16.”The burning problem of the Mulnivasi Bahujan and the need to create nationwide Movement”. We are going to transform the slogan, ‘Freedom in a Rupee’ into a mass movement. This shall be a People’s Campaign” – Waman Meshram

‘Addressing the people gathered in the convention in the inauguration session, Mr. Waman Meshram said in his presidential speech, “It was decided to generate about one corer and one lakh rupees for the creation of nationwide movement. But you have generated only 35 lakh rupees. On one hand I want to thank you for this. But on the other hand I want to warn you that there are those people who have cores of unaccounted black money. If you want to fight with such people who have corers of rupees, then this war cannot be won by only contributing a few lakh rupees. Though I thank you for contributing this much but I want to warn you that with these resources we cannot run our movement. Therefore from 16th April to the end of September we shall organize programmes in about 100 centers covering 500 districts in which you will have to contribute a minimum of 1 lakh to a maximum of 5 lakhes rupees to compensate for this backlog. Accord¬ingly we have made a plan and we shall try to implement it. I wish to give you information on a very important subject. The subject is, “The burning problem of the Mulnivasi Bahujan and the need to create nationwide Movement”. To under¬stand the burning problem of the Mulnivasi Bahujan we have to delve into history.
Jotirao Phule started the freedom struggle of the Mulnivasi Bahujan in modern In¬dia in 1848. Gandhi was not even born then. Jotirao Phule was 21 years of age at that time. Gandhi was born in 1869; 21 years after Jotirao Phule started his movement. Jotirao’s move¬ment was a movement for our independence and liberation. But Gandhi was running his movement for the Brahmins and the higher castes; to free them. The mutiny of 1857 is said to be started by Mangal Pandey. Mangal Pandey was a Brahmin by caste and he revolted only because the Brahmins were the slaves of the British. That is why the Brahmins started their freedom struggle. Jotirao Phule had started a movement for our liberation because the Brah¬mins had made us their slaves. We were not directly the slaves of the British but we were the slaves of the Brahmins. Even when the Brahmins were free we still were the slaves of these Brahmins. The Brahmins were the slaves of the British but we were slaves of the Brah¬mins. That means we were slaves of the slaves. Jotirao Phule started his movement to liberate the slaves of the slaves. We want to write his¬tory in a new way using a new approach. We shall organize a seminar on history very soon. All definitions and analyses will have to be re¬written.
Jotirao Phule had started a movement to free the Mulnivasi Bahujan Samaj from their slavery to the Brahmins. It was a freedom struggle of the Mulnivasi Bahujan Samaj. The history written by the Brahmins tells us that Jotirao Phule never fought against the British. The fight against the Britishers was a freedom movement for the Brahmins alone. Definitely Jotirao Phule was not fighting against the Brit¬ish for the freedom of the Brahmins. In fact he was fighting for our independence.
The historical documents prove that Jotirao Phule used to say that the Shudras and the AtiShudras have a chance of obtaining their freedom from the Brahmins only till the time the British remain in India. And they should use this chance as early as possible.
