Before Bhimrao

Bhimrao Ambedkar was born in 1891. But his story starts long before that, in the villages of western India, in the barracks of the British army, and in the schools of a few brave reformers.

He was born into a family that Hindu society called “untouchable”. To understand why he spent his life fighting that label, we first need to see how the system worked, who his people were, and what his family had already achieved.

What was the caste system?

For many centuries, Hindu society was divided into thousands of groups called castes. You did not choose your caste. You were born into it, and it was very hard to leave. Dr. Ambedkar later wrote that, for a person born into a caste, “His occupation, his dwelling, his gods and his politics are all determined for him by the group to which he belongs” BAWS Vol. 5, p. 63.

People were usually expected to marry only inside their own caste. In his 1916 paper “Castes in India”, Dr. Ambedkar argued that this rule against marrying outside the group was the very core, or “essence”, of caste BAWS Vol. 1, p. 8.

The castes were not equal. They were ranked one above another. An old religious scheme grouped them into four varnas (broad classes): Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. Communities treated as “untouchable” were placed outside even this scheme. Dr. Ambedkar explained that they were called “Avarnas, those who have no Varna” BAWS Vol. 7, p. 36.

Some people defended caste as a simple way of dividing up work. Dr. Ambedkar disagreed:

“Caste System is not merely division of labour. It is also a division of labourers.”

— Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste (1936) BAWS Vol. 1, p. 47

What did “untouchability” mean?

Untouchability meant that people from certain castes were treated as if their touch, and sometimes even their shadow, would “pollute” others BAWS Vol. 10, p. 3. They were kept apart in daily life.

Dr. Ambedkar described how every village was really two villages: the quarters of the “touchables” and the quarters of the “untouchables”, with distance between them. The untouchables’ quarters had their own names, such as Maharwada (the Mahar quarter) BAWS Vol. 5, p. 62.

He explained that “untouchable” families did the village’s dirtiest work, collected food at others’ doors, and bought spices and oil “from a distance”. They had to treat the village as their home, “and yet never touch nor be touched by any one belonging to the village” BAWS Vol. 12, p. 663.

The Mahar community

Bhimrao’s family belonged to the Mahar community. The Mahars were the largest community treated as “untouchable” in the Marathi-speaking region that is now Maharashtra. They lived on the edge of villages and in towns across the region Eleanor Zelliot, “Mahar”, Encyclopedia of World Cultures.

Mahars were village servants. The historian Eleanor Zelliot lists their traditional duties: watchman, messenger to other villages, mender of the village wall, carrier of firewood to the cremation ground, remover of dead animals, and the person whose word settled boundary disputes Eleanor Zelliot, “Mahar”.

In return they held a hereditary right called a watan: a small piece of land, plus baluta, a share of grain collected from the farmers. In 1928 Dr. Ambedkar told the Bombay Legislative Council that the land had been split so many times that it earned almost nothing. The grain depended on the “sweet will” of the farmers, who could simply refuse to pay BAWS Vol. 2, p. 77.

He said a Mahar could be called out at any hour, day or night, by any government department, and was treated as the “maid of all work”. If the man was away, his father, wife or mother could be made to serve instead BAWS Vol. 2, p. 76. If Mahars refused the “dirty work”, they could lose their land. In his words, “They have to choose between doing the dirty work or facing starvation” BAWS Vol. 5, p. 257.

Soldiers of the Bombay Army

There was one important way out. When the British East India Company (a trading company that gradually took control of much of India) built its armies, it recruited many soldiers from “untouchable” communities. Dr. Ambedkar wrote that the Company’s Bombay Army was drawn largely from Mahars BAWS Vol. 12, p. 87.

The biographer Ashok Gopal notes that the Konkan coast, and especially Ratnagiri district, was a major recruiting ground. Mahars, called “Parwaris” in army records, made up around a sixth of recruits. Army life brought regular pay, a pension, and schooling. In the army, rank mattered more than caste Ashok Gopal, A Part Apart, excerpt in Scroll.

