Just off National Highway 66 is Dasgaon, a village of about 3,000 in the coastal Raigad district of Maharashtra, about 5 km from Mahad. There is no plaque marking its importance in Indian history and the locals do not remember their people’s contribution to the Dalit movement. They remember the shooting of Mammootty’s film, dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, directed by Jabbar Patel. This was in 2000 and Crawford Lake was called Chavdar Tale in the film, a reference to the lake in Mahad.
A government guest house, a dak bungalow, as the British called it, is being renovated on the shores of the lake. There is also no plaque to commemorate an important part of Indian history. Dalit icon Dr. stayed here. Ambedkar during what became known as the Mahad Satyagraha.
The earth burns the head and feet, but the green water of Lake Crawford is soothing to the eyes. Dozens of workers work on its shores, laying wires that hold together the rocks that define the lake’s border. “This embankment has pushed the lake in. It used to be wider,” says a local resident.
Amruta and Arun Waghmare who reside near Kranti Stambh Mahad Satyagraha in Mahad district of Maharashtra. | Photo credit: Emmanuel Yogini
Soon there will be a running track and lawn on the shores of the lake. “It will be beautified so that we can use it,” says Ataullah Deshmukh in his native house right by the lake. There is a well in front of his house, again of historical significance, but Deshmukh is unaware of its significance. It is the third generation to occupy the home.
He tells stories of his grandfather, Dawood Khan Deshmukh, who started an Urdu school in the nearby village of Tudil and spread awareness in his community to send his children to school. His father, Dr. Abdur Rauf Deshmukh, assisted Padmashri awardee Dr. Himmatrao Bawaskar, a physician renowned for his research into the treatment of scorpion stings and snake bites.
“Nobody ever talked about the well and the lake in the context of satyagraha,” he says. His wife, an apothecary, brings cold sherbet to cool the afternoon heat.
Their neighbor Faizar Shaikhnag says his grandfather YB Shaikhnag was the sarpanch of the village. The land where the dak’s bungalow stands was once owned by his family, he adds. “It was leased to the government for 99 years. The lease is now over. We are fighting to get the land back.” Shaikhnag also does not know about satyagraha or Dalit mobilization here. “Our grandfather died before we were born. Nobody talked about it,” he says.
A few buildings away, retired teacher Vasant Dalvi lives. His daughter-in-law Vishakha Dalvi says she has never heard any stories of Dalit mobilization here.
Waking up and moving
“This is a legacy that we fear will be lost,” says civil rights activist Subodh More. Subodha’s grandfather Ramchandra Babaji More (RB More) was a Dalit leader who led a satyagraha in 1926 to drink water from a well that is now on Deshmukh’s property.
Subodh More, grandson of Ramchandra Babaji More, who led the protest in Dasgaon, stands next to the remains of his ancestral home. | Photo credit: Emmanual Yogini
Satjagraha was triggered by the Bolea Bombay Legislative Council resolution in 1923 which allowed “the untouchable classes to use all public watering holes”. In 1924, the Mahad municipal body also passed a resolution reiterating this. Although this was a significant early step against caste-based exclusion in India, it was not implemented.
RB More was 23 years old at the time. He gathered the people in Dasgaon and held a public meeting to implement Bole’s resolution. On December 4, 1926, nearly 300 people, considered untouchables by the upper castes, gathered to go to Crawford Lake and the Crawford Well to draw water. Until then, Dalits were not allowed to drink from public tanks because those in the upper castes believed it would pollute the water.
The protest was local and went almost unnoticed. But its success strengthened Babaji’s determination to organize a protest on a larger scale in Mahad under the leadership of Dr. Ambedkar. On March 20, 1927, dozens of protesters led by Dr. Ambedkar they marched to the Chavdar Tale Public Tank in Mahad. “This fight is not just for water but for basic human rights… We have to go to Chavdar Tale to not only drink water there but to prove that we are also human beings like others,” said Dr. Ambedkar at the Mahad during the Chavdar Tale Satyagraha.
RB More was the main organizer of Mahad Satyagaraha. He was deeply inspired by Dr. Ambedkar and was one of the leaders who started calling him Babasaheb.
