A Short History of Dalit Religious Conversions in Colonial Uttar Pradesh

At no stage did the Empire challenge caste in the way the Mission did (Copley Reference Copley1997, 6). While there had been earlier conversions by the outcastes, for example to Buddhism in ancient India, the arrival of the British and the impetus it gave to Christian missionary activities proved to be one of the biggest influences in altering their position. The Christian community in India was drawn largely from converts of the depressed classes (Webster Reference Webster1994, 36). There were some Dalit conversions to Christianity in Uttar Pradesh (Alter Reference Alter1986; Sharma Reference Sharma1988), though not as many as in several other parts of colonial India. However, there was a huge discourse, debate, and representation of the issue in popular literature, newspapers, reformist tracts, caste pamphlets, cartoons, and missionary propaganda. The Protestant missionaries particularly adopted a variety of techniques for propagation among the Dalits, including bazaar preaching, itinerating through villages, conducting open services in public places, attending religious festivals and fairs, visiting homes, and distributing scripture portions and tracts, mostly in local vernacular languages (Church Missionary Society 1926; Webster Reference Webster1994, 36).

The North Indian Christian Tract and Book Society, run by the Church Mission of England and headquartered at Allahabad, widely disseminated vernacular tracts among the outcastes, including painted story scrolls, books, and a multitude of songs and hymns (Clayton Reference Clayton1911; Lucas, n.d., 3; Sharma Reference Sharma1988, 92). Its annual publication and circulation of Christian books reached a staggering height of 908,000 volumes in 1914. A Conference on Urdu and Hindi Christian Literature held at Allahabad resolved that particular efforts would be made through such literature to influence the lower castes and servants (Christian Vernacular Education Society 1875, 4, 15). Every month, between 8,000 and 40,000 copies of Hindi tracts were sent out for free distribution. Many of them were thin pamphlets of four to six pages (Lucas, n.d., 41, 53). Tracts like Hindu dharm ke phal (Fruits of Hinduism, 1905), Jati ki chut chat (Unreasonableness of caste, 1905, 1–10), Hinduon ki nirdhanta (Causes of Hindu poverty, 1909, 7–17), and Jati panti ka varnan (Explanation of caste, 1924, 11) launched a stringent attack on Hinduism, particularly on the treatment meted out to the outcastes. Conversion to Christianity was depicted as the biggest boon, which gave the depressed classes dignity, education, and clean clothes (Devi, devta aur murti puja [Goddesses, gods and idol worship] 1923, 24; Jati pariksha [Test of caste] 1906, 13). At the same time, their language was guided by a sense of racial and religious superiority, cloaked in a patronizing tone of bringing culture and civilization to the outcastes. For example, a Hindi mission tract stated:

Besides Christianity, Islam too carried its teachings amongst the Dalits (Mujahid Reference Mujahid1989; Sikand Reference Sikand2004). Many of the lower castes actively engaged with and creatively reinterpreted Islamic traditions into their lives and cultures during the medieval period (Eaton Reference Eaton1993, 113–34). It was stated by colonial officials that a considerable proportion of the cobbler caste of Uttar Pradesh had become Muhammadan (Nesfield Reference Nesfield1882, 22), and that many Muslim leather workers in the towns were Hindu Chamar converts (Walton Reference Walton1903, 12). Muslim organizations continued to actively seek converts in colonial Uttar Pradesh from among the outcastes. In Saharanpur, Moradabad, Bijnor, Bulandshahr, and Dehradun, they mobilized resources to preach Islam in villages with only untouchables (Police Abstracts of Intelligence of UP Government [henceforth PAI], April 14, 1923, 241; May 19, 1928, 189). As an example, in 1925 a Muslim zamindar (landlord) of Etah stated that if the outcastes converted to Islam, he would give them 500 bighas (3,025 square yards) of land and also have roti-beti (food and marriage) ties with them (Abhyudaya 1925b).

