Dalit

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Introduction

You are a Ravidasi or a Valmiki, or an Indian Buddhist, or an Indian Christian. Your parents may have even described themselves hesitantly as Hindus when asked by the white people as the white people do not understand various Indic tradtions. But some of you do not feel 100% sure about your personal identity. Everyone from South Asia seem to be so sure and so proud of his or hers roots and identity, but like the character in Jackie Chan’s film in “Who Am I? you seem to be in a state of amnesia although you feel at times that your roots are noble. At other times you may feel like the character Neo in the Matrix who has something of greatness in him but he has first to be reborn before he can find his true identity which is hidden from him as he is kept isolated and fed on liquefied waste. It does actually feel like it at times. You may have been subjected to casteist baiting in the school playground or outside or in the pub. It may even be the place of work but you feel powerless to act. Your baiters may even have been the supposedly caste free Sikhs. Welcome to the real world!

In this booklet we give you a choice of either the white or the red pill which means that if you opt out for the white pill, you don’t need to read this any further. You will be no wiser nor different than before. Alternatively you can swallow the red pill which means that your thinking about your identity will never be the same again.

The fact that your are still reading this means that you have chosen the red pill, new friends and a new meaning in life.

Time to learn some mental Jiu-jitsu and about the Matrix.

The Matrix in this instance is the caste system which controls just about every aspect of your life and your relative’s life in India. What is in the Matrix appear to be “real” is very often unreal and what may at times feels unreal is actually real. In this booklet we are going to take you to a 5000 years long trip detailing the fantastic history of your ancestors culminating in the state of society both in India and in the Diaspora.

After that the next step is up to you.

No doubt you will have many questions to ask even after that.

Indus Valley Civilisation - The Story of your ancestors

We start at circa 3500 BCE. The place is north northwest South Asia. From humble villages to flourishing cities around the valley cut out by the Indus River have sprung up by 2500 BCE. This civilisation covers an area of roughly one million square kilometres. It is one of the oldest civilisations on this planet and one of the most inventive. What seem like very modern concept such as the grid system city planning, complete with baths and refuse collection systems, duo decimal weights, knowledge of astronomy and hydraulics, international trade etc. etc. as they say. Even one of the earliest discoveries of silk has been placed in this civilisation. This is a home grown civilisation.

It is a seemingly peaceful civilisation with very few weapons and articles of war. It has characteristics but no evidence of civil strife. This would come later when the outsiders arrive from South Russia steppes on the scene of the already decaying Indus Valley cities and towns. By this time circa 1500 BCE cites are being abandoned due to complex socio-ecological factors and are no longer the centres of power. It is very easy for the new arrivals to take over small town and villages and establish their over lordship. The Aryan culture is an aggressive barbarian culture, relatively speaking. It places a great emphasis on weapons of war and the war itself, loot, gambling, cattle raiding, fighting even one’s own kith and kin in order to control even larger and larger territory and cattle grazing grounds. Already the outsiders together with the local intermarrying elites are calling themselves Aryans or nobles. Such terms can only be relative. The subjugated non-Aryans are the vast majority of the population, the manual workers, first seen as Dasas (or slaves) and then later as Sudras or menials. Dasas were an ethnic groups, once very powerful but the Aryans had reduced them to helots, hence the very term Dasa became to mean slaves.

The Aryans when they came to India were split into 3 theoretical social classes called varnas. These were namely Brahmins (priests), Kashtriyas (warriors) and the Vis or the multitude farmers/traders. These were not fixed but fluid categories. Flexibility at the top of the class pyramid was balanced by the near rigidity for those near the bottom of the heap.

More fighting meant more loot for those at the top. Kashtriyas helped by the priest is installed as the ruler, a change which is justified on religious grounds. By the time of the last chapter of the Rig Veda (a holy Aryan verbal writ) is compiled it is very clear that the religion cements the oppression and exploitation; society is extremely class divided and even the second layer from the bottom of the Aryan society is described as “to be removed at will… to be slain at will”. Like in the Aztec society, people could even be openly sacrificed in the Ashavmedha ritual. A chapter in the Rig Veda describes the priests as the head of the sacrificed cosmic man, the warriors as his arms, the ordinary people as the stomach and the menials as the feet.

This describes on a religious plane what had happened to North Indian society from 1500 BCE to 500 BCE.

But this is not the origin of the caste system as it is known today. This was the varna or status system which already had racial overtones.

