Days before the thread-binding ceremony, Sarvesh Mawana, another Valmiki, was told by some priests they would take offence if he were to wear the thread. “I need to feed my family. I don’t want to be scorned and lose my job,” says Mawana.

But for Sunny Mangeram, a Valmiki who works at Delhi University, wearing Brahmin symbols is not the same as abandoning a Valmiki identity. He is proud to be a Valmiki but sees the thread as an equaliser, he says. In 1995, when he was travelling to Bulandshahr in for a wedding, his group was handed tea in porcelain cups at a dhaba. “But when we were asked our caste, and we said ‘Valmiki’, they took away the cups and gave chai in clay bowls. Now, I will walk into the campus, my shirt unbuttoned, flaunting the thread.”

BSP MP Ambeth Rajan, a Dalit, is also of the view that such ceremonies will help bring about social change and says he “welcomes” the idea of more such events.

However, Dalit leader and president of the Indian Justice Party Udit Raj says that such ceremonies are of no use. “Why should they wear a janeyu? They should be abolished. Even if they do wear the sacred thread, they will still be outcastes. The caste stigma has not left them,” he says. “This is no social revolution. If tanything, they should give up the broomstick. Valmiki was a writer. The community should hold pens.”

Patra, meanwhile, argued that the janeyu symbolised the responsibilities of a man towards his ancestors, teachers and gods and Dalits too should be able to express those values.