In 1855, the
28-year-old Jotirao Phule of Poona wrote a Marathi play Tritya Ratna (Third
Jewel). It was to be sent to a prize committee managed by the British
government of the time. The committee had been set up to reward scholars’
accomplishment, which at that time were mostly Brahmins proficient in
Sanskrit. Poona’s enlightened citizens had petitioned the government
that it must also encourage original Marathi writing among the
literati of the Bombay Presidency. The award was called Dakshina
Prize.
The British
defeated the Peshwas in 1818. As pragmatic rulers do, they
continued most of the cultural and socio-religious practices inherited
from the Peshwas. This included awarding of
Dakshina. Traditionally that meant the gift to the Brahmin priest.
The British knew that to perpetuate their rule in India, they must make
concessions to the elite class from among their subjects. The support extended
by the East India Company to temples, religious practices, rituals and customs
of the Hindus led some historians to remark that the “Indian Empire [of the
British] was, fundamentally if not formally, a Hindu Raj” (R. E. Frykenberg).
Lord Mountstuart
Elphinstone, the governor of Bombay, continued the practice where only Brahmins
were considered for Dakshina. He founded a Sanskrit college in Poona in 1821
and spent forty percent of the Dakshina amount there. However, in due course of
time, he brought about two changes in this policy. First, he made it possible
for non-Brahmins to apply for the prize. Second, he made works not only in
Sanskrit but in Marathi to be considered for state support. At that time Marathi
was just developing into a modern and respectable literary
language. This happened because of the pioneering work done in the
field of Marathi lexicography and grammar by missionaries such as William
Carey. He published the first Marathi
grammar in 1805 and then a Marathi dictionary in 1810. Later, American and
Scottish missionaries brought out number of school text books that prepared a
new generation of Marathi readers and writers.
Elphinstone was
not the only one interested in giving prizes to
non-Brahmins. Reform-minded Brahmins such as Lokhitwadi Gopalrao
Deshmukh also collected signatures to pressurise the government to give
some of the Dakshina fund to Marathi works. These reformers, however, were
threatened by the traditionalist Brahmins. In this case, Jotirao himself
provided security to the petitioners.
Coming back to the
play, we know that that play was never performed. Dakshina Prize Committee
rejected the play. Why? In his most celebrated work Slavery (1873),
Phule recounts: “…I had written a play to the Dakshina Prize Committee, too.
This was way back in 1855. But even there, the opinions of the bhat [Brahmin]
members held sway and the European officers could do nothing. So my play was
straightaway rejected.”
The play tells the
story of a rural couple. A farmer and his pregnant wife are
exploited by the religious trickery of the local Brahmin priest. The
shenanigans of the priest, his wife and extended family are laid bare in a
great detail. The Vidushak in the play adds humour but also sheds light on the
nature and extent of exploitation with his incisive remarks. Vidushak is the
traditional drama narrator, often a mouthpiece of the author—and in this play
he is the alter ego of Phule. The play concludes that, for the unlettered,
“backward” villagers the way out from exploitation is through education. The
farmer and his wife decide, by the end of the play, that they would go and enrol
themselves in the night school of the Phules, and will create a new future for
their unborn child.
The curious thing
about the play, however, is the presence of a Christian padre. During the
latter part of the play, Phule makes this unnamed padre almost the central
character. It is he who makes the first move to open the Tritya Ratna (Third
Jewel or Eye) for this “low-caste” couple. Third jewel is a metaphor for
critical, rational thought unrestrained by fear of the socially dominant
classes. The jewel is more than mere literacy, or the mere ability to read and
write. It is ability to interpret life and what it dishes out to you for
yourself, without coercion or deception. The jewel, the proverbial third eye,
is flowering of the intellect enthralled for ages by the mythologies and
superstitions. It is the life-line for dignified living as a respectable human
being.
Phule could have
written his play without the padre. The plot for the play would be simple and
effective. Lack of education leaves you prone to exploitation: get educated,
escape exploitation. But by making a padre the catalyst for the true awakening
within the individual as well as the society, Phule was underlining a
historical reality. He was documenting a social truth. It was the Christian
missionary who brought enlightenment and the knowledge of true God to the
masses of India. Phule himself studied in the Scottish missionary school and it
is very likely that he developed his own critical acumen and strengthened the
courage to question the degrading caste system of India in the company of
highly inspirational and dedicated teachers like Murray Mitchell (see Rosalind
O’Hanlon).
Phule saw clearly
that British had established their rule in Maharashtra with the help of the shetji-bhatji
combine (moneylenders and priestly class). They would not risk their government
by offending them. British rulers could not be seen as promoting the interests
of the “lower castes”. Phule also saw that the only social force that worked
for the genuine uplift of marginalized shudras-atishudras of Maharashtra was
the missionaries.
Jotirao Phule is
considered the first “Indian” to start a school of untouchable girls in 1848 in
Poona. He was inspired by another such school he had seen in Ahmednagar the
previous year, which was run by a woman missionary Mrs Farrar. Dhananjay Keer,
Phule’s biographer tells us that, Phule and his friend Govande had been
“impressed by the foreigners’ perseverance in improving [India] and felt for
their [fellow]countrymen’s neglect for it”.
It can be said
that Phule’s play was not only a battle cry for the education of Indian masses
long neglected and exploited by the country’s elite but also a rich tribute to
the pioneering and self-less work by unsung heroes of India’s regeneration—the
Christian missionaries.
References
Frykenberg, Robert E.
“Christian Missions and the Raj”. Mission and Empire, edited by Norman
Ethrington, Oxford UP, 2008.
Keer, Dhananjay. Mahatma
Jotirao Phooley: Father of the Indian Revolution. Popular Prakashan, 2005.
O’Hanlon, Rosalind. Caste, Conflict and
Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-century
Western India. Cambridge UP, 2002.
