Bhagwan Das (1927–2010): Ambedkarite, Buddhist, and Fighter for Dalit Rights

 

Bhagwan Das (1927–2010): Ambedkarite, Buddhist, and Fighter for Dalit Rights

By Maren Bellwinkel-Schempp

Translated from German to English

                                             

Bhagwan Das was born in 1927 in Shimla. He belonged to the Chuhra or Lal Beghi community, as the street sweepers and latrine cleaners of Punjab are called, named after the rebellious prophet of the Bhangis. The term "Bhangi" itself is derogatory, literally meaning those who consume bhang (cannabis) as an intoxicant.

During colonial times, some of them were closely associated with the British-Indian military. Lal Beghis were employed as servants, cleaners, and also as waiters and cooks in the military. These roles allowed them to bypass some of the discrimination inherent in the traditional caste system. Bhagwan Das grew up in a garrison where his father worked at the telegraph office. The family could afford to send their children to good private schools with English as the medium of instruction. This quality education enabled him to join the Royal Indian Air Force at the age of 16 after completing his matriculation (10th grade) in 1943. At that time, British India was embroiled in World War II, with the Imperial Japanese Army, supported by the Indian National Army, attempting to advance into the Indian heartland from the eastern front. Bhagwan Das was trained and deployed for the newly developed radar surveillance. His excellent command of English allowed him to get along well with British comrades and officers, earning their respect. He would have liked to stay in the Royal Air Force after the war, but his family could not afford the 5,000 rupees required for an officer’s commission.

Ambedkarite and Buddhist

Bhagwan Das had heard of Babasaheb Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the great statesman and leader of the Untouchables, during his school years. In 1943, he had the opportunity to meet Ambedkar in Shimla for the first time. This encounter led to an enduring connection, culminating in Das serving as Ambedkar’s private secretary in 1955–56. Bhagwan Das offered to assist Ambedkar with compiling his writings, speeches, and lectures, working a few hours a day without compensation. This work, interrupted by Ambedkar’s death in 1956, later resulted in a four-volume publication, Thus Spoke Ambedkar, published by Das between 1963 and 1980 in Jalandhar through Bhimpatrika Press, run by Lahori Ram Balley. This publication is significant as one of the first collections of Ambedkar’s works, long before the Maharashtra government published Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Writings and Speeches.

As a young man, Bhagwan Das was strongly influenced by Christian missionaries. He openly shared how he would visit a Methodist missionary every morning to pray before going to work. Remarkably, he noted that the missionary never pressured him to convert to Christianity.

In the months following Bhagwan Das’s death on November 18, 2010, at the age of 83, numerous obituaries have highlighted his significant contributions to the Dalit movement in India. He was undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the Dalit movement in North India, playing a key role in spreading Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar’s ideas. His great achievement was making the movement accessible to those at the very bottom of the “Untouchable” castes: latrine cleaners and street sweepers. Additionally, he successfully internationalized the issue of “Untouchability,” notably by advocating for the Burakumin in Japan, a group similarly discriminated against as India’s street sweepers and latrine cleaners.

Several years before Dr. Ambedkar’s famous conversion to Buddhism in October 1956, Bhagwan Das had already embraced Buddhism, influenced initially by Bodhanand Mahastavir (1874–1952) in Lucknow and a group of Buddhists in Delhi, originally inspired by the Arya Samaj in Punjab. This group held regular weekly prayer and sermon sessions at the Ambedkar Bhawan and in private homes.

Bhagwan Das recounted how, in Lucknow, a group of Buddhists, led by Pragyanand, arranged his marriage to a well-educated woman from the Dhanuk caste—“for my own good,” as he emphasized. This was likely one of the first Buddhist weddings among Dalits and was notable for being a cross-caste marriage. The Dhanuk are a smaller Untouchable caste, often working as pig herders or vegetable farmers. Bhagwan Das’s wife was a primary school teacher, supporting the family while he pursued law studies and later became a lawyer. They had two daughters and a son. Their eldest daughter, Zoya Hadke, is a senior civil servant in the Indian Administrative Service; their son, Rahul Das, is a doctor; and their younger daughter, Shura Darapuri, is a professor at the BBAU University of Lucknow, dedicated to publishing her father’s works in 23 volumes.

