American historian Howard Spodek, known for long association with Ahmedabad, dies at 82
Howard Spodek was professor at the Shrenik Lalbhai Chair at Ahmedabad University and was also conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award by the World History Association in 2016.
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Howard Spodek. (Ahmedabad University website) Howard Spodek, an American historian who taught at Ahmedabad’s HK Arts College in the sixties, and five decades later was associated with Ahmedabad University, died Sunday morning at his home in Philadelphia after a brief illness. He was 81 years old.
Author of ‘The World’s History’, a multi-volume publication, Spodek, Professor Emeritus at Temple University Philadelphia, had made Ahmedabad his home for many years. He was considered an authority on the city.
Retired professor of English at the HK Arts College Benson Agarwarker, who was a student at the same college then, remembers Spodek as his teacher and rues how “Ahmedabad has lost a great scholar”.
“He traced Ahmedabad’s history right from the textile mills era, from its pioneer Ranchhodlal Chhotalal, and kept coming back to the city to see how it developed. He would walk the lanes and bylanes of Manekchowk to get the real feel of the people and the place…He fell in love with Ahmedabad”, Agarwarker who would meet him often at Ahmedabad’s Magen Abraham Synagogue, told The Indian Express.
Ahmedabad-based author Esther David says Spodek, an Ashkenazim Jew was made a member of the synagogue as he was “deeply religious and very knowledgeable”, and confesses having learnt a lot from him. Ahmedabad is home to a community of Bene Israel Jews.
In a 2013 issue of the newsletter of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Spodek writes about how he landed in Ahmedabad in mid 1964. “Dr Olive Reddick, head of the Fulbright Office in New Delhi, had persuaded some ten university presidents in India that they could benefit from having young Americans, recent B.A.s, help teach their students English…In five years, 1963-68, she brought over some 150 recent graduates. Dr. Reddick asked each of us what we would like to do in addition to teaching English. I wanted to study economic development. She sent me to Ahmedabad”, he wrote.
City-based urban planner and architect Bimal Patel compares Spodek to New Zealand -born historian Kenneth Gillion who wrote ‘Ahmedabad- A Study in Indian Urban History’ in 1969. He says Spodek was the only other “historian to write on Ahmedabad”, referring to his 2011 book: ‘Ahmedabad-Shock City of Twentienth-Century India’.
“This is the only balanced and academically rigorous book on Ahmedabad”, says Patel, revealing how he and Spodek made plans in 2015 to write about Ahmedabad at the turn of the century, which could not take off. Patel is the architect of the new Central Vista and Indian Parliament building.
Patel and Spodek met “some 20 years back” when the latter became interested in the Sabarmati Riverfront Development project that Patel was working on for the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, and became good friends.
“I had just returned from the US and he asked me, how long was I going to be in Ahmedabad, and I told him ‘ ‘I am going to die in Ahmedabad”’, Patel shared with this paper on Monday.
Spodek has made a 42-minute film on the displaced people from the Sabarmati Riverfront project, along with a colleague at Temple University Professor Warren Bass, titled Urban World: A Case Study of Slum Relocation.
Discussing the film later at the Shrenik Lalbhai Chair lecture, in Ahmedabad University, where he was a professor, Spodek would stress how “all concerned parties should be brought to the discussion table, irrespective of their backgrounds”, a note on the university website says.
In 1969-70, Spodek would be based out of Rajkot doing a PhD on the princely cities of Gujarat when he also focussed his research on Gandhi and returned to Ahmedabad in 1975-76 on an AIIS grant to research Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. It was then that he discovered MahaGujarat movement architect Indulal Yagnik’s autobiography in Gujarati which had a critical perspective of Gandhi, Sardar, the Congress and Ahmedabad and Spodek became part of a translation project of this work in 1985-86 along with the late Professor Devvrat Pathak (former Vice Chancellor of Saurashtra University) and Professor John Wood from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver which Gujarat Vidyapith published in 2011.
In 1997-98, Spodek was in Ahmedabad on another Fulbright programme to research at the Elaben Bhatt-founded Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). Around the same time, Spodek took part in the first Ahmedabad heritage walk when it was launched in the city.
Manvita Baradi, Director at Urban Management Centre (UMC) who posted news of his death on social media, says Spodek was working on another piece on Ahmedabad and was here for research when he suffered a stroke in January.
His daughter flew him back home to the US for treatment and rehabilitation a month later. Spodek passed away in his sleep.
Spodek is survived by his wife Lisa Hixenbaugh, daughters Susie and Sarah and son Josh.
After spending a long period in Ahmedabad, Spodek when he was returned to Philadelphia in 2016, on bidding “aavjo” (goodbye in Gujarati) to friends, had shared a note in email where he wrote, “I was overwhelmed here by the spaciousness, scarcity of people, abundance of trees, and general wealth. None of this is new, of course, and I was surprised by being surprised – but I was. It took about three days to remember that my appreciation of Ahmedabad is not based on spaciousness, scarcity of population, abundance of trees, or general wealth – but based on my relationships with all of you – which I treasure. I am looking forward to returning for a few weeks”.
And friends recall how he kept returning, every year, almost every December, to the city he loved.
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