‘
‘Aamcha
Baap ani Aamhi’ is an autobiographical sketch of four
generations of a Dalit family which embodies the ‘upward mobility’ from the
lowest strata of society to the highest circles of power. The USP of this story
is the positive attitude which sets it apart from all other Dalit narratives
where the focus is mostly upon the hardships & sufferings of the
protagonists. Though hardships & sufferings do constitute the major chunk
of life for the main characters—acute & obvious for the first two
generations while subtle but not lesser for the next two—it is not the listing
of those incidents but the listing of various steps which led from lowest to
highest rung of the social ladder.
The
title of the book is very significant[1] as it
foregrounds the supportive & inspirational relationship between father
& children which is the main driving force behind their later success in
life. The colloquial word ‘Baap’
instead of ‘Wadil’ lends it
authenticity of experience & emotional proximity. (In Marathi the word ‘Wadil’ requires plural lexicon to
denote respect while ‘Baap’ takes up
singular lexicon to denote closeness.) The‘Baap’
in the title also refers to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar who is the father figure for
the Dalits in Maharashtra.
The
book is divided into biographical/semi-biographical/auto-biographical chapters
on various members of Jadhav family. Its shifting perspective gives the
panoramic view of around 100 years[2] of
social change in Maharashtra with special reference to the city of dreams,
Mumbai. In the following paper, we would discuss various features of this
outstanding story.
Autobiographical Sketch of Four Generations
The
Jadhav family originates at Ozar, Taluka Niphad, Dist. Nasik in Maharashtra.
There are details of ancestors living in the area but the main story begins with
the migration of Rahibai (author’s grandmother) with her children to Mumbai.
There are details of her struggle for survival along with the details of her
son’s (author’s father) tough learning in the school of life. Both mother &
son had to try their hands at several jobs just to meet their hands & mouth
unless & until, he gets a steady job at Port Trust of India. It’s the
stability of job & steady income (though not sufficient enough) that
triggered off the ‘upward mobility’ of the Jadhav family on Abraham Maslow’s
pyramid of hierarchy of needs & self-actualization.
It
is said that nothing succeeds like success & the first success came in 1962
when the eldest son of the family J. D. Jadhav passes IAS. The author narrates
the funny incident at that time when the telegram arrived from Delhi to Mumbai
stating ‘J. D. Jadhav passes IAS’ which was mistakenly read as ‘J. D. Jadhav
passes away’ & resulted in a lot of commotion before turning into
celebration. Another memorable but disturbing incident took place in 1970 in
Parbhani where J. D. Jadhav was posted as District Collector, yet his wife
Pushpa was subtly denied entry into Kataneshwar Temple. Frustrated with the
experience, he applied for transfer to Mumbai. Later on in 1981, he became the
Chief Secretary, the highest beaurocratic officer to the Govt. of Maharashtra.
The
second brother Sudhakar, tried his luck in the private sector, went to Dubai
& despite hardships succeeded in his field. The third one, Dinesh first
joined Income Tax department as the inspector & then became officer in the
Shipping Corporation. His two jobs acquainted him with disparity in the two sides
of India—extreme richness of top businessmen, politicians & landlords on
one hand & acute poverty & hardships of seamen on the other. As far as
possible he tried to ease the problems of the seamen.
Then
comes iconic Dr. Narendra Jadhav who started his career in State Bank of India
(October 1974 to September 1977), then moved to Reserve Bank of India as
Research Officer & left his golden imprint on whatever he did. His
important achievements are his research on criteria to decide relative quota of
developed & developing countries in International Monetary Fund (1988),
Financial Advisor to Govt. of Ethiopia (1988), Director of Economic Department
of RBI (1990), research on Hawala Market (December 1991) which gave him the
nickname ‘James Bond of RBI’, Financial Advisor to Govt. of Afghanistan, member
of the Planning Commission, Vice Chancellor to University of Pune & Financial
Advisor to RBI among others.
The
children of all the four brothers are well-educated & doing well in their
respective fields.
Rationalism: Agent of Change
The
quality that brought about this drastic social transformation is rationalism,
the belief that one’s life should be based on reason & logic rather than
emotions or religious beliefs. Dr. Ambedkar was a hardcore rationalist & as
his disciple Dr. Jadhav’s father strictly adhered to it. He was an atheist who
believed in hard work & strongly opposed superstitions. He inculcated the
same values in his children. He had the positive attitude, knew the importance
of education, gave full freedom to his children to choose their own career as
well as life partner & in the process rose above all the in-built
prejudices of caste system. He never glorified poverty but taught his children
the importance of money & how to use it constructively.
Importance of Education
The
most famous teaching of Dr. Ambedkar not only to Dalits but to all the people
was ‘educate, unite & agitate’. It is the education, first & foremost,
which is the vehicle of rationalism & social change. Education frees the
mind from all types of prejudices & superstitions & gives it the
strength to face the challenges of life. However educational system is still
laden with these evils. Dr. Narendra Jadhav shows how he had to face them at
four distinct stages of his education.
His
primary education took place at Wadala school where majority of the students
came from same socio-economic background. Their heroes were the local goons
& criminals. It taught him the toughest lesson which helped him throughout
in life i.e. ‘survival of the fittest’.
Then
for his secondary education, he was admitted to Chhabildas High School, Dadar
where he was first introduced to middle class values, high caste culture &
standard language. The hegemony of these three tactically instilled Inferiority
Complex in him which on one hand frightened him but on the other hand pushed him
towards the pursuit of excellence. It was the same value ‘pursuit of
excellence’ that his father always upheld for his children & for which his
teachers motivated him. The incident foregrounding this paradox was Dr.
