Gangadhar Nilkanth Sahasrabuddhe was an Indian social activist from Maharashtra. He was born in a Marathi Chitpawan Brahmin family and belonged to the Social Service League. [1] Along with other activists - Surendranath Tipnis, chairman of the Mahad Municipality and A.V. Chitre, he was instrumental in helping Babasaheb Ambedkar during the Mahad Satyagraha. During the satyagraha he burnt the book Manusmriti . Later, he went on to become the editor of Ambedkar's weekly 'Janata'. [2] [3] [4]
Untouchability is a form of social institution that legitimises and enforces practices that are discriminatory, humiliating, exclusionary and exploitative against people belonging to certain social groups. Although comparable forms of discrimination are found all over the world, untouchability involving the caste system is largely unique to South Asia.
Dalit, also previously known as untouchable, is a name for people belonging to the lowest stratum of the castes in India. Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and were seen as forming a fifth varna, also known by the name of Panchama. Dalits now profess various religious beliefs, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity, Islam and various other belief systems. Scheduled Castes is the official term for Dalits as per the Constitution of India.
Jagjivan Ram, known popularly as Babuji, was an Indian independence activist and politician from Bihar. He was instrumental in the foundation of the All India Depressed Classes League, an organisation dedicated to attaining equality for untouchables, in 1935 and was elected to Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1937, after which he organised the rural labour movement.
The Chitpavan Brahmin or Konkanastha Brahmin is a Hindu Maharashtrian Brahmin community inhabiting Konkan, the coastal region of the state of Maharashtra. Initially working as messengers and spies in the late seventeenth century, the community came into prominence during the 18th century when the heirs of Peshwa from the Bhat family of Balaji Vishwanath became the de facto rulers of the Maratha empire. Until the 18th century, the Chitpavans were held in low esteem by the Deshastha, the older established Brahmin community of Maharashtra region who considered the Chitpavans as Parvenus or newcomers to the Brahmin class.
Mahad is a city in Raigad district situated in the North Konkan region of Maharashtra state, India. It is located 108.5 km (67.4 mi) from District's headquarter Alibag, and 167 km (104 mi) from Mumbai, the state capital of Maharashtra and economic capital of India, towards western coast. Mahad is home to Raigad Fort, the capital of the Maratha Empire in Shivaji's era and revolutionary Mahad Satyagraha launched by at Chavdar Tale in the wake of modern India.
Ramdas Bandu Athawale is an Indian politician and social activist from Maharashtra. He is the president of the Republican Party of India (A), a splinter group of the Republican Party of India and has its roots in the Scheduled Castes Federation led by B. R. Ambedkar. Currently, he is the Minister of State in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in Second Modi ministry and represents Maharashtra in Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India's Parliament. Previously he was Lok Sabha MP from Pandharpur.
Martin Macwan is a Dalit human rights activist in Gujarat, India.
Namdeo Laxman Dhasal was a Marathi poet, writer and Dalit activist from Maharashtra, India. He was one of the founders of the Dalit Panthers in 1972, a social movement aimed at destroying caste hierarchy in Indian society. The movement was active in the 1970s and the 1980s during which time it popularised the usage of the term dalit in India. Dhasal was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sahitya Akademi in 2004.
Diwan Bahadur Rettamalai Srinivasan, commonly known as R. Srinivasan, was a Scheduled Caste activist and politician from then Madras Presidency of British India. He is a Paraiyar icon and was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi and was also an associate of B. R. Ambedkar. He is remembered today as one of the pioneers of the Scheduled caste movement in India. He founded the Adi dravida mahajana sabha in 1893.
Arun Krushnaji Kamble was an Indian Marathi language writer, professor, Politician, and Dalit activist. Arun Kamble, President and one of the founding members of Dalit Panther of India, worked as a Head of Marathi department at University of Mumbai. He was the National General Secretary of Janata Dal. He took many major decisions in favour of Dalit, Backward Class and Minorities.
