SK Bole – the social reformer who mentored Ambedkar but then joined hands with Savarkar

On 4 August 1924, Sitaram Keshav Bole moved a resolution in the Bombay Legislative Council granting untouchables access to public water bodies, wells, dharmashalas, schools, courts and hospitals. Three years later, it was this resolution that was invoked by BR Ambedkar, a lawyer who would go on to lead India’s Dalit rights movement, as he led thousands of so-called untouchables to Mahad to drink water from a public water tank that had been barred to them.

The Mahad satyagraha was a critical moment in the anti-caste movement – a movement whose young leader, Ambedkar, had been mentored by Bole since 1907.

Just over a decade later, in 1938, Bole – a man who had worked for decades on behalf of underprivileged castes and classes – became president of the Bombay Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu nationalist organisation. This contradiction at the heart of Bole’s life has gone almost entirely unexamined.

Since branches were established in Maharashtra from 1923, the Hindu Mahasabha there had been dominated by Brahmins. Its politics centred on the challenges its leaders perceived from other religions, particularly Islam. Caste reform, the abolition of untouchability and the concerns of farmers and labourers were never part of its core agenda.

If anything, these issues became a point...

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