Tribute to Bhagwan Das

Tribute to Bhagwan Das  

-Mangesh Dahiwale

Death of great people always reminds us of their good done to others. Bhagwan Das is one of the stars and heroes after Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, who not only shouldered his responsibilities, but helped to strengthen the struggle of the Dalits all over India. I often met him at his Munirka residence many times in New Delhi, and also in recent years I went to see this great man, and learn at his feet the great learnings of his years with Babasaheb Ambedkar. He belonged to so called Bhangi community, and he tried all his life to convince Bhangi community people that they are Broken People (Bhangis) and not Valmikis (a hinduised identity posed on them by the upper caste Hindus to Hinduise them and bring them under Hindu flag in 1920s and 30s). Sometimes he was rebuked by his own people.

 I learnt from him the great stories about Babasaheb's life in his flawless English. He was a Supreme Court advocate and fought many important cases, but to my mind his important contribution is in making known  Dalit/untouchable problems outside India. As such the strategy of the dominant classes in India is to hide the ugly truth of caste and discrimination and create a rosy picture, but Bhagwan Das not only spoke in UN about the problems of the untouchables, but also he was a member of many Human Rights commissions, including IMADR founded by Burakumins of Japan. He also worked with people so discriminated from Nepal and parts of South Asia.

 His other important contribution is in the area of publishing Babasaheb's speeches in famous volumes which nurtured my childhood and teenage fascination for Babasaheb, which were published under title "Thus Spoke Ambedkar". These speeches were the only source to learn about Babasaheb's message in the early days of the movement till Maharashtra government started publishing the blue books which sort of fuelled social revolution all over India. In the early days, Bhagwan worked throughout India to make SSD stronger and along with his friends from Punjab, including L.R. Bali got lot of important works published in Hindi, another milestone in the Ambedkarite movement after Babasaheb Ambedkar. Samata Sainik Dal (SSD) acted as a very important force at the time of Babasaheb, and it continued its work even after Babasaheb.

He was a fearless fighter, and even when he grew old he kept copies of paper cutting related to Dalits and development in various fields. He told me many stories, and one of them that I will relate is this: one day he was reading a book written by Darwin: Origin of Species, and Babasaheb came and saw him reading it,  became fascinated and told him that he has not read that book, but found the ideas of Darwin interesting.

 

The way he talked about Babasaheb created the scenes lively in my mind. His library was immense and he was fond of books. He was always surrounded by books. His grasp of western philosophy was strong and deep, and also his hold on English language, but also he was master of Urdu Language. In fact he wrote books in Urdu. I salute this great man, and I hope sincerely that the Dalits throughout India will follow in his footsteps. One of his action to show his efforts to end the caste system is to marry off his son and daughters to people from all different caste thus creating a truly Buddhist classless and casteless family.