Such campaigns and some actual conversions by Dalits created apprehension among the high-caste Hindus, the Arya Samaj, and the Hindu Mahasabha. While reformist endeavors were guided by other concerns as well, it was conversions that forced many of these organizations to seriously work among the outcastes. Arya Samaj effectively utilized the print public sphere to constantly lament their perceived conversions. This was tied to a number-crunching politics, where a picture of terrible calamity was built of rapidly declining Hindu numbers due to Dalit conversions (Chandrikaprasad 1917, 14; Dwivedi Reference Dwivedi1924, 1, 26, 35; Parmanand Reference Parmanand1928, 90; see also Abhyudaya 1925a; Chand 1929a; Sudha 1929). It was stated that every week 2,000 untouchable Hindus converted to Christianity, which meant 104,000 converts in one year. It was also believed that 200,000 untouchables became Muslims every year (Jha Reference Jha1925, 4). Massive attempts were made to win them over by attending their feasts and marriages, allowing them to draw water from wells (Sanyasi Reference Sanyasi1919, 65; see also Chand 1927b; PAI, July 1, 1922, 1087; April 7, 1923, 226; April 21, 1923, 265, 266; May 26, 1923, 309; June 9, 1923, 332; June 30, 1923, 367; February 23, 1924, 75; March 29, 1924, 118; February 13, 1926, 84; June 5, 1926, 308; June 19, 1926, 327; March 12, 1927, 92; March 31, 1928, 124; May 26, 1928, 193), reconverting them through shuddhi (a purification ceremony) (Census 1933, 501–2; Freitag Reference Freitag1989, 230–41; Ghai Reference Ghai1990; Gooptu Reference Gooptu2001, 144–57; Jordens Reference Jordens1981, 142–51; Pandey Reference Pandey1978, 115–17; see also National Archives of India 1925), and showing the relative equality that had been achieved (see figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1.

People from various castes bathing together. (Lion and Lamb on the Same River Bank: See at the pilgrimage site of Triveni at Prayag: The touchable and the untouchable take bath together.) Source: Kedia (Reference Kedia1933, 34).

Figure 2.

Brahmin and Dalit drinking from the same fountain. (Thirst for Water: The train has two minutes left to leave. The Brahmin and the untouchable drink water from the same tap.) Source: Kedia (Reference Kedia1933, 34).

Many leading Hindi newspapers and magazines gave their unequivocal support to these efforts (see, e.g., Abhyudaya 1926a; Chand 1927c). Simultaneously, a vast amount of literature, including pamphlets, poems, posters, and cartoons, was published to counter conversion attempts by missionaries and Muslims (Banprasthi Reference Banprasthi1927; Jha Reference Jha1925, 5–15; Sanyasi Reference Sanyasi1919; Sharda Reference Sharda1925, 6-9; Shukla Reference Shukla1934; Upadhyaya Reference Upadhyaya1925). The supposedly mythical benefits that the outcastes got due to conversions were ridiculed (Banprasthi Reference Banprasthi1927, cover):

Implicit in such literature was upper-caste prejudice, as reflected in the above quotes. Moreover, severe tensions on the ground remained. The attempts at keeping the boundaries of Hinduism intact by stopping conversions while simultaneously increasing reconversions could not be easily reconciled with maintaining a difference within the Hindu community (PAI, March 18, 1922, 350; March 25, 1922, 597; March 10, 1923, 155; April 5, 1924, 126).

Amidst such campaigns by missionaries on the one hand, and Hindu reformers on the other, Dalits often used conversions as a heuristic device, which signaled some dignity, education, clothing, employment, political representation, and “manhood” (Gupta Reference Gupta2010; Rawat Reference Rawat2012). Many sweepers, Lal Begis, Chandals, Doms, and Chamars of Badaun, Mathura, Meerut, Roorkee, Etah, Cawnpore, Moradabad, Pillibhit, Bijnor, and Bareilly converted to Christianity (Allison Reference Allison1969, 116–27; Census 1933, 500; Church Missionary Society 1926; Phillips Reference Phillips1912, 34; Sanyasi Reference Sanyasi1919, 42; Sharma Reference Sharma1988, v). Most often, these followed along family and jati lines (Mohinder Singh Reference Singh1947, 178). Many converted sweepers and Chamars refused to do begar (unpaid labor) in the households and fields of zamindars (Nevill Reference Nevill1904, 81). Alongside, Dalits often used to their advantage the alarm felt by reformers regarding their conversions to demand more rights for themselves, and as a way of questioning the stigma of “untouchability” (Rawat Reference Rawat2012).

Against this background, I attempt to read representations of Dalit women's conversions through a gendered lens. First, I underscore conversions to Christianity and its sartorial portrayals, mainly through popular cartoons published in reformist literature. Second, I highlight some police reports to mark individual conversions to Islam, and the fears around them.