Jadhav’s winning of Jagannath Shankarsheth Scholarship for topping in Sanskrit
at matriculation. The reaction of his Sanskrit teacher Joshi sir is
self-explanatory. He curiously enquired, “Who is that student? Sane? Bapat?
Sule?” When he came to know about Dr. Jadhav he couldn’t recollect him &
wished to meet him. But Dr. Jadhav dared not face him thanks to casteism.
The
turning point in his life came in the form of Ruia College. Though he first
philandered with a couple of colleges & a few science subjects, it was at
Ruia that he got the right direction. He chose the combination of Economics
& Statistics for his B.Sc. & graduated with distinction. Various
curricular, co-curricular & extra-curricular activities at Ruia like
elocutions, debates, NSS etc. not only contributed to his all round development
but also gave him the much needed self-confidence to take on further challenges
in life.
The
next milestone in his educational career was his pursuit of Ph.D. (Economics)
at Indiana University, USA. For this he was awarded National Scholarship by
Govt. of India & three years leave by RBI. The pressure to finish his Ph.D.
at the earliest was paramount & along with it was his enthusiasm at his
best. There too he participated in many co-curricular activities & in 1983
bagged the award for the Best International Student. However grass was not
always green. Till now he had experienced casteism in India but now he had to
taste bitterness of racism in USA. His guide Prof. Fursterberg who boasted of
German royal blood & was drenched in racist ideology of Nazi Germany
(though living in USA) played cat & mousse with Dr. Jadhav. He turned every
stone to frustrate Dr. Jadhav & made scornful remarks about his lineage.
Finally Dr. Jadhav had to take firm stand & only then could he finish his
Ph.D. successfully.
Inter-caste Marriage
When
it comes to any type of inborn superiority related to caste, class, religion or
race; its underlining principle is so-called ‘pure blood’. Though genetic
science & anthropology have proven without doubt that entire human race is
one (According to Human Genome Program, there is only 0.01% difference in the
genes of various races, let alone other outward labels of caste, class or
religion.) the same sciences are used to justify pseudo-scientific claims of
purity of blood. Obviously this ghost of purity & superiority of ‘blood’
forbids mingling of blood i.e. inter-caste, inter-class, inter-religious or
inter-racial marriages & strictly enforces the code of endogamy.
However
when a person imbibes rationality, he accepts that no superior quality is
inborn but rather learnt & developed through one’s experiences &
efforts. As a result, all are born equal & can achieve excellence.
Consequently the very basis of enforced endogamy collapses & frees a person
to choose one’s life partner not on the basis of his/her caste, religion, race
or any such label but his/her earned qualities.
In
case of Dr. Jadhav it is significant that his father accepted his inter-caste
marriage to Vasundhara Kulkarni saying, “One has to choose one’s life partner
very consciously. If partner is not right, the life can’t proceed properly.
I’ll tell only one thing & that is whichever girl you may choose as your
partner, don’t bother about her caste at all.” However Vasundhara’s mother was
against the marriage as she had seen many alcoholic Dalit husbands beating up
their wives & she feared that same fate awaited her daughter. But as the
time passed by, her fears were proven false & on the contrary the caste
prejudiced diluted & led to flowering of healthy friendship between her
& Dr. Jadhav’s mother.
Role of Mumbai City in Social
Engineering
While
discussing various facets of this outstanding story, we cannot underestimate
the importance of locale, the Mumbai city. Mumbai is fundamentally different
from other cities in India not just in the size of population but also in its
cosmopolitan culture. Originally belonging to fisher folk, this small island
became the megacity by incorporating within it people coming from all parts of
India, belonging to different castes, class, religions, languages & races.
Under the alien British rule & at the forefront of economic &
technological development, Mumbai became the melting pot where diverse people
mingled together more harmoniously than anywhere else. The sheer crowd of the
city along with its variety made it impossible to strictly follow age-old caste
restrictions. Majority of people who came to Mumbai came here in the search of
better future & hope & were more willing to co-operate (unless &
until communalism took roots). The city of Mumbai was also the hot spot of many
socio-political-cultural movements. It also provided the much needed daily
bread & butter to its residents. As a result, here one got every
opportunity to develop oneself. Rationalism, education, inter-caste marriage,
the various steps in the ‘upward mobility’ would have been simply impossible
without the city of Mumbai. On the whole, what Mumbai brought about in case of
not just Dr. Jadhav & his family but in case of hundreds of other such
cases, is nothing short of social engineering.
So
to conclude, we would like to say that ‘Aamcha
Baap ani Aamhi’ is indeed a saga of modern India & an important
milestone in the history of Marathi literature as well.
**********
Dr. Manisha Patil,
Asst. Professor (English),
Gurunanak College of Arts, Science & Commerce,
GTB Nagar, Mumbai.
Dr.
Manish Kumar Mishra,
Associate IIAS, Shimla & Asst. Professor (Hindi),
K.M.Agrawal College of Arts, Science & Commerce,
Kalyan.
[1] The significance of title ‘Our Father
& Us’ is lost in the title of its English translation ‘Untouchable’ which
can be easily confused with Mulk Raj Anand’s masterpiece by the same name.
[2] From 1910, the tentative year of
birth of Dr. Narendra Jadhav’s father ‘Baap’
in the title, till 2010 the year of latest edition of the book.
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