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Ravi Dasis & Today’s Punjab
WSN Bureau
 In a well worked
out and analytical article, Surinder S Jodhka of Jawaharlal Nehru
University has argued that the interpretation of the recent violence
in Punjab as "yet another instance of caste conflict within Sikhism"
(between dalit Sikhs and upper caste Sikhs) was incorrect and "could
lead to a communal divide between dalits and mainstream Sikhism."
Jodhka, in his
paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly, a left leaning
journal in India, has tried to provide a historical perspective and
has made clear how, though the Ravidasias rever Guru Granth Sahib
and their temples are also often called Gurdwaras, a large majority
of them do not identify with the Sikh religion and are rather now an
autonomous caste-religious community.
They have
evolved their own symbols and practices of worship, which
distinguish them from the Sikhs of Punjab. "They do not see their
faith as being in an antagonistic relationship with contemporary
Sikhism," Jodhka argues. He traces back the phenomenon to the rise
of the Ad Dharm movement that took off with the arrival of Mangoo
Ram, the son of an enterprising Chamar of village Mangowal of the
Hoshiarpur district of Doaba subregion of
Punjab,
on the scene.
Jodhka explained
how initially the Ad Dharm movement saw itself as a religious
movement and its proponents advocated that the “untouchables” were a
separate qaum, a distinct religious community similar to the
Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, and should be treated as such by the
rulers. They argued that Ad Dharm has always been the religion of
the dalits and that the qaum had existed from time immemorial.
"In the very
first conference of the organisation, they declared: We are not
Hindus. We strongly request the government not to list us as such in
the census. Our faith is not Hindu but Ad Dharm. We are not a part
of Hinduism, and Hindus are not a part of us."
The emphasis on
Ad Dharm being a separate religion, a qaum, was to undermine the
identity of caste. As a separate qaum, Ad Dharmis were equal to
other qaums recognised by the colonial state, the Hindus, Muslims
and Sikhs. Mangoo Ram also expected to bring other untouchable
communities into the fold of Ad Dharm and emerge as a viable
community at the regional level. But the movement could not maintain
its momentum for very long and began to dissipate soon after its
grand success in 1931.
To quote Jodhka:
According to the popular understanding, the causes of the decline of
Ad Dharm movement lay in its success. Its leaders joined mainstream
politics. Mangoo Ram himself, along with some of his close comrades,
became members of the Punjab Legislative Assembly. The caste issue
was gradually taken over by the emerging pan-Indian movement of the
dalits and it finally merged with it. The Ad Dharm Mandal began to
see itself as a social and religious organisation and in 1946
decided to change its name to Ravi Das Mandal, “entrusting the
political work to All India Scheduled Castes Federation in
conformity with rest of India”
It was during
the Ad Dharm movement that the Ravi Dasi identity had begun to take
shape. Leaders of the movement also saw Ravi Dasi identity as their
own resource. Long after dissolving the Ad Dharm Mandal and being in
retirement for many years, Mangoo Ram summed up the achievement of
the Ad Dharm movement in an interview with Mark Juergensmeyer in
1971 where his focus was more on having given the local dalits a new
community and religious identity than their political empowerment:
We helped give them a better life and made them into a qaum. We gave
them gurus to believe in and something to hope for.
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About Bhagat
Ravidas
Ravi Das was born sometime in 1450 AD in the north Indian town
of Banaras in an “untouchable” caste, the Chamars and died in
1520. Like many of his contemporaries, he
travelled extensively and had religious dialogues with saint
poets in different parts of the north India. Over time he
acquired the status of a saint. However, his claims to religious
authority were frequently challenged by the local brahmins who
complained against his “sacrilegious behaviour” to the local
rulers.
His followers believe that every time the king summoned Ravi
Das, he managed to convince the political authorities about his
genuine “spiritual powers” through various miraculous acts. He
is believed to have also visited Punjab and met with Guru Nanak,
founder of the Sikh faith, at least thrice. He also gave most of
his writings to Guru Nanak, which eventually became part of the
Sikh holy book, Guru Granth.
Though historians of Indian religions tend to club Ravi Das with
the Bhakti movement, a pan Indian devotional cult, his ideas
appear to be quite radical. He built his own utopia, a vision of
an alternative society, articulated in his hymn “Begumpura”, a
city without sorrows, “where there will be no distress, no tax,
no restriction from going and coming, no fear”. |
After having
changed its name to Ravi Das Mandal in 1946, the movement activists
shifted their focus to social and religious matters. They had
realised long ago that in order to consolidate themselves as a
separate qaum, they needed a religious system of their own, which
was different from the Hindus and Sikhs. However, in order to do
that they chose a caste-based religious identity: Chamar = Ad Dharmi
= Ravi Dasi.
Choice of Ravi
Das appeared to be an obvious one for the Ad Dharmis as a religious
symbol for the community. The fact that his writings were included
in the Sikh holy book, Adi Granth, which had been compiled in Punjab
and was written in the local language, made Ravi Das even more
effective and acceptable.
Thus the Ad
Dharm movement played a very important role in developing an
autonomous political identity and consciousness among the Chamar
dalits of Punjab and its renaming itself as a religious body, Ravi
Das Mandal in 1946, was an important turning point in the history of
dalit movements of
Punjab.
However, it is important to mention here that the Ravi Dasi
religious identity had already begun to take shape, independently of
the Ad Dharm movement in the region.
 In fact, some of
the Ravi Dasi deras had, in fact, played an active role in the late
1920 when Mangoo Ram was campaigning for separate religious status
for Ad Dharmis. Mangoo Ram often visited the Ravi Dasi deras during
his campaign.
Interestingly,
even when the community reconciled itself to the idea of being
clubbed with Hindu SCs for census enumerations, the identity of
being Ad Dharmis continued to be important for them. As many as
14.9% (5,32,129) of the 70,28,723 SCs of Punjab were listed as Ad
Dharmis in the 2001 Census, substantially more than those who
registered themselves as belonging to the Ad Dharmi qaum in 1931. In
religious terms, as many as 59.9% of the Punjab SCs enumerated
themselves as Sikhs and 39.6% Hindus. Only 0.5% declared their
religion as Buddhism.
However,
notwithstanding this official classification of all SCs into the
mainstream religions of the region, everyday religious life of the
Punjab
dalits is marked by enormous diversity and plurality. Apart from the
popular syncretic religious traditions that have been in existence
for a long time in the region, the dalits of
Punjab, and
elsewhere in India, have also developed an urge for autonomous faith
identities, particularly for getting out of Hinduism.
They view
Hinduism as the source of their humiliating social position in the
caste system. This urge became much stronger with the emergence of a
nascent educated middle class among them during the later phase of
British colonial rule. The Ad Dharm movement of 1920s (discussed
above) was a clear example of this.
Historically,
dalits have chosen two different paths to this move away from
Hinduism. The first of these was conversion to other religions such
as Christianity, Islam or Sikhism, which do not theologically
support caste-based inequalities and divisions. The second path has
been to look for indigenous egalitarian faith traditions that
emerged in opposition to the system of caste hierarchy. The Ravi
Dasi movement can be seen as an example of this path.
17
June 2009
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