Thirst for Knowledge and Struggle

Like his father, Bhagwan Das was driven by a thirst for knowledge. Following the example of his mentor, Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar, he bought many books and read extensively, including entire encyclopedia articles in libraries to deepen his understanding of specific topics. For Dalits, who were traditionally excluded from knowledge under the Brahmanical caste system and relegated to servitude, access to education was of immense importance. It was not just about understanding the world but about changing it and securing a rightful place for Dalits in the democratic and socialist independent India. For both Bhagwan Das and Ambedkar, this was a lifelong mission.

In his later years, Bhagwan Das lived with his wife (who passed away a few years earlier), his son Rahul, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren in a small fourth-floor apartment in Munirka, a settlement developed by the Delhi Development Authorities near Jawaharlal Nehru University. Whenever I visited Delhi in recent years, I stopped by to see him. He was unpretentious, requiring only a phone call to arrange a visit. Guests were received in his living and working room, filled floor-to-ceiling with books, mostly legal texts. Conversations always went straight to the point, focusing on the situation of Dalits, the Buddhist movement, and human rights. He was an inspiration and source of knowledge for many academics and activists, including Walter Hahn, coordinator of the Dalit Solidarity Platform, social scientist Martin Fuchs, and Indologist Heinz Werner Wessler.

Internationalization

Bhagwan Das’s major contribution was internationalizing the Dalit issue. As a Buddhist, he was a founding member of the World Conference of Religions for Peace (WCRP), established in Kyoto in 1969 and meeting every four years. Ambedkar had sought to place the Dalit issue in a global context, comparing Dalits to slaves in the Roman Empire or Black communities in American ghettos, though these analogies were imprecise. Bhagwan Das, however, made a significant impact in 1979 at a WCRP conference in Princeton by comparing the plight of Dalits in India to that of the Burakumin in Japan. The Burakumin, traditionally confined to segregated neighborhoods, were assigned “dirty” jobs like waste disposal and carcass processing, excluded from education, and considered impure—paralleling the situation of Dalits.

In August 1983, supported by several Dalit organizations, Bhagwan Das testified before the United Nations Subcommission on Human Rights in Geneva about the ongoing discrimination against Dalits, challenging India’s official stance that such discrimination, prohibited by the Constitution and laws, was an internal matter. He also played a leading role in the International Dalit Conference in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, a precursor to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban (South Africa, August 31–September 7, 2001).

Bhagwan Das was closely linked to the beginnings of the German Dalit Solidarity movement. In 1993, under the aegis of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Bonn, a conference was held on the situation of former “Untouchables” in India, attended by Dalit representatives from Christian, Muslim, Sikh, and Buddhist communities. Bhagwan Das represented the Buddhists, and during this event, the Dalit Solidarity People was founded, marking the first Indian coalition with international support. This set the model for subsequent networks, culminating in the establishment of the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) in 2000.

In 2001, three years after the formation of India’s National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), the German Dalit Solidarity Platform was established, initially hosted by the Protestant aid organization Bread for the World, and now a permanent institution. Key figures like Ruth Manorama, S.K. Thorat, and Martin Macwan carried forward Bhagwan Das’s legacy.

His most significant book, Main Bhangi Hoon (I Am a Bhangi), written in Hindi, is a fictional social history of street sweepers. It vividly describes how Bhangis were oppressed, displaced from their land, and rendered homeless through wars and devastation over millennia. Despite being marginalized, Bhagwan Das shows, they retained their pride and ethos. This was undermined by the Arya Samaj’s shuddhi (purification) campaigns, which sought to assimilate them into a conformist Hinduism, renaming them “Valmikis” to tie them to a Brahmanical tradition. Bhagwan Das vehemently opposed this, advocating for an emancipatory Buddhism inspired by Ambedkar.