Aryanisation of India

Aryan craving for more land, loot and people to subjugate and exploit coincides with the discovery of and the sophisticated use of the iron technology. This culminates in the great Aryan expansion eastwards and southwards. Non-Aryan India was mostly gentler matriarchal culture where either garden agriculture or hunter gathering way of life predominated. It was also relatively speaking a lot less class divided and a lot more eco-conscious, sustainable, plough free economy and culture. The Aryan expansion – just like the white man would do in the Americas – into the indigenous territory, clearing vast swaths of forest by burning and introducing the iron tipped plough. The natives had to be either killed off, subjugated into semi-slavery or if it was a militaristic tribe assimilated. There was no escape for Adivasi way of life. Assimilate if found useful to the Aryans, usually at the low rung of the society or die – this was the usual choice. Resistance in the long run was usually futile. Those who fought back, refused to assimilate and clung to their ancestral way of life were usually eventually overpowered and forced to accept the most inhuman and menial jobs. This was the punishment meted out to them as an example to the others. Demonisation of the resisting tribe was common. They like the “blood thirsty” Apaches and other Native American would be known by a variety of names which became synonymous for monsters, demons, ghouls, ugly, distorted, cruel, mean, sinful, and criminal and without any redeeming features. In North America the only good Indian was a dead Indian. In India the only good indigenous was the one who submitted and who was loyal. Hanuman the monkey servant of the God King Rama falls perfectly in this category whilst Ravana the chieftain of Lanka is a 10 headed demon.

Craft specialisation was common in India tribal clans. Some tribes/clans for example specialised in iron working. Very often the skills would be passed on from father to son. This did not mean that the son of a carpenter could only be good at carpentry, he could become something else.

But this would not be allowed in the new society. Aryans needed craft specialists who could be kept together, forced to follow an ancestral occupation and therefore be exploited much more easily en-mass and cheaply as pool of workers who were kept in check by military and political means and bonded by religious rituals, in order to do the bidding of the Aryan overlords. The craftsmen working with their hands were called Shudras as opposed to the Aryan Brahmin priests, Kashtriyas or warriors and Vaisayas (the multitude) who were farmer/traders. Under these four theoretical and fictional categories could be found multitudes of ex-tribal clans converted to castes by force. The system is fluid at this time where as is always the case in India, class could override ‘caste’. Much later yet another category came into existence. This consisted of rule breakers, rebels, people who married in a caste which was separated by status difference, considered unacceptable by those in power. It also consisted of people who kept on resisting the Aryan advance to the very bitter end. These people were punished for their audacity and given the lowest status in the new hierarchy. Only the very menial jobs were allocated to them. These were the ancestors of the present day Valmikis and Ravidasis and later on Buddhists and materialists and Tantrics. Scholars have traced the fall from grace of a tribe called Nishad who were at one time very respectable and were renowned for their military prowess. Nevertheless the Nishads were always retreating in front of the Aryans and eventually their status fell to those of ‘others’ or the untouchables. So obviously there was resistance too.

What came out of the clash of Adivasi and Aryans way of life was what neither side wanted. The future group of people who would be known as Hindus took everything from the Adivasis society, religion, medicine, culture, customs, music, myths. They refined these and passed these on as their own, thus denying Adivasis and Dalits their own identity. There is a tendency, even now, to define the Adivasis as beyond the pale of Hindu society but the fact is that most aspects of the Indian Hindu culture can be traced back to the Adivasi society. It is the thick veneer known as Brahminism which is the outside influence; the underlying reality is that of tribal India, even in modern India in the 21^st century.

But there was resistance too!

Bhagwan Valmik

Aryan expansion into east and south India was facilitated by iron weapons and tools, an inhumane caste system, wholesome destruction of the eco-system – god Agni devouring forests complete with all animals and forest dwellers. There were native people who had also learnt Sanskrit the lingua franca of Aryans. They had also organised themselves with their own leader. One such lineage was that of Valmikis, a patronym much like the title ‘Guru’ in Sikhism. The first Valmikis also try to split their opposition by giving shelter to their enemies and to large extent initially they succeeded. However their ethos was humanistic, egalitarianism, non-oppressor relationship with women, anti-caste, anti-exploitation and eco-conscious. But they were pitted against the new plough based culture, which was much more productive based as it was on exploitation, greed and aggression. People resisted for a long time but as in the Americas, time and history worked against them. The latter descendants of the Valmiks were defeated and forced to accept conditional subjugation. It were the latter Valmikis who compiled the tradition of the earlier Valmikis into the original uncontaminated Ramayana which is to be differentiated from the later much distorted Brahmnical version of the same epic. In the original Ramayana, Ravana is a tribal leader, democratically consulting his kinsmen whereas Rama is an autocrat. There are no taxes or slaves in Lanka, nor is their any sign of any plough agriculture. Nevertheless, prosperity reigns in Lanka. Women seem to find their true love and are not subjugated into patriarchal marriage for in the old society was matriarchal where women had real rights. In Rama’s kingdom the position of women is that of a property which is ‘controlled by her father when young, by her husband when married and by her sons when she is old’.

