य: कॉपीराईट होल्डर्स , राजश्री मराठी