According to academic Mukul Sharma, writing in Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics (2017), the Mahad Satyagraha in Maharashtra was vividly described by Dr BR Ambedkar as follows: “The Hindu inhabitants of the town saw the scene. They were taken by storm. They stood aghast witnessing this scene which they had never seen before. For the moment they seemed to be stunned and paralyzed. The procession in forms of fours marched past and went to the Chawdar tank, and the Untouchables for the first time drank the water.”Today marks the 99th anniversary of the 1927 satyagraha. To commemorate it, a major beautification of the Chavdar Tale area has begun, with leaders performing the Bhumipujan. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis will also be present at the site.The lead-up to MahadBy the 1920s, scattered and localised challenges to caste had coalesced into an explicit demand for civic rights in various parts of India. Ambedkar saw the movement of the so-called “untouchables” or the Dalits in two stages: protest and petitioning, followed by open revolt through direct action. In this context, as Tufan Bhaskar Awatale notes in Dalit Studies (2026), “As an instance of direct action, Mahad Satyagraha was a watershed moment of Dalit assertion.”Also known as the Mahad Agitation, it was centred on the right of Dalits to draw water from public sources. Mahad, a small town in the Kolaba district of the Bombay Presidency, had a largely caste Hindu population, with fewer than 400 Dalits among 7,000–8,000 residents. The Chawdar tank, a municipal public tank at the heart of the town, was the only accessible water source for outsiders, yet Dalits were barred from using it.This exclusion persisted despite legal reform. The 1923 Bombay Legislative Council resolution, proposed by SK Bole, granted Dalits access to state-funded public wells, tanks, and institutions. Though accepted by the government and adopted by the Mahad Municipality in 1924, it remained largely unenforced due to upper-caste resistance: “The resolution of the Municipality remained a mere gesture… owing to the hostility of the caste Hindus,” writes Awatale.Explained | Ambedkar Jayanti: How Babasaheb defined an ideal society in ‘Annihilation of Caste’Against this backdrop, over 2,500 Dalits gathered at the Mahad Conference from 19–20 March, 1927 under Ambedkar’s leadership. On March 20, they resolved to assert their rights collectively by marching to the Chawdar tank. As historian Anupama Rao writes in The Caste Question (2009), “When three thousand people gathered in the town of Mahad on March 19, 1927, for nonviolent public action… they were testing a resolution.”The satyagraha was organised by the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha, founded in 1924 by Ambedkar to promote education and social reform among the Depressed Classes.Story continues below this adOrthodox backlash soon followed. Rumours spread by a temple priest, on Dalits next entering nearby temples, inflamed caste Hindu sentiment. Violence followed, with attacks against Dalits. Many were injured and some were forced to seek refuge in Muslim homes. Soon after, the Chawdar tank was ritually “purified” to erase what was deemed the “polluting” touch of those who had, for the first time, claimed their right to its water.Writer Anand Teltumbde argues in Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt (2023) that the incident “represents the first collective articulation of their civil rights and clear resolve to assert them. Before Mahad the acts of violation of the caste code had begun happening either by individual Dalits or by their collectives but unfortunately they were not noted as such beyond their locale.”Gandhi’s imprintsIn popular imagination, Mahad is associated with Satyagraha. “However, it is not fully true,” writes Teltumbde, adding, “The first conference did not have any reference to Satyagraha. Even when the decision to march to the Chavadar Tank was taken after conclusion of the first conference, it was not referred to as Satyagraha.”Yet, the method of struggle clearly reflected the influence of Mahatma Gandhi. While Ambedkar’s views on Gandhi evolved and grew more critical later, his early years were undoubtedly shaped by him. Teltumbde notes, “Gandhian influence could perhaps be discerned even in the way Dr Ambedkar dressed himself for the conference. He had worn a Bengali style khadi dhoti-kurta.”Story continues below this adAlso Read | Why Gandhi and Ambedkar clashed: From separate electorates to Hinduism to concept of justiceIn his newspaper Young India, Gandhi wrote in support of Ambedkar for leading a Satyagraha at Mahad, commending the Dalits for their ‘self-restraint’ and praising his leadership in refusing to be provoked by a stick-wielding mob of caste Hindus.In his presidential address at the Mahad Conference, Ambedkar said, “there is a great similarity between our meeting today and the revolutionary national assembly that took place on 5 May 1789 at Versailles in France.”Assessing this comparison, Teltumbde notes, “The formation of the National Assembly in France led to events that changed the course of world history. Mahad may have said to have changed the course of the Dalit movement. It set the attitude and orientation of the post-Mahad Dalit movement, influencing the events that followed, positive as well as negative…”Perhaps prompted by Gandhi, Jamnalal Bajaj, a millionaire and his close confidant, opened the Lakshminarayan Temple in Wardha to the Dalits in 1928. The following year, the Congress reconstituted the Anti-Untouchability Subcommittee with Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya as president and Bajaj as secretary. The cause of temple entry would also be pursued by the Congress over the next decade.