The next rationalist person to challenge the incipient caste system, changing into the classical caste system, was no other than the well known person called the Buddha or the enlightened one.

The Buddha

Buddha’s story and Buddhism are too well known for us to narrate it here. Most of it is historical but there also elements of legends and myths there too some of which have their basis in Brahminical distortion. For example it is true that all life has some suffering attached to it but as old materialists known as the Lokayatics would retort “Why throw away happiness just because all life starts and ends in suffering?”

So what made Buddhism flourish where the descendants of the Valmiks failed although the latter survived for near enough a millennia as Buddhism did in India. Buddhism had it closest followers in newly formed urban cities. There were many traders in their upper ranks of Buddhism as the newly opened territories and cities as well as the international trade routes made the production, transportation and selling of commodities lucrative occupations. Artisans and traders of all description naturally formed numerous followers of the Buddha who was for ‘actual merit’ and not for birth based merit just as he was for the Middle Path of peaceful assimilation of the tribal population without large scale jungle clearance and eco-genocide, forced resettlement and animal sacrifices. Such a message naturally fell on receptive ears of the people who suffered from all of the above. Nearly 2000 years later Sikhism although theistic in nature would provide a similar basis of ‘equality’ for the upwardly mobile artisan/trader classes. In such an environment one’s caste or hereditary occupation would not be considered, only what one was capable of doing. True merit but not birth privilege could make or break an international trading expedition or an expedition passing through dangerous location such as tribal territory. People separated by vast distances but united by religion and anti-caste ideology found the new religion very attractive. Compared to Brahminism it was rational, almost scientific, especially at a psychological level although ultimately it was idealistic. It was a religion which had tested and absorbed what was the best in all of the old Indian philosophies in the person of Gautama the Buddha himself. All of this was tailored to the new conditions. Being merit based (karma in this life and not another) it was found very attractive by the lower orders. It was the first time for a long time, that the ordinary people were told that they did not have to behave in accordance with the dictates of the Brahminical caste order in order to be reborn into a higher caste. They could even find nirvana or liberation in this life.

But for a significant section of the society even this was not possible. Runaway slaves, debtors, lepers, tribal population, soldiers in the king’s service could not join the Buddhist order of Sangha. These were not the only compromises that later Buddhism made with the ruling classes. It also accepted land and other donations from the kings who always patronised both Brahminism and Buddhism at the same time, sometimes favouring the latter, and at other times especially much later, it favoured the former. It was because of this that the rebellion benefitted only a certain section of the population. The trading guilds engaged in production and distribution of luxury goods perhaps got most out of Buddhism. For many after having been trampled by a caste based societal order, the very psychological balm that Buddhism offered was enough for them to favour this religion over any other. The kings kept the balance by asymmetrical patronage depending on circumstances. However large areas of India which was still forested and yet amenable to exploitation could still be exploited but not in the old Aryan manner. For this to happen Brahninism itself had to change and to revive itself in a new shape.

Brahminical Revival:

Brahminical revival adopted certain techniques from Buddhism. Destroying ecological resources wholesale, holding mass scale animal sacrifices to show off the nascent king’s power by the Brahmin priests having to give up your cattle for sacrifice without explanation, all these were gradually declared passé in the new Brahminism. Ahimsa or non-violence – wars were not very conductive to trade – respect for animals were adopted. Buddhists also opposed mass killing of either animals in the jungles in ritual sacrifices beloved of the Brahmins. Brahmins made the cow holy. Brahmins also stole Buddhist dialectical philosophy and incorporated this in the holy Bhagvat Gita. It was not a question of borrowing your opponent’s clothes only but also his body also. And it worked. The effect it had was this: When the internal and more importantly external international trade declined to such an extent that the negative multiplier effect became pronounced, the economy forced the emphasis on agriculture and feudal culture based on small kingdoms rather than the large scale jungle clearing settling people in these empires. Small kingdoms are self sufficient, being based on largely agriculture and as such did not need large scale or long distance trades. Local trade would have sufficed. This was one factor in the decline of power of Buddhism as its core power base was small scale independent producers, trade guilds and rich traders although the bottom layer of society also supported Buddhism. Since the kingdoms were much smaller they could not afford to have large scale armies and the method of controlling rebellious population had to be fit for the new era called Kali Yuga or the age of darkness. The time is now around the beginning of the common era.

