It was the year 1865. Nearly one-third of the land area of what we now know as the UK—the “United Kingdom”—was the country called Scotland. In Scotland, there were two main means of livelihood for the poor: fishing and agricultural labor.
Twice a year—on Whitsunday (the seventh Sunday after Easter; in May) and on Martinmas (the feast of Saint Martin, November 11)—Scotland witnessed a surge of laborers, mushrooming like ants. These workers waited with eager eyes for their turn to be taken on as bonded farm laborers for the next six months.
The laborers were arranged into three rows according to their three principal skills. One row for those who could plough, another for those who could perform hard manual labor, and a third for those who could tend cattle and do byre-cleaning work. Then the farmers arrived. They would squeeze the arms and forearms of the laborers to check whether their muscles were strong enough for work. If satisfied, the farmer would place a “shilling”—equivalent to our old one “anna”—into the laborer’s hand as a sign that the “deal was sealed.” Once this coin was accepted, breaking the contract invited severe punishment, including imprisonment.
Wages in cash were meagre. According to their rank, laborers were provided stone-and-thatch houses to live in and barley for food. A ploughman received 10–14 pounds for six months of labor; women received 3–6 pounds; and those doing byre-cleaning work got 1–4 pounds. Labor was not confined only to the fields. Even the boots to be worn during the killing cold of winter were supplied by the owner, and their cost was deducted from the wages.
In the town of Lossiemouth in Scotland, such a line of laborers was formed. In this line stood twenty- or twenty-one-year-old Anna Ramsay and a young man of roughly the same age, John MacDonald, who had migrated from another region. Both were selected as laborers. As they worked together, their eyes met, and Anna became pregnant. They could not marry. One reason was that Anna found the young man unsuitable. Before the child was born, the man returned to his native place. The child born on October 12, 1866, never saw his father in his lifetime!
Anna’s mother, Isabella, worked carrying heavy baskets of fish from the harbor into the town. This was the same kind of work that Dr. Ambedkar’s wife Ramabai’s father, Bhikhu Dhotre Valangkar, used to do. The child and his mother came to live in Isabella’s small two-room house.
At that time in Scotland, children born outside marriage were treated almost like “untouchables” and objects of ridicule. In Christian churches, the parents of such children were made to sit on separate benches away from other worshippers and were humiliated. Everyone mocked this boy by calling him “barefoot,” because he walked without shoes. He received shoes only at the age of twelve, when, after a little schooling, he dropped out of education and took up work carrying manure baskets. The upbringing of this child, “Jaimie,” was owed largely to his grandmother, and it is for this reason that one can see the central place women held in his later life and career.
A few years later, he found employment as a “pupil teacher.” His youth remained one of struggle and economic hardship. In search of employment and a career, he came to London at the age of twenty-one. There, alongside college studies, he took up the lowest-paid clerical job. Hunger was a real experience. Sometimes he learned to survive on barley and water sent from home by his mother. During his college days, he became active in a political party.
By the end of the eighteenth century, labor organizations realized that the country’s two major political parties—the Liberals and the Conservatives—were doing nothing for workers’ rights. In the year 1900, various organizations came together to form the “Labour Representation Committee.” This young man was appointed the first secretary of this committee. In 1906, the committee won 29 seats in the parliamentary elections. The committee was renamed the “Labour Party.”
It is the year 1931. The Second Round Table Conference is being held in London. The Congress had boycotted the First Round Table Conference, but Dr. Ambedkar had not. Dr. Ambedkar dominated London and its newspapers with the “Dalit question in India.” After this conference, Gandhi invited Dr. Ambedkar for the first time to meet him at Mani Bhavan in Mumbai. Gandhi was even prepared to go to Dr. Ambedkar’s home to meet him. It was then that Gandhi learned for the first time that Dr. Ambedkar was a “Dalit,” and that his struggle arose not from abstract politics but from lived experience.
At the Second Round Table Conference, the central figure in our story is seated at the center. His name is Ramsay MacDonald, and he is the Prime Minister of England. Sitting not far from him is Dr. Ambedkar. The struggle Ramsay had endured in his life was the same kind of struggle Dr. Ambedkar had endured. Their religions were different, but both had experienced being ostracized within their own religions. This experience of religious exclusion was so powerful that Gandhi’s argument against “separate electorates for Dalits”—that “separate electorates would divide Hindu society”—fell flat. Had Ramsay MacDonald not been Prime Minister and someone like Churchill been in his place, there could well have been delays even in resolving the question of India’s independence.
The simple statement that the British ruled India is misleading. It may be more accurate to say that British elites ruled India, and those same British elites ruled over the “poor English” in their own country. It was disturbing that these same wealthy classes exploited the poor under monarchies in India as well. Whether in India or anywhere else in the world, the poor have always remained exploited. Today, in independent India, the contrast between the constitutionally written principle of “equality” and the inequalities prevailing in society makes us acutely aware of injustice even in the absence of any “foreign slavery.”
For patriots who may feel offended by this article, there is a direct and simple question: why, in independent India, are Dalits, Adivasis, women, and OBCs continuing to suffer economic and social inequality and internal bondage?
Separate electorates for Dalits were approved. This left Gandhi with the path of an “indefinite fast inspired by God’s command,” which Jawaharlal Nehru strongly opposed, saying that religion should not be brought in to resolve political questions. On the other hand, a new maneuver was adopted by Munje, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha with close ties to the founders of the RSS. Upset at not being invited to the Second Round Table Conference, Munje brought Dalit leader M. C. Raja to his side. An agreement was reached between Munje and Raja, and a telegram was sent to the British Prime Minister stating that Dalits (the Depressed Classes) did not want separate electorates but reservations within the general electorate (reservations of the kind that exist today). There is no reason to believe that Gandhi was unaware of this backdoor politics.
Today, Ramsay, Gandhi, and Dr. Ambedkar are no longer with us. I do not believe in a politics that invokes those who are no longer present in order to conceal the failures of the present nation. The point is to learn from history. Lack of knowledge misleads us. The original issue from which reservations for Dalits arose was caste-based discrimination and untouchability. By provoking the people of India over the issue of “reservations,” the fundamental issue is made to be forgotten.
Today, on the 76th anniversary of India’s Constitution, the same question stands before us: “Will the dream of an untouchability-free India that we cherished in 1947 truly be realized in 2047?”
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*Founder, Dalit Shakti Kendra and Navsarjan Trust, Ahmedabad
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