/ Stars that died in 2023

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Lykourgos Kallergis, Greek actor, director and politician, died he was 97.

Lykourgos Kallergis  was a Greek actor, director and politician born in Heraklion died he was 97..

(March 7, 1914 – August 27, 2011)

Kallergis was credited in more than five hundred acting roles in Greek television, film, radio and stage over a career that spanned more than sixty years.[1] He also ventured into politics, serving as a deputy within the Greek Communist Party from 1977 until 1981.[1] Kallergis later translated foreign language plays into Greek and becoming a director.[1]
Lykourgos Kallergis died at the Giorgos Gennimatas hospital in Athens on August 27, 2011, at the age of 97.[1]


To see more of who died in 2011 click here
at No comments:

Stetson Kennedy, American folklorist and civil rights activist, died he was 94.


William Stetson Kennedy  was an American author and human rights activist died he was 94.. One of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the 20th century, he is remembered for having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world. His actions led to the 1947 revocation by the state of Georgia of the Klan's national corporate charter.[1] Kennedy wrote or co-wrote ten books.
(October 5, 1916 – August 27, 2011)

Biography and activities

Kennedy was named for a member of his mother's family, the hatter John Batterson Stetson.[1] As a teenager, he began collecting folklore material while seeking "a dollar down and dollar a week" accounts for his father, a furniture merchant. While a student at the University of Florida, Kennedy befriended one of his professors, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.[2]
In 1937, he left the University of Florida to join the WPA Florida Writers' Project, and at the age of 21, was put in charge of folklore, oral history, and ethnic studies. As her supervisor, Kennedy traveled throughout Florida with African-American novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, visiting turpentine camps near Cross City and the Clara White Mission soup kitchen in Jacksonville. Hurston later chronicled these experiences in her book Mules and Men. The two were forced to travel separately because Jim Crow laws prohibited them from working together. Because of segregation laws operative in Florida at the time, "You could get killed lighting someone's cigarette", Kennedy told independent producer Barrett Golding. "Or shaking hands -- both colors, white and black."[3] Hurston was not even allowed to enter the Federal Writers' Project office in Jacksonville through the front door and did most of her work from her home. Kennedy had a large hand in editing several volumes generated by the Florida project, including The WPA Guide to Florida: the Southernmost State (1939), from the famed WPA American Guide Series, A Guide to Key West, and The Florida Negro (part of a series directed by Sterling Brown). Kennedy also studied at New College for Social Research in New York and at the Sorbonne in Paris.[2]

Stetson Kennedy cuts the cake for his 93rd birthday party (two days before the actual birthday) at the Civic Media Center in Gainesville, Florida.
Kennedy's first book, Palmetto Country, based on unused material collected during his WPA period, was published in 1942 as a volume in the American Folkways Series edited by Erskine Caldwell. Legendary folklorist Alan Lomax has said of the book, "I very much doubt that a better book about Florida folklife will ever be written." To which Kennedy's self-described "stud buddy", Woody Guthrie, added, "[Palmetto Country] gives me a better trip and taste and look and feel for Florida than I got in the forty-seven states I've actually been in body and tramped in boot." The Library of Congress has placed the recordings and pictures from the project online. Kennedy has been called "one of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the 20th century", and his work is a keystone of the library's presentation.
In 1942 Kennedy accepted a position as Southeastern Editorial Director of the CIO's Political Action Committee in Atlanta, Georgia, in which capacity he wrote a series of monographs dealing with the poll tax, white primaries, and other restrictions on voting that delimited democracy throughout the South. Kept from military service by a bad back, Kennedy resolved to perform his patriotic duties in Georgia by infiltrating both the Klan and the Columbians,[4] an Atlanta-based neo-Nazi organization.[5]
After World War II, Kennedy worked as a journalist for the liberal newspaper PM. His stories appeared in newspapers and magazines such as the New York Post and The Nation, for which he was for a time Southern correspondent, and he fed information about discrimination to columnist Drew Pearson. To bring the effects of Jim Crow in the South to public awareness, he authored a number exposés of the Klan and racist Jim Crow system over the course of his life, including Southern Exposure (1946), Jim Crow Guide to the USA (1959), and After Appomattox: How the South Won the War (1995). During the 1950s, Kennedy's books, considered too incendiary to be published in the USA, were published in France by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre[6] and subsequently translated into other languages. Kennedy coined the term "Frown Power",[7] when he started a campaign with that name in the 1940s, which simply encouraged people to pointedly frown when they heard bigoted speech.
In 1947, Kennedy provided information - including secret codewords and details of Klan rituals - to the writers of the Superman radio program, leading popular journalist Stephen J. Dubner and University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, in their 2005 book Freakonomics, to dub Kennedy "the greatest single contributor to the weakening of the Ku Klux Klan".[8] The result was a series of 16 episodes in which Superman took on the Klan. Kennedy intended to strip away the Klan's mystique; and the trivialization of the Klan's rituals and codewords likely had a negative impact on Klan recruiting and membership.[9]
In 1952, when Kennedy ran for governor of Florida, his friend and houseguest Woody Guthrie wrote a set of lyrics for a campaign song, "Stetson Kennedy".[10] Kennedy says he became "the most hated man in Florida", and his home at Fruit Cove near Lake Beluthahatchee was firebombed by rightists and many of his papers destroyed, causing him to leave the country and go to live in France. There, in 1954, Kennedy wrote his sensational expos̩ of the workings of the Klan, I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan (later reissued as The Klan Unmasked), which was published by Jean-Paul Sartre. Questioned in later years about the accuracy of his account, Kennedy later said he regretted not having included an explanatory introduction to the book about how the information in it was obtained.[11] The director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress Peggy Bulger, the subject of whose doctoral thesis was Kennedy's work as a folklorist, commented in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press, "Exposing their folklore Рall their secret handshakes, passwords and how silly they were, dressing up in white sheets ... If they weren't so violent, they would be silly."[1]
A founding member and past president of the Florida Folklore Society, Kennedy was a recipient of the 1998 Florida Folk Heritage Award and the Florida Governor's Heartland Award. His contribution to the preservation and propagation of folk culture is the subject of a dissertation, "Stetson Kennedy: Applied Folklore and Cultural Advocacy" (University of Pennsylvania, 1992), by Peggy Bulger, who assumed the directorship of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in 1999. Kennedy is also featured as one of the "Whistle Blowers", in Studs Terkel's book Coming of Age, published in 1995.
In 2005, Jacksonville residents attended a banquet in honor of Kennedy's life, and afterward a slide show with narration at Henrietta's Restaurant, located at 9th and Main Street in Springfield. This event was largely coordinated by Fresh Ministries. The slides included numerous pictures of his travels with author Zora Neale Hurston, and direct voice recordings which were later digitized for preservation.
In 2006, on November 24, the ninety-year-old Kennedy was wed to former city commissioner Sandra Parks at a Quaker-style ceremony at the William Bartram Center on the Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida.[12] Parks and Kennedy met when she came to Beluthahatchee to recruit him for the 40th anniversary observance of the St. Augustine civil rights marches which he participated in with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy, who admits to at least five previous marriages, commented, "I’ll leave it to the historians to decide how many times I’ve been married."[13]
In 2007 St. Johns County declared a "Stetson Kennedy Day".[14]

