Dalits by Teltumbde Anand;

Author:Teltumbde, Anand; [Anand Teltumbde]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781315526423
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

The land struggle, 1959

This impressive beginning of the party could not hold the ambitious, aggressive and egotist leaders of the RPI together. Right from the day of cremation of Dr Ambedkar, the intrigues of leaders had begun to claim the position Ambedkar occupied. They came to a breaking point when, in 1959, two groups held their separate conferences at Nagpur and Aurangabad, wherein the separation formally took place on 14 May 1959 between a group headed by B. C. Kamble and the other by B. D. Gaikwad. The conference of the RPI at Aurangabad headed by B. D. Gaikwad that precipitated this split had passed inter alia one resolution that reiterated a clause in Dr Ambedkar’s States and Minorities, demanding that the state should take over ownership of all lands and distribute it among those who wish to cultivate it. In pursuance thereof the party launched a satyagraha of the landless from 30 July 1959 in a village, Dhadhane in Nandurbar taluka, which soon spread all over Maharashtra. It was essentially an extension of the 1953 SCF satyagraha in Marathwada which was carried out in deference to the suggestion made by Dr Ambedkar himself. This satyagraha, like the one before it, was also led by Gaikwad. It earned him an epithet of being the darling of communists from the Kamble faction of the RPI, which had more influence among the urban middle classes of Dalits. The struggle attracted rural Dalits in large numbers along with many from the non-Dalit communities mobilised by the communists. Some fifty thousand volunteers, among them large number of women and children, had courted arrest 7 until 17 October 1959, when it was withdrawn after the government accepted all the 15 demands of the agitators. 8 The participation of the non-Dalits could be gauged from the figures of arrestees in west Khandesh, where it was particularly intense. Among the arrestees, 5,217 were Buddhists (Mahars), 6,782 were non-Buddhist Dalits, 6,894 were Adivasis and 4,105 were caste Hindus. 9 Many leaders of the CPI like comrades Shamrao Parulekar, Godavari Parulekar, Krantisinh Nana Patil and R. B. More along with thousands of peasants and agricultural workers took active part and courted arrest. For the first time since the 1938 industrial workers’ strike, the red flag of communists and the blue flag of Ambedkarites fluttered together in 1959.

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