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Feminine, criminal or manly?Imaging Dalit masculinities


in colonial north India

Article  in  Indian Economic & Social History Review · November 2010


DOI: 10.1177/001946461004700302

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Feminine, criminal or manly? : Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north


India
Charu Gupta
Indian Economic Social History Review 2010 47: 309
DOI: 10.1177/001946461004700302

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Feminine, criminal or manly? Imaging
Dalit masculinities in colonial north India

Charu Gupta
Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi

This article places the Dalit male body at its centre, and in the process disturbs the idea of
masculinity in colonial India. It argues that ways in which caste, Dalit identities and masculinity
relate to each other have not been readily recognised, in spite of a growing body of work on
Dalits in the colonial period. The article explores how the Dalit male body was socially con-
structed, or belied, by colonial authorities, by upper castes and by Dalits themselves in colonial
Uttar Pradesh, both for purposes of social control and for the construction of identity. It
approaches Dalit masculinity discursively, through its representations in the dominant culture,
in which the imagery was related to larger structures of oppression, such as lack of education,
a discriminatory labour market, criminal justice system and technologies of surveillance,
which resulted in an institutional decimation of Dalit males. At the same time, the article
attempts to understand assertions of Dalit masculinity by Dalits themselves, by rooting it in a
wider historical narrative. It seeks a gendered interpretation of Dalit histories, and the crisis
of Dalit manhood.

Keywords: Dalits, masculinity, colonialism, criminal, feminine, army

Acknowledgements: This article is part of a larger work on ‘Gendering Dalits in Colonial North
India’. I would like to thank the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, as it was as a Fellow there
that this article started taking shape. Earlier versions of this article were presented in 2009 at
the History Seminar Series at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in 2008 at the Feminist Pre-Conference
on The Body in South Asian Feminism at the South Asia Studies Conference in Madison and the
Exploring Masculinities: A South Asian Travelling Seminar in Kathmandu. I am grateful to all
participants who contributed in shaping the arguments.

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DOI: 10.1177/001946461004700302

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310 / CHARU GUPTA

Studies on masculinity in India have come of their own, particularly in the past
decade.1 The study of men is as vital for gender analysis as that of the ruling
classes for class analysis.2 However, masculinity frequently denies men’s identity
because of its centrality in patriarchal formations. The propertied, high caste,
heterosexual Hindu male is at the top of religious and caste hierarchies. Significant
works have revealed how the male body was constructed in colonial discourse,
contrasting the manly British with the effeminate colonial subject.3 And in present
day India, links have been made between the growth of the Hindu Right, assertions
of masculinity and violence.4
However, most historical studies have focussed primarily on colonial or upper
caste Hindu masculinity and have not examined how this appeared in the creation
of Dalit identity.5 While religious identities have remained an important arena for
masculinity studies, the same cannot be said with equal authority of caste. In
other words, the relationship between caste, Dalit identities, sexual ideology and
masculinity has not been easily recognised, particularly in the context of colonial
India. Examining Dalit masculinity complicates the rigid links between mascu-
linity, domination and power. Dalit masculine subjectivity remained ambiguous
in relation to Hindu upper caste masculine hegemony in colonial India. Claiming
manhood, for example, could become a way of articulating dignity, social status
and extending the rights of Dalits. These images contested, creatively appropriated
and re-interpreted various ideals of masculinity. The ideas and social practices
that constituted hegemonic masculinity were accepted, rejected and enacted in
contradictory and ambiguous ways by Dalit men. This article places Dalit mascu-
linity at its centre, rather than relegating it to the margins of masculinities studies,
in the process messing its current trajectory. It explores ways in which the Dalit
male body was socially constructed, or denied, by colonial authorities, by upper
castes and by Dalits themselves, both for social control and for identity construc-
tion, in colonial north India, with a particular focus on the region known as Uttar
Pradesh (UP) at present.

1
For example, Chopra, Osella and Osella, eds, South Asian Masculinities; Chopra, ed., Reframing
Masculinities; Osella and Osella, Men and Masculinities; Derne, Movies, Masculinity and Modernity.
2
Connell, Masculinities.
3
Nandy, Intimate Enemy; Sinha, Colonial Masculinity.
4
Bharucha, ‘Dismantling Men’; Hansen, ‘Recuperating Masculinity’; Pandey, Routine Violence.
5
Chopra, Osella and Osella, eds, South Asian Masculinities acknowledged the following: ‘We
note with dismay, but a sense of inevitability, the absence in this polarised picture of the Dalit (ex-
untouchable) man, certainly another of the modern South Asian nation’s problematic “Others”, and
hope to find future work addressing this lacuna’ (p. 4). This absence is particularly visible in his-
torical studies in India. Some recent anthropological works have provided an important corrective.
See, Jeffrey, Jeffery and Jeffery, Degrees Without Freedom?; Rogers, ‘Modernity, “Authenticity”,
and Ambivalence’; Anandhi, Jeyaranjan, and Krishnan, ‘Work, Caste and Competing Masculinities’.
However, these works focus on contemporary settings. There have been significant works on black
masculinity, which have pointed to similar tensions. For example, Collins, Black Sexual Politics,
pp. 181–212; Summers, Manliness and its Discontents; Wallace, Constructing the Black Masculine.

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‘Untouchables’ in Colonial UP

Scholars have shown how colonial rule accelerated two seemingly contradictory
processes: the ‘secularisation’ of caste and its novel association with Hindu reli-
gion through urbanisation, municipal laws, the courts, orientalist perceptions,
missionary activities and the decennial census.6 Though Dalits were employed to
an extent in the colonial economy, there was a simultaneous consolidation of the
‘pollution barrier’, which divided clean and unclean castes. There also appeared
a tight connection between religious, caste and political assertion amongst the
Dalits in colonial India.7 For Dalits of UP, colonial rule signalled a mixture of
advantages and privations, whereby they gained and lost in a variety of conflicting
ways.8 Proselytising by Christian missionaries led to the considerable dissem-
ination of vernacular tracts in UP as propaganda for conversions.9 The North
Indian Christian Tract and Book Society, with its headquarters at Allahabad,10
published painted story scrolls, pamphlets, books and hymns, addressing itself
largely to the depressed classes.11 Many Chamars and Bhangis (sweepers) of
Badaun, Mathura, Meerut, Roorkee, Kanpur, Moradabad, Pillibhit, Bijnor and
Bareilly converted to Christianity.12
Simultaneously, in rural eastern UP a group of landholders appeared in
nineteenth century, who had a greater interest in defence of hierarchies.13 Patron-
client linkages, jajmani system (a system of quasi service, in which occupations
and castes are linked to each other), and begar (unpaid labour) acquired new

6
Scholars have argued that in British India, notions of caste substantially changed. Colonial
administrators, ethnographic accounts and the census helped in epitomising caste as the essence of
Indian society. Attempts to describe, categorise and simplify the social complexity of local manners
and customs of various castes and jatis often led to upholding of textual law, assisting in making
society more caste-bound and ‘Brahmanic’ in character. See Cohn, Anthropologist among Historians,
pp. 224–54; Dirks, Hollow Crown; Dirks, Castes of Mind; Inden, Imagining India, pp. 56–66; How-
ever, British were not the paramount agents for perpetuating caste, which had much deeper roots as
a social structure in India. Moreover, Indian polemicists too identified caste as a topic of vital concern
for the modern nation. See Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics, pp. 25–96, 144–86; Pinch, Peasants
and Monks, pp. 17–20; Sarkar, Writing Social History, pp. 358–90; Dube, ed., Caste in History.
7
Jurgensmeyer, Religion as Social Vision; Dube, Untouchable Pasts.
8
Gooptu, Politics of the Urban Poor, pp. 27–65; Hoey, Monograph on Trade and Manufactures
in Northern India, p. 25; Lynch, Politics of Untouchability.
9
Clayton, Preachers in Print.
10
Lucas, History of the North Indian Christian Tract and Book Society, p. 3; Griswold, Village
Evangelization.
11
A Descriptive & Classified Catalogue of Hindi Christian Literature, pp. 1–41; Report of the
Christian Literature Society, pp. 1–5.
12
Sharma, Christian Missions in North India, p. 92. Webster, Dalit Christians; Nevill, Pilibhit,
p. 97.
13
Cohn, Anthropologist among Historians, p. 384.