Kennedy in 1991
Kennedy participated in the two-day New Deal Resources: Preserving the Legacy conference at the Library of Congress on the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the New Deal held in March 2008.[15] Kennedy's most recent book, Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West, was issued by the Pineapple Press, in 2008.
In February 2009, Kennedy bequeathed his personal library to the Civic Media Center in Gainesville, Florida with which Kennedy had worked since the center's inception.[16]
In October 2009, a first party for Kennedy's 93rd birthday was held at the Civic Media Center and the next day admirers flocked to Beluthahatchee Park, now a landmarked historic site, to celebrate Kennedy's birthday there.[17]

Beluthahatchee Park


Sign on Stetson Kennedy's residence erected consequent to the 2003 designation of Beluthahatchee as a Literary Landmark, No. 83 in the National Register. (An additional marker, in Kennedy's name, was also approved, to be erected following his demise.)
In 2003, Friends of Libraries USA put Beluthahatchee on its national register of literary sites and, to commemorate the occasion, Arlo Guthrie gave a concert in Jacksonville.[18]
In 2005 Kennedy received a life estate on his 4 acre homestead in Saint Johns County, and it is now Beluthahatchee Park.[19]
The name "Beluthahatchee" describes a mythical "Florida Shangri-la, where all unpleasantness is forgiven and forgotten" according to Zora Neale Hurston.[20]
Among the amenities are a picnic pavilion, canoe dock, access to the Beluthatchee Lake, and use of the two wildlife observation platforms. A “Mother Earth Trail” throughout the property is planned, as envisioned by the Kennedy Foundation. The Park’s perimeter is surrounded by a heavy canopy of native vegetation and the enclave provides a habitat for wildlife and continues to serve as a rookery and roosting place for many types of waterfowl and other birds.
Kennedy’s home will, upon his death, be open as a museum and archive and offer educational exhibits and whatnot, primarily about Woody Guthrie and William Bartram in addition to Kennedy himself, and will be operated by the Kennedy Foundation which will share office space in an adjacent home with the William Bartram Scenic and Historic Highway corridor group. A log cabin that's in the park may serve as a caretaker residence while the fourth building there may house an Artist-in-Residence through the Florida Folklife program.[21]
The park is part of a 70 acre tract that Kennedy purchased in 1948, recorded restrictive covenants setting aside land in perpetuity as a wildlife refuge, and the following year subdivided, subsequently selling all but his own 4 acre parcel.[19]

