Jotirao Phule - Slavery

Mr. Nelson Mandela, the acknowledged leader of the liberation movement in South Africa, visited India last year. The State Government of Maharashtra under the leadership of Chief Minister Shri Sharad Pawar proposed to invite him to Bombay. This being the Centenary Year of Mahatma Phule s Death Anniversary, the State Centenary Committee decided to present to Mr. Nelson Mandela the English Translation of Mahatma Phule s ( Slavery ) and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkars Annihilation of Caste as most fitting offerings. The Committee requested Prof. P. G. Patil (Bar-at-Law) the well-known scholar and Satyashodhak intellectual to undertake the task of translating the book Gulamgiri in English which he did with the devotion of a faithful in a record short time. The Committee is beholden to him and I offer him heartfelt thanks. My thanks are also due to Shri Hari Narke the upcoming and promising researcher for the pains he has so gladly taken in the implementation of the project.

Mahatma Phule was just not a Social Reformer, but was a Social Revolutionary who proved to be the Founding Father of the Indian Renaissance movement of modern times. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar therefore naturally accepted him as his Masterone of the Gurus.

Mr. Nelson Mandela visited India but he could not make it to Bombay. Babasahebs Annihilation of Caste was a speech prepared but not delivered. History has repeated itself in a way. This book was translated and printed but not delivered to Mr. Mandela in person as he could not visit Maharashtra.

The genesis of this English translation of Mahatma Jotirao Phules Slavery is rather interesting. At the first meeting of the Mahatma Phule Death Centenary Central Committee held in late June 1990, the noted Phule activist Shri Baba Adhav broached the novel idea that Slavery be translated into English and it be presented to the celebrated African anti-apartheid leader Dr. Nelson Mandela who was due to visit India in October 1990. The Committee unanimously accepted Baba Adhavs proposal and further resolved to ask me to undertake this task. I readily accepted it and completed the task by October 1990. The same is now being published, and it is hoped that the first copy will be sent by airmail to Dr. Nelson Mandela in South Africa. This happy event would have delighted the heart of Mahatma Jotirao Phule to no end.

Mahatma Phule published Slavery in 1873. The opening words of the Preface are as follows:

Since the advent of the rule of Brahmins for centuries (in India), the Shudras and the Ati-shudras are suffering hardships and are leading miserable lives. To draw people's attention to this, and that they (the Shudras etc.) should think over their misfortune, and that they should eventually set themselves free form this tyranny of the Bhats (Brahmins) perpetrated on them is the main aim of (writing) this book. Jotiraos thesis is that the Aryan Brahmins were Iranians, that they came to India from a foreign land (Iran), and that they subjugated the original inhabitants of India and tyrannised over them heartlessly. In order to impress them with their own superiority, the conquerors devised many ways to perpetuate their own interests by various ways.

2. In order to overpower them and keep them in thraldom for ages, the Aryans produced many spurious religious tracts and claimed to have received them directly from God as revelations.

3. Even a cursory and casual acquaintance with these spurious tracts is enough to explode the myth of their divine origin. The Bhat authors concocted these spurious tracts in the name of God, dispossessed the common natives of their legitimate rights and assumed for themselves a pre-eminent place in the hierarchy of society. The depressed and downtrodden natives were deliberately kept ignorant by the Bhats, the better to serve their nefarious objects.

4. The title of this tract is significant, Slavery (in the civilised British Government under the cloak of Brahmanism) exposed by Jotirao Govindrao Phule.

5. The book is divided into sixteen chapters. Jotirao has added four poems (composed by himself) at the end which describe vividly the shameless manner in which the Bhats oppressed the helpless Shudras and Ati-shudras.

6. Jotirao has given an allegorical interpretation of some of the ten incarnations () which may sound a bit fanciful to a modern reader. This foray into the field of Evolution (enunciated by Charles Darwin in 1859) is interesting and audacious. Considering that Jotirao penned the tract fourteen years after Darwins book was published, his thesis sounds plausible and fanciful. Jotirao chose the incarnation of Parashurama for special castigation as he genuinely believed that Parashurama and the various legends associated with him were calculated to highlight the Aryans invasion and conquest of the original inhabitants of India.

7. In the opening paragraph of his English Preface to Slavery, Jotirao pointedly alludes to the mythological story of King Baliraja and Vamana (Waman). He regards Baliraja as a champion of the original inhabitants of India, and Vamana as an interloper and a fraudwho treacherously condemned Baliraja to the nethermost region. Jotirao quotes the popular saying, common among the toiling masses of India: () . (Let all troubles and misery go and let Balis kingdom come!)