90 years of Harijan Sevak Sangh

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History of Harijan Sevak Sangh-

• It served as a laboratory for Mahatma Gandhi’s fight against social evils like untouchability.
• Harijan Sewak Sangh, born out of the historic Poona Pact between Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar in 1932, was founded by the Father of the Nation the same year, to lend a conducive environment for the upliftment of the oppressed classes or ‘Harijans’ as he called them.
• Currently, it is headquartered at Rajpath(now Kartavya Path)  Camp in Delhi.
• After the Second Round Table Conference, the British government agreed to give Communal Award to the depressed classes on the request of B. R. Ambedkar. 
• Gandhi opposed the government’s decision which he considered would divide the Hindu society and subsequently went on to the indefinite fast in Yerwada Jail. 
• He ended his fast after signing the Poona Pact with Ambedkar on 24 September 1932. 
• On 30 September, Gandhi founded the All India Anti Untouchability League, to remove untouchability in the society, which was later renamed as Harijan Sevak Sangh (“Servants of Harijan Society”). 
• At the time industrialist Ghanshyam Das Birla was its founding president with Amritlal Takkar as its secretary.
• In 1939, Harijan Sevak Sangh of Tamil Nadu headed by A. Vaidyanatha Iyer entered the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, with members of the depressed class including P. Kakkan despite opposition from the upper caste Hindus. 

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