In 2005, Walter Hahn, the longtime coordinator of the Dalit Solidarity Platform, invited Bhagwan Das to the annual conference in Bonn, followed by a lecture at Bonn’s Indology Department. This was a moving experience for Das, as Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar had enrolled at the University of Bonn in 1921 to study economics and hoped to learn Sanskrit under the renowned Indologist Hermann Jacobi—a pursuit denied to him in India as a Dalit. Though Ambedkar’s plans were thwarted by lack of time and funds, Bhagwan Das was impressed by documents from Ambedkar’s time in Bonn, including a handwritten letter in German. He marveled at the Sanskrit collection in the university library. A visit to Bonn’s Haus der Geschichte sparked discussions on the culture of remembrance, noting the scarcity of museums or memorials dedicated to Dalit oppression and the Dalit emancipation movement in South Asia.

Even in 2005, it was evident that the strength of this lifelong fighter for Dalit human rights was waning. Yet, he remained lean and active, rising early to work and rejecting retirement. Full of plans for further publications, he regularly attended events at the Panchasheela Institute, which he co-founded in Munirka, and welcomed friends, journalists, and scholars in his modest study. Some projects, including a planned sequel to his fictional history of the Bhangis, remained unfinished. However, he lived to see the publication of his memoirs, In Pursuit of Ambedkar. A few months later, on November 18, 2010, Bhagwan Das—one of the last to have personally known and been directly inspired by Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar—passed away.

 

How to be a Good Buddhist? Bhagwan Das

How to be a Good Buddhist?

  -Bhagwan Das

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I have borrowed nothing excepting title from Liu Shao Chi, the famous Chinese leader and author of the book ‘How to be a good Communist?’ which converted thousands to Communism. Besides the ‘Communist Manifesto’ and the ‘Das Kapital’ perhaps the Emile Burns ‘What is Marxism’ is perhaps another world famous book which appealed to the educated people and explained Communism and clarified doubts. Sydney Webbs ‘World Communism’ has its own place in the Communist Literature of the world. But for common people I think no other book can surpass Liu Shao Chi’s ‘How to be a good Communist?’

I have travelled through almost all parts of India and wherever I go young men put questions about Buddhism? Why did Babasaheb Ambedkar choose Buddhism? ‘Can religion be the panacea of ills?’ ‘Why are the young Buddhists in Buddhist countries turning to Communism? What does Buddhism mean to us?’ ‘What must we follow as Buddhists?’ Many more difficult questions are put and repeated at different places. I am not going to answer all or any one of these questions in this paper. I am simply trying to explain, as best as l can, how to be a Buddhist? I am not following the pattern adopted by Liu Shao Chi but putting it in my own manner keeping in view the circumstances in which we are placed in India.

To start with we must clearly understand that Buddha was the greatest religious teacher in the real sense of the word. He was a teacher and not a prophet, messiah, ‘son of god’ or’ ‘incarnation   born to liberate the erring masses’ or ‘to save deteriorating ‘dharma’.  He was not a ‘yogi’ who could create a following by working miracles and curing the sick. He was a teacher of morality and adopted education as his weapon for ameliorating the suffering masses. He did not promise salvation or a comfortable place in heaven nor freedom from rebirth. His teaching was more earthly and easy to understand. The only difficulty was practising his religion. ‘Panch Sheel’, ‘Four Noble Truths’ and ‘Ashtang Marg’ contain the essence of his teachings. You may and may not read the Dhammapada;  you may not be conversant with ‘Tripitaka’;  you may or may not be able to recite thc Suttas in Pali, if you know the meanings of Panch Sheel, understand the significance of Four Noble Truths and follow ‘Eightfold Path’, it is sufficient to make you religious and a ‘man’ in the real sense of the word Buddha wanted man to be a ‘man’ and not merely a ‘biped’ interested only in eating, drinking or procreating.