Conversions, Christianity, Clothes, and Cartoons

Religious conversions of women were a difficult enterprise for the Christian missionaries. Work among the zenana (women's quarters) in upper-caste households had resulted in the spread of some education, but was a dismal failure in terms of religious conversions (Forbes Reference Forbes1986; Lloyd Reference Lloyd1882; Pitman Reference Pitman1906). In comparison, they were more successful amidst outcaste women (Morris Reference Morris1917, 2, 9). Some missionary women particularly became active in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh in the early twentieth century, entrusted with the task of converting, teaching, visiting homes, and organizing meetings of outcaste women (Survey of Evangelistic Work 1929, 80). The Church Missionary Society was very effective in the Meerut district, with about eighteen to twenty teachers and Bible women working in the mission area (Alter Reference Alter1986, 74; Pemberton and Perfumi Reference Pemberton and Perfumi1915, 47–48). Certain missionary publications were specifically aimed at preaching to the outcaste women (Lucas, n.d., 93; Charitra sudhar [Character improvement] 1910; Lara lari [Story of quarrelsome women] Reference Johnson1905; Ratnmala [Garland of pearls] 1869). These included inspiring stories of their conversions, and the dramatic and “positive” changes conversion brought about (Campbell Reference Campbell1918; Chandra Lila sadhuni ka vritant [Biographical account of Chandra Lila, a lower-caste female convert] 1910; Mem sahiba aur ayah ki katha [The story of the lady and the ayah] Reference Johnson1896). Orphanages and day and boarding mission schools, even though few and far between, were established; they were perceived as removing the outcaste women from a “useless” and “dirty” heathen environment. The Jeyi school in Meerut took a pride of place here (Church Missionary Society 1926, 2–3, 8–10; Stewart Reference Stewart1928).

As has been emphasized by historians of gender, conversions to Christianity had contradictory implications for women (Bauman Reference Bauman2008; Haggis Reference Haggis2000; Kent Reference Kent2004). On the one hand, they identify the work done by missionary women amidst their non-Christian “sisters” in the colonial empires as a “mission of domesticity,” which schooled them in marriage, education, household work, child care, cleanliness, and a particular outlook. On the other, they also stress that it was not a straightforward way of making women good, “clean” Christian wives and mothers. In Uttar Pradesh too, these ambiguities were visible. In spite of various limits, at times the conditions of Dalit women improved in comparison to the drudgery in which they were living before. Most converted women refused to do unpaid midwife's work or begar. Education, even if limited to sewing, hygiene, and Bible training, was seen as more appropriate than manual work or unpaid public labor (Philip Reference Philip1925, 34–35; Speer and Hallock Reference Speer and Hallock1939, 81). Mrs. Mohini Das, a Dalit Christian convert, speaking at the All India Depressed Classes Association meeting in Lucknow held on May 22–24, 1936, gave a speech titled “What Womanhood Owes to Christ,” where she argued that Christianity opened a new door of opportunity for depressed-class women: “Wherever His [Jesus's] teachings took root the condition of women began to alter. She became not just a glorified courtesan and housekeeper, but a homemaker, a companion to her husband and a fit mother for bringing up his children” (quoted in Webster Reference Webster1994, 222). Miss A. M. Stewart, an active missionary in the Jeyi school, stated: “Girls who have passed out of Jeyi School will make a lasting difference in the village communities amongst whom they live, by their lives and examples” (Stewart Reference Stewart1928, 277). Some became Bible women. Though there was a severe shortage of funds and their position remained decidedly low in the hierarchy of the missions, Miss P. Emery had this to say on a depressed-class Bible woman in Uttar Pradesh (Emery Reference Emery1928, 15–16):

Another missionary remarked on how a Christian woman sweeper working in the palace of a local rajah (king) sold ten gospels to the rajah's women folk (Heinrich Reference Heinrich1928, 94).

While the missionaries wished to restructure every aspect of converted Dalit women's daily lives, including their physical appearance, sartorial styles, marital relations, customs, and language, and the people with whom they interacted, many of the religious and social practices of these women reflected highly eclectic borrowing and adaptation (Kent Reference Kent2004). Even through processes of mimicry, they often selectively appropriated, reconstituted, and at times subverted some of the ideals of upper-caste and missionary life, and imbued it with their own sensibilities and practices. Rev. J. C. Harrison wrote: “As yet none of our Christians have broken away from their heathen customs. . . . The household gods are still worshipped by the women. The Hindu festivals are kept, charms are retained, fakirs are consulted – the Sabbath is not kept, marriages are conducted according to heathen rites” (quoted in Alter Reference Alter1986).

