Gopal Baba Walangkar: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 16:10, 20 July 2017
Gopal Baba Walangkar, also known as Gopal Krishna, (ca. 1840-1900) is an early example of an activist working to release the untouchable people of India from their historic socio-economic oppression. He developed a racial theory to explain the oppression and published the first journal targeted at the untouchable people.
Life
Gopal Baba Walangkar was born into a family of the untouchable Mahar caste[1] around 1840 at Ravdal, near Mahad in what is now Raigad district, Maharashtra. He was related to Ramabai, who in 1906 married the polymathic social reformer, B. R. Ambedkar. In 1886, after serving in the army, Walangkar settled at Dapoli and became influenced by another early social reformer, Jyotirao Phule, thus being a link between two of the most significant reform families of the period.[2]
The Aryan invasion theory, since discredited, was in vogue at this time. Walangkar extended Phule's version of this racial theory, that the untouchable people of India were the indigenous inhabitants and that the Brahmin people were descended from Aryans who had invaded the country. According to Eleanor Zelliot, Walangkar claimed that "high-caste people from the south were 'Australian–Semitic non-Aryans' and African negroes, that Chitpavan Brahmans were 'Barbary Jews', and that the high-caste Marathas' forebears were 'Turks'".[1][a]
Walangkar founded the Anarya Dosh-Parihar Mandali (Society for the Removal of Evils Among the Non-Aryans) in the same year that he left the army and, two years later, he began publishing the monthly journal titled Vital-Vidhvansak (Destroyer of Brahmanical or Ceremonial Pollution). This publication was the first to have the untouchable people at its target audience.[2]
In 1889, Walangkar published Vital Viduvansan (Annihilation of Ceremonial Pollution), which protested the position of untouchables in society and raised consciousness regarding what those people should expect.[2] He addressed this pamphlet to the elites of Maharashtrian society. T. N. Valunjkar says that Walangkar "can be regarded as the first intellectual rebel from the dalit community to have launched a scathing criticism of the caste system and the position of dalits in it."[3] Nonetheless, his criticism was intended to cause change through an appeal to those elites, rather than an opposition to them - it was an awareness-raising style, in the hope that the paternalist elements of society would take heed.[4]
Walangkar also at once empowered the Mahars and diminished the influence of Brahmin priests by forming a group of Mahar astrologers to set the times for religious ceremonies, which was effectively the only service that Brahmins would perform for the caste.[5]
The Mahar were initially heavily recruited into British military units, but this process slowed after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Their recruitment was halted under Lord Kitchener in the early 1890s. Before the rebellion, Mahar regiments made up one-sixth of the Bombay units of the British East India Company but thereafter they were pensioned off and gradually removed from military service.[6][7] Mahar recruitment reached its nadir in the early 1890s (sources differ as to exact year) when Kitchener halted the recruitment of untouchables in Maharashtra in favour of "martial races," such as the Marathas and other north-western communities.[8][9] The Mahar community attempted to confront this block with a petition circulated among the Mahar, Chamar, and Mang former soldiers—all Marathi-speaking untouchables—but the movement was unable to organise and submit their petition.[8] It was Warangkar, through the Anarya Dosh-Parihar Mandali, who attempted this petition.[1][3]
Walangkar was elected the local taluk board of Mahad in 1895.[3] He died at Ravdal in 1900.[2]
References
Notes
- ^ Zelliot herself argues that caste and race are unconnected and, indeed, that Indian languages have no equivalent word for race in the context used in the western world.[1]
Citations
- ^ a b c d Zelliot, Eleanor (2010). "India's Dalits: Racism and Contemporary Change". Global Dialogue. 12 (2). Archived from the original on 2013-04-30.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|deadurl=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ a b c d Jadhav, K. N. (1991). Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission. Popular Prakashan. pp. 9–10. ISBN 978-8-17154-329-8.
- ^ a b c Valunjkar, T. N. (1998). "Dalit Social Consciousness in Western Maharashtra in Colonial Period 1880-1910". In Pathak, Bindeshwar (ed.). Continuity and Change in Indian Society: Essays in Memory of Late Prof. Narmadeshwar Prasad. Concept Publishing Company. pp. 207–208. ISBN 978-8-17022-726-7.
- ^ Valunjkar, T. N. (1998). "Dalit Social Consciousness in Western Maharashtra in Colonial Period 1880-1910". In Pathak, Bindeshwar (ed.). Continuity and Change in Indian Society: Essays in Memory of Late Prof. Narmadeshwar Prasad. Concept Publishing Company. p. 214. ISBN 978-8-17022-726-7.
- ^ Smith, Donald Eugene (2015). South Asian Politics and Religion. Princeton University Press. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-40087-908-3.
- ^ Jaffrelot, Christophe (2005). Dr. Ambedkar and untouchability: fighting the Indian caste system. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231136021.
- ^ Rao, Anupama (2009). The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. University of California Press. p. 30. ISBN 0520257618.
- ^ a b Zelliott, Eleanor (1978). "Religion and Legitimation in the Mahar Movement". In Smith, Bardwell L. (ed.). Religion and the Legitimation of Power in South Asia. Brill. pp. 88–90. ISBN 9004056742.
- ^ Kamble, N. D. (1983). Deprived castes and their struggle for equality. Ashish Publisher House. pp. 129–132.