Pradnya Jadhav
This reflection is shaped by my conversations with long-time movement workers, activists, and community members. It has been written not as an account of someone learning from a living Ambedkarite lineage, that is not an abstract idea from people who have carried forward the labour, dignity, and moral courage that define what social justice is.
Ever since Marathwada came to be known as an entity, it has been described or labelled as backward, a categorisation settled more through administrative habit and political convenience than through an honest understanding of its people. Defining Marathwada in this manner is to disregard the need for fundamental social transformation and serves as an easy explanation rather than an invitation to examine deeper realities. It obscures the complexity through which the region must be understood. This characterisation reduces a living, evolving region into a fixed stereotype. It ignores what is often dismissed as a deficiency was, in reality, a landscape of political imagination and collective memory, a memory that is carried through everyday acts of organizing, asserting rights, reclaiming dignity, and rebuilding social life through collective empowerment.
The anti-caste assertions here did not appear in defiance of the region’s imposed character, but as a response to it. To reduce this history to a single word is to miss the depth of consciousness, the manifestation of Ambedkarite thought, and to overlook the persistent, principled labour with which the communities reshaped their own conditions. The anti-caste struggle in Marathwada has never been episodic; it has been the intergenerational continuity of people committed to the annihilation of caste through the disciplined activism, courage, study, and ethical clarity Babasaheb envisioned.
To understand Marathwada more fully, one must move beyond the vocabulary that has long misrepresented it. The lived memory of Marathwada is not nostalgic, but foundational and emancipatory. It is a resource that strengthens resolve and guides action. Again and again, the generations who lived through its harshness and hope have turned their experiences into moral clarity and shaped the movements for justice and self-respect. This region is not defined by its imposed stature but by its people, who challenged dominance and lived Ambedkarism, a force that continues to shape its collective life.
The socio-political awakening of this region took shape through the Phule, Shahu, and Ambedkar traditions. This history is not a sudden eruption or a momentary act, but a sustained, organised, collective struggle. The fight against caste hierarchy, landlessness, exclusion, and indignities found its meaning and direction in Babasaheb’s ideas. It demanded equality, dignity, and a just social order. The movement and socio-political organising in this region were larger than individual actors, yet they were deeply rooted in shared labour, ethical commitment, and many ideas. They were built by people who preserved Ambedkarite thought in everyday life.
The reason for me to scribble my thoughts is because my roots in Marathwada take me back not to revisit nostalgia, but to understand what this land continues to teach and to seek clarity from it, to participate in collective work, shared reading, principled debates, and to learn what disciplined organising is, and how the long-time movement workers have preserved the essence of their struggle alive.
When the activists of Dalit Yuvak Aghadi gathered in Mangwadgaon last year, the meeting felt less like a formal event and more like people returning to conversations they had carried across decades. The movement workers, sharing the age and routines they are bound to now as life progresses, spoke of evenings spent in reading and discussing Mahatma Phule, Babasaheb, Buddha, Shahu Maharaj, Charvak, organising and leading the protest for water at Khalwat Nimgaon—perhaps the first in the history of Marathwada demanding access to a public water body—the stories of walking miles from village to village to organise Jayantis, navigating uncertainties, and friendships built over time. The singing of Waman Dada’s “tujhich kamai, aahe ga Bhimai” by Prakash Sirsat, Sukhdeo Bhumbe, and Uttam Jogand, who performed a Jatyawarchi Ovi using readily available props, made this meeting memorable. How enthralling to see the shared rhythm of a thoughtful community, manifesting, speaking of politics through songs, memory, and collective affirmation.
Nothing in the gathering felt distant; it was the intergenerational continuity that actually works through people who made the efforts of preserving, adjusting, arguing, and remaining committed to the long arc of social justice.
Within these recollections, the presence of Shamrao Thorat, who everyone affectionately called Thorat Guruji, was marked. His mention did not emerge of a solitary figure but as a thread running through many efforts, discussions, and mobilisations. His role, as remembered by those who worked with him, reflected something deeply rooted in principled action and Ambedkarite ethics: that movement-building rests on people’s leadership and strengthening political imagination. Thorat Guruji encouraged young people not just to participate but to think, to question, to read rigorously, to argue with clarity, and to develop their own convictions through Babasaheb’s ideals. He believed that a movement’s strength is in mature and sustained political consciousness rather than momentary enthusiasm. The Dalit Yuvak Aghadi did not remain a youth organisation; its scope and magnitude of work widened as the years passed. During the years of Thorat Guruji’s deep engagement, the work of Dalit Yuvak Aghadi grew into a space where young people learned what it means to carry the commitment required for transformative politics.