A Brahmin ideologue called Manu collated existing and new proposed caste laws in different kingdoms and codified these in a reference named after Manu, called the Manav Dharamshastra or Manu Smirti. This Manu Smirti remains to this day a hated text amongst Dalits as it left them with not even a glimmer of hope. Military sanctions against the lower castes remained but these were now supplemented by additional social sanctions which were to be overseen by Brahmin judges and applied collectively to the servile classed. Thus the need for costly army could be almost eliminated. This was the ideal four varna based caste system. Other law-givers coming after Manu, such as Yajanvalkaya would quote Manu approvingly. In the 20^th century Dr B R Ambedkar would symbolically burn the Manu Smirti as a gesture of where he thought the root cause of caste system and untouchability lay.

The kings on their parts granted land and certain other land and other rights with temples to the Brahimins who now became the local judges, passing judgements on rebels, on caste disputes which in essence were class disputes, marriage matters (read gender oppression as Manu was also an arch woman hater) and anything to do with property (untouchables and Sudras were kept too poor to pay taxes). Local officials called Dandanayaks (rod wielders) and Mahadandanayaks were appointed to mete out punishments locally. Previously this was either the caste council or ultimately the king’s prerogative. The caste laws were made notoriously rigid that it permanently split apart the bottom rung of the Indian society never to unite even in the early 21^st century. The non-untouchable Sudra artisan previously with the untouchables now benefitted from the new arrangement.

The new temple land grant and being the local judge and frequently also the landlord gave the Brahmin tremendous power which would not be challenged till the Muslim and British rule in India. Even the new rulers found it expedient to keep the Brahmin as a low level representative of the Hindu society, taking orders from above and keeping the lower strata in their place. It was now less the large scale military threat the kept the large scale rebellions – such as those in China – from occurring. Rather it were the local punishments and threats of violence, coupled with disunity fostered by caste divisions and untouchability and ultimately the threat of invocation of kings power which kept the rebellious population in check. It was after all the king’s duty to keep the varnasharma or the caste system intact.

Once the Brahmins consolidated and expanded their power it was easy for them to later root out Buddhism from the country of its birth. It took a millennium and a half for them to do so. The factors for these are complex but in essence it was a struggle of agriculture based feudal society against a commodity producing trading economy people. Sometimes this fight was subdued and the kings patronised both sects, sometimes it was intense and when large scale internal and especially external trade ceased to matter the fight went in favour of Brahminism which killed and digested Buddhism, including its philosophy and in some cases its teaching of ahimsa or non-violence as its own. But this is not the whole story.

Islam came to India but it made a pact an unofficial pact with Hinduism. There were to be no attacks on the caste system. Brahmins were to be spared but not the remaining Buddhist monks and monasteries, for the Muslim trader would replace the Buddhist. Hindu temples would be attacked sometimes for financial and political reasons but not because these were hotbeds of the caste philosophy. Paradoxically many Dalits joined Islam on the lowest social rung in the outer areas where Islam was not strong. Dalits in conquered territories knew that it did not really matter whether a king was Hindu or Muslim, the theoretical four varna system would be kept intact as it was in the interest of the rulers to do so. Indian Islam under the Hafinite legal code adopted a theory which had people of learning, people of arms, people of trade and menials as one of the model of society.

But resistance never dies.

Gorakhnath

Some Buddhists fled to China, Nepal and Tibet etc. There was a time when there was allegedly a price on the head of every Buddhist monk’s head in India.

