Icons of resilience & excellence

18 ‘Dalit’ icons covering at least five thousand years of our history — the epochal narrators Ved Vyasa of the Mahabharata and Valmiki of the Ramayana, the medieval saints Namdev, Ravi Das and Kabir, the freedom fighter Rani Jhalkaribai, the educational reformer Savitribai Phule, the revolutionary Udham Singh, the law ministers of India and Pakistan Dr Ambedkar and Jogendranath Mondal, respectively, and many more — have been brought together by Sudarshan Ramabadran and Guru Prakash Paswan in this powerful discourse on how Indian history, from the times of the epics to the present, has been shaped by Dalits.

Before we delve into each of these personalities, it’s important to understand that the authors are trying to “change gears from Incredible India to Incredible Indians”, especially those whom mainstream texts have not given the due ‘space’. Whether it was by ‘deliberate design or default’ is a question that needs to be addressed independently; for the purposes of this review, it is sufficient to say that this is an honest attempt to address this anomaly and bring a perspective to the discourse.

We begin with the life and times of sages Ved Vyas and Valmiki: the creators of the grand meta-narratives which define Bharat and bust the factoid that all the texts of ancient India were Brahmanical – either in their origin, or writing or different philosophical strands, including the most powerful 700 verses of the Bhagwad Geeta (the Song celestial). There was no attempt ever to hide, or to dress up their social origins, and it certainly shows how societal roles were shaped by interest and competency rather than the circumstances of birth. However, it must be acknowledged that by the end of the first millennium of the CE, circumstances of birth became the dominant factor.

So, we have Nandanar, the twelfth-century saint (one of the three) to whom Ambedkar dedicated his book ‘The Untouchables’. There are numerous legends about his devotion, including one in which he asks Shiva to direct Nandi to move aside for a better view of the Lord Himself. Gurram Jashuva, the rebel Telugu poet, whose writing style became the standard format for the literary fraternity, modelled his lament on Kalidasa’s famous Meghdootam. Jashuva’s poem “is a message sent by an untouchable man to Lord Shiva in Varanasi”.

Varanasi is also home to both Kabir and Guru Ravidas. They were contemporaries, and it’s also believed that the two met Guru Nanak during his Varanasi sojourn. Ravidas soon started writing in Gurumukhi, and 41 of his verses were included in the Guru Granth Saheb. He was also the spiritual mentor to the royal princess Meerabai, who wrote, ‘When Ravi Das, the perfect Master I met /the sewered twig joined the tree /my Master revealed the secret of the Name/the flame of mine merged into the Flame’.

While Namdev is well known and well-regarded as a saint, the authors introduce us to his nurse and companion Sant Janabai who was a spiritual savant in her own right, and played an important role in his spiritual journey elevation. He, in turn, introduced her to many of the contemporary seekers. It was a wonderful relationship between the two – she was at one level her maid, and at another, her mentor. She was also a contemporary of Soyarabai, whose devotion to Pandurang Vitthal was also legendary.

Let’s now move from the medieval to the modern. Rani Jhalkari Bai of the Kori — or Koli — caste was the closest associate of her queen Laxmi Bai, and showed her mettle in the first war of Independence. She was at her best astride a mount with a sword in her hand, and led the troops of Jhansi in the guise of her queen to give Laxmi Bai the chance to escape from the fort in the historic battle of 1857! In 1990, the then governor of Arunachal Pradesh, Mata Prasad, penned a drama on her fearless exploits under the title ‘Jhalkaribai Natak’.

Savitri Phule and her husband Jyotirao have done more for the education of girls, the dignity of widows and emancipation of the depressed classes than any of their peers. Hers was the first school to admit a child widow in Marathwada in 1847, and then there was no looking back. She was also the first woman in Indian history to light her husband’s funeral pyre, and took over the mantle of leading the Satyashodka Samaj which Jyotirao had started. She lost her life in the plague of 1897, for she was a frontline worker who took charge of her clinic head-on.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Ayyankali had emerged as a subaltern hero in Kerala. His community, the Pulayars, were considered ‘rural slaves’ and faced every possible exclusion. Ayyankali established community courts for mediation and dispute resolution, schools for education and was nominated to the Travancore assembly in 1912 where he argued for permission for Dalit children to enrol in public schools. At the dawn of Independence, Dakshayni Velayudhan, the first and only Dalit woman in the Constituent Assembly, made a very interesting observation “as long as the scheduled castes or the Harijans, or by whatever name they are called are economic slaves of other people, there is no meaning demanding separate electorates or joint electorates or any other kind of electorates with this kind of percentage. Personally speaking, I am not in favour of any kind of reservation”.

Jogendranath Mandal was born into the Namasudra caste, but rose to be a minister in the undivided Bengal, and then Pakistan, but in his 8,013-word letter of resignation – the longest in recorded history — he gave vent to his frustration against the repression of Hindus and depressed classes in Pakistan and a clear violation of the commitment given to him when Jinnah lured him to support the Muslim League against the Congress.

Next, we have Babu Jagjivan Ram, a powerful political orator who narrowly missed out on being India’s first Dalit prime minister. By all accounts, he was a formidable minister who served the country with distinction as a cabinet minister in several portfolios, but his crowning glory was India’s decisive victory in the 1971 war when he was helming the Defence Ministry.

Growing up in the Doab region of Punjab, one could see, hear and feel the impact of Kanshi Ram, the political entrepreneur. He rose to fame and prominence when he took up the matter of replacing Buddha and Ambedkar Jayanti with those of Tilak and Gokhale as public holidays. Starting his political career with DS4 (Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti) and the All India Backward and Minorities, he went on to establish the BSP, and mentored Mayawati who later went on to become one of the youngest and most powerful CMs of UP.

The first Dalit President of India KR Narayanan made a mark for himself — first as an exceptionally bright student, as a researcher, a journalist and then as a stellar diplomat. While working for the Bombay edition of the Times of India, he met Mahatma Gandhi, and they both agreed that “casteism and communalism were two sides of the same coin”.

The penultimate entry is on Udham Singh, who was inspired by Bhagat Singh to avenge the Jallianwala Baugh massacre by fatally attacking the Governor of Punjab O’Dwyer who had ‘blood on his hands’. Like his muse, he kissed the gallows and his last words were ‘Inqilab Zindabad’.

The final tribute is reserved for Babasaheb Ambedkar, the maker of our Constitution, the inspiration for all Indians, an ideologue for linguistic states, a prolific thinker and writer who made it quite clear that political equality, without social justice and fraternity would be meaningless. For him social democracy was “a way of life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as principles of life. These are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy”.

This is a book that deserves to be read, cover to cover, many times over!

The writer, a former Director of LBS National Academy of Administration, is currently a historian, policy analyst and columnist, and serves as the Festival Director of Valley of Words — a festival of arts and literature