By TN Ashok
The Haldwani controversy is larger than a quarrel between two political families. It has reopened one of independent India’s most uncomfortable questions: has caste-based untouchability really disappeared, or has it merely changed its vocabulary and rituals?
India’s political battlefield has acquired an unusually old-fashioned weapon: holy water, a havan and the idea that a place must be “purified” after a Dalit politician has occupied it.
The controversy erupted in Haldwani, Uttarakhand, after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge addressed a rally at Ramlila Maidan on August 8. Two days later, a right-wing organisation, identified in reports as Shri Ram Sena, conducted what the Congress described as a shuddhikaran or purification ritual at the venue.
Congress leaders interpreted the act as a humiliating reminder of untouchability because Kharge is a Dalit. The organisers and BJP leaders rejected that interpretation, saying the exercise was a cleanliness or religious ritual after the ground had allegedly been left dirty and inappropriate slogans had been raised there.
That distinction — purification or cleaning, caste discrimination or religious ritual — is now at the heart of an explosive political fight.
Mahatma Gandhi could not legally abolish untouchability. He fought it relentlessly and popularised the term “Harijan”, but its constitutional abolition came through Article 17 of the Constitution, while Parliament subsequently enacted laws including the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Kharge himself took the matter to the Rajya Sabha, saying the incident had made him experience the pain of untouchability and asking why such a ritual was necessary after his public meeting. Union minister and BJP president J P Nadda said the BJP did not subscribe to such practices and indicated that the matter would be investigated. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami subsequently denied that BJP workers were involved.
But the controversy acquired a new political life when Rahul Gandhi entered the fray.
At a press conference on August 29, the Leader of the Opposition described the alleged purification as another form of untouchability and demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi ensure an FIR under the SC/ST Act against those responsible. Gandhi argued that the incident represented a mindset in which Dalits were not allowed to advance, live with dignity or occupy positions of prominence without provoking resentment.
His sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra followed a day later, turning the issue into a direct constitutional challenge to the Modi government. She argued that if the Prime Minister genuinely respected the Constitution, an FIR should be registered against those responsible and action taken under the SC/ST Act. She pointed out that about 20 days had passed without such action.
Then came the twist. Instead of an FIR against those alleged to have conducted the purification, an FIR was registered against Rahul Gandhi.
The complaint was filed by Amit Kumar, who identified himself as a member of the Scheduled Caste Valmiki community and an office-bearer of the Shri Ram Sena Dharmarth Seva Nyas. Police registered the case under provisions including Sections 196 and 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The complainant alleged that Gandhi had wrongly given a caste angle to what he described as cleaning and a religious ritual, thereby hurting the sentiments of the Scheduled Caste community.
For the Congress, the irony was irresistible. Its argument is simple: the person who protested against an alleged act of untouchability has been booked, while the people accused of performing the purification have not been booked.
That has allowed the Gandhis to frame the dispute not merely as an issue of caste but as a question of who gets protection from the law — and who gets investigated by it.
The BJP has an equally straightforward counterattack. It denies that the purification was an anti-Dalit act, denies BJP involvement and argues that the Congress is exploiting caste for political purposes. BJP leaders have also attacked Rahul Gandhi’s record on Dalit politics and invoked Congress’s historical relationship with B R Ambedkar and Jagjivan Ram.
There is, however, a danger in reducing the controversy to “BJP versus Dalits”. It would be factually wrong to describe the BJP simply as a party “run by Nagpur Brahmins”. The RSS headquarters is in Nagpur and Brahmins have historically occupied important positions in the organisation, but the BJP today is a mass political coalition encompassing upper castes, OBCs, Dalits, tribals and other communities.
Indeed, the party has deliberately expanded its Dalit and backward-caste representation over the past decade. The more serious question is whether caste prejudice survives inside sections of Indian society irrespective of which party is in power.
And there is evidence that it does. The Haldwani episode is not an isolated historical curiosity.
