The Real Lokamanya
“To combat a deadly disease, drastic remedies are required,” said Dr. Ambedkar when some around him wondered if the decision to go to Mahad and drink the water from the Chowdar lake was an “impatient” one. Following the act of Babasahaeb and his comrades of concern, the upper-caste people of Mahad had not just beaten up the Dalits of the village but also performed a ritual to ‘purify’ the Chowdar lake, which according to them had been polluted by the untouchables. Mere education, creation of awareness and exposing the truth of scriptures wouldn’t be sufficient to battle untouchability, opined Ambedkar and decided to launch another Satyagraha at Mahad.
This decision was welcomed and supported by the non-Brahmin leaders Dinkarrao Javalkar and Keshavrao Jede. But the two leaders had a condition for Dr. Ambedkar. They wanted no Brahmin to participate in the proposed conference at Mahad or in the whole of the second phase of Mahad satyagraha. The bitter memory of what had happened in Mahad earlier was probably what prompted Javalkar and Jede to make such a request, and it was not unjustified. Babasaheb strictly said no to the condition put forth by Javalkar and Jede saying “the view that all Brahmins were the enemies of Untouchables was erroneous,” and explained that what he hated was the men who were possessed with the spirit of Brahminism. He added that “a non-Brahmin filled with such ideas of highness and lowness was a repellent” to him as a “Brahmin free from this spirit and sense of these privileges and unjust power” was welcome to him.
The stand taken by Ambedkar, so different from the position of Javalkar and Jede, reflects the worldview of his. In addition, it is possible, it is a glimpse also of his own experiences- shaped by some true allies of anti-caste struggle coming from the Brahmin community. One among them, a close associate of Ambedkar and his fight against Untouchability was Shridhar Balwant Tilak alias Shridharpanth!
Shridharpanth who founded the Pune branch of Samata Samaaj Sangh, an organization started by Ambedkar, and also served as its Vice-President, was the son of Balgangadhar Tilak. “It is a miracle that an Ambedkarite was born in an extremely brahminical set-up,” says Shatrughn Jadhav, author of a book on Shridharpanth and his close association with Ambedkar.
Though it shouldn’t be expected of the children that they always follow the footpath of the parent, the overpowering influence the family environment has on individuals, especially during their formative years, is undeniable. An Ambedkaraite coming out from the Tilak family appears like a miracle, not just because of the influence parental figures have on children, but also because the battle of ideology, and the social-political and legal fights that were happening between the two camps, the conservative Brahmin nationalists, whose idea of a nation was based on a castist idea of a society, and the non-Brahmin warriors of social justice, who envisioned political independence through the lens of social justice.
The intensity of the battle between these two streams can be better understood by having a closer look at the saarvajanik ganeshotsav (collective celebration of Ganesha festival) in Pune.
At the end of the 19th century Sardar Krishanji Kashinath alias Nanasaheb Khajgiwale witnessed the public celebration of Ganesha festival in Gwalior and replicated the same in Pune the next year. Though there was only three public celebrations of Ganesha that year in Pune, the idea captured the imagination of Balagangadhar Tilak who in his Kesari editorial wrote great words of appreciation about the new culture. As a result of this and the calculated and concentrated effort of Tilak around 150 public celebration of Ganesh were held in Pune the next year.
Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav popularized by Tilak has been hailed as a master stroke since it played a role in mobilizing people against the colonial rule. But along with creating a political awareness against the colonial regime, these public celebrations were also used as political tools or weapons against the majority of Indians. This needs a bit of an elaboration. Those days with the blessings of Balagangadhar Tilak a music troupe named Sanmitra Mela, who sang during the Ganesha festival. The songs of the Sanmitra Mel would ridicule and belittle the political opponents of Tilak, namely Gopalkrishna Gokhale, Firoze Shah Mehta, Rajaram Shastri Bhagawat and the song package of Sanmitra Mela also had songs that were anti Dalits and spat venom on girls going to school, and upholding the views of Tilak against girl education. These songs were harming beyond the public celebrations, when children listening to these songs would go to school and repeat them before girls and Dalits. Many of the girls and Dalits finding it humiliating, in addition to other humiliations caused by caste discriminations, opted out of school! This condescending and dehumanizing music culture continued for many years with the blessings of Tilak.