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salience.14 The central and eastern districts and Bundelkand, all densely populated
regions, suffered from extreme poverty and heavy pressure on agricultural land.15
The region saw growth of sugarcane cultivation, which profited zamindars (land-
lords) but offered no economic opportunities for Dalits,16 80 per cent of whom
were agricultural peasants and labourers.17 Many Dalits were also in debt bondage
and harwahas (agricultural labourers and ploughmen) for generations, receiving
extremely low wages.18 In regions like Awadh, debts remained high. There were
further economic dislocations due to growing land hunger, agrarian depression,
natural disasters, progressive sub-divisions of land holdings and decline of cottage
industries.19 Many Dalits found their means of livelihood in jeopardy.20
This led many Dalits to migrate to cities, which they saw as places which pro-
vided greater opportunities. After 1857 there was rapid expansion of communica-
tion, market production, law courts, education, libraries and print in towns of
UP.21 The urban economy saw considerable industrial expansion. Between 1922
and 1927 alone, regulated factories in UP increased by 40 per cent and factory
workers by 25 per cent.22 But urban spaces, too, were segregated along caste
lines. Dalit men were confined to the worst jobs, the dirtiest work in industry and
relegated to the most squalid neighbourhoods. The urban contexts often reinforced
values of caste Hindu society and institutionalised Brahmanical prescriptions by
incorporating Dalits almost exclusively into occupations considered polluting to
Hindus. At the same time, urbanisation and limited capitalism had certain advant-
ages for Dalits. They provided anonymity, which made it difficult to enforce caste
restrictions. This led to some loosening of traditional caste ties, the forging of
new alliances and occupational mobility. New jobs were created, with Dalits work-
ing as carters and porters in railways, as domestic servants and retainers for the
British, peons in offices, municipal sweepers and scavengers.23 There were also
limited opportunities for Dalits to acquire fortunes in trades which caste Hindu
were loath to touch. There were examples of acquisition of wealth by some mem-
bers of Chamars, Doms, Telis and Kalwars through the development of leather,

14
Neale, Economic Change in Rural India, p. 21; Mayer, ‘Inventing Village Tradition’.
15
Pai, Agrarian Revolutions in Uttar Pradesh.
16
Amin, Sugarcane and Sugar in Gorakhpur.
17
Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, Vol. VII, pp. 388–91.
18
Singh, Depressed Classes, pp. 23, 29, 38; Chaturvedi, Rural Wages in the United Provinces,
p. 50.
19
Royal (Whitley) Commission, p. 138–39. For changes in the rural economy and conditions of
the poor in UP, see Siddiqi, Agrarian Change in a Northern Indian State; Whitcombe, Agrarian Con-
ditions in Northern India; Jafri, History and Status of Landlords and Tenants in UP.
20
Pandey, ‘Economic Dislocation in Nineteenth-Century Eastern UP’, pp. 89–129; Shilberrad,
Monograph on Cotton Fabrics Produced in NWP, p. 45.
21
Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, pp. 427–30; idem, Empire and Information, p. 338.
22
Royal (Whitley) Commission, p. 133; Report of the Department of Industries in UP, 1935–36.
23
Gooptu, Politics of the Urban Poor.

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 313

oil-seed, liquor and metal businesses. Some Chamars24 took to the profitable trade
of shoemaking and saddlery, trading in raw hides and skins as legitimate entre-
preneurs.25 They also found new outlets in large tanneries, especially around
Kanpur and Aligarh, with relatively higher wages.26 In Agra, some families of the
Chamar caste came to be accepted as creditworthy merchants.27
A section of Dalits saw modern developments and institutions like schools
and colleges, print and publishing, public and political bodies, courts and railways
as spaces for greater social, political and economic mobility.28 There emerged a
small educated Dalit elite in UP, as a result of limited openings in education. A
certain increase in opportunities and print offered the chance to forge new organ-
isations.29 From the 1890s, there was a proliferation of Dalit caste associations in
UP, with their own movements, publications, journals and temples. They initiated
changes in their religious and social practices as ways of asserting alternative vis-
ions for their community.30 Urbanisation did enable formerly submerged Dalit
subpopulations to emerge, and made manifest a pre-existing Dalit heterogeneity
concerning gender, sexuality, class and immigrant status. As part of a vernacular
reading public, Dalit castes spokespersons emerged,31 and made some of the most
forceful claims to higher status and an assertion of their ‘rights’. Print journalism
helped nurture a Dalit counter-public sphere and create a new sense of Dalit
identity, articulated by Dalit reformers and publicists. These Dalit publicists re-
evaluated caste histories and their genealogies. They made powerful critiques of
Brahmanical domination and caste hierarchies. Dalit leaders like Achutanand
drew a distinct Adi-Hindu movement, which not only made claims for social and
political rights, but also forcefully stated Dalits to be the original inhabitants of
India.32 They also made several petitions to the government, arguing for preferential

24
On Chamars of UP, see Briggs, Chamars; Cohn, Anthropologist among historians, pp. 255–319;
Lynch, Politics of Untouchability; Khare, Untouchable as Himself.
25
Knorringa, ‘Artisan Labour in the Agra Footwear Industry’; Roy, Traditional Industry in the
Economy of Colonial India, pp. 158, 197.
26
Walton, Monograph on Tanning and Working in Leather in UP, pp. 25–28; Blunt, Caste System
of Northern India, p. 237; Briggs, Chamars, pp. 226–29; Nevill, Cawnpore, pp. 104, 117.
27
Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, pp. 340, 445.
28
For a powerful statement on the relationship between Dalits and modernity, see Rao, The Caste
Question.
29
Sarkar, Writing Social History, pp. 358–90.
30
Wiser and Wiser, Behind the Mud Walls; Lynch, Politics of Untouchability; Jurgensmeyer,
Religion and Social Vision; Cohn, Anthropologist among Historians.
31
Census of India, 1931, UP, pp. 554–56.
32
Gooptu, Politics of the Urban Poor, pp. 154–75; Ramnarayan S. Rawat, ‘A Social History of
“Chamars” in Uttar Pradesh, 1881–1956’, unpublished PhD thesis, Department of History, University
of Delhi, 2004, Chapter 4.

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314 / CHARU GUPTA

treatment and a share in public appointments and political representation.33 Thus,


for some Dalits colonial modernity was perceived as providing a limited sense of
liberation.
In the same period, reformist and revivalist rhetoric in UP reached new heights.
Movements like the Arya Samaj, while upholding caste hierarchies, were also
making limited indigenous critiques of caste rigidities, linking them to modernity,
civilisation and nation-building.34 In the Arya Samaj’s renderings,35 the down-
trodden had a definite place in the reconstituted Vedic past: because their degraded
lifestyles were a consequence of forgetting their Aryan identity, they could be
redeemed through shuddhi (purification). At least on a theoretical level, they pro-
posed that depressed classes be allowed certain liberties.36 Such developments,
combined with increasing assertions by Dalits, made many among the upper castes
feel that their caste superiority was waning.37 Many of their publications portrayed
a bleak mental landscape of Kaliyug, the modern times, where none of the castes
were conforming to prescribed behaviour.38 Brahmins, instead of praying, were
becoming lazy; Kshatriyas, instead of being brave, were becoming sexually de-
based; and lower castes had abandoned their obligation to serving and were gratuit-
ously asserting their rights. They were forgetting their place in caste hierarchies
and society.39
This is the background in which the article is placed. Ways in which Dalit
masculinity was constructed or dismantled by the upper castes revealed social
relationships at particular historical moments and showed how these could be
inscribed onto the actual human bodies available. The article first examines Dalit
masculinity through its representations within the dominant culture in colonial
UP, at the hands of actors such as Arya Samajists, missionaries and the British.
Second, it attempts to understand assertions of Dalit masculinity by Dalits them-
selves. It tries to read Dalit histories and the crisis of Dalit manhood through a
gendered lens.

Dilemmas in Colonial and Upper Caste Narratives

In colonial India, manhood emerged as a national preoccupation. Colonialism


justified itself through masculine images and nationalism worked its own versions
33
Ahmad, ‘Caste Mobility Movements’; Carroll, ‘Colonial Perceptions of Indian Society; idem,
‘Caste, Social Change, and the Social Scientist’.
34
Bayly, ‘Hindu Modernisers and the “Public” Arena’, pp. 93–137.
35
Trautman, Aryans and British India; Leopold, ‘Aryan Theory of Race in India’.
36
Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda, p. 137.
37
Malhotra, Gender, Caste and Religious Identities, pp. 2–3.
38
Sarkar, Writing Social History, pp. 186–215.
39
‘Samaj Sudhar’, Sudha, April 1929, p. 318; Sharma, Achchut Mimansa, pp. 1–11; Laata, Brahman
Sudhar, pp. 4–7; Narayan, Bhajan Gaurakha Gopal Darpan, p. 23; Sharma, Kaliyug mein Satyug,
p. 12.

