Buddhism in India

Colonial Challenges and Buddhist Revival 229

cupidity of the Western nations, no doubt attracted the Aryans, who

came to India not as simple emigrants with peaceful intentions of

colonization, but as conquerors. They appear to have been a race

imbued with very high notions of self, extremely cunning, arrogant and

bigoted....The aborigines who the Aryans subjugated, or displaced,

appear to have been a hardy and brave people from the determined

front which they offered to these interlopers....The wars of devas and

Daityas, or the Rakshasas, about who so many fictions have been

found scattered over the sacred books of the Brahmans, have certainly

a reference to this primeval struggle.... (Phule 1991: 118–19).

Thus, the concept of Aryan conquest proved a means by which

Phule could interpret, undermine and replace Brahmanic teachings.

His own historical–theoretical explanation was predominantly materi-

alistic: the Aryans had unleashed raids into India, prompted by greed;

had conquered due to military technological advantages (the bow and

the horse-driven chariot), and had maintained their rule through the

use of religious sanctions and by banning education for the conquered.

The religion conceived by the Aryans was one of superstition, ritual

and purity–pollution concerns, but their puranic legends were seen by

Phule as having their material basis in the process of conquest and rule.

Thus, for example, the nine avatars of Vishnu were seen simply as

stages in the ‘Arya Bhat-Brahman’ assault: first the attack by sea (the

tortoise), then by land (the boar), then through trickery, and finally

slaughter (Parasuram’s legendary killing off of all Kshatriyas).

The legend of Raja Bali provided Phule’s alternative ‘golden age’

of India. In the story of the avatars, King Bali is a demon or raksasa,

a king who is tricked by the dwarf Waman into giving him a boon.

Waman asks for all that can be covered in three steps—then puts

one on the earth, the second on the sky, the third on Bali Raja’s chest

to push him under the earth. Among Maharashtrian farmers, how-

ever, and in regions such as Kerala, Bali is described as an ideal

beneficent king, illustrated by the Marathi saying ida pida javo,

Balica rajya yevo(‘let troubles and sorrows go and the kingdom of

Bali come!’), Phule considers Bali as a ruler of India at the time of the

assumed Aryan invasion, and depicts it be such a ‘Golden Age’ that

he continually uses the name ‘Balisthan’ for India as an alternative to

‘Hindustan’. Through this conception of Raja Bali, Phule integrated

many of the popular peasant deities of Maharashtra. ‘Khandoba’,

‘Jotiba’, ‘Vithoba’ and others were seen as governors and feudatories

and warriors in the great realm of Raja Bali.

was born in a Mali (gardener caste) community of Maharashtra,
and educated first in his village, then at Pune, at that time the
centre of cultural and political stirrings. While he was for a time
inclined to nationalism, he quickly became disillusioned with its
Brahman leadership, and instead embarked on a career as social
reformer intending to awaken the ‘Shudras and Ati-Shudras’ to the
reality of their slavery and their destiny. His initial efforts involved
starting schools for untouchables and girls in 1849 and 1951. Then
in 1875 he founded the Satyashodhak Samaj or ‘Truth-Seekers’
society, which was his answer to the various organised groups,
such as the Prarthana Samaj and the Brahmo Samaj of the elite. Its
purpose was to fight priestly domination, especially by organising
social-religious ceremonies without them; it also encouraged the
education of both boys and girls and promoted gender equality
with a quite radical version of the marriage ceremony. This move-
ment gained some influence in Bombay and in Pune district, and he
collected around him a group of young radicals, led mostly by
Malis in the city and Maratha-Kunbis from the rural areas, but
including a wide range of Shudra castes, while maintaining links
with emerging Dalit leaders.
Phule’s first major polemical work, Gulamgiri (Slavery) was
published in 1873. In it he turned the ‘Aryan theory’ of European
origin upside down to unleash a harsh attack on Brahmanism in
all its guises. As noted, the discovery of the linguistic relationship
between Sanskrit and the European languages was linked to the
identification of racial ethnic groups and conquest. In interpreting
caste in this way, the British identified the three upper varnas
(Brahman, Kshatriya and Vaishya) as descended from the Vedic
Aryans (that is, as racially akin to Europeans) while the lower
castes were thought to be descended from conquered, dark-skinned
indigenous peoples. While initially the elite used this to claim their
own relationship to Europeans, Phule turned it upside down. In a
period of emerging nationalist political organisation, while the
nationalists were attacking British imperialism, Phule described
the ‘Arya Bhat-Brahmans’ as the first conquerors. As his English
introduction to Gulamgiriput it:

The extreme fertility of the soil in India, its rich productions, the

proverbial wealth of its people, and the other innumerable gifts which

this favoured land enjoys, and which have more recently tempted the

228 Buddhism in India