The Cultural Construction of Identity

Many stereotypes, including expletives regarding the psyche and culture of sweepers or the choorra caste, are deeply embedded in mainstream discourse, including folklore, idioms and local narratives.

Certain derogatory traits are considered to be part and parcel of the sweeper community and profession. These attitudes are culturally embedded and find expression not just in language use, idioms and folk songs but in poetry, novels, films and other forms of the entertainment industry.

Significantly this debasement of a particular caste and occupation has given rise to a counter-discourse of resistance to the hegemony of the purity/pollution binary. In raising their voice in support of the ‘impure’ ‘untouchables’ of the caste system, the Sufi poets of Punjab inverted the discursive hierarchy and granted the debased ‘choorri’ an agentic voice. They transformed her into a metaphor of resistance to the false values and self-image of those in power.

A powerful example of such writing is this verse from the 18th century Sufi poet Bulleh Shah:

“Main choorri haan sachay sahib di sarkaron
Kazi jaanay hakim jaanay pharag khati begaaron”

[I am the sweeperess in the service of the true Lord
Let the qazi know, let the judge mark!
No longer a bonded slave, I am the humble servant of the Almighty]

In this verse, he joins his voice with that of the ‘polluted’ sweeper and elevates it triumphantly in a manner that rejects so-called ‘status and purity’.

However, not all artistic expression, even when sympathetic, is so uncompromisingly clear in its message. The Pakistani film Main Hoon Shahid Afridi touches on the issue of religion and caste-based oppression through the character of a Christian cricketer who is repeatedly mocked and ridiculed by his colleagues with the name of ‘choorra’, negatively affecting his performance. As the storyline leaves the issue unaddressed, the film, instead of challenging the stereotype, reinforces the occupational vulnerability of this community and those affiliated with it by religion.

Colloquial Punjabi, including Lahori Punjabi, has a vast repertoire of demeaning and derogatory terms and idioms regarding the Choorra community. ‘Choorra’ is a word often used to belittle and insult ‘worthless’ people. This behaviour connotes a poor state of mind. Other idiomatic expletives used to ridicule the community include ‘Choorray jaisi khaslat’, ‘Choorray jaisa rang’ (only a sweeper has such a nature or behaviour typical of a sweeper or only sweepers have such a complexion).

Jime Sidanius and Rosemary C Veneigas, researchers tackling gender and race, explain that human societies are structured and governed by group-based social hierarchies, ascribing more benefits to the dominant group (wealth, power and status). In contrast, subordinate groups face a disproportionate amount of negative social value.

While investigating racial/ethnic differences in multiple aspects of well-being, American psychologist Carol D Ryff and her colleagues found that perceived discrimination is the negative predictor of well-being. Its gender-specific effects entailed more on women who faced high levels of discrimination that compromised their sense of growth, well-being, mastery, autonomy and self-acceptance.

An Inescapable Stigma

The scholar Neepa Gandhi observes in her paper on sanitation workers in Ahmedabad, India that people in janitorial services are considered polluted, and they have to live with this stigma in the prevailing reality and accept their status as untouchables. Hector Bertheir, a Mexican researcher who has written extensively about the issues faced by garbage workers, points out that the marginalised social status of garbage workers has made them live in isolated and closed societies, developing their habits, customs, beliefs and values as well as specific mechanisms for their marginal or interim integration. The internalisation of their marginality and low social status due to their work with garbage and dirt is deeply embedded in the psyche of sweepers, as they prefer to live in areas inhabited by the sweeper community.

The close-knit settlements of Christian communities in Lahore at Pathi Ground on Dil Muhammad Road, Youhanabad, Nishtar, Mohallah Churshah Bandagi, Baelhatha Garrhi Shahu, Isanagri Misri Shah, Maryam Colony Township, Christian Colony, Azmat Chowk, Paki Thattiyan, Joseph Colony, Bajwa Colony, Badami Bagh, Sandha Chandni Chowk, Sandha Bundroad, Nijatpura Bundroad, 62 Road Niazi Adda and Mohalla Tupsari depict the ghettoised living conditions of Christians.

There is a strong sense of shared understanding among sweepers that society does not respect their profession. This realisation leads them to internalise worthlessness and develop inferiority complexes and social alienation from society. Because of their physical contact with waste, sweepers think their work invites indignity and insult. This feeling can be felt in the words of a sweeper woman:

“Muslim fellows ridicule us due to our profession. They think that because we are involved in dirty work, we should carry our own utensils to eat and drink tea or water to work. Once at a small restaurant, I was refused a cup of tea with the excuse that other customers would not like it if we ate in the same pots as offered to them.”