The renowned Kashmiri historian Kalhana who lived in the 12^th century recorded how king Jalanka ordered the demolition of Buddhist Viharas because the sound of clarions disturbed his sleep. King Abhimanyu had 100’s of Buddhists killed year after year. King Nara also of Kashmir had viharas destroyed and settled Brahmins in Buddhist villages. “The massacre of the Buddhists and destruction of their monasteries did not stop till Buddhism was rooted out of the valley (of Kashmir)…. South Indian kings also turned on the Buddhists. King Sudhavan issued the edict “From the Bridge of Rama in Ceylon to the Himalayas, “Who does not slay the Buddhists, both old and young shall be slain”.

In some areas both inside and outside of India where Buddhism was not critically weak, Buddhist influence remained but not as before. In other areas many Buddhists were forced to practice their religion underground under the guise of Siva worship, a Hindu deity who was once a tribal god.

Guru Gorakh Nath (around 1000CE) was the founder of the Kanphata yogis or Buddhist Sidhas. He fought against animal sacrifices, produced a more rational philosophy, took out worst tantric practices that had been incorporated into Buddhism under pressure. Like many Buddhists he laid emphasis on Hatha Yoga or physical yoga. Gorakh Nath is known as the master yogi as was the Buddha himself. Many of the bandhs or locks in yoga are named after Gorakh Nath’s disciples for example Jalandhar lock is named after Jalandhar Nath. Most of Gorakh Naths disciples came from the despised and untouchable background. His disciples were early chemists and wonder workers who would treat the poor without pay. In South India the tradition of Sidha Ayurveda medicine can be traced all the way back to Guru Gorakh Nath. Ayurveda itself was not invented by any god but came from the accumulated knowledge and practices of the ordinary Indians and low caste mendicants. Ayurveda which dealt in both meat and liquor as medicine, examining putrid body and all other live bodily discharges could never have been invented and developed by a bodily-pollution taboo-ridden priestly caste in India. Nevertheless the knowledge of Ayurveda was taken over by the upper castes.

Gorakhnath’s teaching was so powerful that even the very progressive elements who criticised his followers for being beggars and hypocrites were forced to adopt many of Gorakh Nath’s ideas in their own philosophy. Both Guru Nanak and Kabir who were staunch anti-caste, criticised Gorakh Nath’s followers (Gorakh Nath had died many centuries back) for their superstitions but adopted the reverence of the Guru, non-vegetarian diet and anti-caste ideology in their own teachings. If Gorakh Nath had not kept the anti-caste sentiments alive, then the Bhakti movement in India would perhaps have been delayed many more centuries.

Kabir

According to well known Kabir expert Dr Hazarriprasad Divedi, the weavers of Kabir’s caste had rejected the Brahminical hierarchy and they lived as householders (but yogis) – a practice that the latter day Sikhs would follow. Kabir’s ancestor’s practiced weaving and spinning and they believed in Gorkhnath. The God that they worshipped was not Hindu or Vishnu but a formless or Nirguni God. The did not believe in the caste, Hindu Gods or Avatars. Howeever clean their occupation, the Hindus considered them untouchables. After the advent of Islam in India these people became Muslims. They lived mostly in Punjab, Bihar, UP and Bengal. Thus Kabir was subjected to two anti-caste traditions, one Indian and one Muslim. Hence ‘neither Hindu nor Muslim’.

Kabir drew upon Gorakh Nath’s clean Tantric terminology tradition and the newly emerging liberal Muslim Sufi tradition. In this sense he was much like Guru Nanak who was also much influenced by Muslim Sufi tradition. So Kabir was neither a Hindu nor a Muslim but something fundamentally different; a humanist in the wider sense. Kabir, like Nanak was a giant thinker, never afraid to withhold criticism and always speaking for the common man and woman. His poetry has been compared to that of Mohamed Ali the famous boxer.

The influence of Kabir on the thoughts of the normal man and woman of North India can not be exaggerated. After all, much of his thinking reflected early Buddhist and materialistic philosophy. All Bhaktas (devotees of God) and Gurus were forced to use the terms such as Ram, Allah tec. In their works as not to do so could land you in jail or worse still under the executioner’s sword. Shorn of all this Kabir and Guru Ravidas’s philosophy was based on a God who was Nirguni or without any properties or attributes. How was this possible? This was the only way that one could subvert and undermine the caste-based society and ideology in which supreme Hindu god Vishnu himself takes birth in order to protect the varnashram dharma or the caste system. This is what separated the liberal Muslim Sufi and anti-caste holy men from the right wing reactionary Hindu holy men like Tulsi Das, whose motto was “Drums, vagrant, low-castes and women are best beaten”. Tulsi Das also paraded God as Saguni or having all attributes.

