Bengal, Rethinking History: Essays in Historiography

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Bengal, Rethinking History: Essays in Historiography

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~engal:

Rethinking History

Essays in Historiography

BdUild by SEKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY

MANOHAR

INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR BENGAL STUDIES

2001

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BENGAL: RETHINKING HISTORY Essays tn Htstorlograpby

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ICBS PUBUCATION NO. 29

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First published 2001 C Sekhar Bandyopadhyay 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the editor and the publisher

ISBN 81-7304-400-7 Published by Ajay Kumar Jain for Manohar Publishers & Distributors 4753/ 23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj New Delhi 110002

'T}'peset by A J Software Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd. 305 Durga Chambers 1333 D .B. Gupta Road Karol Bagh, New Delhi 110005 Printed at Rajkamal Eleetric Press B 35/9 G T Kamal Road Indl Area Delhi 110033

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A tribute

to an emtnent btstorlan ofBengal Professor Amales Trlpatbt (1921-1998)

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Contents

Contributors

9

Introduction

13

ECONOMY, CLASSES AND SOCIAL CHANGE 'East Indian Fortunes': Merchants, Companies and Conquest, 1700-1800: An Exercise

in Historiography

39

LAK.sHMI SUBRAMANIAN

Peasant and Tribal Movements in Colonial Bengal: A Historiographic Overview SAN)UKTA DAS GUPTA

65

Bengal Fishers and Fisheries: A Historiographic Essay Bos PoKJWtr, Pm!R REEvEs and JOHN McGUUU!

93

Towards a 'Total History' of Bengal Labour AlyAN DI! HAAN

119

Great Men Waking: Paradigms in the Historiography of the Bengal Renaissance BRIAN A. HATOIER

135

SOCIAL IDENTITIES AND POLITICS Being and Becoming a Muslim: A Historiographic Perspective on the Search for Muslim Identity in Bengal 167

AslM ROY

Differentiation and Transience: History of Caste, Power and Identity in Bengal 231

S!!KHAR BANDYOPADHYAY

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CONTENTS

Histories of Betrayal: Patriarchy, Class and Nation SAMJTA SEN

259

Between Monolith and Fragment: A Note on the Historiography of Nationalism in Bengal SUGATA Bose

283

The Decline, Revival and Fall of Bhadralok Influence in the 1940s: A Historiographic Review

297

)OYA CHA1T£1\JI

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Contributors

SEKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY teaches South Asian History at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the author of Caste, Poltttcs and the Raj· Bengal 1872-1937 (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co. 1990) and Caste, Protest and ldenttty in Colonial India: 1be Namasudras of Bengal, 1872-1947 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997). He has also edited (with Suranjan Das) Caste and Communal Polutcs in South Asia (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchl & Co. 1993) and (with A. Dasgupta and W. van Schendel) Bengal: Communities, Development and States (New Delhi: Manohar, 1994). His current research interest is In the Transfer of Power and Partition and their impact on identity fonnatlon and popular politics. SuGATA Bos!! is currently the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University. Previously he was Professor of History and Diplomacy and Director, Center of South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies at Tufts University. He has published extensively on agrarian conditions and nationalism in the Bengal region. His major publications are: Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Polittcs 1919-194 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pre.ss, 1986), 1be New Cambridge History of India: Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and (with Ayesha Jalal) Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Polttical F.conomy (Pelhi: Oxford University Press, 1997). ]OYA CHATTERJI, for some time a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, is now a Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Bengal Divided: Hindu Communaltsm and Partition, 1932-1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and is currently working on a second monograph on the implications of Partition for society

