SEMINAR ON MERIT OF RESERVATION POLICIES OF INDIA The seminar is dedicated to Indian fathers of the affirmative action programs Dr. Ambedkar, Periyar, and Ghaddri Baba Babu Mangoo Ram Mugowalia

By Jai Birdi

Burnaby : In response to the Indian Supreme Court’s recent decisions on the reservation policies, Chetna Association of Canada has planned a seminar to discuss merit of Indian reservation policies of India .  The seminar is dedicated to Indian fathers of the affirmative action programs Dr. Ambedkar, Periyar, and Ghaddri Baba Babu Mangoo Ram Mugowalia.  The seminar will be on June 7 at 6 pm and it will be at the Dr. Ambedkar Library, Guru Ravidass Community Center , 7271 Gilley Avenue in Burnaby .  All are invited to attend this seminar.  Admission is free.

“I am pleased to host the seminar on one of India ’s most progressive, yet controversial, social policies”, said Surinder Ranga, president of Chetna Association.  To contribute to the debate, the association has invited Surrey ’s radio host Gurpreet Singh, and social activists from Punjab , India , Om Parkash and Vidya Devi.

In addition to the seminar, the association will screen Monica Sallan’s documentary film, “The Caste Problem”.  The Toronto-based film maker provides a brief overview on the structure of caste hierarchy and relates to the recent episodes of caste-based violence in India .  Surrey-based artist Shital Anmol will also donate his painting of Gadhari Baba Babu Mangoo Ram Mugowalia to the Dr. Ambedkar Library, which will be a welcome addition to many of his paintings that are already displayed at the library.

(Posted on www.ambedkartimes.com (June 03, 2008 )

	LEST WE FORGET BABA MUGGOWALIA C. L. CHUMBER Email:c.l.chumber@gmail.com

I congratulate in advance Mr. Jai Pal Virdi, office bearers, members and supporters of the Chetna Association of Canada for organizing a seminar on Manuvadi “Caste System” on June 7 th, 2008 at Burnaby (Canada). They dedicate this seminar to Gadharite Baba Mangu Ram Mugowalia (Jan 14 th, 1886-April 22 nd, 1980) founder of the Adi-Dharm is a centenary of his sojourn to USA in 2009. I am indebted to all the NRIS of USA who joined the Gadhar Party founded in April, 1913 AD including Baba Mugowalia Ji Maharaj.

I still hope that Canada, UK, USA’s NRIS have a Gadharite spirit. They are struggling day and night to strengthen the Indian economy. Mr. Harbans Singh Hira, President, Adi-Dharm Brotherhood, Birmingham, UK of Moranwali (Hoshiarpur) and his team is active for the last 30 years or more. Mr. Prem Kumar Chumber, editor of www.ambedkartimes.com and his team celebrated Baba Mugowalia’s birthday in 2008 AD in all the Adi-Gurdwaras of Adi-Guru Ravidass Ji in Canada and USA. This is a healthy development which must be carried on to unite the Indian aboriginals whether they live in India or in any other country.

Mr. Caryle wrote “A nation that does not worship its great leaders and heroes soon comes to Grief.” I again thank my younger brother Mr. Prem Kumar Chumber and his family for uniting us by the www.ambedkartimes.com. Thanks to all.

C. L. CHUMBER (Ex Tehsil Welfare officer) Chief Editor:Kaumi Udarian Email:c.l.chumber@gmail.com

Posted on www.ambedkartimes.com (June 07, 2008 )

Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia
And Ad-Dharma Movement

Ishwar Das Pawar,
District & Sessions Judge (Retd.)

While recalling the significance of the role of the Ad-Dharma movement launched by Babu Mangu Ram of Mugowal in the year 1926, for espousing the cause of the Untouchables of the pre-partition Punjab, we must remind ourselves of the circumstances prevailing in those times. For, since then tremendous changes have taken place in the social, political and administrative fields, and not many of the present times may have a precise idea of the harrowing conditions and environments in which our people found themselves.

