Features

Phule to Panthers via Ambedkar: A brief history of Marathi anti-caste journalism

Snapinsta.app 32669054 172483126783925 5267645133616054272 N 1080(1)
Cover page of the magazine ‘Rāvā’ (Courtesy: Instagram/@dalitpanthers_archive)

The adoption of printing press technology in India in the 19th century made it possible to mass-produce written material, after which middle and upper class intellectuals passionately took to journalism and pamphleteering. One of the earliest examples of this in Marathi was Gopal Hari Deshmukh, more popularly known as Lokhitwadi, a British government servant who fervently attacked social evils such as child marriage, dowry, and Brahmin orthodoxy through his shatpatre (literally, a hundred letters, though they actually numbered 108), or commentary pieces, in a weekly called Prabhakar in the years 1848 to 1850.[1]Naregal, V. (2001). Language Politics, Elites, and the Public Sphere. Permanent Black. 

Lokhitwadi, however, didn’t have a direct link with any organised activity for social reform. For that we need to fast-forward a couple of decades. 

In 1873, the greatest anti-caste leader of the 19th century, Jotirao Phule, wrote an explosive book, Gulamgiri, attacking the caste system and took on the Brahmin supremacy head-on, which, as expected, received virulent response from the Brahmin intelligentsia. Phule, a contemporary of the iconic African American social reformer Frederic Douglass, was writing only a few years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation proclamation, which had officially ended slavery in the United States, and as a nod to that Phule had dedicated his book to “the good people of United States as a token of admiration for their sublime, disinterested and self-sacrificing devotion in the cause of Negro slavery.”[2]Phule, J. G. (1991). Collected Works of Mahatma Jotirao Phule: Slavery : (in the civilised British Government unde the cloak of Brahmanism). (Issue v. 1). Education Department, Government of … Continue reading

Just a few months after Gulamgiri was published, Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, an organisation that mainly had lower caste members and which challenged the caste system from the get-go. Satyashodhak Samaj also launched a newspaper called Deenbandhu in 1877, under the enthusiastic efforts of one of its leaders Krishnarao Bhalekar. Deenbandhu was the first newspaper to have a direct association with an organised anti-caste activity in any part of the Indian subcontinent.[3]Patil, V. (2016). Maharashtrache Shilpakar: Krishnarao Pandurang Bhalekar. Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya ani Sanskruti Mandal.

Phule kept publishing pamphlets, books, and booklets throughout his life, and also contributed to Bhalekar’s Deenbandhu. He himself took a dab at running a periodical, Satsar — a one-man adventure — towards the end of his life, but could publish only two issues, the first in June 1885 and the second in October 1885. Bhalekar’s Deenbandhu too had stopped publishing in 1879 due to financial difficulties. Bhalekar, however, continued his journalistic activism by launching other publications such as Dinmitra, Ambalahari and Shetakaryancha Kaivari in the 1880s and 1890s.

The hits and misses that characterise social movement media can also be observed in BR Ambedkar’s career as a journalist. The first publication that Ambedkar got involved with was the fortnightly Mooknayak, in 1920, where, though Pandurang Bhatkar was the official editor, Ambedkar was the de-facto editor. Ambedkar had to leave for the United Kingdom for his further studies so his editorship at Mooknayak got cut short in just six months. The second publication — Bahishkrit Bharat, founded in 1927 — was more of his own but neither of the publications was as successful as Ambedkar would have wished for.

According to Prabodhan Pol, “Ambedkar’s newspapers were cursed by a lack of funds – the very reason why Mooknayak and Bahishkrut Bharat eventually shut down”. Despite these tribulations, Ambedkar was a successful journalist, pamphleteer and writer. He continued to contribute to journals all through his life and was also aided by other movement publications as well as performative media such as shahiri jalsas (which, in the post-Ambedkar period, came to be called Ambedkarite jalsas).

Activists leading the social movements develop a close relationship with mediated communication. They use media tools to spread awareness and movement’s ideology, to mobilise people around their cause, and to raise consciousness. Oftentimes, activists themselves take up the role of a journalist or writer. The social movement media are usually on the margins of the publishing industry, in terms of their size and readership. Very often non-commercial ventures, these publications are run by a small staff (sometimes just one person) and find it hard to sustain themselves in the long run. Therefore, a microscopic focus on a single publication may mislead us into believing that the social movement media are chronically under-resourced, mostly short-lived and have little impact on the public sphere. But when we expand our focus and look at them as a whole, the macro picture that emerges gives us very different insights. 