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 315

of this, raising individual concerns to collective anxieties over the meanings of


masculinity and femininity. Masculinity was expressed in different ways: from
Vivekananda to Gandhi, from Sanatan Dharmists to Arya Samajists, from notions
of brahmacharya (celibacy) to images of a warrior Krishna.40 Most such cultural
constructions erased the Dalit male body from the national imagination. National
manhood was overwhelmingly constructed as a Hindu upper-caste story. However,
Dalits could not escape the projection of other versions. The Hindu upper caste
and colonial male gaze froze Dalit bodies into accepted rigid forms, embedded in
existing hierarchical power relations. Their narratives often converged in their
portrayal of Dalit men and their masculinity. They upheld contradictory images
of Dalit men, which varied according to the context in which they appeared. On
the one hand, they were often portrayed as meek and docile, strong but stupid,
ready to serve their masters. On the other, there was an equally strong projection
of them as criminals, violent, threatening. Both these images were enframed and
confined to narrow representational fields and fed into each other, their invocation
depending on the ideological contextual need. These constructions made the Dalit
male subject publicly visible, while at the same time they reproduced certain
stereotypes of Dalit male otherness.
Scholars have shown how the Indian male was constructed by the British as
weak and lacking in manliness.41 This was further magnified in the construction
of Dalit male. His body reflected the abject body of labour. There was repeated
imagery of him as meek and stupid, which served a particular purpose. Since
Dalit men did hard manual labour, justification for the harsh conditions forced
upon them required a representation of their bodies as resilient but dim-witted.
Their image as chattels re-enforced their status of domestic subservience. Stereo-
types of Dalit men repeatedly characterised them as childlike, inferior and unfree.
The Chamar male, for example, was often seen as docile, both in colonial and
upper caste literature, ready to do hard work. The Dalit male body was infantalised,
tamed and trained for practical use. They were considered as a form of agricultural
machinery, valued primarily for their hard work, endurance and productive cap-
ability. They were the beasts of burden and workhorses. Their bodies were literally
to be used in the fields from sunup to sundown. Numerous narratives attested to
their passivity in servitude. In several gazetteers of UP it was repeatedly empha-
sised that Chamars were good and industrious cultivators, but were habitually

40
For various constructions of masculinity in colonial India, see for example, Nandy, Intimate
Enemy, pp. 1–63; Sinha, Colonial Masculinity; Sengupta, Frail Hero and Virile History, pp. 120–49;
Parekh, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform, pp. 172–206; Alter, Wrestler’s Body; McClintock, Imperial
Leather.
41
Malik, Orient and Occident, p. 183; Nandy, Intimate Enemy; Sinha, Colonial Masculinity.

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316 / CHARU GUPTA

inclined to desert their holdings on a slight pretext.42 The settlement reports stated
that Chamars were both laborious and submissive.43
Many Dalits had entered the households of landlords as domestic servants.
These men were stripped of their supposed predilection for unrestrained sexuality
and violence and their masculinity was unmade. They were rendered powerless
of their own selves, which reinforced their servile status. They were serfs and ser-
vants whose behaviour fitted them to serve the upper castes. They dared not oppose
or go to the court. To justify their exploitation, high caste men and colonial author-
ities created the prevailing image of the Dalit male as subservient. He was an
embodiment of the asexual, safe, assimilated and subordinated Dalit male; the
emasculated, feeble Dalit man, who, at the same time, was capable of hard physical
labour. The benevolence bestowed on Dalit men by their masters was seen as pre-
ferable to their exposure to the ‘tyrannies of freedom’ in the towns. The village
was romanticised as a place where there was much harmony, where upper castes
behaved with lower castes according to their maryada (customary boundaries)
and where Chamar and Pasi men were also addressed respectfully.44 Seva (to
serve) had a much higher status in this version of the world than naukri (employ-
ment). An article titled ‘Hindu Bhangi’, published in the leading Hindi journal
Chand stated:

Bhangi (sweeper) means to serve.... If the sweepers refuse to clean then who
will protect the grandeur of the rich and the veil of the high caste women?...
Their homes are kept outside the villages and cities so that they can get adequate
rest and their health remains fine.... The sweepers are not our naukars (servants)
but our sevaks (attendants).... Those who work for salaries in government
municipalities are to be criticised as their real job is to do service without
greed.45

The Dalit male’s intellectual capacities too were referred to as inferior and
child-like, playing on a mind/body separation.46 He was seen as far inferior in
intellect, slow in understanding things, and dumb. Work of the brain was there-
fore denied to them, relegating them to the work of the body. An isomorphism
was visible here, as the binaries between men/women were reflected in the rela-
tionship between upper caste and Dalit men: intellect/body, active/passive, reason/
emotion and order/disorder. Even the Arya Samaj often succumbed to this rhetoric.

42
Nevill, Badaun, p. 72; idem, Pilibhit, p. 89; idem, Shahjahanpur, p. 19; Neave, Farrukhabad,
pp. 69, 85.
43
Phelps, Final Settlement Report on the Bulandshahr District, p. 10.
44
Chand, July 1939, pp. 189–92.
45
Gaurishankar Singh Chandail, ‘Hindu Bhangi’, Chand, June 1934, pp. 145–49.
46
‘Dalit Samudaya ki Arthik Samasya’, Chand, January 1940, pp. 133–34.

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 317

In an article in Sudha, Gangaprasad Upadhyaya, a leading figure of Arya Samaj


in UP, stated:

The achchuts (untouchables) cannot do any work themselves; they can only
obey the orders of others. If they are with a student, they can upkeep his books;
if they are with a soldier, they can dust and clean his sword; if they are with a
trader, they can sweep his shop. These men have been referred to as our feet.
We must remember that they are not unnecessary. But they cannot do any ori-
ginal work. They can just follow others.47

It was further argued that Dalit labour fostered the same love between the
landlord and the Dalit as marriage did between husband and wife. The unequal
status and lack of competition between the Dalit and his master became a definition
to promote love. A reformist tract stated:

We need to be protective towards our achchut younger brothers. Just as a


husband takes care of his wife and bestows love on her, while also keeping a
watch on her movement, we too need to look after achchuts and see to it that
they are not swayed by any outside influence. For a harmonious society, it is
imperative to have such a balance.48

Even sympathetic accounts of Dalit men were often cast in the same language.
There was a romantic casteism here, where the affectionate nature of Dalit men
was stressed. An Arya Samaj tract observed:

If we look deeply into the hearts of our achchut brother who works around us,
we will find a village simpleton, who bestows care on us unconditionally. He
addresses us as seth-sahib, babu-sahib and mai-baap. In return he demands
nothing from us except some love.49

These views were endorsed by many. Summed up Annie Besant:

They [depressed classes] are gentle, docile, as a rule industrious, pathetically


submissive, merry enough when not in actual want, with a bright though gen-
erally very limited intelligence; of truth and the civic virtues they are for the

47
Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya, ‘Samaj Sudhar’, Sudha, July 1929, p. 665. Also see Upadhyaya, ed.,
Dalitodhar, p. 11.
48
Sharma, Hinduon ki Unnati aur Achchut, p. 24.
49
Prasad, Bhaichara, p. 8. Also see, Shivnarayan Mishra, Bahishkrit Bharat.

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most part utterly devoid... but they are affectionate, grateful for the slightest
kindness, and with much ‘natural religion’.50

Literature in support of and against religious conversions, by missionaries and


reformers, strengthened such imagery. Missionary records repeatedly talked of
the simple heart of the depressed classes. Stressed one:

They make splendid Christians. They have great faith, and many of them a
child-like trust and simplicity in worship that puts an occidental to shame.51
(emphasis mine)

Or, stated a missionary pamphlet, published from Allahabad:

The depressed classes are governed by their heart rather than their mind. They
are not cunning like many of the upper caste Hindus, who have exploited these
simple men in a clever fashion. It is much easier to win them over and mould
them according to the true teachings of Christian faith.52

Hindu reformers depicted Dalits as incapable of taking decisions to convert on


their own, and saw them as being manipulated by the maulvi (Muslim religious
teacher) and the missionary. Cartoons on the subject, in leading magazines of UP,
portrayed the Dalit male body as feeble, small in stature and without a mind. One
caricatured him as a ‘football’, being kicked by the pandit (Brahman, with know-
ledge of Hindu scriptures), but being grabbed by the maulvi and the padri (Christian
religious preacher) (see Figure 1).
Another showed him as ‘unclaimed property’. In both, the Dalit was denied
any voice in the matter. Other visual images too reinforced the imagery of the
meek Dalit body, usually portraying him as dark, set against a white background
and an upper caste, white, well built body, for maximum visual contrast.53 These
images constructed the cultural meanings of the Dalit body and symbolised the
aesthetic, cultural and social values of reformers. They indicated what was sanc-
tioned, often repeatedly, to be expressed in print. Even benevolent Dalit rhetoric
used symbols of submission, where Dalit men appeared as semi-nude, kneeling
and in servile positions. The everyday visual depictions of Dalit men in public
spaces showed them in a restricted context, which kept them in ‘their place’.