The movement run by Jotirao Phule till 1890 was a regional movement. Even when Savitrimai Phule carried this movement forward; it was a regional movement. Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj carried this movement forward through Bhaskarrao Jadhav. Why did Chhatrapati Shahu feel the need to run this movement even when he was a king himself? It was because even for Shahu. Maharaj the Brahmins recited the Mantras meant for the Shudras. The mantras to be recited during the pooja are different for the Shudras and the Brahmins. Shahu Maharaj protested against this. But the Brahmins in¬sisted that only the mantras meant for the Shudras will be recited. But Shahu Maharaj opposed this by saying that his forefather was Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj who was given the status of a Kshattriya and as he was the de¬scendant of Shivaji Maharaj he too was a Kshattriya. Brahmins retorted by saying that they had given a temporary concession to Shivaji Maharaj and his descendants will not benefit from that past concession given to a forefather. The descendants therefore will not be considered as Kshattriyas. Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj therefore had to run this move¬ment because the Brahmins considered him as a Shudra. This movement was a regional movement. When Babasaheb assumed lead¬ership of this movement he swore that he shall transform this movement into a nationwide movement. It took Babasaheb 26 years to do this. He called a convention of the Scheduled Castes Federation on 1819 July 1942 in Nagpur. In this convention 50000 men and 25000 women participated from all over the country. In that convention Babasaheb gave the message that our struggle was not for power or pelf but for independence. However this does not mean that our people do not want power or pelf. Our people should want it. But some people want power and pelf at the cost of indepen¬dence. They want to compromise with their freedom to gain power and pelf. They want to compromise with their self respect. After Babasaheb’s demise the leaders compromised freedom and self respect to get power and pelf. They got power but with power they also got despair and slavery. We do not know how many people actually understood the significance of the convention of the Scheduled Castes Fed¬eration held in Nagpur in 1942. But this con¬vention left a deep impact on one person. This person was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Immediately on the 9th of August after Babasaheb had transformed his movement into a national movement, Gandhi launched “Quit India Movement” from Bombay, only three weeks after the SCF convention. He asked the British to Quit India. One more event which is important is that on 9th August 1942 on Singapore Radio, Subhash Chandra Bose gave a slogan,” Give me blood and I will give you Free¬dom”. Subhash Chandra Bose knew that the British are not going to listen to Gandhi’s so called Ahimsa and that is why he exhorted “Azad Hind Sena”, the army that he had formed to march to Delhi. To obtain Freedom it was necessary to fight and to shed blood, thought Subhash Chandra Bose. We have to under¬stand a historical event the convention of the Congress party held in Tripura. Gandhi’s can¬didate was Pattabhi Sittaramaiya whom he had nominated to stand in the election for the seat of the president of the Congress party. People thought who would dare to put up a candidate against the candidate that Gandhi had put up. But Subhash Chandra Bose himself stood up to fight against the candidate put up by Gandhi and won the election. When Subhash Chandra Bose assumed the President ship of the Con¬gress Party and began work he was so dis¬turbed from doing his work properly that he had to resign from the President ship. Not only did he resign from the Presidentship he also re¬signed the primary membership of the Congress party. Afterwards he formed a new orga¬nization called as the “Forward Bloc”. This im¬plied that the Congress party was a backward bloc. It also implied that Congress was a casteist party, a sanatani party. The question is why did Gandhi disturb and trouble Subhash Chandra Bose in his work as president of the Congress party? Because Subhash Chandra Bose was a Kayastha and Kayastha’s are Shudras in the VarnaVyavastha. For e.g. Balasaheb Thackeray, a Kayastha. Balasaheb Thackeray’s father was Keshav Sitaram Thackeray who was involved in the movement of the Shudras and the atiShudras. The Maharashtrian Shudras and the atiShudras gave him the title of ‘Prabodhankar’. Prabodhankar means the one who awakens and instructs. K.S. Thackeray knew that the Brahmins consider the Kayasthas as Shudras. In Shivaji’s time the Brahmins used to oppose Shivaji but Kayasthas used to support him. The person sent by Shivaji to Benares to meet Gagabhatt was not a Brahmin but a Kayastha. Gandhi meted out such treatment to Subhash Chandra Bose because Subhash Chandra Bose was a Kayastha. Babasaheb Ambedkar was an atiShudra in this Varna Vyavastha. Thus an AtiShudra launched a nationwide movement and a Shudra gave a call to march to Delhi. Gandhi thought that if his freedom struggle were to slip towards these two different movements then the whole movement will go into the hands of the Shudras. In such a situ¬ation what will become of us in free India thought Gandhi.
What Babasaheb said in the Scheduled Castes Convention made a deep impact on Gandhi and immediately on the 9th of August he launched “Quit India Movement”. For this movement he coined a new Slogan i.e. ‘Do or Die’. Gandhi had sacrificed his Ahimsa. Gandhi thought if he didn’t take an initiative everything would be lost and the matter would become topsy-turvy. Gandhi thus abandoned the road of Ahimsa and instead gave the slogan of “Do or Die”. Babasaheb wrote an article in Janata which said,” It is good that the person in the Mahatma remained whilst the Mahatma died”. When Gandhi used to chant “Ahimsa Ahimsa”, people used to say he is such a Mahatma. This was Babasaheb’s reaction after Gandhi gave the slogan of “Do or Die”. We should analyze history in this context.