Critical assessments from his peers

In 1999, a freelance historian, Ben Green, alleged that Kennedy falsified or misrepresented portions of I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan. During the 1990s, Green had enlisted Kennedy's help while researching a book about the still unsolved 1951 Florida fire-bombing murders of black Civil Rights activists Harry T. Moore and his wife Harriette. Green's book about the Moores, Freedom Never Dies, was published in 1999. Green and Kennedy, quarreled over what Kennedy considered Green's too sympathetic portrayal of the FBI. Green, whose book is generally disparaging of Kennedy, claimed to have examined Kennedy's archives at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and in Atlanta and concluded that a number of interviews, portrayed in I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan as having been conducted undercover, had in fact been done openly, and that racist material amassed by Kennedy had also been openly obtained from mail subscriptions to the Klan and similar groups and not surreptitiously, as implied. Most seriously, Green accused Kennedy of concealing the existence of a collaborator, referred to as "John Brown" (a pseudonym probably chosen in honor of the 19th-century abolitionist John Brown), whom Green alleged was in fact responsible for the most daring of Kennedy's undercover revelations. Green also interviewed Georgia State Prosecutor Dan Duke, whom he reported as denying having worked with Kennedy as closely the latter had claimed. "Duke agreed that Kennedy 'got inside of some [Klan] meetings' but openly disputed Kennedy's dramatized account of their relationship. 'None of that happened,' [Duke] told Green", according to Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt in their New York Times Magazine column of January 8, 2006.[22] In the same column, Levitt and Dubner also quote Jim Clark, a professor at the University of Central Florida and co-author of a PBS television documentary based on Green's book, as saying that "[Kennedy] built a national reputation on many things that didn't happen". Jim Clark and Ben Green collaborated on the script of Freedom Never Dies: The Story of Harry T. Moore,[23] based on Green's book and partially funded by the Freedom Forum.[24] Peggy Bulger, on the other hand, stated that when she interviewed him: "[Sheriff] Duke laughed about the way The Klan Unmasked was written. But he added that Kennedy 'didn't do it all, but he did plenty,' she said. In a letter to Kennedy dated July 27, 1946, Georgia Gov. Ellis Arnall wrote: 'You have my permission to quote me as making the following observation: Documentary evidence uncovered by Stetson Kennedy has facilitated Georgia's prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan.'"[11]
Freakonomics authors Dubner and Levitt had included a favorable summary of Kennedy's anti-Klan activities with special emphasis on the events recounted in I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan in the 2005 edition of their bestselling book. In the revised 2006 edition, after being contacted by Green, they retracted their earlier admiration, claiming that they had been "hoodwinked".[22] The allegations in their retraction were swiftly repeated by the business journal Forbes in a review of the revised edition of Freakonomics: "It turns out that Kennedy doesn't quite live up to his own legend. In fact, he had exaggerated his story for decades and credited himself with actions taken by other people".
Green's insinuations are contested by scholars, who emphasize that Kennedy never concealed that he had protected his colleagues' identities and maintain that Green either misread or did not really read the material at the Schomburg Center. Peggy Bulger, the head of the American Folklife Division of the Library of Congress, who wrote her Ph. D. dissertation on Kennedy and interviewed him extensively, maintains that Kennedy was always candid with her and others about his combination of two narratives into one in I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan: "His purpose was to expose the Klan to a broad reading audience and use their folklore against them, which he did." In a letter to the editor of New York Times Magazine (published on January 22, 2006) Bulger accused Dubner and Levitt of "holding Stetson Kennedy responsible for the inadequacies of their own research":
It's preposterous. I have worked with Stetson Kennedy for more than 30 years, conducting almost 100 in-depth interviews with both Kennedy and his contemporaries. Your writers use one footnote from my dissertation as "evidence," yet Dubner admitted to me that they never read the whole thing. This is "data"? What is the smoking gun here?[25]
In the same issue of the magazine a letter of protest from famed oral historian Studs Terkel affirms that "With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace and beauty.... The thing is, Stetson did what he set out to do .... He did get help. He should have been much more up-front. But he certainly doesn't deserve this treatment".
In his own response (published in the Jacksonville, Florida Folio Weekly, January 27, 2006) Kennedy pulled no punches:
The hidden story behind these hidden story guys is that is was a put-up, hatchet job. Freakonomics co-author, Stephen Dubner, admitted to me that it was Ben Green, author of the book about the Harry T. Moore assassinations, who made the call. And, why would he have it in for me? We once had a contract to collaborate on the Moore book and split the byline; but instead we split, because I was convinced that lawmen at every level were involved in every phase of the murders, while he was bent not just upon whitewash but on praising the G-men for a "stellar performance".
I must say that I am not at all comfortable about being in Freakonomics, anyway. I took the authors into my home on the basis of their assertion that what they were after was the economics of the Klan. The next thing I knew, they sent me a pre-publication copy of their sketch of Klan history, and I was horrified to see that it was a rehash of the Klan's very own "Birth of A Nation" version. I did some detailed editing, but they chose to ignore it — just as they did all the documentation I gave them on my infiltration of Klans all over the South, all by my lonesome.
I trust that readers took note of the book's attack upon Head Start, which with all its faults, is a godsend to many. Still worse is the book's suggestion that the way to decrease the crime rate is to decrease the black birthrate via abortion. Without reference to what American does to its black and tan kids, that is sheer racism. There is too much evil going on in the world for me, going on 90, to take time out to haggle with anyone about which agent covered which Klan meeting 50 years ago.[26]
In 2006, The Florida Times-Union, after extensive research, published an article "KKK Book Stands Up to Claim of Falsehood" (January 29, 2006) substantiating the general accuracy of Kennedy's account of infiltrating the Klan, while acknowledging that (as he himself never denied) he had made use of dramatic effects and multiple narratives in the book I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan.
David Pilgrim of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University commented:
Green claimed, after months of readings Kennedy's field notes, that he was unable to substantiate many of the claims in The Klan Unmasked. He even insinuated that Kennedy had fabricated his true role. Kennedy, in his 90s, fought to salvage his reputation and protect his legacy. He acknowledges that some accounts in his books were actually derived from the actions of co-infiltrators or others sympathetic with undermining the Klan. Though I recognize the importance of integrity in a person's work, I am nevertheless not especially troubled if Southern Exposure or The Klan Unmasked includes accounts from others afraid to speak for themselves. Nor am I bothered that Kennedy embellished his role. Infiltrating the Klan was an act of great courage, and the information in the books and on the radio shows led to the arrests of some Klansmen, the derailing of domestic terrorist acts, and the unpopularity of the Klan organization. That is good enough for me. I encourage readers to watch this short video [(no longer) on Youtube] which chronicles the life and work of Kennedy.
The Jim Crow Museum staff periodically trains docents to work in the facility. When I facilitate this training I have the students read Kennedy's book, Jim Crow Guide: The Way It Was (1959). The book is a mock guide dripping with bitter sarcasm; nevertheless, it is a historically sound account of life under Jim Crow segregation.