50
An extract from Mrs Annie Besant’s article, which was reprinted from The Indian Review of
February 1909, in The Depressed Classes of India: An Enquiry into their Condition and Suggestions
for their Uplift, p. 31.
51
Annual Report of the Presiding Elder.
52
Johnson, Jati Pariksha, p. 8. Also see Khan, Jati ki Chut Chat.
53
Dyer, White; Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters; Perry, Shades of White.

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‘Football’ of ‘Untouchables’ Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 319
Figure 1

Source: Chand, January 1929, p. 446.

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320 / CHARU GUPTA

Colonial perceptions strengthened these stereotypes. Dalit men were often de-
scribed as dirty, short and ugly. Thus wrote Crooke, ‘Bhangis have a dark com-
plexion, stunted figure, and peculiar dark flashing eye’.54 Sherring remarked that
Doms were ‘Dark complexioned, low of stature, and somewhat repulsive in ap-
pearance, they are readily distinguished from all the better castes of Hindus’.55
Even missionary literature could not escape such classifications:

arya jati ke log lambe chaure sundar sudaul aur sabhya hote hain. neech jati
ke log kurup kudaul nate kad ke aur asabhya hote hain.
[Aryans are tall, broad, beautiful, well built and civilised. Lower caste people
are ugly, weak, short, wild and uncivilised.]56

The language used was not a simple reflection of human physiology or customs;
it reinforced the assumption that their supposed physical attributes were also an
expression of their moral qualities. In the process, these writers were exhibiting a
highly charged, but socially approved, convention.
However, instead of a single fixed identity, there was a repertoire of images
representing Dalit bodies. They were also often constructed as lecherous, criminals,
violent, threatening and uncontainable.57 These socially sanctioned pejoratives
were linguistic short-hands in a jumble of casteist and racial semiotics, which
became particularly potent whenever Dalits started to assert their rights. They
conveyed a negation of the distinct identity of certain groups of outcaste commu-
nities by showing them as an aberration or an inferior part of a homogeneous
Hindu identity. Scholars have shown how the British identified untouchables as
having criminal attributes as a result of their genetic inheritance and assigned
them to the lowest position in Hindu ritual hierarchy.58 Many of these perceptions
were shared by caste Hindus.59 Colonial practices drew upon Brahmanical frame-
works and gave them a further stamp of authority by confirming these assumptions.
Images of Dalit men were extended from abstract textual categories into founda-
tional ones. In many British official documents and upper caste perceptions, Dalit
men, particularly Chamars, were associated with cattle theft.60 It was widely
54
Crooke, Tribes and Castes, p. 261.
55
Sherring, Hindu Tribes and Castes, Vol. I, p. 401.
56
North Indian Christian Tract and Book Society, Jati Pati ka Varnan, p. 3.
57
Cecil Walsh, Indian Village Crimes.
58
For details, see Frietag, ‘Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India’; Yang, ‘Dangerous
Castes and Tribes’; Nigam, ‘Disciplining and Policing the “Criminals by Birth”, Part I’, pp. 131-64;
Nigam, ‘Disciplining and Policing the “Criminals by Birth”, Part II’; Mayaram, ‘Criminality or
Community?’; Radhakrishnan, Dishonoured by History; Kumar, ‘Relationship of Caste and Crime’.
59
Singha, Despotism of Law, pp. 37–46.
60
For a detailed analysis of this, see Rawat, ‘A Social History of “Chamars” ’, Chapter 1. Also
see, Indian Police Collection, Mss Eur F161/154, ‘Forms of Crime’, Oriental and India Office
Collections (OIOC).

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 321

believed that they had an economic motive for poisoning cattle, since they were
regarded as the chief tanners and shoemakers. Crooke confidently stated that
numerous cases had occurred where Chamars had poisoned cattle for the sake of
hides and flesh.61 William Hoey, the Commissioner of Gorakhpur, was convinced
of the diabolical nature of Chamars in poising cattle.62 It has been argued that it
was the colonial state that first put forward this dominant narrative in the second
half of the nineteenth century, when it singled out the crime of cattle poisoning
not just as an occasional occurrence but as an ‘organised and professional crime’
associated with Chamars.63 It was stated elsewhere that if any one community
was more addicted to crime than another, it was the Bhangis.64 The Pasis of Oudh
were identified as criminal tribes under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 and con-
structed as hereditary robbers and thieves.65 Dusadhs were characterised as drunk-
ards. The Doms of Gorakhpur were seen as having criminal characteristics, always
on the threshold of jail.66 The lines between criminals and low castes were con-
stantly blurred and the two terms were almost used interchangeably. The British
discovered a bewildering host of specimens to be classified as ‘essential types’.
These images became a part of Dalit men’s social experience.
Furthermore, when some Dalits became active in anti-landlord movements of
eastern UP in the 1920s and anti-begari agitations of the 1940s, they were seen as
a threat because of their predilection for violence. During riots, Dalits were often
identified as a social menace. As an officer from Kanpur reported in 1900:

The population of Cawnpore contains number of Chamars engaged in various


tanneries and leather factories. They are notoriously of a turbulent disposition
and have been the most active participants in recent riots.67

Moreover, though Muslim men were portrayed as the most potent threat to
upper caste Hindu women,68 sometimes even Dalit men were portrayed in the
same way, because of anxieties over intimate liaisons that might be established
between them. Public places were particularly ‘dangerous’ where outcaste and
Muslim men ogled upper caste women.69 The threat of potent Dalit male sexuality

61
Crooke, Tribes and Castes, Vol. I, p. 190.
62
F. 154 (C)/Box 27, February 1900, Judicial [Criminal] Department, Uttar Pradesh State Archives
(UPSA).
63
Rawat, ‘A Social History of “Chamars”’.
64
Nevill, Pilibhit, p. 131.
65
Hollins, The Criminal Tribes of the United Provinces, pp. 92–4. Also see Yang, ‘Dangerous
Castes and Tribes’.
66
42–48/November 1916, Jails, A, Home Deptt, National Archives of India (NAI).
67
291–302/June 1900, Public, A, Home Deptt, NAI.
68
Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community.
69
Hoch, White Hero, Black Beast; Hernton, Sex and Racism, p. 19.

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322 / CHARU GUPTA

also provided a basis for controlling upper caste women under the guise of ‘pro-
tection’. Various didactic manuals gave instructions to women to keep away from
Dalit men. The tract Striyon ko Chetavni (Warning to Women) warned:

Do not ever go in front of Dhobis (washermen), Chamars or Bhangis without


purdah (veil). Do not eat anything offered by them or wear charms and amulets
given by them. In public places, never talk to them.70

Or as another, meant for Vaishya women, stated:

Why do our women observe purdah from righteous men like husbands and
father-in-laws? What they need is to observe strict purdah in front of the neech
kaum (low caste) like the Dhobi, Chamar and Bhangi, who have bad characters,
but they often do not do so.71

This was combined with a fear that some upper caste widows might elope with
and marry Muslim and lower caste men. It was reported that two upper caste
widows ran away with a Dhobi and a Bhangi respectively. Both men, along with
their wives, converted to Christianity.72 The fear of losing their women to Muslim,
Christian or lower caste men created grave anxieties for upper caste men. The
stereotype of the sexually-potent Dalit male was also often associated with the
promiscuous reputation of the Dalit woman. It was thought that to satisfy such
hot natured women, the Dalit male had to be especially potent.73 Dalit men were
also seen as wife-beaters and drunkards, repeatedly unleashing violence against
their women.74 Upper caste men usually used this imagery to deflect and divert
attention from their own patriarchal attitudes. Thus Dalitness was also seen as
threatening, feral and sexually bestial.
There were thus two broad trends in the constructions of Dalit bodies. The
desirous body was one that could be manipulated and measured by its utility. It
displayed the qualities of an industrious, docile and willing servant. The worst
were those who not only declined to serve, but dared to challenge upper caste
supremacy, symbolising a reversal of established hierarchies.

We Too Are ‘Men’: Dalit Male Identities and Assertions of Manhood

However, Dalit men were not just a screen on which high caste men and colonial
authorities projected their caste, racial and gender anxieties. They, too, were

70
Tirathram, Striyon ko Chetavni, p. 12.
71
Vaishya, Narayani Shiksha, p. 285.
72
‘Samaj ki Chingariyan’, Chand, November 1927, pp. 151–52.
73
‘Achchut’, Chand, August 1934, pp. 352–59.
74
‘Bal Patniyon ke Aasoon’, Chand, March 1927, pp. 460–61.

