Chapter
2
Childhood & Youth
1. BRAs Family- Ambedkars come from Konkan.
BRA’s ancestral village is Ambavade, five kms from Mandangad, a small town in
the Ratnagiri district. The family had some prestige in the village. BRA’s
grandfather Maloji Sakpal came of a good Mahar family. Of all the untouchables
the Mahars are the most robust, adaptable, fighting, brave and leading
community. It is believed that the Mahars were the original inhabitants of
Maharashtra which they say was Mahar –Rashtra! Yet the origin of the word Mahar
is said to be Maha-Ari, the great enemy! They were the first to come into
contact with the Europeans. They formed a part of the Bombay Army of the East
India Co just as the Dusads of Bihar.
Maloji was a retired military man. BRA’s father was Ramji
& mother Bhimabhai. The family belonged to the devotional Kabir school of
thought. Thus Bhakti school found consolation in the human attributes like
love, compassion and resignation to God. These devotees sought & found
moral/spiritual food in Lord Krishna/Ram. But the most important effect upon
the mind of the followers of this school was that they had abolished the
rigidity of the caste system as Kabir had condemned it.
An uncle of BRA’S conferred a boon on Ramji that soon
would a boy be born who would leave his mark on history. Entranced with the
belief, Ramji and wife intensified their religious observances. The boon took
effect at Mhow, on April 14, 1891 & so was born Bhim. BRA’s mother Bhimabai
came of the Murbadkars, an untouchable Hindu family. They were a rich family
from the village of Murbad in Thane district. Fair by complexion, she had a
broad forehead, curly hair, round glowing eyes & short nose.
BRA’s father secured a job in Bombay in the military
quarters at Satara. His mother passed away when BRA was six. Being the youngest
of five children now his married sisters looked after him turn by turn. Besides
his father’s sister Mirabai was there to take care of the family. Soon BRA
became her favorite. BRA’s father Ramji Sakpal lived a very industrious &
intensely religious life. He offered prayers morning & evening. He read
& recited to his children the Ramayana & Mahabharata, the two unfailing
sources of divine inspiration. He also sang spiritual songs from the Marathi
saint-poets like Moropant, Mukteshwar and Tukaram. Constant recitals of these
songs provided his children with a certain toning & command over language
at an early age. For 14 years Ramji served as headmaster in military schools
& had attained rank of Subedar-Major. He was a teetotaler and never touched
meat. A friend & admirer of Phule he was aware of the social problems faced
by his community. When the British banned the recruitment of the Mahars in the
Indian Army, Ramji took a lead in protesting, approached the ever helping
Ranade to draft a petition appealing to the British to rescind the orders. No
wonder BRA had derived from his father his painstaking spirit, forceful mental
energy and intense interest in the welfare of his society.
2. Early Education - At Satara BRA completed
his primary education. During his school days BRA realized painfully what the
stigma of untouchability meant. Once he & his brother took a train for
Goregaon. Since their father had not come to the station they took a bullock
cart for Goregaon. When the god-fearing caste Hindu cartman came to know that
the two brothers were untouchables he asked the brothers to get off the cart,
took them back only after they had paid him double the fare. After that the caste
Hindu walked behind the cart with BRA’s brother driving it. This was the first
rude & shattering shock to the budding mind of Bhim. A few days the earlier
impression got confirmed when he was drinking water stealthily at a public
watercourse, got caught, and was beaten black & blue. The barber refused to
cut his hair so his sisters cut his hair.
What an indelible impression these cruel disabilities must
have made on Bhim’s young mind that was so strong, so sensitive & yet too
resolute. Such insults must have engendered in him a burning hatred for
Hinduism. Bhim was pugnacious, resourceful & fearless. He could defy
anybody and anything that dictated rules of conduct & discipline.
A Brahmin teacher by the name Ambedkar loved Bhim very
much. He dropped part of his meal into the hands of Bhim every recess. This
teacher has left his impress on the life of his pupil. The original name of
Bhim father was Sakpal. Bhim drew his surname Ambavadekar from his native
village Ambavade, as Maharashtrian surnames are often derived from the
names of the ancestral villages. ‘Friends it happens in other parts of India
like Punjab’s ex-CM Parkash Singh Badal came from the village Badal. Sachin
Tendulkar’s village is Tendu’. The teacher took so much fancy to the Bhim that
he changed his surname from Ambavadekar to Ambedkar in the school records.
Despite those oases of warmth, Bhim & his brother were not treated well at
school.
He was a playful child who was not keen on studies but
liked to indulge in all sorts of hobbies, fancies and gardening. When Ranade
died in 1901 he was happy to enjoy the holiday not knowing who Ranade was.
Sometime before this, Bhim’s father married again. Bhim did not like this and
so decided that he must earn his own livelihood. He had heard from his sisters
that boys from Satara had found jobs in mills in Bombay, thus, he decided to be
a winding boy in a Bombay mill. Unable to arrange the money for fare to Bombay
he decided to give up his truant habits, study hard, get through his exams as
fast as possible so that he could be independent of his father. This marked a
turning point in his life because he became so diligent that his teachers urged
his father to give him the best possible education.
