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Accepted Paper:

"Harijan Sandesh": finding one's way to citizenship  
Nicolas Jaoul (CNRS)

Paper short abstract:

This study of the organization of a Dalit ("sweeper") community in the two decades after independence, discusses the manner in which the paternalistic notion of the "Harijan" subject was questioned critically and contested practically, as a claim to political agency and universal citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the manners in which ideas and practices of citizenship were appropriated and self taught by the "sweeper" community of Kanpur in the two decades following Indian Independence. While the Constitution promoted notions of equal citizenship, social welfare policies took paternalistic overtones with the officialization (inspite of being unconstitutional) of the Gandhian terminology ("Harijan"). Whatever little was done by the Congress government to advertize notions of equal citizenship and Dalit rights, was attributed to Gandhian and Hindu reformist organizations, who interpreted this task in terms of "Untouchable uplift", meaning in practice benevolent caste patronage.

The formation of the Harijan Bal Videarthy Sangh, a local organization of the sweeper community of Kanpur, shows that notwithstanding these official lacunas, these young enthusiasts redefined the meaning of "Harijan" in a manner that challenged the upper caste monopoly on social work. Their appropriation of the task of "Untouchable uplift" thus reformulated established notions that could seem acceptable to the local Congress authorities, while building their own internal authority and doing away with patronage. While "Harijan" depicted Dalits as the meek and problematic beneficiaries of national charity, they contested this definition practically by portraying themselves as the responsible upholders of national ideals of popular progress inside their community. Before adopting a more radical anti-caste discourse in the 1960s, the "Harijan" meaning was thus stretched from the start in a way that fitted a popular claim to universal citizenship.

Panel P34
The partisan manufacture of citizens in India
  Session 1