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10

CONTIUBUTORS

and politics in Bengal. In 1998 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Fellowship in support of her work on East Bengal refugees. SANJUKTA DAS GUPTA is a Lecturer in History at Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta. Her research interest is in the history of tribes in eastern India. She is currently finishing her doctoral dissertation at Calcutta University on 'A Middle Indian Tribe in Transition: the Ho of Singhbhum, 1821-1932'. She has published journal articles and book reviews. ARJAN OE HAAN was at the Poverty Research Unit, University of Sussex, until the end of 1998; since then he has been Social Development Adviser at the British Department for International Development. He is the author of Unsettled Settlers: Mtgrant Worken and Industrial Capttaltsm tn Calcutf!l (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994; and Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co., 1996). He has also edited (with Sarnita Sen) A Casefor Labour Htstory: Tb'ejute Industry tn Eastern Indta (Calcutta, K.P. Bagchi & Co., 1999). BRIAN A. HATCHER is Associate Professor, Religion and Humanities and Chair of the Religion Department at Illinois Wesleyan University, in Bloomington, Illinois. He is the author of Idioms of Improvement: Vidyasagar and Cultural Encounter tn Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996) and Eclectictsm and Modern Htndu Discourse (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). His current research focuses on the activities of Sanskrit pundits in colonial Bengal. McGUIRE is the Director of the South Asia Research Unit, Curtin University of Technology. He teaches in history and political economy, and researches problems relating to colonialism and postcolonlalism, and the state in India. He has published books, essays and articles on questions such as the role of the bhadralok in Calcutta in the nineteenth century; India and the world economy in the latter part of the nineteenth century; the role of precious metals, the British Imperial State and the world economy; the rise of the BJP and the question of governance; and the history of ftsheries in colonial Bengal.

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CONTRIBtrrORS

BoB PoKllANI" is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology in the School of Social Sciences and Deputy Director of the South Asia Research Unit within the John Curtin International Institute at Curtin. He has worked extensively on the historical ethnography of South Asia, panicularly Bengal, on fisheries and has done fieldwork on contemporary fishing communities in Bangladesh. His current project, in collaboration with Peter Reeves of the National University of Singapore, is on globalizing production in Bangladesh's export-oriented brackishwater shrimp indusny. PEmt RmMs is presently Co-ordinator of the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore; before that he was a member of the South Asia Research Unit at Curtin University of Technology. He has been engaged in the study of historical aspects of fisheries in colonial and postcolonial India since the late 1980s, as a member of the team at SARU. His earlier work was concerned with the agrarian and political history of Uttar Pradesh. The main publications from that were Sleeman tn Oudh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), HandbooktoElecttonsin UP, 1921-52(NewDelhi: Manohar, 1976) and Landlords and Governments tn Uttar Pradesh: a study of their relaltons unttl zamtndarl aboltt1on (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991).

As1M Rov, the former Director of Asia Centre, University of Tasmania, is currently a senior academic in the School of History and Classics of the same University, where he teaches history and politics of South Asia. A keen student of Islamic developments in South Asia, with special reference to the Bengali-speaking regions of India and Bangladesh, he has written on various aspects of historical developments of Islam and Muslims in the region. His major monographs include: 7be Islamic Syncrettsttc Tradttton tn Bengal (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983 with a special South Asian edition, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1987); Islam tn South Asia: A Regional Perspective (New Delhi: South Asia Publishers, 1996); and edited (with Howard Brasted) Islam tn History and Poltttcs: South Asian Perspectives (South Asia, Vol. XXII, Special Issue, 1999).

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COITTRIBt.rrORS

SAMrrA SEN is Reader in the Department of History, Calcutta University. She is the author of Women and Labour in Late Colontal India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and editor with A . de Haan of A Casefor Labour Htstory: Tbe jute Industry in Eastern Indta (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co., 1999). Her recent research interests include gender and labour in South Asia. She is also actively involved in the Indian women's movement since 1982-3. LAKsHMI SUBRAMANIAN is Reader in the Dep3rtment of History, Calcutta University. She is the author of Indigenous Capttal and Imperial Expansion: Bombay, Surat and the West Coast (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996) and Medieval Seafarers (Delhi: Roll Books, 1998), and editor with Rudrangshu Mukherji of Poltttcs and Trade tn the Indian Ocean: Essays tn Honour of Asbtn Dasgupta (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). More recently she has been doing research on 'Nationalism and the Performing Arts' and has published on this.

