(Kanwal Bharti)
(English translation from original Hindi: SR Darapuri I.P.S.(Retd)
(Samajweekly) According to the published documents of Bhagat Singh and his comrades, Bhagat Singh had written an article on the problem of untouchables under the name ‘Vidrohi’ in ‘Kirti’ of June 1928: ‘The Question of the Untouchables’. However, it is beyond understanding why Bhagat Singh used to write under a pseudonym.
There is a background to this article, which is mentioned in the introduction of the article as follows: ‘The Congress session was held in Kakinada in 1923. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in his presidential speech, suggested dividing the present-day scheduled castes, which were called untouchables in those days, into Hindu and Muslim missionary institutions. The rich Hindus and Muslims were ready to give money to make this class distinction permanent. At the same time, when there was an atmosphere of debate on this issue, Bhagat Singh wrote an article called ‘The Question of the Untouchables.’ In this article, concrete suggestions have been given for the progress of the working class by estimating its strength and limitations. Why did Muhammad Ali Jinnah suggest dividing the Untouchables between Hindus and Muslims? Bhagat Singh has not discussed this topic in the article. However, it was a very interesting topic. It was directly related to the strength of numbers, based on which the division of power was to be done. With the aim of increasing their numbers, Hindu organizations were trying to include Untouchables in the Hindu fold by running Shuddhi and Untouchability-Eradication-Movement, which was being carried out by the leaders of Congress and Arya Samaj. One of its aims was also to prevent Untouchables from converting to Islam and Christianity. On the other hand, Muslim groups were running the ‘Tabligh’ movement to include Untouchables in Islam. Their aim was also to increase their numbers by converting Untouchables to Islam. But where all discrimination against Untouchables ended after reciting Kalma and becoming Muslims, in Hindu society discrimination did not end even after purification, they remained Untouchables. The Shuddhi movement of Hindus was a hoax, under which Untouchables were taken to the well of a Hindu after bathing with Vedic mantras, and they became pure. Later that well was also purified. In this way, purification of Hindus was nothing but a political trick. Actually, Hindus needed purification, because they were the ones with impure mentality, but they were flowing the Ganga upside down by purifying Dalits. Bhagat Singh has also not criticized this upside-down Ganga in his article, although he has definitely shown the trickery of Hindus. For example – ‘When the conference of Hindu Mahasabha was held in Patna under the chairmanship of Lala Lajpat Rai, who has been an old supporter of untouchables, a heated debate broke out. There was a good argument. The problem was whether the untouchables had the right to wear the sacred thread or not? And do they have the right to study the Vedas and scriptures? Big social reformers were furious, but Lalaji made everyone agree and saved the honour of Hinduism by accepting these two things.’
Bhagat Singh has not mentioned what were those two things that Lalaji got accepted. However, he had caught the hypocrisy of Hindu social reformers like Malviya. For example –
‘These days big social reformers like Malviya (Madan Mohan Malviya), great lovers of untouchables and what not, first get a garland put around their neck by a sweeper, but consider themselves impure without taking a bath with clothes on. What a great trick is this?’
Further, Bhagat Singh has mentioned about Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs also increasing their numbers by including untouchables. For example – ‘Everyone was worried about increasing the number of their community to demand more rights. Muslims put more emphasis on it. They started giving equal rights to untouchables by converting them to Islam. This hurt the ego of Hindus. Competition increased. There were riots too. Gradually, there were fights among Sikhs on the issue of removing the sacred thread of untouchables or cutting their hair. Now all three communities are pulling untouchables towards themselves. There is a lot of noise about this. On the other hand, Christians are quietly increasing their status. Well, all this commotion is removing the curse of the country’s misfortune.’
Here, what has Bhagat Singh called the country’s misfortune and what is the curse? There is no need to clarify this.
Now let us also consider the root cause of this problem, which had made untouchables prominent in politics. This problem was the population of untouchables. The first census in India was conducted in 1881, but no attempt was made to classify the various Hindu castes into upper and lower or upper caste and untouchable. The second census was conducted in 1891, and for the first time an attempt was made by the Census Commissioner to classify the population based on caste, race and category. But this was only an attempt. It was not implemented. The third census was conducted in 1901. In this census, the principle of classification based on castes present in the society was adopted. Upper caste Hindus started protesting this principle, and started demanding removal of the question related to caste in the census. But this protest had no effect on the Census Commissioner. He considered the enumeration based on caste important and necessary. He said, ‘Whatever view may be adopted regarding the advantages or disadvantages of caste as a social institution, it is impossible to imagine any useful discussion on population questions in India, if caste is not an important element in it. Caste still forms the basis of the Indian social fabric and caste records are still the best guide to changes in the various social strata in Indian society.’