Conversion to Christianity had particular implications for Dalit women's clothing, as it brought to the fore questions of the body per se vis-à-vis caste. Clothes veil the body. They encode a game of modesty and sexual explicitness, of a denial and celebration of pleasure. They are a form of social control, a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion, mirroring social hierarchies and moral boundaries. They serve as a discursive daily practice of gender, simultaneously communicating and constituting gender, caste, and religious and national identities (Barnes and Eicher Reference Barnes and Eicher1992; Gaines and Herzog Reference Gaines and Herzog1990; Ross Reference Ross2008, 83–102). Clothing played an active role in the construction of families, castes, classes, regions, and the nation in colonial India (C. Bayly Reference Bayly and Appadurai1986; Cohn Reference Cohn, Weiner and Schneider1989, 106–62, 312–13; Tarlo Reference Tarlo1996, 23–127). Cloth was inscribed with new meanings by nationalists, particularly Gandhi, and became a key visual symbol of the freedom struggle against the British rule (Bean Reference Bean, Weiner and Schneider1989; Ramagundam Reference Ramagundam2008; Trivedi Reference Trivedi2007). However, as Tarlo (Reference Tarlo1996) argues, there were no singular and stable meanings to clothing choices in colonial India. Feminist historians posit that attempts at re-dressing women had a distinct relationship to the idealized upper-caste, middle-class wife and mother, to a sartorial morality, and to a denigration of sexuality (Bannerji Reference Bannerji2001, 99–134; Gupta Reference Gupta2001; Sangari Reference Sangari2001, 344–49).

Clothing hierarchically distinguished women from one another. Dalit women had to endure humiliating dress restrictions, which were also ways to mark their bodies as inferior and sexually promiscuous. Her sexuality was there to be seen and consumed, as her private being was made public through her dress. For example, as elsewhere, among the sweepers of Lucknow, women could not wear a bodice, gold ornaments, or a nose ring (Crooke [1896] Reference Crooke1974, 290). Conversion to Christianity was a declaration of an altered relationship with the world through a transformed disposition of caste-marked bodies. Christian missions in South India encouraged low-caste Shanar women converts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to cover their breasts in public places, which was associated with only upper-caste women (Gladstone Reference Gladstone1984; Hardgrave Reference Hardgrave1968; Kent Reference Kent2004). Such cross-dressing not only was an appropriation of upper-caste dress signifiers that were forbidden to low-caste bodies, but also represented as re-signifying the gendered habitus, and improved the social standing of lower castes.

Clothing became an indicator to distinguish Dalit Christian women from their unconverted counterparts, and a way to garner dignity. Notions of care and presentation of the body were key components informing the conversion mission. Sewing thus was particularly important, as missionaries were keen to see the “seminude” outcaste women clad in “decent” clothes, fit for clean Christian souls. Pictures appeared in popular literature portraying on the one hand a naked, “dirty,” and unkempt outcaste woman and on the other a fully clothed, sari-clad, “clean,” and smiling Christian Dalit woman (see figure 3). John Munro, acting as Dewan to Rani Lakshmibai, issued a proclamation way back in 1812, guaranteeing Indian Christian women the right to cover their breasts (Kooiman Reference Kooiman1989, 149). Changes in clothing through conversions became for a section of Dalits a symbolic act and a material marker to transcend systems of inequality, signal upward mobility, write themselves into colonial modernity (Menon Reference Menon2006), acquire respect in the public sphere, fabricate their identities, and put the ignominy of their past status behind them.Footnote ²

Figure 3.

Clothing, Christianity, and a Dalit family. (On the left is a Hindu family in the state of untouchability! On the right is a complete change on becoming a Christian – from animal to human!!) Source: Chand (1929a, 450).

Reformist iconography, particularly cartoons, also recognized dress as a terrain for contesting social relations and articulating new religious identities. R. K. Laxman, the celebrated cartoonist of India, testifies that a cartoonist attempts to convey the ironies of everyday life through disapproval and complaint (Laxman Reference Laxman1989; Reference Laxman1990, iv; Sahay Reference Sahay1998). In colonial Uttar Pradesh, Avadh panch was the first Indian newspaper to publish cartoons (Hasan Reference Hasan2007, 9; Oesterheld and Zoller Reference Oesterheld and Zoller1999). Cartoons could make a great impression on a functionally literate population. Soon, many other reformist publications, including those in Hindi, were using them to advocate social reforms, with a central focus on women.