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historical agents in their formulation of identity. They attempted to challenge the


stereotypes about themselves by asserting their own masculinities in different
ways, often implicitly and by conceiving a gendered sense of self in political
activities, cultural performances and demands in social-public spheres, the impli-
cations of which were often contradictory and ambiguous. Through quotidian
practices in the spheres of work, war, leisure and political organisation, they
evolved ways to survive the self-alienating disjunction of caste and to recuperate
their manhood. Continued discrimination in cities made it difficult for Dalits to
talk of masculinity through dominant social standards. However, migration and
urbanisation did help Dalits to reconstitute manhood and make visible a variety
of Dalit ways of being. Here I will briefly discuss some spaces in which Dalits
attempted to refute subordinated Dalit masculinity by living their own versions
of it in specific contexts, which sometimes led to a positive assertion of their
social status and rights, and at other moments strengthened patriarchal formations
and prevailing notions of masculinity.
In the cultural realm, for example, myths and heroic traditions of Dalits provided
not just models of reality but also models for reality. In colonial UP, the epic of
Alhakhand was appropriated and chanted by some Dalit minstrels,75 who reinter-
preted it, not as a tale of Rajput but of Dalit chivalry. They claimed Alha and
Udal, the two brothers whose heroic deeds helped king Parmal in his war against
Prithviraj in the twelfth century, as part of their own heroic traditions. In a number
of versions, the epic referred to Dalit characters, like the Biria Malin, who carried
messages to Alha under the pretext of fetching flowers, or Dhunwa Teli, a leader
of the Kannauj forces, a Mallah and a Korie.76 They were celebrated and emphasised
in the renderings of the epic by rural Dalits77 and by Agra Jatavs, who claimed
Alha and Udal to be untouchables. They were identified as symbols of courage
fighting for justice. Alha and Pachra, sung particularly by Dusadhs, and batohiya
songs rendered by Dalits in UP, came to centre on such tales. In the 1940s,
Ambedkar became a part of Dalit performances of the epic in UP. He too was
depicted as a great leader and a hero, who could take his place among the country’s
leaders with pride.78 Through such stories, Dalits attempted to prove that untouch-
ables were great warriors in heart, word and deed. Myth and reality, constructions
of heroism and valour combined to provide a language of social rights. In such

75
A lot has been written on the epic. Sir George Abraham Grierson an oriental scholar and
superintendent of the Linguistic Survey of India from 1898 to 1902 wrote extensively on it. See for
example his translations and edited versions of the epic—The Lay of Alha; ‘The Lay of Brahma’s
Marriage’; ‘The Song of Alha’s Marriage’. Also see, Grierson Collection, Mss Eur E223/15, OIOC.
76
See Sir Charles Elliot’s notes on the customs of the epic, in the Grierson Collection, Mss Eur
E223/15(ii), OIOC.
77
Trivedi, ‘Lok Katha ke Nayak Alha Udal’.
78
Lynch, ‘Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: Myth and Charisma’, p. 107.

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popular spaces a complex ideology of Dalit masculinity was played out, which
was neither heterocentric nor misogynistic but developed out of a uniquely Dalit
experience. They offered a critical recourse to another language in which different
realities of Dalit masculine life were expressed.
Military modernity in the colonial period provided many castes of UP a possi-
bility of ‘manhood enhancement’. The idiom of martial valour found supporters
amongst many, including, for example, the urban Sudra poor and the Yadavs, as it
was an effective expedient of upward class mobility.79 Dalits too used this oppor-
tunity to articulate their distinctive military traditions and visions of manhood, in
the process drawing from others, while simultaneously giving it their own colour.
The role and participation of Dalits in the British army and police has been a
subject of debate. Dalit scholars and some historians have researched colonial
army histories to show that Chamars, Dusadhs, Dhusias, Doms, Dhanuks and
Pasis played a critical part as soldiers in the British armies, especially during the
battle of Plassey and in 1857.80 It appears that when the English began to transform
their economic into military power, the lower castes provided their first soldiers.81
However, recruitment of Dalits by the British proved fickle, and there was a slow
Brahmanisation of the army.82 As early as 1800, British commanders had been
submitting applications for the dismissal of men whom they suspected of belonging
to the ‘objectionable’ lower castes.83 But some argued in favour of their recruitment.
Their most vigorous defence came from a report submitted in 1860 by Lieutenant
Bruce, Chief of the Oudh Police. In his police force there were 462 Bhungis, 252
Chamars and 764 Pasis. Regarding Bhungis, he wrote:

There are numerous divisions of the sweeper tribe but all make good soldiers.
The men are of good height and fair muscular development, and they eat and
drink anything with anybody; they are brave, aspire greatly to military service,
and are fond of the practice of sword exercises in which many of them are
expert, and are possessed of great shrewdness.... There are nearly 500 of these
men in the Police, and they have done good service both as Soldiers and
Policemen.84

79
Pinch, Peasants and Monks; Gooptu, Politics of the Urban Poor; Michelutti, Vernacularisation
of Democracy.
80
See, for example, Longer, Forefront Forever; Basham, Untouchable Soldiers; Constable,
‘Marginalization of a Dalit Martial Race’; Cohen, ‘The Untouchable Soldier’; Kolff, Naukar, Rajput,
and Sepoy.
81
Orme, History of Military Transactions of the British Nation.
82
Constable, ‘Marginalization of a Dalit Martial Race’.
83
F/4/260/5780, Board’s Collections: 1808–09, OIOC.
84
L/MIL/7/7236, OIOC.

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 325

He was particularly fully of praise for the Pasis:

The Passees...are extremely hardy and courageous race, and furnish most of
the village watchmen of Oude and the adjacent NWP, they use the bow and
arrow expertly, and are said to be able to kill with the latter at wonderful dis-
tances; there used to be bodies of these men in the service of every Talookdar
and Zemindar of Oude, the NWP too—I have no doubt before they came under
our rule.... Although there is hardly a species of theft, robbery and plunder in
which they are not experienced and skilful, they have a remarkable name for
fidelity when employed, so much so that Bankers employ them to carry their
special remittances, householders leave the guard of their property and family
to them during their absence, and the highest caste Native in the land would
not scruple to place them in positions of trust. There are several Regiments of
these men employed by the Native Government under the denomination of the
Teer Jung Puttans (Regiments of Archers); they are wonderfully active at all
sorts of mining operations, and when leading a vagabond life they often commit
robberies by mining galleries for considerable distances until they get beneath
the position of their prey. Most of the mines against the Baillee Guard were
driven by these men under the superintendence of the mutineer Sappers. The
Passees alone in Oude, I am sure, number more than 100,000 families, and as
one or more of these class is employed in almost every family they make the
best detectives in the land.... As soldiers the Passees though of smaller stature
vie in courage with the Seikhs—on one occasion the late Captain Dawson, of
the Oude Police, was in a position of some danger, and his detachment was
composed about half Passees and half Seikhs; he informed me that if possible
the former exceeded the latter in fearlessness.85

Such voices, however, were slowly marginalised and Dalit numbers dwindled
steadily after 1857. Most British officers were opposed to their recruitment. John
Lawrence, in a letter dated 5 January 1861, wrote that the employment of Chamars
and Bhungis as soldiers, along with Brahmins and Kshatriyas was ‘like bringing
lepers in contact with men of sound health in Europe’.86 Brigadier P. Gordon from
Benares wrote of Chamars and Mehtars, that they get drunk, are smallish in appear-
ance with ill developed chests and small limbs. Pasis, Chamars and Bhangis were
repeatedly condemned as drunkards, dirty and prone to creating disturbances in
bazaars.87 Their manliness was crude, uncultivated and inferior.88

85
Ibid.
86
Ibid.
87
Ibid.
88
See L/MIL/14/216, OIOC; L/MIL/7/12141, OIOC.

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However, increasing demands for manpower during the two wars forced a re-
evaluation of the recruitment system.89 Scholars have shown how sweepers, par-
ticularly convict sweepers, mainly from UP, were recruited by the Government of
India during the First World War to serve in the army overseas, although to do the
‘lowly’ work.90 In Gorakhpur, Doms were urged to enlist as sweepers91 and to go
overseas to serve in the army.92 Some Ramdasies were recruited and a Chamar
regiment was raised during the Second World War.93 Dalit soldiers were particularly
needed for non-combatant services. In this context, Dalit spokespersons renewed
demands for army recruitment during the Second World War, celebrating a suc-
cession of their military achievements during British rule, and providing their
own martial perspectives. In an article titled ‘Harijan aur Sainik Seva’, the valour
and martial skill of Dalits was compared to that of Krishna.94 A conference of the
Adi Hindu Sabha in Lucknow urged that they be urgently recruited in the police
and military.95 Even if not recruited in combatant services, the prestige of enrolling
in the military in any position was considered great by the low castes, since this
was seen as an important means both of seeking concessions from the government
and of claiming a raised social status. Dalit genealogies considered enrolment in
the army as a defining moment in the establishment of social and political affir-
mation, prestige and manhood. It is to be noted that Swami Achutanand, the founder
of Adi Hindu movement, and one of the leading Dalit publicist of UP, was raised
and educated in a military cantonment where his father was employed.
R.S. Hari Prasad Tamta, President of the Kumaon Shilpkar Sabha and a leading
member of the UP Adi Hindu Depressed Class Association, actively asserted the
role that Dalits could play in the British army. Tamta emphasised the martial role
that Shilpkars of Kumaon had played in the past, pointing to the fluidity of earl-
ier recruitment and kshatriya naukari (employment) traditions of Dalits.96 Many
Shilpkars of Kumaon, mostly Doms, enrolled in the army during this time. They
usually went into a labour unit and not a combatant unit, because of the stigma of
untouchability. But any military designation was seized upon by them as a sign of
social affirmation. They later recalled their military service, even as porters, to

