Mangoo Ram Mugowalia was born at Mugowal in Hoshiarpur district in 1886, went to the United States in 1909, worked on the west coast and was involved with the Ghadar Party, and returned to Punjab in 1925.
In 1926 he founded the Ad Dharm movement, arguing that Punjab's untouchable communities were the original inhabitants of the region with their own religion, and that they were neither Hindu nor Sikh.
The movement's demand was for separate recognition in the census. In 1931 around 418,000 people registered as Ad Dharmi in Punjab, which established the community as a distinct political category and entitled it to separate representation.
Its centre was the Doaba, which had and has the highest Dalit population share in India. Bhagat Ravidas Ji was adopted as its principal figure, and the movement is the direct ancestor of the Ravidassia formation that declared a separate religion in 2010.
It was a Punjabi Dalit political movement, founded by a Ghadar returnee, that won recognition in the census in five years, and it is not in the standard account of either the Ghadar movement or Indian Dalit politics.
The movement was founded in 1926 by Mangoo Ram Mugowalia, a Ghadar returnee, and it argued that the Dalits of Punjab were a separate original community and not Hindus.
It succeeded in getting Ad Dharmi recorded as a separate religion in the 1931 census, which is the only time that has been done anywhere in India.
Its base was the Doaba and its infrastructure was the leather trade's money and the emigration remittance. The Ravidassia institutions of Jalandhar district descend from it.