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Introduction

At the beginning of the twenty-first century in a market-driven postmodern world, historians practise their craft in very different ways, compared to what they did say twenty-five years ago. Postmodern relativism has not only de-centred but also destabilised history, by questioning the authenticity of the past and the facticity of facts. Doubts have been raised about a pure 'objective history', as the past can be described and re-described in many ways, so that history as a written discourse can be deconstructed like any other text. Hayden White, who initiated the 'linguistic tum' in 'history, has argued that history is nothing but 'a form of fictionmaking'.1 In such an environment of relativism and scepticism, all 'certaintist discourses',1 like humanism, liberalism or Marxism, have been questioned. We have moved from the older metanarratives of nationalism and class struggle to a search for the 'small voices of history'. We have started questioning the essentialism of categories like caste, class or nation and are talking about fleeting solidarities and protean identities, 'Imagining' India or the 'construction' of communalism are now favoured themes for serious history writing on South Asia. Moreover, in an age when history is frequently used in the service of politics and historians not only write from their various ideological vantage •1 wish to thank the committee members of the International Centre for Benjpl Studies, more pattlcularly Abhijit Dasgupta and Willem van Schendel, for encouraging me to undertake this project. I also wish to thank all the contributors for their valuable time and enthusiasm. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience and also a learning process for me, in many respects-intellectual as well as personal. If this book can help a new researcher or raise a refreshing new debate, its purpose will be more than fulfilled. 1 Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays tn Cultural Crtt1ctsm (Baltimore, 1978), p. 122. 2 I have borrowed this expression from Keith Jenkins, Re-tbtnktng History (London and New York, 1991), p . 6o.

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BENGAL: RETHINKING HISTORY

points, but also get directly involved in those political enterprises, history writing ls a profoundly political project. There ls now no unpositioned site of historical knowledge. Sceptics of these new approaches are not rare either; nor are they less vocal in expressing their concerns about this 'anarchic view of history' marked by a 'flight from facts'. Occasionally we hear their cynicism about the elision of boundaries between history and philosophy or between history and literature. When the past is deprived of reality and history of any truth, what emerges,· according to them, ls 'fictional history'.' But in between the older positivism or empiricism that still searches for 'truth' and the extreme postmodern narrativist view that denies the fixity of historical realism, there remains a vast middle ground where significant contributions have been made in the last twenty-five years. As Perez Zagorin has observed recently, history has survived the onslaught of postmodemism.• We have arrived at what Brian Fay has called the 'dialectical middle ground',5 where all historians agree to the constructivist or perspectival nature of historical narratives, which cannot be faithful representations of the past in the narrow empirical sense. Representation of the past, we all agree, ls not a mirror image of the past, but that does not mean that all historical narratives are fictional. Historical narratives can be true in the same way as any other non-fictional discursive texts can be true. That a true interpretation has to be an absolute interpretation ls false; there can be multiplicity of interpretations. And that does not reduce the significance of history writing as an important cognitive enterprise which produces verifiable knowledge about our past. History, therefore, is no longer the same as it was twenty-five years ago; it now definitely has a new face. If we look at Indian ' See, Gertrude Himmelfarb, 'Telling it as you like it: Post-modernist history and the flight from fact', nmes Lttemry Supplement, 16 October 1992, pp. 12-15; a more recent aitque is Perez Zagorin, 'History, the Referrent and Narrative: Reflections on Postmodemism Now', Htstory and 1beory, Vol. 38, No. 1, February 1999, pp. 1-24. ~Perez Zagorln, 'History, the Referrent and Narrative', ibid. 'Brian Fay, 'lntroductlon', In Brian Pay, et.al. (eds.), Htst-Oryand7beory: Contemporary Readtnas (Oxford, 1998), p. 10.

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INTRODUCTION

historiography, this new historical literature recognises that there cannot be history without 'facts' and 'evidence'; but there Is also a recognition of the inherent subjectivity of historical interpretation, iiod therefore, a conscious po.$itioning of the historian within the broader historiographic context. History writing in India continues to evince a lingering faith in the po.$t-Enlightenment concepts of rationalism, modernity and progress. A recent bold rejection of po.$ttnodem relativism may be seen in Sumit Sarkar's WrlUng Socuu Htstory, where he warns us against the hazards of 'a repudiation of Enlightenment as a bloc'.6 One of the professed aiJm of S.N. Mukherjee's new book Citizen Htstorlan Is 'to show' the younger generation 'what can still be done with the older tools · of history'. For him, '[e}mptrlcal data are essential for scientific research'. But this preoccupation with 'facts' Is not the narrow 'empiricism' of the nineteenth century. 7 He would perhaps argue with Thomas Haskell and others in his profession in India, that 'objectivity Is not neutrality'. The 'conception of objectivity ... is compatible with strong political commitment . . . it recognises that scholars are as passionate and as likely to be driven by interest as those they write about'. 8 Side by side with the epistemological shifts, there have also been some important methodological innovations. Postmodern scepticism has compelled historians to question critically their source materials. We all agree today with Roger Chartier that it Is the historian who gives voice to the silence of the archives. Documents are studied these days not just for the information they provide; they are 'studied in themselves for their discursive and material organisation, their conditions of production, and their strategic utilisation'.9 What Is more important, historians now consciously search for alternative voices. In addition to the 6 Sumit

