Tuesday, 8 July 2025

A Neglected Message from Dr. Ambedkar TO OBCs- Dr. K. Jamanadas

 

A Neglected Message from Dr. Ambedkar TO OBCs- Dr. K. Jamanadas


 

An article was published recently in Marathi local magazine by Suhas Sonwane based on daily Loksatta. The following is a gist of it, translated from Marathi.

Mr. Babasaheb Gawande, the founder president of an Organization of Marathas from Bombay called "Maratha Mandir" was a close friend of Dr. Ambedkar. Mr. Gawande asked Dr. Ambedkar, who was then a Law Minister in Nehru Cabinet in 1947, for a message for the Maratha people to be published in the Souvenir of "Maratha Mandir". Ambedkar declined saying that he had no relation with the Organization or the Marathas, but on persistent insistence, a message was given and published in the souvenir on 23rd March 1947. But unfortunately, that special issue is not available in the office of the Organization today. But it was made available by Shri Vijay Survade recently and was undocumented till now.

Dr. Ambedkar said:

"This principle will apply not only to Marathas but all Backward Castes. If they do not wish to be under the thumb of others they should concentrate on two things, one is politics and the other is education."

"One thing I like to impress on you is that the community can live in peace only when it has enough moral but indirect pressure over the rulers. Even if a community is numerically weak, it can keep its pressure over the rulers and create its dominance as is seen by the example of status of present-day Brahmins in India. It is essential that such a pressure is maintained, as without it, the aims and policies of the state cannot have proper direction, on which depends the development and progress of the state."

"At the same time, it must not be forgotten that education is also important. Not only elementary education but higher education is most essential to keep ahead in competition of communities in their progress."

"Higher education, in my opinion, means that education, which can enable you to occupy the strategically important places in State administration. Brahmins had to face a lot of opposition and obstacles, but they are overcoming these and progressing ahead."

"I cannot forget, rather I am sad, that many people do not realize that the Caste system is existing in India for centuries because of inequality and a wide gulf of difference in education, and they have forgotten that it is likely to continue for some centuries to come. This gulf between the education of Brahmins and non-Brahmins will not end just by primary and secondary education. The difference in status between these can only be reduced by higher education. Some non-Brahmins must get highly educated and occupy the strategically important places, which has remained the monopoly of Brahmins since long. I think this is the duty of the State. If the Govt. cannot do it, institutions like "Maratha Mandir" must undertake this task."

"I must emphasize one point here that middle class tries to compare itself with the highly educated and well placed and well to do community, whereas lower class all over the world has same fault. The middle class is not as liberal as upper one, and has no ideology as lower one, which makes it enemy of both the classes. The middle-class Marathas of Maharashtra also have this fault. They have only two ways out, either to join hands with upper classes and prevent the lower classes from progress, and the other is to join hands with lower classes and both together destroy the upper-class power coming against the progress of both. There was a time, they used to be with lower classes, now they seem to be with the upper class. It is for them to decide which way to go. The future of not only Indian masses but also their own future depends upon what decision the Maratha leaders take. As a matter of fact, it all should be left to the skill and wisdom of the leaders of Marathas. But there seems to be a lack of such wise leadership among the Marathas."

What he said about Marathas, equally applies to all OBCs, and still holds true after half a century. Dr. Ambedkar wrote much to educate the OBCs. It is only now that OBCs are awakening gradually. It must not be forgotten that the future of this country depends on them.

Saturday, 5 July 2025

Bhagwan Das (1927–2010): Ambedkarite, Buddhist, and Fighter for Dalit Rights

 

Bhagwan Das (1927–2010): Ambedkarite, Buddhist, and Fighter for Dalit Rights

By Maren Bellwinkel-Schempp

Translated from German to English

Bhagwan Das was born in 1927 in Shimla. He belonged to the Chuhra or Lal Beghi community, as the street sweepers and latrine cleaners of Punjab are called, named after the rebellious prophet of the Bhangis. The term "Bhangi" itself is derogatory, literally meaning those who consume bhang (cannabis) as an intoxicant.

