If Dr Bhausaheb Ubale had his way, India's Minorities Commission and Tribal Commission would be disbanded. The National Human Rights Commission would be renamed the National Civil Rights Commission. And there would be a real human rights commission that would protect basic human rights and actively advocate and promote social change.
That's not all. No application form, whether for a school admission or for a job, would ask for the applicant's caste, sex or age.
There would be no separate college or other hostels for scheduled castes and tribes.
And, instead of the paltry Rs 1,000 now given to couples, the government would reward intercaste marriages with jobs, housing, and security.
"My daughter is married to a German, while my son is married to a black," he says proudly.
Ubale, born February 28, 1936, in the then princely state of Satara (now a district in Maharashtra), was the first South Asian to be appointed Canada's human rights commissioner and the first race relations commissioner for the province of Ontario.
"We took a strong stand against apartheid in South Africa, but we continue to treat our own people worse than dogs," says Ubale, who now lives in Canada.
"My caste, my religion, my gender are all accidents of birth. Why should an accident be linked in any way to my contribution towards the nation?"
In Mumbai recently on one of his frequent visits to India to visit family and friends, as well as to coordinate the projects run by the International Centre for Poverty Eradication -- a consortium of Canadian NGOs, local Toronto community groups, and international experts, of which he is president -- Ubale expresses amazement at the colonial system still prevalent in India.
"Why do we still have bungalows for ministers in prime areas in Mumbai?" he asks, pointing out of the window of his relative's house off Marine Drive. "Move them all to Navi Mumbai and sell off the real estate. This will also ease the congestion of the area.
"Why do they need so much security, so many red lights, so many assistants to follow them around wherever they go? What a colossal waste of the taxpaper's money!
"The ministers' motorcades pass by starving children rummaging through garbage for food. What kind of a society are we building when children have to starve? Freedom from hunger and homelessness are basic human rights," he says.
Ubale, whose family was actively involved in the Indian freedom struggle, grew up on stories about people like Lokmanya Tilak, described by the British media in 1907 as the 'father of the Indian uprising'.
While his father, a civil servant, worked secretly with the Indian National Congress at night, 10-year-old Bhausaheb sang powadas, or martial Marathi songs, which praised Indian freedom fighters at village fairs.
He was barely 11 when India won freedom from the British and he won his first prize for public speaking.
After finishing high school in Pune, the young Ubale moved to Mumbai to work and pay his way through college. He also joined the Indian Youth Congress. When the state was divided along linguistic lines, he was asked by then chief minister Y B Chavan to help organise the state's birthday celebrations, which were inaugurated by then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
After graduation, he joined the ministry of industry and trade and was tasked with establishing a registrar of companies in Ahmedabad, then the capital of the newly carved state of Gujarat. It was there that he got involved with the Harold Laski Institution of Political Science and Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram. Both continue to have a profound influence on his life.
In the early 1960s, he was named founder-director of the Indian Institute of Political Studies. While coordinating some rural development projects for the institute, he met a young lady, Pramila Khedakar.
A few months later, Pramila met with an accident that paralysed her waist down.
It was during her yearlong stay at St George's Hospital in Mumbai that young Ubale proposed to her. They were married on the hospital premises in December 1963.
But when he was asked to run for political office, he declined. "I wanted to enter politics as a well-informed person," he recalls wryly.
A year later, the couple sailed to England with just £50 and a few letters of recommendation. Their austere financial conditions forced the young, wheelchair-confined Pramila to weave plastic baskets on the ship's deck to sell to other passengers.
It took four years of expensive treatment for Pramila to recover partial use of her legs. During that time, Ubale dabbled in British politics and journalism while working for a PhD in economics. It was in London that their two children were born.
After he finally received his PhD from Leeds University in 1975, the Ubale family decided to move to Canada.
Despite his degree, "the best job anyone in Toronto would offer me for two years was that of a clerk. At $100 a week," he recalls. That didn't stop him from networking with the community at large.
Two years later, the violence against the East Indians and Pakistanis living in Toronto peaked. This prompted community leaders to ask him to write a 200-page report on the subject, which was 'submitted' to the government at a public meeting in June 1977.
"Being a journalist, I knew some of the tricks of the trade," he chuckles. "So, instead of presenting the document to the minister myself, I asked a young Indian girl to do so. While presenting it, all she said was: 'I don't know what is in this document, but I know it affects my future'."
That quote took Ubale to prime time television and the front pages of Canadian dailies the next day.
At yet another public meeting days later, then premier Bill Davis and his entire Cabinet endorsed each and every recommendation in what is now known as the Ubale Report.
In January 1978, he was appointed Ontario's first full-time human rights commissioner.
"When I told them I was still an Indian citizen, they said they didn't care where I came from, as long as I was capable of doing my job. Can you imagine that happening in India?" he asks.
In December 1979, he was named Ontario's first race relations commissioner and in 1986 he was appointed Canada's human rights commissioner. He also served on the board of the Association of Official Human Rights Agencies in Washington,DC.
Though his activism was resented by the Canadian right wing, intimidating telephone calls and death threats didn't stop him from organising racial orientation courses for policemen and enforcing legislation favouring community integration.
He describes it as 'social engineering'.
Among other honours, he was conferred with the Order of Ontario and the Queen's Silver Jubilee Award.
In India, says Ubale, the adoption of the Mandal Commission report in 1990 and the subsequent setting up of the Minorities Commission, the National Scheduled Castes and Tribes Commission, and the National Women's Commission worked to divide the population rather than integrate it.
Though many senior jurists -- including former chief justice of India Y V Chandrachud, twice Minorities Commission chairman Justice Mirza Hameedullah Beg, the late Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Balasaheb Deoras and others -- endorsed Ubale's proposals for a comprehensive humans rights commission which would encompass and make redundant the various divisive commissions, the politicians had their vote banks to consider.
Nearly 25 years later, his proposals remain just that, he says ruefully, pointing to pictures of himself with various Indian (and Canadian) politicians, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani, Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi. They all heard him out politely, but ignored his appeals to set up such a commission.
Undeterred by the political apathy, Ubale has decided to take his message to the grassroots. And walk his talk.
Among other things, the International Centre for Poverty Eradication proposes to enter into a memorandum of understanding with three small villages in the Satara district.
In return for help in developing local talent and leadership, especially among the youth, the villagers have to pledge two things.
One, no child will go to bed hungry.
Two, there will be absolutely no reference to caste, creed or religion.
The response, particularly from youngsters, says Ubale, has been overwhelming.