Death and Memorials


Stetson Kennedy's ashes are spread at the end of his memorial service on October 1, 2011 onto Beluthahatchee Lake by his daughter, Jill Bowen.
Kennedy died on August 27, 2011 at Baptist Medical Center South in Jacksonville, Florida, where he had been in palliative care for several days.[27]
Kennedy's stated wishes were that upon his death there be a party held rather than a funeral; therefore, a celebration of Kennedy's life was held on October 1, 2011 (four days before Kennedy's 95th birthday) at Kennedy's homestead, Beluthahatchee Park.[28] Several hundred kin, friends, and admirers gathered for the events which commenced with an hour of music performed by many well-known artists of pieces among which were several written by Kennedy’s friend Woody Guthrie, who composed many songs at Beluthahatchee, including a number about Kennedy, e.g., "Beluthahatchee Bill". The music culminated with all present singing Guthrie’s "This Land Is Your Land", which was followed by an hour of eulogies. Then all present walked down to Lake Beluthahatchee and watched as Kennedy’s ashes were scattered thereon from a canoe by his daughter.[29]

Books


To see more of who died in 2011 click here
at No comments:

Kim Tai Chung,Korean actor and martial artist, died from internal stomach bleeding at 68..

Kim Tai Chung , also known as Kim Tai Jong or Tong Lung, was a Korean born taekwondo practitioner martial artist actor and businessman died from internal stomach bleeding at 68. Kim is perhaps best known as Ghost Bruce Lee in 1986 martial arts film No Retreat, No Surrender.
(12 February 1943 – 27 August 2011)

Acting

In 1970s, Kim played Bruce Lee’s character Billy Lo in 1978 martial arts thriller film Game of Death his first Hong Kong film debut, along with Yuen Biao (who performed the acrobatics and stunts), Kim played Lee's character so well that the producers used him again a few years later.
In 1980s, Kim played Bobby Lo in 1981 film Game of Death II alongside Hwang Jang Lee, Roy Horan, To Wai Wo and Lee Hoi San.
After Game of Death II, Kim returned to Korea and playing Master Bruce in 1982 film Jackie vs. Bruce to the Rescue (also known as Fist of Death) along with Jackie Chang (look like Drunken Master film star Jackie Chan), and another Korean film Miss, Please be Patient, it was released in November 1981.
In June 1985, Chinese film producer Ng See Yuen was looking for an actor to play ghost Bruce Lee in 1986 martial arts film No Retreat, No Surrender his American debut and final film, which marked the film debut of Belgium martial artist actor Jean-Claude Van Damme as Ivan the Russian. Kim played Bruce Lee to training Kurt McKinney's martial artist.

Retired from acting

After No Retreat, No Surrender, Kim returned to Korea and retired from acting at the age of 43 and became a businessman.
In 2008, Kim made a rare public appearance in Korea as part of a screening of Miss, Please be Patient, which had originally been released in 1981. Kim had played a leading role in that film.

