मधुकर केशव ढवळीकर, "महाराष्ट्राची कुळकथा", २०११:
"... गुप्तकालीन आणि गुप्तोत्तर काळात जे संस्कृत आणि प्राकृत वाङ्गमय
मोठया प्रमाणावर निर्माण झाले, त्यात आपल्या प्राचीन नगरांच्या वैभवाची
राजे-रजवाड्यांची जी रंजक वर्णने आहेत, त्यांवरून सर्व काही आलबेल होते अशी
आपली गोड समजूत आहे. परंतु प्रत्यक्ष परिस्थिती खूपच वेगळी होती. कारण
पुरा्तत्वीय पुरावा या उलट आहे आणि त्यावर आपण विश्वास ठेवला पाहिजे.
वारंवार पडणारे दुष्काळ हे भारताच्या आर्थिक अवनतीचे कारण आहे. जोवर आपण
त्यांवर मात करू शकत नाही, तोवर परिस्थितीत फारशी सुधारणा होणे शक्य
नाही...
आजही एक मुंबईचे डोळे दिपवणारे वैभव सोडले, तर महाराष्ट्राची काय स्थिती आहे हे सांगणे नको."
D. D. Kosambi:
“Gold coins don’t make an age golden.”
Paul Samuelson, 1976:
“No new light has been thrown on the reason why poor
countries are poor and rich countries are rich.”
Wikipedia:
“Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of
human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture.”
वरील दोन भारतीयांची अवतरणे मी दोन-चार वेळा तरी वापरली असतील. मला
ती फक्त अगदी थोड्या अंशी मान्य आहेत.
सर्व काही आलबेल होते असे कुणाला
वाटत असेल तर तो मनुष्य स्वप्नात राहतो
असेच म्हणायला पाहिजे. पुरातत्वीय पुरावा महत्वाचा आहेच परंतु मानवाचा इतिहास अनेक गोष्टीत भरलेला आहे. शिवाय इतिहास सांगो ना सांगो पण सर्व प्रकारच्या अडचणींना तोंड देत
टिकून राहून वंश वाढवणे यात एक मोठे यश आहे अस मला
वाटत. भारतात, वेगवेगळ्या कारणाने लोकांनी मौल्यवान किंवा उपयुक्त
गोष्टी (material culture) टिकू दिली असण्याची शक्यता कमी आहे. सोन्याची नाणी टिकू
दिली तर जमिनीत सापडणार मग सुवर्ण काळ होता का नव्हता हा नंतरचा प्रश्न.
माझ्या डोळ्यादेखत मिरजेच्या मध्ययुगीन किल्ल्याच्या तटबंदीचे, खंदकाचे
दगड लोकांनी १९७०च्या दशकात काढून नेले आहेत. तेंव्हा केवळ पुरातत्वीय
पुराव्यावर किती भरोसा टाकायचा?
वर
दिलेल्या quote मध्ये ढवळीकर म्हणतात "आर्थिक अवनती". ते कसे? भारत जवळजवळ १९व्या शतकापर्यंत, इंग्रज स्थायिक होई पर्यंत,
जगात आर्थिक दृष्ट्या बलाढ्य राष्ट्र होते. ["...Strachey argued that the
Raj was bad for Britain and the
British. In Inglorious Empire, Shashi Tharoor argues, with equal
passion, that it was much worse for India and the Indians. In 1700, when the
British were mere traders clinging on to a few coastal toeholds, the Emperor
Aurangzeb ruled over a country that accounted for a quarter of the world’s
economy. By the time the British left, India’s share of global GDP had sunk to
just over 3 per cent..." (Ferdinand Mount, 'Umbrageousness', LRB, September 2017)].
२५% हा आकडा कदाचित ढवळीकरांनी सखोल अभ्यासिलेल्या सातवाहनकालीन
भारतापेक्षा, हराप्पाकालीन (The Ancient Indus Civilization) भारतापेक्षा
सुद्धा जास्त असेल.
दुष्काळ हा भारतासाठी एक मोठा शाप आहे हे खरे पण त्यांची भयंकरता इंग्रजी आमदनी मध्ये प्रचंड वाढली. Jon Wilson यांचे 'India Conquered: Britain's Raj and the Chaos of Empire' , २०१६ वाचून हे समजले की त्याची सुरवात
प्लासीच्या लढाईनंतर झाली आणि आधीच्या आणि नंतरच्या भारतीय राजवटी, कशाही असोत, त्या इतक्या टोकाचे
अकाल टाळायच्या.