In the early twentieth century, cartoons depicting the crisis of conversions through clothing entered the Hindi print-public sphere in Uttar Pradesh, putting on display the perceived insecurities and sexual unease of caste and reformist Hindus. Cartoons published in Chand (Moon, 1922–1940s) and Arya Samaj publications, and many of them compiled in Vyanga chitravali [Collection of cartoons and caricatures] (1930), usually depicted two outcaste women or men together, of which one had converted to Christianity.Footnote ³ Even while lamenting conversions, they could not help but acknowledge the change in demeanor and stature that it brought about in Dalits—in their mode of dressing, walking style, gait, and prestige. One cartoon, for example, visualized the converted outcaste woman walking ahead royally, carrying an umbrella and a purse and wearing a hat, skirt, and high-heeled shoes, reflecting an elevated status. The unconverted woman walked behind, head bent, barefoot, carrying the child of the converted Dalit woman (see figure 4). Another had the Christian Dalit woman carefully sitting on a chair, looking down while the untouchable took care of her dog, looking up (see figure 5). Yet another lamented the loss, showing the converted woman again with shoes, a hat, and an umbrella (see figure 6).

Figure 4.

Converted and unconverted Dalit women. (See the difference between two women of the same species: One is an English madam and the other a servant-untouchable. The former walks ahead with an umbrella, while the latter walks behind with her child.) Source: Vyanga chitravali (1930).

Figure 5.

Converted Dalit mistress and unconverted Dalit servant. (The Christian woman is the master of the dog, while the outcaste woman her servant. But they both were of the same caste, Hindus please see carefully.) Source: Vyanga chitravali (1930).

Figure 6.

Converted Dalit woman and unconverted Dalit fish seller. (One has become a madam-lady, the other a fish seller. Blessed be the religion of Christ, which is all powerful.) Source: Chand (1929b).

Such cartoons can function as constitutive archives. These banal, ordinary, everyday, popular communications are pivotal documents in conceiving the anxieties of Hindu reformers, while also offering a counter-politics of sartorial desire. These representations encompassed the everyday life of Dalits, at home and on the streets. The rhetoric of such repeated caricaturing was meant to manufacture Hindu public opinion against conversions, and warn the caste Hindus not to treat Dalits badly. Such cartoons did not encompass the “truths” of conversion and its relationship to the sartorial styles of Dalit women, as very few dressed in the ways illustrated here. In fact, the dress for Dalit Christian women in missionary schools was very modest, with a sari and a blouse. However, their very portrayal in particular ways in these cartoons reflected the traumatized identities of caste Hindus, and their powerful language made explicit the upper-caste perceptions of Dalit women's desires.

For Dalits, clothing representations became a symbol of dignity. It has been proposed that Dalit culture in general does not place any value on an indigenist notion of “authenticity,” including in clothing (Ilaiah Reference Ilaiah2003).Footnote ⁴ Discarding the demeaning dress became a code for radical dissent against caste discipline, marking the right to inhabit unmarked bodies (Pandey Reference Pandey2006, 1785–86). For women from stigmatized communities, sartorial changes, even if sometimes mythical, symbolically associated women's clothing with community dignity. Dalits emphasized the right to ceremonial displays, vigorously policed by upper castes. Good clothing, footwear, and bodily comportment—standing erect while speaking, refusing to contort the body in a submissive fashion—were critical to Dalit self-fashioning. Though discourses of sexuality and of female enfranchisement were caste-specific, the focus on the feminized body—how it was experienced and represented—was central to a range of political processes. Clothing representations that conversion to Christianity provided Dalits not only questioned upper-caste religious and symbolic monopolies in intimate spheres, by arguing for the right to wear footwear, wear the breast-cloth, or carry umbrellas in the presence of persons of high ritual status, it also treated them as matters of collective and direct public action, making them politically radical issues (Rao Reference Rao2009). At the same time, the converted Dalit figure was an internal embarrassment, an “inappropriate other,” whose sartorial style defied nationalist logic. These women literally wore their difference on their bodies, signifying an uncomfortable anomaly in the reformist-nationalist discourse.

Romantic Desires and Conversions to Islam

Sartorial representations due to mass conversions to Christianity by Dalits, while giving some room for change, embedded women's desires within community boundaries, sometimes even upholding conservative gender constructs. There were differing perceptions of conversions accorded to collective social groups and to individual Dalit women. This has led some scholars to argue that the political-public Dalit sphere in colonial India was rendered male (Rao Reference Rao2009). I do not wish to overemphasize an “individual versus collective” binary, as these were complex and intertwined issues. At the same time, Dalit men were anxious about individual conversions by Dalit women, particularly to Islam. These were seen as bringing “shame,” since Dalit women were perceived as part of a network of relationships within a community. Dalit men found it difficult to envisage a world of conversions in which Dalit women made personal choices. Such conversions caused disquiet, both among reformers on the one hand and Dalit men on the other. There appeared to be a political and social consensus between them against the desire of Dalit women to convert as individuals, sans familial and community approval.

