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.