Death

On 27 August 2011 [2], Kim has died of internal stomach bleeding at the age of 68. [3]


To see more of who died in 2011 click here
at No comments:

Nico Minardos, Greek actor (Istanbul, Twelve Hours to Kill, The Twilight Zone), died from natural causes at 81.

Nico Minardos was a Greek-American actor died from natural causes at 81..

(February 15, 1930 - August 27, 2011 )

Life and works

Nico Minardos made his first appearance in front of the Hollywood cameras as an extra in the 1952 film Monkey Business, starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, and Marilyn Monroe. Also listed among his film credits are Holiday for Lovers with Jill St. John; Twelve Hours to Kill with Barbara Eden; It Happened in Athens with Jayne Mansfield; and Cannon for Cordoba, an action-packed western with George Peppard and Pete Duel.
The majority of Minardos' work, however, was in television, where he made guest appearances in a wide variety of shows. Because of his dark looks and accent, he was often cast as a Mexican, a trend which can be seen throughout his career. These roles included that of a thief in the Maverick episode, "The Judas Mask"; a doctor in The Twilight Zone episode "The Gift"; and two roles in the TV show Alias Smith and Jones, first as a bandit chief in "Journey from San Juan," and then as the Alcalde of a Mexican resort town in "Miracle at Santa Marta." These latter two appearances reunited him with Cannon for Cordoba co-star, Pete Duel, who played Hannibal Heyes, the alias Smith of the title.
Minardos was married twice, first briefly in the mid-1950s to the former Deborah Jean Smith (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Deborah Ann Montgomery). There were no children from that marriage. Two years after the divorce, Deborah married the legendary actor Tyrone Power. Minardos remarried in 1966. He and his wife Julie had two children together, a son named George and a daughter named Nina. Minardos reputedly lived with the actress Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s and also for a short time the actress/dancer Juliet Prowse lived with him in his Beverly Hills canyon house before she moved to Las Vegas to be with Frank Sinatra.
On September 28, 1966, Minardos, who was co-starring with actor Eric Fleming in an MGM-TV movie filming on location in Peru to be called "Selva Alta" ("High Jungle"), was involved in a canoeing mishap on the Huallaga River in which Fleming drowned. Minardos, a strong swimmer, was unable to rescue Fleming from the rapids and only barely survived himself. Fleming's body disappeared in the turbulent waters and was not recovered until three days later.
In 1975, Minardos starred in and produced Assault on Agathon based on the book by Alan Caillou. It is the story of a revolutionary from World War II, the mysterious Agathon, who is committing terrorist acts in Greece and Albania. Minardos stars as Cabot Cain, a Western agent assigned to stop Agathon and locate a missing Interpol agent. The film also starred Marianne Faithfull and John Woodvine. Minardos's last appearance on the screen was in an episode of The A-Team in 1983.
In 1986 Minardos was one of the celebrated defendants in a case related to the Iran-Contra Affair, resulting from Minardos' business association with the Saudi arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi. Minardos was caught in an FBI sting operation in New York and was indicted by then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani on charges of conspiracy to illegally ship arms to Iran. He was represented by famed anti-government attorneys William Kunstler and Ron Kuby in this case. Minardos was interviewed by Mike Wallace for a segment of the CBS show 60 Minutes regarding his role in the case. Although the indictment was eventually thrown out, the cost of his legal defense drove him to the point of bankruptcy which unfortunately ended his Hollywood career. Minardos soon traded his home in Beverly Hills for a sailing yacht in Florida, which he subsequently outfitted and sailed across the Atlantic to his Greek homeland with a crew that included his son George.
Minardos retired to Fort Lauderdale, Florida during the 1990s and 2000s, but moved back to Southern California in 2009 after suffering a stroke. He was the subject of a documentary about his life titled Finding Nico which was completed in 2010.
To see more of who died in 2011 click here
at No comments:

Ram Sharan Sharma, Indian historian, died at 91.

Ram Sharan Sharma was an eminent historian of Ancient and early Medieval India died at 91..

(26 November 1919 – 20 August 2011)