“Buddha,” to use the words of Tanaka Devi, famous author of ‘Seven Courses of Civilisation’ ‘‘was not a Buddhist; nor for that matter was Christ a Christian and Mohammed a Mohammaden. It was the followers who made them Buddhist, Christian and Mohammedan. In most cases it was the politician and warrior who killed the spirit of religion and began to worship the shell for his own purpose. He exploited religion for his own advantage. Religion gradually became the hand-maid of politician and warrior. It is the ignorant who becomes the most fanatic fighter in defence of religion and political creed. It is at the same time strength and the greatest weakness of any ideology. A small minority of people are seriously interested in religious theory. Majority of the people are never seriously interested in religion or any political theory. They lack the will and the competence to comprehend. Instead of elevating themselves they try to bring the level of the religion down to their feet. What they cannot understand or find difficult to practice they discard. They accept and practice what is easy to comprehend and follow and give them pleasure. Religions which have chalked out an easy path for the masses become more popular than those which demand study, practice, sacrifice and knowledge.

The easiest to follow is Hinduism. To use the words of Eliot, “it is a jungle.” You are free to believe or disbelieve anything. What is required is conformity with rituals and customs, caste and ceremonies and willingness to call him a Hindu. Among the organized religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam some semblance of discipline is maintained. But majority of the Christians and Moslems do not care for their religions. Like the followers of other religions they also believe that merely following of age old customs is the religion. Most of the troubles have been created by religions and religious leaders themselves. We do not know whether Christ said so or not but Christian books say that ‘no man can enter the kingdom excepting through me.’ Krishna of the Bhagwat Gita said, ‘‘I am God. Come to me and follow and do anything in my name and I shall save you.” He claimed to be God, the saviour.

A good Christian is one who believes in the word of God as embedded in the Bible, has faith in Lord Jesus Christ and accepts him as his saviour. A person may be very moral but if he does not believe in the Bible and does not accept Lord Jesus Christ as his saviour, he is not considered a good Christian. Similarly, a good Mohammedan is one who believes in God as well as in the Koran, accepts Prophet Mohammed as last Prophet sent by God with his message, prays five times a day, visits Mecca. For a Hindu to be a good Hindu there are no commandments to follow and no hard and fast rules. He may be an atheist or agnostic, he may be idolatrous, theist or an iconoclast; he may or may not believe in any book, scripture, religious teaching or philosophy, he can be a Hindu perhaps a good one, too, if he belongs to a caste and follows dictates of his caste. He has to believe in caste system.

On the other hand, a good Buddhist is not one who recites the Suttas correctly, burns candles and joss sticks before the image of the Buddha, goes on pilgrimage to the sacred places like Sarnath, Shravasti, Gaya and Kusinara; bows reverently before the  Bhikshus, occasionally gives ‘Dana’, and sleeps with the satisfaction that he has done his duty towards Dhamma. Buddhism, unlike other religions does not believe in God, his prophets, incarnations, salvation, hell and heaven, redemption and forgiveness, prayers, fasts, sacrifices  meaningless rituals.

Buddhism is not the faith. It is a religion of morality and practice. Buddha at no time claimed to be omniscient nor gave under importance to his own teachings. “Everything changes,” he said, “for change is the law of nature.” He laid down a criterion for judging his teachings. He also laid down certain principles. He exhorted people not to accept anything on faith. His religion was for the good of many and for the good of all. His religion was not the end in itself but only an aid to elevate oneself. Likening the ‘Dhamma’ to a boat, he said that the boat’s place was in water and the purpose was to carry the passengers across the river. He despised those who carried the boat over their heads.

‘Trisharna’, ‘Panch Sheel’ and ‘Ashtang Marg’ were the important pillars of his religious teachings. They are simple to recite but difficult to comprehend and translate into action. Yet they were not the ‘commandments’ but only teaching willingly accepted. Violation was not visited by curses and scourges. Bad deeds, born of evil thoughts led to suffering. Good deeds invariably led to good results. We cannot remove the pain caused by evil deeds nor can we efface the evil effects of sinful deeds. At best we can minimize the effects of evil deeds by doing good deeds in abundance. If each one of us thinks good of our neighbours and do good, the result would be good and happiness all around. Mind not body commands. Mind has to be controlled and cultivated. Mind controls the body. Body does not control the mind. Knowledge alone is not considered enough. It is the right action with right intention which matters most.