Sarkar, Wrll1ns Social Htst-Ory (Delhi, 1997), p. 107 and passim. 7 S.N. Mukherjee, CUt.zen Historian: Explorations tn Htstorlgrapby (New Delhi, 1996), pp. xi, xiv. 1 Thomas Haskell, 'Objectivity Is not Neutrality: Rhetoric versus Practice in Peter Novlclances, p. 52. 19 Sunil Sen, Agrarian Struggle tn Bengal, 19464 7 (New Delhi, 1972).

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Bl!NGAL: RE'llflNKING HIS'IORY

economic conditions. Rebellions were either a protest against rent or high landlordism or arose out of a concern for occupancy status or the share of the produce. Such studies also assumed that peasants had no political consciousness of their own; it was developed by political parties and non-peasant leaders. Such interpretations, ironically, had points of commonality with the colonial discourse, which viewed the peasantry as simple, poor and ignorant, unaware of the cause of their poverty, and always instigated by others. With the launch of the Subaltern Studies collective in the early 1980s, significant advances have, however, been made in restoring the history of subaltern groups, disrupting both the nationalist narrative that considered all colonial revolts as events in the becoming of the Indian nation, and contesting the older Marxist accounts of rebellions as preludes to the emergence of full-fledged class consciousness. Ranajit Guha's Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency tn Colontal Indtd"' warned us against the tendency of treating peasant movements as only the prehistory of Indian nationalism. He rejected that point of view which interpreted peasant movements as spontaneous uprisings and characterised them as prepolitical; he asserted that peasant notion of domination was primarily of a political nature, economic exploitation being an issue among others. Following Antonio Gramsci's ideas as set out in his famous 'Notes on Italian History',31 Guha and others of the Subaltemist historians have suggested that colonial and postcolonial South Asian society can be studied in a framework of power relationships in which the elite and subaltern classes inhabit two distinct and relatively autonomous domains of existence and consciousness. Peasants are thus seen in these narratives as makers of their own rebellion, having their own political consciousness derived from their own traditions, independent of outside leadership. Resistance was that aspect of power relations through which the peasantry expressed its distinct and autonomous identity. (Delhi, 1983). Antonio Gramsci, SelectJons from tbe Prison Notebooks of .Antoni Gmmscl, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London, 1971), pp. 52-120. 20

21

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PEASANT AND 1lUBAL MOVEMENTS

Guha delineated structural similarities between disparate movements and identified six different strands or 'elementary aspects' of rebel peasant consciousness: negation, modality ambiguity, solidarity, transmission, and territoriality. The insurgent consciousness was, in the first place, a negative consciousness, as the rebel peasant learnt to recognise himself not through his own attributes, but through attributes of the dominant group that he lacked. During rebellion, this negative consciousness found expression through the peasants' attempt to appropriate for themselves the signs of authority of those who dominate them. Secondly, peasant rebellions in their initial stage involved a degree of ambiguity; signs of rebellion were at first misinterpreted by the colonial authority as increases in crime (rebellions differed from crime in that they were invariably communal and public events). Guha identified certain modalities of insurgency, which once distinguished from common crime exhibited its identity as violence that is public, collective, destructive and total. He further delineated four forms of struggle, wrecking, burning, eating and looting, as the most conspicuous and destructive. Fourth, the self-definition of the insurgent peasants lay In their solidarity, usually expressed in terms of ethnicity, kinship, religion and class awareness. The message of rebellion was disseminated for the dual purpose of informing and mobilising, through a variety of verbal and non-verbal means, a process Guha termed transmission. Finally Guha showed that peasant rebellions were characterised by their inability to spread beyond a certain geographical space and remaining localised affairs. This was determined both negatively, by the rebel's perception of the geographical spread of the authority of the dominant group, and positively by the notion of ethnic space occupied by the insurgent community. Guha's approach undoubtedly allowed a richer understanding of peasant resistance. However, he did not attempt to trace the evolution of such resistance over time. The structure of domination and subordination is only marginally analysed, leaving unintelligible in many cases the beginning of the insurgence. Such an analysis moreover tends to reify the insurgent consciousness and ignore the elements of temporality in peasant consciousness and the emergence of-new attributes in it. Partha Chatterjee, another scholar of the Subaltern collective,