These multi-layered oppressions generate multiple forms of minority stress as interlocking identities perpetuate the social conditions of the stigmatised community. Amartya Sen argues that social exclusion has a conceptual connection with poverty and deprivation and is an approach to studying the dimensions of poverty. Being excluded from social relations can result in other deprivations, capability failures and limiting life opportunities.

The consequences of discrimination can lead to deprivation indirectly, through passive discrimination, in which discouragement and lower self-confidence convert into poor performance, or through direct routes that reduce access to income or education.

A research paper published by public health practioner Ashraful Kabir and others states that political, economic and cultural implications resulting from the intersecting inequalities prove a disadvantage to socially excluded groups. More generally, a continuing combination of discrimination with lower levels of educational attainment keeps these groups in the worst-paid and most demeaning jobs.

Children of the Sweeper Community

The heightened sense of a separate religious identity and the internalisation of a socio-religious subservient status with regard to the majority Muslim community perpetuates the social identity markers of exclusiveness and otherness. This internalisation invariably contributes towards low self-esteem among young children of minority communities.

For example, a study by economists Karla Hoff and Priyanka Pandey that experimented with the children of Dalits, a forsaken caste in India, found that the children performed well with children of other caste identities in solving puzzles in return for payments. However, these same children of Dalits did not perform well when they were segregated into separate caste groups. Hence the internalisation of ascribed inferiority negatively affects the creative capacity of children from socially excluded groups.

Most children of women sweepers are school dropouts and are highly disinterested in pursuing their educational careers. Here, it is pertinent to consider the working hours of women sweepers that start as early as 5am, depriving the mothers of time at home in the early morning hours to prepare their children for school.

For this kind of help, mothers have to rely on relatives or grandparents, which often results in neglect of the children. Street sweepers’ work rhythm and routine are entirely different from other working classes, and their children are often seen idly roaming around the streets before even completing grade 5.

Higher dropout rates from the very early stage of school are also attributed to various other factors, including a lack of parental supervision, a non-conducive learning environment and low self-esteem among children, due to their subservient minority status and the stigmatised nature of their parents’ work. A child’s education is seen not only as a cost that parents have to bear for the educational expenses but as a loss of earnings.

Going through experiences of abuse, co-editor of the “Indian Journal of Gender Studies” Malavika Karlekar notes that women sweepers often do not view formal schooling as a usual path to modernity or financial and social well-being, especially for their daughters, whose help is needed at home. Charles Amjad-Ali, who has served as the director of the Christian Study Centre in Rawalpindi, highlights that class and caste prejudice negatively affect the growth of those children who attain neither a secondary nor a primary level of education.

In the face of desperate and dire financial constraints and endless domestic work, women sweepers often seek help from their young sons in their cleaning work. Employers do not mind or stop women sweepers from bringing their husbands or sons to work, as it means more free hands/labour for the employer.

Many young sons help their mothers in sweeping the streets and aspire to get permanent jobs in their mothers’ place after their retirement. Cleaning the streets can be quite strenuous, especially for older women, and is one of the reasons they take their husbands or young sons to work as helpers. As shared by a woman sweeper:

“I wake up early in the morning, prepare breakfast for my children, husband and mother-in-law, clean the house and leave for work. I return home by the evening, buy groceries, cook food for my children and wash the utensils. I don’t know how the day passes so quickly. I do not get any help from my husband with domestic chores; he does not even work and never gives me money for household expenses.

“My elder son has left school and, though I wanted him to become an educated man, I could not continue to arrange for his tuition fee as my menial salary does not allow it. So now I have asked him to work with me. I need help. I’m growing old and have severe backaches. It is becoming difficult for me to bend down and sweep the roads.”

A Generational Cycle

The chances for social upwards mobility through education continue to be an uphill challenge. Many growing children join their parents’ profession to support the family. On the other hand, most of the daughters in the sweeper community are more interested in education and continuing with their schooling.

However, parents generally cite their marriage and financial difficulties as an excuse for stopping their daughters from continuing their studies. A study on Valmiki Dalits in India showed similar trends of high school dropout rates of both girls and boys, although some parents believe that education is essential for girls.

Many young boys and girls in the age bracket of 12 to 18 years shared their personal experiences of religious discrimination at school that further reinforced their perception of their low social status and identity. While sharing the reason for leaving school in grade 7, a 15-year-old son of a sweeper woman said:

“My Muslim classmates ridiculed and bullied me because of my Christian faith. They often hurled derogatory Punjabi expletives such as choorra at me and made fun of our religion. I had successfully hidden the cleaning profession of my parents from them until one of them saw my father sweeping the streets. He spread this news among my friends, who then laughed at me. It led to a fight and I had to leave the school.”

