Swami Achootanand facts for kids

Swami Achhootanand, also known as Achutanand or Hariharanand, was an important Indian leader. He worked to make society fairer for everyone, especially for a group of people called Dalits. He was a writer and a social reformer, meaning he worked to improve society.

Swami Achhootanand first joined a group called Arya Samaj. However, he later felt that this group was not doing enough for social equality. So, he started his own movement, called the Adi Hindu movement. He was also a talented writer, creating poems, plays, and historical works.

Early Life and Education

Achhootanand was born in 1879 in a Chamar family in Umari village, which is in the Mainpuri district of India. His parents, Moti Ram and Ram Piari, followed the Kabir panth faith. Many men in his family, including his father and uncles, served in the British Indian Army.

He grew up in a military area called Deolali in Maharashtra. There, he received a good education for his time, especially for someone from his background. Christian missionaries at the local school taught him to read and write in Urdu, English, Hindi, and Gurumukhi.

Joining Arya Samaj

As a teenager, Achhootanand became a follower of a religious leader named Swami Sacchidananda. From him, he learned several new languages, including Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, and Sanskrit. For about ten years, from age 14 to 24, he traveled across northern India with holy people.

During his travels, he read many religious books. These included the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of Sikhs, and the Bijak of Kabir. He also studied the writings of other Bhakti poets like Ravidas. He even read a Bengali translation of the Rig Veda, an ancient Hindu scripture.

Achhootanand became very involved in the Arya Samaj group's efforts to improve society. He took the name "Harihar" and worked on their Shuddi campaigns. These campaigns aimed to bring people back to Hinduism, especially those from lower castes who might have converted to Islam or Christianity.

However, after a few years, he started to feel disappointed with the Arya Samaj. He believed that these Hindu reformers were mostly worried about how many Hindus were counted in the government census. He felt they were not truly committed to creating real social equality for all people.

The Adi Hindu Movement

Achhootanand faced unfair treatment because of his caste within the Arya Samaj movement. Because of this, he decided to leave the group. He stopped using the name "Harihar" and chose a new name: "Achutanand." This name means "someone whose happiness is untouched" or "someone who finds joy with the untouched people." The word "Achut" was often used in a negative way to mean "untouchable." But Achutanand chose to see it as "untouched," meaning pure.

Achhootanand strongly disagreed with the Arya Samaj and the Indian National Congress (a major political party). In 1919, he started the All India Achhut Caste Reform Sabha, which means "All India Untouchable Caste Reform Assembly." In the 1920s, he called the Congress a group that mainly supported upper-caste people. He also spoke out against the non-cooperation movement and supported the visit of Prince of Wales Edward to India. By 1922, he had become very popular among the local untouchable communities.

He began to campaign against the Arya Samaj through his writings and protests. He was invited to Delhi, where he successfully debated with a leader from Arya Samaj, Swami Akhilanand. After this, he founded the "Jati Sudhar Achhoot Sabha." He was given the special title of "Shri 108" by other leaders.

In 1922, Achhootanand led people from the Chamar community away from the Arya Samaj. He then started the Adi Hindu movement. This was the first social reform movement specifically for Dalits in the Hindi-speaking parts of India. He taught that "untouchables" were actually "Adi Hindus," meaning "original Hindus." He believed they were the first, peaceful, and cultured people of India, who were later enslaved after the Aryan conquest.

He was influenced by Jyotirao Phule, another social reformer. Achhootanand said that the upper castes were like foreign invaders who took advantage of the lower castes. Following a movement in Punjab called Ad-Dharmi, he chose the medieval saint Ravidas as a key figure for his movement. Ravidas was a low-caste saint. The Adi Hindu idea was that Bhakti (devotion) was the true original religion of India. It encouraged people to connect directly with God, without needing Brahmin priests or old Vedic rituals.

In 1925, Achhootanand moved to Kanpur, where many Dalit business owners lived. The Adi Hindu movement grew popular in the United Provinces. It attracted untouchables from different backgrounds, including those who were newly educated, village leaders, and wealthy business people. His closest supporters were often wealthy Dalit individuals, like Chamar merchants who had become successful in the British leather trade.

Achhootanand organized many important meetings called All India Adi Hindu Conferences. These were held in different cities across India, including Delhi (1923), Nagpur (1924), Hyderabad (1925), Madras (1926), Allahabad (1927), Bombay (1928), and Amravati (1929). He also held special conferences and many state-level meetings in Uttar Pradesh. By 1930, these conferences brought together members from many different lower castes.

Supporting B. R. Ambedkar

On February 22, 1928, Achhootanand shared the stage with another very important Dalit leader, B. R. Ambedkar, at an All India Adi Hindu Sabha meeting.

Achhootanand welcomed King Edward VII, who was the Prince of Wales at the time. He also asked for special proposals for the Depressed classes (another term for Dalits) to be given to the Simon Commission. While the Congress party was against the Simon Commission, the Adi Hindus welcomed it. This was because the Commission recognized Dalits on a national political level. On November 30, 1928, Achhootanand met Ambedkar in Lucknow during a Simon Commission hearing. During the Round Table Conference in London in 1931, he supported Ambedkar by sending telegrams and raising awareness among untouchables in Kanpur.

Achhootanand strongly disagreed with the term "Harijan," which was used by Congress leader Mahatma Gandhi to refer to untouchables.

In 1932, Gandhi started a fast (refusing to eat) to protest against separate voting groups for untouchable Hindus. Achhootanand advised Ambedkar to reach an agreement with Gandhi. He was worried about what might happen to untouchables if Gandhi died.

Literary Works

Achhootanand started a new type of writing for Dalits in the Hindi language in the 1920s. To help spread awareness among the Depressed Classes, he began his own publishing work. He wrote poetry using the pen name Harihar. Achhootanand was one of the first people to create Dalit literature in Hindi.

In 1922, he launched his first monthly newspaper called Achut from Delhi, but it stopped publishing in 1923. Later, he started Prachin Hindu, but that also closed within a year. He then set up the Adi Hindu Press and published The Adi-Hindu Journal from Kanpur between 1924 and 1932.

Achhootanand was a deep thinker, a poet, and also wrote plays. Some of his Hindi books include:

• Shambuk Balidan, a play
• Achhut Pukar, a collection of religious songs
• Mayanand Balidan, a biography
• Pakhand Khandani
• Adi-Vansh Ka Danka

Death and Legacy

Achhootanand's health got worse after a large Adi Hindu Conference held in Gwalior in 1932. He passed away in 1933 in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh.

He was buried in a graveyard near the Nazirabad Police Station in Kanpur. In 1974, Rajendranath Aherwar, whose father was a close friend of Achhootanand, created the Sri 108 Swami Achutanand Smarak Samiti. This committee holds celebrations every year on May 3rd to remember his birthday.

A biography of Achhootanand, titled Swami Achutanand 'Harihar', was written by Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu in 1968.