He taught at Patna University, Delhi University (1973–85) and the University of Toronto and was a senior fellow at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; University Grants Commission National Fellow (1958–81) and President of Indian History Congress in 1975. It was during the tenure of Professor R. S. Sharma as the Dean of Delhi University's History Department in the 1970s that major expansion of the department took place.[5] The creation of most of the positions in the Department owes to Professor Sharma's efforts.[5] He is the founding Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and a historian of international repute.[6]
On his death, a function was organized by the Indian Council of Historical Research which was hosted by the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, the eminent historians Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, D.N.Jha, Satish Chandra, Kesavan Veluthat and ICHR Chairperson Basudev Chatterjee paid rich tributes to R.S. Sharma and emphasized that he had influenced them in more ways than one.[7] Professor Bipan Chandra paid him the most handsome tribute: "After D.D. Kosambi, R.S. Sharma was the greatest historian of India.”[8] Two of the most gifted historians of our times —D.N.Jha and Sumit Sarkar — were brought to Delhi University when Sharma was at the helm.[9]
During his lifetime, he authored 115 books[10] published in fifteen languages. As head of the departments of History at Patna University and Delhi University, as Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, as an important member of the National Commission of the History of Sciences in India and UNESCO Commission on the history of Central Asian Civilizations and of the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, and, above all, as a practising historian he has been influencing the major decisions relating to historical research in India.[11] At the instance of Dr. Sachchidanand Sinha, when Professor Sharma was in Patna College, he worked as special officer on deputation in the Political Department in 1948 where he was deputed to prepare a report on the Bihar-Bengal Boundary Dispute which he prepared in right earnest.[12][13][14] His pioneering effort resolved the border dispute forever which has been recorded by Dr. Sachchinand Sinha in a letter to Rajendra Prasad.[12][13][14]

Early life

Sharma was born in Barauni, Begusarai, Bihar in a poor Bhumihar Brahmin family.[15] With great difficulty his father sponsored his education till matriculation. After that he kept on getting scholarships and even did private tuitions to support his education.[11] In his youth he came in contact with peasant leaders like Karyanand Sharma and Sahajanand Saraswati and scholars like Rahul Sankrityayan and perhaps from them he imbibed the determination to fight for social justice and an abiding concern for the downtrodden which drew him to left ideology.[11] His later association with Dr. Sachchidanand Sinha, a social reformer and journalist, broadened his mental horizon and firmly rooted him in the reality of rural India and thus strengthened his ties with the left movement and brought him into the front rank of anti-imperialist and anti-communal intellectuals of the country.[11]

Education and achievements

He passed matriculation in 1937 and joined Patna College, where he studied for six years from intermediate to postgraduate classes.[12] He did his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London under Professor Arthur Llewellyn Basham.[16] He taught at colleges in Ara (1943) and Bhagalpur (July 1944 to November 1946) before coming to Patna College in 1946.[12] He became the head of the Department of History at Patna University from 1958-1973.[12] He became a university professor in 1958. He served as professor and Dean of the History Department at Delhi University from 1973–1978. He got the Jawaharlal Fellowship in 1969. He was the founding Chairperson of Indian Council of Historical Research from 1972-1977. He has been a visiting fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (1959–64); University Grants Commission National Fellow (1958–81); visiting Professor of History in University of Toronto (1965–66); President of Indian History Congress in 1975 and recipient of Jawaharlal Nehru Award in 1989.[12] He became the deputy-chairperson of UNESCO's International Association for Study of Central Asia from 1973–1978; he has served as an important member of the National Commission of History of Sciences in India and a member of the University Grants Commission.[12]
Sharma got the Campbell Memorial Gold Medal (for outstanding Indologist) for 1983 by the Asiatic Society of Bombay in November, 1987; received the H. K. Barpujari Biennial National Award by Indian History Congress for Urban Decay in India in 1992 and worked as National Fellow of the Indian Council of Historical Research (1988–91).[12] He is a member of many academic committees and associations. He has also been recipient of the K. P. Jayaswal Fellowship of the K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna (1992–94); he was invited to receive Hemchandra Raychaudhuri Birth Centenary Gold Medal for outstanding historian from The Asiatic Society in August 2001; and in 2002 the Indian History Congress gave him the Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade Award for his life-long service and contribution to Indian history.[12] He got D.Litt (Honoris Causa) from the University of Burdwan and a similar degree from Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarnath, Varanasi.[12] He is also the president of the editorial group of the scholastic magazine Social Science Probings. He is a member of the Board of Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library. His works have been translated into many Indian languages apart from being written in Hindi and English. Fifteen of his works have been translated into Bengali. Apart from Indian languages many of his works have been translated into many foreign languages like Japanese, French, German, Russian, etc.
In the opinion of fellow historian Professor Irfan Habib, "D. D. Kosambi and R. S. Sharma, together with Daniel Thorner, brought peasants into the study of Indian history for the first time."[17] Prof. Dwijendra Narayan Jha published a book in his honour in 1996, titled "Society and Ideology in India: ed. Essays in Honour of Professor R. S. Sharma" (Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi, 1996). In his honour, a selection of essays was published by the K. P. Jaiswal Research Institute, Patna in 2005.
Journalist Sham Lal writes about him, "R. S. Sharma, a perceptive historian of Ancient India, has too great a regard for the truth about the social evolution in India over a period of two thousand years, stretching from 1500 BC to 500 AD, to take refuge in a world of make-believe."[18]
Professor Sumit Sarkar opines: "Indian historiography, starting with D. D. Kosambi in the 1950s, is acknowledged the world over - wherever South Asian history is taught or studied - as quite on a par with or even superior to all that is produced abroad. And that is why Irfan Habib or Romila Thapar or R. S. Sharma are figures respected even in the most diehard anti-Communist American universities. They cannot be ignored if you are studying South Asian history."[19]

