Gopal Baba Walangkar, also known as Gopal Krishna, (ca. 1840-1900) is an early example of an
activist
Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...
working to release the
untouchable
Untouchable or The Untouchable may refer to:
People
* Untouchability, the practice of socially ostracizing a minority group of very low social status
** A word for the Dalits or Scheduled Caste of India, a group that experiences untouchability
* ...
people of India from their
historic socio-economic oppression, and is generally considered to be the pioneer of that movement. He developed a racial theory to explain the oppression and also published the monthly journal Vital-Vidhvansak, targeted at the Brahmanical Orthodoxy.
Life
Gopal Baba Walangkar was born into a family of
Mahar caste
Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...
around 1840 at
Ravdul, near
Mahad in what is now
Raigad district
Raigad district (Marathi pronunciation: Help:IPA/Marathi, aːjɡəɖ, previously Colaba fort, Colaba district, is a district in the Konkan division of Maharashtra, India.
The district was renamed to Raigad fort, Raigad after the fort that ...
,
Maharashtra
Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...
. He was related to Ramabai, who in 1906 married the polymathic social reformer,
B. R. Ambedkar
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (14 April 1891 – 6 December 1956) was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer and political leader who headed the committee drafting the Constitution of India from the Constituent Assembly debates, served a ...
. 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.
Walangkar was appointed to the local
taluk
A tehsil (, also known as tahsil, taluka, or taluk) is a local unit of administrative division in some countries of South Asia. It is a subdistrict of the area within a district including the designated populated place that serves as its administr ...
board of Mahad in 1895,
which displeased the members from the upper castes and caused considerable debate in newspapers. He died at Ravdal in 1900.
Activism
The
Aryan invasion theory
The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages, the predominant languages of today's North India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lank ...
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
Brahmin (; sa, ब्राह्मण, brāhmaṇa) is a varna as well as a caste within Hindu society. The Brahmins are designated as the priestly class as they serve as priests (purohit, pandit, or pujari) and religious teachers (guru ...
people were descended from
Aryan
Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ' ...
s who had invaded the country. 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'".
In 1888, Walangkar began publishing the monthly journal titled ''Vital-Vidhvansak'' (Destroyer of Brahmanical or Ceremonial Pollution), which was the first to have the untouchable people as its target audience.
He also wrote articles for
Marathi-language newspapers such as ''
Sudharak'' and ''
Deenbandhu'', as well as composing
couplet
A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the ...
s in Marathi that were intended to inspire the people.
Having read
Hindu religious texts
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or ''dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global pop ...
, Walangkar concluded that caste was contrived by the Aryan invaders to control the Anaryans (indigenous people).
In 1889, he published ''Vital Viduvansan'' (Annihilation of Ceremonial Pollution), which protested the position of untouchables in society and raised consciousness regarding what those people should expect.
He addressed this pamphlet, which was crafted as a collection of 26 questions,
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."
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 but it also warned that the untouchables might leave India unless their situation improved. A further significant work, titled ''Hindu Dharma Darpan'', appeared in 1894.
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 had been willing to perform for the caste.
Walangkar founded the Anarya Dosh-Parihar Mandali (Society for the Removal of Evils Among the Non-Aryans). Some sources say this took place in the same year that he left the army
but Anand Teltumbde gives 1890 as the date and suggests it was connected with an issue relating to military recruitment.
The Mahar were initially heavily recruited into British military units, but this process slowed after the
Indian Rebellion of 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the fo ...
. 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
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
but thereafter they were pensioned off and gradually removed from military service. 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
Maratha
The Marathi people (Marathi: मराठी लोक) or Marathis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are indigenous to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. Maharashtra was formed as a M ...
s and other north-western communities.
The Mahar community attempted to confront this block with a petition circulated among the Mahar,
Chamar
Chamar is a Dalit community classified as a Scheduled Caste under modern India's system of affirmative action. Historically subject to untouchability, they were traditionally outside the Hindu ritual ranking system of castes known as varna. ...
, and
Mang former soldiersall Marathi-speaking untouchablesbut the movement was unable to organise and submit their petition.
It was Walangkar, through the Anarya Dosh-Parihar Mandali, who attempted this petition.
Walangkar is generally considered to be the pioneer of the Dalit movement, along with
Harichand Thakur
Harichand Thakur (হরিচাঁদ ঠাকুর) (30 March 1812 – 5 March 1878), worked among the untouchable people of Bengal Presidency. He formed the Matua sect of Hindus.
Life
Harichand Thakur was born in a Namashudra (or avarn ...
through his
Matua involving the
Namasudra (
Chandala
Chandala ( sa, चांडाल, caṇḍāla) is a Sanskrit word for someone who deals with disposal of corpses, and is a Hindu lower caste, traditionally considered to be untouchable.
A female member of this caste is known as a ''Caṇḍ ...
) community in
Bengal Presidency
The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and ...
. Ambedkar himself believed Walangkar to be the progenitor.
References
{{reflist
1840s births
1900 deaths
People from Raigad district
Indian social reformers
19th-century Indian writers
19th-century Indian journalists
20th-century Indian journalists
British Indian Army soldiers
Dalit activists
Ambedkar family