Some years later, as a response to the Sanmitra Mela, under the guidance and leadership of Jede and Javalkar a new music troupe came into existence. The new troupe was called Chatrapati Mela. The songs churned out by the Chatrapati Mela sang the glory of Shivaji, Shahu Maharaj and mainly Phule. The songs also took on themselves to spread the values lived and upheld by these icons and leaders. Also, the songs of Chatrapati Mela critiqued the vision and action of the Tilakites. Javalkar collected these songs and published them as a book under the title Chatrapati Padya Sangrah.
The fight between these two forces got so intense that from mere battle of bands, it got physical when to combat Tilakites formed a vigilante group to tame the Chatrapati Mela. In response to this move by the Tilakites, another group of vigilantes was formed by Jede and Javalkar.
If one is to observe this battle of titans closely, it does seem like a miracle that an Ambedkarite emerged from the house of Tilak!
Shridharpanth, unlike his father Balagangadhar Tilak, held views against untouchability, girl child marriage, shaving the heads of widows, and also worked towards their abolition. This shows how his views and understanding came very close to that of Babasaheb, who in his writings had shown how these very elements – girl child marriage, enforced widowhood, degradation of widows- were at the heart of caste system’s formation. Hence fighting against these matters were essential to the politics of Ambedkar and preaching superficially against untouchability alone wasn’t sufficient to annihilate caste. Shridharpanth shared this dream, and also worked with Ambedkar on the same lines.
Even before coming into contact with Ambedkar, Shridharpanth held progressive opinion and anti-caste views. He would argue with his father saying political freedom and social justice are both important, while his father largely believed that the matters of social justice were a mark of ‘loss of nationality’ and it ‘denationalized’ persons. This deviation of Shridharpanth from the path of his father caused a lot of discomfort among the colleagues and followers of Balagangadhar Tilak.
The discomfort of Tilakites reached its peak because of three reasons. One, the political views of Shridharpanth became sharp after him coming to contact with Ambedkar. After the Dalit students’ conclave in Pune, the young Tilak not just took Ambedkar to Gaikwad-waada of Tilak, this and him starting the Pune branch of Samataa Samaaj Sangh made this friendship and camaraderie very clear and loud. To make it worse, outside the Gaikwad-wada he put a board that read ‘chaturvarnya vidhwamsak samiti’. These became the second reason. To top it all, Shridharpanth organized an inter-caste dining at Gaikwad-wada and invited nearly 200 people from the Untouchable communities, which included many singers and instrumentalists from the Chatrapati Mela. The main guest of this inter-caste dining was none other than Babasaheb Ambedkar. This became an unbearable matter for the Tilakites, majorly those from the Kesari-Marhatta Trust. They sweated quite a bit to stop this inter-caste dining from happening. When all their efforts failed they broke the electric wire and cut the power connection from Gaikwad-wada when the guests were about to arrive. Though this created a small commotion, Shridharpanth handled it calmly. He requested the members and allies of Samaaj Samtaa Sangh to bring in lanterns and lamps from their homes, which they did, and finally the inter-caste dining happened with hundreds of lamps and lanterns providing the necessary illumination.
What followed this was tragic!
The members of the Keasri-Marhatta Trust who were against the property being handed over to Shridharpanth, sketched conspiracy against him and his brother Rambhavu who too was a progressive minded person, and began torturing them psychologically by making a legal move with regard to the ownership of Kesari and Marhatta newspapers and the Trust. The brothers faced a lot of humiliation, ridiculing and harassment from the Trustees who were being supported even by the extended family of Tilak, after Shridharpanth organized the inter-caste dining at Gaikwad-wada. They began speaking lowly of him in public, tarnishing his image and thus creating a public opinion against him. Some relatives of Shridharpanth, the well-meaning ones, unable to see the targetting of brothers, requested them to reconcile with the Tilakites and give up their ideological beliefs. But both the brothers refused to do so.
Probably striking a balance between a tender heart and a sharp mind became difficult for Shridharpanth. Unable to bear the torture of the conservatives, he jumped under a running train and killed himself on the 25th of May in the year 1928. He was just 32 then.
Just before killing himself by suicide, Shridharpanth wrote three letters. One to the the then Collector of Pune, one to the newspapers and one to his friend B.R. Ambedkar. In his letter to Babasaheb he wishes best to the anti-caste struggle, expresses his solidarity with the movement and Samaaj Samtaa Sangh, and in a moving line says he is going ahead in time to let the Almight know about the grievances of his Dalit brothers and sisters.