There are millions of nominal Christians, Mohammedans, Sikhs, Shintoist, Taoists, Zoroastrians and Confucius. Likewise, there are millions of nominal Buddhists who have inherited their religion like the property of their ancestors or parents. They may not always be good representatives of their religions.

A good Buddhist is one who is striving to attain a higher standard of culture, is truthful, honest, upright courageous, compassionate and tolerant. He must have a very high standard of morality. He must try to elevate himself as well as those around him. No man can be truly great in isolation. Buddhism is opposed to individualism. A good Buddhist cannot be selfish. He cannot be dogmatic.  He is a rational person with compassion and loving kindness for all.

One can be a good Buddhist if one reads the books of the Dhamma and ponders over the truth imparted by the Buddha. He must learn to meditate and assimilate the noble teachings of the Buddha. He must earnestly try to translate those noble and lofty principles into everyday life.  He must remain vigilant and not accept everything written in books on faith. He must judge whether it is good for his self as well for the many.

It is good at the beginning, good in the middle and good at the end.

Deeds speak louder than the words. One must always be guarded in his thoughts, deeds and words. When in doubt one should always flash the torch of Dhamma and see whether the particular act would be in accord with the teachings of the Dhamma.

A good Buddhist must always remain vigilant and avoid such acts as are likely to bring bad name to the Dhamma, his teacher Lord Buddha and the Sangha.

Religious societies are judged by their practices and not through their professions.

If we do not keep only the interest of all ‘self’ in mind but work for the betterment and happiness of many, keeping the ideal of removing the suffering of all living beings through service and loving kindness we can make this place a true heaven much better and more real than what the imagination of poets and philosophers have created or presented in their poems and books. This should be the ideal of a good Buddhist. Whoever works for attaining this ideal through right means in accord with the teaching of the Buddha is a really good Buddhist.

Source: Bheem Patrika: Dec, 1973, Vol. 2.

(Late Sh. Bhagwan Das was a true Ambedkarite. He gave the slogan “Dalits of the World Unite!” He was a crusader for internationalization of the issue of Untouchability. He presented this issue including that of Burakumins of Japan in the UNO in 1983. He worked as Assistant to Dr. BR Ambedkar for good time. He compiled and edited “Thus Spoke Ambedkar”  in four volumes in the seventies.)  

Bhagwan Das:The historian of ‘his people’ OBITUARY

Bhagwan Das:The historian of ‘his people’
OBITUARY

The historian of ‘his people’
VIJAY PRASHAD

Bhagwan Das (1927-2010). His life was given over to the fight against caste and untouchability, and towards the promotion of Buddhism.

During the monsoon season of 1991, I began my dissertation research in Delhi. I always knew that the project was going to be hard: to write the history of the Balmiki community of North India. In graduate school at the University of Chicago I studied with Barney Cohn, who guided me deftly into the study of a “people without history”. Nothing about the Balmiki community was without history, but its absence in the archives made writing the history difficult. Unlike commercial communities whose archives resided in their transaction documents and unlike royal families whose archives slumbered in palaces and in war notes, the “untouchables” of India did not seem to have their own archives, and only rarely made an appearance in history books.

My work began in the National Archives of India, where my friend Prabhu Mohapatra led me into the Revenue papers. Here, in the margins, I found a lot of information on the Chuhra community of Punjab – the people whose hard labour made Punjab’s fields flower. I also went out to the various colonies where the Balmiki community lived: in the Bhangi colony on Mandir Marg and in the Old City, along its walls. One evening, near Kalan Masjid, a community elder handed me a slip of paper that had a name and a number written on it. He told me to call the number and go and see the man.

A few days later, I called the number and asked to speak to Bhagwan Das. In less than a minute a man came on the line. He spoke with what sounded vaguely like an American accent. Very courteously he asked me to see him a few days later. Bhagwan Das lived in a modest housing complex in Munirka. His unpretentious apartment was filled with books and magazines, all well read.

