Hari Narke, ideologue of state OBC movement, passes away

Hari was a member of a committee that oversaw the publication of Dr B R Ambedkar’s writings and speeches as well as a member of the Maharashtra state commission for backward classes to champion the cause of OBCs

MUMBAI: Hari Narke, who passed away in Mumbai on Wednesday, was an astute scholar, ardent follower of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and ideologue of the OBC movement in Maharashtra .

Hari Narke, ideologue of state OBC movement, passes away

I met Hari sometime in the late 1970s when both of us were student activists. He came from a very poor OBC family but that did not deter him. While working in the graveyard as a helper, he learned the English and Devanagari alphabets, and educated himself. He was a talented youngster and voracious reader with wide-ranging interests.

Both of us were involved in the movement for renaming Marathwada University after Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar in 1979. During this movement, Hari made the acquaintance of several left-wing and Ambedkarite leaders and became the blue-eyed boy of Dr Baba Adhav, G B Sardar, Arun Kamble et al. He would literally torture them with questions, so much so that Anil Awachat, a renowned Marathi writer, once said to me fondly, “Hari is the Socrates of Sade Satara Nali (Hari’s residential address).”

In the late 1980s, Dr Bal Gangal published a controversial article on Mahatma Phule in the weekly ‘Sobat’ titled, ‘What sort of Mahatma is he? He is a stench called Phule’. Under the garb of criticism, Gangal, an RSS swayamsevak, abused Phule through the article. All hell broke loose: the Left and Ambedkarite movements condemned the piece, and copies of ‘Sobat’ were publicly burnt. However, it was Hari Narke, then in his twenties, who wrote a series of counter-arguments, clinically dissecting each and every point of Gangal without using a single abuse.

Hari’s rejoinder forced ‘Vivek’, an official mouthpiece of the RSS, to suggest that it was not proper to project Mahatma Phule in a bad light, and that doing so would be damaging to Hindutva (‘Me, Manu Ani Sangh’ by Ramesh Patange). The rejoinder was later published as a book titled ‘Mahatma Phule yanchi Badnaami: Ek Satyashodhan’.

Hari’s debut brought him into the sphere of Maharashtra’s public intellectuals. He was a powerful orator as well. In his 30s, he became the member secretary of the Mahatma Phule Source Material Publication Committee of the Maharashtra government. He published the most authentic version of the collected works of Mahatma Phule and a biography of Savitribai Phule. These books were translated into other Indian languages.

Hari held many other positions. He was a member of a committee that oversaw the publication of Dr B R Ambedkar’s writings and speeches as well as a member of the Maharashtra state commission for backward classes to champion the cause of OBCs. Chhagan Bhujbal, the founder of Samata Parishad, made a smart move by inducting Hari as the vice-president of Samata Parishad. Hari delivered over 10,000 lectures in Maharashtra, India and abroad on various subjects but his focal point was the OBC cause.

Two Marathi television serials on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar were based on Hari’s research. He was a rare academic who was equally committed to social and political action.

(Sunil Tambe is senior journalist)