Since Kabir was nominally Muslim he had no fear of Hindu priests, but he did not care about the orthodox mullahs either. Best to let Kabir speak for himself from the book The Bijak of Kabir – translated by Linda Hess and Sukhdeo Singh (Motilal Banarsidass New Delhi 1980).

Pandit, look in your heart and acknowledge

Tell me where untouchability

Came from, since you believe in it. (page 17)

Hey pandits, who did not die?

If you find out tell me.

Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva died,

Parvati’s son Ganesha died

………..

One, the original did not die. (page 57)

From one drop a universe

One blood, one meat.

From one drop a universe

Who is Brahmin? Who is Sudra? (Page 67)

If putting on a thread makes you a Brahmin.

What does the wife put on?

That Sudra is touching your food, pandit!

How can you eat it?

Is Brahma bigger than where he came from?

Is the Veda bigger than where it was born fom?

Is the mind bigger than what it believes in? (page 78)

Kabir’ influence was wide ranging. He is also very clearly related to the north India’s greatest saints and gurus namely Ravidas and Nanak. Kabir remains an ever green favourite read amongst people of all liberal hues. Ambedkar whose family was Kabirpanthi, would dedicate one of his books ‘The Untouchables’ to Kabir and Ravidas. He would also consider Sikhism as a religion to convert to although he would ultimately reject it in favour of Buddhism. Kabir remains very central to not only Sikhism but also to all progressive North Indian religious tradition.

Guru Ravidas

Ravidas has a very important place in medieval anti-caste movement. Like Kabir his hymns survive in the holy book of both the Satnamis and those of the Sikhs as well as in the Rajasthani scripture known as Panchvani. Ravidas and not Sir Thoms More in England was the founder of the concept of Utopia which Ravidas named Begumpura or a city without sorrow or taxes. Ravidas also attacked the caste system in a very sophisticated manner, almost like a philosophical rapper turning his opponent’s arguments against him. In this, Ravidas complemented Kabir whose opposition to the caste system took the more assertive and even aggressive form. Both belonged to a school of philosophy called Nirguni, which simply put, stated that God was without any form or properties. One of the implications of this philosophy was that God could not incarnate himself as Rama or Krishna in order to defend the caste system this denying the very cornerstone of the varanasharam dharma as being divinely ordained. God could not be ‘him’ or ‘her’ and therefore ‘it’ was gender neutral. It also meant that since ‘God’ manifested itself immanently as the universe simultaneously, God’s creation had all of infinite properties. Such a God was beyond time and space. This could almost be an atheist and a very scientific viewpoint in India. Putting aside the question of the existence of God – which Nirguni said lived in people’s hearts (but had no attributes!) - such a conceptual framework was very ethical and progressive; almost revolutionary for its time. Although no religion can ever fit comfortably with science, as these are incompatible at practical level, at a philosophical level, Nirguni philosophy can be defended as highly rational in a religiously obsessed society. It was Ravidas who offered Mira Bai a salvation from the royal patriarchal feudal oppression. It is no wonder that Ravidas is still stands a beacon of light for most North Indian Dalits.

Just as Guru Gobind Singh is a continuation of Guru Nanak by military means, the Satnamis were continuation of Guru Ravidas by armed means.

The Satnamis

Satnamis were to Ravidas what Khalsa was to Nanak. Satnamsi had their very own holy book containing the work of Ravidas, Kabir, Nanak and others, just like the Sikhs had their Guru Granth Sahib. Satnamis were staunchly anti-caste and they had amongst their ranks lay people of all castes altogether although Ravidasia’s predominated. They habitually carried weapons, wore iron bangles and chains (steel is the motif for strength). And they did this many decades before the founding of Khalsa in 1699. Such open rebellious acts were bound to lead them to clashes with the then ruling classes who were protected by the top predators in the form of Moguls. The clash is described in a book called the Peacock Throne by Waldemar Hansen.

“Then came the almost supernatural revolt of the Satnami faqirs in May 1672 which sent a current of fear through Imperial Delhi… Inspired by a toothless Joan of Arc who claimed that her magic would make Satnamis invulnerable to bullets, and capable of multiplying like dragon’s teeth, the sect had thousands of men under arms. They pressed towards Delhi, plundering villages, defeating small Mogul forces. Aurengzeb countered with 10,000 men, artillery and even a detachment of his own imperial guard to neutralise Satnami power. He wrote prayers and esoteric talismans which were sewn into Mogul army banners. In a dramatically supernaturally finale which soon became high massacre the Satnami martyrs fell in cascade of blood.”

