The Dalit Who Willfully Never Entered a Temple

Chokhamela was a Dalit man in ancient times who became a deity in the eyes of the Dalit community because he gave them reasons and closure behind their improvised existence and their perilous life. He was a man who accepted his destiny as a Dalit and never ever entered a temple even though it was his biggest aspiration to behold the deity. He was a disciplined Dalit who always believed and preached that Dalits deserve to die at the feet of god and the upper caste.

By convention, Dalits are prohibited to enter temples, Source: Pinterest

Centuries ago, on the land where warriors wielded their swords to end injustice and ensure inequality, there was a man who lived and died, advocating and accepting the norms of his community, accepting the rashness of his low birth. One can count on fingers how many rebellions were fought in the long history of India when things have been beneficial for every step of the caste and class hierarchy.

But this story is not about a messiah of lower castes who used his eloquence and actions to elevate the status of the Dalits. Strangely and contrary this is the story of a man who accepted the degeneration of his roots and decided to live his life as a sentence, trying to complete his punishment for which he had been born as a Dalit, after all, to be born as a lower caste or Dalit person means that the wheels of Karma have just dropped you off at your deserving destination, for the sins committed in a past life.

An aware and intellectual reader must be very confused and perhaps aggravated by now. Why would a person who supported the faith and suppression of Dalits make a viable story to read about? The reason that makes Chokhamela’s story worth reading and thinking about is that he did create a sense of hope and gave some closure to the Dalits who used to feel anger at the analogy of their existence. While not trying to heal the wounds of the Dalits, Chokhamela did try to make Dalit’s existence bearable by becoming a prophet of Dalit identity.

In the noble town of Pune, there stands a very famous temple called the Vitobha temple, and just outside in the courtyard of the temple stands the statue of a Dalit deity, called Chokhamela who spent his entire life standing outside the temple to get a glimpse of the illustrious deity. Ironically, after his death the Dalit community gloried him and made him a deity, he became the identity of the Dalit’s image who willfully spent his entire life in front of the temple, never daring to enter it, even though he is no less a devotee than an upper caste Brahmin.

In 1794, during the rule of the Peshwas, an order was passed that there should be a modest distance between the upper caste devotees who visit the Vitobha temple and the untouchables who hover in the courtyard of the temple, worshipping the statue of Chokhamela, the man who had assumed the position of being a humble deity who accepted his origins with pride and urged his followers to do the same.

But what does Chokhamela represent now? To be considered deserving of the unearthly and degenerated ways in which a Dalit in India is treated is to laugh in the face of someone who is crying. Even today people indeed believe in the concept of seven births but to what extent this can explain the Karma thing?

Is being born as a Dalit so low that it's presumed they must have lived a sinful life in the past?

It's quite sad and disappointing that Chokhamela spent his entire life yearning to enter the temple and he never did so. After all, he believed that he deserved the torture of yearning because he was a Dalit. If only he would have taken that first step and entered the temple, the story would have been quite different by now, after all, he had the confidence and the eloquence. All the difference was of perspective.