ABSTRACT
The Valmiki caste title is not a ‘Hindutva’ creation. Its adoption by Dalits in the 1930s in Punjab and Delhi was encouraged by an Arya Samaj activist who sought to dissociate the so-called caste of ‘sweepers’ from the leaders of Dalit emancipation. The Valmiki movement of Punjab was originally an attempt to redefine the community from above, which bore the seal of upper-caste patronage. Ami Chand, an Arya Samaji Brahmin who pledged to dedicate himself to the Hinduisation of Chuhras, wrote Valmik Prakash, a booklet where Valmiki is presented as the upper-caste patron of the ‘sweepers’. The way the ‘sweepers’ of Kanpur became Valmikis illustrates how Sanskritisation was and continues to be politically engineered among Dalits. Sanskritisation could nevertheless be appropriated from below and redefined in a manner that reintroduced Dalit agency and resistance. The cultural practices of the Valmikis thus reveal a very partial, incomplete and twisted process of adoption of brahminical norms and practices.