During colonial times, some of them were closely associated with the British-Indian military. Lal Beghis were employed as servants, cleaners, and also as waiters and cooks in the military. These roles allowed them to bypass some of the discrimination inherent in the traditional caste system. Bhagwan Das grew up in a garrison where his father worked at the telegraph office. The family could afford to send their children to good private schools with English as the medium of instruction. This quality education enabled him to join the Royal Indian Air Force at the age of 16 after completing his matriculation (10th grade) in 1943. At that time, British India was embroiled in World War II, with the Imperial Japanese Army, supported by the Indian National Army, attempting to advance into the Indian heartland from the eastern front. Bhagwan Das was trained and deployed for the newly developed radar surveillance. His excellent command of English allowed him to get along well with British comrades and officers, earning their respect. He would have liked to stay in the Royal Air Force after the war, but his family could not afford the 5,000 rupees required for an officer’s commission.

Ambedkarite and Buddhist

Bhagwan Das had heard of Babasaheb Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the great statesman and leader of the Untouchables, during his school years. In 1943, he had the opportunity to meet Ambedkar in Shimla for the first time. This encounter led to an enduring connection, culminating in Das serving as Ambedkar’s private secretary in 1955–56. Bhagwan Das offered to assist Ambedkar with compiling his writings, speeches, and lectures, working a few hours a day without compensation. This work, interrupted by Ambedkar’s death in 1956, later resulted in a four-volume publication, Thus Spoke Ambedkar, published by Das between 1963 and 1980 in Jalandhar through Bhimpatrika Press, run by Lahori Ram Balley. This publication is significant as one of the first collections of Ambedkar’s works, long before the Maharashtra government published Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Writings and Speeches.

As a young man, Bhagwan Das was strongly influenced by Christian missionaries. He openly shared how he would visit a Methodist missionary every morning to pray before going to work. Remarkably, he noted that the missionary never pressured him to convert to Christianity.

In the months following Bhagwan Das’s death on November 18, 2010, at the age of 83, numerous obituaries have highlighted his significant contributions to the Dalit movement in India. He was undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the Dalit movement in North India, playing a key role in spreading Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar’s ideas. His great achievement was making the movement accessible to those at the very bottom of the “Untouchable” castes: latrine cleaners and street sweepers. Additionally, he successfully internationalized the issue of “Untouchability,” notably by advocating for the Burakumin in Japan, a group similarly discriminated against as India’s street sweepers and latrine cleaners.

Several years before Dr. Ambedkar’s famous conversion to Buddhism in October 1956, Bhagwan Das had already embraced Buddhism, influenced initially by Bodhanand Mahastavir (1874–1952) in Lucknow and a group of Buddhists in Delhi, originally inspired by the Arya Samaj in Punjab. This group held regular weekly prayer and sermon sessions at the Ambedkar Bhawan and in private homes.

Bhagwan Das recounted how, in Lucknow, a group of Buddhists, led by Bodhanand, arranged his marriage to a well-educated woman from the Dhanuk caste—“for my own good,” as he emphasized. This was likely one of the first Buddhist weddings among Dalits and was notable for being a cross-caste marriage. The Dhanuk are a smaller Untouchable caste, often working as pig herders or vegetable farmers. Bhagwan Das’s wife was a primary school teacher, supporting the family while he pursued law studies and later became a lawyer. They had two daughters and a son. Their eldest daughter, Zoya Hadke, is a senior civil servant in the Indian Administrative Service; their son, Rahul Das, is a doctor; and their younger daughter, Shura Darapuri, is a professor at the University of Lucknow, dedicated to publishing her father’s works in 23 volumes.

