The Dalit question in Punjab is characterised by three ironies. First and foremost, it has the highest concentration of Dalits (32 per cent) with no assertive Dalit politics as seen in states like UP and Maharashtra. Secondly, despite having an avant garde, early Dalit political movement in the form of the Mangu Ram-led Ad-Dharm movement in the 1920s, the Dalit discourse has not witnessed a consolidation. Thirdly, Dalit socio-economic aspects and aspirations are manifested primarily through cultural assertions, giving precedence to cultural politics over other aspects of politics.
As per Census 2011 and other government data, Dalits in Punjab constitute 32 per cent of the population, close to double the national average. An overwhelming section of them, 73 per cent, is spatially located in rural areas. Also, the community that constitutes 62 per cent of the total number of below-poverty-line (BPL) families in the State, owns a mere 6 per cent of operational land holding — mainly non-agrarian — despite constituting more than 40 per cent of the population in 40 per cent of the villages and close to 25-30 per cent in the rest.
It was as early as in the 1920s that the Ad-Dharm movement in the Doaba region heralded assertive Dalit politics. By articulating the voice of the marginalised, it signified a transformative potential for acting as agents of egalitarian change. The movement merged later with other political outfits like the Ambedkar Schedule Caste Front and thereupon transformed into the Republican Party of India and subsequently faded away without ever bringing the non-Chamar/Ravidas/Ramdas Dalits like Balmikis and Mazhabi Hindus into its fold.
Officially, there are 37 Dalit castes in Punjab. A majority of them can broadly be divided into two categories, constituting around 82 per cent of the community’s population, with distinct socioeconomic and subregional characteristics. The first category is constituted by two prominent Dalit castes, namely the Mazhabi Sikhs and the Hindu Balmikis, who trace their origin to the Chuhra caste. The second category comprises the Ad-Dharmis/Chamars/Ravidasi and Ramdasi Sikhs, who originally belonged to the Chamar caste. Bahujan Samaj Party founder Kanshi Ram belonged to the Ramdasi Sikh caste from Roopnagar district. Subregionally, the former are predominantly located in the Malwa and Majha regions while the latter are concentrated in the Doaba.
In terms of the urban-rural dimension, the overwhelming majority of Mazhabi Sikhs and a significant section of Balmikis are located in rural areas engaged as farm labourers in the fields of landed Jatt Sikhs, while a majority of Chamars and a significant number of Balmikis are found in urban centres wherein while the former have witnessed occupational diversities on account of their early exposure to economic opportunities, the latter are confined to scavenging and cleaning jobs.
These divergent intra-Dalit sociopolitical dynamics in Punjab translated into fragmented politico-cultural articulations by various Dalit subcastes wherein the cultural aspects constituted the political response. In the early 1970s, after the fusion of the religio-agrarian identity of Sikhs started posing a serious challenge to the political dominance of the Congress, the party responded by appointing a non-Jatt Sikh, Giani Zail Singh, carpenter by caste, as the CM.
With the twin aims of uplifting the most backward Mazhabi Sikh and Balmiki Dalits and ensuring a social cleavage in the politics of the unified Sikh identity played by the upper caste Jatt Sikhs, he came up with a 1975 government notification of reserving half of the SC quota of 25 per cent in State government jobs exclusively for these two castes. As a Congress leader, he aimed to win over the two castes as there was speculation that the emerging primacy of this religious political framework may consolidate the Mazhabi Sikhs in the fold of the Akalis and Balmikis in the fold of the Jan Sangh. By the mid-1980s, with the emergence of the BSP, the Chamar/Ad-Dharmis/Ravidasi/Ramdasi Sikhs shifted significantly to that party by deserting the Congress — a pattern that continued till 1997 when the BSP as a potential Dalit party in Punjab declined.
Thus the failed emergence of unified Dalit politics, despite having assertive social movements on the ground, led to the primacy of caste-centric cultural-politics among Dalit groups who despite the egalitarian rhetoric compete with each other rather than strive for solidarity and alliance. Interestingly, the cultural politics of Dalit caste groups mediates through the various Deras which challenge the cultural hegemony of the Jatt Sikhs who control institutions like the SGPC. These cultural assertions of various Dalit groups via religious symbols are primarily caste-centric.
In this fragmented Dalit discourse, the role of the Deras, the caste-centric appeal of various political parties and intracaste dynamics would emerge as potential determinants of electoral articulation by various Dalit caste groups. The fact that Akalis are appealing to Balmikis by taking a Balmiki Yatra throughout the State and allocating sumptuous funds for the construction of a Valmiki temple at Amritsar, the Congress promising allocation of land for Mazhabi Dalits, the BJP’s recent appointment of a Dalit as its State chief and AAP’s declaration of a Dalit deputy CM endorses the existing fragmented Dalit political articulation mediated through the primacy of caste-centric cultural assertions.
(Sajjan Kumar, a research associate at ICSSR, is associated with People’s Pulse, a Hyderabad-based research organisation specialising in field-work-based political and electoral studies) (Concluded) on account of its Chamar-centric outlook, factionalism, splits and failure to respond to the political aspiration of Mazhabi Sikhs and Balmiki DalitsThus one finds phenomena like the cult of Sant Ravidas catapulted by the efforts of Dera Sachkhand Ballan in the Doaba with a following among the Chamar Dalits; the construction of a spectacular Valmiki temple at Amritsar with which the Balmiki Dalits are enamored; the building of separate gurdwaras by Mazhabi Sikh Dalits in villages and their recourse to various Deras like Sacha Sauda. This primacy of a religious metaphor in cultural assertion is also reflected in fusing Ambedkar with Sant Ravidas by Chamar Dalits who are also competing with the cultural hegemony of the Jatt Sikh being the romanticised identity as the representative of the Punjabi self in the music industry.