As an Institution Builder

Impatient with inefficiency and guided by his radicalism, Professor Sharma had been a great builder of institutions.[11] Under his guidance the department of History, Patna University, drastically changed its syllabi and made a sharp departure from the communal and imperialist historiographical legacy of the colonial period.[11] He has the credit of activising the dapartment which was suffering from an almost incurable inertia and of initiating academic programmes which gave a distinct character to the History department of Patna University and thereby bringing it into the vanguard of secular and scientific historiography.[11]
In Delhi where he spent a smaller part of his teaching career, Professor Sharma's achievements are no less significant. The development of the department of History, Delhi University, owes a great deal to the efforts of Professor Sharma who radicalized it by converting it into a citadel of secular and scientific History and waged an all out war against communalist historiography.[11]
It is largely because of his efforts that the largest body of professional Indian historians, the Indian History Congress, of which he was the general president in 1975 and which honoured him with H.K. Barpujari Award in 1989, has now become the symbol of secular and scientific approach to History.[11]

Personality

Professor R.S.Sharma was known for his simplicity.[20] He was tall, fair and was always clad in dhoti-kurta.[20] Historian Suvira Jaisawal, Sharma's first PhD student, remembers her teacher not only giving a lesson in good writing but even mundane stuff like how to put pin in papers so it did not hurt anyone.[9] In the opinion of his student, Historian Dwijendra Narayan Jha, "A man of courage, conviction, utter humility and a strong social commitment, Professor Sharma is as unassuming as indefatigable in his academic pursuits. Full of compassion, he has been a constant source of inspiration to his pupils and other younger scholars. While he has been all warmth to his friends, he is extremely decent and generous to his detractors. His qualities of head and heart make him a truly great man."[11]

Writing style

Professor Sharma’s mastery of epigraphic, literary and archaeological texts enabled him to demolish many myths created by imperialist-colonialist historiography as well as by the cultural chauvinists of more recent times, and made scientific study of the ever-changing Indian society in all its dimensions possible.[20] His humility had no limits — he was always ready to learn even from a novice working in the discipline of history and go to the extent of acknowledging him/ her in his works.[20] Such a combination of scholarship and humility is not seen easily today, when even toddlers in history writing prefer to blow their own trumpets in the din of the market.[20]
In his writings Professor Sharma has focussed on early Indian social structure, material and economic life, state formation and political ideas and the social context of religious ideologies and has sought to underline the historical processes which shaped Indian culture and civilization.[11] In his study of each of these aspects of Ancient Indian History he has laid stress on the elements of change and continuity.[11] This has significantly conditioned his methodology which basically rests on a critical evaluation of sources and a correlation between literary texts with archaeology and ethnography.[11] His methodology is being increasingly extended to the study of various aspects of Indian history just as the problems studied by him an the questions raised by him have generated a bulk of historical literature in recent years.[11]

Major works

  • Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India (Motilal Banarsidass, Fifth Revised Edition, Delhi, 2005)
  • Sudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order Down to Circa AD 600 (Motilal Banarsidass, Third Revised Edition, Delhi, 1990; Reprint, Delhi, 2002)
  • India's Ancient Past (Oxford University Press, 2005)
  • Looking for the Aryans (Orient Longman Publishers, 1995, Delhi)
  • Indian Feudalism (Macmillan Publishers India Ltd., 3rd Revised Edition, Delhi, 2005)[21]
  • Early Medieval Indian Society: A Study in Feudalisation (Orient Longman Publishers Pvt. Ltd., Delhi, 2003)
  • Perspectives in Social and Economic History of Ancient India (Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi, 2003)
  • Urban Decay in India c. 300- c. 1000 (Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi, 1987)
In contrast to his predecessors who had focussed their attention on the study of higher orders, he published his Sudras in Ancient India as early as 1958 and examined the relationship of the lower social orders with the means of production from the Vedic age up to the Gupta period.[11] In the following year (1959) his Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India, apart from national chauvinist and revivalist approach of earlier Historians, emphasized the material basis of the power structure in Ancient India, a point he also stressed in his later work The Origin of State in India (1990).[11] In 1965, his Indian Feudalism posed a major problem as to whether India passed through the phase of Feudalism (see Indian feudalism).[11] His Social Changes in Early Medieval India, being the first Dev Raj Chanana Memorial Lecture, brought into focus the changes in social structure that accompanied the origin and growth of feudalism in early India and in 1987 his Urban Decay in India (c.300-1000) drew attention to the overwhelming mass of archaeological evidence to demonstrate the decline of urban centres in early medieval period which reinforces his arguments reharding the genesis and growth of feudalism in India.[11] In another work, Material Culture and Social Formations in Ancient India (1985), on which he worked as Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow, Professor Sharma has sought to unravel the process of class formation, and social implications of the material changes in the Vedic period and in the age of the Buddha on the basis of literary and archaeological sources.[11]
Professor Sharma's researches cover the whole range of early Indian history and are largely summarized in his popular textbook Ancient India (1977) written for the National Council of Educational Research and Training.[11] When this book was withdrawn under pressure of obscurantist elements he launched an attack on them in his In Defence of "Ancient India" (1979) and the book was subsequently restored.[11]

