In search of a religion: the making of Dalit-Identity in Jammu and Kashmir, India

ABSTRACT The Dalits in Poonch, a borderland district situated along the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir, belong to the multi-religious Pahari-ethnic-group. The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 affected the community and displaced them across the cease-fire line – the boundary that bisected the erstwhile Poonch fiefdom and has since then stood as the de facto disputed border. Their displacement to the Poonch on the Indian side added another layer of marginality to an already stigmatised community (also referred to as Harijans/Bhangis) as the processes of their rehabilitation failed to rise above the narratives of exclusion and discrimination in a post-partition scenario. For the Dalits of Poonch, the journey has been different from the Dalits who have been subjected to oppression and exclusion elsewhere in India. The ethnic-Dalits in quest of ‘a religious identity’ where they can exist as an equal, have belonged within three different religious folds. Through an ethnographic inquiry, the research while exploring the lived experiences of Dalits here also looks at keeping in mind the role of partition and religion in the evolution of identities here. Besides the changing inter-community interactions between the Dalit community and dominant-caste groups in Poonch, the research analysis layers of marginality by looking at how one exists as a Dalit, living between and with multiple identities: religious identities, the larger Pahari-ethnic-identity, both of them at crossroads with the identity of being a borderlander, dwelling in a zone of conflict and dispute.