Omar Rashid 
New Delhi: Dalit leaders and scholars have condemned Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath for referring to the Dalit community as “Harijan,” a Gandhian term that’s not only considered patronising by the community but has also been denounced by the parliament as well as the highest judiciary. In 2017, the Supreme Court had observed that the term ‘Harijan’ was often used by the ‘upper castes’ for members of the Dalit community as a term of “insult, abuse and derision.”
In his eagerness to reach out to the Dalit community on the occasion of Diwali, Adityanath on October 31 while addressing an event in Gorakhpur, appealed to people in the state to celebrate the festival with those who were unable to afford to light diyas in their homes. “This morning, I was in Ayodhya, where I went to a ‘Harijan basti’ (loosely translated as a Dalit slum) and distributed sweets, diyas (earthen oil lamps) and oil. I also shared the happiness of Deepawali with them and greeted everyone there,” said Adityanath.
That Adityanath chose to say ‘Harijan basti’ instead of ‘Dalit basti’, caught the attention of opposition leaders who criticised the UP chief minister for using a word that’s considered derogatory by the Dalit community across the country.
Nagina MP and Aazad Samaj Party–Kanshiram president Chandra Shekhar Aazad reminded Adityanath that the Union government had issued an advisory to all state governments asking them to not use the word “Harijan” for Scheduled Castes in 1982. Aazad, in a post on X, said that in 2010, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment had banned the word by issuing new guidelines. “Is chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who occupies such an important constitutional post, not aware of these decisions? Or are the people of Scheduled Castes being insulted deliberately through the word ‘Harijan’,” asked Aazad.
The young Dalit MP used the occasion to take a dig at Adityanath’s ‘batoge toh katoge’ remark that was aimed at uniting Hindus. “Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who gave the slogan ‘batenge toh katenge’ (if divided, we will be cut) in election rallies, is himself dividing the society into ‘Harijans’ and ‘non-Harijans’ on social, cultural and religious platforms. Doesn’t the use of this word ‘Harijan’ endanger his so-called Hindus,” asked Aazad.
Former Uttar Pradesh leader of opposition and Ambedkarite politician Swami Prasad Maurya said the word ‘Harijan’ used by Adityanath had been banned by the Union government as well as by the courts. Despite this, by using a “divisive” word, Adityanath was not only ignoring established norms but also ruining the slogan ‘batenge toh katenge’, said Maurya, who is the president of the Rashtriya Shoshit Samaj Party.
The word ‘Harijan’, which means ‘children of god’, was popularised by Mahatma Gandhi to refer to those who were then referred to as the ‘untouchables’ under the Hindu caste system. It conferred on them a sacred identity.
Historian Ramachandra Guha, who has written several books on Indian socio-politics centred around Gandhi, in a 2017 article in The Telegraph wrote that the word ‘Harijan’ had first been used by the mediaeval poet-saint Narsinh Mehta, whom Gandhi admired. In 1933, Gandhi even renamed Young India, a weekly newspaper edited by him, as Harijan. He believed that the campaign to abolish untouchability was as vital as winning political freedom, wrote Guha.
Also read: Dalit Business Owners Earn 15-18% Less Than Others Finds Study
With Gandhi’s endorsement, the word ‘Harijan’ quickly gained currency and among the Hindu middle class as well as in the nationalist press, the untouchable community were regularly referred to as ‘Harijans’, wrote Guha. However, the reference was rejected by B.R Ambedkar, who felt it was derogatory and deceptive.
Dalit activists and scholars The Wire spoke to, view Adityanath’s reference to ‘Harijan’ with similar derision and say that it reflects his ‘upper caste’ mindset. Rampur-based Ambedkarite Dalit scholar and author Kanwal Bharti said the word ‘Harijan’ was derogatory as it imposed a communal ‘identity’ on Dalits. Not only did Ambedkar vehemently oppose it, Swami Achootanand, the 20th century anti-caste reformer, even dedicated a bhajan against the word ‘Harijan’ in 1928 or 1929, said Bharti. After Independence, ‘Harijan’ continued to be used by Congress party leaders and workers to refer to people from the Dalit community and even Dalit leaders such as Jagjivan Ram, former deputy prime minister, used the term, Bharti said.
Ajay Rawat, assistant professor in the department of sociology at the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Lucknow, said the term ‘Harijan’ was laced with a religious identity whereas the anti-caste movement in the pre- and post-Ambedkar eras involved challenging the “ishwari satta” or divine power and the denial of God. ‘Harijan’ denoted a “sentiment of benevolence” towards the untouchables from mainstream society, said Rawat. “It was a name given by god so that the mainstream society would accept them,” he said.
Dalit activist from Uttar Pradesh, Bhawan Nath Paswan, criticised Adityanath for referring to Dalits as ‘Harijan’ and argued that the word had no relevance or meaning.
