OLD FIGHT, NEW TERRAIN
Bhima Koregaon in Maharashtra is where the Mahar regiment defeated Peshwadom, the fount of Brahmanism. How does that 1818 battle fuel Dalit pride and assertion today? A report
It is a little after 11 pm on New Year’s Eve when Anisha Savale gets off the tempo with her husband and three children. She has travelled for more than 400 km but as she rushes into a sea of humanity, her youngest in her arms, there is little sign of fatigue. Darkness hang over the fields, save for a small clump of land dappled in light and the chatter of thousands of people celebrating the bicentenary of the Bhima Koregaon battle in a remote village in Maharashtra, roughly 40 km from Pune.
The nine-acre plot is awash in blue flags and cries of ‘Jai Bhim’ rent the air as Savale pushes herself to the head of the queue – she wants to get her youngest to the 60-feet victory pillar, decked in yellow and orange garlands, before midnight. “I couldn’t come last year but couldn’t miss it this time. I have to show my children what their culture is and what they have to fight for,” says the 34-year-old.
Her son, dressed smartly in a white shirt and blue jeans with a prominent ‘Jai Bhim’ wristband, tugs at her saree . “He wants to get a tattoo of Babasaheb,” she explains, but adds that she hasn’t made her mind up.
Around her, members of the Samata Sainik Dal (SSD), a volunteer organisation set up by BR Ambedkar in 1926, march up and down, readying themselves for a midnight tribute. “We are not cowards, we don’t flee a battlefield…when our Babasaheb picked up the pen, look at the power he put in the Constitution,” the announcer from the stage booms to cheers.
A hush suddenly falls five minutes before the New Year as Buddhist monks walk up to the “ranstambh” and chant hymns – invoking Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism in 1956 .
Savale silently mouths the words, her hands clasped in prayer. Her son is beaming at a plumage of fireworks lighting up the sky to usher in the New Year, and pushes forward for a selfie with the plaque that commemorates the martyrs of the 1818 war on the British side, including 22 Mahar soldiers, whose tales of bravery form the fount of Dalit pride today.
Next to him, Shanta Kamble, 79, says she comes every year. Why, I ask. She looks at me and frowns. “You are young, you won’t understand. Do you think we would exist without this battle? We are here because of this. How can I not come?”
She spends the night in a tent, one of scores erected for people streaming in from across the country. There is excited chatter and songs sung in praise of Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule and Shivaji. “It is like a pilgrimage but without religion, without garlands and worship,” Savale says.
The celebrations go on through the night. As the sun rises over the Bhima river, people make a beeline for the freezing waters but only the bravest take the plunge. By 7am, the trickle of people turns into a flood and tempos, trucks, trawlers, and cars – all with blue flags fluttering – jostle for space. The SSD struggles to conand tain the swelling crowd that moves in great waves from the pillar to the shops behind that sell everything from anti-caste literature and pocket books on the Constitution and Buddhism, to Ambedkar-themed sweatshirts, busts and blue flags. In one corner of the middle lane is the tattoo stall.
THE HISTORY
Bhima Koregaon grabbed public imagination in 1927, when BR Ambedkar visited the spot and exhorted Dalits to remember their valiant history of ‘defeating’ the Peshwa. India’s first law minister described in great detail the oppressive practices instituted by Brahmin rulers that forced every lower caste person to carry a spittoon on their neck and a broom on the back, so that even their dust wouldn’t pollute the dominant castes.
Punishment for lower castes was often disproportionate and harsher than the upper castes, and Mahars, a caste Ambedkar belonged to, would ritually be sacrificed and buried to make the foundation of a building strong, explains Shradhha Kumbhojkar, a historian at Pune University. “Phule and Ambedkar chronicled this and every conscious Dalit person has read their writing on this subject. The history of enslavement, of oppression and ruthless death penalties has built this resistance,” she tells me.
Recorded history is patchy, stitched together from the correspondence of Captain FF Staunton with the East India Company and local oral histories.
But this much is certain: Peshwa Bajirao II was already on the back foot on January 1, 1818. He had lost his seat of government in Pune’s Shaniwar Wada, from where the British flag had been unfurled in November 1817. With 20,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry, the Peshwa’s army vastly outnumbered Staunton’s 800-odd men, around 500 of who were Mahars.
From here, the narratives diverge. Staunton’s journal records the British forces took in heavy fire and attacks on January 1, with one of their two guns exposed . There is no record of losses on the Peshwa’s side but Staunton writes a hurried dispatch for more forces, while chronicling the hunger and fatigue in his force.
But by afternoon of the second day, the Peshwa’s forces withdrew, allowing Staunton to pick up his wounded and return to the nearest camp. “For the British, this was a big victory. The myth of dogged resistance started building in the first report sent to the East India Company,” says Kumbhojkar, quoting from records of the British Parliament and letters by the then governor Mountstuart Elphinstone.
In the next six months, the Peshwa was vanquished, and banished to Kanpur. The company showered accolades on Staunton
‘THE BRITISH WANTED TO DEFEAT HINDU KINGS. WHAT DID THE BRITISH GIVE THE MAHARS AFTERWARDS?’
other soldiers and in 1819 commissioned the pillar for “one of the proudest triumphs of the British army in the East”.
The Mahars prospered, using the army’s patronage to escape the backbreaking violence and discrimination, but not for long. Their recruitment stopped in 1892 after being declared a non-martial race. This fomented a movement that petitioned the British repeatedly. It is during this time, in 1910, that a British officer RA Lamb stumbled across the obelisk again.