The day this letter reached him home, Ambedkar was in Jalgao where he first got the news of Shridharpanth’s untimely death. Ambedkar in his obituary to Shridharpanth wrote about how he kept wishing that the news was a false one. But since the news came from the Pune members of the Samaaj Samta Sangh, of which Shridharpanth was the vice-president, the chances of it being a lie was less and Ambedkar had to believe the news and this, he says in his obituary, made his heart heavy with pain. He also speaks about how he immediately saw that it could not be a natural death and was restless to know what had caused the death. On reaching home Babasaheb went to pick up the newspaper to read the details of Shridharpanth’s death and along with newspaper he also found a letter written to him by Shridharpanth. It is said that Ambekar wept on reading the letter by Shridharpanth. In the same obituary Ambedkar holds the conservatives of Pune and the Tilakites responsible for the death of Shridharpanth and also calls his untimely death a great loss not just to Maharashtra but to the whole of India.
Later in the obituary, recollecting how Balagangadhar Tilak spoke dismissively about his paper Mookanaayak, and also about the Dalits, Ambedkar declares that a man like Tilak is not worthy of the title Lokamanya. He says that the ‘loka’ (world) of the so called Lokamanya was casteist and non-inclisive. This was not the case with his son Shridharpanth, says Ambedkar, and declares that Shridharpanth is the real Lokamanya.
(Originally written in Kannada for my fortnightly column daarihoka for the webportal ee-dina)
JHUND: On Extra Baggage and Flying
In Nagaraj Manjule’s JHUND, at a very early stage of team building, Vijay Borade, the coach of the yet-to-be-built team, is having a freewheeling discussion with the team members, and an airplane flies over their heads. Breaking away from their then happening conversation, Vijay takes a detour and explains how airplanes fly. He explains, “There is a life lesson in this knowledge of science,” and without much underlining, very casually tells how it is important to go against the force to be able to fly.
After nearly an hour after this scene, we see one of the key players of the team, and the film, Don, played very beautifully by Ankush Gedam, is unable to board the flight that promises a tour that can change the course of his life. The hurdle in the path is partially because of his past records, unmistakable caused by the uneven order of things in the world, and also partially by external forces which are structural. Somehow he, with the support of his friends and well-wishers, clears some of the hurdles and gets his passport, only to be stopped at the checking. Here the narrative moment turns into metaphor and sheer poetry… Don is now expected to overcome a hurdle within, externalized in the narrative through a weapon, which signifies rage and the need for revenge, without which the gate to liberation will not open. He is stopped and also made to go back. He has to throw away the weapon and only then the doors will open. When it does open, the gates of a damned fate open, and also the gates of the until then dammed tears. It lightens the chest and lets the wings open. Don flies.
Restoration of the self, by getting rid of the rough edges created by the unequal world becomes more important than retaliation.
kyun rehati hai tu
dhoop kay mausam ko kosti
behtar hai karley zindagi
baadal sey dosti
jeena hai toh aur jahaan bhi dhoond ley
saahil na sahi tinka hee dhoond ley
Beyond the structures of the world there lies a human self, and human will. Though this self gets shaped by the world outside and the interaction of the self with the world, it, in spite of all despairs, still has the ability to fly. For that to happen, it is important to fight the forces and go against the wind, like it is for the airplane, as explained by Vijar Borade. But the writer-director goes one step further and through the narrative says, it also requires to give up, or rather throw away things kept/ built within us, (the weapon kept in the secret pocket and the rage built up in the body-mind) even if it is kept/ built (consciously or unconsciously) for our own defense in an unjust and unfair world. The weapon and the rage both cut two ways and it is this which makes the vulnerable seem violent and also clips their wings. This extra baggage within makes the flight impossible- suggests the writer-director in this extremely Manjulesque scene. To overcome this also becomes important, says the film, along with collectively going against the force.
It is here that the writer-director’s vision, not just as a creative artist but also as a thinker belonging to a long intellectual history following the likes of Phule and Ambedkar, becomes evident. This vision which existed in all the previous works of Nagaraj Manjule becomes visible, observable, and extremely clear in this defining sequence from Jhund. It is for this vision of the writer-director and the person Nagaraj Manjule, that Jhund is a film that we all need to welcome with all our hearts and celebrate, despite some of its limitations.