Some parents complained that children do not like going to school. However, a deeper analysis of their domestic situation highlighted the absence of a conducive home environment for these children’s education. It was found that parents have more interest in a child’s labour for increased earnings than in their education. Many girls aged 13-14 look after infant siblings and the elderly, sick or disabled family members.

The overall socio-economic pressures impede the prioritisation of children’s education, negatively affecting their life choices. A sweeper woman corroborates this: “We do not like our children to follow our cleaning profession, but what else can our children do? They are uneducated; therefore, they cannot become government officers.”

A survey study of 1,380 Christian individuals residing in the slums of Lahore by researchers Kanwal Zahra and Tasneem Zafar revealed that as many as 80 percent of the surveyed population is engaged in low-skilled work. This population group is mainly illiterate or has a nominal level of education. Survey results verified that this class is caught in multi-dimensional poverty and the lack of socio-economic infrastructure has not allowed them to break the poverty cycle, thus resulting in continuing deprivation of education and employment and poor health.

A perceived sense of religious discrimination is highly detrimental to the psychological well-being of the children of minority communities. Assistant professor of psychology Sarah K Calabrese’s joint findings illustrate that social stress in the form of discrimination, coupled with other social disadvantages (based on the particular combination of statuses), entails adverse mental health problems and decreased psychological well-being.

Everyday experiences of discrimination and unfair treatment negatively impact an individual’s view of society and his/her relationship with society, and can result in deleterious mental health outcomes.

Concealing Identities and Changing Names: Response to Discrimination

It is not uncommon to find local Christians with English names in Pakistan, which can be linked to their historical linkages with Western missionaries, who converted the lower choorra caste Hindus to Christianity. However, realising the pernicious effects of the concept of untouchability on the psyche and the damage it causes to self-worth and dignity, many Christians actively adopted English names to get rid of this stigma.

This quest for another identity as an escape from the curse of untouchability is movingly depicted in Mulk Raj Anand’s powerful book The Untouchable, through the character of Bakha, who dreams of aping the lifestyles of the British ‘Tommies’ whose latrines he cleans.

Azam Mairaj, author of Neglected Christian Children of the Indus, highlights that most Pakistani Christians adopted English surnames to disguise their local identity to seem more like European Christians. However, hiding the identity itself ruins the qualities and personality of individuals.

In the 1961 census, Christians from the choorra caste were categorised as Isai. Isai is taken from Isa, an Arabic equivalent of Jesus. Their profession was officially written as sweepers in the 1961 census. Over time, the word Isai got stigmatised because of its association with their ancestral caste-based cleaning occupation.

Therefore, as observed by researcher Asif Aqeel and journalist Sama Faruqi, Punjabi Christians became involved in an ongoing social movement to call themselves Maseehi, not Isai. The community representatives even went to the Supreme Court of Pakistan to request that the Christian community be referred to as Maseehi instead of Isai. A court order was passed in their favour.

Christians sought to shed off their caste identity and adopt a religious identity replacing their caste “choorra” with “Isai”, denoted as Christians but, more precisely, the followers of Jesus. Many of their irregular settlements were named “Isa-Nagri”, known as the town of Jesus. As time passed, the term Isai became a euphemism for “choorra”. American philosopher Judith Butler’s assertion on the melancholy of the lost past and the unfinished process of grieving is central to the formations of identifications that form ego and the unresolved past continues to haunt.

Now many local Christians prefer not to give English names to their children. An official of the Lahore Metropolitan City Corporation corroborated this fact,

“Nowadays, Christian sweepers are not interested in giving English names to their children. Instead, they prefer giving them Muslim names, to avoid distaste, dislike and discrimination ascribed to their Christian religious identity.”

On asking why Christians are not giving English names to their children, which was initially the practice, a sweeper woman explained:

“English names instantly inform our Muslim fellow workers about our Christian identity and they try to maintain a distance from us and dislike us. Most of the time, they ask us to change our religion and ask many questions about it. We do not want to give them any answers, which makes it difficult for us to work with them.”

The Anglo-Indian names have their origins in India’s colonial history and the local Christians also used to have such names. However, a few years ago, local Christians adopted certain names, such as D’Souzas, Braganzas, Pascals, Masseys, Coopers, Christophers, Walters, Cynthia, Allegerene, Edwina, Christina, Ingrid etc, as their surname. However, now these surnames are hardly heard among the Christian community in Lahore.

This name-changing phenomenon reflects multiple and alternative sources of the social identity of Pakistani Christians, who have been struggling continuously to rid themselves of their caste, religion and occupation-based stigma and earn social respect in society.

