Rebuttal to Mr Surinder Singh's claims - GLOBAL AMBEDKARITES

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Sunday, February 16, 2025

Rebuttal to Mr Surinder Singh's claims

Video By Mr Rajratna Ambedkar

Mr Surinder Singh is the CEO of Satluj Network TV, based in Phoenix, Arizona. He also claims to be a filmmaker and a Journalist.

He has posted a video from the USA alleging that Dr. B.R. Ambedkar identified himself as a Rajput in Volume 17, Part 2 of his collected writings and speeches. According to Surinder Singh, this assertion was an attempt by Dr Babasaheb to distance himself from the Untouchables, thereby betraying them.

Furthermore, Surinder Singh makes a startling claim that Dr Babasaheb’s four sisters are married to Brahmins due to their Rajput status. However, he remains silent about his brother Anand Rao Ambedkar's marriage.

Surinder Singh presents these claims as groundbreaking revelations, seemingly reliant solely on a 13-page essay on page 137 of Volume 17, Part 2.

However, Dr Babasaheb's speeches and writings are widely accessible, allowing anyone to verify Surinder Singh’s allegations.

Initially, it seemed best to dismiss Surinder Singh’s claims as baseless. However, given his public stature as an intelligent and articulate individual, it is necessary to address his misinterpretations. His understanding of Dr Babasaheb’s work lacks the depth expected from a genuine intellectual, raising questions about his motives

The 13-page essay is about the Mahars: Who were they, and how did they become the Untouchables? Based on this, Surinder Singh has seized the opportunity with much forceful conviction and vigour to frame Dr Babasaheb as a Rajput.

Since Singh’s assertions concern Dr Babasaheb and my family, this response aims to clarify the matter.

Had Dr Babasaheb determined to establish his Rajput or Khatri identity, he would have written an extensive book on the subject rather than leaving behind only the 13-page document found and published by the Indian government from his archived papers.

Surinder Singh seems to rely upon a missing table on page 139, describing the mapping of ‘Kul’ (Gotra) amongst the Mahars(Untouchables) and Marathas(Kshatriyas). He uses Dr Babasaheb's incisive research and reasoning about the existence of 96 ‘Kuls’.

However, using Dr Babasaheb’s scholarly research, Surinder Singh applies reverse engineering to accuse Dr Babasaheb of being a Rajput. Not only that, but Surinder Singh also takes a further step to frame Dr Babasaheb as anti-Untouchable, going to the extent of saying Dr Babasaheb himself claims to be Rajput and who is actively distancing himself from Untouchables by claiming higher Rajput status, thus accusing him of being the betrayer of the Untouchables.

Surinder Singh may have his own sources regarding the list of the 96 ‘kuls’. However, irrelevant to the present discussion, he commits a heinous act and is guilty of distortion of truth by framing Dr Babasaheb as a Rajput.

Dr Babasaheb admits there is no ‘Kul’ among the Marathas, which is not to be found among the Mahars. But he also elucidates that in a later period, the Mahars were made to live on the outskirts of Indian villages, degraded and deemed Untouchable.

Surinder Singh apparently does not know who the Mahars were at a point in ancient and medieval history or what they became over time, so he deliberately ignores this aspect of Dr Babasaheb’s explanation.

Claiming ancestral royal lineage does not mean one retains that status indefinitely. Societal structures evolve, and Dr Babasaheb, a pragmatic man, had to contend with the social reality of being born an Untouchable. He never denied his Mahar identity but instead devoted his life to dismantling caste oppression and Untouchability.

Dr Babasaheb’s 13-page essay discusses the origins of untouchability concerning the Mahars, who once shared social standing with the Marathas but later became Untouchable. Nowhere in this discussion does he claim to be a Rajput in a contemporary context; instead, he references ancient and medieval history in response to colonial-era historians.

In his book Who Were the Shudras, Dr Babasaheb posits that Shudras were also Kshatriya at one time. Due to conflict with the Brahmins, a section of the Shudras became socially degraded and formed the 4th class of Chaturvarna.

In his book The Untouchables, he explores how modern-day untouchables formed part of a homogenous whole in ancient society before the advent of untouchability. Due to the conflict between Brahminism and Buddhism, Buddhists living on the outskirts of Indian villages were relegated to the status of Untouchables.

