Double dilemma of the Dalit Sikhs of Shillong
CHANDIGARH:PRECARIOUS peace, with night curfew and high alert still persisting, has been restored in Shillong, the capital of the northeastern hill state of Meghalaya, but clouds have not yet lifted from Punjabi Lane and the future of Dalit Sikhs who inhabit this ghetto in the heart of city.
Historians and sociologists are pointing to the predicament of a people who are not accepted in the fold even of Sikhism to which their forefathers turned to avoid the stigma of being outcasts. These were the Mazhabi
Sikhs of Punjab who belonged to the “lowest” rung of Dalits, the ‘untouchable’ scavengers.
“The sad saga in Shillong this month has once again brought to fore the prejudice that exists within Sikh community to Mazhabis,” says Amritsar-based Rajkumar Hans, a retired professor from MS University, Baroda, engaged in recovering Dalit Sikh histories. “Rage of Khasi tribals against Dalit Sikhs in Shillong has also shown the local elite Sikh community in poor light,” he adds.
Himadri Banerjee, former professor of history at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, was among the first to probe migration of the Dalit Sikhs of Punjab to Shillong and Guwahati. What set him on this task was surprise at seeing a Sikh sweeping a street in Shillong in 2004. Commenting in his research paper on the recent dilemma, he said: “In the early years of the present century, the majority of these Dalits are almost sandwiched between two engines of coercion: one (Soniars) seeking to stop their entry to Sri Guru Singh Sabha, while the other [Shillong municipality] threatened them with dispossession... Besides, periodic ethnic violence in the Khasi Hills and the Dalits’ lack of regular communication with their counterparts scattered in other parts of the country had made matters critical.”
In the pre-independence era, dominant Ramgarhias here denied them entry to Sri Singh Sahib Gurdwara, and the new leadership did not allow Dalits to forget their stigma carried from Punjab.
PREJUDICE PERSISTS
Asked if Dalit Sikhs are now allowed access to the gurdwara, Paramvir Sehdave, vice-president, Sri Singh Sahib Gurdwara management, says, “They come to the gurdwara and even cook langar (community meal)!” Are they given membership of the gurdwara? “It is run by members who are significant so, along with them, we cannot give membership to a mere municipality worker.” This underlines the lament of Gurmeet Singh, secretary of Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara for Dalits in Bara Bazaar: “Discrimination in the Sri Singh Sahib Gurdwara continues even though Dalits have been given entry at last.”
Birinder Pal Singh, a professor of social anthropology from Punjabi University, Patiala, says in a research paper: “Mazhabis at Shillong and Guwahati are especially targeted for eviction in the name of slum clearance and beautification of the two cities... The residents see it as a plot to evict them and render them homeless.” He further says that “80% reservations are for the tribal” and the Khasis are “now open to taking up cleaning jobs”.
Writer and art historian Belinder Dhanoa says, “As a Sikh born and brought up in Shillong, I am gutted that Sikhs still allow caste to be part of our social structures.”
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
The Dalit Sikhs are from Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts of Punjab and have married their daughters to men in Punjab villages; however, the return to Punjab is by the community is not a choice.
Birinder Pal says, “It adds to their dilemma, to be or not to be there. The senior generation wishes to return to Punjab but the younger one finds the present residence more fascinating, given their peer group and metropolitan opportunities for work. In Punjab, living at the outskirts of a village in a caste society or even in a city is more discriminating than being ghettoised in the North East”.
It is this dilemma which evokes a Dalit Sikh in
Shillong to say, “We are a tragic people: outsiders here and outsiders there”.