Mahatma Phule's Historical Attempt to Dalit Glorification

Mahatma Phule sought to change the identity of the Shudras and Ati-Shudras in Maharashtra from that of low and ‘unclean’ castes to that of an oppressed community. He adopted a three-pronged strategy for this purpose. First, he sought to re-write history correctly explaining the true position and the past of the Shudras. Second, he made Shivaji, the popular Maratha warrior, the symbol of low caste aspirations. Finally, he tried to rally the Shudras round pre-Aryan Gods like Khandoba and the good Daitya King Bali.

Using History to Glorify Dalit

According to Phule, the most important stories of popular Hindu mythology were actually the distorted reflections of the ancient struggle between the Brahmans, who originally came from some region beyond the river Indus, and the Kshatriyas, the original inhabitants of this land, who came to be called kshatriyas by the invaders because they lived in ‘kshetras’ or fields. Phule explained how the mythological accounts of the ten incarnations of Vishnu and Parshuram’s extirpation of the kshatriyas from the earth were deliberately distorted versions of the actual historical conquest and defeat of the natives. Phule devotes the first nine chapters of Slavery to reconstructing the past and reinterpreting the 10 incarnations of Vishnu in historical terms (Phadke, 1979).

According to Phule, the Aryans first attacked in small boats that moved in water like fish or ‘masa’ and hence the nickname of the first Aryan leader to attack the Kshatriyas came to be ‘Matsya’ (the first incarnation of Vishnu). Brahman writers distorted this historical event in the Bhagwat Parana to say that Lord Vishnu emerged from a fish. The second time the Aryans attacked, they came in larger boats which were slpw moving and resembled the tortoise in movement. This event was distorted in the Bhagwat Purana as the second incarnation of Vishnu. The Purana describes Vishnu as emerging from a tortoise to recover things of value lost in the deluge. And in this way Phule goes on to give his unique explanation of the third, fourth and fifth incarnations of Vishnu as the boar Varah, as the man-lion Narasinha, and the dwarf Vaman, respectively. Varah, Narasinha and Vaman were incarnations, Vishnu took in order to deliver the world from the tyranny of the Daitya or demon kings who were historically the defeated Kshatriya.

Then breaking with the conventional Hindu accounts of the incarnations, Phule describes the next leader of the Aryans to be Brahma. Brahma has a central place in Hindu mythology with the Brahmans claiming that they came from his head, the Kshatriyas from his arms, the Vaishyas from his stomach and the Shudras from his feet. The Vedas are also claimed by the Brahmans to have come from Brahma’s mouth. Phule debunks all these stories as deliberate distortions by cunning Brahmans to fool the masses, and reinterprets Brahma in an ingenious way. After Vaman died, the Aryans had no significant leader, says Phule, and hence a cunning and avaricious Brahman clerk by the name of Brahma, who first invented the art of writing on palm leaves, got a chance to take over. Brahma, says Phule, composed little poems like those of the Parsis (Phule is obviously referring to the Avesta and the Gathas of Parsi Zoroastrians) which along with a few magical incantations, popular in his days, he put down on palm leaves and this (according to Phule) gave birth to the subsequent belief that the Vedas came from the mouth pf Brahma.

Taking advantage of the death of the native King Banasira, Brahma invaded his kingdom of ‘kshetra’ and after defeating the inhabitants (Kshatriyas) sought to permanently humiliate them by reducing them to the position of Shudras by debarring them from education (reading Sanskrit texts, etc.). Parshuram, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, Phule goes on to tell us, succeeded Brahma as the head of the Aryans. It was at this time that the small group of Kshatriyas, still left unconquered, attacked Parshuram 21 times. The Aryans called them the ‘maha-ari’ or the ‘great enemy’ and described them as a demon race (daitya) who had rebelled against the Gods. Parshuram’s historical defeat of the ‘maha-ari’ is mythologically described as the wiping out of the Kshatriya race from the face of the earth.

However, the historical fact, says Phule, is that the banished ‘maha-ari’ were reduced to such misery and poverty that in order to survive they even had to eat the flesh of dead animals. Thus were bom the Mahar and Mang communities whom the high castes consider unclean or untouchable because they eat dead animals’ meat. Since the brave ancestors of the present day Mahar and Mang communities were the valiant last resisters, the Brahmans marked them out for the most severe punishment. Thus they were forced to wear a black thread round the neck as a sign of identification and were to be treated as Ati-Shudra, people whom even the other Shudras could not touch.