Dr Babasaheb does not claim in the essay that he is a Rajput, but his broader analysis of ancient history shows that Indian Society was once Homogenous.

Dr Babasaheb’s study investigated the racial theory propounded by Colonial-era historians.

Seeing the diversity of people in India, these historians constructed a racial theory to describe the diversity of the Indian people, which Dr Babasaheb debunked.

Surinder Singh bypasses the status of Untouchables in the modern setting that is in their ostracised and socially degraded state.

Dr Babasaheb conjectures that Aboriginals, modern-day Scheduled Tribes, may be Indigenous, but he was not sure. In Volume 2, Page 464, whilst giving evidence before the Indian Statutory Commission on 23rd October 1928, Dr Babasaheb was asked a question relating to the status of the Chamar, followed by the status of the Mahar, to which Dr Babasaheb replied that both are Untouchable.

On page 465, a question relating to Aboriginals was asked if they were pre-Aryan, to which Dr Babasaheb replied:  Well, I do not know.

This shows that Dr Babasaheb was clear that he belonged to the Mahar Untouchable caste and that he was an Untouchable.

Surinder Singh does not furnish any specific reference in Dr Babasaheb’s writings to his alleged claim that Dr Babasaheb wrote or said, ‘I am not B R Ambedkar, but I am B R Sakpal’.

None of the 20 online volumes of Writings and Speeches published by the Government of Maharashtra mentions Sakpal.

Dr Babasaheb was born into the Mahar caste, a historically oppressed Maharashtra community considered "Untouchable." He never identified as a Rajput, and the claim that he wrote about being a Rajput in Volume 17, Part 2 of his collected works is misleading. Dr Babasaheb analysed various caste groups' origins but never denied his Untouchable identity.

His entire life was dedicated to fighting caste discrimination and untouchability, advocating for the rights of the Untouchables as an Untouchable Mahar. If he had been from an upper-caste Rajput background, there would have been no reason for him to experience the severe discrimination he faced, such as being denied water in school or being forced to sit outside the classroom.

In Volume 12, page 666, In a biographical essay entitled Waiting for Visa, he writes

As children on a journey to meet their father at Goregaon, the stationmaster asked who we were. Without a moment’s thought, I blurted out that we were Mahars. (Mahar is one of the communities treated as untouchables in the Bombay Presidency.)

On Page 673, when he returned to India in 1918 from his study in USA and London, he writes that

My five-year stay in Europe and America had completely wiped out of my mind any consciousness that I was an Untouchable.

However, he was reminded of his Untouchable status when he discovered he could not get accommodation anywhere in Baroda. Desperate, he disguised himself as a Parsi to get accommodation at a Parsi Inn. When the innkeeper later discovered he was not a Parsi but an Untouchable, he was threatened with violence and thrown out of the Parsi Inn.

 In Volume 7, Page 279, of his book, The Untouchables, published in 1948, he writes that

The Mahar community is a principal Untouchable community in Maharashtra. It is the single largest Untouchable community found in Maharashtra.

The idea that Mahars are Rajputs is based on colonial-era theories and local legends rather than historical facts. While some Mahars may have sought Kshatriya status to escape caste oppression, Dr Babasaheb rejected caste hierarchies altogether. His writings consistently opposed the caste system rather than seeking to place Mahars within the Rajput framework in modern times.

The essay by Dr Babasaheb, referred to by Surinder Singh in the video Volume17, Part 2, page 137, proceeds with the anthropological approach by examining the ’kul’ or Gotra of the various clans amongst the Marathas (Rajputs) and Mahars (Untouchables) and finds that ’Kuls’ overlap.

But this finding of overlapping ‘Kuls’ is not confined to Mahars and Rajputs alone but is found amongst numerous clans across India, including the Brahmins.

In Volume 7, Page 259, Dr Babasaheb writes that Mahars are also to be found in Bengal.

Dr Babasaheb concluded that all races co-mingled once in ancient history, and society was predominantly homogenous. Later, conflict amongst the various clans led to some groups breaking off from settled communities, leading to the emergence of untouchability.

This thesis is elaborated in his book The Untouchables, published in 1948. In it, he refutes the racial origin of the Untouchables and posits that they were originally Buddhist.

