Colonial Challenges and Buddhist Revival 231intercourse; they raise their young, protect themselves from their
enemies and understand nothing aside from belching after they have
eaten; and since there is not a speck of change in this constant behavior
of theirs, there is no upheaval or basic change in their original condition.
However, one marvellous specialty in the nature of human beings is
intelligence. With its help, they have won superiority over all the fish,
animals, birds, insects and other creatures; and with this intelligence
they have invented the system of writing to put their thoughts down
on paper. After this, since the people of the continents all around have
kept note of all their experiences up to today, there has grown up a
huge mass of experienced knowledge in the world, and with the help
of this experiential knowledge and their intelligence, the Europeans
send their important messages through telegraph wires thousands of
miles to inform each other and bring lakhs of tons of grain by boat
and train in the time of drought to save each other. And in the midst
of such intelligent human beings, the Sudra Shivaji brought to ruin the
Muslim Badshah who worships one god and advised the farmers to
take care of all the cows and the Brahmans and their self-interested
religion! (Phule 1991: 396).Thus it was that by preventing the Dalits from using their intelligence,
by denying them education the Brahmans maintained their power;
and the ‘swadeshi’ alternative was attractive to them because it left
them with a captive population over which to exercise hegemony.
Phule also gave what could be called a materialistic alternative to
the orthodox Theravada Buddhist chain of causality. Like this,
Phule’s causal chain also began with ‘ignorance’; he used the term
‘vidya’ (Pali vijja), but treated it as knowledge gained through
education: vidyavihin mati geli; mativihin gati geli; gativihin vitta
geli; vitavihin sudra kacle(‘Without education wisdom was lost;
without wisdom development was lost; without development
wealth was lost; without wealth the shudras were ruined’) (ibid.: 353).
Thus, he argued for compulsory universal primary education, with
teachers trained from among the ‘Shudras and Ati-Shudras’ them-
selves, and with a course of studies that included both simple
Marathi and training in agriculture and artisanship.
Phule’s feminism, very advanced for his age, was shown ideologi-
cally in the strong defense of women raised in two pamphlets
entitled Satsar, published in 1885 and focusing particularly on the
two great women leaders of his time, Pandita Ramabai and Tarabai
Shinde.Phule’s second major work, Shetkaryaca Asud(The Whipcord
of the Cultivator) published in 1882, extended these themes into
a critique of British colonialism. This depicted the bureaucracy as
the greatest exploiter of the ‘Shudra and Ati-Shudra’ farmers; and
the bureaucracy itself was seen as an alliance of the ‘lazy indolent
white English government employees’ and the ‘cunning Arya Bhat-
Brahman black government employees.’ As Phule saw it, the lazy
English, ill-informed about the country they ruled, simply let their
Brahman subordinates loot the peasants in their name. Along with
religious extortions, quarrels were instigated in the villages by the
cunning Brahmans, factions were created among the peasantry,
fights incited, and once the case went to court all the clan of
Brahmans at every level united to loot both sides. Along with this
cheating, taxes, cess, octroi and all kinds of funds were extorted
from the peasants, their land was take over by the ‘gigantic’ Forest
Department so that ‘peasants had not even an inch of land left to
graze even a goat’, and nothing was done to develop agriculture;
consequently the masses of people were being ruined.
Phule took nationalist themes quite seriously. In Shetkaryaca
Asudhe discussed the way in which the peasantry and artisans
were ruined by foreign competition, and criticised the loans taken
from European ‘moneylenders’ for irrigation schemes for which the
farmers were overcharged and even then left without water as it
never actually reaching their fields. But, he attacked the nationalists’
solution of swadeshi, which was beginning to be proclaimed at the
time. Phule’s solution was different. For him, in contrast to the
developing themes of ‘economic nationalism’ which emphasised
autarchy, exchange and trade with other lands were foundations
for development and for building understanding among peoples; in
fact cutting off such commerce between peoples was one of the
means Brahmans had always used to maintain their power. The
solution to the problem of competition, he insisted, was not expulsion
of the foreigners and closure of the country, but rather education,
and access to technology.
The emphasis on education and technology was consistent with
his fundamental view of human beings, in which intelligence was
the major distinguishing feature:
Now... aside from knowledge, humans and all other animals are
basically alike in their nature. Animals need food, sleep and sexual230 Buddhism in India