Introduction: In Pursuit of Bhagwan Das

S

OMETIME IN THE MID-1990'S, I picked up a volume of Ambedkar's speeches from a pavement bookshop in Hyderabad. It was compiled and edited by Bhagwan Das and published by Bheem Patrika, Jalandhar. That was the first time I encountered the work of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. From then on, I wondered about Bhagwan Das and Bheem Patrika.

After a major struggle, in 1999, I managed to order all the available volumes of Ambedkar's writings as published by the Maharashtra state government's education department in the Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches series from Blumoon Books, a dalit bookstore in New Delhi. For good measure, Blumoon added a few selections of essays by Bhagwan Das to make up for the missing government volumes.

After Navayana was founded in 2003, I dug up a little more about Bhagwan Das and his work, and spoke to him on the phone. But it was only after I moved to New Delhi in 2007 that I met him for the first time. He was 80. Through the interactions that followed with him, I realised that well before the Maharashtra government began, in 1979, to publish Ambedkar's writings and speeches, Das had edited, compiled and produced a four-volume Thus Spoke Ambedkar series between 1963 and 1980. It was perhaps the first, professional effort to publish Ambedkar's writings in one place. Crucially, I found out that Das had had direct access to Ambedkar.

Having first met him in Shimla in 1943 at the age of sixteen as a member of the Scheduled Castes Federation, Das worked as a research assistant with Ambedkar in 1955-56 at the latter's residence at Alipur Road, Delhi. Yet the editorial committee that the Maharashtra government put together to oversee its Ambedkar volumes excluded Das and Lahori Ram Balley of Bheem Patrika-men who pioneered the publication of Ambedkar's writings and speeches. As Das, with typical understatement, recalls in his memoir, "Fifteen years after Babasaheb's death, the Maharashtra government decided to edit and publish his writings and speeches and formed a committee for the same under the chairmanship of Vasant Moon. Membership to the committee was limited to Maharashtra's politicians and intellectuals."

An unassuming, self-effacing man, Das does not make much of his association with Ambedkar. Yet, we see that he takes pride in recounting occasional disagreements with the stalwart. Das recalls both in his memoir and in the film that now accompanies this book, that his formal education amounted to nothing more than matriculation when he worked for Ambedkar, who had a clutch of degrees and two doctorates from Columbia University. (It was only in the mid-1970s that Das acquired degrees in Political Science and Law.) Yet, what draws Ambedkar to Das is his command over the English language, and his hunger for books and research.

I met Das several times in 2007 and 2008 with the intention of reissuing a value-added, annotated edition of the four volumes of Thus Spoke Ambedkar (the first of which is being published at the same time as this memoir). He was, however, in no position to write fresh introductions to the volumes. His memory was failing him, and he could recall only about seven or eight defining moments in his life. At the behest of a friend, I decided it was as important to bring out Bhagwan Das' story as it was to reissue his wide-ranging selection of Ambedkar's speeches. On reading his slim memoir, Baba ke Charanon Mein, published in Hindi in 2004, I decided to shoot a series of piece-to-camera interviews-merely as an exercise in keeping a record. Das, however, had just recovered from a serious illness and was suffering bouts of dementia. Yet, for me, it was important that his story-whatever he remembered of it-be rendered to the larger public. A mere reading of his memoir would not suffice; people would have to see and hear Bhagwan Das speak his impeccable English in his clipped accent. They had to fall in love with him and be charmed by him like I was, like the friends I took to meet him were. Hence the DVD that accompanies this book.

As we shot the interviews, Das expressed his desire to travel to Shimla, Nagpur and Ambedkar's Alipur Road residence where he had worked. Though we could not travel to Nagpur, our effort soon grew into a modest documentary feature on Das and his dedicated pursuit of Ambedkar's ideals. Navayana hardly had the funds for such a venture. Given Das' precarious health and fading memory, I could not risk writing a proposal and waiting for funding, but friends pitched in with contributions. After seeing the footage, amateur though it was, the editor of the film, Shikha Sen, refused to charge us. She too was charmed by the man, though piqued by the fact that he would sometimes forget the name of his wife (Rama Devi) or the year of their marriage (1957). But despite his failing memory, he would be alert to the details of his various interactions with Ambedkar. Clearly, here was a man to whom nothing mattered more than his association with Ambedkar. All said, we pieced together a viewable, hour-long film. The biggest compliment we received was that Das liked it.

In post-Independence India, we have hardly any record of the several men and women who played key roles in dalit movements across the country, especially those who donned the roles of the intellectuals and chroniclers of the movement. For instance, Bheem Patrika, the monthly journal founded by LR Balley, celebrated fifty years of existence in 2008. Balley has produced scores of books on the dalit movement and Ambedkar. People like Das and Balley rarely find mention in post-Independence histories of India. They are neither fêted nor remembered. To see Das recount the story of his English, and how he gently underscores the fact that in 1943 when he met Ambedkar in Shimla they spoke to each other in English, reveals to us the unwavering faith many in the dalit movement had in the power of modern education, and especially in the English language. Ambedkar's slogan 'educate, agitate, organise' had clearly inspired Bhagwan Das and many like him.

As a Buddhist, Das was one of the founding members of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, first held in Kyoto in 1969. They subsequently met every four years in various parts of the world.

In August 1983, supported by a coalition of dalit organisations, Bhagwan Das gave a testimony on untouchability before the United Nations Subcommission on Human Rights in Geneva, much against the wishes of the official Indian delegation to the conference. He played a pivotal role in the 1998 International Dalit Convention held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a precursor to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa.

Despite his many achievements, Bhagwan Das has led a lonely life. His lament is that few in the dalit movement have shown interest in the kind of work he has done. Given that the resource pool of educated dalits with an aptitude for research is rather meagre, especially of dalits who have a felicity with the English language, the chronicling of dalit history has seriously suffered. As someone born in a sweeper community, an 'untouchable among untouchables,' as Das says, he is not very popular among sections of the valmiki community that have been Hinduised under the influence of Gandhi, the Arya Samaj and other Hindu organisations. Das has consistently argued that the notion of 'valmiki' is a fiction (as you shall see in the book and in the film). He musters evidence to convincingly argue that the so-called valmikis were 'lalbegis'.

Bhagwan Das' flat in Munirka, Delhi, has been a mandatory stopover for almost every social historian and anthropologist who has ever worked on the dalit/anticaste movement, from Eleanor Zelliot, Mark Juergensmeyer, Owen Lynch, Marc Gallanter, RK Kshirsagar and Sukhadeo Thorat down to younger scholars like Vijay Prashad, Nicolas Jaoul and Maren Bellwinke-Schempp. He has been a storehouse of insight and information, generous with his time and knowledge for anybody willing to stop by and ask.

Navayana is proud to present the results of its pursuit of Bhagwan Das.