Till about the mid-twenties there was no social and political awakening among the untouchables. People had been fed on the deceptive and demoralising Brahmanical philosophy that the Untouchables were born as such not by any coincidence but because of their accumulated bad deeds committed in the past lives. As a consequence, they were disentitled to get education, to own and possess property, to take to professions and avocations of their own liking and choice, and to a place of equality, honour and dignity in society. This was the divine dispensation. It was dinned into their ears day in and day our that this was not due either to their own fault in this life or to the fault of society that they were born in the lowest and wretched castes, and, therefore, they were made to suffer untold hardships and punishments under the edict of the Almighty for their past sins. Out of sheer ignorance these misguided and gullible people tacitly accepted their cursed fate foisted on them by the clever sort. For their woeful sufferings they would beat their foreheads in utter helplessness and say pathetically that it was due to their inevitable fate and destiny. It never occurred to them, and there was none to tell them, that they were being duped and cheated by the uppermost strata of society who were interested in keeping them under their feet. They could not understand why others who were leading most sinful lives before their very eyes were enjoying all comforts of life both good and bad. The good deeds of the ignorant and unsophisticated people of this life were of no consequence for them in this life; they were being stored and preserved for consideration in the life to come. It was a very cunning ruse played on the ignorant and deprived people.

There was none among the Untouchables to raise the banner of revolt against this aggression, oppression, tyranny, deception and exploitation of the poor and the ignorant committed behind the facade of religious philosophy. There, however, appeared on the scene an inspired soul in the person of Babu Mangu Ram of Mugowal, who came back from America after a decade’s sojourn there. There he was a member of the Ghadar Party formed by the Indians living there to supplement the struggle of freedom launched by the nationalists here.

On reaching home Babu Mangu Ram founded an organisation under the name Ad-Dharma Mandal. Soon a band of enthusiastic and devoted workers gathered around him. The message brought by Babu Mangu Ram was new inspiring. It was aimed at awakening the Un-touchable. The message called upon them to know and realise themselves as they had forgotten their true selves due to the hostile influences in which they had been living for thousands of years. It caught the imagination and hearts of the oppressed and down-trodden people and soon Babu Mangu Ram’s name became a household word. He succeeded remarkably well in creating awareness and awakening the people. His path was beset with difficulties and he had to work against odds and trying circumstances. Financial difficulties apart, he and his co-workers were chased everywhere and hounded out of bound out of bounds of towns and villages by the Hindus, and quite often they had to hold their meeting and conferences in open fields. One such incident also took place at Una. A weekly “Adi-Danka” in Punjabi was also started to carry the message to every nook and corner of the province. This was the beginning of the struggle for getting back the human rights of which they had been deprived of for centuries. Wherever Babu Mangu Ram went, the people were eager to have a glimpse of their beloved leader and benefactor. He did the pioneering work to awaken the people. My own relations with him had been very close and cordial. From my college days I had been attending meetings of the Ad-Dharma Mandal and also occasionally contributing small articles to the Adi-Danka.

In the crucial days of the Round Table Conference held in London in the early thirties for the purpose of hammering out a new political set up for our country, Babu Mangu Ram worked enthusiastically shoulder with the greatest leader of the underdog, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who was representing the Untouchables of the County at the Conference, to strengthen his hands in his historic struggle for securing political rights for his people on the basis of their being a separate and distinct political entity.

Babu Mangu Ram will be long remembers as the devoted pioneer in the crusade against social and political injustice. He fought relentlessly even in the face of crippling heavy odds for the achievements of the goal. Whatever rights we have been able to snatch so far is entirely due to these great men.

There is needed to look back lest we should forget our benefactors-the brave soldiers who fought our battles.

