What are the promises for social uplift made by the Indian state and how are they interpreted and appropriated by minoritized communities in urban spaces? What do these promises have in common with those of religion? What can we learn through ethnographic attention to zones of contact perhaps quite literally urban neighborhoods – where subaltern groups encounter both religion and the civil service? In the last several decades, members of the Dhanka Scheduled Tribe in Jaipur City have embraced three social locations from which they have drawn cultural resources for their efforts towards social uplift and upward mobility: the Radhasoami faith, the lower rungs of the civil service, and the city of Jaipur itself. In each of these three spaces, a discursive and institutional commitment to equality is contradicted by social practices that reinforce hierarchy and difference. In the Radhasoami tradition, all people are considered equal before the guru; the civil service is su pposed to be a great equalizer and, through reservations, ensure that scheduled communities are adequately represented in the functioning of government and provided with some upward mobility via job security, particularly in low level positions; urban spaces, in and of themselves, are expected to erase orthodox caste distinctions found in villages. Indeed, many Dhanka would agree that participation in Radhasoami and the civil service largely as employees in the Public Health and Engineering Department working as sewer pipe fitters“ have made life better for their community over the last several decades. Formerly stick-and-tarp bastis have been transformed into pukka neighborhoods with individual water taps and reliable electrical connections. Men who previously drank and failed to support their families have become sober and temperate householders. Yet, Dhanka participation in these spaces of uplift is always circumscribed by their ambiguous tribal/ “untouchable” status: their ongoing relationship with the PHED and Jaipur’s sewers mirrors their “participation” in Radhasoami for whom one of their primary voluntary activities is setting up latrines at the satsang grounds outside the city when Radhasoami comes to speak. Rather than treating these spaces as instances of failed democratic promise, however, I argue that ethnographic attention to how the Dhanka themselves narrate their participation casts light on how subaltern communities maintain and augment promises of uplift despite their inevitable failure by and in institutions of religion and the state; central to this augmentation is their commitment to (re)building their neighborhood and recasting its relationship to Jaipur City. Megan Moodie is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she studies the sociality engendered by legal and economic projects for uplift and empowerment, including affirmative action, microfinance, and gender-based rights assertions. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on ethnographic fieldwork with an urban tribal community in Jaipur, India.

What are the promises for social uplift made by the Indian state and how are they interpreted and appropriated by minoritized communities in urban spaces? What do these promises have in common with those of religion? What can we learn through ethnographic attention to zones of contact perhaps quite literally urban neighborhoods – where subaltern groups encounter both religion and the civil service? In the last several decades, members of the Dhanka Scheduled Tribe in Jaipur City have embraced three social locations from which they have drawn cultural resources for their efforts towards social uplift and upward mobility: the Radhasoami faith, the lower rungs of the civil service, and the city of Jaipur itself. In each of these three spaces, a discursive and institutional commitment to equality is contradicted by social practices that reinforce hierarchy and difference. In the Radhasoami tradition, all people are considered equal before the guru; the civil service is su pposed to be a great equalizer and, through reservations, ensure that scheduled communities are adequately represented in the functioning of government and provided with some upward mobility via job security, particularly in low level positions; urban spaces, in and of themselves, are expected to erase orthodox caste distinctions found in villages. Indeed, many Dhanka would agree that participation in Radhasoami and the civil service largely as employees in the Public Health and Engineering Department working as sewer pipe fitters“ have made life better for their community over the last several decades. Formerly stick-and-tarp bastis have been transformed into pukka neighborhoods with individual water taps and reliable electrical connections. Men who previously drank and failed to support their families have become sober and temperate householders. Yet, Dhanka participation in these spaces of uplift is always circumscribed by their ambiguous tribal/ “untouchable” status: their ongoing relationship with the PHED and Jaipur’s sewers mirrors their “participation” in Radhasoami for whom one of their primary voluntary activities is setting up latrines at the satsang grounds outside the city when Radhasoami comes to speak. Rather than treating these spaces as instances of failed democratic promise, however, I argue that ethnographic attention to how the Dhanka themselves narrate their participation casts light on how subaltern communities maintain and augment promises of uplift despite their inevitable failure by and in institutions of religion and the state; central to this augmentation is their commitment to (re)building their neighborhood and recasting its relationship to Jaipur City. Megan Moodie is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she studies the sociality engendered by legal and economic projects for uplift and empowerment, including affirmative action, microfinance, and gender-based rights assertions. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on ethnographic fieldwork with an urban tribal community in Jaipur, India.