IN MEMORIAM
KULAPATI DR. K. M. MUNSHI
This is the first volume of this series (out of ten so far published) which appears without a Foreword from the pen of its inaugurator, the late lamented Kulapati Dr. K. M. Munshi. He died full of years and honors, and his activities and achievements are only too well-known. His death is mourned by all classes of people from one end of India to the other and also abroad. But it has been an irreparable loss to the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan which sponsored not only the project of publishing this historical series but many other books calculated to promote a knowledge of the culture of India. To me the loss is also a personal one. I still cherish the memory of my first meeting with Dr. Munshi in 1945. I was surprised to receive an invitation to meet him at Bombay, for I was a complete stranger to him at the time. Far greater was my surprise when I listened to him explaining the ideals and method envisaged by him for the publication of a series of ten volumes on the history and culture of the Indian People, laying particular stress on the two words ‘culture’ and ‘people’. I need not expatiate on this, as he has himself expressed, in the Foreword to the First Volume, his own concept of the scope of this series. These lines would bear repetition. “Some years ago”, wrote Munshiji, “I defined the scope of history as follows:
“To be a history in the true sense of the word, the work must be the story of the people inhabiting a country. It must be a record of their life from age to age presented through the life and achievements of men whose exploits become the beacon-lights of tradition; through the characteristic reaction of the people to physical and economic conditions; through political changes and vicissitudes which create the forces and conditions which operate upon life; through characteristic social institutions, beliefs and forms; through literary and artistic achievements; through the movements of thought which from time to time helped or hindered the growth of collective harmony; through those values which the people have accepted or reacted to and which created or shaped their will; through efforts of the people to will themselves into an organic unity. The central purpose of a history must, therefore, be to investigate and unfold the values which, age after age, have inspired the inhabitants of a country to develop their collective will and to express it through the manifold activities of their life. Such a history of India is still to be written.”