Every regiment ran schools, and family members could attend. Some Indian soldiers were trained at a military school in Pune to become schoolmasters Ashok Gopal, Scroll. This army education would shape Bhimrao’s family.

The Koregaon obelisk

On 1 January 1818, near the village of Koregaon on the Bhima river, about sixteen miles from Pune, a small Company force fought the army of Baji Rao II, the Peshwa (the Brahmin chief minister who ruled the Maratha state from Pune) Ashok Gopal, Scroll. According to the official Gazetteer of 1885, the Company side had 834 men. At its core were 500 soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, Bombay Native Infantry, under Captain Francis Staunton. They held the village for a whole day. About 275 of them were killed, wounded or missing Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. XVIII, Poona (1885), pp. 244–247.

The British later built a tall stone obelisk (a pillar) at the site. The Gazetteer describes it as 65 feet high, with inscriptions in English and Marathi and the names of the dead and wounded Gazetteer, Poona (1885). About 22 of the soldiers named on it were Mahars, recognisable by the ending “-nak” in their names Ashok Gopal, Scroll.

Historians still debate what the battle meant. The historian Shraddha Kumbhojkar writes that neither side won decisively that day. It was remembered as a British triumph because the Company won the wider war soon after Shraddha Kumbhojkar, Economic and Political Weekly (2012). Dr. Ambedkar himself saw it as the battle that ended the Maratha empire BAWS Vol. 12, p. 83, and wrote:

“The men who fought in the battle of Koregaon were the Mahars, and the Mahars are Untouchables.”

— Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, “The Untouchables and the Pax Britannica” (unpublished manuscript) BAWS Vol. 12, p. 86

For Mahars, the pillar became a symbol of courage. Dr. Ambedkar visited it in 1927 Ashok Gopal, Scroll, and the later Mahar Regiment carried the obelisk on its badge Outlook (2018).

The door closes

Around the time Bhimrao was born, this path was shut. The army began recruiting only from groups it called “martial races”, and Mahars were left out BAWS Vol. 12, pp. 87–88. Dr. Ambedkar later remembered finding, among his father’s papers, a petition against “the orders issued in 1892 banning the recruitment of the Mahars in the Army” BAWS Vol. 1, p. 211.

Retired Mahar soldiers did not stay silent. Gopal Baba Walangkar, an ex-soldier living in Dapoli, organised petitions asking the army to take Mahars again Columbia University – Pritchett timeline. Pensioners in Dapoli also fought, from 1892 to 1894, to get their children into the local government school. One of the signatures on their letters was “Pensioner Subedar Ramnak Malnac”, most likely Bhimrao’s father Ashok Gopal, Scroll.

The Sakpal family

Bhimrao’s family name was Sakpal. Their ancestral village is Ambadawe, today in Mandangad taluka of Ratnagiri district, on the Konkan coast Ratnagiri District, Government of Maharashtra. Dr. Ambedkar described his roots this way:

“Our family came originally from Dapoli Taluka of the Ratnagiri District of the Bombay Presidency. From the very commencement of the rule of the East India Company my fore-fathers had left their hereditary occupation for service in the Army of the Company.”

— Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Waiting for a Visa (c. 1935–36) BAWS Vol. 12, p. 665

His grandfather, Maloji Sakpal, was a retired soldier. Two of his children were Ramji and a daughter named Mira Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission, p. 8.

Bhimrao’s father, Ramji Maloji Sakpal, joined the Bombay Army around 1866, when he was about 18. Army records list him as “Ramnak Malnak”. He was selected for teacher training in Pune and became headmaster of an army school at Mhow, near Indore Ashok Gopal, Scroll. Dhananjay Keer, an early biographer, says he served as a headmaster for fourteen years Keer, p. 11. Dr. Ambedkar wrote that his father “rose to the rank of an officer and was a Subhedar when he retired” BAWS Vol. 12, p. 665. A subhedar was one of the highest ranks open to an Indian soldier Ashok Gopal, Scroll.