In 2009, a temple in Odisha was reportedly purified after Dalit minister Pramila Mallick entered its sanctum. The temple priest openly acknowledged that Dalits were not permitted inside the sanctum and that the premises were washed after her departure.
In 2016, a temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur Dehat was reportedly cleansed with Gangajal after Dalit women entered for worship. The priest and his wife allegedly washed the premises after the women left.
In 2018, an especially embarrassing episode involved Manisha Anuragi, herself a Dalit BJP MLA. After she entered a temple in Hamirpur, the temple was reportedly purified with Gangajal and its idols were sent away for purification. The priest reportedly said women had never been permitted inside the temple.
In 2025, BJP leader Gyan Dev Ahuja generated another controversy when he publicly “purified” a Ram temple in Rajasthan with Gangajal after Congress leader Tikaram Jully, a Dalit, participated in its consecration ceremony. Ahuja justified the action by referring to the presence of “impure people”.
And in March 2025, Congress leader Kanhaiya Kumar’s visit to a temple in Bihar was followed by allegations that the temple had been washed with Gangajal.
The pattern therefore predates the Gandhis’ present confrontation with the BJP.
Even Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav has now entered the debate, saying that similar purification episodes happened to him three times, including the washing of a temple in Kannauj and, according to his account, his official residence with Ganga water after he had occupied it.
There is another important historical distinction.
The concept of shuddhi itself is not synonymous with untouchability. The Arya Samaj popularised shuddhi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries primarily as a programme of reconversion to Hinduism. Over time, however, the vocabulary of purity and pollution acquired different social and political meanings.
That is why Haldwani is so politically potent. For Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, the controversy offers an opportunity to reclaim an issue that goes beyond electoral arithmetic: the Congress’s constitutional language of equality, dignity and social justice.
For Rahul, it fits neatly into his continuing political emphasis on caste census, representation and what he describes as the concentration of power among privileged groups.
For Priyanka, the intervention has a different emotional register. Her politics increasingly relies on direct identification with ordinary citizens, women, farmers, workers and marginalised communities. By taking up Kharge’s humiliation, she is also placing herself alongside a senior Dalit leader rather than allowing the episode to remain an internal Congress complaint.
The BJP, meanwhile, faces a delicate problem. It cannot simply endorse the ritual without appearing to legitimise caste hierarchy. But neither can it allow the Congress to establish that every religious purification ritual is automatically an act of untouchability. Hence its insistence that the event was about cleanliness, religious sentiment and the condition of the venue rather than Kharge’s caste.
The FIR against Rahul Gandhi has consequently transformed a local incident into a national political argument. The central question is no longer simply: Was the Haldwani ground actually purified because a Dalit leader had spoken there?
The harder question is: What does the law do when an act is interpreted by one side as religious practice and by another as caste humiliation?
That is where the Constitution matters. Article 17 does not merely condemn physical segregation. It abolishes untouchability and makes its practice punishable. The SC/ST Act provides additional protection against caste-based atrocities. But the law cannot automatically determine the intention behind every ritual. That requires investigation, evidence and, ultimately, judicial scrutiny.
If the ritual was genuinely motivated by caste prejudice, those responsible should face the law regardless of their political affiliation. If it was genuinely a cleanliness or religious ceremony unrelated to Kharge’s caste, that too should be established through evidence rather than political assertion.
But if the FIR against Rahul Gandhi becomes the only visible legal action while the original allegation remains unexplained, the optics will be devastating. For a country that abolished untouchability constitutionally nearly eight decades ago, there should be no political argument about whether a Dalit leader has to leave a public stage before it becomes “pure”.
That is the uncomfortable lesson of Haldwani: India may have abolished untouchability in law, but it has not yet abolished the idea of purity and pollution from every corner of Indian society.
And that is precisely why the Gandhis have decided this is a battle worth fighting. (IPA Service)
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