108 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
I was born at Mhow, Indore, where my father was employed in the army. He held the rank of a Subedar at that time. Since we lived in the cantonment we had little to do with the world outside the military area. I had no experience of ‘Untouchability’. When my father retired from service on pension, we shifted to Satara to live there. My mother had passed away when I was barely five years old. Famine broke out in Goregaon, in the District of Satara, and to combat this the Government started ‘Famine Relief Employment’. They started digging a watertank and my father was appointed as a pay-master to disburse wages to the workers in the labour camp. He had to join the labour camp at Goregaon and we, the four children, were left behind at Satara. For nearly four to five years in Satara, we had to live only on rice. It was only after coming to Satara that we began to experience what Untouchability was. The first thing which struck me most was that no barber was prepared to cut our hair. This disturbed us. My elder sister who is still alive used to cut my hair sitting on platform out side our house. I could not understand why inspite of the presence of so many barbers, no barber was prepared to cut our hair.
The second incident also relates to that period. Whilst my father was at Goregaon, he used to send us letters. In one letter he invited us to visit Goregaon. The idea that we would be travel ling by train to Goregaon thrilled me very much because I had never seen a train before. With the money sent by my father we got new clothes stitched and my brother, my sister’s daughter, and I, set off for Goregaon.
We had sent a letter beforehand but, unfortunately, due to the carelessness or a mistake on the part of our servant, it had not reached my father. We were certain that my father would send a servant to receive us at the railway station. On our alighting from the train we were distressed to find the servant nowhere in sight.
Soon everybody departed and there were no passengers, excepting us, left on the platform. We waited in vain for some three quarters of an hour. The Station Master enquired who we were meeting, what caste we belonged to, and where we wanted to go. We told him that we belonged to the Mahar caste. This