"To collect cash from the new territories in Bengal acquired with the
diwani, Robert Clive ordered ten companies of troops to march into the
countryside and enforce payment. In his two last years as Governor of
Bengal, 1766–7, Clive tried to focus the Company’s servants’ attention
more emphatically on the goal of collecting revenue, banning officers
from engaging in private trade and allowing them a commission on the
Company’s private trade instead of private profits. This met with much
resistance, and Company servants continued to make fortunes from
personal commerce for another twenty years. But the impatient focus on
the collection of revenue at all costs undermined the capacity of
political authorities in Bengal to respond to economic crises. The
consequences were catastrophic...
... Later British officers saw Bengal as a place peculiarly vulnerable to
these malign natural forces. In reality, though, they found it very
difficult to find evidence for such a devastating famine in Bengal’s
recent history. The last similar event occured in 1574, when the Mughal
conquest of Bengal had only just begun. Between then and 1769, the back
and forth of Mughal politics ensured ecological shocks did not cause
human disasters. Good years created surpluses of food and money, which
could then be redistributed to feed people in lean times. Bengal’s
little kings and Mughal rulers used their reserves to buy grain, to feed
the poor, to accept the late payment of land revenue and lend money to
farmers to get them started again if their crops were wiped out. This
was not an economy with a high rate of growth, and living standards were
poor by today’s standards. But bad harvests, in 1737 and 1738 for
example, did not create large mortality rates. India before the British
was, after all, a polity where power depended partly on consent, and
resistance and flight were options for subjects who did not like the way
a ruler behaved. Maintaining political authority needed political
leaders to be sensitive to the needs of subjects when their livelihood
was under threat. It was that sensitivity the British lacked..."
आणखी
एक गोष्ट अशी की भारतात विषमता कायमच आहे, भारतात कायमच गरीब लोक
बहुसंख्य होते आणि भारतीय इतिहासाने वंचित वर्गाकडे दुर्लक्ष शेकडो /
हजारो वर्षे केले आहे हे ही खरे आहे. पण म्हणून श्रीमंत आणि मध्यम
वर्गांच्या इतिहासाकडे दुर्लक्ष करायचे? अजंताच्या गुहांच्या चित्रांत
दिसणाऱ्या बहुतेक व्यक्ती श्रीमंत असतील पण त्यांची गोष्ट सुद्धा त्या
काळच्या गरीब माणसाइतकीच इंटरेस्टिंग असू शकते. त्यांचा इतिहास सुद्धा
भारताचाच इतिहास आहे.
पण जमिनीखाली सापडणाऱ्या गोष्टींचे
महत्व प्रचंड आहे हे खरे आणि त्या निकषावरती हे सिद्ध होते की डिनोसार हे
पृथ्वीचे अत्यंत यशस्वी रहिवासी होते. दिवंगत ढवळीकरांनी सुद्धा ते नक्की
मान्य केले असते!
Steve
Brusatte, "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: a new history of a lost world":
"... Most of all, though, I want to show that dinosaurs were not
aliens, nor were they failures, and they’re certainly not irrelevant. They were
remarkably successful, thriving for over 150 million years and producing some
of the most amazing animals that have ever lived—including birds, some ten
thousand species of modern-day dinosaurs. Their home was our home—the same
Earth, subject to the same whims of climate and environmental change that we
have to deal with, or perhaps will deal with in the future. They evolved in
concert with an ever changing world, one subject to monstrous volcanic
eruptions and asteroid impacts, and one in which the continents were moving
around, sea levels were constantly fluctuating, and temperatures were
capriciously rising and falling. They became supremely well adapted to their
environments, but in the end, most of them went extinct when they couldn’t cope
with a sudden crisis. No doubt there is a lesson there for us.
More than anything, the rise and fall of the dinosaurs is an
incredible story, of a time when giant beasts and other fantastic creatures
made the world their own. They walked on the very ground below us, their
fossils now entombed in rock—the clues that tell this story. To me, it’s one of
the greatest narratives in the history of our planet...."
Brusatte यांच्या नवीन पुस्तकाचे परिक्षण Ira
Flatow यांनी NYT मध्ये केले आहे:
"... The often
discussed dino demise 66 million years ago obscures their 150-million-year
reign, making them among the most successful creatures ever to walk the planet.
“Far from being failures,” Brusatte writes, “they were evolutionary success
stories.” Their fossilized remains can be found just about everywhere on earth.
And while we talk about the fall of the dinosaurs, tens of thousands of species
of dinosaurs are still among us. We call them birds. .."
<Their fossilized remains can be found just about everywhere on earth.>
खालील चित्राने सिद्ध होते की चार्ल्स अॅडम्स हे कसे जगातील एक सर्वोत्तम व्यंगचित्रकार होते ते: पुरातत्वशास्त्रज्ञ परत आलाय आणि जीवाश्मांच्या ऐवजी एका जिवंत माणसाला घेऊन आलाय!
आता पुढची कल्पना करा एक दिवस असा टीरेक्स आला तर...
Artist:
Charles Addams, The New Yorker, August 23 1941
