Samata Din | 20th March 1927 – 2025 | Equality Day | Social Empowerment Day
20 March · Samata Din
Two voices. One truth. Ninety-eight years of a question unanswered.
Drinking the water of Chavdar Lake will not make us immortal. We did not die even before drinking it. We are not going to Chavdar Lake merely to drink its water. We are going there to establish that we too are human beings like others.— Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Mahad, 20 March 1927
Piece I · Personal Reflection
My Father Did His Part. What Am I Doing?
Vijay Gaikwad · Mumbai, 20 March 2024
What water means to a man who comes from a drought-prone region — no one needs to explain it separately. Even today, water carries a deep sense of wonder for me.
In recent years, the drought in our region has eased, thanks to nature’s cycle and my father’s relentless efforts. Because of him, even in drought years, the well on our farm runs twelve months a year. Just five years ago, a cattle relief camp had to be set up on our land due to drought. When the water crisis arose, my father Shrawan Gaikwad opened our well for the camp.
Our drought may be over — but the village’s drought is not. A college run by the Ahmednagar District Education Promotion Society came up on the open land near our farm. The college started, but the drinking water problem remained. The wise elders of the village kept persuading us. My drought-scarred heart took time to agree. Finally, my father’s willpower prevailed — a 2HP pipeline from our farm well was extended to the college.
“The community that had been denied water for thousands of years was now giving it away freely.”
Later, when my father visited Mumbai on 6th December, we were at Shivaji Park. A stall was distributing free water. I was moved deeply. The community that had been denied water for thousands of years was now giving it away freely.
Water is national wealth. Every creature on this earth — every ant, every living being — has a right to it. How generous must Mahatma Phule have been, when in 1868 he opened the hauz at his own home for untouchables to drink from.
Even today, the politics and commerce of water inequality continue openly.
On 20th March 1927, in a single moment, Bhim quenched a thirst that had lasted thousands of years.
My father did his part. What am I doing?
Piece II · Historical Essay
The Unaccounted History of Chavdar Lake
Rahul Bansode · Nashik ·
The entire history of humanity is stained with examples of dominant classes controlling food and water — the two essentials of life — to keep the oppressed in submission. By controlling these two things, the helplessness of the lower classes was exploited to build great empires. The monuments of those towering empires survive to this day, but the tears of the exploited at their foundations — their reckoning — are never counted. That is what khijganti means: not a false account, but a hidden truth. A truth that even the one who knows it does not wish to recall, because if remembered, it might slip out, and cause trouble.
The River and the Lake
The Savitri river flows near Mahad. When a river is named after a great woman from mythology, it is automatically brought under control in the name of sanctity. Across India, wherever rivers carry the names of such mythological women, the nearby history reveals record levels of untouchability — or more precisely, the systematic violation of fundamental human rights.
The Savitri is a complex river by nature. Rising in the hills of Mahabaleshwar, it winds through roughly sixty miles, sometimes widening, sometimes narrowing, occasionally splitting into channels that rejoin the main flow. In the monsoon, it floods violently. In summer, it sometimes runs completely dry — making one wonder if this is the same river that had overflowed its banks months ago.
Underground springs would find their way to a lake about a mile and a half from the Savitri’s course. Nature, without discrimination, provided this water. This spring became a reservoir. The ancient riverside civilisation shaped itself drinking from it. Where a system of exploitation survives for more than a hundred years, that place is said to have “developed.” These developed places construct a caste hierarchy under the dominion of religion. Once such a system is established, its first objective is control over natural resources. The same happened with Mahad’s lake. Walls were built on all four sides. Gates were installed. Water that nature had given freely was enclosed in a frame. It became the Chavdar lake — a lake with four doors.
The Logic of Thirst
A lake locked on all sides was a matter of pride for those who “guarded” it. Stories circulated in Konkan — Mahad never faces a water shortage; the lake stays clean and sweet because the shadow of untouchables never falls upon it; this water is ideal for religious rituals. Not only were untouchables forbidden from drinking the lake’s water — they did not even walk on the roads leading to it.
In ordinary times, this was not insurmountable. A short walk westward would bring one to the Savitri, with designated spots downstream for untouchables to draw water and bathe. The problem began when the Savitri started drying up in summer. The remaining pools would be allocated according to caste hierarchy. After about a month, those too would dry up, and people would walk further west to where the river broke apart — a place called Tutki. Many families had only a single brass or copper vessel for the journey. The advantage of a small vessel was that even young children could carry it — two or three children and the women of a family spent their days in the labour of fetching water from distant pools.