The Ghettoisation of Sweepers

Is it not ironic that, where Islamic discourse places so much emphasis on cleanliness, the very people who ensure cleanliness are considered social pariahs and subjected to humiliation? This humiliation is not confined to their workplaces. Instead, it becomes a part of the personalities of those discriminated against. A woman sweeper shared:

“My children ridicule me and my husband for cleaning work. Of course, we do not like our work, but we have to do it in order to live, but it breaks my heart when my children crack jokes at us. They always tell us to leave this cleaning work and hide our profession from their friends, but what else should we do to earn money?”

The perpetual feeling of being disliked, not only by strangers but by their own children, leads sweepers further into self-subjugation. At the same time, the discrimination and injustices they are subjected to, combined with a sense of vulnerability, give rise to subtle forms of everyday resistance.

As explained by political scientist and anthropologist James C Scot, marginalised groups do not resort to confrontation or protests but prefer minimal risk for attaining their objectives. Sweepers avoid confronting their employers over discrimination issues and prefer not to complain. Rather, they vent their anger by lying to their employers about petty matters such as pretending to be sick in order to get holidays and deliberately shirking work responsibilities. An official of the Lahore Waste Management Committee (LWMC) corroborated this assessment:

“We have to hire sweepers on daily wages and cannot convert their jobs into permanent employment structures because they lie to us, take holidays, disappear without telling us, and do not complete their work on time.”

In the face of the exploitative and degrading work conditions and low social status ascribed to their religious and occupational identity, what options is a sweeper left with except resorting to the politics of dissimulation, manifested in their daily work routines? Considering cleaning jobs disgraceful, sweeper women prefer to hide their work from distant relatives. Their children also hide their parents’ work from their friends to ward off peer group pressure and ridicule.

Sweepers perceive discrimination as their reality as well as their destiny. This perception is a negative predictor of their well-being and affects their personal growth, self-esteem, life choices and interpersonal relations with people of a different religion or class. Sweepers tend to internalise their episodic experiences of discrimination to the extent of seeing themselves as victims of malign circumstances and fate.

This collective sense of victimhood increases their vulnerability, minimises their agentic potential to change their conditions and plunges them into a state of helplessness. As part of their social identity, this sense of victimhood validates their argument for seeking financial support from others. As emphasised by one woman, “We are poor people and cannot do anything to change our situation. Therefore, rich people should help us financially and give free education to our children.”

Incidents of social exclusion are integral to the daily experiences of the sweeper community and adversely impact their sense of self-worth. Although cleaning work is a means of economic survival for them, it also strengthens their ghettoisation and social exclusion. For a sweeper, a broom is a sign of shame, stigma and exclusion, but at the same time, it is the sign, symbol and means of sustenance and subsistence.

Beyond Marginalisation

Sweeper women and men counter exclusionary and discriminatory experiences through inclusionary practices. Sweeper women often refer to themselves with the collective ‘we’ instead of the individual ‘I’ to draw a sense of belonging from their community.

This kind of language is not specific to the sweepers of Pakistan, as illustrated by sociologist Orly Benjamin and her fellow researchers. They state that women in bad jobs try to maintain self-worth by using ‘we’ in order to escape social exclusion despite one’s exclusion from the specific organisational ‘we’. The author here corroborates my assertion that a woman sweeper using the term ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ while sharing her experiences of discrimination signals collectiveness and belongingness to their community. It also serves to her as a coping mechanism against being singled out.

This desire for belonging and inclusion in the sweeper community is not limited to the use of language. It is exercised through various inclusionary practices in their social circles of family and relatives. American social psychologist Roy F Baumeister and his colleagues argue that socially excluded and rejected people are more prone and willing to spend money to enhance their social appeal and make themselves appear attractive to others.

This argument may be applied to marginalised workers who attain respectability by spending beyond their means to compensate for their lost self-worth and humiliation at their workplaces. Such irresponsible spending gets them trapped in informal networks of debt. This phenomenon can be attributed to degrading treatment at the workplace and resulting damage to their self-respect. Having minimal access to other social capital for community cohesion, this ghettoised community draws support, solace, and satisfaction by interacting within their family circles.

The perpetual sense of degradation that stems from their occupation has also instilled bitterness and rage among the sweeper community, and an annoyed sweeper’s intransigence is proverbial. This is borne out by a well-known Punjabi saying about the stubbornness of a sweeper, “Laes lasoorrae dee tae akkarr choorrae dee [A wronged choorra is very difficult to appease and his stubbornness shows prolonged indignation].”

The intransigent reaction to shame and humiliation contributes towards building the community’s inner resilience. Still, at the same time, their situated reality at the intersection of such oppressions, fuelled by divisions of class, caste, religion and gender, further crystallises their inferiority complex and increases the likelihood of self-derogation, degradation and self-hatred.