RB More was a Dalit labour organiser and trade unionist whose political life crossed anti-caste and communist movements. Memoirs of a Dalit Communist: The Many Worlds of RB More brings his story into English, offering a view of Bombay’s labouring worlds and the ways caste, class and city life shaped political struggle.
Who was RB More?
Ramachandra Babaji More, known as RB More, was active in Dalit and labour politics and closely associated with B. R. Ambedkar. His work connected anti-caste organising with trade union activity, rather than fitting neatly within a single political tradition.
In an essay accompanying the English volume, editor Anupama Rao describes More’s involvement in several publications: he was a founding member of Ambedkar’s newspaper Bahishkrit Bharat, was involved with Janata, edited the left-identified Aavhan, and was later associated with the CPI(M) publication Jivan Marg. These affiliations help explain the book’s subtitle, The Many Worlds of RB More: his political life moved among overlapping anti-caste, labour and left currents. Rao’s account in Scroll stresses that the editors do not claim More exclusively for either the Ambedkarite or Communist “side.”
What is in the memoir?
The English book, Memoirs of a Dalit Communist: The Many Worlds of RB More, was translated by Wandana Sonalkar and edited and introduced by Anupama Rao. LeftWord is identified as its publisher. The English volume draws on a Marathi work first published in 2003 by More’s son, Satyendra More. That source combines RB More’s autobiography, his son’s biography, and archival material assembled by family members. The autobiography itself ends in 1924, so the book’s wider account is built from more than More’s own first-person narrative.
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Rao says she encountered the Marathi text while working on The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India and came to believe it merited translation. The English edition’s development involved family archives and private collections as well as collaborative translation and editorial work. The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University confirms the translator, editor and publisher.
Why does Bombay matter to More’s story?
Rao reads the memoir as a record of Dalit labouring life and urban experience in Bombay. The city is not just a backdrop: it shaped the possibilities and limits people encountered, while bringing caste and class into contact in everyday life and political organising. Through More’s account, the volume traces how labour politics and anti-caste thought could intersect without becoming identical.
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One sentence from More’s account, quoted by Rao in Scroll, captures his attention to the structures around him: “I had by now a general idea of the relations between the people and the government, of the different strata among the people and their problems, of religious, social, economic and political differences.” The wording is quoted in Rao’s article; no page number is provided there.
How should readers understand the book’s politics?
The most useful frame is a history that crosses political boundaries, not a contest over which movement can claim More. His connections to Ambedkarite politics and communist organisation illuminate different dimensions of the same historical life. Rao’s editorial approach keeps that complexity in view rather than reducing the memoir to evidence for one camp.
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That complexity also gives the book’s title argument its force. Histories of Dalit workers, urban life and political organising can challenge accounts that leave caste out of labour history or treat anti-caste politics as separate from class struggle. The memoir presents a perspective on those entanglements; its existence alone is not evidence that a particular government erased or censored this book.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What does the account say about Aavhan?
Rao’s Scroll essay reports that Aavhan was banned after its twelfth issue, that only one issue survives, and that it circulated from Vidarbha to Belgaum with a reported print run of 2,000. These are figures reported in her account, not independently verified publication records established here. They point to the fragile record left by a political publication, while warranting care about how precisely its history can be reconstructed.
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