Census politics revives Punjab’s Ad

Census politics revives Punjab’s Ad-Dharm legacy

With the Assembly elections due in 2027 alongside the Census, identity politics is likely to become even more consequential.

ON July 12, 2026, thousands of people gathered in Phagwara, Punjab, under the banner of a new identity called Ravidassia, demanding that their caste-religious identity be recognised in the upcoming 2027 Census under a separate column. This was a case of history repeating itself, but with a tinge of irony. The Doaba region of Punjab witnessed this kind of mobilisation about a century ago when Babu Mangoo Ram, the great Ghadarite revolutionary from the region, had led the Ad-Dharm movement in the 1920s.

He had articulated a similar demand: that their community, comprising Dalits and subaltern castes of Punjab, was distinct from both Hindus and Sikhs and it should be recognised as independent of the others as Ad-Dharmis or the original religion. Mangoo Ram's efforts paid quick political dividends. The government recognised Ad-Dharmis as a separate religion and caste community in the 1931 Census.

The British regime in India introduced the idea of a decennial census towards the second half of the 19th century. This was part of the colonial project of governmentality seeking to freeze the diverse demographic constituents into numbers, essentially to serve its wider civilising mission. The exercise included identifying various castes and religious groups and putting them on a register under neat categories presented as tick boxes. Many anthropologists later described this classification as a form of epistemic violence inaugurated via the politics of numbers.

The problem was that this massive cartographic exercise was being undertaken to set in stone a landscape that was inherently fluid, borderless and porous. The peculiar and vexatious interlocking between caste and religious identities in India, particularly in Punjab, and its immense diversity and local/regional metamorphosis baffled the British Census officials.

People and communities moved across religious traditions and yet their caste identities persisted. A religious landscape made up of diverse, overlapping traditions was forced into neat identity boxes by the Census, much to the bewilderment of the people and confusion among Census officials.

By the second decade of the 20th century, as India entered into the phase of politics of representation, numerical strength became a major political capital and rallying point for each community in the bargaining for power with the government. Mangoo Ram sensed the significance of this power struggle and the Ad-Dharm Mandal was founded in 1926. The Ad-Dharm movement essentially wanted to create a larger, independent Dalit formation in Punjab. Though the movement and its leadership were largely dominated by a caste group whose traditional occupation was linked to working with leather and was considered polluting, it was attempting to forge a unified umbrella organisation of the Dalits and subaltern groups under the banner of a new religion called Ad-Dharm.

After Independence, though the Ad-Dharmi movement petered out owing to such factors as the rise of Ambedkar and his pan-Indian appeal, cooption by the Congress and internal bickering among various fragments, it remained a shining example of subaltern resistance to caste in Punjab.

Many decades later, in 2010, a new movement came into prominence, which has been referred to as the Ravidassia Movement, from the same region in Punjab. This time, it was led by a prominent Ravidassia dera called Dera Sach Khand Ballan or Dera Ballan. The irony is that the new identity articulation emerges from the same Ad-Dharmi cultural matrix. The dream of a unified, larger umbrella organisation of Dalits of Punjab, as envisaged by Mangoo Ram, metamorphosed into a rather community-specific project. Unlike the Ad-Dharm movement that had a universal appeal for the Dalits, the Ravidassia Movement was articulated via a dera that imagined a community exclusively under the banner of a 15th century Bhakti poet and sant, Guru Ravidas.

Dera Ballan of Jalandhar, whose leader, Sant Niranjan Das, has been conferred with the Padma Shri, is one of the most prominent deras of Punjab. Though it has historically drawn influence from multiple traditions, including the Udasi tradition, which broadly functions in reverence to the Rahit Maryada of Sikhism, it has also been according prominence to Guru Ravidas’s bani as he belonged to the same caste-community as dera followers.

However, the persistence of caste in Punjab society has created a strain in the syncretic template of Dera Ballan. As one of the most influential among the Dalit groups, both numerically and economically, followers of the dera drifted away from the Ad-Dharmi model of Dalit collectivisation. Other subaltern caste groups such as Balmikis, found it unacceptable when the dera started foisting the name of Guru Ravidas in its identity under the new insignia of Hari.

Things changed with an incident in Vienna, Austria, in 2009, where during a religious congregation, two sants of Dera Ballan were attacked by some extremist elements, in which Sant Ramanand was killed, while the current Gaddi Nashin, Sant Niranjan Das, was injured. This proved to be the trigger for the demand for a separate religious identity under the banner of Ravidassia. Since the 1970s, the dera has built a Guru Ravidas Janam Asthan Mandir in Benaras. In 2010, the dera sants, in the presence of lakhs of followers, announced the founding of the new religion of Ravidassia. In 2012, the book 'Amritbani Ravidas Maharaj', was launched. It is a compilation of shabads and banis of Guru Ravidas.

Since then, the effort to get the name recognised has been on the dera agenda. With the Census 2027 on the anvil, it is campaigning for a separate identity. There is hope, given Prime Minister Modi's visit to the dera and a slew of initiatives taken, including the conferment of the Padma Shri to the dera Sant, the dedication of the Adampur airport in the name of Guru Ravidas and the start of a train called Guru Ravidas Express between Jalandhar and Benaras.

But the crucial question is whether Dera Ballan represents all Ravidassias. And importantly, whether all followers of Guru Ravidas would like to be identified as Ravidassia. The answer is complex. A significant number of people still cling to the Ad-Dharmi model of Dalit politics. Some deras and organisations do not subscribe to the Dera Ballan model. Some, like the Charan Chhoh Ganga, disapprove of the use of the word Ravidassia.

It remains to be seen how the demand evolves. With the Punjab Assembly elections due in 2027 alongside the Census, identity politics is likely to become even more consequential.