Ambedkar declares at Yeola that he will not die a Hindu

Who: Dr B.R. Ambedkar, leader of the so-called untouchable or depressed classes, who presided over the Yeola conference. On the Sikh side, the SGPC and the leaders who answered him, among them Master Tara Singh, Sundar Singh Majithia and Jogendra Singh.

What: On 13 October 1935, at the Yeola Conversion Conference, Ambedkar advised the Depressed Classes to give up their agitation for temple-entry rights and to leave Hinduism altogether for another religion. He solemnly vowed that he would not die as a Hindu.

The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism names this declaration as the immediate cause of the Sikh response. The SGPC executive took the matter up on 25 January 1936. Its general session at the Akal Takht on 1 March 1936 resolved to set up a preaching mission and to hold a large conference at Vaisakhi. The Sarb Hind Sikh Prachar Conference met at Amritsar in April 1936. Ambedkar attended and addressed it, again stating his intention to renounce Hinduism. Ninety-four people took Khalsa initiation there, at least 43 of them non-Sikhs from outside Punjab. The conference founded the Sarb Hind Sikh Mission. Preachers were sent as far as Malabar and Travancore-Cochin, centres opened in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Kerala, and a Khalsa College opened in Bombay in 1937.

Where: Yeola, in Nashik district, for the declaration. Amritsar, at the Akal Takht and the conference, for the Sikh response.

Why it mattered: Yeola drew the Panth's institutions into a direct response: a preaching mission aimed at the so-called untouchable classes, backed by donations of several lakh rupees collected or promised on the spot at the conference. Ambedkar and his followers ultimately decided not to adopt Sikhism. The Mission's centres kept up useful work for some years, though its activity dwindled. Twenty-one years after Yeola, on 14 October 1956, Ambedkar became a Buddhist at Nagpur, with many thousands of Dalits.