They are a legacy of a little-known reformist movement in the early 1930s that stemmed from this idyllic village of Mangrul Dastagir, some 120 km from Nagpur.
Their numbers shrunk to a few hundred today — scattered over central India, particularly Vidarbha. They call themselves Ajaat — or casteless.
Even as the Centre measures the socio-political fallout of enumerating caste-related information in the national census, this small community wants the enumerators to register them as what they are: Ajaats, a metaphor they use for the renunciation of their caste-identities in a society riddled with complexities and tensions of caste.
“If enumerators ask us our caste, we will tell them to write Ajaat in that column,” says Shyam Maharaj Bhabhutkar with pride. Instead of trying to rid the society of caste, he says with a lament, the government is trying to reinforce it.
More than 80 years ago, hundreds of disciples of Shyam Bhabhutkar’s grandfather, Ganpati Maharaj or Hari Maharaj, renounced their castes in an attempt to abolish that system and bury inhuman discrimination in the times of strong caste prejudices. The new community called their new religion Manavta (or humanity).
In 2005, DNA reported in a three-part series about the life of Ajaats. “Ajaat is not a caste, but a metaphor for those who gave up their caste,” says Nagpur-based historian Dr Bal Padwad. A few hundred such families, originally belonging to 18 different castes, are scattered in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
Ganpati Maharaj laid 21 tenets in the 1920s to bring about a new social order where men and women are equals, where there is no space for caste or class. He bulldozed traditions and social evils, erasing gender-disparity, calling for alcohol prohibition, taking on usurious money lending, campaigning for education, advocating collective farming, and giving up his caste-identity.
“We failed in telling the world that life without caste is possible and far better,” says Pandharinath Nimkar, a septuagenarian Ajaat and current president of Shwet Nishandhari Ajatiya Manav Samstha that was founded by Ganpati Maharaj. “The model of Ajaat is worth studying as an alternative to the caste-system that has taken the country by flames.”
Yet, ironically, Ganpati Maharaj’s fourth generation of disciples and family members have had to trace their original castes for all the practical purposes: gain in admission to colleges and schools.
“On the one hand the government asks us to banish caste system, and on the other it seeks to know the caste at every step,” Shyam Bhabhutkar says. Five years ago, he had to file an affidavit before a local court to get a certificate for ‘Mali’ caste for his daughter. “Her college would refuse to admit her until we revealed our caste and proved it with a caste validity certificate,” he says. “There’s no escaping caste.”
