You don’t need to tap on legendary Dalit writer Namdeo Dhasal’s door to know why these terms are so important sometimes, especially if you are not a high caste Hindu (or a Muslim or Christian for that matter — try getting a high caste Muslim to marry into a lower caste). The story goes that in 1977, a young woman keen on becoming a bureaucrat was spotted at a debating competition by the emerging Dalit leader Kanshi Ram. He took her under his wings and the exercise resulted in Mayawati first taking oath as India’s youngest-ever chief minister (at the age of 39) in 1995. What is interesting is that the young lady at that debate in 1977 was making a case for why “Harijan” was an entirely inappropriate word and should be dropped immediately as a reference to Scheduled Castes.

The journey from caste names referring to the life of misery they were condemned to, such as chamar and bhangi (unconstitutional) to “untouchables” (again unconstitutional) and then “Harijans” (now out of use), is in itself a story. The Mahatma’s recognition of the problem of the so-called lower castes, especially those who at one point were required to wear bells or not look at upper caste residents if caught on the same street, and his insisting that they be referred to as “God’s people” (Harijan) was a huge leap of faith. And history.

The different names reflected the changing politics and where the Scheduled Castes were located in that framework. From the lowly menial she was supposed to be, to being patronised by Gandhi as God’s own, certainly demonstrated this newfound role in the freedom movement, and as part of the emerging entity called India and, eventually, as votes went, an important force to be patronised and developed by parties led by upper caste elites. Reservations mandated by the Constitution then made sure the phrase “Scheduled Caste” or just “SC” came into being. At the time of the Mandal crisis in North India in 1990, the upper middle classes shortened it to a derogatory “sched”. Finally, in 1987, the Indian state decided that even “Harijan” was not politically correct enough.

There was a deep desire with the emergence of a nascent middle class in the community to throw off the patronage offered via “Harijan” and be called just Dalits — “depressed classes”, which is what Ambedkar used to refer to them in his work and in his capacity as chairman of the drafting committee of the Indian Constitution.

So it is not just semantics — being able to cope with calling a spade a spade, just factually describing their plight in a single word, is a signal of the times. Despite its deep divisions, Dalit politics in India today is increasingly being premised on not being just an attachment to someone else’s grand plans to make schools or a few other buildings for them, but on turning themselves collectively into a formidable force, so that others feel compelled to align with them on their terms.

Everybody wants a good caste fight today, at least in Uttar Pradesh, as this latest battle over name-calling has shown. The political parties who support the 79-year-old Jat farmer Tikait see it as a way of splintering Mayawati’s winning formula, a “realignment” that they hope would favour them. And Mayawati too is happy to use the opportunity to signal, to the north at least, that she is the single Dalit leader being targeted and that she will take them on. And she has taken them on, not through protests and slogans, but through the police and state power. The mistake that critics like Tikait make is to route (often legitimate) criticism of her politics via her identity. Whether you like it or not, because of the nature of the shared past of a Dalit, the minute you do that, you make her stronger than before.

It has been 31 years since Mayawati, in the apocryphal story, stood up in the debate and criticised the term “Harijan”. Now, Harijan has certainly morphed into the power of the majority — the Bahujan. Look through her eyes and you might see just how much there is in a name.

seema.chishti@expressindia.com