Caste and Partition

Abstract

The chapter begins with a brief description of how the autonomous Scheduled Caste (SC) movement developed in colonial Bengal, spearheaded by two communities—the Rajbansis in the north and the Namasudras in the eastern districts. It looks critically at how space was important for their social mobilisation in the early twentieth century. When that cultural habitat was threatened by the Partition, they could hardly remain unaffected. It looks at how Partition politics affected and disrupted the organised SC movement in Bengal, taking the narrative through the election of 1946, the riots in Calcutta, Noakhali, and other parts of east Bengal, the Hindu mobilisation of the Dalit, and the Communist intervention through the Tebhaga movement. It looks critically at the question of Dalit identity on the eve of Partition and the division of Dalit leadership into two rival groups on the issue of Partition and alliance with the Muslim League. It concludes that we need to understand their participation in Partition politics within the context of a complex relationship between subalternity, religion, identity, space, and political mobilisation.

Gandhiji and RSS: The Cultural Grounding of Social Representations

“…66 In the language of Gandhiji, the problem of Hindu-Muslim relations was forced to pass into the hands of God, as it was understood that there was no possibility of human control in the foreseeable future. 67 Doctorji persistently remarked that it was the Muslim rioters who initiated communal riots in various parts of India including Multan, Nagpur and Kanpur. 68 The ways in which the RSS as a cultural organisation kept itself from the uncontrollable might of the leadership, and the manner in which the entire organisational structure had been designed to moderate the role of the state democratically, safeguarded the organisation from getting entangled in contentious fascist inclinations.…”

Seeking Space in Post-Partition Bengal: Reading Kalyani Thakur Charal’s Autobiography Ami Kano Charal Likhi through a Gender and Caste Perspective

“…But the question is why her father like many other Namasudra refugees decided to inhabit at the border lands of Nadia. First of all, this geographical space conduced them to reclaim those discarded cultivated lands that they had left behind and to return again to reap at the harvest time (Bandyopadhyay & Basu Ray Chaudhury, 2014, p. 7); second, their togetherness in this border district at least brought back some sort of past ambience of their lost ‘homeland’; third, it would be conducive for them, they hoped, particularly at the initial phase of the partition, to return to their ‘homeland’ again after the communal violence was over; fourth, they thought that living at the vicinity of the border land might psychologically quench their pain of loss. Caste remained a factor in the rehabilitation-politics in West Bengal as the upper caste bhadralok refugees in 1949 resettled themselves in squatter colonies in and around Calcutta (now Kolkata) with their resources and kin-group support as well as the government’s endorsement of the rehabilitation scheme but the Dalit refugees, in a stark contrast, were meted out a completely different treatment, as having no resources they were either forced to the various transit camps or pushed to live in the outskirts of the city (Chatterjee, 2016, p. 94).…”

“…Why did these communities, now designated as the Other Backward Class, behave in such a manner? Bandyopadhyay and Basu Ray Chaudhury (2014) asserted that the local Goalas always supported the retreating Muslims than these refugees because the latter were disturbing ‘the local balance of power’ by forcefully vacating the homes and lands of the Muslims and even threatened them regularly to migrate to Pakistan (p. 7). Another reason behind this kind of discriminatory treatment exerted by not only the Goalas and Napits but also all the original inhabitants of West Bengal is the cultural antagonism and prejudice between the regions of east and west of the Padma River that is ‘no less deep than those between upper and lower castes or Hindus and Muslims’ (Chatterjee, 2016, p. 98).…”

“…20, 79) but also it cemented the platform on which the Namasudras than the other sub-castes in West Bengal mostly achieved various white-collar occupations 6 . Thus, Thakurnagar has been converted into ‘a new imagined space’ where ‘the geographically dispersed and socially divided community are trying to recover their collective self in post-Partition India’ (Bandyopadhyay & Basu Ray Chaudhury, 2014, p. 15).…”

“…4.The Matua Mahasangha which was founded by Harichand Thakur at Orakandi of Faridpur of Bangladesh in the late nineteenth century, was later organized by Guruchand Thakur in the early twentieth century (Bandyopadhyay & Basu Ray Chaudhury, 2014, p. 13).…”