When a Dalit Leader's Mere Presence on a Stage is Treated as 'Polluting'

Two days after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge addressed a public rally at Haldwani's Ramlila Maidan in Uttarakhand on August 8, a shuddhikaran havan (purification ritual) was conducted at the same venue. Members of the Shri Ram Sena Dharmarth Seva Nyas Sangathan performed the ritual to purify the site. The organisation cited the slogans raised at the rally and Kharge's criticism of the BJP and the RSS as its justification for the ceremony.

But a political disagreement does not make a public space impure and it certainly does not justify cleansing a venue after it has been used by a person from the Dalit community. The act reproduced the caste logic of purity and pollution that lies at the heart of untouchability. Kharge subsequently raised the matter in the Rajya Sabha, calling it an experience of untouchability and humiliation, and sought action under the law.

The incident should be called what it is: an expression of caste-based untouchability. The fact that the organisers offered a political justification does not erase the social meaning of the act. In a society where the Dalit community has historically been subjected to exclusion on that basis, such a ritual reproduces an idea that should have no place in a democratic society.

Political disagreement can be answered with argument, protest or criticism. It cannot justify treating a space as impure because of who occupied it.

The politics of purification

Purification is never simply about cleanliness. It establishes a boundary between what is considered "pure" and "impure." In the caste order, this distinction has historically been imposed upon human beings themselves. Certain communities have been treated as closer to ritual purity, while others have been placed at the bottom of the hierarchy and treated as "polluting." Their touch, presence and proximity have been regulated accordingly.

The Haldwani incident brings this logic into the contemporary public space. The symbolism of a venue being "purified" after being occupied by a person belonging to the Dalit community is unmistakable: something associated with the event was deemed as requiring "cleansing."

Such a ritual reproduces the very social imagination that sustains untouchability and this is why the incident deserves criticism not merely as an act of political provocation, but as an act that reproduces caste hierarchy. It is not necessary for the organisers to explicitly announce that Kharge's caste was the reason for the purification, for the casteist meaning of the act to matter. Caste often survives through symbols, rituals and practices whose social meaning is inherited from a much longer history.

The caste system does not merely divide society into communities. It ranks those communities. The distinction between purity and pollution has historically been one of the mechanisms through which this hierarchy is maintained. It determines who can enter certain spaces, who can share food and water, whose touch is "acceptable," whose presence is welcome and whose must be kept at a distance.

The most disturbing feature of this system is that impurity is attached to birth. A person is not treated as impure because of an action or a heinous crime, but because of the caste into which they were born. Caste therefore turns social difference into inherited hierarchy and makes inequality appear natural.

Untouchability is the most brutal expression of this logic. It transforms the body into a marker of social status. The question is no longer simply who a person is as an individual, but what caste their body is understood to represent.

When a public space is purified after a person from the Dalit community has occupied it, the act invokes this same logic. It suggests that the presence of a particular social body has altered the status of the space. That is the caste imagination that must be confronted.

The sacred and the profane

The distinction between the sacred and the profane provides another way to understand why purification is so significant. Societies create boundaries around what they consider sacred, pure and worthy of protection. The problem begins when these boundaries are transferred from objects and rituals to human beings.

Some communities have been positioned closer to what is considered as sacred, while others have been pushed away from religious spaces and "social purity." The distinction between the "sacred" and the "profane" consequently becomes a distinction between people.

A democratic society cannot accept such a hierarchy. No citizen's caste can make a public space sacred or profane. No person's presence can make a venue impure. The moment society accepts such an idea, it has already moved away from equality.

Caste has always operated through a paradoxical relationship between inclusion and exclusion. Those at the bottom of the caste order are not completely outside society. They are made part of society, but kept apart within it. Their labour is required, their social roles are defined and their presence is necessary to the functioning of society, yet their equality is denied.

This is the deeper meaning of untouchability. It does not simply expel a person from society. It incorporates them on unequal terms.

The Haldwani incident exposes this contradiction in a contemporary setting. A person from the Dalit community can occupy a public stage and exercise political rights but still be kept symbolically apart from the imagined order of purity.

The myth of individual advancement

The presence of a small number of people from the Dalit community in prominent positions is often presented as evidence that caste is disappearing. This is a misleading conclusion.

The exceptional advancement of a few individuals cannot be equated to the emancipation of an entire community. There are people from the Dalit community who have achieved significant political, professional, academic and institutional positions. These achievements matter, but they do not erase the structural inequalities that continue to affect millions of others. Access to education, employment, land, political power, social dignity and public resources remains deeply unequal.

Individual mobility, therefore, cannot be mistaken for collective transformation. The fact that a few individuals cross institutional boundaries does not mean that caste itself has been dismantled. Kharge's position makes this contradiction particularly visible. His political authority is considerable, but the incident demonstrates that institutional status does not automatically erase caste identity. The fact that a person from the Dalit community can occupy a prominent political position and still be subjected to an act rooted in the logic of "purity" and "pollution" exposes the limits of representation as a measure of social equality.

Political representation matters. It gives historically excluded communities a voice in institutions and can challenge the monopoly of dominant social groups over political power. But representation alone cannot annihilate caste. It is possible for institutional inclusion and social exclusion to coexist. A person can be politically powerful and still be socially marked by caste.

This is the central contradiction exposed by the Haldwani incident. Political democracy recognises the individual as an equal citizen, while caste society continues to interpret the individual through inherited social categories. One system says that citizenship is equal; the other continues to ask which caste a person belongs to.

Thus, the problem is not simply that more people from Dalit communities need to be represented. The deeper problem is that representation must be accompanied by a transformation of the social relations through which caste hierarchy is reproduced.

This is where B.R. Ambedkar's critique of caste remains indispensable. Ambedkar understood that political democracy could not survive without social democracy. Constitutional rights and political representation are necessary, but cannot by themselves transform a society organised through graded inequality.

Article 17 of the Indian constitution abolished untouchability. However, the legal abolition of untouchability does not automatically eliminate the social consciousness that produces it.  Ambedkar's challenge was the annihilation of caste itself. That requires not merely changing who occupies institutions, but changing the social relations through which human beings recognise one another.

The Haldwani incident demonstrates why that project remains unfinished.

Political disagreement cannot become caste purification

The organisers may provide political reasons for conducting the ritual. Nevertheless, those reasons cannot make the act acceptable. A political speech can be criticised. A slogan can be opposed. A political leader can be challenged. None of these requires a purification ritual.

The decision to purify a public venue transforms political disagreement into an act of cleansing. It takes the dispute out of the realm of political argument and places it within a symbolic framework of "purity" and "impurity." The act reproduces a hierarchy in which impurity must be removed and purity restored.

Democracy depends upon disagreement. Caste depends upon hierarchy. The former can tolerate difference; the latter converts difference into graded inequality. The Haldwani incident shows what happens when the language of caste hierarchy enters a space that should belong equally to all citizens and should, therefore, not be treated as a minor political controversy or as an isolated ritual.

It is a stark reminder that caste survives through the symbolic boundaries that continue to organise social life. That is fundamentally incompatible with the principle of equality.

The struggle against caste requires dismantling of the social imagination that divides people into the "pure" and the "polluted," the "sacred" and the "profane," those who can belong without qualification and those who have to continually provide proof of their competence and belonging and are still kept apart.

Akhilesh Kumar is a PhD Research Scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, an Ambedkarite activist and an independent writer.

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