It is within this continuum that the emergence of leadership in Marathwada, the work of Dalit Yuvak Aghadi, figures like Thorat Guruji, and many preserving organisers become not merely history but a living reservoir of lessons.
This meeting was long overdue, even to restart the work on a volume on the life and role of Shamrao Thorat, which was later published as “Samatecha Shiledar”. As I witnessed and in small ways participated in the making of the book, I could realise how immense the work is, the magnitude of the movement, and the labour required to preserve its memory. The editors of the book, Prakash Sirsat and Nagnath Lokhande—longtime activists of Dalit Yuvak Aghadi—took on this tremendous task and approached their work not as professional historians but as keepers of a fragile yet powerful movement. The life and work of Thorat Guruji were scattered across recollections, village meetings, songs, and slogans inscribed on walls. Gathering these fragments and piecing them together in a coherent manner was not simply editorial work; it was a commitment to ensure that the history is not erased. It was a formidable task of reconstructing a person, a movement, and an era from fragments: the documents, photographs, handwritten notes, and newspaper clippings. Some of these records were meticulously preserved.
Creating this book was not easy work. Memory is delicate. It falters, contradicts itself, and often tends to slip away. Yet, the makers of this volume handled it with responsibility and sensitivity. They allowed the narrative to emerge from the voices and not through impositions. This massive work reflects Babasaheb’s insistence on intellectual rigour and on community responsibility. Documentation of this kind is not passive; it is a political act. To preserve history in a dignified way is to preserve the power of those who resisted, who created the change, the power of those whose stories would otherwise be erased. This work aims to pass on not mere inspiration, but knowledge: a concrete account of how people’s movements are built, how leadership is nurtured, and how communities organise.
While working on this book, the editors defied conventional definitions of “good editing.” They saw this work as an urgent effort to preserve a living history and ensure its transmission to future generations, making this book a momentous one. It is not just a collection of memories, but a resolute chronicle of the struggle for social justice led by the Dalit Movement in Marathwada and more broadly in Maharashtra. The narration evokes deep respect for Thorat Guruji, but more than that, it brings to light the lived realities of activists who dedicated their lives to this fight. It emphasises not only their relentless efforts but also the undeniable necessity of their struggle, which is still relevant.
The book is published by a Bahujan publishing house—Apurva Publishing House—and released in Kaij, March 2025. The launch of this book felt like a collective exhale. Elderly activists arrived with careful steps, carrying memories that had shaped decades. Younger activists came with curiosity and eagerness, women with their own stories, and children ran around with excitement, unaware that they were part of a historical moment. At this juncture, no grand oratory was needed; the presence of people itself was a tribute. Their lives testified to the resilience of Ambedkarite ideology and to their liberation.
Months have passed after the launch, yet I find myself returning to the faces, voices, and stories I encountered. These recollections were not simply episodes, but lessons in what it means to commit oneself to the community. It is often easy to celebrate leadership abstractly, but what I have been learning here is something else entirely: a leadership grounded in humility, in listening, in sharing labour, in carrying forward collective responsibility.
In the decades following Babasaheb’s passing, Marathwada became a vital site of Dalit-Bahujan assertion. The movement for renaming the Marathwada University, the land-rights movement, and the movement for education are powerful reminders of the assertion against caste. During this period, several organisations founded by Dalit-Bahujans worked towards spreading the message of Babasaheb with remarkable creativity and commitment. These movements emerged organically, without any trained political academies giving them direction; they were built by old, young, men, women—everyone. They learned with each other, through experience, through their shared realities.
I realised that a tribute I wished to write for Babasaheb could not be confined to a date, nor be centered on one individual. To honour Babasaheb is to honour everyone who has carried his legacy, everyone who fought on the ground, the communities who stood together, and those who continue to ask difficult questions.
Babasaheb’s dream of an equal society demands recognition of the continuum of struggle from past to present, from leaders to communities, and from ideas to action. It asks us to understand that the Ambedkarite movement is not history; it is a living force.
As I write this now, I am reminded of something an elderly activist said in Mangwadgaon: “We did not do anything great. We only refused to bow our heads. That refusal, that simple yet profound act, is the core of Ambedkarite politics in Marathwada. It is the legacy Babasaheb has handed down to us. It is the inheritance that the activists preserved. It is the work the editors of Samatecha Shiledar have carried forward. If this tribute carries even a fraction of the care and responsibility that shaped the work of those who came before us, it has done what it needed to do: that is, to refuse to accept anything less than dignity.”
And in honouring the people of Marathwada, the history, the leadership, the resilience, I feel we honour Babasaheb by recognising that his legacy lives most powerfully in those who continue to transform the world he once imagined for us.
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Pradnya Jadhav is an author and researcher based in Maharashtra.
