New Delhi: The information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry’s advisory that the media should stop using the word ‘Dalit’ and replace it with ‘Scheduled Caste’ has run into a hurdle with Press Council of India (PCI) refusing to impose a blanket ban on using the term.
According to Indian Express, the council has decided against issuing such an unqualified ban on the word ‘Dalit’ after its chairman, Justice (retd) C.K. Prasad said that “absolute prohibition is not advisable” and not even “feasible”.
The Wire previously reported that the ministry had issued a letter to media outlets on August 7 which referred to a June order by the Bombay high court asking the ministry to consider issuing a direction to the media against using the word ‘Dalit’. The court directive had come in response to a petition filed by Pankaj Meshram before the Nagpur bench of the high court.
In an earlier order on March 15, social justice ministry too had sent a similar advisory to states and union territories saying that in all official transactions, ‘Scheduled Caste’ should replace “Dalit”.
Also read: So the Term ‘Dalit’ Can’t Be Used But ‘Brahmin’ and 6,000 Other Caste Names Can
PCI’s decision was formally endorsed at a meeting of the council on Thursday, just a day ahead of the National Press Day. The council’s chairman said the media could not have “general guidelines” banning the use of ‘Dalit’ in all media coverage. The chairman argued that such a decision can only be taken in the basis of individual cases. 
The Chairman of the Press Council of India, former Justice Chandramauli Kumar Prasad. Credit: PTIDisagreeing with the I&B ministry advisory, the council chairman further said: “Our reading of the Bombay high court order is that it did not seek a ban on the word ‘Dalit’. We deliberated on the order and have come to the conclusion that it is advisable not to issue directions/orders prohibiting the use of word ‘Dalit’.”
According to The Hindu, Justice Prasad added that a judgment on using the term would have to be done on a case-by-case basis. He said that if the term was being leveraged for harassing an individual, then using it in reporting the incident would be fine, but “if say a man is injured in an accident and he turns out to be from the Scheduled Caste, then identifying him as a Dalit will be unnecessary.”
Also read: How Do I Refrain From Using ‘Dalit’?
Prasad also said “may be, in a given case, the use of the term Dalit may be necessary and, therefore, we have said absolute prohibition is not feasible, it is not advisable”.
When the Bombay high court directive was first issued, The Wire reported how some groups of activists fighting for Dalit rights, including one of the co-founders of the Dalit Panthers J.V. Pawar, had said that while certain sections may disagree with the use of the term, it was not the court’s job to police such usage since there were sections who identified with the term. Attempts to censor the term were recently made in academia as well with a Delhi University’s committee in end-October urging that the word “Dalit” be replaced with “bahujan’, “ambedkarwadi” or “scheduled caste” in books used by post graduate political science students.