Dinmitra cover page
The masthead of ‘Dinmitra’, a newspaper published by Mukundrao Patil

According to Arun Shinde, more than 60 periodicals dedicated to spreading the work and ideology of the Satyashodhak movement were launched from the year 1877 to 1930.[4]Shinde, A. (2019). Satyaśodhakīya Niyatakālike. Kr̥shṇā Sãśodhana va Vikāsa Akādamī, p 86 These journals played an important role in keeping the movement alive in the post-Phule period (Phule died in 1890), and also in taking it to the interiors of Maharashtra. Mukundrao Patil, one of the most important Satyashodhak journalist-activists of the 20th century, founded his newspaper Dinmitra in 1910 and ran it continuously till his death in 1967, from a small village called Tarawadi in Maharashtra. It is the tenaciousness of activists like Patil and many after him that has led to the creation of a vibrant Ambedkarite counterpublic in the 21st century.

The post-Ambedkar Little Magazine movement

The magazines run by many Dalit writers in Maharashtra in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly by activists associated with the revolutionary Dalit Panther, were an important part of India’s little magazine movement. Talking about the politics and design of these magazines, Ritupriya Basu writes:

An unfettered spirit of experimentation and a devil-may-care attitude laces both the literature and the design of these magazines, which were deeply influenced by the lack of budget and resources. While little magazines by the Dalit Panthers like Comrade Ani Octopus, and Samuh retained a simple, monochromatic palette, publications like Vidroha, Anta, and Rava show a minimal use of two-color treatments, as four-color printing was costly, and hence, out of reach.

These movement magazines flourished in the backdrop of the heady 1960s. They broke with conventions, took liberty with language and grammar, and challenged literary sensibilities. Many who could not afford the cost of printing, wrote on postcards and inland letter cards. Writer and poet Shridhar Pawar, who personally knew many writers and activists who ran these little magazines, said:

The scope of these magazines was little, in terms of numbers (circulation), in terms of the pages, in terms of size. Earlier, there were even handwritten magazines, or magazines produced on a cyclostyle machine (copier). People used to write on a postcard and send it and would call it a magazine. There used to be inland letter cards. They (the journalist-activists) would write 50-60 inland letters by hand and say it’s our magazine. Some magazines were very well illustrated and designed and printed. At that time, the printing was very costly and a big luxury. So the magazines varied from handwritten to (those) produced on a cyclostyle machine to (those) printed. They (the editors) would pay from their own pockets. There was no advertising. Many (editors) used to work somewhere so they would foot the cost from their own pockets. (Shridhar Pawar,  personal interview, July 25, 2022)

These ‘aperiodicals’ handled radical themes and challenged the Brahmanical orthodoxy despite encountering constant financial and resource constraints. Edward Bishop (1996) offers some of the key characteristics of little magazines in the American context of the early 20th century and which apply to the little magazine movement in India as well:

Little magazines are by definition magazines that do not make money; they are trying to promote new ideas or forms of art, rather than sales. They are usually funded by a small group of supporters, and a few paying subscribers, and are created to provide an outlet for work that would not appear otherwise. The little magazine is always in an adversarial position with regard to the dominant culture, and when it loses that adversarial edge, or the enthusiasm of its backers, it dies.[5]Bishop, E. (1996). Re:Covering Modernism – Format and Function in the Little Magazines. In Modernist Writers and the Marketplace (pp. 287–319). Palgrave Macmillan UK. … Continue reading

The challenge to dominant culture that Bishop talks about has been an important aspect of Marathi anti-caste journalism. The little magazines in Maharashtra and elsewhere played an important role in the creation of Ambedkarite counterpublics. They are the link that connects pre-independence Satyashodhak and Ambedkarite newspapers and magazines with the proliferation of digital media platforms and social media pages in the last two decades, which has given birth to a radical anti-caste digital counterpublic.

Notes

Notes
1 Naregal, V. (2001). Language Politics, Elites, and the Public Sphere. Permanent Black.
2 Phule, J. G. (1991). Collected Works of Mahatma Jotirao Phule: Slavery : (in the civilised British Government unde the cloak of Brahmanism). (Issue v. 1). Education Department, Government of Maharashtra.
3 Patil, V. (2016). Maharashtrache Shilpakar: Krishnarao Pandurang Bhalekar. Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya ani Sanskruti Mandal.
4 Shinde, A. (2019). Satyaśodhakīya Niyatakālike. Kr̥shṇā Sãśodhana va Vikāsa Akādamī, p 86
5 Bishop, E. (1996). Re:Covering Modernism – Format and Function in the Little Magazines. In Modernist Writers and the Marketplace (pp. 287–319). Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24551-2_12

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top button