Theory of Feudalism

The publication of his monograph Indian Feudalism in 1965 caused almost a furore in the academia, generating intense debate and sharp responses both in favour of and against the applicability of the model of “feudalism” to the Indian situation at any point of time.[14] The concept of “feudalism” was initially used by D. D. Kosambi to analyse the developments in the socio-economic sphere in the late ancient and medieval periods of Indian history.[22] Sharma, while differing from Kosambi on certain significant points, added a great deal of depth to the approach with his painstaking research and forceful arguments.[14] The work has been called his magnum opus.[14] Criticism goaded Sharma into reinforcing his thesis by producing another work of fundamental importance, Urban Decay in India (c.300-1000), in which he marshalled an impressive mass of archaeological data to demonstrate the decline of urban centres, a crucial element of his thesis on feudalism.[14] It won him the H.K. Barpujari award instituted by the Indian History Congress.[14] However, the redoubtable professor was unstoppable, and in his Early Medieval Indian Society: A Study in Feudalisation (Orient Longman, 2001), he further rebutted the objections of his critics point by point.[14]
Sharma applied the tool of historical materialism not only to explain social differentiation and stages of economic development, but also to the realm of ideology.[14] His investigations into the “feudal mind” and “economic and social basis of tantrism” are thought-provoking, opening up new lines of inquiry.[14] In an earlier article, he examined “the material milieu of the birth of Buddhism”, which now forms a part of his Material Culture and Social Formations in Ancient India (Macmillan, 1983).[14] The monograph, full of seminal ideas, has been translated into several Indian and foreign languages and has had 11 editions.[14]

The issue of Aryans

Sharma wrote two books, Looking for the Aryans (Orient Longman, 1995) and Advent of the Aryans in India (Manohar, 1999), to demolish the myth assiduously cultivated by the historiography that the Aryans were the original inhabitants of India and Harappa culture was their creation.[14] More recently, when some people sought to get a new lease of life by creating a crisis over Adam's Bridge, or Ram Sethu, by asserting that it was a man-made construction built by Ram and not a natural formation (the result of continuous wave action), the Government of India appointed a committee of three with two bureaucrats and a historian to examine the veracity of such claims.[14] Sharma, who was the historian on the committee, submitted his report in December 2007 and thus helped in diffusing the crisis.[14] Incidentally, work on the report occasioned his last visit to Delhi.[14]

Views on communalism

Sharma has denounced communalism of all types. In his booklet, Communal History and Rama's Ayodhya, he writes, "Ayodhya seems to have emerged as a place of religious pilgrimage in medieval times. Although chapter 85 of the Vishnu Smriti lists as many as 52 places of pilgrimage, including towns, lakes, rivers, mountains, etc., it does not include Ayodhya in this list." But as the team leader of the Babri Masjid Action Committee, he failed to furnish proof when asked by the Chandrasekhar government in 1990, that Babri Masjid was not built destroying a Rama temple in the disputed Ram Janmobhoomi site.[23] Sharma also notes that Tulsidas, who wrote the Ramcharitmanas in 1574 at Ayodhya, does not mention it as a place of pilgrimage.[23] After the demolition of Babri masjid, he along with Historians Suraj Bhan, M.Athar Ali and Dwijendra Narayan Jha came up with the Historian's report to the nation on how the communalists were mistaken in their assumption that there was a temple at the disputed site and how it was sheer vandalism in bringing down the mosque and the book has been translated into all the Indian languages.[24] He had denounced the vandalism of Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in 2004.[25]

Political controversies

His 1977 Ancient India was banned by the Janata Party government in 1978, among other things for its criticism of the historicity of Krishna and the events of the Mahabharata epic, reporting the historical position that
"Although Krishna plays an important role in the Mahabharata, inscriptions and sculptural pieces found in Mathura dating back to 200 BC and 300 AD do not attest to his presence. Because of this, ideas of an epic age based on the Ramayana and Mahabharata have to be discarded..."[26]
He has supported the addition of the Ayodhya dispute and the 2002 Gujarat riots to school syllabus calling them 'socially relevant topics' to broaden the horizons of youngsters.[27] This was his remark when the NCERT decided to include the Gujarat riots and the Ayodhya dispute besides the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in the Class XII political science books, arguing that these events influenced the political process in the country since Independence.[27]

Criticism

Andre Wink, Professor of History at University of Wisconsin–Madison criticizes Sharma in Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World (Vol. I) for drawing too close parallels between European and Indian feudalism.


To see more of who died in 2011 click here
at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Dickey Betts died he was 80

Early Career Forrest Richard Betts was also known as Dickey Betts Betts collaborated with  Duane Allman , introducing melodic twin guitar ha...