3. Then Ramji & family moved to Mumbai,
stayed at Dabak chawl in Lower Parel. He got
his sons admitted into the Maratha school. Under his father Bhim did the
translation of Howard’s English Reader & the three famous translation books
by Tarkhadkar. This improved Bhim’s English tremendously. Bhim like Tilak &
Savarkar developed in his youth a passion for reading. His desire to possess
books was insatiable. A wide reading, deep knowledge & historical
perspective bestow upon their growing lives a certain prestige & toning,
Bhim was no exception. Ramji borrowed money to ensure that his son was supplied
with new books. It was his ardent desire that his son should become a man of
letters & light.
After a few months, Bhim was sent to the Elphinstone High
School a leading school. Bhim studied hard, read at night – early morning under
a kerosene oil-lamp. Inspite of being a govt school there were the same
prejudices. By virtue of living in a labor class locality i.e. Parel he had the
opportunity of observing the conditions of the labor class. In this environment
three years glided by. By dint of hard work he got through his exams.
Yet the school life of Bhim was to receive its unkindest
cut that was so deep which all his life he remembered with strongest aversion.
Both Bhim & his brother were not allowed to take up the study of Sanskrit –
a key to the study of the Vedas, but were forced to take Persian instead
against their will. Afterwards BRA studied Sanskrit partly by himself &
sometimes with the help of some pandits & himself became a pandit. “In his
opinion, Persian stands no comparison with Sanskrit as the latter, observes he,
is the golden treasure of epics, the cradle of grammar, politics &
philosophy and the home of logic, dramas & criticism”. Quote from Hudilkar,
Prof Satyabodh. BRA praises Sanskrit.
Notwithstanding the ills & intolerable insults
inflicted upon him and stimulated by his father to rise to a high position on
life, encouraged by broad-minded men, Bhim passed the Matriculation exams in
1907 from Elphinstone High School. Bhim obtained 282 out of 750. This scoring
of average marks is not uncommon in case of ambitious boys whose minds are
absorbed in subjects other than texts and who become great in the future. But
these marks were uncommon for an Untouchable. The community under the
presidentship of S.K. Bole, a well-known social reformer, decided to honor
Bhim. At this meeting well-known author & social reformer Krishnaji Arjun
Keluskar took a fancy to Bhim & presented him with a copy of his new book,
Life of Gautama Buddha.
4. A short time after the exams Bhim in abeyance to
his father’s wishes got married in an open shed of the Byculla market in
Bombay. Bhim was hardly 17 and his wife 9, name Rami she was renamed as
Ramabai.
By now the problem of Untouchables had made headway. From
among them emerged Shivaram Janba Kamble who convened the first Conference of
Untouchables in India. He sent a memorandum to the British govt in 1910
appealing to them to enlighten & elevate the Untouchables ‘by allowing them
to remain followers of their own ancestral faith’. Another stalwart from the
Maratha community V.R. Shinde, educated at Oxford, started in 1906 the
Depressed Classes Mission of India. It opened branches in other cities too.
Encouraged by his father Bhim studied further, completed
his Inter Arts after which his father ran out of funds, approached Keluskar for
help who called the Maharaja of Baroda reminding him of the announcement he had
made a few days earlier at a Townhall meeting in Bombay, promising to help any
Untouchable in the pursuance of higher studies. Mahaja Sayajirao Gaekwad asked
Bhimrao some questions, satisfied, he granted him a scholarship of 25 rupees
per mensem.
AIM. BRA studied now with a view to passing the
exam. But reading was the greatest joy in life. It was directed to some purpose
in life. It was his aim to arm himself with every possible missile, make
himself master of a repository of knowledge & develop the power of his mind
to prepare himself for higher attainments & a new life that was to open the
portals & possibilities of a great career.
BRA passed his B.A. exams in 1912. It was during this
period that the rights of Indians were totally suppressed by the British govt.
This gave rise to a whirlwind of discontent. Tilak’s deportation to Mandalay
& Savarkar’s brother’s revengeful transportation to the Andamans,
imprisonment of several others shook Maharashtra violently. This state of
repression must have agitated the strong currents of BRA’s mind.
The repercussions of these events were seen on his mind
when he wrote his famous thesis, The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British
India. The patriot in BRA describes in it how the Brits resorted to repressive
measures and indicts the British administration in India with these words, ‘Not
satisfied with the aid of power with which the Executive was endowed by the
provisions of the Criminal & Penal Codes to anticipate offenses by
preventing acts, it besmeared the Indian Statue Book with a set of repressive
laws hardly paralled in any other part of the world’. He tells us that the
Indian Press Act of 1910, puts a muzzle on the Press. Few front tank authors of
those times described this period of Indian history as pithily as BRA has done.
BRA’s reactions to Morley-Minto are noteworthy. Tracing
the growth of constitutionalism at different stages, 1853-1861-1892001909, he
says in his theses that it was always the intent of the British to make the
legislature independent and at the same time muzzle it. He said that it was a
Parliamentary system without a Parliamentary executive and in which the
Legislature could neither make or unmake the Executive.
After his graduation, BRA took service in Baroda, the
state of his benefactor. He was appointed to the post of a lieutenant in the
Baroda State Forces. This move was probably a shrewd step fully aware that most
offices being manned by orthodox Hindu upper classes it could create an
unbearable situation for him. Barely 15 days later BRA had to rush to Bombay to
see his ailing father who passed away on 2/2/1913. This was the saddest day of
BRA’s life. So passes away Ramji Maloji, in debt but with exemplary character
and unconscious of his great legacy to his clan, country & humanity. Having
infused his son a strength of will to resist worldly temptations & a depth
of spirituality unfound in his son’s contemporaries, he left him behind the
fight the battle of life & to break the world to his way.