Courtesy: Souvenir, 1985 Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia 99th Birth Anniversary, By Mr. C. L. Chumber

Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia combined in his personage the qualities of a fierce revolutionary, a staunch patriot, a devoted crusader against social evils and above all a true humanitarian through and through Born among the lowliest of the low, he crossed all social barriers dauntlessly and suffered all sorts of indignities of life and made his way to reach the pinnacle of gray.

Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia represents a rare example among the revolutionaries Ghadrite philosophy. In those dark days, it was rare for an untouchable to understand the essence of revolution against imperialism. But he rose to the occasion and proved his mettle. He joined the Ghadar Party when he went to California (U.S.A.) in 1909 A.D. as its active member, Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia; it appears desired an establishment of society which must be based on Equality. And he saw one being fought for by the Ghadarites as they had abolished all social distinctions among themselves first-which, perhaps, is not the practice with the modern community or who profess change of the sort. As Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia spoke of the Ghadar Party, "It was a new society; we were all treated as equals".

As a Ghadrite, he took part in the Organizational activities at first but in 1915 A.D., an occasion came when he volunteered to be one of the five Ghadarites in a dangerous mission involving smuggled weapons shipped from California to the Punjab. Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia was chosen by the leader of the Ghadar Party at that time. Mr. Sohan Singh Bhakna, the Secretary of Ghadar Party, whom Babu M.R. Mugowalia remembered as "Godha" sent the five to Los Angles, where they boarded an intermediary boat, after depositing all of their personal identifications with "Godha", for the rest of the journey's saga, Mangu Ram would be known by a Muslim pseudonym, "Nizamuddin."1 Putting his life into danger and traveling through Secrorro Islands and halting at Mexico, Caledonia Islands, and Manila, Singapore and again to Manila where he stayed for sometime and finally to India where he reached in 1925 A.D.

It is after 1925 that this career as a crusader against untouchability and casteism began. As he traveled from Ceylon to Punjab through Madurai, Madras, Bombay, Poona, Sitara, Nagpur and Delhi, he observed the condition of the untouchables on route and was dismayed to see these people being treated so badly. In Madurai, when Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia visited the Meenakshi Temple, he was told to be careful not to touch Achhut (Untouchables) since they assumed by his dress that he was of a decent caste. By the time Babu M.R. Mugowalia had reached the Punjab, he was convinced that there was need for social change.

Babu M.R. Mugowalia wrote to the Ghadar Party headquarters in San Fransisco about the difficult conditions of the Untouchables in India. He wrote them that their freedom was more important to him than Indian freedom. According to Babu Mugowalia, leaders of the Ghadar Party then disengaged him to work with Scheduled castes (Untouchables), and wrote him that they would support him in his tasks. Thus, in a new context, the old revolutionary from Fresno continued the Ghadar spirit. This clearly shows that even Ghadarites had realized the need to awaken these slaves of Indian Society - the then untouchables.

When he started his task of social reform i.e., establishing schools for untouchables poors, he began to look for an alternative which may provide a lever for the unity of the untouchable poors and then to demonstrate through that alternative the political presence of the untouchables in the politics of Punjab of those days. It must be remembered that Punjab was already witnessing political up haul and each class was trying to reap at political harvesting. Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia, along with other conscious men from his class, then founded on June 11-12, 1926 A.D. at his village Mugowal Ad-dharma as the alternative. Ad-Dharma's main aim was to create a feeling of identity among the untouchable class which numbered at that time about one fourth of the entire population of India.

Babu M.R. Mugowalia and the early leaders of the Ad-Dharma perceived their first task to be the creation of a new religion. In their initial meetings, even before they developed an organisational structure, they labored over a basic ideological theme upon which they could build a system of religious ideas & symbols. Its central motivation was novel: the idea that untouchables constitute a qaum, a distinct religions community similar to those of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, and that the qaum had existed from time immoral. It was a myth of power addressed to the people without power. It was intended to communicate the sense of strength that Babu M.R. Mugowalia felt belonged to his Caste fellows by right. As he explained, partly stating a fact, partly expressing a hope, "The untouchables have their powers: communal pride (qaumiat), religion (Mazhab), and organisation (mazlis), "The hope was that / these powers could be fostered and spiltered through force of ideology.