Ramji was deeply religious. He followed the Kabir Panth, the path of the poet-saint Kabir, who had criticised caste Keer, p. 8. Dr. Ambedkar later wrote that his father “was a Kabirpanthi, though his father was Ramanandi”, and did not believe in idol worship Columbia University – Ambedkar’s unpublished preface to The Buddha and His Dhamma (1956).

In 1867 Ramji married Bhimabai, from the Murbadkar family of Murbad in Thane district, whose father was a senior soldier in his regiment Ashok Gopal, Scroll. They would have fourteen children. From 1888 the family lived in the army town of Mhow Ashok Gopal, Scroll.

Reformers who came before

Bhimrao was not the first to challenge caste. In Pune, Jotirao Phule (born 1827) and his wife Savitribai Phule started a school for girls in 1848. In 1873 Jotirao published Gulamgiri (Slavery) and founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth-Seekers’ Society) to fight caste Savitribai Phule Pune University – Mahatma Phule Chair. Savitribai was the school’s first teacher. She faced insults and harassment for teaching girls The Week (PTI), 2020.

Jotirao Phule died on 28 November 1890, less than five months before Bhimrao was born Savitribai Phule Pune University. His ideas reached the Mahar soldiers: Gopal Baba Walangkar had joined Phule’s Satyashodhak Samaj Ashok Gopal, Scroll. Keer writes that Ramji Sakpal himself admired Phule Keer, pp. 11–12.

Decades later, Dr. Ambedkar dedicated his book Who Were the Shudras? (1946) to Phule:

“The Greatest Shudra of Modern India who made the lower classes of Hindus conscious of their slavery to the higher classes and who preached the gospel that for India social democracy was more vital than independence from foreign rule.”

— Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, dedication of Who Were the Shudras? (1946) BAWS Vol. 7

This was the world into which Bhimrao was born: closed in by caste, but with a few doors pushed open by soldiers, teachers and reformers.

Where sources disagree

• When the army ban began. Dr. Ambedkar dates the orders to 1892 in his Ranade speech BAWS Vol. 1, p. 211, but in another essay says “since about 1890” BAWS Vol. 12, p. 87. The historian Philip Constable writes of exclusion “after 1892” Constable, Journal of Asian Studies (2001), abstract.
• When the Koregaon obelisk was built, and how tall it is. The 1885 Gazetteer records an English inscription dated 1822 and a height of 65 feet Gazetteer, Poona (1885). Kumbhojkar cites a British officer who saw a 60-foot obelisk being built the year after the battle EPW (2012).
• Ramji Sakpal’s rank and regiment. Dr. Ambedkar says he retired as a Subhedar BAWS Vol. 12, p. 665. Keer calls him a Subhedar-Major of the 2nd Grenadiers Keer, p. 11. Gopal, using Khairmode’s Marathi biography, says he retired as a subhedar from the 107th Pioneers Ashok Gopal, Scroll.
• The village’s name and taluka. Keer spells it “Ambavade” and places it near Mandangad Keer, p. 8. Gopal says “Ambadave” is correct, but places it in “Mangaon taluka” Ashok Gopal, Scroll. The Ratnagiri district government lists it under Mandangad taluka Ratnagiri District. Dr. Ambedkar himself said “Dapoli Taluka” BAWS Vol. 12, p. 665.
• Grandfather’s religion. Dr. Ambedkar calls his grandfather a Ramanandi unpublished preface, while Keer says the whole family belonged to the Kabir school Keer, p. 8.

Read more

• Waiting for a Visa (Columbia University text) — Dr. Ambedkar’s own short memoir of untouchability, starting with his childhood.
• Columbia University – Pritchett timeline, 1890s — a carefully sourced year-by-year timeline.
• How Ramji Sakpal struggled for the education that gave us his son — an excerpt from Ashok Gopal’s biography A Part Apart on the army, Dapoli and Ramji Sakpal.
• Eleanor Zelliot, “Mahar” — a short encyclopedia article on the Mahar community by a leading historian.
• Shraddha Kumbhojkar, “Contesting Power, Contesting Memories” — a history of the Koregaon memorial.
• Life sketch of Mahatma Jotirao Phule — a dated timeline from Savitribai Phule Pune University.