Diksha Lalita Devanand Karhade
News Editor
In the 1980s, Kanshi Ramji, a respected member of the Charmkar community in Punjab, studied the cultural movement here and realized that the Bahujan community here was completely stuck in cultural stagnation and therefore their path to political power was also completely blocked.
After studying the philosophy of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, he set out to awaken the entire Bahujan community, which was divided into seven and a half thousand castes and was completely dependent on the Brahminical culture dominated by the priesthood, separating each other with the pride of caste hierarchy.
For this, he turned his attention to the highly educated youth of the Bahujan community. Keeping in mind that the OBC community is mainly the carrier of this Brahmin culture, he took the highly educated people of this community along and through them started to bring awareness among castes like Sali, Mali, Kunbi, Chambhar, Dhor, Blacksmith, Carpenter.
Gradually, an army of such youths emerged in an organization called BAMSEF. They started to find their history and tell it to the people through effective pen and speech…
One of these young people from the Kunbi community was the respected Mr. M. Deshmukh. Mr. M. Deshmukh, who was very knowledgeable about history, presented history in a different way.
The ‘right vision’ of Buddha looked at history and placed the Bahujan great men who fought against the Brahmin culture in front of the people.
Since he wrote the medieval history of India’s freedom movement truthfully, a funeral procession was taken out for him during his lifetime. However, a group from the Ambedkar movement immediately took out a funeral procession for him and
made the funeral procession extinct.
Mr. Deshmukh now reached every household. Along with Babasaheb’s books, Mr. Deshmukh also started appearing in the book collections of every Buddhist house in the Ambedkar movement. Deshmukh sir gave great love to this historian, who was greatly loved by the Ambedkar movement group and also to the Ambedkar movement.
In every program, he himself sat at the book stall for some time and told the readers the importance of the book.
His one-and-a-half hour speeches used to captivate the audience. I have heard many of his speeches.
Today, after hearing the news of the passing of M.M. Deshmukh, a historian in the Ambedkar movement, I wondered whether there would be thinkers and activists in the OBC community who would take his place, who would embrace the ‘comprehensive Ambedkar philosophy’ that encompasses the philosophies of all these great men – Buddha, Kabir, Shivaji, Phule, Shahu, etc., and would awaken our society and contribute to winning the ongoing cultural battle of poverty.