His awakening to injustice was early and personal. When he was 11, the local school did not give him admission, even though he passed the scholarship exam. “There were no concessions for students below the age of 11. I passed the scholarship exam held at Alibaug. The government gave me a ₹5 scholarship and asked me to enroll in an English medium school,” RB More wrote later in the article. It was in 1913-14. The local school refused to admit him because of his caste.
Dalits were not allowed to sit with upper caste children and the school did not want to risk closure for one admission, she said. After being led by social reformers, he wrote a letter requesting the withdrawal of government subsidy to the school because it refused to admit a deserving student despite a government order. The letter was printed with his name in the local newspaper Prabodhan, which forced the school to admit him. But he was forced to sit on a stool in the corner in front of the classroom.
The foundation of the house
From 1931 to 1941, RB More was forced illegally after the British decommissioned it in 1931-1933. Subodh, who now lives in Mumbai, remembers playing in the house where his grandfather was hiding. It was uncle RB More’s house and was one of the few at the time to be built up to the first floor. In fact, his uncle’s name was Madiwale Joshi, or Joshi, whose house had a maadi (first floor in Marathi), a rarity in those days. The ruin now has only black basalt rock blocks and a staircase. It was the first pucca house built by Dalits.
“The Brahmins who did the bhoomi poojan were boycotted by the upper caste back then,” says Rajendra Hate, a school official who lives near the ruins. He adds that unfortunately it was so dilapidated that it had to be taken down.
Subodh talks about personal stories of struggles around the intense caste battles that were going on in the region back then. Hate remembers the village elders telling stories of when Babaji came out of hiding. “When he came out of hiding years later, they had to make him sit in a separate cattle pond to wash the dead skin off his body,” he says.
Last week, MA Baby, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (M), visited the lake and the well along with the school set up by RB More. “This is the place where the seeds of the historic Mahad Satyagraha were sown. It is a historically significant place,” says Dr. Ashok Dhawale, CPI(M) politburo member who accompanied MA Baby.
“Caste discrimination has not yet disappeared from India. Whether it was the Chavdar Tale protest or the burning of the Manusmruti, which was the source of India’s anti-caste struggle, Comrade RB More played a significant role. He has a special place in our history,” Dhawale says, adding that RB More was a prominent leader of the communist movement.
Lakes and their symbolism
While Dasgaon is largely forgotten, Mahad is the center of attention for the Dalit community. Every year, lakhs march on 25 December and 20 March to mark the Manusmriti dahan (burning) and Chavdar Tale Satyagraha, respectively. Manusmriti is an ancient text that codified the caste system.
Kranti Stambh memorial Mahad Satyagraha led by Babasaheb Ambedkar. | Photo credit: Emmanuel Yogini
Konkan Republican Samajik Sanstha, a local non-profit organisation, has written to the Raigad district authorities urging them to declare the entire region as a national monument. “We have written letters to the district collector that Crawford well, Crawford lake, dak bungalow, the temple where Manusmruti was burnt, the landing dock where Babasaheb landed and similar places have been declared as national monuments. Lakhs march here every year. We have not received any response to our pleas yet,” says secretary Deepak Pawar. Despite repeated attempts, Kisan Jawale, district collector of Raigad, did not respond to The Hindu’s queries.
Maharashtra Social Justice Minister Sanjay Shirsat said the government will now make efforts to preserve the history of the region where Dalits broke the social order. “We don’t have information about it yet. But our officials will go and see the place. In Dasgaon, we will not only install plaques informing about the significance of the place, but we will also do other things to bring the history alive.”
Shobha Dhone, a daily wage laborer from Latur, is one of the hundreds of women who reach Mahad every year, mostly from Marathwada and Vidarbha, to drink the water of Chavdar Tale. They chat with their children about Ambedkar, pay their respects to the statue in the middle of the lake, and then drink water from the taps around. “We are here because of him. We were treated as worse than cattle. We had no rights. Only our hearts know what Babasaheb did for us,” she says.
Amruta Waghmare lives in Mahadu and runs the Mahila Utkarsha Samajik Sanstha, which seeks to mobilize unorganized workers. He feels, “Undoubtedly, things have changed from a century ago, but casteism still exists; Brahminism still exists. The community does not bother anyone. They only care about their individual material growth. The Ambedkarite movement has weakened,” he says.
vinaya.deshpande@thehindu.co.in