Shivaji as the Symbol for Reconstructing Dalit Identity

In June 1869 Phule published his ballad on Chatrapati Shivaji Bhonsale (Phule, 1969c: 6-30), the 17th century Maratha warrior. While the ballad undoubtedly extolled the exploits of Shivaji, it also powerfully served as a rallying point and a symbol for instilling a sense of pride and creating a new sense of identity among the various lower castes of Maharashtra, Shudras and Ati-Shudras alike. The ballad represented the Shudras and Atishudras as the forgotten descendants of the heroic race of Kshatriyas of ancient India, led by the mythical Daitya King Bali. Phule draws a parallel between Shivaji and the mythical King Bali as the leaders of the lower castes against external oppressors. In the ‘pavada’ (ballad) on Shivaji, Phule attributed Shivaji’s success to the skill of his Shudra and Ati-Shudra armies rather than to his Brahman ministers. The Kshatriyas (non-Brahman lower castes) are projected by Phule as not only the tillers of the soil but also its protectors in times of war and as the rightful leaders of Maharashtrian society and representatives of its traditions.

As part of his strategy to use Shivaji as a symbol for uniting the lower castes against Brahman domination, Phule inserted an imaginary episode. Shivaji’s mother, Jijabai, takes young Shivaji into the garden and narrates to him the story of his ancestors, the Kshatriyas of pre-Aryan India. She explains how the country’s weakness before the Muslims was due to the previous Brahman persecution of the martial races. She narrates how the forefathers (pre-Aryan Kshatriyas) lived happily on the land till they were destroyed by Brahma and Parshuram, thereby weakening the country and paving the way for its eventual conquest by the Muslims. Shivaji’s anger, the ballad tells us, against the Muslims rises when he realises that this is the second time his country is being made to suffer in this way.

Khandoba and Bali as Rallying Points for ‘Shudra’ Unification

As part of his strategy to unite the Kunbis and the Mahar-Mang communities and to create a new common identity for all lower castes of Maharashtra, Phule sought to make them rally round the pre-Aryan God Khandoba and the Daitya King Bali. The gods Mhasabo, Bahiroba and Martand (all non-Aryan Gods) were also made the central figures round which Phule sought to unite all the non-Brahman castes. In Slavery Phule portrays King Bali in historical terms as the greatest ruler of the original Kshatriya community. King Bali subsequently appointed Khandobas for each village. For Phule, Bali is the symbol of oppressed humanity. Hence he had little difficulty in seeing all great historical figures who struggled and fought for human rights as ‘other King Balis’. In chapter 10 of Slavery, Phule speaks of Christ as another King Bali whp stood up for the lowly and the simple peasants, for the lowest of the low. Similarly, he claims that the Buddha belonged to tile same tradition of valiant resisters of injustice and oppression. He even describes George Washington and the Frenchman Lafayette, as the disciples of King Bali.

Phule rejected the popular Hindu belief in a golden age of the Aryans, called the Vedic age. Whereas Sanskritists like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Dayanand Saraswati had argued that the glorious Aryan Vedic culture had degenerated over the centuries, Phule claimed that the real golden age was the pre-Aryan era when noble kings like Bali ruled over the Kshatriyas who knew no caste system and who lived amicably as equal citizens of the land. In this regard Phule went a step further than the missionaries. The missionaries had only published the Sanskrit texts in the vernacular in order to demystify Brahman culture and its claims to superiority. Phule in contrast wanted to destroy Brahman authority by exposing their past fraudulent deeds and how all their activities and actions (including the writing of so-called sacred literature) were all aimed at establishing the hegemony of the Brahmans over the rest of the population. He was not interested in ‘sanskritising’ the low castes, obtaining for them the right to don the sacred thread or recite Sanskrit texts hitherto denied to them. Though his immediate goal was to unite the non-Brahmari castes in a broader community of the oppressed ‘Marathas his long-term objective was to obtain for them their rightful place as the true sons of the soil and re-establish the egalitarian pre-Aryan age under their political leadership.