Hindutva activists ‘purify’ venue after Congress president’s rally
Hindu extremists “purified” venue after president of Indian National Congress, Mallikarjun Kharge – a Dalit himself - addressed rally
NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — India’s most prominent Dalit opposition leader faced a casteist act rooted in centuries-old notions of untouchability after Hindu extremists performed a purification ritual at a venue days after he addressed a political rally there.
Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the Indian National Congress, India’s oldest and main opposition party, addressed a rally at Ramlila Maidan in Haldwani in the northern state of Uttarakhand on Aug. 8.
Two days later, members of the right-wing Shri Ram Sena returned to the ground and performed a shuddhikaran, or purification ritual, reportedly declaring that the venue had been “defiled.”
The group performed a Hindu fire ritual and reportedly used water from the Ganges, considered sacred in Hinduism, to “purify” the ground.
For Kharge, who was born into a Dalit community, the act touched one of the most degrading foundations of Hinduism’s caste system. Dalits or lower caste Hindus were historically regarded as ritually “impure” under the Hindu caste order, with dominant castes treating their touch — and in some circumstances even their presence — as contaminating.
Kharge drew that connection himself, saying the Haldwani episode made him feel the “sting of untouchability.”
The term is not merely a metaphor for discrimination. Untouchability developed from caste notions of purity and pollution that determined who could share food, water and social spaces with whom. Dalits could be excluded from temples and common wells or forced to use separate utensils because contact with them was considered polluting.
That history gives the act of “purifying” the Haldwani venue its particular caste significance. Cleansing a space regarded as defiled recalls the same social logic that once required separation between Dalits and communities considered higher in the caste hierarchy.
Kharge also raised the incident in the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house, where he said he did not want to reduce the episode to partisan politics. He stressed that throughout his years in Parliament he had never asked anyone to protect him because he was Dalit or sought special treatment because of his caste.
“I have never told anyone that I am a Dalit, protect me, nor have I begged in front of anyone,” Kharge said. “I have the strength to fight, and I do fight.”
His response also highlighted an extraordinary contradiction in modern India. Kharge is not a politically powerless figure. The 84-year-old leads the country’s principal opposition party, serves as leader of the opposition in Parliament’s upper house and has spent decades holding elected office.
Yet his position at the highest levels of Indian politics did not prevent an episode that he associated with the humiliation historically inflicted on people from his caste background.
Speaking outside Parliament, Kharge said he had been insulted by what happened in Haldwani.
“We have been saying all along that there is no space for Dalits in this country,” he said.
The episode is also not the first time Kharge’s family has encountered remarks condemned as casteist.
In 2023, Araga Jnanendra, then a minister from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in state of Karnataka, said people from the Kalyana-Karnataka region would turn “black” because of scorching heat before adding, “We will know it by looking at Kharge.”
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