Editing Adi-Hindu Movement (section)

== Swami Achhutanand ==

Swami Achhutanand (1879–1933) is the founder of the movement in the accounts of both Hunt and Gooptu.<ref>Gooptu (2001), ''Politics of the Urban Poor'', p. 154 (dates); Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 34–41.</ref> Hunt gives his early name as Harihar. He came from a Chamar family and was raised in a military cantonment and educated by missionaries; Hunt gives his birthplace as Umari village in Mainpuri district in one place and as Farrukhabad elsewhere.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', p. 34 (Umari, Mainpuri), pp. 5 and 44 (Farrukhabad).</ref> From the age of fourteen to twenty-four he travelled with mendicants, and he read the ''Guru Granth Sahib'', Kabir's ''Bijak'', and the verses of Dadu Dayal, Ravidas, and Namdev. He worked for the Arya Samaj's ''shuddhi'' campaign under the name Harihar before breaking with it.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 35, 37.</ref> In 1917 he composed the poems in which, according to Hunt, Adi-Hindu thought first appeared, and the All India Achhut Caste Reform Sabha dates from 1919. He opposed the Non-Cooperation Movement and called the Congress Brahmanical, and he ran a press at Kanpur that issued a monthly, ''Achut'', in the early 1920s, a daily, ''Adi Hindu'', until 1932, and a monthly, ''Usha'', from 1928.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 38, 40, 74 n. 13.</ref> Chamar ''panchayats'' (caste councils) in Kanpur acknowledged him as leader, and he presided over sweepers' meetings in 1925; in a statement Gooptu quotes, he claimed for the untouchables a prior, natural, and superior claim to the nation.<ref>Gooptu (2001), ''Politics of the Urban Poor'', pp. 159, 175.</ref>

On religion, Hunt locates his philosophy in the bhakti tradition. Gooptu reports, second-hand through Jigyasu's biography of him, that he discussed religion with Theosophical missionaries and with Jain and Buddhist ''sadhus''; this is the only Buddhist contact for him that Gooptu records, and she draws no Buddhist conclusion from it.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', p. 34; Gooptu (2001), ''Politics of the Urban Poor'', p. 158 n. 49 (context only; the biography is Jigyasu's 1968 life of Achhutanand, translated in Narayan and Misra 2004, which was not consulted for this entry).</ref> V. Geetha's account of Achhutanand rests on Gooptu and adds nothing independent.<ref name="Geetha2021">Geetha, V. (2021). ''Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India''. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 264–266.</ref> His place in the RBP that of a boundary figure: a Dalit leader of the same anti-caste, anti-Brahmin movement as the Buddhist wing, but not a Buddhist himself. His drama ''Ram-rajya Nyaya'', from the late 1920s or early 1930s, was edited and published by Jigyasu and reached a second edition in 1964.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 97–98.</ref>