Gopal Baba Walangkar

Gopal Baba Walangkar, also known as Gopal Krishna Walangkar (1840–1904) is an early example of an activist working to release the untouchable people of India from their historic socio-economic oppression and is generally considered to be the pioneer of that movement. He developed a racial theory to explain the oppression and also published the monthly journal Vital-Vidhvansak, targeted at the Brahmanical Orthodoxy.

Life Gopal Baba Walangkar was born into a family of Mahar caste around 1840 at Ravdul, near Mahad in what is now Raigad district, Maharashtra. He was related to Ramabai, who in 1906 married the polymathic social reformer, B. R. Ambedkar. In 1886, after serving in the army, Walangkar settled at Dapoli and became influenced by another early social reformer, Jyotirao Phule, thus being a link between two of the most significant reform families of the period.

Walangkar was appointed to the local taluk board of Mahad in 1895, He died at Ravdul in 1904. In 1889, he published Vital Viduvansan (Annihilation of Ceremonial Pollution), which protested the position of untouchables in society and raised consciousness regarding what those people should expect. but it also warned that the untouchables might leave India unless their situation improved. A further significant work, titled Hindu Dharma Darpan, appeared in 1894.

Walangkar founded the Anarya Dosh-Parihar Mandali (Society for the Removal of Evils Among the Non-Aryans). Some sources say this took place in the same year that he left the army Mahar recruitment reached its nadir in the early 1890s when Kitchener halted the recruitment of untouchables in Maharashtra in favor of "martial races," such as the Marathas and other north-western communities. The Mahar community attempted to confront this block with a petition circulated among the Mahar, Chamar, and Mang former soldiersall Marathi-speaking untouchablesbut the movement was unable to organize and submit their petition.

Walangkar is generally considered to be the pioneer of the Dalit movement, along with Harichand Thakur through his Matua involving the Namasudra (Chandala) community in the Bengal Presidency. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar himself believed Walangkar to be the progenitor.