They knew that a lake existed nearby — one with water year-round. But that water was not for them. The unwritten rule had become second nature. Desperate attempts were made. But the punishments were so inhuman that fear of the lake outweighed any temptation.
“Making a human being this abject for the sake of water — this was perhaps the greatest gift of this so-called elevated culture.”
In the month of Vaishakh, the situation became dire. The river nearly dried up. The remaining pools would become putrid. Further west, at the Dabki, the water was murky and heavily polluted. Near the end of Vaishakh, the dry riverbed itself would be dug up — a zira — and drops that seeped in were collected with a bowl or pottery shard. The thirst was so overpowering that there was no time to wait for the water to settle and clear. The entire family would sometimes make the journey together.
How acute thirst can become — these people had known this for thousands of years. But it was endured because the monsoon was never far. Sometimes the rains were delayed, and then people would beg the well-owners for even a mouthful. Making a human being this abject for the sake of water — this was perhaps the greatest gift of this so-called elevated culture.
The Law and the Satyagraha
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to serve administrative convenience and British economic interests, the colonial legal framework was being strengthened. Seeking an organised society for wartime production, the British began enforcing their laws more effectively at the district level. In 1923, the Bombay Legislative Council legally permitted untouchables access to public resources and facilities.
Around this time, Mahad was developing into an important municipality. The port at Dabhol, ten kilometres away, saw goods traffic and military movement — including veterans from untouchable communities, some of whom had built schools and first-aid facilities for their people. A telegraph facility was also available through the British India Submarine Telegraph Company. Despite this social progress, untouchables could still not drink water in Mahad’s market or access the lake.
Acting on the 1923 law, Surabanna Tipnis, then president of the Mahad Municipality, had ordered the Chavdar Lake opened to untouchables. But upper-caste resistance was fierce, and constant surveillance made it practically impossible. Tipnis’s young friend Ramchandra Babaji More was working on a solution. By then, Dr. Ambedkar had established the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha. At the 1924 meeting of the Kulaba District Depressed Classes Mission, More met Ambedkar and described the situation. A satyagraha was the only path.
Four years of deliberation and preparation followed. In 1927, Ambedkar formally announced the water rights satyagraha. Among those who participated directly were G.N. Sahasrabuddhe, a Chitpavan Brahmin social reformer; A.V. Chitre, a Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu reformer; and Surabanna Tipnis himself. But the fundamental act — of drinking the water — would have to be performed by the untouchables themselves.
On 20th March 1927, a public gathering was convened. Tipnis announced that all public places and lakes were being opened to untouchables. Ambedkar addressed the gathering, then began walking toward Chavdar Lake. Three thousand untouchables walked behind him — including some Muslims. The procession reached the lake. Descending the steps, Ambedkar walked forward, cupped water in his palms, and drank slowly.
The Steps
The steps on the right side of Chavdar Lake have been slightly altered over time. But any person of goodwill who descends them today, toward the water below, feels a shudder pass through them. The local air of Mahad creates a particular atmosphere in the sheltered space near those steps. Even if there were no history attached to this place, the experience of descending to touch the water for the first time would have been remarkable. With the weight of the most fundamental human struggle added to it, the experience of walking down those steps is one of the defining experiences of many lives.
Those from formerly untouchable communities who participated in this satyagraha — or whose ancestors did — still feel that shudder descending these steps today. The name of that shudder is Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. Ambedkar did not only create a new history — he created a new geography. And for those who learn this history and geography in full, those steps also forge the independent consciousness of a human being of a new age.
The New Chavdar Lake
The water struggle that Ambedkar began has now entered a new phase. Bottled water — affordable only to the wealthy — is the new Chavdar Lake. The Savitri, like every other river in India, is now severely polluted. Not one river in this country is fit to drink from. Springs are drying up permanently. Lakes are disappearing, being polluted, running dry. Chemically contaminated and sewage-laced water is still what crores of people drink daily. For lack of clean drinking water, many people today live in conditions no better than those before the Chavdar Lake Satyagraha.
The urgent need to fight again for the most basic right — drinking water — is undeniable. But today we have no Ramchandra More, no Surabanna Tipnis, no G.N. Sahasrabuddhe, no Bhai Chitre.
And the man who fought the world’s first struggle for the right to drinking water — Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar — is no longer with us.
Jai Bhim · Jai Samvidhan · Jai Kisan
Published on Samata Din, 20th March
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