One of the first questions I asked him was about his accent. He laughed, a bit startled by my abruptness, and told me about his childhood near Shimla, in the Jutogh cantonment. English came to him not from the colonial overlords, but in the 1940s when he encountered U.S. airmen during his service on the Burma front during the Second World War. We chatted about the American troops, and he told me that he had befriended a few African-Americans among them. He was curious about racial discrimination and they were interested in his Dalit community (a U.S. air force report in the 1940s noted, “Native persons here are of a dark race and the Negro fails to respect their rights and privacy”; certainly the airmen that Bhagwan Das met did not respect his privacy, but they did honour his rights). These evenings in Bhagwan Das’ house were my apprenticeship.

Many scholars came through Bhagwan Das’ Munirka flat. He offered us his encyclopaedic knowledge and his kind wisdom. When I heard he had died on November 18, I was reminded of his calm intelligence and his kindness. Born in 1927 in the Jutogh cantonment, Bhagwan Das came of age in the shadow of B.R. Ambedkar, whom he met for the first time in 1943 in Shimla. Ambedkar drew him into the Scheduled Castes Federation and into working for him as a research assistant between 1955 and 1956. Finishing his law degree, Bhagwan Das went to work at the High Court. This was his job. His life was given over to the fight against untouchability and caste, and towards the promotion of Buddhism.

Bhagwan Das helped found the World Conference of Religions for Peace (Kyoto, 1970), along with the remarkable American Gandhian, Homer Jack. In 1983, he spoke before the United Nations on the vice of untouchability. He pointed out that India has an enlightened Constitution, what many in his circle called “Dr. Ambedkar’s Constitution. Nevertheless, Bhagwan Das told the U.N., “Anything which the untouchables consider good for them is vehemently resisted and opposed. Whatever goes to make them weak, dispirited, disunited and dependent is encouraged.” It was a powerful presentation.

Bhagwan Das was also a leading figure in making sure that the Dalit issue was not seen only in its domestic context, but taken in an Asian and global framework. In 1998, he was central to the creation of the International Dalit Convention (Kuala Lumpur) and had a role in the Dalit presence at the World Conference Against Racism (Durban, 2001). I had presented a paper at the U.N. conference on Dalit oppression in the global context, a talk that greatly pleased him (it was later published in a volume in honour of Eleanor Zelliot, titled Claiming Power from Below, by Oxford University Press). At the time of his death, Bhagwan Das was working on a book on untouchability in Asia.

I went to see Bhagwan Das several times during the early 1990s. He had a remarkable memory: one day, in 1993 (as my notes tell me), he fired off a series of names of people I should meet: Kanhayya Lal, Bhagwan Din, Narain Din, Kalyan Chand, Shiv Charan, and so on. Each name came with a story. Bhagwan Das did not have to consult any paper or notes; he had their names and their biographies at his fingertips. It was exhilarating. What kind of idea was this that a “people have no history”!

Bhagwan Das was a living historian and his autobiography, Mein Bhangi Hoon (I am a Bhangi, 1976), provided a window into the life and lineage of one person who fought against the idea that he had no history. A part of his story is available from Navayana as In Pursuit of Ambedkar, 2010. I read his works eagerly. He also taught me how to create my archive. The state might have only put the Chuhra and the Balmiki into marginal notes; but the people were less dismissive of their own histories. In plastic bags, and wrapped in rope, under beds and in steel trunks, he said, there were documents galore; and indeed this was the case. The most precious papers that tell the history of the Balmiki community were not found in the National Archives but in the humble homes from northern Punjab to western Uttar Pradesh.

One day Bhagwan Das said to me, get out of Delhi. Go to Punjab. That is where the trick will be uncovered. He sent me to meet Lahori Ram Balley, the remarkable leader of Buddhist Publishing House at Phagwara Gate in Jalandhar. Lahori Ram told me the story of the Scheduled Caste Federation of Punjab and handed me an invaluable pamphlet by Fazul Hussain ( Achutuddhar aur Hindu asksariyat ke mansube, Lahore, 1930).