By focusing on personal Dalit women's conversions, I wish to also historicize love and romance, which are mutable concepts (Collin Reference Collin2003; Langhamer Reference Langhamer2007), whose meanings are contingent on gender, caste, and religious identities. Scholars have emphasized shifting meanings of romantic love in colonial India (Orsini Reference Orsini and Orsini2007, 30–34). Tapan Raychaudhuri (Reference Raychaudhuri2000) shows how developments in modern print-public culture profoundly altered intimate concerns. Though reformers treated romantic love as an irrelevant joke, a flourishing popular romantic literature in the period brought new intensity in conjugal relationships, with little precedent in the premodern past. These authoritative archives of intimate histories highlighted the snug connection between marriage, sex, and romantic love (see figure 7).

Figure 7.

Cover of a book. (Only for Married Women and Men: Secret of Love and Sex between the Married Couple by Yashoda Devi. Allahabad, Reference Devi1933.)

However, while the literary turn of both Indian feminist studies and postcolonial theory has provided scholars with sophisticated insights into love, desire, and other forms of subjectivities of middle-class women, the same cannot be said about Dalit women. Here I explore how in this climate Dalit women negotiated intimacies beyond its moral and social parameters. The writings from this period provide a window onto both sociological realities and their constitution and mobilization for particular political ends, with an inherent politics of exclusion and engagement, reflecting shifting registers of unspoken ambivalences.

I am here also implicitly concerned with everyday violence. The intertwining of gender, religious identities, and violence has been richly explored by feminist historians in India. While offering deep insights, their works have usually been embedded in cataclysmic events. Scholars have highlighted the inchoate ways of everyday life (de Certeau Reference de Certeau and Rendall1984, xi–xxiv). Histories of interreligious intimacies reflect a mundane texture, where women were ubiquitous, where varied meanings were imparted to sexual affiliations. Even while within hetero-normative paradigms, Dalit female desire produced daily policing and everyday violence, along what Foucault calls the alliance model of sexuality, where—through arrangement of marriages—relations and boundaries of caste and religion were policed.Footnote ⁵

Ambedkar linked maintenance of endogamy with strengthening of caste, arguing that inter-caste marriage was the most important way of annihilating caste, since it alone acknowledged a relationship between the maintenance of caste purity and the control of women's sexuality (Rao Reference Rao2009). In Uttar Pradesh, Swami Achhutanand, the leader of the Adi Hindu movement, exhorted Dalits to abolish sub-casteism by inter-sub-caste marriages, and proposed that Muslims and Christians also could help in this enterprise (Jigyasu Reference Jigyasu1960; Kshirsagar Reference Kshirsagar1994, 345). Yet, as Prem Chowdhry (Reference Chowdhry2007) shows, inter-caste marriages took on new contours in the colonial period and became more contentious. Caste endogamy increasingly came to be observed, and often became legally enforceable even for “untouchable” caste groups who had significantly different norms. Moreover, as Anupama Rao (Reference Rao2009) argues, though caste radicals were preoccupied with challenging caste ideology by rethinking love and marriage, they were by no means immune to the extension of novel patriarchal practices into their own households. Caste and gender inequalities reinforced each other, as regulation of women's movement and sexual disciplining emerged as powerful means for consolidation of caste and community exclusivities (Gupta Reference Gupta2001). Even intermediate and lower castes started imposing restrictions on women in intimate spaces, paradoxically seeing this as a way to claim masculinity, strengthen claims for upward mobility, assert patriarchal control, and restore dignity to their women (Bandyopadhyay Reference Bandyopadhyay2004; Saurabh Dube Reference Dube1998; Gupta Reference Gupta2010; Lynch Reference Lynch1969, 174–81). For example, Chamars of Moradabad, Dehra Dun, Meerut, and Saharanpur announced that they would allow their women less liberty of movement and forbade them to visit bazaars (Briggs Reference Briggs1920, 47; PAI, April 1, 1922, 642; May 13, 1922, 845; September 30, 1922, 1466; November 4, 1922, 1577; Raghuvanshi Reference Raghuvanshi1916). Similar resolutions were adopted by Bhangis, Khatiks, and Pasis (Blunt Reference Blunt1931, 241; PAI, March 24, 1923, 186; September 29, 1923, 503). Hindu publicists also attempted to “improve” popular practices of lower-caste women, ostensibly to cleanse them of their perceived lax moral standards. This involved not only challenging existing customs associated with low-grade practices, but also shaping new ones in keeping with high tradition (S. Bayly Reference Bayly1999, 159–60; Chowdhry Reference Chowdhry2007). Endeavors to refigure Dalit women's subjectivities created fresh norms of conjugal relations, embedded in endogamy and containment of sexuality. Fears were also expressed of illicit collusions and pleasures between upper-caste women and lower-caste men (see figure 8).