“The role of the military in the empowering of Mahars is great. For the first time, they were addressed as human beings,” explains Kumbhojkar. Calling for the re-entry of Mahars in the army became a rallying point, and one of the leaders of that movement was Ambedkar’s father.
Ambedkar’s visit to Bhima Koregaon on January 1, 1927 was a watershed moment that pushed the war back into popular consciousness. He appealed to the British to reinstate the Mahars – which they briefly did during World War I – and even wrote a short treatise during the first Round Table Conference. The Mahar regiment was eventually raised in 1941.
Not everyone agrees with this version though. A section of Marathi literature throughout the 1960s and ’70s showed the Peshwa as the winner, most notably in the novel Mantravegla by Nagnath Inamdar.
“The Peshwa’s army contained many different castes, and only few Brahmins. The battle was not against Brahmins, it was against a regional power. The British created this caste narrative for their advantage,” said Nand Kumar Nikam, former principal of Shirur College. Anand Dave of the Akhil Bharatiya Brahmin Mahasangh, says the battle was neither a caste fight nor were the Mahars victors. “The British wanted to defeat Hindu kings. What did the British give the Mahars afterwards? ”
Kumbhojkar agrees there is a degree of myth involved but doesn’t see the reason for outrage. “Every community has its own myths. Dalits were creating an alternative to Hinduism through culture and Bhima Koregaon became a rallying point. There are layers of memories associated with the place.” Conversations with Dalit leaders also dispel the notion that they are unaware of the nuances.
“We know the Mahars didn’t fight alone. But in defeating the Peshwa, the non-brahmins won. We are told our history isn’t glorious but these soldiers are symbols of the first fight against caste. They are a symbol for future generations,” says Keshav Waghmare, an activist.
THE UNREST
This year, trouble started brewing on December 29 when a little-known cemetery in Vadhu Budruk, near Bhima Koregaon, was desecrated. The cemetery was dedicated to a 17th century Mahar peasant, Govind Ganapat Gaikwad, who administered the last rites to Shivaji’s son Shambhaji, killed by Aurangzeb in 1689. Many historians believe that at a time when the local population was terrified of the Mughals, Gaikwad gave Shambhaji an honourable funeral. This is an important moment in the anti-caste history because Dalit thinkers believe Shivaji was a Shudra king who was opposed to Brahmins and caste practices. In Bhima Koregaon , for example, a statue of Ambedkar faces another of Shivaji. But a competing narrative is also afoot, helmed by hardline Hindu leaders such as Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote, accused of fomenting the violence near Bhima Koregaon that killed one person this past week.
“They say that Shivaji was a protector of Brahmins and that he was the raja of all Hindus. They say Shivaji was a proponent of caste and varnashrama,” says Sachin Garud, a professor at Islampur College in Sangli district.
This week’s violence might have opened a chasm between Dalits and a section of the Maratha caste that Shailendra Kharat, a professor at Pune University, believes must be seen in light of growing right-wing influence. Simmering tensions spilled out onto the streets last year after a gang-rape case in Kopardi, where Dalit men raped a Maratha woman. The case triggered a huge churning as thousands of Marathas took out silent marches. In September, three Dalit men were sentenced to death.
But another murder, that of a 17-yearold Dalit man for allegedly falling in love with an upper caste woman, in Ahmednagar district, remained under the radar. In November, all accused in the case were acquitted for want of evidence.
“This generated tremendous anger among Dalits. Not only was the boy killed but the killers let off. This sent out a message that Dalits couldn’t even fall in love without risking death,” says Sudhir Dhawale, an activist.
Kharat believes the root of these tensions lies in a persistent agrarian crisis and falling rural wages among the Marathas . At the same time, many Maratha groups have joined the Dalit protests this week across Maharashtra, and local Marathas in Bhima Koregaon have come together with Dalits.
“The ascendance of Dalits, especially neo-buddhists and Mahars, and their material dominance was met with hostility, especially as the material dominance of the Marathas waned in the ’90s,” argues political scientist Rajeshwari Deshpande.
These shifting dynamics have also undermined another 100-year-old movement, called Brahmantar, that sought to bring all non-brahmin castes under one broad Bahujan fold, says academic Suhas Palshikar. “The 2014 election was the loss of hegemony of Marathas as the Brahmins felt more encouraged by the current dispensation,” he says.
THE FUTURE
In the chaos of the past week, the one clear narrative was that of the educated rural Dalit –– articulate and proud of their history. In the shadow of the obelisk on January 1 stood a group of young men who had spent New Year’s Eve in a bus from Belgaum in Karnataka, and raised slogans in praise of Phule and Ambedkar.
All were Dalit and said they faced pervasive but intangible discrimination in their university – and were at Bhima Koregaon to gain strength . Their resolve finds echo in the village chief’s husband, Babusaheb Bhalerao. “We get strength from this monument – that everyone comes here,” he tells me. The event itself is funded by the community and hosted by a committee of local villagers.
A little distance away in the rank and file of the SSD stood a 70-year-old former teacher, Nanda Kamble, and a 10-year-old boy, Adish Ingle. When asked why they joined an organisation that needs them to stand in the sun for long hours, manage crowds and take orders, their answers were almost identical: “We heard of Babasaheb and want to follow in his path.”
By now it is almost noon and time for Savale to leave but her son is adamant about that tattoo. In her admonishment, she holds out a promise. “Read the books I bought you about Babasaheb. I will quiz you and if you pass, next year I may let you get a tattoo,” she tells him. He seems content with the challenge as they climb into their tempo.