by MRIDULA CHARI
Five hundred Mahar soldiers scattered the 25,000-strong Peshwa army for the East India Company in Koregaon near Pune in 1818.
An hour after New Year struck on Friday, two retired army officers, PS Dhoble and Dadasaheb Bhosle, set out in a bus from the tomb of Independence-era leader BR Ambedkar in Mumbai’s Dadar area. Accompanying them in the convoy were more than 300 other uniformed men and women.
Five hours later, they reached their destination: a large village just past Pune called Bhima Koregaon. It was here, on the banks of the Bhima river, that a ragtag group of Mahar soldiers fighting under the British flag in 1818 defeated the vastly superior forces of the Peshwa. More than 150 years later, evidence of the battle is still apparent. Residents of Bhima Koregaon say they find swords from the battle in the river bed even today.
Bhosle recounted with pride the story of how 500 Mahar soldiers on foot launched a heroic attack against the 25,000-strong army of the Peshwas, staffed with mounted soldiers armed with guns
“Bigod, humne Peshwe ko khatm kiye,” Bhosle said. “The Mahars only ended Peshwa rule and gave India to the British.”
This might seem an unusual sentiment for an officer who has several medals on his chest in recognition of his services to the nation. Bhosle served in the 1965 war, in Sri Lanka, in the Andamans and Jammu and Kashmir.
Yet the Battle of Koregaon has a deep significance to Mahars and other Dalits in India, who remember it every January 1 as a mark of their triumph against the dehumanising rule of the Peshwas and as the first step in their ongoing struggle against caste-based oppression.
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