Dalit oppression in Punjab: The caste cauldron

On October 15, a horri­fic scene played out on nati­onal television, of a bleeding Lakhbir Singh, a 35-year-old Dalit Sikh farm labourer from Punjab’s Tarn Taran district, who had been tortured and killed at the Singhu border, the epicentre of the ongoing protests against the new farm laws brought by the Centre. The farmer unions quickly distanced themselves from the incident, and the next day the Haryana police arrested four Nihangs, members of a militant Sikh order known for their blue robes, swords and violent antecedents. The Nihangs—Sarabjit, Narain Singh, Bhagwant Singh and Govind Preet—claimed they had “punished” Lakhbir for “desecrating a Sikh holy book”.

As disturbing as the incident was, even more so was the deafening silence of the political establishment in Punjab. The silence was made even more stark by the fact that the new chief minister is a Dalit Sikh. Charanjit Singh Channi, Punjab’s first Dalit Sikh chief minister, maintained a studied silence on the issue. Sukhbir Badal, chief of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), who the mainly rural Dalit Mazhabi Sikhs consider their benefactor, also kept mum. Tied as the incident was to the sacrilege issue, no politician in Punjab wanted to face the wrath of the Sikh clergy and upper caste Sikhs.

The violent oppression of Dalits in Punjab is not a new story. Nor are religious pretexts uncommon to justify the oppression, but the dynamic plays out mostly away from the media glare. The last time such a story hit the national headlines was in October 2019, when a Jagmale Singh from Sangrur district was tied to a tree and tortured to death. Jagmale had committed the mortal sin of picking up a fight with a Jat Sikh.

The run-ins between the Mazhabi Dalit Sikhs and their upper caste Jat counterparts started getting more frequent after the 2015 Granth Sahib sacrilege incident that produced a simmering undercurrent of rage among devout Sikhs. The Sikh clergy believe that followers of Gurmeet Ram Rahim’s Dera Sacha Sauda were behind the incident. The deras, and to some extent Christian churches, have been a place of refuge for the Dalits—largely Mazhabis—in Punjab, and many of them have gravitated to the Sacha Sauda Dera. The deras have also given the Dalits the confidence to organise and start movements to claim their rights, including on land. This has not gone down well with the upper caste Sikhs because it challenges their domination—of both landholdings and religion. “What appears to be religious clashes often turn into clashes against Dal­its,” says Ravinder Kaur Dhaliwal, who teaches at Panjab University, adding that the Dalits end up on the “losing side” as they lack resources and political muscle.

The new Christians

On October 16, the National Comm­ission for Minorities chairman Iqbal Singh Lalpura wrote to Punjab chief secretary Anirudh Tiwari after getting a complaint from the Akal Takht jathedar asking him to investigate the funding of evangelical groups indulging in “illicit conversions to Christianity” Lalpura said that he has received “thousands of complaints” that foreign funds were being used to lure Dalits, especially Mazhabis.

The issue has blown up at a time when the Shiromani Gurdwara Parba­ndhak Committee (SGPC) is running a ‘Ghar ghar andar dharamsaal (a sacred shrine in every home)’ drive on October 10 to counter the alleged conversions of Sikhs to Christianity in Punjab. “These conversions are happ­ening because the have nots have not got justice (access to education, health and equal rights in the Sikh religion),” says Ranjit Singh, former Akal Takht jathedar.

The rise of a challenger

Since 2009, the Zameen Prapti Sangh­arsh Committee (ZPSC) or ‘land rights struggle committee’, an informal left-wing organisation, has been mobilising Dalits youth through village-level committees in the Malwa region. The ZPSC encourages collective bidding and cultivation on the ‘reserved’ common lands by all Dalits in a village. This puts them in direct confrontation with Jat Sikhs. Since 1961, the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act has been in place, reserving 33 per cent of common farm land in a village for SCs, who get an annual lease through bidding. But Dhaliwal says the Jat Sikh farmers corner the land by putting up proxy Dalit candidates. “The Dalits are not up to challenging the status quo,” she says; the Mazhabis end up as farm labour.

There’s also the threat of violent retribution. On October 5, 2016, a group of big farmers and their supporters brutally attacked the Mazhabis who were seeking land to till from village Jhaloor’s surplus land; 72-year-old Gurdev Kaur was killed and several others were grievously injured. But despite this, with the help of left-leaning outfits, the community got tilling rights there.

According to the 2015 agriculture cen­sus, Jat Sikhs, who make up 18 per cent of the population, control 93 per cent of private land holdings in Punjab; the Dalits (32 per cent) own just 3.5 per cent. Among them, the Mazhabis own less than 0.1 per cent (nat­ional average is 8.6 per cent of farm land for the 16.6 per cent Dalit population).

Amid the ongoing farm protests, Jat Sikh-dominated panchayats across Punjab began using punitive resolutions to control the wages and freedom of Mazhabi Sikh labourers. As per the resolutions, farm labour will be paid Rs 2,500-3,200 per acre for sowing paddy. And the labourers have been barred from moving out of the village for work. This is when migrant labour commands Rs 4,500 or more for the same job.

With Channi as chief minister, exp­­ectations are high that he will resolve the rural Dalit community’s issues inc­luding implementation of land reforms, enforcing the 85th constitutional ame­n­dment on reservations in governm­ent job promotions, allowing quotas within quotas for Dalits and improving their access to healthcare and education. But in his first month in office, Channi has been kept busy by the warring Pradesh Congress Committee chief Navjot Sidhu.

When size doesn’t matter

As per the 2011 Census, Dalits are the largest community in Punjab, with a majority belonging to Lakhbir’s Mazhabi Sikh/ Valmiki community (35 per cent). But the Mazhabis are neither politically organised nor do they have an effective leadership in the state. Channi belongs to the Ramdasi Sikh/Ravidasi group, the second largest Dalit community (30.4 per cent). They are much more developed, cornering most of the benefits of reservations in educational institutions, jobs and political office. Of the four Dalit MPs from Punjab, three are Ravidasi/ Ramdasi; there are none from among the Mazhabis.

In terms of social status, the Mazhabis are at the bottom. They were primarily scavengers before their conversion to Sikhism. In fact, many of the Nihangs in Punjab also come from the Mazhabi Sikh community (including three of the accused in the Lakhbir murder). The Mazhabis have been devout Sikhs for ages, and are often remembered for their valour in retrieving the severed head of the ninth Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur, who was beheaded in Delhi by Aurangazeb.

In large parts of the Majha and Doaba regions, the Mazhabis have had to leave the villages with migrant labour taking their jobs. The Mazhabis migrate to the towns and cities where they largely end up in menial jobs as safai karamcharis, lab attendants or freelance labourers. Very few of them get into government jobs. “The challenge is to organise the com­m­u­nity…but poverty and lack of resources hold them back, it’s a battle for survival,” says Capt. Amandeep Bhatti of the Garib Kalyan Morcha, a Mazhabi Sikh front.

Meanwhile, Punjab’s political parties stay silent as the caste struggle continues, each wondering how to convert it into electoral dividend in next year’s election. The wait for political empowerment continues for the Mazhabi Sikhs.

This story first appeared on indiatoday.in