“Even the Parliament ended the practice of using it. No implication can be drawn out of ‘Harijan’. It means we are the people of Bhagwan. But in truth, we are all humans born to humans,” said Paswan. He feels that ‘Harijan’ is used to insult Dalits and reflects a “corrupt mentality.”
“When a word has been abolished by the parliament and the tradition of using it has come to an end in the society, nobody should use the word, be it a prime minister or a chief minister. Untouchability was created by man, god has nothing to do with it,” said Paswan, president of the Dr. Ambedkar Rashtriya Ekta Manch.
Mayawati, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and arguably the most politically successful Dalit leader the nation has ever produced, has over the years objected to the use of the word ‘Harijan’ and argued in favour of referring to the community as either Dalits or Scheduled Castes. The term Dalit, which means broken or oppressed, came into wider usage after being adopted by a group of radical anti-caste Dalit activists, the Dalit Panthers, in Maharashtra in the 1970s. Today, it is a political term used to refer to communities under the Scheduled Castes, and often, if not always, meant to include Scheduled Tribes.
At an election rally in Haryana in October, Mayawati reprimanded a senior leader of her ally Indian National Lok Dal for using the word ‘Harijan’ for Dalits. Mayawati pointed out that the term used for Dalits in the constitution was Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and not ‘Harijan’.
The former UP chief minister narrated an incident from 1977, when she was a first year law student in Delhi University, to illustrate the pervasive use of the term ‘Harijan’. Mayawati said that in 1977, Dalits from across the country held a three-day ‘Jati Todo Sammelan’ in Delhi to express their anger over the Janata Party, which came to power, not fulfilling its promise of electing Dalit leader Jagjivan Ram as prime minister. Even the Congress had not made him prime minister, said Mayawati. She was invited to speak at the 1977 event as a representative of the youth. Mayawati recalled that at the event, all Janata Party leaders were using the term ‘Harijan’ for Dalits. “I told them, on one hand you are talking of breaking caste, while on the other you are using the term Harijan. If we take it positively, ‘Hari’ means Ishwar (god). We are ishwar ki aulad (children of god). So does that mean the others are shaitan ki aulad (children of the devil),” asked Mayawati.
Also read: The Rise of Dalit Cinema and Its Future
According to MP Aazad, this question is relevant even today. “Adityanath ji should tell us if the people of Scheduled Castes are ‘Harijans’, then if the rest of the people are not the people of ‘Hari’, then whose people are they,” asked Aazad.
Dalit activists also say that while Dalit caste names such as ‘Chamar’ and ‘Pasi’, which are often also used as insults by casteist people, denote caste groups, the term ‘Harijan’ does not address any Dalit caste and therefore has no purpose except for insult.
In 2017, a division bench of the Supreme Court, while quashing an order granting anticipatory bail to a person in Bihar accused of insulting a Dalit woman, noted that that words ‘Harijan’ or ‘dhobi’ were often used “by people belonging to the so-called upper castes as a word of insult, abuse and derision.” The apex court said, “Calling a person by these names is nowadays an abusive language and is offensive. It is basically used nowadays not to denote a caste but to intentionally insult and humiliate someone.”
While ‘Harijan’ is deemed an insult, in the hinterlands, it is commonly used by all communities, including some Dalits, to refer to themselves, in particular the Jatav or Chamar sub-groups. Bharti said that over time, with the usage being promoted by the Hindu Right, ‘Harijan’ has started becoming synonymous with the Valmiki community.
Vikram Harijan, an assistant professor who teaches ancient and mediaeval history at the Allahabad University, said that many people like him, especially from the Chamar and Jatav communities, still continued to use ‘Harijan’ as their surnames. In particular, people from the ‘Chamar’ community in West Bengal’s Asansol freely use this surname, said Harijan, who spent his formative years in a coal mining colony in the eastern Indian city.
There was a fundamental difference between Adityanath referring to them as ‘Harijan’ and the common usage of referring to the community as Dalits, said the professor. “The difference is that ‘Harijan’ was a name given by the upper castes. That is why it is often on their tongue. On the other hand, Dalits used the term ‘Dalit’ for themselves. It was a word they picked for themselves,” said Harijan.
He said that he has faced problems and discrimination all his life due to the easily identifiable nature of his surname. “Usually, to fight discrimination, Dalits hide their names and identity. But I took ‘Harijan’ as a term of pride after both upper castes and other Dalit communities hated this word. It became about my ego and I stuck to the name,” said Harijan.
He also explained that while ‘Harijan’ was discouraged by both the governments and judiciary, its use was embedded in common practice, while the word ‘Chamar’, the largest Dalit community in the country, was often used as a derogatory, casteist slur. “Gandhi gave this word and the upper caste Congressmen used it widely. And today it has become a practice of ‘commonsensical knowledge’,” said Harijan, who added that in future he planned to adopt the surname Ambedkar.