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar is a 2000 Indian English-Hindi bilingual feature film directed by Jabbar Patel. It stars Mammootty in the title role. The film tells the story of B. R. Ambedkar, known mainly for his contributions in the emancipation of the downtrodden and oppressed castes, and as a result, the oppressed classes in India and shaping the Constitution of India, as the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constituent Assembly.
Bapu Chandrasen Kamble was an Indian politician, writer, editor, jurist, and social activist. He is also an Ambedkarite thinker, translator and biographer. Kamble is the leader of Republican Party of India (Kamble). He is from Maharashtra. He has written a Marathi biography of B. R. Ambedkar called "Samagra Ambedkar Charitra".
Paul Chirakkarode was a noted Malayalam- and English-language novelist, short story writer, biographer, essayist, thinker, social critic, orator and human rights activist. It was through his literary interventions that the miserable and subhuman life of the downtrodden people of Kerala was exposed before the world of letters in an aesthetic manner. The author has been considered one of the pioneers of Dalit Literary Movement in India.
Namantar Andolan was a Dalit and Navayana Buddhist movement to change the name of Marathwada University, in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India, to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar University. It achieved a measure of success in 1994, when the compromise name of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University was accepted. The movement was notable for the violence against Dalits and Navayana Buddhists.
Urmila Pawar is an Indian writer and activist in the dalit and feminist movements in India and her works, all of which are written in Marathi language, have often been hailed as a critique of social discrimination and the savarna exploitation by commentators and media outlets.
Mahad Satyagraha or Chavdar Tale Satyagraha was a satyagraha led by B. R. Ambedkar on 20 March 1927 to allow untouchables to use water in a public tank in Mahad, Maharashtra, India. The day is observed as Social Empowerment day in India.
Ramchandra Babaji More was a political leader and campaigner with a particular focus around the struggle against the Caste system in India and Class exploitation in the Indian subcontinent.
Gopal Baba Walangkar, also known as Gopal Krishna, is an early example of an activist working to release the untouchable people of India from their historic socio-economic oppression, and is generally considered to be the pioneer of that movement. He developed a racial theory to explain the oppression and also published the monthly journal Vital-Vidhvansak, targeted at the Brahmanical Orthodoxy.
Surendranath Tipnis was the president of the Mahad Municipality in the early 1900s and a social activist. He was born in a Marathi CKP family. Along with other progressive social activists of the time such as A.V. Chitre and the Chitpawan Brahmin G. N. Sahasrabudhe, he was instrumental in helping Babasaheb Ambedkar during the Mahad Satyagraha. He declared Mahad's public spaces open to untouchables and invited Ambedkar to hold a meeting at Mahad in 1927. Later, he went on to become an MLA in Ambedkar's Independent Labour Party. He was awarded the titles 'Dalitmitra'(friend of the dalits) and 'Nanasaheb'.
Rao Bahadur Sitaram Keshav Bole, also known as Babasaheb Bole (1869―1961) was an Indian reformer, activist, barrister and politician from Bombay. He was a member of the Bombay Legislative Council, who was known for his contributions towards the upliftment of mill workers in Bombay and the Bhandari community. He was an associate of B. R. Ambedkar. He founded the Kitte Bhandari Aikyavardhak Mandali, founded in 1890. Rao Bahadur SK Bole Road in Dadar, Mumbai, is named after him. The British government conferred him the title of Rao Bahadur.
According to Teltumbde, “There was a deliberate attempt to get some progressive people from non-untouchable communities to the conference, but eventually only two names materialised. One was Gangadhar Nilkanth Sahasrabuddhe, One was Gangadhar Nilkanth Sahasrabuddhe, an activist of the Social Service League and a leader of the cooperative movement belonging to the Agarkari Brahman caste, and the other was Vinayak alias Bhai Chitre, a Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu. In the 1940s, Shasrabuddhe became the editor of Janata—another of Ambedkar's newspapers.