But the 1901 census did not give any accurate data of the population of untouchables. There were two reasons for this. First, the Census Commissioner did not have any criteria to decide who was an untouchable? And the second reason was that the section of the population, which was economically and educationally backward, but was not untouchable, was mixed with the real untouchables. Therefore, when the fourth census was conducted in 1911, ten criteria were made to identify untouchables, which were as follows –
- Untouchables are those who do not believe in the supremacy of Brahmins;
- Those who do not take mantras from any Brahmin or Hindu Guru;
- Those who do not believe in the Vedas;
- Those who do not worship Hindu gods;
- Those in whose homes Brahmins do not perform rituals;
- Those whose priests are not Brahmins;
- Those whose entry into Hindu temples is prohibited;
- Those whose contact makes Hindus impure;
- Those who bury their dead; and,
- Those who eat beef and do not consider the cow sacred.
This criterion was also adopted in the 1921 and 1931 census. Based on this identification, the population of untouchables in India came out to be about six crores. This meant that a part of the representation received by Hindus had to be left for the untouchables. Therefore, all the efforts of the Congress, Hindu Mahasabha and Arya Samaj to bring untouchables into the Hindu fold were being made to deny them representation. In this regard, the attention of the government was first drawn by Muslim leaders in 1910 by giving a memorandum, in which it was said that the political representation given to Hindus is not of the entire Hindus, but of the upper caste Hindus, because their argument was that untouchables are not Hindus.
Now let us consider the question that in what background did Bhagat Singh write the article ‘Achhut Ka Sawal’ (The Question of Untouchables) and what was its purpose? Muhammad Ali Jinnah had suggested dividing the untouchables into Hindus and Muslims in the 1923 session of the Congress, but Bhagat Singh wrote the article five years later in 1928. Why so late? An event has its effect immediately, not after many years. This means that the article is not inspired by Jinnah’s suggestion, but the source of its inspiration is some other event. What is this other event? It is important to know this. One reason is also present in Bhagat Singh’s article. That is Noor Muhammad’s statement given in the Bombay Council in 1926, in which he says that when you refuse to give even water to a person, when you do not allow them to study in school, then what right do you have to demand political rights? Bhagat Singh has supported Noor Muhammad’s opinion. In 1925, five thousand Chamars in the town of Ujhani in Uttar Pradesh had converted to Islam. This news was also on Bhagat Singh’s notice. Kanpur’s ‘Pratap’ not only published it prominently but also wrote an editorial criticizing it. Bhagat Singh also noticed the welcome of the Simon Commission by Dalit organizations in the whole country in 1928. Congress and Hindus boycotted it. Later, Lala Lajpat Rai’s protest against it became the cause of his death. But a bigger reason than all these reasons was the emergence of the untouchables as a separate political and religious force. All over India, the untouchables were establishing their new identity as ‘Moolnivasi’ and movements representing the natives were going on in every province, such as Adi Dravida, Adi Andhra, Adi Karnataka, Adi Hindu, Adi Dharmi etc. These movements of the untouchables were establishing their identity as the third force of the native Indians parallel to the political powers of Hindus and Muslims. This new power had posed a crisis of division of representation in front of both Hindu and Muslim politics. Till now, Hindu and Muslim leaders were trying to eat the cake of political representation in half, but now Dalits had also started demanding their share, because they had clearly said that they are not Hindus, and they want their separate rights. This was going to harm Hindus, not Muslims. That is why all Brahmin organizations including Congress, Hindu Mahasabha and Arya Samaj were disturbed and worried, and were doing all sorts of hoaxes to somehow convince the untouchables. I am calling their love for untouchables a hoax because they did not have any human feelings towards Dalits then, nor do they have it now. They were against the development of Dalit castes then and are against it in this twenty-first century too.
In fact, this rise of Untouchables as a new political power is the real background of Bhagat Singh’s article. He has mentioned this in his article in the form of ‘Adidharma Mandal’. In front of them were Mangu Ram’s Ad-Dharma in Punjab and Swami Achhutanand’s Adi-Hindu movement in Uttar Pradesh, which had deflated the Congress’ Swaraj movement, Hindus’ social reform and Shuddhi movement. The Shuddhi movement of Hindus ended only when the Adi -Hindu movement began. These two movements of the 1930s arose like a storm and were shaking the Swaraj politics of Hindus like a hurricane. They set their own separate and new agendas for the struggle of Dalits. These movements established the new identity of the untouchables as ‘Adi-Hindu’ and ‘Ad-Dharmi’ (natives) and demanded their separate political rights along with their separate religion. In his article, Bhagat Singh is not in support of this new consciousness of the untouchables, but is against it. He calls this new religious consciousness and politics of the untouchables a conspiracy of the government machinery i.e. the British. He writes—
‘When the untouchables saw that because of them there were riots between them (Hindus and Muslims), and everyone was considering them as their food, why shouldn’t they get organized separately? The British government may or may not have had any hand in the implementation of this idea, but it is certain that the government machinery had a great hand in its propaganda. Organizations like ‘Aaddharma-Dharma Mandal’ are the result of the propaganda of that idea.’
