Narrating the Culture of Resistance in Harijan Community in an Urban Area of Bangladesh

Abstract

The culture of resistance refers to an act by a particular unprivileged community against the dominant practice of cultural norms in the larger society. It perpetuates the clash between dominant and alternative cultural meanings developed by mainstream society and marginalized subgroups. We aimed to narrate the culture of resistance in the Harijan community in urban Bangladesh. We adopted Observation, In-depth Interview (IDI), Key Informant Interview (KII), and General Discussion as data collection tools to obtain data from the Harijan community to narrate it. The findings revealed that Harijan people struggled to survive with ‘intra’ and ‘inter’ community competition. Moreover, they resist in everyday activities through some cultural norms and practices such as keeping silent, avoiding any untoward situation, acting differently with mainstream people, following conventional customs as well as mainstream people’s law, and making common temples for their religious occasion’s observance. Therefore, they survive in their everyday lives by adopting this simple resistance mechanism.