‘Harijan’ row reignited

A recent directive by the Haryana government asking all its departments—public and educational institutes and other institutions—to “strictly avoid" using the terms ‘Harijan’ and ‘Girijan’ in official communications to refer to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is indicative of the all-pervading nature of the caste conundrum in India even today.

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The term ‘Harijan’, or ‘children of God’, was first used by Mahatma Gandhi in 1932 to refer to Dalits. He even started three journals in English, Hindi, and Gujarati with the same name in 1933. Gandhiji used the term to avoid words like untouchable, which stigmatised the Dalit community. By using the word Harijan, he hoped Dalits would be more acceptable to Hindu society. However, many of the Mahatma’s contemporaries, including B R Ambedkar, objected to the word, terming it condescending and an attempt to avoid the real issue of caste discrimination. In fact, Ambedkar walked out of the Bombay Legislature on January 22, 1938, to protest the use of the word. In effect, the word ‘Harijan’ has been banned by the government in caste cer