Here Bhagat Singh is describing the concept of Ad-dharm as the result of the propaganda of the British. Meaning, the untouchables calling themselves ‘Moolnivasi’ and identifying themselves as Ad-Dharmi seemed to him to be the propaganda of the British. Therefore, instead of supporting the new identity and new religious identity of the untouchables, he was seeing it as a colonial conspiracy. This clearly meant that he wanted to see the untouchables in the same Hindu fold, in which they were not even humans, but slaves deprived of all human rights. What can be said about the religious views of a materialistic Communist thinker in the context of the Untouchables?
Not only Bhagat Singh, the entire Hindu system of that time was perturbed by this new identity of the untouchables. There were two reasons for this. First, the untouchables were getting organised politically separately from the Hindus and were demanding separate political representation for themselves from the British government; and second, they were not only rebelling against Hinduism, but were also getting organised as non-Hindus. At some places, they were even leaving Hinduism and becoming Christians and Muslims. This was a big threat to the Hindu Mahasabha, Arya Samaj and Swarajists. In Punjab, the Arya Samaj started the ‘Valmiki Dharma’ to counter the Ad-dharma and keep the Mehtar community, which is called Chuhra in Punjab, in the Hindu fold. An Arya Samaj Brahmin named Amichand Sharma wrote a book named ‘Valmiki Prakash’ and propagated Valmiki-Dharma in the Chuhra community. It was this Amichand Sharma who gave them the name Valmiki and linked them to Rishi Valmiki, the author of Ramayana, which has today taken the form of an institutional religion even more widely there. It was this religion that kept the Valmiki community away from Dr. Ambedkar’s movement, and linked it to Gandhi and the Congress. Swami Achhootanand had started the Adi-Hindu movement in Uttar Pradesh, which had an impact in the whole of North India. The Congress was so scared of this movement that Lala Lajpat Rai fielded a Harijan leader Chaudhary Bihari Lal against him, who called Achhootanand by uncivilized and indecent names like ‘Jutanand’. But this protest proved unsuccessful, and Adi-Hindu Mahasabha of Achhootanand gave a grand welcome to the Simon Commission in the entire state, in which thousands of untouchables participated.
What was the solution to the untouchable problem in Bhagat Singh’s view? It is very important to see this, because how does Bhagat Singh search for the social problem of India, which has no solution in Communism? It would be interesting to know this. But there is no doubt that he considers the problem of untouchability to be a gift of the caste system of Brahmanism, and refutes it. As—
‘Now another question arises that what should be the right solution to this problem? Its answer is very important. First, it should be decided that all humans are equal and no one is born different either by birth or by division of work. That is, because a man is born in a poor sweeper’s house, he will clean filth all his life, and he has no right to get any kind of development work in the world, these things are useless. In this way, our ancestors Aryans treated them unjustly and scolded them by calling them lowly and started making them do low-grade work. At the same time, there was also a concern that they might rebel, so the philosophy of reincarnation was propagated that this is the result of your sins of your previous birth. Now what can be done? Spend the day quietly! In this way, by preaching patience to them, they pacified them for a long time. But they committed a grave sin. They destroyed the humanity in humans. They destroyed the feelings of self-confidence and self-reliance. They committed a lot of oppression and injustice. Today is the time to atone for all that.’
Bhagat Singh should really be praised for the fact that he held Hindus and their Brahminical philosophy responsible for keeping a large population untouchable. But he did not accept that the untouchables were not Hindus, whereas untouchability itself is a major sociological proof of their being non-Hindus, based on which they were identified in the census. Blaming Hindus for the plight of untouchables is one thing, and recognizing their problem is another. The problem of untouchables was not that Hindus should repent for their sins and treat them humanely, which is perhaps not possible in Hinduism. The problem of untouchables was not so easy that Bhagat Singh said, ‘Keeping these classes in front of us, we should neither call them untouchables nor consider them untouchables. That is it, the problem is solved.’ Not calling or considering any community untouchable is a good thing from a human point of view. But if a religion itself calls a community untouchable and teaches to keep social distance from it, then the question is not just about calling or considering it untouchable. Then the question becomes one of religious belief, which forces even social workers like Madan Mohan Malviya to get a garland from a sweeper and take a bath with clothes on to purify themselves. The problem of untouchables was both religious and political. If the untouchables were Hindus, then perhaps Hindus would not have become impure by coming in contact with them. The untouchables were not Hindus, that is why Hindus did not want to give them political rights. The untouchables were not Hindus, that is why Gandhi sat on a hunger strike against their political rights. However, Bhagat Singh was not alive to see Gandhi’s protest and hunger strike. He had been martyred. Therefore, we cannot say what his reaction would have been to Gandhi’s protest? Perhaps he would have been with Gandhi, because he too would have seen the separate rights of the untouchables as a division of Hindu society.