89
Basham, Untouchable Soldiers, pp. 28–9; Cohen, ‘Untouchable Soldier’, p. 458.
90
Singha, ‘Finding Labor from India for the War in Iraq’. Also see 42-48/November 1916, Jails,
A, Home Deptt, NAI, ‘Recruitment of convict sweepers for service in Mesopotamia’; 5/May 1916,
Police, Home Deptt, NAI.
91
6–7/June 1913, Police, A, Home Deptt, NAI.
92
42–48/November 1916, Jails, A, Home Deptt, NAI.
93
Deshpande, ‘Hopes and Disillusionment’, pp. 180–3.
94
‘Harijan aur Sainik Seva’, Chand, July 1939, p. 200.
95
(Secret) Police Abstracts of Intelligence of UP Government, 1922–40 (PAI), 24 February 1940,
No. 8, Para 71, p. 42.
96
L/PJ/10/14, OIOC. Also see, Banshidhar, Kshatriya Shilpkar Darpan, p. 59.

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 327

plead for official patronage.97 Maurice Hallett, governor of UP, acknowledged


their valuable contribution to the war effort.98 Writing in March 1942, Tamta linked
it to the restoration of manhood and civilisation among the Shilpkars. He further
remarked:

I am one of those who stand for unconditional support of the British Government
in this struggle which she has taken up for us all.... You would be glad to hear
that from the District of Almora alone I have been able to get about ten thousand
Shilpkars (Depressed Class) recruited in the Army. These Depressed Class
men (Shilpkars) are serving in various Pioneer Battallions, Labour Units and
as Technicians.... It is a truth poignantly realised by the Depressed Classes of
these Provinces that for centuries preceding the British Rule they were steeped
in the abysmal ignorance and unspeakable poverty and the social system as
well as the political power then conspired to rob them even of their manhood.
Had it not been for the British Government which came to their rescue like a
merciful act of God, the Depressed Classes could not hope within any measur-
able time to emerge from degradation and to share benefits of a civilized world.99

In a spirited speech, along with Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu, he stated that the
Shilpkar soldiers represented a simple peasant brotherhood in arms. They were
plain, simple and informal, ready to do a variety of tasks, which many of the
upper caste soldiers would not touch. Unlike the luxurious world of the upper
castes, these soldiers represented a model of simplicity and soldierly masculinity.100
He also said:

We are immortal souls and these bodies are our garments.... Just as we feel joy
in putting on new clothes in place of old ones, similarly, those who are brave
feel joy in entering new bodies after sacrificing old bodies at the altar of duty....
A coward is afraid of death but a brave person invites it. He fearlessly enters
the battlefield.... The earth is for the brave to enjoy.101

The great aspiration among Dalit men for a military status was continuously
reflected in their meetings. Resolutions were adopted by the UP Adi Hindu
Mahasabha at its various conferences urging the depressed classes to enrol them-
selves in the army and police as civic guards, ARP, police and military services.

97
Singha, ‘Finding Labor from India for the War in Iraq’, pp. 443–44.
98
L/PJ/10/14, OIOC.
99
Ibid.
100
Ibid.
101
‘Shilpkar Soldiers’, Pioneer, 1 August 1942.

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Repeated requests were made to the government to adopt special measures to cre-
ate scheduled caste regiments and military police forces, as in the Kumaon div-
ision.102 In a speech made at the Adi Hindu Conference at Allahabad in January
1942, Nand Lal Jaiswar ‘Viyogi’ argued that the martial character of Dalits had
been proved time and again, especially in 1857.103 Dalits mobilised a language of
paternalism through which they tried to invoke the special bond that they shared
with the British, the sarkar (government), by faithful service in their army. By
repeatedly invoking their service in the army of the ruling power, they tried to
turn that entity into a patron which could be approached for concessions.104 Land
was granted to some Choovail and Chaidah Chamars of UP, paying a jumma of
` 250, as a reward for mutiny services.105 The Scheduled Castes Federation, along
with its UP wing, expressed deep concern with the demobilisation and the peace-
time reorganisation of the Indian Army and the effects of this on troops, raised
from the scheduled castes during the war. It urged not only an acceptance of the
present strength in the forces, but also for its expansion, so that scheduled castes
could reach the highest ranks of the army.106 Enrolment in the British army in any
capacity was seen by Dalit groups as a major argument, around which they could
advance the cause of their fitness for higher levels of political power, equal citizen-
ship and manhood. Police or army uniforms, medals and military papers became
critical markers for the projection of the strength and power of the masculinised
body of Dalit men.
The Pasis and Bhangis in colonial UP recuperated a pre-colonial, non-Aryan
martial-race heritage, but they attached their martial identity to a new goal—a
claim to continued employment in the British army. Pasis repeatedly stated that
they had been the bravest and the strongest, and were trusted for generations to
serve in the army or to be chaukidars and ‘protect’ the people. They worshipped
the sword, would rather be turned to stone than be defeated and they were therefore
the best soldiers. Accusations of criminality were also sometimes turned upside
down, when they claimed that some of their community members had resorted to
theft since this was the only way to express their bravery and courage, given the
absence of other outlets. In order to use their strength positively and not in such
‘lowly’ activities, it was imperative to enrol them in the army.107 An educated
sweeper pointed to a cannon known as bhangiyon wali taup (cannon of Bhangis)

102
L/PJ/10/14, OIOC; L/PJ/8/685, OIOC; ‘Depressed Classes Urged to Enlist’, Pioneer, 18 January
1942; Pioneer, Lucknow, 25 February 1942; Samta, 25 February 1942; Poster in Hindi titled ‘UP
Adi Hind Mahasabha ke kuch Pramukh Padadhikari’, available in L/PJ/10/14, OIOC.
103
Report of the Adi Hindu DC Kumbh Mela Conference, pp. 3–4.
104
Similar idioms were used in different contexts by prisoners laboring on public works under the
British. See, Singha, Despotism of Law, pp. 274–75.
105
105–105/January 1860, Foreign Consultation, Foreign Deptt, NAI.
106
L/PJ/8/685, OIOC.
107
Pasi, Pasi Samaj, p. 3; Risalsingh, Pasi Panchayat, pp. 4–5.

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 329

to mark out their military history. It was reported that in 1762, one Harisingh
Bhangi attacked Khwaja Ubaid and captured a house of weapons. He got hold of
a cannon which was named as bhangiyon wali taup, and which was then passed to
Gujarsingh and Lehnasingh Bhangi.108 Elsewhere, a Dalit writer emphasised the
honour of serving in the military, since in this way, Dalits could fashion for them-
selves a different kind of body, acquire a soldierly bearing and style their headgear
and clothes in a way suitable for military service.109 Army service deeply affected
the first generation of Dalit publicists of UP, as elsewhere, who used it as a language
of masculinity, social mobility and as an argument for better jobs and more dig-
nity. Here Dalits seemed to have imbibed a shared strategy of mobility with other
castes, imbued of the manhood rhetoric, but with their own distinct arguments
added to it.
Scholars have shown how in order to overcome their vulnerability, and as a
means of self-assertion, caste associations and the urban Shudra poor in UP adopted
a language of Hindu masculinity and claims to kshatriyahood.110 At the beginning
of the twentieth century, a section of educated Dalit men too, wrote their caste
genealogies, advancing claims to martial status, as a way of restoring their own
dignity, while simultaneously contesting the views of upper castes against them.
As scholars have shown, such claims were accompanied by different, though some-
times overlapping, trajectories. Thus the backward castes largely embraced a form
of militant Hinduism while the untouchables revitalised the Bhakti tradition.111
At the same time, Dalit caste genealogies produced new investments in history.
Dalit caste histories like Chanvar Puran, Kshatriya Shilpkar Darpar,
Nishadvanshavali, Pasi Samaj, Dharuka Kshatriya Vanshavali, Yadav Jivan and
Yaduvansh Ka Itihas were written at this time.112 Their primary concerns were not
economic injustice. Instead, their writings sought to reclaim dignity by question-
ing Brahmanical theories of their origins, which blamed them for all the ills of
society.113 These writers borrowed from a Hindu Puranic tradition and made claims
to Kshatriya status or to a lineage from Krishna, in order to reclaim a ‘pure’
historical past. Raghuvanshi, the author of Chanvar Puran, claimed that through
this book, it was proved beyond doubt that the word ‘Chanvar’ referred to those
who were suryavanshi in the dwij kul (twice born), and that they belonged to a