Lahori Ram had encouraged Bhagwan Das’ intellectual and political work. Both were followers of Ambedkar. In the 1960s, the two friends would publish a series of books of Ambedkar’s speeches, Thus Spoke Ambedkar (edited with superb introductions by Bhagwan Das; the first in 1964). The second volume opened with a poem by Khalil Gibran, demonstrating the open-mindedness of these men. They were not bilious like those dominant caste intellectuals; nor were they prone to compromise. The first volume was strongly criticised by the press, Bhagwan Das recollected. “We expected it and in fact welcomed the criticism,” he wrote in the second volume, “because we believe nobody kicks a dead dog. All great ideas have to pass through three stages namely ridicule, discussion and finally acceptance.” They were at the first stage. The next was before them.

The generosity of Bhagwan Das and his friends never ceased to astonish me. Lahori Ram and Bhagwan Das also sent me off to meet the leaders of the Balmiki community in Jalandhar and Ludhiana, and later, in Shimla. The trick was here. I had not noticed it. They knew where they were leading me. It was the classic matter of the novice historian being led by the intellectual engagé.

Just outside Jalandhar, in a Balmiki-dominated village, I spent several nights. One went poorly. It was cold, and I was not keen on the bed. I went for a walk just before dawn. In the field I saw a light flickering, and went toward it. There I saw an old man lighting a set of lamps and placing them in a set of pigeon-holes. He was in what might have been a trance. I watched him, and then retreated. The next morning I asked him what he was doing. He told me about Bala Shah Nuri and Lal Beg, the preceptors of the Chuhras, the great faith of his people that had been obliterated in the 1930s. It was in this decade that the Chuhras had been force-marched into Hinduism and encouraged to forget their own religion and customs. This was the trick.

I went back to Delhi. Bhagwan Das knew I had found it out when I walked into his door (it must have been in March 1993). He handed me his book, Valmiki Jayanti aur Bhangi Jati, which laid out part of the story. Later, I found Amichand Pandit’s Valmiki Prakash (1936), which was a catechism for the Chuhras; and I found Youngson’s collection of Lalbeg songs in The Indian Antiquary (1906).

Bhagwan Das appreciated how we had together uncovered a forgotten story: how his community’s deep cultural traditions had been vanquished by the Hindu Mahasabha and conservative sections of the Congress – eager as they were to increase the numbers of “Hindus” against “Muslims”. It was a tragedy for the Chuhras, the Lalbegs, the Bala Shahis: they now became second-class Hindus. It is from this kind of reduction that human dignity shudders. It was also out of this history that Bhagwan Das followed Ambedkar to Buddhism; better a new religion that one loved than an enforced one that treated you as beneath contempt.

The generations before us loved poetry. It is something that we have lost to our own discredit. To make a point, and to do so in an unexpected way, they would often offer up a couplet or a line of poetry. It was very graceful. Bhagwan Das loved poetry. He particularly liked to talk with me about the verse of the Punjabi branch of the Balmiki community. It is from him that I grew to love the writings of Bhagmal ‘Pagal’, whom I would later meet in Jalandhar, and Gurudas ‘Alam’, whose poem from 1947 stays with me.

After one trip to Jalandhar, I brought back Alam’s Jo Mai Mar Gia (1975) for Bhagwan Das. We sat in the main room in his house, me drinking tea, and him reading out the poems. Here is Azaadi,

My friend, have you seen Freedom?

I’ve neither seen her nor eaten her.

I heard from Jaggu:

She has come as far as Ambala,

And there was a large crowd around her.

She was facing Birla with her back towards the common people.

In Jalandhar, I also met R.C. Sangal, the editor of Jago, Jagte Raho, from whom I got a stack of the papers. Bhagwan Das enjoyed the fact that the paper carried the verse of Baudh Sharan Hans and Alam (I also found Bodhdharam Patrika, another Ambedkarite newspaper that regularly carried poetry, including, from 1978, Alam’s great Chunav). The last time I met Bhagwan Das, we talked about poetry. I had thought to bring together some of these poets into a small volume. I was such a poor translator that I doubted my abilities. He was as encouraging as ever.

He called Ambedkar “an iconoclast and a revolutionary”. These words apply to Bhagwan Das himself, whose flat in Munirka was a stone’s throw from Jawaharlal Nehru University, but for me it was an intellectual haven like no other.