Figure 8.

Upper-caste woman and lower-caste male servant. (Tending the Feet: Prosperous Woman: When you rub my feet with your hands, I am deeply contented. Servant: I know your pulse. Body Paste: Prosperous Woman: Rub a little more. . . . Servant: I might sprain you. . . .) Source: Vyanga chitravali (1930).

However, while inter-caste alliances were deeply opposed by caste Hindus, the thought of women, even if from lower castes, eloping with or marrying Muslim or Christian men and then converting to Islam or Christianity proved to be more disturbing. Thus even while rejecting inter-caste intimacies, in certain circumstances, lower- and upper-caste Hindu men came together to impose constraints on their women. This coincided with the growth of militant Hindu assertion in Uttar Pradesh, which reached new heights in the 1920s, with unprecedented communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims (Freitag Reference Freitag1989, 8–9, 230–41; Pandey Reference Pandey1978, 115–17), and aggressive participation from a section of the lower castes (Gooptu Reference Gooptu2001; see also National Archives of India 1927). The liberal premise and promise of reformist discourse was considerably overturned when, within it, the woman's body became a marker for enthroning communal boundaries.

Hindu reformers and revivalists started making appeals to upper-caste Hindus to uplift outcaste women. The Hindu Mahasabha emphasized that there was a need to validate by marriage clandestinely carried out amorous relations between a Hindu girl and boy of different castes, even if one of them was an untouchable, to prevent conversions. Cases were cited where the Hindu Mahasabha had prevented a Bhangi or a Chamar woman from converting, by marrying her to a higher-caste Hindu boy (Moonje Reference Moonje1935). Conversions of outcaste women were also represented as a loss of numbers and potential child-bearing wombs for the Hindu community. A special issue of Chand stated that there were millions of outcaste mothers who were full of love but, because of the cruelty of Hindu society, were nurturing wombs and prodigies of Muslim children, and producing cow killers (Chand 1927b, 4). Stated Abhyudaya:

Anxieties around conversions to Islam by Dalit women were often expressed in a language of abductions. It was emphasized in magazines and newspapers like Chand and Pratap (Glory) that women, including outcaste women, were being molested and forcibly converted by Muslim men (Chand 1924, 1927d, 177). “Samachar sangrah” (Collection of news items), regularly published in Chand, built a psyche of Muslims as abductors of Dalit women, using it as a plank to woo Dalit men to the side of Hindus (Chand 1926a, 1926b, 1927a, 1927e). It was reported in 1938 that when a sweeper woman was cleaning the road near a mosque in Kanpur, attempts to kidnap her were made by Muslim goondas (evil characters). Following this, the Mehtar Sabha (Body of Sweepers) resolved to boycott local Muslims (Pratap 1938). A communal riot occurred in Basti in 1939 due to the alleged molestation of a Chamar woman by a Muslim, the trouble assuming serious proportions due to the rivalry between the Hindu and Muslim lathi akharas (gymnasium teaching fighting with bamboo sticks) in that vicinity (PAI, February 25, 1939, 40). Dalit men often colluded with such rhetoric, at times overpowering the realities of caste hierarchies. It not only touched an emotive nerve; women were crucial for their material existence. At a meeting of sweepers in Dehradun, it was resolved not to allow their women to work in Muhammadan households. Similar resolutions were adopted by Chamar, Khatik, and Pasi caste associations in Agra, Allahabad, Benaras, and Kanpur (PAI, March 12, 1927, 92).

