A common tendency in Indian history and larger public memory has been to remember certain moments of the country’s freedom struggle as turning points, while quietly relegating others to footnotes. This selective invocation has followed even rarer engagement with these events and ideas, particularly regarding their ethical, political, and contextual meanings. They are infrequently treated as a tour de force as they were in the historical context. The Mahad Satyagraha of 1927 falls squarely into this uneasy space. It is cited, commemorated, sometimes even celebrated, yet seldom confronted. What is remembered is the image of Dr Babasaheb B.R. Ambedkar leading thousands to drink water from the Chavdar tank, but what is forgotten is the persistently unsettling question—what does it mean for a society to deny something as basic as water? More importantly, what does it take to dismantle the structures that make such denial possible? In such a sense, Mahad was not merely about access to a public tank. It was about the assertion of personhood in a society that had normalized graded inequality. The act of drinking water became political because the social order had rendered it so. When Babasaheb Ambedkar and the satyagrahis walked to the tank, they were not simply claiming a civic right already granted in law, but they were exposing the void in a society that could legislate equality and yet refuse to practice it. The subsequent violence, the “purification” of the tank, and the prolonged legal battles only reinforced the depth of resistance to that claim. Mahad, in this way, was not an event about grievance; rather, it was a symbolic representation of societal contradiction and the reassertion of the rights of the marginalized. And yet, in the broader narrative of India’s freedom struggle, Mahad does not occupy the place it deserves. The Salt March is etched into national consciousness as a defining moment of anti-colonial mobilization. By contrast, Mahad remains treated largely as a sectional or “Dalit” issue. Such downplaying is detrimental because asking and talking of ‘who can access water’ is foundational to the idea of citizenship and the idea of Bharat itself.
This marginalization is not accidental. It reflects a discomfort with confronting the internal hierarchies of Indian society at the same level of seriousness with which colonial domination is addressed. It is easier to celebrate resistance against an external oppressor than to interrogate the injustices embedded within. Such selective remembering is not merely detrimental to the spirit of those who struggled but carries with it far-reaching consequences. It reduces Mahad to a symbolic milestone rather than a living challenge.
We see anniversaries are marked, statues garlanded, speeches delivered, but the essential demand and idea at the heart of Mahad have been softened over the years. The insistence on equality is rightly acknowledged, but the implications of this landmark event have largely been deferred. The question now is not whether we remember Mahad. Instead, we must rethink how we have to remember it. Put simply, do we see Mahad as a completed chapter or as an unfinished argument?
Dr. Babasheb Ambedkar himself did not treat Mahad as an isolated act. The struggle was not merely for access to resources but against the ideological foundations of caste. Mahad was both a beginning and a declaration: that dignity could not be negotiated within a framework that denied it at its core. To reduce it to a moment of “social reform” is to miss its deeper significance as a critique of the very structure of Hindu society as it existed then and, in many ways, continues to persist today.
The historiography of Mahad reflects this discomfort. Mainstream accounts often acknowledge it but do not dwell on it. It appears as a precursor to constitutional provisions, a step towards the abolition of untouchability under Article 17, or an episode in Babasaheb Ambedkar’s political journey. What is lost in this framing is the experiential dimension of the lived reality of exclusion that Mahad sought to confront. The child who cannot drink water in a classroom, the traveller denied water at a railway station, the worker excluded from public spaces, these are not abstract figures but recurring realities. Mahad speaks directly to them, yet our narratives often move too quickly from the event to its legal aftermath, as if the passage of law resolved the condition.
This gap between law and lived reality is precisely where Mahad retains its relevance. The Constitution carries the imprint of that struggle, but constitutional morality cannot be sustained by text alone. It requires a social transformation that is far from complete. The persistence of castebased discrimination in access to water, sanitation, housing, and education is structural, not incidental. When reports continue to emerge of segregated water sources in villages or of manual scavengers handling waste with bare hands, Mahad is not a historical episode. Instead, it assumes a mirror for the corners of India where such practices (at times, more sophisticatedly) continue in action.
The problem, therefore, is not merely one of remembrance but of engagement. Symbolic representation without substantive change risks becoming a form of evasion. It allows society to acknowledge injustice without addressing it. It creates a vocabulary of respect that coexists with practices of exclusion. Mahad challenges this comfort. It demands that we move beyond gestures to transformation.
To do so requires a rethinking of how we situate Mahad within our collective consciousness. It cannot remain confined to Dalit history or to Ambedkarite discourse alone. It must be recognized as central to the making of modern India. The “right to water” is a universal claim for living beings. And denial of that right cannot be treated as a marginal issue, but as one of the most fundamental rights. By placing Mahad at the centre, rather than at the margins, we are compelled to confront the unfinished work of our reassertion of equality.
This also requires a more honest historiography, one that does not sanitize conflict or reduce it to progress narratives. Mahad faced hostility, violence, and legal obstruction. It exposed the limits of social reform from within. To engage with it seriously is to acknowledge that the struggle for equality has always been contested, and that those contestations continue.
The centenary of Mahad, or any commemoration of it, should therefore not be an exercise in ritual remembrance. It should be an occasion for introspection. As we approach the centenary of Mahad, we need to ask ourselves, has the promise of dignity become a lived reality? Or does it remain unevenly distributed, contingent on caste and location? Are we willing to confront the everyday practices that sustain inequality, or do we prefer the comfort of symbolic acknowledgment?
Mahad does not offer easy answers. It offers a standard against which society can measure itself. To honour it is not to repeat its story but to continue its work. That means recognizing that the aspiration for a casteless society cannot remain a slogan, invoked in speeches and ignored in practice. It must be pursued as a concrete, unconditional commitment. The danger of leaving Mahad in the realm of symbolism is that it allows inequality to persist under the cover of remembrance. The challenge, thus, is to bring it back into the realm of action. The waters of the Chavdar tank were once denied, but after a century, the question persists: Does the idea of equality as “law” and as “reality” flow as freely as it should? The vision to Viksit Bharat needs to make Indian society in reality more inclusive and egalitarian. The annihilation of caste needs to the mission and a real tribute to Babasaheb Dr B.R. Ambedkar in the centenary year of the Mahad Satyagraha.
- Prof Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit is the Vice-Chancellor of JNU.
