The Mallah and Ram Charana in the United Provinces

During the 1920s and 1930s, Ram Charana, of the Mallah caste and a resident of Lucknow, led the campaign for his caste to secure a place in the plans for constitutional and electoral reform being drawn up by the colonial authorities. His objective was to ensure the inclusion of the caste within the administrative category of the Depressed Classes and subsequently as a Scheduled Caste even though it was labelled and stigmatised as a caste defined primarily by its criminality. Ram Charana was appointed to the United Provinces Legislative Council as the sole nominee to represent the Depressed Class population, and he participated in all of the investigations of the time into constitutional reform. Although he personally achieved a leading role in the reform proceedings, he was unable to secure any recognition for the Mallah. This article examines the criminalisation of the Mallah particularly in the light of police sources not consulted previously. It describes Ram Charana’s role and analyses the reasons for his failure, despite his personal prominence and official promotion, to gain a more advantageous position for the Mallah.