Ambedkar’s revolutionary call for annihilation of caste offered a path of emancipation and empowerment to the Dalits, oppressed for centuries. Remembering Ambedkar, this week Bol features Namdeo Dhasal’s तुझे बोट धरून चाललो आहे [Holding Your Finger, I’ve Walked], read and translated from the original Marathi to English by Dileep Chavan.
Dhasal was born in 1949 in a village in Khed taluk near Pune. A Mahar, he grew up in dire poverty. Following in the footsteps of American Black panther movement, he and his founded the Dalit Panther in 1972. Dhasal wrote several poems for Dr. Ambedkar, and described him as the sun that “moves only from one freedom to the next”.
Words will fall short to phrase your contribution
You are too high, the sky above the sky…
I have not found a perfect leader like you
Who transformed human beings into the gold