Nagaraj Sir, please accept my salutation and a warm hug! Love you till the end of eternity and the end of the horizon!
Protected: Those Six Girls…
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Protected: The Final Letter: Invitation to A Forward Journey
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bell hooks, my friend
bell hooks is no more.
thank you, my friend, for being the friend you have been to this stranger all these days!
yes, bell hooks is a friend though I haven’t met her even once.
It was in the summer of 2019 that I finally picked up the book All About Love after it being there in my personal library for nearly three years then. while reading it I was so deeply touched by every sentence that I just wanted to pick several expressions, phrases, sentences, and passages from the book, hold them by their hand, and kiss them! by centering politics and life around the idea and practice of love and stressing on ‘love ethic’, bell hooks theoretically and intellectually concretized for me a worldview which until then was unconsciously being formed in the same direction under the influence of the words of Shailendar, Paulo Freire, Basavanna, Kabir, Gibran etc.
after reading her All About Love, i quickly picked up Salvation, her second book in the four-book series on love. it made it possible for me to view the world in a very different way since it dealt with black people and love. while reading it, i was constantly engaged with the thought of how one could view the Indian marginalized sections from a similar lens of love. it only humbled me and widened my horizon and made my heart even more tender.
next, i picked up her The Will To Change, and, no exaggeration, while reading this book it did not feel like reading a book. i never thought i would weep reading a non-fiction book, but while reading The Will to Change i wept endlessly like a child, like weeping in therapy sessions. it certainly was therapeutic to an extent. The Will to Change deals with ‘men. masculinity and love’ and it addresses with great depth and more importantly with great compassion and kindness, the pressure of patriarchy on men; an issue that i have been trying to articulate for a long period of time. reading this book, as said earlier, did not feel like reading a book. it felt like making a new friend who heard the silence between my heartbeats, the unvoiced cries within me, and then just put her arms on my shoulder and silently said, “I understand you.”
my friend, your books Communion and Where We Stand remain half-read and stare at me from my bookshelf. there are many more books of yours, my friend, that i wish to read and I will certainly read them and keep you alive in my living of life and in my whole-hearted attempt to practice of love ethic.
bell hooks, my friend, you are the only author other than Galeano whose hand I wished to kiss. it will never be possible. but your arms will always be around my shoulder and in its warmth, I will feel more and more grounded. thank you for being yourself, my friend.
rest in love, bell hooks.
A Fable
My mentor and I sat down to have lunch at a small hotel in our hometown. We were comfortable being silent in each other’s company though we were meeting after a long time. We ordered our food and while we waited for our meal to be served, the couple seated at the table next to ours paid the bill and got up to leave. While leaving, they greeted my mentor. I looked at them closely and then looked at my mentor. “You don’t know them,” he said. My preoccupations made me unzip my lips and say, “Yeah, I don’t know.” By then the server came with our meal plates and placed them on the table, repeating what was told to him while placing the order- “One plate rice and sambar. And one plate boiled rice ganji.”
Silence sat with us for a while, while we were having lunch. Being preoccupied with certain recent occurrences, I broke the silence, wanting to discuss.
“You may have an answer to this. Even if you don’t, I know you will understand what I am trying to say.” My mentor paused as I began speaking and looked at me, without taking the next handful of rice to his mouth. “In such an opinionated world how is one supposed to find their place?” I asked and heard laughter from the other side of the table. “I ask you because I know you too have been facing this issue since you too hold unpopular opinions and have refused to fall into the trap of binary thinking.” Looking into my eyes with compassion, helplessness, and understanding, all at the same time, my Mentor said, “This problem has existed always in the world”. Though I did not disagree with the answer, I wasn’t comfortable listening to a generic answer. I looked within and asked myself what exactly is troubling me about a divided world. “Maybe it has existed always, ” I agreed and continued to say, “But that fact doesn’t lessen the loneliness of being in this position.” Taking a deep sigh, in a very defeated tone I stated, “It gets very lonely.” My mentor nodded his head in agreement. “Yes, I know,” he said. “Yes, that is why I brought it up with you,” I explained. “Also, social media gives great courage to people to vehemently put forth their opinions and because of social media’s algorithms, it feels like these opinions are pouncing on us. All of this not just makes it difficult to have views of one’s own, but it is also making me doubt my own views and positions. I am constantly wondering if I did not understand something which others seem to have understood,” I spoke in one breath and exhausted myself.