The torch of revolt quickly passed to Sikhs of the Punjab.

The point to note here is that the Sikhs were successors to the Satnamis and that the Sikhs only succeeded as they happen to be at the right time and place. There was time in the future when despite the fact that the Mogul empire was weak, when the Sikhs were nearly wiped out but luck combined with opportunism gave them the critical breathing space.

Banda Bahadur

Banda means ‘The Man’ and bahadur means ‘brave’. Banda was the man baptised and appointed the commander of the Sikh army by Guru Gobind Singh himself who found himself exhausted after clashing with Moguls. If Gobind Singh was an extraordinary man, then Banda had reputation of literally performing miracles – just like the Satnamis whose demise Banda would avenge - and he had a large armed following even before he met Guru Gobind Singh. But there was a major difference between the two beloved and towering figures. Jats predominated in Guru Gobind Singh’s army whilst the so-called low-castes were in the majority in Banda’s army. Guru Gobind Singh made all Sikhs ritually equal. Banda put this into practice. Any Dalit who jointed Banda could be appointed governor of a province. This was unheard of before. The spectacular victories that Banda achieved were possible because most of the so-called low-castes joined his ranks and fought brilliantly under his banner. The Mogul using the ‘divide and rule’ tactics offered a governorship to a section of Sikhs who were opposed to Banda because they wanted a compromise with the Moguls. They betrayed Banda, fought on the other side at critical times. Banda was captured together with his followers tortured by Moguls and later on anti Banda Sikh lobby finished off the remaining of Banda’s followers. This is one of the most shameful episodes of Sikh history culminating in an even more shameful attempt to justify anti-Banda successors, whilst carrying out a character assassination. Winding the clock forward, Banda’s iconic personality has been made use of by the Jat Sikh Khalistanis as well as the extreme right wing Hindu RSS. These groups never bother to answer the 2 questions. Why did nearly destroy the caste system out of Punjab if he was a Hindu hero and why did one section of the Sikhs helped to actively destroy him.

Joti Rao Phule

Joti Rao was the greatest anti-caste anti-Brhamin movement figure of the mid nineteenth century Maharashtra. How did he manage to oppose the Brahmins when previously under the Peshwas the Brahmins were supreme and untouchables were subjected to extreme inhuman indignities such having to carry a spittoon around their own neck and tying a broomstick to their backside so that they may not pollute any high caste person? The answer lies in Phule’s background as a contractor originating from mali gardener background and those of Phules helpers who came from such similar backgrounds. Although well off they were still nominally Sudras or very low caste. The British needed the Brahmins as a buffer zone, the subjugated Maharaja Sahu who normally would be expected to be the defender of the Hindu faith and also of the caste system, found himself playing the opposite role of opposing the British as well as their allies the Brahmins! Part of Deccan suffered from famines and people were fed up with those who were in power. It is in this backdrop that Phule started his non-Brhamin movement in order to dislodge the Brahmins from their position of power. Phule was very successful in his strategy of targeting the Brahamins. He opposed untouchability, caste system and he was for the equality of women and he opened the first school for women in India. The famous 19^th century feminist Pandita Rama Bai came from these roots. Rama Bai has been written out the upper caste history but she was very much ahead of her times.

Phule as well as doing political work, wrote a number of important pamphlets, books, plays and helped to start up street theatre. In a book titled Gulamgiri or slavery he develops the concept of Aryan overlords creating the caste system to oppress the indigenous peasantry, a concept later incorporated into the constitution of the 20^th century Adi Dharam movement led by Mangoo Ram. Although there were no large scale military invasions by the Aryans and no mass population displacements, Phule’s concept on the whole was correct, subject as he was to the limitations of the archaeological or other knowledge available at that time. Nevertheless there are the Aryan colonisation of India which resulted in the helot like slavery of the Sudra and later those of the untouchable castes.

Phule’s personal life was exemplary. Unfortunately the contractor class which led the non-Brahmin movement and opposed the worst aspects of Brahminism soon sold out for Phule’s death having obtained all the benefits and advantages for themselves. Many years later Ambedkar was to lament this fact. Nevertheless for the people of India and in particular the people of Maharshtra, Phule remains the best anti-caste non-Brahmin beacon for the 19^th century India.