January 1, 2025, marked 207 years of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon. Considered to be an insignificant military engagement initially, this battle, a part of the Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817-1819), is today regarded as highly symbolic in the struggle for Dalit equality and rights.
As author Richard B White notes in his 1994 essay, The Mahar Movement’s Military Component, a small force of 500 men under Captain F F Staunton held off 20,000 Horse and 8,000 Infantry of Peshwa Baji Rao II, who was threatening the British garrisons at Kirkee and Poona.
Staunton’s unit was dominated by the Mahars, an ‘Untouchable caste’ from what is today’s Maharashtra.
“Mahars dominated Staunton’s unit. The Peshwa’s troops inexplicably withdrew that evening, despite their overwhelming numbers, giving the British an important victory. The men of the lst Regiment Bombay Native lnfantry, including many Mahars, who fought in this battle, were honored for their bravery,” White writes.
Today, an obelisk marks the spot near the Bhima river, where Staunton and his men displayed extraordinary courage. ‘Untouchable’ Mahar men defeating a force of the Brahmin Peshwa, head of the Kunbi-Maratha Empire, is today the stuff of legend. More so, after the controversial happenings at Bhima Koregaon on January 1, 2018.
The battle was not known to many till that incident happened. What many are still unaware of is that the Mahars have a martial tradition that predates Koregaon. Even more importantly, the Mahars’ stint as colonial British troops becoming the foundation on which Babasaheb Ambedkar built the edifice of the Dalit rights movement in India is also unbeknownst to many.
The Mahars’ martial skills predate Koregaon. Under the balutedar system of Maharashtra, the community served as watchmen of villages in the region.
Ardythe Basham, notes in her landmark 1975 thesis on the community, Army service and social mobility: The Mahars of the Bombay Presidency, with comparisons with the Bene Israel and black Americans:
The traditional rights and duties of the Mahars as part of the village organization may well represent survivals from a time when they owned the land. The duties include acting as watchmen, gatekeepers, messengers, porters, boundary referees and guides. Their testimony was vital in boundary and revenue disputes, and as messengers they often carried large sums of money to the district treasury.
While the balutedar system also mandated the Mahars to remove dead cattle from the village, rendering them ‘Untouchable’ in the eyes of caste Hindus, their other duties meant they had to carry and wield knives and sticks to fend off possible attackers, similar to the Malas of neighbouring Telangana-Andhra, notes Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd.
This sense of loyalty and trustworthiness led Chattrapati Shivaji to include Mahars as a vital component of his army, writes White.
“Shivaji, leader of the Maratha nation, fought for a Hindu empire, but using Untouchables did not bother him. He “found the Mahars useful, for the wily Maratha chief realized that the best way of obtaining the maximum results was to mix up various castes in his garrison forces.” He used the Mahars “to watch the jungles at the foot of the hill forts, act as scouts and [they] kept the forts supplied with wood and fodder.” This was the first exposure of the Mahars to an organized army that provided its soldiers with steady pay and benefits,” he adds.
The Mahars continued to serve Shivaji’s successors like Chattrapati Sambhaji and Rajaram.
“Their experience with Shivaji and others encouraged them to seek similar employment as sepoys of the British East India Company,” writes White.
While Koregaon is the best-known instance of Mahar bravery in British ranks, they also served in the Second Anglo-Sikh War and the Second Afghan War as well as the Bombay Marine, the East India Company’s naval force.
Military service under the British changed the Mahar community. “The Mahars’ ability to work among the British exposed them to Western ways, and helped them to realize that their status as Untouchables did not keep them from working in successful and satisfying occupations,” writes White.
Community members got various benefits while serving in the army including “pay and pensions, access to education and/or specialized training, preferential access to employment, enhanced social status, and personal satisfaction”.
White quotes Eleanor Zelliot who wrote that Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the son of Ramji Sakpal and the scion of a Mahar family that had long been in the British Indian Army, especially benefitted due to education and increased social status.
Ambedkar’s experiences were “[f]ree from the traditional village role, his early life was spent among educated ex-army men, imbued with the pride of soldiers and acquainted with a more sophisticated Hinduism than that found in the village,” Zelliot noted.
Indeed, so advantageous were these benefits that the de-listment of the Mahars in 1893 came as a rude shock. The British had embarked on the controversial ‘Martial Races’ policy of recruiting men from communities they saw as ‘martial’ and ‘loyal’ in the aftermath of the Revolt of 1857. The Mahars did not seem to fit the bill.
The Mahars petitioned the British in 1895 and then between 1904 and 1910 to re-enlist them. The second attempt was led by Ambedkar himself.
According to Basham, “education and skills acquired through military service created a class of community leaders, and the wish to retain the social and economic benefits derived from military service was a powerful incentive to organize behind these leaders and work for a common goal”.
As for the Mahars’ stint in the Army, a Mahar Regiment arose first during the Great War, only to be disbanded and then again in 1945. The second regiment has existed since then and has seen action in all conflicts involving independent India.