Ad-Dharma was almost Babu M.R. Mugowalia's show. It inspired the lowliest of the low to fight for equality, economic, social and political in a converted way. The Ad-Dharma, under the dynamic leadership of a true revolutionary like Babu Mugowalia, was a aggressive and autonomous movement or compared to similar movements that took birth in other parts of the country. Within a short span of time, it jolted the "haves-not" through its rallies, publications, deputations and demonstrations to demand new government policies or to protest upper caste discriminations. The most influential political action of the movement that can be listed as one of its great achievements was to get Scheduled Castes registered as followers of new religion. In the 1931 A.D. Census, almost half a million of them registered as "Ad-Dharmi" rather than Hindus or Muslim or Sikh. Mr. Mark Juergensmeyer writes as "Later in the 1930, their political influence turned towards electoral politics, in alliance first with the predominantly Muslim Unionist Party and then with the congress"2 It was the logical consequence of the political awakening created among them by Ad-Dharma movement in Punjab, whose undisputable leader was Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia.

Thus through several means, then, the Ad-Dharma presented to its followers a vision of a world which both confirmed and transformed the rude experience of untouchables. And in doing so it implied that a different sort of world was coming into being, for the separate identity so defined signaled hope for a society in which social groups carried no inherent mark of judgment and in which the benefits of progress could be shared by all, Cultural & humanistic aspects of the personality of Babu M.R. Mugowalia were even more glaring. As a humanist his vision of the world was near to rationalist view of the universe (we can even say materialistic as well as through in rudimentary form), he believed in the inherent equality of all human-beings; he was against all sorts of exploitations of man against man; and he earnestly devoted his bodily energy and financial resources in founding a New Society based upon the gospel of equality. His ideas about the universe and equality of all men are echoed in the Ad-Dharma Mandal (1926 to 1931) report in the preparation of which Babu Mugowalia had played a big role. It reads as follows: "Nature (Qudrat Ka Mela) created human beings from original source (Adi) at the time that it created all beings in the earth. The knowledge of moral behaviour (karm-dharm) was also given to them at that time by Nature. Nature made humans superior than animals, but among humans all were equal.

In the beginning, when Nature created human beings, there was no discrimination. There were no differences and no quarrels. In particulars, there were no such concepts as high a law caste. God (Ishwar) was mediating; all was in harmony. Everyone believed in one dharma which Nature had given then through intellect and knowledge." Babu M.R. Mugowalia did not mean by the world 'God' as something supernatural beings who is said to have created the world and since then regulating it as is believed in theology. Mark Juergensmeyer makes quite clear in his work.

Religion as social vision, 1 thus; "Occasionally there is mention of God in a more formal sense": "God (Ishwar) was meditating; all was in harmony." And Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia made a practice of using the name Adi-Purkh for the divine-literally "the originator", Or the original Being." All these designations, although they are theistic terms, are impersonal in intent.4

He, all his life, stood like a rock against social evils such as untouchability, caste-system, women, women slavery, exploitation etc. etc His life in cultural side symbolized with the creation of new social virtues such as women's rights, the value of education, abstinence from alcohol and drugs - which were 'nothing less than a new concept of moral order,' Thus Babu M.R. Mugowalia, a Ghadrite revolutionary, social crusader, political activist and strategist and as an humanitarian fought for the establishment of an ideal society till he breathed last. The noble way of commemorating celebrating the 99th Birth Anniversary (for that matter every birth anniversary) of Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia - who desired his movement to coin-side with Ambedkarite movement to give the movement of depressed classes a country - wide statue, is to emulate him. Therefore, let us resolve to emulate. The great Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia - a patriot, social revolutionary, a successful strategist and, above all, a humanist.

Courtesy: Souvenir, 1985 Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia 99th Birth Anniversary, By Mr. C. L. Chumber