The Mahad Satyagraha: Ambedkar and the foundation event of the Dalit movement

As a grateful nation celebrates the 132nd birth anniversary of the father of India’s Constitution, here is a recall of the Mahad Satyagraha, one of the earlier and among the most significant of milestones in a great life.

Context of the Satyagraha

The events that led to the Mahad Satyagraha began to unfold in August 1923. The Bombay Legislative Council passed a resolution moved by the social reformer Rao Bahadur S K Bole, which said “the Untouchable classes be allowed to use all public water sources, wells and dharmashalas which are built and maintained out of public funds or administered by bodies appointed by the Government or created by statute, as well as public schools, courts, offices and dispensaries.”

Albeit with reluctance, the Bombay government adopted the resolution in the following month, and issued directions for its implementation. The situation on the ground, however, remained unchanged — upper caste Hindus would not allow the lower castes to access public water sources.

At that point, Ramchandra Babaji More, a Mahad-based Dalit political leader, approached Ambedkar to preside “over a conference of the Untouchables in Konkan”, the scholar and civil rights activist Anand Teltumbde wrote in his book, Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt (2016).

Ambedkar at the time was helping Dalits fight against the social evil of untouchability through the Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha, the institution that he had founded in 1924.

Ambedkar agreed to More’s proposition, and involved himself in overseeing the preparations for the conference, which was to take place in Mahad town in the Konkan (now in Maharashtra’s Raigad district) on March 19 and 20, 1927. He conducted meetings with local Dalit leaders, stressed on creating “a wave of awakening” among the lower caste people of Konkan, and directed other organisers to conduct meetings to propagate news of the conference.

“The volunteers collected Rs 3 from each of the 40 villages and also collected rice and wheat to feed the participants at Mahad. It took nearly two months of preparations to hold the Conference. Workers and leaders personally met depressed class people and explained to them the importance of the Conference,” historian Swapna H Samel wrote in her paper ‘Mahad Chavadar Tank Satyagraha of 1927: Beginning of Dalit Liberation Under B R Ambedkar’ (Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 1999).

What happened at the Satyagraha

According to Samel, the Mahad Satyagraha — it was labelled as a “conference”, not Satyagraha, at the time — was attended by around 2,500 “delegates, workers and leaders of Depressed Classes from almost all the districts of Maharashtra and Gujarat”, including “boys of fifteen to old men of seventy”.

On the first day of the conference, progressive non-Dalit leaders also came to the event and addressed the attendees, talking about the civil rights of the Dalits and promising to help them in their struggle.

In his speech, Ambedkar said: “I feel that until we get to eat these pieces of stale bread, our condition may stay the same. So long as the old path exists, nobody will take the new path. By clinging to the old path we have been deprived of our dignity. You ought to think how far you are going to walk that path.

“I want to particularly emphasize that all of us have to speed up our work of creating awakening among our people….Here, this conference is happening only now. You should never let the fire of awakening douse.”

After the day’s proceedings, it was decided that the next morning, Ambedkar, the other organisers and attendees would march to the nearby Chavadar tank, where people from untouchable communities weren’t allowed to draw water from, to implement the resolution — this wasn’t originally planned by the organisers though.

On March 20, Teltumbde wrote, “They began marching in a long procession through the marketplace of Mahad with utmost discipline, shouting slogans of Mahatma Gandhi ki jai (Victory to Mahatma Gandhi), Shivaji Maharaj ki jai (Victory to Shivaji Maharaj), and victory to equality. They stopped at the Chavadar Tank and followed Dr Ambedkar, who entered it and picked up its water with his cupped hands. They all shouted ‘Har Har Mahadev (Victory to Lord Mahadev) and drank its water.”

Soon after the conference came to an end, a priest of a local temple went around the town claiming that Dalits were planning to enter the temple, and asked people to help thwart them. This resulted in a clash in which “20 people were seriously injured and 60-70 people, including 3 to 4 women were wounded”, Teltumbde wrote.

Upper caste Hindus conducted a purification ritual of the tank by “emptying out 108 earthen pots full of gomutra (cow’s urine) into it,” Teltumbde wrote.

But Ambedkar was not to be deterred by the backlash. He announced another conference on a much bigger scale, at the same venue on December 26, 1927, in order to showcase the resolve of the Dalit community. This time, he consciously called it a Satyagraha.

Some upper caste Hindus filed a case in court against Ambedkar and his followers on December 12, claiming that the tank was private property. Two days later, the court issued a temporary injunction, prohibiting Babasaheb and other Dalits from going to the tank or taking water from it until further orders.

Mahad Satyagraha, December 1927

The court injunction could dissuade neither the organisers nor the participants. “With the resolve to do or die, the villagers decided to come to the Conference. From each village, the Satyagrahis, nearly 4,000 people gathered at Mahad,” Samel wrote. On December 24, Ambedkar reached the spot, where the police informed him about the lawsuit, and asked him to postpone the Satyagraha.

In the following days, deliberations were held on whether to continue with the Satyagraha in the changed circumstances. Although most people wanted to go ahead, the Satyagraha was suspended on the advice of Ambedkar. Also, unlike the last time, no water was drawn from the Chavadar tank.

“The basic argument Babasaheb Ambedkar put forth before the conference was that their struggle was against the caste Hindus; the objective to demonstrate the strength of their unity and determination was fulfilled; and if they went for the Satyagraha defying the court injunction, it would be direct confrontation with the state, which they ill afforded, particularly when the District Magistrate had assured them of his sympathies,” Teltumbde wrote.

Still, the Satyagraha did not pass without an event. Ambedkar and his followers burnt the Manusmriti, a powerful rejection of the caste system, and the first time that such symbolic action was undertaken.

Samel wrote: “At 9 PM a copy of Manusmriti was placed on the pier in a specially dug pit in front of the pendal (where the conference was taking place) and was ceremoniously burnt at the hands of the untouchable hermits. The burning of the laws of Manu sent shock waves through the Hindu society and filled the untouchables with awe mixed with apprehensions.”

Significance of Mahad Satyagraha

The Mahad Satyagraha is considered to be the “foundational event” of the Dalit movement. This was the first time that the community collectively displayed its resolve to reject the caste system and assert their human rights. Although anti-caste protests had taken place before the Mahad Satyagraha, they were mostly localised and sporadic.

“The difference between (the) Mahad (Satyagraha) and them mainly lay in the organisation and leadership; they lacked in elements of organisation and the charismatic leadership of Dr Ambedkar,” Teltumbde mentions.

The Mahad Satyagraha was to become the blueprint for organising future movements against the caste system and its practices. It marked an important point in Ambedkar’s political journey, catapulting him to the leadership of the downtrodden and oppressed classes in the country.