When Babasaheb ran his movement he analyzed that his movement comprised of the Scheduled Castes only. The freedom struggle would not succeed only on the strength of this section of people. When he got an opportunity he devised a strategy to broaden the social base of his movement. He also tried to awaken the backward classes and join them to his movement. Not only did he try to transform the movement into a nationwide movement, he even tried to make it more broad base.
Afterwards he went to Bengal to get him¬self elected to the Constituent Assembly. The Congressmen defeated Babasaheb twice in Maharashtra. Those who hail Congress do not know history. Congress put up a ‘seventh stan¬dard pass’ candidate against Babasaheb and this candidate defeated Babasaheb. Also in Bhandara the Congress put up a nonmatric candidate named Borkar against Babasaheb and defeated him. The people of Bengal from the districts of Jassur, Barishal, Khulna and Faridpur elected Babasaheb to the Constituent Assembly. Gandhi had made an announcement through the Congress party that for Babasaheb not only the doors but also the windows of the Constituent Assembly would be closed. In spite of this the people of Bengal elected Babasaheb to the Constituent Assembly. That is why Gandhi and Congress gave away these districts to Pa¬kistan to inflict punishment on these people. In¬deed how great was Gandhi! Congress had to compromise with Babasaheb because of the nationwide movement that he had created. They had to make him the chairman of the Draft¬ing Committee. This was not any favor be¬stowed on him. The question is where is the nationwide movement that Babasaheb built and with the help of which Babasaheb was able to give us constitutional rights. Those who as¬sumed the leadership of the movement after Babasaheb were bought by the Congress with the help of money and party ticket. These lead¬ers dissolved this movement into the Congress Party. In this way the Congress was able to destroy this movement. There is one more rea¬son for the destruction and demolition of this movement. Congress and Gandhi used the Poona Pact to destroy and demolish this self-respecting, self reliant and independent move¬ment. Babasaheb had launched a “JailBharo” movement to protest against the Poona Pact in 1946. Master Mansingh who went to jail in that movement is present here on this occasion. R. R. Bhole under whose leadership this move¬ment was run later joined the Congress party. He too was great!
In 1954 the working committee of the Scheduled Castes Federation passed a reso¬lution. Babasaheb himself has written that the political reservation should be terminated. Those Buddhists who went to the Bombay High Court to beg for Political Reservation should read the resolution passed by the SCF in Nashik in 1954. Babasaheb said that our leaders open their mouths in Parliament only to yawn and for noth¬ing else. If yawning was not a natural activity then these so called leaders wouldn’t have yawned even! Haribhau Narke has published some volumes in Marathi in which Babasaheb calls those who get elected through Political reservation as “Gadhe (Donkeys or asses)”. This means that Babasaheb wanted to end this Political Reservation. Gandhi and Congress used this political reservation to destroy our self-respecting, self reliant and independent nation wide movement. Our people considered those who get elected through the reserved seats as their leaders and representatives. Babasaheb called those who got elected through the re-served seats as agents but our people ac¬cepted these people as leaders. Our people thought there was no need of running a sepa¬rate movement as they had their leaders elected through political reservation. Thus people with¬drew their support from the movement and went after the so called leaders. Consequently the Nationwide movement was destroyed. After the destruction of our nationwide movement the enemy started to encroach upon our rights by implementing the policy of liberalization, privatization and globalization. We got our rights because of our forefathers who fought a long struggle of 108 years. Have we given a thought to this struggle of 108 years? Will this struggle just vanish into thin air? BJP and Congress both started this programme of Privatization. This programme is intended to end all our constitu¬tional rights. In ancient times Manusmriti was used to deprive us of our rights. LPG is the Manusmriti of the present times. Our rights are being terminated in front of our eyes as we have no movement to resist it. The so called leaders who had been given this responsibility are them¬selves involved in this programme of implemen¬tation of LPG. This proves that they are not our real representatives. In this way neither there is any movement to oppose LPG nor are these so called leaders willing to stand in your support. Thus we have no alternative other than watching this Tamasha. But if we wish to resist in the future, then there is only one alternative through which we can do so, that alternative is to create a Nationwide Movement. Our forefa¬thers created a nationwide movement but Gandhi and Congress destroyed it. If we wish to retain and get constitutional rights, if we wish to start a freedom struggle then we must make preparations.