108
‘Bhangiyon wali Taup’, Madhuri, Vol. 1 (4), 1923, pp. 419–20.
109
‘Asprishyon mein Jagriti’, Chand, February 1930, p. 775. Intermediate castes too were making
similar claims. For example, see Yadav, ‘British Shasan Kal Mein Yadavon ki Fauji Unnati ka Itihas’.
110
Pinch, Peasants and Monks, pp. 81–114.
111
Gooptu, Politics of the Urban Poor, pp. 185–243.
112
Raghuvanshi, Chanvar Puran; Banshidhar, Kshatriya Shilpkar Darpan; Pasi, Pasi Samaj; Sadhu,
Nishadvanshavali; Mishra, Dharuka Kshatriya Vanshavali; Sagar, Yadav Jivan; Yadvendu, Yaduvansh
Ka Itihas.
113
Banshidhar, Kshatriya Shilpkar Darpan, pp. 65–7.

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renowned lineage dating back to the dawn of life.114 However, while relying on
‘traditional’ registers to write caste genealogies, Dalit publicists produced some-
thing different, as they challenged a history that defined them as defiled.
Simultaneously, and especially with the growth of the Adi Hindu movement,
various Dalit castes declared themselves the original inhabitants of India, who
had been historically ‘demasculinised’ and conquered by upper caste Hindus. In
Awadh, Pasis claimed that they had been the lords of the region and their kings
reigned at Sandila, Dhaurahara, Mitauli and Ramkot in the districts of Kheri,
Hardoi and Unao. Ramkot in particular was said to be one of their chief strong-
holds.115 Dalit genealogies argued that they had been victims of racial conquest
by the ‘Aryan’ races and Brahmins, who brought with them Hinduism and an
‘alien’ case system. These genealogies claimed an exceptional role for the down-
trodden in resisting Aryan-Brahmin invaders, though they were finally defeated
through chicanery and cunning. As a punishment for resistance, the Dalits were
defined as untouchables and banished from society, condemned to poverty and
feeding on dead carcasses. While Dalits had no nostalgic yearnings for a pre-
colonial or Aryan ‘golden age’, they constructed their own notions of the past, of
a primordial egalitarian society, believed to have existed before the Aryan invasions
brought Brahmanic Hinduism.116 These caste genealogies can also be read as
masculinised alternative discourses, nurtured by an emerging counter public sphere
of Dalit print journalism. Many of their publications explicitly addressed the dis-
abilities of caste while shaping a new sense of Dalit identity. Upper-caste percep-
tions of untouchability as ritually transcendental were resisted by a process which
claimed to ‘recover’ their true past of ‘genuine’ masculinity in the pre-historical
Indian community. A pamphlet claimed of the Pasis:

Our men were the strongest and the bravest. We had powerful bodies and we
fought many battles without fear. We were experts in wielding lathis (bamboo
sticks) and guns and digging mines was our specialty.117

The trope of Kaliyug became significant here, since it was used repeatedly by
Dalits in assertions of their masculinity in colonial UP. While many upper castes
lamented the arrival of this period of destruction, many publications by Dalit
writers claimed it was a time to recuperate their lost status. Chanvar Puran claimed
that in this period of Kaliyug, their kul would again rise, and have the opportunity
to re-establish the fame of their ancestors.118

114
Raghuvanshi, Chanvar Puran, Introduction.
115
Benett, Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, Vol. 2, p. 207. Also see Risalsingh, Pasi Panchayat.
116
Report of the Special Session of the All India Adi-Hindu (Depressed Classes) Conference, p. 3.
117
Pasi, Pasi Samaj, p. 6.
118
Raghuvanshi, Chanvar Puran, pp. 46–7.

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 331

Modern public-political arenas have been the ‘natural’ homelands of mascu-


linity.119 Dalit masculine identity too was politically contingent. Dalit men used
politics to lay claims to manhood rights. Scholars have argued that in colonial UP,
unlike Maharashtra, politics was not a site of action for the depressed classes.120
This may be partially true, insofar as Gandhian work among the Harijans is con-
cerned. However, a look at the Adi Hindu movement, which dominated Dalit
politics in the 1920s and 30s, reveals that manhood of Dalits sought its own ideo-
logical expression, by equating caste oppression and masculine subjecthood with
political rights. Examples of political assertion by Dalit men abound in western
UP, where their condition was better. The Chamars historically had much bigger
landholdings here and there was less begar. By the late colonial period, in regions
like Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and Agra, they had emerged from positions of servitude
and this was reflected in their lifestyle, food, housing and clothing.121 They used
these opportunities repeatedly to demand more voting rights, to remove the depend-
ency of the franchise upon property, equal employment and more representation
in government bodies by means of continuous petitions. The Adi Hindu movement
argued that Dalits were entitled to full membership in the emerging nation. Its
conference at Lucknow in 1931 adopted as its first resolution the ‘right to equal
citizenship, free enjoyment of equal rights, and adequate representation in legis-
latures and services’.122 The UP Adi Hindu Depressed Classes Association, and
later the UP Scheduled Caste Federation, passed various resolutions to this effect,
demanding more jobs in the bureaucracy and a greater share in political power. It
even asked for 30 per cent representation through separate electorates for the
scheduled castes, or at least a more equitable distribution of seats.123 This was a
male-centred language of resistance and civic rights. An embattled Dalit mascu-
linity asserted itself in political spaces,124 where the Dalit citizen was imagined
within a male paradigm.125 Dalit critiques of the gendered character of caste were
constantly muted by new forms of caste conflict that increasingly equated the
modernisation of gender with a reconstitution of caste masculinity. Male political
mobilisation against caste was determined by the interaction of caste radicalism
in a context of colonial modernity and the logical rhetoric of an emerging polit-
ical nationalism. In a very real sense the stage was set for a male-dominated Dalit
public-political sphere.126

119
Dudink, Hagemann and Tosh,,eds, Masculinities in Politics and War.
120
Pai, Dalit Assertion, p. 32.
121
Singh, Depressed Classes, pp. 47, 109–24.
122
Report of the Special Session of the All India Adi-Hindu (Depressed Classes) Conference, p. 4.
123
L/PJ/8/685, OIOC.
124
Spivak, Critique of Postcolonial Reason, pp. 198–311.
125
Summers, Manliness and its Discontents, p. 2.
126
Rao, The Caste Question.

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There were other arenas where Dalits attempted to articulate some sense of
manhood, which I will touch upon briefly. Some of the Dalits even participated in
aggressive demonstrations of masculinity in public arenas and in communal vio-
lence between Hindus and Muslims, which rocked UP in the early twentieth cen-
tury. In Allahabad, some untouchables asked to be included in Ramlila committees.
They claimed that they could raise a force of men used to handle lathis that would
intimidate the Muslims.127 Kaluram Chamar from Allahabad claimed that during
riots, most Muslim goondas (evil characters) were kasais, kunjras, bhatiyaras
(butchers, vegetable sellers, bard singers) and ekka (coach) drivers. Hindus could
win in riots only if Chamars stood against these forces.128 Relating physical strength
to bravery and heroic deeds, even during riots, enabled them to cultivate a sense
of pride and glory in physical labour and strength, to which little social worth was
attached by the upper classes. Their participation in such riots permitted contrasting
interpretations. Being tough and street-smart was seen as a validation of their
manhood, since Dalit men had access to street weapons and their bodies could
also be used as weapons. This was also a crucial way of fighting poor Muslims
for lowly jobs.129 Similarly, in leather work, which remained largely a Dalit male
sphere, Tolaram Chamar claimed that the work of tanning involved a display of
masculine strength. It was not because it was stigmatised that Chamars did it, but
because they alone were capable of displaying such physical power and hard
work.130 Pasis claimed to be the best watchmen, because of their physical power
to keep crime under control.131
Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu, who established one of the first Dalit presses in
Lucknow, challenged pictorial representations of Dalits by stating that Dalit intel-
lectuals should pay careful attention to their dress style and present to the world a
body which appeared efficiently modern. Discourses around demeanour, clothing
and the elevation of male status were also tied to conversions to Christianity.
Missionary literature claimed that conversions provided manhood to Dalits by
making them into respectable men.132 Said Godfrey Phillips:

These movements are making the outcaste into a man, and giving him a man’s
place in the world—a place he has never enjoyed before.133

Ironically, while lamenting conversions, reformers too acknowledged that they


provided Dalits with an elevated masculine stature. Cartoons published in Chand

127
PAI, 27 October 1923, No. 41, Para 687, p. 532.
128
Sharda, Dalitodhar, p. 10.
129
Gooptu, Politics of the Urban Poor.
130
Sharda, Dalitodhar, p. 14.
131
Crooke, Tribes and Castes, p. clvi.
132
Johnson, Hindu Dharma ke Phal, p. 6. Also see, Johnson, Jotdar ka Brittant.
133
Phillips, Outcastes Hope, p. 83.

