Revisiting Dasgaon, where a 23-year-old drank water from a well and broke a social order

Just off National Highway 66 is Dasgaon, a village of about 3,000 people, in the coastal Raigad district of Maharashtra, about 22 kilometres from Mahad. There is no board to signify its importance in India’s history and the locals don’t remember their people’s contribution to the Dalit movement. What they remember is the shooting of the Mammootty-starrer Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, directed by Jabbar Patel. That was in 2000, and Crawford lake was called Chavdar Tale in the movie, a reference to a lake in Mahad. 

On the banks of the lake, the government guest house, the dak bungalow as the British called it, is being renovated. Here, too there is no board to commemorate an important part of India’s history. This is where Dalit icon Dr. Ambedkar had stayed during what has come to be known as the Mahad Satyagraha.

The ground burns the head and feet, but Crawford lake’s green water calms the eyes. Scores of labourers work on its banks, laying an enmeshment of wires to hold together the rocks that will define the boundary of the lake. “This embankment has pushed the lake inside. It was wider before,” a local resident says.

Amruta and Arun Waghmare who reside near the Kranti Stambh of Mahad Satyagraha in Mahad district of Maharashtra.
| Photo Credit:
EMMANUAL YOGINI

There is soon to be a jogging track and a lawn on the lake’s banks. “It is going to be beautified so we can use it,” says Ataullah Deshmukh, at his ancestral home just beside the lake. Outside his house is a well, again of historic importance, but Deshmukh is unaware of its significance. He is the third generation to inhabit the home. 

He tells stories of his grandfather, Dawood Khan Deshmukh, who started an Urdu school in Tudil village nearby, and spread awareness within his community to send their children to school. His father, Dr. Abdur Rauf Deshmukh, assisted Padmashri awardee Dr. Himmatrao Bawaskar, a physician renowned for his research on the treatment of scorpion sting and snakebite.

“Nobody has ever talked about the well and the lake in the context of a satyagraha,” he says. His wife, a pharmacist, brings out cold sherbet to soothe the afternoon heat.

Their neighbour, Faizar Shaikhnag, says his grandfather, Y.B. Shaikhnag, was the sarpanch of the village. The land where the dak bungalow stands, was owned by his family once upon a time, he adds. “It was given on lease to the government for 99 years. The lease is over now. We are fighting to get the land back.” Shaikhnag too does not know about the satyagraha or about the Dalit mobilisation here. “Our grandfather expired before we were born. Nobody spoke about this,” he says.

A few buildings away stays a retired school teacher, Vasant Dalvi. His daughter-in-law Vishakha Dalvi, says she has never heard any stories about a Dalit mobilisation here.

An awakening and a movement 

“This is a legacy which we fear will be lost,” civil rights activist Subodh More, says. Subodh’s grandfather, Ramchandra Babaji More’s was a Dalit leader, who, in 1926, led a satyagraha to drink water from the well that is now on Deshmukh’s property. 

Subodh More, grandson of Ramchandra Babaji More who led the protest in Dasgaon, stands besides the remains of his ancestral house.
| Photo Credit:
EMMANUAL YOGINI

The satyagraha was prompted by the Bole Resolution by the Bombay Legislative Council in 1923, allowing “the Untouchable Classes be allowed to use all public watering place”. In 1924, the Mahad municipal body also passed a resolution reiterating this. While this was a significant early step against caste-based exclusion in India, it was not implemented. 

Babaji was 23 years old then. He brought people together in Dasgaon, and held a public meeting for the implementation of the Bole Resolution. On December 4, 1926, nearly 300 people, considered untouchables by upper castes, gathered to go to Crawford lake and Crawford well to draw water. Till then, the Dalits were not allowed to drink from public tanks, as those from the upper castes believed it would pollute the water.

The protest was local, and went largely unnoticed. But its success steeled Babaji’s resolve to hold a protest on a larger scale at Mahad, under Dr. Ambedkar’s leadership. On 20 March 1927, scores of protesters, led by Dr. Ambedkar, marched to the public tank of Chavdar Tale in Mahad. “This struggle is not just for water, but for basic human rights…. We have to go to Chavdar Tale to not just drink the water there, but to prove that we are human beings too, like others,” Dr. Ambedkar had said, in Mahad, during the Chavdar Tale Satyagraha.

Babaji was the chief organiser of the Mahad Satyagaraha. Deeply inspired by Dr. Ambedkar, he was one of the leaders who started referring to him as Babasaheb. 

