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Ronki Ram (
) is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Political Science at Panjab University Chandigarh, India.
The state of Punjab has been popularly viewed as a notable exception to the widely prevalent Brahminic orthodoxy of graded caste hierarchy and its consequent system of untouchability in India. However, as far as the real-life conditions of the Dalits in the state are concerned, Punjab has been far from an exception.1 Dalits in Punjab have also been subjected to humiliation and untold miseries for centuries, like their counterparts in other regions of India. The repeated references to and loud condemnation of the caste system in the teachings of the Sufis and the Sikh gurus of the region are a case in point. In fact, the roots of caste hierarchy were so well entrenched in Punjab that it survived even the reformatory endeavors of the various social reforms movements (Arya Samaj, Chief Khalsa Diwan, and Singh Sabha) of the 1920s. Left to fend for themselves in the face of the failures of these movements, the Dalits of Punjab have taken up the cudgel with those who have all along dominated them deeply.
Over the years, Dalits have strengthened their economic position through hard work and enterprise and acquired political consciousness to secure their interests. Although state-based affirmative action, provided under the constitution of independent India, has been an important factor in the uplift of the Dalits, the Ad Dharm movement of the 1920s and Ravidass Deras (religious centers or compounds) played a historic role in the formation of Dalit consciousness in Punjab.2 The Ad Dharm movement is widely accredited with sowing the seeds of Dalit consciousness in the state.3 It was during this movement that the image of Ravidass, a Dalit nirguni (devotee of God without attributes) saint of the medieval North Indian Bhakti (loving devotion) movement, was projected systematically to concretize the newly conceived Dalit cultural space in Punjab. This movement used his pictures as its emblem, his poetry as its sacred text, and legends about him as illustrations of the power and pride of the socially excluded (Juergensmeyer 1988 , 33).
The fact that Ravidass-who unleashed a frontal attack on the centuries-old practice...