In volume 7, Pages 322-307, Dr Ambedkar writes that

by the application of anthropometry to the various strata of Hindu society disprove that the Untouchables belong to a race different from the Aryans and the Dravidians. The measurements establish that the Brahmin and the Untouchables belong to the same race.

In volume 17, part 2, page 142, he writes that

the Mahars [sometime later] had become fallen in status and were classed as Untouchables

Dr Babasaheb was born in 1891 and was deemed an Untouchable at birth. So, he revolted against the system of Untouchability in his capacity as an Untouchable, not as a Rajput. He did not shun the Untouchables but fought throughout his life to champion their cause in his capacity as an Untouchable.

It is worth recalling that the study of ‘Kul’ or Gotra in the context of social anthropology as the object of Dr Babasaheb’s study is not new and thus not confined only to the 13 pages that Surinder Singh references. Social anthropology is a running theme across many of Dr Babasaheb’s speeches and writings.

As a student, Dr Babasaheb read a paper entitled Castes In India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development before the Anthropology seminar at Columbia University, New York, USA on 9th May 1916.

In Volume 1, page 6, Dr Babasaheb writes that in ancient India, society was homogeneous, and that Caste is a parcelling of an already homogeneous unit. The genesis of Caste explains this process of parcelling.

On page 9, Dr Babasaheb writes that

The various Gotras of India are and have been exogamous(married outside Gotras), and so are the other groups with totemic organization. It is no exaggeration to say that with the people of India, exogamy (marrying outside the Gotra) is a creed, and none dare infringe it, so much so that, despite the endogamy(marrying within)  of the Castes within them, exogamy is strictly observed and that there are more rigorous penalties for violating exogamy than there are for violating endogamy. You will, therefore, readily see that with exogamy as the rule, there could be no Caste, for exogamy means fusion. But we have castes; consequently, in the final analysis, the creation of Castes, so far as India is concerned, means the superposition of endogamy (marriage within caste) on exogamy (marriage outside Gotras)

Surinder Singh presents no credible evidence to show that Dr Babasaheb’s sisters married Brahmins or Rajputs.  Surnames across different castes overlap, which cannot be used as the criteria.

The subject of The Poona Pact (1932) was not a betrayal but a compromise forced upon Dr Babasaheb due to Gandhi’s fast to death. Dr Babasaheb initially demanded separate electorates for the Untouchables to ensure their independent political representation. However, under immense pressure, he agreed to reserve seats instead to prevent Gandhi’s death. Despite this, Dr Babasaheb later expressed dissatisfaction with the agreement, recognising its limitations, but he remained committed to Untouchable’s rights through constitutional means. Indeed, he continued to demand Separate Electorates for the Untouchables well into the 1940s.

Dr Babasaheb never attempted to escape caste discrimination by claiming to be part of Rajput, as alleged by Surinder Singh.  

Instead, Dr Babasaheb strongly opposed caste-based oppression and worked to annihilate the caste system. His conversion to Buddhism in 1956 directly rejected Hindu caste structures. If he had sought to assimilate into an upper-caste identity, he would not have led the mass conversion of Untouchables to Buddhism.

Nowhere did Dr Babasaheb say: ‘I do not belong to those Untouchables or scheduled castes. I have not attached to those castes that do not fall under Rajputs’.

Conclusion

Surinder Singh’s video deliberately distorts historical facts and misrepresents Dr Babasaheb’s legacy. His claims are unfounded and attempt to delegitimize Dr Babasaheb’s contributions to social justice.

Surinder Singh conflates anthropology, history, and caste politics while ignoring the lived realities of the Untouchables in the 20th century. His video is a deliberate act of misinformation aimed at misleading the public.

Surinder Singh is guilty of distortion of truth by publishing the video, a deliberate effort to malign, misrepresent, and misinform the public.

Dr Babasaheb was the undisputed leader of the Untouchables, dedicating his life to their emancipation. Attempts to frame him as Khatri Rajput seeking to escape his identity are not only misleading but an insult to his lifelong struggle.

Surinder Singh is reminded that today’s so-called former Untouchables are better educated and informed to confront diabolical contrivances, as his video depicts.

 

Date: 4/2/2025

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