Mahatma Phule’s Attitude to British Rule

In his early years Mahatma Phule came under the influence ot anti-British Brahmans. Under their influence he even learnt Dandapatta, a style of native fencing with staves. However, this influence was short-lived. Two factors led to this change, his acquaintance with the writings of Thomas Paine and his own personal experiences of the harsh realities of Brahman discrimination. In his book Slavery (1873), Phule speaks of how he was in fact introduced to Paine’s work by some anti-British Brahmans in Pune. These Brahmans had sought to use Paine’s argument to urge on Phule the necessity of all castes uniting to win back the control of political affairs from the hands of the British. Phule, however, decided to make a closer study of Paine for himself and soon realised the potential for radicalism of a very different kind in Paine’s writings.

At the same time Phule had an unpleasant experience regarding the touch-me-not attitude of the Brahmans. In 1848 he was invited to the marriage party of a Brahman friend. In the procession he was recognised by some orthodox Brahmans as a mali and a Shudra and ordered to leave. When a profoundly upset Phule narrated the incident to his father, the latter rebuked him for having acted unwisely and then went on to narrate how the greater degree of social liberty enjoyed by the low castes was a recent phenomenon and how if he had committed the same misdemeanour before British rule, he would have incurred the harshest punishment under the Brahman Peshwas. His father’s narration of the general social disabilities, humiliations and discriminations the low castes and untouchables were subjected to made a deep impression on young Phule. In the same year Phule visited the American Mission School for Low Caste Girls in Ahmednagar and shortly thereafter resolved to shift his attention (from hostility to the British) to badly needed social reforms of Hindu social and religious practices. His own schooling at the Scottish Mission School (1841-47) where he had got accustomed to a greater degree of social freedom and had not experienced caste barriers, must have only served to heighten Phule’s sense of resentment and made him see foreigners in a different light.

In Slavery Phule admits that he is no longer interested or impressed by the patriotic appeals of some Brahmans to all Hindus to unite and drive out the British. In fact he began to see the progressive stance adopted by the Brahmans as merely a cloak to continue their dominance and preserve the traditional religious hierarchies. ‘If the ancestors of these progressives and learned men had really understood the meaning of patriotism’, Phule writes, ‘they would not have written essays in their books in which their own countrymen, the Shudras, were regarded as lower than animals (Phule, 1969a: 135-36). Quite obviously Phule regarded British rule as less of a violation of man’s natural rights than conventional Hinduism. This did not mean that he never criticised the British. He often accused them of setting up an administration comprising incompetent Englishmen and corrupt Brahmans and asserted that the price for this had to be paid by the poor and helpless cultivators. He particularly accused the Brahmans in the education and agricultural services of denying legitimate benefits due to the illiterate peasants.