Gopinath Mohanty’s Oriya novel Harijan (1948), recently translated into English as Harijan (2021), is widely regarded as one of the most powerful indictments of caste oppression in modern Indian literature (Mohanty). Set in urban slums inhabited by manual scavengers during the late colonial and early post-independence period, the novel traces the tragic lives of a Mehentar (a Dalit community engaged in sanitation work) family caught between entrenched caste hierarchies and limited social reforms. Through characters like Sania and others in the Mehentar basti, Mohanty exposes the brutal mechanics of social stratification: ritual pollution, untouchability, economic exploitation, internalized inferiority, and the perpetuation of Dalit exclusion by broader society. The paper argues that Harijan presents caste not merely as an external structure of domination but as an internalized “conscience” a deeply moral and psychological force that regulates behavior even when legal or economic sanctions are absent (Mohanty). Mohanty illustrates how caste conscience operates at multiple levels: the upper-caste fear of ritual contamination, the Dalit internalization of shame and self-loathing, and the tragic ambivalence of reformist gestures (Gandhian Harijan upliftment, missionary conversion, colonial courts) that ultimately reinforce rather than dismantle hierarchy. By juxtaposing the rigid caste order of urban society with broader social dynamics, Mohanty underscores caste as a historically specific ideology rather than a timeless religious essence, while simultaneously revealing its resilience against modernizing forces.