Editing Adi-Hindu Movement (section)

== Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu ==

Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu was born in Lucknow in 1899, according to Hunt, to a relatively prosperous low-caste family; his father was headmaster of the American Mission School, and his own schooling ended at class ten when his father died.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', p. 38.</ref> His death date is not given in the pages of Hunt read, and the sources conflict: 1974 or 1978.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 210.</ref> His early career was in Hindu reform and nationalist publishing: he wrote a first book at sixteen, translated the ''Bhagavad Gita'' from Urdu, founded a Hindu Samaj Sudhar Karyalay, and had published more than thirty titles by 1931, including a proscribed pamphlet on Nehru that, Hunt reports, went through twelve editions in a year. The British raided his press five times and jailed him for several months.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 38–39.</ref> He first met Achhutanand in 1926 and later met Bodhananda, through whom he met Ambedkar; the meeting left him, in Hunt's account, disenchanted with Hindu reform. He renamed his press Bahujan Kalyan Prakashan, a date that Hunt gives as the early 1930s and that her notes leave open.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 38–39, 75 n. 22. Jigyasu is also reported to have met Achhutanand in 1926; the source for the date is Jigyasu's own 1968 biography of Achhutanand.</ref> At an October 1931 meeting of two to three thousand untouchables in Lucknow, which he addressed with Ram Charan, he is quoted as saying that to call themselves Adi Hindus was to assert a natural right over India.<ref>Gooptu (2001), ''Politics of the Urban Poor'', pp. 174–175.</ref>

His writing on history and Buddhism includes the Adi-Hindu histories ''Bharat ke Adi-Nivasiyon'' ([Devanagari]; "The Original Inhabitants of India") and a volume on the origins of human society, which Hunt dates variously to 1937 and 1938, with a third edition in 1941; Gooptu cites what appears to be the same work, which carries the word for socialism (''samajvad'') in its title, as a source for the Adi-Hindu self-image, and she says nothing about Marxism or Buddhism in connection with it. The title is not evidence of its content.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 40, 60, 86, 89; Gooptu (2001), ''Politics of the Urban Poor'', pp. 169 n. 85, 198 n. 39, 286–287.</ref> With Bodhananda he is credited with the co-authorship of Buddhist books, among them ''Bhagavan Gautam Buddh'' (1933) and ''Bauddhacharyapaddhati''.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', p. 39 (via the unpublished 1972 manuscript "Chandrikaprasad Jigyasu 'Prakash' Lakhanavi"); Ober's bibliography lists the 1933 ''Bhagavan Gautama Buddha: Jivani aur Updesh'' (Calcutta: Kishkamitra Press) under U Ottama, Bodhananda, and Jigyasu.</ref> He also issued Ambedkar pamphlets, among them a life of Ambedkar, ''Baba Saheb ka Jivan Sangharsh'' (1961), which reached sixteen editions by 1995, and he published Hindi translations of Ambedkar's ''Annihilation of Caste'', ''Who Were the Shudras?'', and ''The Untouchables''.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 45, 120, 122.</ref> He also wrote a Hindi life of E.V. Ramasamy (Periyar), in 1973, which Hunt describes as toned down; five years earlier, in 1968, Periyar Lalai Singh's Kanpur press had issued a Hindi version of Ramasamy's ''Sacchi Ramayana'' that was banned and litigated.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 101–102.</ref> Hunt reads his career as showing the false promise of inclusion held out by the mainstream Hindi public sphere. Whether he became a Buddhist is not clear, so his Buddhist activity is established only as authorship and collaboration. His press ran from the 1930s until the mid-1960s, and in 2004 was run by his son and grandson.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 25, 36, 59.</ref>