Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society (The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India)

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The colonial period saw important social movements in India. Among the strongest of these was non-Brahman movement in Maharashtra. Its founder was a remarkable intellectual and social activist from the gardener (Mali) caste, Jotirao Phule (1827-90). His writings laid the foundations of the movement, and the Satyashodhak Samaj ('Truthseekers Society') which he founded in 1873, became its primary radical organization, lasting until the 1930s.

Shahu Maharaj, the Maratha maharaja of Kolhapur, who turned against Brahmans because they considered him a shudra, and became radicalized from this, was a major patron. The heyday of the movement took place between 1910 and 1930, when the Satyashodhak Samaj carried the message of anti-caste anti-Brahmanism throughout Maharashtra; one of its offshoots was a strong peasant movement.

In the 1920s a political party emerged, as did Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's Dalit movement, which drew sustenance also from support of the non-Brahmans and patrons such as Shahu Maharaj. Young radicals such as Keshavrao Jedhe and Dinkarrao Javalkar challenged Brahman cultural dominance in Pune and intervened in the Brahman-dominated Communist movement in Mumbai.

By the 1930s, however, the movement died away as the majority of its activists joined Congress. It has left a strong heritage, but the failure to really link nationalism with a strong anti-caste movement has left a heritage of continued and often unadmitted dominance of caste in Indian society today.

This classic study on the non-Brahman movement in western India is invaluable for scholars of sociology, caste movements, Dalit studies and colonialism.

Gail Omvedt currently holds the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Chair of Social Change and Development at IGNOU. She has over the years worked actively with social movements in India, including the Dalit, anti-caste, environmental and farmers' movements and especially with rural women.

Among her numerous books focusing on social and economic issues are Understanding Caste: From Buddha to Ambedkar and Beyond (2011); Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of Anti-caste Intellectuals (2009); Ambedkar: Towards an Enlightened India (2005) and Buddhism in India: Challenging Brahmanism and Caste (2003). Recently she has worked on translations from Marathi into English in collaboration with Bharat Patankar, including Vasant Moon's Growing up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography (2000). Currently a selection of Tukaram's work is due for publication.

This book is a reprint of the substantive part of my early Ph.D. dissertation, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India. It was written for the Sociology Department of the University of California, Berkeley, completed in 1973, originally published by the Scientific Socialist Education Trust in 1976. It has been only with great difficulty available in India, and now is practically out of print.

I have changed very little of the text. I have omitted only some unnecessarily theorizing of a Ph.D. candidate at the beginning and end, some four chapters in all. What remains is the heart of the book.

There have been volumes written on the national movement, which holds a hegemonic place in the imagination of those working on India. Even today terms such as "post-colonial" indicate that the focus of most scholarly work is still on the external sources of oppression and exploitation.. Yet there was another major struggle trend of the colonial period, one that was much more genuinely mass-based, more fundamentally radical in its approach to Indian society.. This was the cluster of movements and agitations of the subaltern castes—non-Brahmans and Dalits. They included some very specific struggles—such as, for example, the Nadar agitation to allow women to wear "breast cloths", in other words blouses—something that traditional caste rules forbade. But they also included not only broad struggles but long-time campaigns under very organized leadership.

The adivasi movement also took place in this period, though it had little interaction with the others. In contrast, Dalits and non-Brahmans, though often at odds, stimulated and inspired one another. Ambedkar, for example, would refer to himself as a "non-Brahman scholar" when discussing brahmanical prejudice, and found not only a patron but a friend in the Maharaja of Kolhapur, Shahu. He had major differences with the non-Brahman leaders of his day—arguing that they were often "against Brahmans but not against Brahmanism, whereas I am against Brahmanism but not necessarily against Brahmans". Yet theirs was a natural alliance, almost always frustrated, but brewing as a strong possibility.