His awakening to injustice was early and personal. When he was 11, a local school did not give him admission despite clearing a scholarship exam. “There were no concessions for students till the age of 11 years. I had passed the scholarship exam held at Alibaug. The government had granted me a ₹5 scholarship and had asked me to get enrolled in an English medium school,” Babaji wrote later in an article. This was in 1913-14. The local school had refused to give him admission because of his caste. 

Dalits were not allowed to sit with children from upper castes, and the school did not want to risk shutting down because of one admission, it said. After being guided by social reformers, he penned a letter seeking that the government grant for the school be withdrawn as it had denied admission to a meritorious student despite a government directive. The letter was printed with his name in the local newspaper Prabodhan, forcing the school to give him admission. But he was made to sit on a stool in a corner outside the classroom.

The foundation of a house

From 1931 to 1941, Babaji was forced underground after the British externed him from 1931-1933. Subodh, who lives in Mumbai now, remembers playing in the house where his grandfather hid. It was Babaji’s uncle’s house, and was one of the few at the time to be built up to the first floor. In fact, his uncle was called Madiwale Joshi, or the Joshi whose house had a maadi (first floor, in Marathi), a rarity at the time. The ruins now have only the black basalt rock blocks and staircase. It was the first pucca house built by a Dalit.

“The Brahmins who did the bhoomi poojan were boycotted by the upper caste then,” says Rajendra Hate, a school clerk who lives near the ruins. He adds that unfortunately it was so dilapidated that it had to be brought down.

Subodh speaks of the personal stories of struggle around the intense caste battles fought in the region then. Hate remembers how village elders told stories of the time Babaji came out of hiding. “When he came out of hiding after years, he had to be made to sit in a separate cattle pond to wash away the dead skin from his body,” he says. 

Last week, M.A. Baby, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (M) visited the lake and the well, along with the school established by Babaji. “This is the place where the seeds of the historic Mahad Satyagraha were sown. It is a historically significant site,” Dr. Ashok Dhawale, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member who had accompanied M.A. Baby, says. 

“Caste-based discrimination has not yet disappeared from India. Whether it was the Chavdar Tale protest or the burning of the Manusmruti, which was the fountainhead of India’s anti-caste struggle, comrade R.B. More had played a significant role. He has a special place in our history,” Dhawale says, adding that Babaji was a prominent leader of the Communist movement.

Lakes and their symbolism  

While Dasgaon is largely forgotten, Mahad is the centre of the Dalit community’s attention. Every year, lakhs march on December 25 and March 20, to mark the Manusmriti dahan (burning) and Chavdar Tale Satyagraha, respectively. The Manusmriti is an ancient text which codified the caste system. 

The Kranti Stambh memorial to the Mahad Satyagraha led by Babasaheb Ambedkar.
| Photo Credit:
EMMANUAL YOGINI

The Konkan Republican Samajik Sanstha, a grassroots non-profit, has written to the Raigad district authorities appealing to them to declare this entire region a national monument. “We have written letters to the District Collector that Crawford well, Crawford lake, dak bungalow, the temple where the Manusmruti was burnt, the landing dock where Babasaheb had landed, and similar such locations, be declared as a national monument. Lakhs march here every year. We haven’t yet received any reply to our pleas,” says Deepak Pawar, secretary of the Sanstha. Despite repeated attempts, Kisan Jawale, District Collector of Raigad, did not respond to the queries by The Hindu.

Maharashtra Social Justice Minister Sanjay Shirsat says that the government will make an effort now to preserve the history of the region where the Dalits broke the social order. “We do not yet have information about this. But our officials will go and see the spot. In Dasgaon, we will not just install plaques to give information about the significance of the place, but will also do other things to bring history to life.”

Shobha Dhone, a daily wage labourer from Latur, is one of the hundreds of women who reach Mahad every year, most from Marathwada and Vidarbha, to drink the water from Chavdar Tale. They talk to their children about Ambedkar, paying respect to the statue in the middle of the lake, and then drink water from the taps around. “We are here because of him. We were considered worse than cattle. We did not have any rights. Only our hearts know what Babasaheb has done for us,” she says. 

Amruta Waghmare lives in Mahad and runs Mahila Utkarsha Samajik Sanstha, which works to mobilise unorganised labourers. She feels, “No doubt things have changed from the way they were a century ago, but casteism still exists; Brahminism still exists. Nobody is bothered about the community. They are only bothered about their individual material growth. The Ambedkarite movement has weakened,” she says. 

vinaya.deshpande@thehindu.co.in