An excerpt from ‘Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva’, by Janaki Bakhle.
If the Sanātani community was anxious about cow slaughter or leery of holding intermixed haḷadī-kuṅkūṁs in private homes, it was outraged at the thought of Dalits entering a temple. So intractable was the community on this issue that it prohibited Dalits from even walking on the streets on which temples were located. The Hindu temple was and is a material representation of Brahmin power, not just to organize the fundamental rituals of Hindu religious practice but to establish the ritual order of caste groups and who could be included in that caste order. Anupama Rao has called the temple “the locus of Brahminical authority” and the “most potent site of Dalits denigration by caste Hindus.”
Accordingly, those fighting for caste equality in the 1920s – from EV Ramaswamy Naicker in the south to BR Ambedkar in western India to Gandhi on a national stage – made temple entry a major plank of their calls for reform. The INC led two major satyagrahas specifically on temple entry in 1924 and 1932, but as Dilip Menon has pointed out, they were aimed at and led by upper castes and intended to reform Hinduism. As Nicholas Dirks suggests, “Although social reform agendas . . . often focused on Brahmanic practices, with only a few exceptions . . . they worked to assert the primary importance of Brahman customs for the definition of the Hindu community.”
Although Dalit-led satyagrahas were less about being “allowed” to enter a temple and more about equal access to public property as a fundamental right, Ambedkar soon grew frustrated by temple entry as a political objective for Dalits, as for that matter did Naicker for non-Brahmans in southern India Savarkar also took on the issue of temple entry. I present here two poems he wrote on untouchability. In 1925 he composed a song for the Akhil Hindu gathering from Shirgaon titled “Hindūzcē ēkatāgān” (“The Unity of Hindus”). It was sung, according to his editor, by Brahmins, Sudras, Mahars, and Mangs alike at gatherings up and down Maharashtra.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.