Harijan, ہریجن (Nastaleeq); translation

Indian English

Indian English is an umbrella term used to describe dialects of the English language spoken primarily in the Republic of India.As a result of British colonial rule until Indian independence in 1947 English is an official language of India and is widely used in both spoken and literary contexts...

: "child of God") was a term used by Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...

 for Dalits. Gandhi said it was wrong to call people 'untouchable', and called them Harijans, which means children of God. It is still in wide use especially in Gandhi's home state of Gujarat.

The term can also be attributed to Dalits of Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 called the haris, who are a group of mud-hut builders.

Although Gandhi popularized the term, he was not the first person to use it. The dalit female Bhakti

Bhakti

In Hinduism Bhakti is religious devotion in the form of active involvement of a devotee in worship of the divine.Within monotheistic Hinduism, it is the love felt by the worshipper towards the personal God, a concept expressed in Hindu theology as Svayam Bhagavan.Bhakti can be used of either...

 writer Gangasati used the term to refer to herself during the Bhakti movement, a period in India that gave greater status and voice to women while challenging the legitimacy of caste

Caste system in India

The Indian caste system is a system of social stratification and social restriction in India in which communities are defined by thousands of endogamous hereditary groups called Jātis....

. This period started in the 4th century BC but is a living force in India today, flourishing particularly during India's middle ages. Gangasati lived around the 12th-14th century and wrote in the Gujurati language.

Gandhi's publications

Harijans were also several weekly newspapers published by Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...

. He created three publications, Harijan in English (from 1933 to 1948), Harijan Bandu in Gujarati

Gujarati language

Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...

 and Harijan Sevak in Hindi

Hindi

Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

. These newspapers found the Mahatma concentrating on social and economic problems.