All his life, Gandhiji kept the abolition of untouchability at the forefront of his public activities. In 1932, he founded the All India Harijan Sangh for this purpose. His campaign for the "root and branch removal of untouchability" was based on the grounds of humanism and reason. He argued that there was no sanction for untouchability in the Hindu shastras. But, if any shastra approved of untouchability, it should be ignored for it would then be going against human dignity. Truth, he said, could not be confined within the covers of a book. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, numerous individuals and organizations worked to spread education among the untouchables (or depressed classes and Scheduled Castes, as they came to be called later), to open the doors of schools and temples to them, to enable them to use public wells and tanks, and to remove other social disabilities and distinctions from which they suffered. As education and awakening spread, the lower castes themselves began to stir. They became conscious of their basic human rights and began to rise in defense of these rights. They gradually built up a powerful movement against the traditional oppression by the higher castes. In Maharashtra, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Jyotiba Phule, born in a lower-caste family, led a lifelong movement against Brahmanical religious authority as part of his struggle against upper-caste domination. He regarded modem education as the most important weapon for the liberation of the lower castes. He was the first to open several schools for girls of the lower castes. Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who belonged to one of the Scheduled Castes, devoted his entire life to fighting against caste tyranny. He organized the All India Scheduled Castes Federation for the purpose. Maharshi Vitthal Ramji Shinde and his colleagues founded the All India Depressed Classes Mission Society. In Kerala, Sir Narayan Guru organized a lifelong struggle against the caste system. He coined the famous slogan: "One religion, one caste and one God for mankind." In South India, the non-brahmins organized during the 1920s the Self-Respect Movement to fight the disabilities which Brahmins had imposed upon them. Numerous satyagraha movements were organized all over India jointly by the upper and depressed castes against the ban on the latter's entry into temples and other such restrictions.