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similarly refutes that political actions of the peasantry were 'primordial', 'pre-political', inational or spontaneous. He believes it is necessary to look on peasant rebellion as '. . . informed by its own consciousness, shaped by centuries of its.own political history, structured by distinct conceptions of power and morality, and attempting to come to terms with·and act within wholly new contexts of class suuggie.'22 While Guba asserted that the struaure of peasant consciousness was bound together by the sense of community, he did not provide, as Chatterjee points out, a theoretical conceptualisation of the community as a formal construct. 23 Challenging earlier attempts to explain all peasant resistance in terms of 'essential class interest', Chatterjee asserts that the Indian peasantry generally conceptualised relationships of power In terms of the idea of community. There was a consciousness of communal rights and communal solidarity among the members. In such a community, 'each individual conducts himself only as a link, as a member of the community proprietor or possessor'. :w Political power is organised as the authority of the entire collectivity. Chatterjee uses the concept 'communal mode of power' to explain communal solidarity and the politically autonomous character of the agricultural community where differentiations were not sharp. The tension between the peasant community of East Bengal, predominantly comprising Muslims, and the state, dominated by landlords, moneylenders and urban traders led to riots between 1926 and 1935. In such riots the ideology which shaped and gave meaning to the various collective acts of the peasantry was fundamentally reltgtous. The very nature of peasant consciousness, the apparently consistent unification of an entire set of beliefs about nature and about men in the collective and active mind of the peasantry, Is religious. Religion to such a community provides

22 Partha

Chatterjee, 'The Colonial State and Peasant Resistance in Bengal 1920-1947', Past and Present, Vol. 110, February 1986, p. 202. 23 Partha Chatterjee, 'For an Indian History of Peasant Struggles', Social Sctenttst, Vol. 16: 11, November 1988, p. 12. 2• Partha Chatterjee, 'Agrarian Relations and Communalism in Bengal, 1926-1935', in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies I: Wrlttngs on South ~n Htstory and Society (Delhi, 1982), p. 12.

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PEASANT AND 11UBAL MOVEMJ!NI'S

an ontology, an epistemology as well as practlcal code of ethics, including political ethics. When this community acts politically, the symbolic meaning of particular acts-.NSIENCE

Bengal between the tenth and the eleventh centuries. It was the resurgence of Brahmanism under the Sen-Barman hegemony in the eleventh-thirteenth century that led to the fonnalisation of varna organisation in Bengal, rigorously structured by a number of orthodox smrltt/raras, including the Sen king Ballala Sen himself, who is well-known for introducing lrulmmn as another form of social differentiation.31 But this orthodox reaction does not seem to have been very succeMful in implementing the rigours of caste system in Bengal-at least the thirteenth century Puranas tell us so. It was in the thirteenth century, when Islam was spreading in the frontier regions of Bengal (as Richard Eaton has shown in a recent study) that peasants at the periphery of vama society adopted it as the religion of the plough.ll Later in the fifteenth century, the Bhakti movement initiated in Bengal by Sri Chaitanya had a similar corrosive effect on caste. Partha Chatterjee has discussed the theoretical implications of this subversive role of Bhakti,'' while Rarnakanta Chakrabany's magnum opus 9n Bengal Vaishnavism has shown how its ideology was offering a 'theological platform whereupon the highest and the lowest might stand with equal rights. . . .' There had been a vigorous conservative attempt, since the Navyasmrltt in the fifteenth-sixteenth century, to reinforce the disciplines of caste. Under this influence the dominant Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition became more orthodox, but side by side, as Chakrabarty has chronicled, there was also the rise, mainly in the eighteenth century, of various 'deviant orders' or Sahajiya Vaishnava cults under non-Brahman gurus, who successfully interrogated the ideology of hierarchy.,. Niharranjan Ray, BangaJtr Jttbas, Adt Parba, Vol. I (in Bengali) (originally pub. 1949; rep., Calcutta, 1980), pp. 2n-80, 296-306; this book is now available in English translation: History of the Bengali People, translated by John W. Wood (Calcutta, 1994). JJ Richard Eaton, 1be Rise ofIslam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1993). ia Partha Chatterjee, •caste and Subaltern Consciousness', in R. