Mata Ramabai Ambedkar:
Ramabai (1896-1935) worthy daughter of Bhiku Dhutre of Wanand a village in the Dapoli sub-division. Ramabai was married to Bhimrao in 1906. Though Babasaheb married in 1906 at age of 17 his real martial life was to start now. When he again gone to England money was soon finished. Ramabai’s brother Shanker and sister Gaurabai were labours. Their earning was just eight or ten ‘Ana’ that day. Ramabai bought groceries from it and cooked the food. Sometimes they slept with hungry stomach. This conditions was send to Babasaheb by mail, on it Babasaheb said that ” I am in same circumstances I don’t have money to buy a food I don’t have money to. send you. If circumstances might be hard then sell the ornaments, I will give new one when I’ ll be back. In the same letter Babasaheb made an inquiry for Yashawant and Mukund. When Babasaheb came back to India some social welfare want to give some money and award But Babasaheb politely and clearly refused it.
Ambedkar did his utmost to mitigate his wife’s sufferings. Medicines cures curable diseases. It could not cure here wasting disease, and the cruel bowl came to him on May 27, 1935, when the last spark of his wife’s life flickered out. Ramabai was a symbol of contentment of heart, nobility of mind and purity of character. During the preceding six month she was struggling with her malady. She had grown weaker and weary ; her cheeks were sucked and colourless. Her great gift to mind alone enable her to endure with cool fortitude the hardships and sorrow that fell to her lot in those early friendless days of wants and worries. The grandeur and glory attached to Rajgriha could not distract her mind from the realities of life. She had passed the major portion of her life in pinching poverty, spent days and nights in anxiety for her husband’s safety and health, observed rigid fasts, on Saturdays took only water and black gram, worshipped God, and invoked his blessings on her Saheb. Her eyes, her hands and her thoughts were devoted to the service of her Saheb. Gentle by temperament and frail by constitution, she was sober in manners, modest in speech, practical in her approach and generous in her dealings.
In her anxious moments she often blamed the conveyers of meetings and conferences that gave her husband no respite and created dangerous situations for him. She said that she could not understand why on earth so many conferences were required to teach and preach to the people. One day she had packed her luggage and insisted on her being taken to the conference at which her Saheb was to preside, so that she might not pass her days in his absence in utter restlessness. There was a little voilent quarrel, and the Saheb dissipated her fears as arrant nonsense.
Profoundly religious, she had a great longing for making a pilgrimage to Pandharpur where every year lakhs of believing Hindus bow their hands in devotion. But being an Untouchable Hindu lady, she would have been required to stand at a certain distance from the temple and offer her prayers. Self-respecting Ambedkar could not tolerate the idea and consoled her by saying : “What of that Pandharpur which prevents its devotees from seeing the image of God, by our own virtuous life selfless service and spotless sacrifice in the cause of the down trodden humanity we would create another Pandharpur.”
Ambedkar had been on a week-end visit to Dr. Sadanand Galvankar at Bassein. He had returned on the previous night. Fortunately he was near her death-bed. About 10,000 people, rich and poor eminent and common, attended her funeral procession, Ambedkar walking by with a heavy heart, his eyes grave, pensive and dry with sorrow. On his return from the cremation grounds, he kept to his room, a lonely being tortured with sorrow. For a week he wept bitterly like a child, and it was difficult for his friends to console him. The Goddess of his prosperity, partner in the cause of humanity, his better-half in this earthly voyage, had departed this life. Unbeliever and destroyer of false notions of priesthood, Ambedkar in his divine love for his wife got all the funeral obsequies performed by his son in the Hindu tradition at the bidding of a Mahar priest by name Shambhoo More, who was Ambedkar’s colleague since school days. some simple, believing men and women said that it was the prompting of this calamity that had made Saheb, a few days earlier, put on a hermit’s dress and bid farewell to the earthly joys and happiness. He got his head tonsured. The serious face, grave and wide eyes, grim surroundings and his saintly saffron robe presented people the appearance of a hermit with a world-negating attitude.