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 333

and Arya Samaj publications134 usually depicted two outcaste men together: one
converted and the other unconverted. The change that conversion brought about
in Dalit men—in modes of dressing, walking style, gait and status—was present
for all to see. One cartoon depicted the converted outcaste man dressed in a suit,
wearing shoes and walking ahead royally as a sahib. The unconverted Dalit walked
behind, bare-footed, carrying a load on his head. The caption read:

chalta hai age ban sahib, isayi jo hua achchut,


jo hindu, wah murgi dhota, peeche yeh kaisi kartoot?
[The untouchable who has become a Christian walks ahead as a sahib. The un-
touchable Hindu carries the load of chicken on his head. What an irony!]135

Another cartoon had the converted Dalit man flaunting his wealth, and giving
wages to the unconverted untouchable man:

ek that se gali dekar daan kar raha mazdoori!


ek jati, achchut isayi, mein rehti kitni doori?
[One curses with arrogance and donates wages. Why such distance between
the same caste—one Christian and one untouchable?]136

There were others which depicted converted Dalits playing sports, getting their
shoes polished etc. by the unconverted (see Figure 2). The elevation of status
through conversions was stark. It was claimed by some Bhangis and Chamars
around Meerut that conversions to Christianity gave them a new life through
literacy, dignity and stature. They too saw in conversions a way of restoring dig-
nity and manhood, though from a different positioning than Hindu reformers or
missionaries.137 Dalits were also writing themselves into colonial modernity, using
Christianity, which involved, for them, a certain degree of freedom from social
oppression.138
Control over their women’s movements and sexualities also became an im-
portant axis for Dalit masculine assertion. In UP, as elsewhere, women’s roles
affected the status of a caste. The chamars of Moradabad announced that they
would allow their women less liberty of movement.139 Chamars of Dehra Dun and

134
These cartoons were repeatedly published in many other newspapers and magazines of the
time, highlighting a broad consensus and opposition to conversions of outcastes. See, for example,
various issues of Chand; Vyanga Chitravali; Abhyudaya, 13 March 1926, p. 9.
135
Vyanga Chitravali.
136
ibid.
137
Forrester, Caste and Christianity, pp. 74–5, 77, 81.
138
Menon, Blindness of Insight.
139
PAI, 1 April 1922, No. 13, Para 416, p. 642; PAI, 13 May 1922, No. 18, Para 573, p. 845.

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334 / CHARU GUPTA
Conversions and Dalit Imagery
Figure 2

Source: Vyanga Chitravali, Allahabad, 1930.

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Imaging Dalit masculinities in colonial north India / 335

Saharanpur started to advocate the wearing of dhotis by their women when cooking
food and forbade them to visit bazaars to sell grass.140 A Jatia Chamar Sabha at
Meerut, attended by over 4,000 Chamars, passed a resolution to have their females
go into purdah.141 Wealthy urban Chamars in particular, began putting their wives
under seclusion, proclaiming a new role for the women of their community.142 At
a meeting of Bhangis at Mathura, it was decided that their women should not be
sent daily to bazaars.143 A Pasi panchayat in Meerut resolved that their women
should not go out for daily labour.144 Bhangis of Bulandshahr passed resolutions
in their panchayats, forbidding the attendance of their womenfolk at melas (fairs).145
Khatiks of Lucknow resolved not to allow their women to peddle fruits on the
street, and made them sell only in shops.146 Scholars have seen such moves as
ways of strengthening claims to upward mobility.147 Dalits here were also drawing
on norms of dominant manhood which emanated from the upper castes, claim-
ing Dalit masculinity not through heterogeneity but through mimicry. These were
markers of masculinity in the domestic sphere, in reaction to their perceived ‘emas-
culation’. Others have argued that these measures were not simply Sanskritisation
or even assertions of patriarchal control, but attempts to restore dignity to Dalit
women. Regulation of sexuality was an important axis for the politicisation of
caste identity. Dalit reformers’ masculinity was predicated on the reform of gender
within their community and the defence of community honour against the disdain
of outsiders.148

Conclusion

Dominant cultures produced a body of stereotypical representations of Dalits.


Attributes of docility, meekness, stupidity and emasculation were used to represent
several untouchable castes subsumed under the Dalit label. Conflicting, through

140
PAI, 30 September 1922, No. 38, Para 1193, p. 1466.
141
PAI, 4 November 1922, No. 42, Para 1269, p. 1577.
142
Raghuvanshi, Chanvar Puran; Briggs, Chamars, p. 47; Lynch, Politics of Untouchability,
pp. 174–81; Cohn, Anthropologist among Historians, p. 272.
143
PAI, 24 March 1923, No. 12, Para 247, p. 186.
144
Abhyudaya, 25 December 1926, p. 8.
145
PAI, 29 September 1923, No. 38, Para 660, p. 503.
146
Blunt, Caste, p. 241.
147
Gender has only recently emerged as an integral part of studies on intermediate and lower
castes. Various scholars have emphasised how women were used to counter their social marginalisa-
tion. See, Lynch, Politics of untouchability; Cohn, Anthropologist among Historians, pp. 255–98;
Bandyopadhyay, ‘From Alienation to Integration’; Dube, Untouchable Pasts. For views on how women
in turn asserted themselves, see, Searle-Chatterjee, Reversible Sex Roles; Jogdand, ed., Dalit Women
in India; Jain, Jain and Bhatnagar, Scheduled Caste Women; Thiruchandran, Ideology, Caste, Class
and Gender; Chakravarti, Gendering Caste; Chowdhry, Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples;
Rao, ed., Gender and Caste; Rege, Writing Caste/Writing Gender.
148
Rao, The Caste Question.

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still formulaic, images also portrayed them as violent, criminal, sexually potent
and drunkards. Dalit ‘othering’ was accomplished through a repertoire of feminine
and masculine stereotypes. However, Dalits were not passive onlookers.
Dalit men themselves imaged their masculine identities implicitly in multiple
ways. From marginal social positions, the manhood of Dalits sought its own ideo-
logical equilibrium between caste oppression and masculine subjecthood. They
put forward gendered claims for dignity and social justice, while implementing
strategies to ascend the social ladder in the face of exclusion. By invoking a mascu-
line past, claiming a place in the army, arguing for more political space, through
their dress and culture, Dalit publicists and reformers sought entry, tenuous though
it may have been, into a modern urban public sphere. They deployed the means
offered by the colonial economy, for example employment, print, educational op-
portunities and religious conversions, for implicit assertions of Dalit masculinities.
Even while the crisis of Dalits was not consciously perceived or articulated in
terms of masculinity, their discourses and actions through these arenas became a
means to recuperate manhood. It became a subtle trope for coping with and over-
coming to an extent their sense of powerlessness, alienation and social impotence.
It was a performative act, a survival strategy, a form of resistance to limited struc-
tures of opportunity, and a way to argue for more rights, dignity and better employ-
ment opportunities. Human rights were expressed in the claim to manhood.
The function of masculinity however, is also to control. Even though coming
from different backgrounds and perceptions, at times Dalit men colluded with
dominant notions of masculinity and fed into binaries by acting out a received
gendered script. There were shifts in definitions of manhood—from production
to consumption, from respectability to bodily assertiveness, from manliness to
masculinity. Patriarchal practices were often enhanced by Dalits, particularly in
domestic spheres, even while control over women was also linked to arguing for
more respectability for them. Dalits also contributed to dominant visions of mas-
culinity when they sometimes emerged as actors of communal violence, even
though they did so for contested and different reasons. At the same time, Dalit
framing did produce dislocations and cracks in those very hegemonic constructions,
as they often appropriated it creatively and interpreted it on their own terms.
It is not enough to say that Dalit self-representations of masculinity in colonial
India were subversive, but to place them in the context of and in relation to repre-
sentations of masculinity by others. Dalit masculinity was not a stable category,
but responsive to its cultural, historical, social and political embeddedness. Ultim-
ately its construction was neither fully cohesive nor entirely innocent, since gender
identities were themselves not immutable, but characterized by uncertainties and
ambiguities. One hopes that Dalit men will evolve and ultimately dismantle the
very ideological fetters that fasten them to a corrosive paradigm of masculinity
and use it more as a creative tool to argue for more dignity and rights.

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