The moment I stopped, immediately my Mentor exclaimed, “That is the truth.” I looked at him with a question mark on my face. “The truth is that you haven’t understood,” said my mentor with a certain force in his voice and then immediately altering the tone a bit, he continued to say, “The truth is that others also haven’t understood it.” He took a pause. “The problem is that while everyone believes they have understood it entirely, you believe you have missed the point entirely.” Without interrupting the brief silence that followed, I waited for him to break the silence and continue. “The truth is that all of us are learning. While others want to be right and correct, you too want to be right and correct. While others are trying to prove their learning to the correct one, you are trying to prove that you aren’t wrong. Others are trying to prove to the world and you are trying to prove to yourself. Hence it is lonely for you. If you try to prove it to the world, you will certainly find an echo chamber,” said my Mentor and his words began creating innumerable thought ripples within me. While I was still trying to digest his words, he said, “But finally in terms, all of their and our understanding and learning is limited, which we do not want to acknowledge. All we want to know is who is right and who isn’t.”
With hearty laughter, my mentor summarized it all with a beautiful metaphor. He said, “Forming opinions even before learning and understanding if not entirely but at least understanding the magnitude of the subject that one is trying to understand and learn about, is like building a temple for baala-Krishna (Krishna as a child). It museumizes Krishna in his infancy and doesn’t take into account that he turned out to be something else as he grew.”
I too joined him and laughed.
Protected: Sunset with Shomu
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Touch That Speaks and Speech That Touches
Life lacks any coherence or purpose. We struggle to make sense of it in several ways, but there are times when things become too overwhelming and we are just not able to make sense of things anymore.
Everything, literally everything, begins to shake and, as Anthony, the protagonist of Florian Zeller film The Father says, we feel all leaves falling off. When close ties break off or get loosened, immortal loneliness slowly begins to grow in the corners of the abandoned house. In no time the cobwebs are all over, and not meeting eyes with the emptiness which the loneliness has left us with, isn’t an option anymore.
We then want some string from the Lord above to pull us out. We want, in other words, or in the words of Anthony, want someone to come and fetch us. In the absence of a place to put down our heads on, we long for a home, the way Anthony does. That home isn’t a shelter for the body, but the heart and its weakened threads. It is a craving for a place like the womb of our mothers, the life of our lives, a place where we felt safe, protected, cared for and warm.
One can’t return to the womb and has to live with the immortal loneliness, till the loneliness lasts, or till life lasts.
How comforting it would be, when caught in such a meaningless vacuum, if one were to find a shoulder to lean on and weep, and have someone say that the sun is bright and we could go for a walk, and more importantly tell us, like the Laura tells Anthony, “everything will be fine.”
Whether things get fine or not, but to have someone say that to us would mean so much. Say it not just to make us feel good or better, but genuinely say it out of affection, gently patting on our shoulders!
Probably the only meaning in an otherwise meaningless life, the only comfort in an otherwise discomforting life, and what makes bearable an otherwise unbearable loneliness of life is a touch that speaks and speech that touches.
Even if it is of a stranger. When the love of dear ones disappears, the compassion and kindness of a stranger begin to appear like love.
Having Someone Wait for You…
In Robert Enrico’s silent film An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge, when the protagonist is running back home, the camera runs along with him & at one point when he falls down, the camera stops, almost like saying, “Buddy, I’ll wait for you till you are ready to run again.”
Every time while watching this film, the point where the camera stops for the protagonist, did something to me. It made my heart ache, it made my eyes wet, there would be a lump in my throat, it brought a slight smile to my face. Why? I never understood.
Recently a friend who is recovering slowly from a complicated surgery texted saying how she feels LEFT BEHIND, & how even the most compassionate ones, even when empathetic to your situation, are not able to/ do not pause for you, when life makes you stop for a while, applies the brake to your journey & how this- life and people carrying on with life- makes you feel irrelevant.
Reading the text not only made me feel a bit sad, and guilty, because as a friend I should be pausing, but also made me realize why that scene from Enrico’s film always created the ripples it created.
Don’t we all long to have friends who will pick us up when we fall down, those who will nurse our injuries when we collapse? But rarely do people pause for you and say, “I will wait till you are ready to run again.” So, when the camera stopped and waited for Farquhar, the protagonist of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, it touched the heart.
Protected: Reconciliation
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Crazy Mind's Eye 