Arnold P. Kaminsky - Nationalism and Imperialism in South and Southeast Asia: Essays Presented to Damodar R.SarDesai

NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Essays Presented to Damodar R. SarDesai

Edited by
Arnold P. Kaminsky
Roger D. Long

First published 2017

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ISBN: 978-1-138-23483-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-27679-3 (ebk)

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This volume is dedicated to and is a festschrift for Damodar Ramaji SarDesai (b. 1931) with whom all the contributors of this volume studied, or worked with in one capacity or another, in the Department of History at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Professor SarDesai's own alma mater as well. He is one of those professors who was much more than a teacher as his office door was always open and he was always willing to stop his own work to greet students and colleagues with a welcoming smile, often a quip, and to offer his support and guidance and to share his considerable erudition. His delightful sense of humour, always bubbling to the surface, made any discussion a welcome and pleasant one, but what made any talk with him so rewarding, stimulating, and enjoyable is his exceptionally keen intelligence and his wide knowledge and deep reading. He can carry on a conversation on almost any subject offering insights and knowledge, yet, with an inquisitive mind, he is, like a true intellectual, always listening and willing to learn from others, young or old. With his wide experience of life in India, the United States, and England and his travels the world over, he is a cosmopolitan person as well, with a wide experience and a mind to match.

Professor SarDesai was born in Portuguese-controlled Goa. To his friends and family, he is known as Bala, short for Balaji, after the famed deity at the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple; Venkateswara is an incarnation of the god Vishnu and one of Venkataswaras homonyms is Balaji. Located at the hill town of Tirumala near Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, it is one of the worlds most visited pilgrimage sites. SarDesais family is a prominent landowning and politically active family and historically has been involved in the government in Goa. A Konkanispeaker, he is also highly proficient in Sanskrit, Portuguese, French, Hindi and Marathi, as well as English. He was raised on the island of Cumbharjua and received his early education from a tutor named Ganesh Shivaram Samant who travelled from Vemgurla to the island to offer classes. This early education had a marked impact on SarDesais intellectual development and he remembers how, in addition to the regular lessons, there were talks about contemporary political issues outside Goa, about Gandhi and the nationalist movement then at its height, and, above all, about the necessity for tolerance and liberalism.

Apart from medical and teaching institutes there were no colleges in Goa. Bombay, however, was not only the great commercial and entertainment metropolis of the west coast of India but it was also a great intellectual centre and the location of a number of educational facilities including one of the oldest in India, Wilson College, which had been set up in 1832 as a school, twenty-five years prior to the establishment of the University of Bombay, with which it is now affiliated. He graduated from the college in 1952 and then enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Bombay. He received a Master of Arts in 1955 ranking first in Social Sciences for which he was awarded the Sir William Wedderburn Prize. During this period he actively participated at a radio station on the Goan border which urged independence from the Portuguese. For this he was banned from entering the colony. In 1982 SarDesai was recognized by the state of Maharashtra for his nationalist activities and awarded a sanmanpatra (testimonial). In 2007 he was honoured with the Global Goan Achievement Award. Among his numerous other awards are the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award given by California State University, Long Beach, for his contribution to the study of India, Southeast Asia, and the British Empire. The D.R. SarDesai Prize was also established at the university as a national competition to reward middle school and high school teachers for the best unit or lesson plan bringing India into the world history curriculum in the United States. In 1979 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London, a society of eminent historians founded in 1868 and given its royal charter by Queen Victoria.