But Bhagat Singh was not against the untouchables getting organized. He considered it a need of the hour. He wrote –
‘But this work cannot be done until the untouchable community organizes itself. We think that their organizing themselves separately and demanding equal rights as they are equal in number to Muslims is a very promising sign. Either end the problem of communal discrimination, or give them their separate rights. It is the duty of the councils and assemblies to give them complete freedom to use schools, colleges, wells and roads. Not verbally, but by taking them along and making them climb the wells. Enroll their children in schools. But in the Legislative Assembly where a hue and cry is raised on the pretext of religion over the bill presented against child marriage, how can they dare to include the untouchables there? Bhagat Singh had caught the right nerve of the Hindus. And this nerve was not to accept any such social reform which is not permitted by religion. This nerve was caught by Dr. Ambedkar before him. He has written that on the pitiable condition of the untouchables, Hindus are often heard saying that ‘we should do something for the untouchables’. But they are not heard saying that ‘we should do something to change the Hindus.’ He said that there is a religious gap between Hindus and untouchables, which is not possible to bridge. If the question was not about taking power from the British, then the ‘Shuddhi-Andolan’ of Hindu organizations for the untouchables would not have worked. And if there was no British rule in India, but only Hindu rule, then no Hindu would have even raised his eyes towards the untouchables. Bhagat Singh makes an emotional appeal to the untouchables, which no Hindu leader did, ‘Arise, you real public servants called untouchables, rise! Look at your history. You were the real strength of Guru Govind Singh’s army! Shivaji could do everything only by trusting you, due to which his name is still alive today. Your sacrifices are written in golden letters. We do not understand the great favour you are doing by serving the people daily, increasing their happiness and making their lives possible.’ Still, Bhagat Singh was not a Dalit, he was an upper caste. That is why he did not appeal to the untouchables to give up all the dirty professions that make them untouchables. This appeal was made by Dalit leaders. In Maharashtra, Dr. Ambedkar and in North India, Swami Achhootanand. And what Bhagat Singh has said in his article about the organization and political rights of the untouchables was the main agenda of Swami Achhootanand’s Adi-Hindu movement.
But Bhagat Singh ends his article by giving such advice to the untouchables that he pushes the entire untouchable struggle against imperialism in support of Swaraj. For example –
‘But remember, do not fall into the trap of bureaucracy. It does not want to help you, rather it wants to make you, its pawn. This capitalist bureaucracy is the real reason for your slavery and poverty. Therefore, you should never join them. Avoid their tricks. Then everything will be fine. You are the real proletariat, get organized. You will not suffer any loss. Only the chains of slavery will be broken. Get up and revolt against the present system.’ Here Bhagat Singh is asking the untouchables to revolt against the British Raj. Why? What harm did the British Raj do to the untouchables? Did the British make them untouchables? Did the British impose untouchability on them? Did the British close the doors of education for them? Did the British give them dirty professions? Did the British keep them poor and miserable for thousands of years? Did Bhagat Singh not know that all this was not done by the British, but by Hindu religion and its creators Brahmin-Thakur-Baniyas? Then why should the untouchables revolt against the British? Did Bhagat Singh want to deprive the untouchables of even the little rights that the British Raj had given them?
Would the untouchables get political power by rebelling against the British Raj? Bhagat Singh did not live to see that the Hindus, especially the Brahmins, took over the power from the British, and they enjoyed the full pleasure of complete independence. What could the Hindu government, which did not give the backward castes their legal rights for forty years, give to the untouchables? This is the Amrit Kaal of freedom. But even today, Dalit-discourse, OBC-discourse, tribal-discourse and minority-discourse are the biggest and most real discussions in Indian society. In reality, such discussions should not take place in democracy. But if they are taking place, then it is because the government did not play any role in making Indian society democratic. These are not just literary debates but the struggles of Indian politics which are going on between Dalits, backward classes, tribals and minority communities and the upper castes and this cannot be denied by any argument of power.
. Ambedkar had said very clearly that ‘political power for the untouchables does not matter in terms of more or less, but what matters is that it should not be dependent on Hindus. If the untouchables depend for their representation in the legislatures on those Hindus, whose political life is directly based on opposing the economic and social interests of the untouchables, then that political power is of no use to the untouchables.
But there is no doubt that today the Dalit classes need to follow the advice of Bhagat Singh to overthrow the current power.
