The use of the word chamar in a judgment by the Supreme Court while referring to the rights of the oppressed has triggered a controversy and surprised many. The word,referring to the most populous Scheduled Caste category in northern India,that works with leather or chamra,is banned from public discourse and decreed unparliamentary and unconstitutional. The Supreme Court used the word in the Delhi Jal Board versus National Campaign for Dignity and Rights of Sewerage and Allied Workers & Others case. US-based Ramnarayan Rawats Ph D on the social history of Dalits in UP could not be registered in Delhi University for a year because of the word chamar in its title. It was only this year that his research,entitled Reconsidering Untouchability; Chamars and Dalit History in Northern India, was published. Earlier,the chairman of the Board of Research Committee at the university had told him that legal opinion said researchers could not use the word. Rawats supervisor persisted and collected published books in state libraries with titles having caste names like bhangi and ahir in them as evidence to finally force them to change their mind. Hesitant to come on record in a matter over which passions routinely run high,several Dalit politicians fear that with the Supreme Court having used the word,it would become the standard now. They point out that the word is used as a jati-soochak or caste marker for a set of people who have suffered unimaginable indignities over thousands of years. A BSP leader said he was surprised that the Supreme Court had used it. While careful not to tread on the Supreme Courts toes,Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan pointed out that chamar,chura,even Harijan are not used any more,and are unparliamentary. At the other end of the spectrum,some Dalit writers say that for them,it is the context that is all important. Says Chandra Bhan Prasad: It is a bit like the Blacks in the US. Our feeling that untouchables,chamars and then Harijans should be banned is (same as them) dropping the word nigger,then Black,then Afro-American to finally return proudly to Black-American. Once a certain degree of confidence and prosperity is there,you go back to your earlier markers and rewrite them in your own way. The how,when and who using chamar is important. If Dalits call themselves that,it is okay,but not if others do it,often derogatorily. Some Hindi Dalit writers are even adding Chamar to their surnames now. Dr S S Jodhka at the Institute of Dalit Studies feels it is a political issue. I use it as I have to study these categories; I cannot not use them. But these people have a right to their dignity and to decide where and how it is to be used,if at all. But while caste identities are immutable even across religions,perceptions of the people themselves change. Valmikis,for example,prefer to get certificates referring to them as churas in some cases. Incidentally,Indias most high-profile Dalit leader,Mayawati,was first noticed by her mentor Kanshi Ram as she made an impressive intervention in the Constitution Club as to why the term Harijan,given by Mahatma Gandhi to Dalits, should be dropped as it was patronising. Author and former governor of West Bengal Gopalkrishna Gandhi,who has written on issues of identity and oppression of various kinds,feels all marginalised or oppressed communities have what may be called the right to be sensitive. A Dalit writer using a certain term in self-description (even in mock criticism) is one thing,a non-Dalit using that is another. Also the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi,Gopalkrishna says he often hears Dalit writers talking about the difference between Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar,and consequently the terminology they used to refer to Dalits. Gandhi may have adopted the Harijan cause,Babasaheb was born into it. And while Gandhiji may have been made an outcast,Babasaheb was one. Giving his own example,Gandhi talks of a novel he wrote in English on Sri Lankan tea plantation workers of Indian Tamil origin,called Saranam,in the 1980s. It referred to workers in their (mostly) low-caste names,like parayar and chakkiliyar. Recently,when the book was reissued as Refuge,he removed the caste names almost completely from the text. I felt that if old prejudices and attitudes had gone,new sensitivities and susceptibilities had come in, he said.