Thirst for Knowledge and Struggle

Like his father, Bhagwan Das was driven by a thirst for knowledge. Following the example of his mentor, Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar, he bought many books and read extensively, including entire encyclopedia articles in libraries to deepen his understanding of specific topics. For Dalits, who were traditionally excluded from knowledge under the Brahmanical caste system and relegated to servitude, access to education was of immense importance. It was not just about understanding the world but about changing it and securing a rightful place for Dalits in the democratic and socialist independent India. For both Bhagwan Das and Ambedkar, this was a lifelong mission.

In his later years, Bhagwan Das lived with his wife (who passed away a few years earlier), his son Rahul, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren in a small fourth-floor apartment in Munirka, a settlement developed by the Delhi Development Authorities near Jawaharlal Nehru University. Whenever I visited Delhi in recent years, I stopped by to see him. He was unpretentious, requiring only a phone call to arrange a visit. Guests were received in his living and working room, filled floor-to-ceiling with books, mostly legal texts. Conversations always went straight to the point, focusing on the situation of Dalits, the Buddhist movement, and human rights. He was an inspiration and source of knowledge for many academics and activists, including Walter Hahn, coordinator of the Dalit Solidarity Platform, social scientist Martin Fuchs, and Indologist Heinz Werner Wessler.

Internationalization

Bhagwan Das’s major contribution was internationalizing the Dalit issue. As a Buddhist, he was a founding member of the World Conference of Religions for Peace (WCRP), established in Kyoto in 1969 and meeting every four years. Ambedkar had sought to place the Dalit issue in a global context, comparing Dalits to slaves in the Roman Empire or Black communities in American ghettos, though these analogies were imprecise. Bhagwan Das, however, made a significant impact in 1979 at a WCRP conference in Princeton by comparing the plight of Dalits in India to that of the Burakumin in Japan. The Burakumin, traditionally confined to segregated neighborhoods, were assigned “dirty” jobs like waste disposal and carcass processing, excluded from education, and considered impure—paralleling the situation of Dalits.

In August 1983, supported by several Dalit organizations, Bhagwan Das testified before the United Nations Subcommission on Human Rights in Geneva about the ongoing discrimination against Dalits, challenging India’s official stance that such discrimination, prohibited by the Constitution and laws, was an internal matter. He also played a leading role in the International Dalit Conference in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, a precursor to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban (South Africa, August 31–September 7, 2001).

Bhagwan Das was closely linked to the beginnings of the German Dalit Solidarity movement. In 1993, under the aegis of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Bonn, a conference was held on the situation of former “Untouchables” in India, attended by Dalit representatives from Christian, Muslim, Sikh, and Buddhist communities. Bhagwan Das represented the Buddhists, and during this event, the Dalit Solidarity People was founded, marking the first Indian coalition with international support. This set the model for subsequent networks, culminating in the establishment of the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) in 2000.

In 2001, three years after the formation of India’s National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), the German Dalit Solidarity Platform was established, initially hosted by the Protestant aid organization Bread for the World, and now a permanent institution. Key figures like Ruth Manorama, S.K. Thorat, and Martin Macwan carried forward Bhagwan Das’s legacy.

His most significant book, Main Bhangi Hoon (I Am a Bhangi), written in Hindi, is a fictional social history of street sweepers. It vividly describes how Bhangis were oppressed, displaced from their land, and rendered homeless through wars and devastation over millennia. Despite being marginalized, Bhagwan Das shows, they retained their pride and ethos. This was undermined by the Arya Samaj’s shuddhi (purification) campaigns, which sought to assimilate them into a conformist Hinduism, renaming them “Valmikis” to tie them to a Brahmanical tradition. Bhagwan Das vehemently opposed this, advocating for an emancipatory Buddhism inspired by Ambedkar.

In 2005, Walter Hahn, the longtime coordinator of the Dalit Solidarity Platform, invited Bhagwan Das to the annual conference in Bonn, followed by a lecture at Bonn’s Indology Department. This was a moving experience for Das, as Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar had enrolled at the University of Bonn in 1921 to study economics and hoped to learn Sanskrit under the renowned Indologist Hermann Jacobi—a pursuit denied to him in India as a Dalit. Though Ambedkar’s plans were thwarted by lack of time and funds, Bhagwan Das was impressed by documents from Ambedkar’s time in Bonn, including a handwritten letter in German. He marveled at the Sanskrit collection in the university library. A visit to Bonn’s Haus der Geschichte sparked discussions on the culture of remembrance, noting the scarcity of museums or memorials dedicated to Dalit oppression and the Dalit emancipation movement in South Asia.