To create a nationwide movement BAMCEF has drafted a 10 point programme. I shall tell you about the programme in brief. First of all we wish to do Geographical Networking. Our people live in 35 states. We planned to spread our organizational network in 26 states. Out of the 602 districts we shall create a net¬work in 502 districts. Out of the 5500 tehsils we plan to network 5000 tehsils. Also we shall make a network in 50000 blocks out of 55000 blocks. We shall build a vast geographical net¬work in 600000 villages. This is a time bound programme and shall end in 2009. The other programme is social networking. To enforce slavery on us the Brahmins divided us into 6000 castes. Thus we have no resistance power. If we wish to destroy these 6000 castes then we have to join them together. The third programme is to create a media of propaga¬tion in all the regional languages. The print media, vocal media, traditional media and the electronic media are in the hands of the Brah¬mins. We need to have a media of our own. The fourth programme is to create a Human Resources and Development Institute. If we need to seriously run this movement then we need trained human resources.
For this we intend to buy 60 acres of land in Central India in Nagpur where the sylla¬bus of the movement shall be taught. Those trained in this institute shall work for the move¬ment on the field.
For the movement to succeed women who comprise 50% of our population cannot be left out. We have designed a 4 point programme to prepare the women for our movement. First we will awaken them and then train them to make them cadres. Then we shall give them representation. Leadership will emerge from those who will represent. We con¬ducted this four point programme implement¬ing it first from Bombay and we tested this programme in Gandhinagar. The results were there to see in Agra and the Convention was very successful. We are applying the same methods all over India. The sixth programme is to work towards creating an international opin¬ion in favour of us. For this we started to establish an international network. The English had imprisoned Nelson Mandela for 28 long years. South Africa became free; it was only because of the international opinion which was in their favour. The international opinion should favour us if we want to achieve freedom. By the end of 2009 this network should reach atleast 100 countries. The seventh programme is to orga¬nize smallbig programmes all over India. The eighth programme is to create a nationwide or¬ganization capable of launching a nationwide mass agitation after 2009. Neither freedom can be won by begging nor can it be won by forming political coalitions. Freedom cannot be got even by contesting elections. Most people are resort¬ing to these three methods. But we are planning a fourth method because we know resort¬ing to these three methods will not achieve Free¬dom. The fourth way is to build a mass move¬ment. Freedom can be achieved only through mass movement. We have planned to mobi¬lize 315 corers people. If the organizational network is spread to 5000 tehsils and if we mobilize 6000 people from each tehsil then we shall be able to mobilize 5000×6000=30000000 people. If one family consists of five members then 30000000×5=150000000 people will agi¬tate on the streets. Gandhi was able to mobi¬lize only 1 corer people but still the English quit India. As our enemies are more treacherous and rogues we have planned to mobilize 15000000 people. We shall need more strength and there¬fore a huge mass movement will have to be built. But to build such a huge movement we shall need enormous funds. We have devised a con¬cept of Nation-Wide Movement Creation Fund”. We collect funds on the occasion of every Na¬tional and State convention. Also we receive funds from every small or big programme that we organize. Mr. S. K. Biswas told us that M. N. Roy received 2 corer rupees. 2 corer ru¬pees in those times are equivalent to 2000 corer rupees today. But we have developed a tech¬nique of doing maximum work in minimum re¬sources i.e. work of 10 rupees in 1 rupee. The fund that we collect is the fund of the Central unit. But our activists themselves spend a lot on the field from their own pockets. They use scoot¬ers and four wheelers in the field for organiza¬tional work. We never give them a single rupee from the Central fund. Thus our activists and our sympathizers actually spend corers of ru¬pees on organizational work from their own pockets. We will also generate “1 rupee per day” fund, i.e. 365 rupees in 365 days. Subhash Chandra Bose had said,” Give me blood and I shall give you freedom”. If I say the same you shall all run away. So I say, “Freedom in a Rupee “. We are going to transform this movement into a mass movement. This will be a people’s campaign. The people will drive it by contribut¬ing a rupee each day to this movement. If we succeed to do this there will not be any dearth of resources. I appeal to all the activists who have come from different states, tehsils and blocks to drive this people’s campaign in their respective regions to transform this movement into a mass movement.”

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