More interesting were individual conversions to Islam by some Dalit women due to love, elopements, and marriages. Gauri Vishwanathan (Reference Vishwanathan1998, 163) states that in many cases of individual conversion, particularly by lower castes, the reason was neither proselytism nor doctrinal conviction, but romance. While it is difficult to trace such cases in Uttar Pradesh, police abstracts of intelligence provide some glimpses, though with a caveat. Only a few cases merited mention, which led to tensions. None of them were described in sufficient detail. Yet they provide significant insights. In almost all cases reported, it was individual outcaste women (and not men) who were found to be converting. Their romantic involvements were possibly aided by greater mobility. There are many stray examples. In March 1924, a Chamar woman left her husband in Banaras in favor of a Muslim, whom she married (PAI, March 29, 1924, 118). In March 1926, a Bhangi woman converted to Islam and married a Muslim in Aligarh (PAI, March 27, 1926, 176). In the same year in April, a Muslim of Kanpur had a female sweeper as his mistress, whom he converted (PAI, April 3, 1926, 195). In the next month, a Kori woman, kept by a Muslim contractor at Banda, converted (PAI, May 1, 1926, 235). In December 1928, a sweeper woman of Unao married a Muslim and converted (PAI, December 1, 1928, 522). It was reported from Fyzabad in 1934 that an outcaste woman had married a Muslim (PAI, November 24, 1934, 625). In May 1938, a sweeper woman eloped with a Muslim in Dehradun and subsequently converted to Islam (PAI, May 21, 1938, 124). In 1946, a local Muslim brought with him a sweeper woman whom he claimed had embraced Islam (PAI, August 2, 1946, 127). Such cases point to Dalit women's ambiguous relationship to caste and religious identities, hinting at their desire and experimentation. At times, they chose to defend their conversion as well. In Basti, a Khatik woman who had been converted to Islam was taken to the Arya Samaj office with a view to reconversion, but she stuck to her decision (PAI, March 6, 1926, 127).

Outcaste women were possibly “using” conversion as a mode of coping with and, within limits, transgressing an oppressive social order. It was a strategic maneuver with social ramifications, combined with elements of choice, desire, and experimentation. It is significant that unlike conversion to Christianity, which required evidence of baptism and other documents, conversion to Islam merely entailed the recitation of kalma (Muslim confession of faith) before witnesses. Also, till at least the 1940s, the courts recognized that conversion to Islam by women of other religions dissolved their former religion and marriage (De Reference De2010). This moment of transition may have been perceived by Dalit women as providing some leverage in negotiating personal status and familial, caste, and religious power relations, and reconfiguring social boundaries, if only partially and temporarily. More often than not, they were entering relationships similar to the ones they had succeeded in leaving. But is it also possible to see these outcaste women as boundary crossers, where romance offered a momentary amelioration? Can we see these as acts of self-expression, offering possibilities for a liberated Dalit woman's body to emerge through alternative religious belongings?

Causing increasing tensions, such crossings were cited by Arya Samaj and Hindu Mahasabha to raise a fearful scenario and to urge outcaste men to prevent their women from taking such steps (Gupta Reference Gupta2001). It was emphasized that Muslims continually seduced their outcaste women neighbors, ran away with them, and converted them (Sharda Reference Sharda1925, 33–34). The outcaste woman's self-consciousness as a woman, as a convert, as a person with sexual agency, was consistently erased. Such individual conversions on their own accord, minus “their men,” evoked hostile reactions from Dalit men. The “rule breaking” by these women was seized as an opportunity to reinforce caste, religious, and sexual controls. Thus to repeat the cases mentioned above, when the Chamar woman converted in Banaras, it caused alarm in Arya Samaj circles. A breach of peace was threatened between them and Muslims (PAI, March 29, 1924, 118). When the Bhangi woman of Aligarh married a Muslim, communal feelings were largely embittered. Large crowds gathered, a case was filed against it, many shops in the city shut down, and the city Bhangis struck work (PAI, March 27, 1926, 176). Trouble arose in Kanpur between sweepers and Muslims when knowledge of the conversion of the female sweeper spread. The Arya Samajists seized upon it as a pretext for anti-Muslim propaganda. They succeeded in bringing about a strike of sweepers, who refused to work for Muslims (PAI, April 3, 1926, 195). In Fyzabad, the Muslim male was arrested on charges of seducing the outcaste woman. Though he was acquitted when she stated that she was his wife, relationships between Muslims and outcastes became strained (PAI, November 24, 1934, 625). The sweeper community threatened to boycott all Muslim houses, following the elopement and conversion of the sweeper woman in Dehradun (PAI, May 21, 1938, 124). The sweepers of Moradabad ceased working for Muslim inhabitants after a case of “kidnapping” of a sweeper woman by a Julaha (PAI, February 18, 1939, 35). In a village in Meerut, a tense situation existed when the sweepers of the locality removed a sweeper woman from the custody of a Muslim (PAI, August 2, 1946, 127). Here the outcaste men colluded in the production of a sense of reality that stigmatized them. While they questioned the dominant order, they at times identified with it, especially when it came to the question of “their” women.