Even in 2005, it was evident that the strength of this lifelong fighter for Dalit human rights was waning. Yet, he remained lean and active, rising early to work and rejecting retirement. Full of plans for further publications, he regularly attended events at the Panchasheela Institute, which he co-founded in Munirka, and welcomed friends, journalists, and scholars in his modest study. Some projects, including a planned sequel to his fictional history of the Bhangis, remained unfinished. However, he lived to see the publication of his memoirs, In Pursuit of Ambedkar. A few months later, on November 18, 2010, Bhagwan Das—one of the last to have personally known and been directly inspired by Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar—passed away.

Tuesday, 1 July 2025

Contribution of Bhagwan Das to Internationalise the Issue of Untouchability

 

Contribution of Bhagwan Das to Internationalise the Issue of Untouchability

in Annihilate Caste

by SR Darapuri

27/06/2025

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Bhagwan Das made significant contributions to internationalizing the issue of untouchability, bringing global attention to the plight of Dalits and the systemic discrimination they faced in India and beyond. Born in 1927 into an “untouchable” community in India, Das was a dedicated Ambedkarite who worked tirelessly to extend the fight against caste-based discrimination beyond national borders, framing it as a human rights issue with broader relevance.

One of his most notable efforts came in August 1983, when he delivered a powerful testimony on untouchability before the United Nations Subcommission on Human Rights in Geneva. Speaking on behalf of the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP) and various Dalit and Buddhist organizations, such as the All India Samata Sainik Dal and the Indian Buddhist Council, Ambedkar Mission Society, Das highlighted the pervasive nature of untouchability not only in India but also in other parts of Asia influenced by Hindu culture, such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. He also took up the issue of Untouchability against Burakumins of Japan. His presentation challenged the Indian government’s reluctance to address the issue internationally, emphasizing that untouchability was not merely a domestic or cultural matter but a violation of universal human dignity. Despite opposition from the official Indian delegation, his speech drew attention to the need for global accountability and action.

Das also played a pivotal role in organizing and influencing key international events. In 1998, he was instrumental in the creation of the International Dalit Convention in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This event laid the groundwork for greater global solidarity among oppressed communities and set the stage for the 2001 World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, where the Dalit issue gained further prominence. His efforts helped shift the discourse from a localized struggle to a transnational movement, linking the experiences of Dalits with those of other marginalized groups, such as the Burakumin in Japan.

Additionally, Das contributed to the intellectual and organizational framework for this internationalization. He co-founded the ACRP (Asian Conference of Religions for Peace) in 1974 in Kyoto, Japan, alongside figures like Homer Jack, providing a platform to discuss untouchability alongside other forms of discrimination. His work with the Asian Centre for Human Rights in New Delhi further amplified these efforts. At the time of his death in 2010, he was researching a book on untouchability in Asia, aiming to document its regional scope and advocate for broader awareness.

Through these actions—speaking at the UN, organizing international conventions, and fostering cross-cultural dialogue—Bhagwan Das elevated untouchability from an Indian issue to a global human rights concern, inspiring activists and scholars to view caste discrimination through a wider lens. His legacy lies in his insistence that the fight against untouchability required not just national reform but a concerted international response.

https://countercurrents.org/2025/06/contribution-of-bhagwan-das-to-internationalise-the-issue-of-untouchability/ 

 

A Neglected Message from Dr. Ambedkar TO OBCs- Dr. K. Jamanadas

  A Neglected Message from Dr. Ambedkar TO OBCs- Dr. K. Jamanadas   An article was published recently in Marathi local magazine by Suhas...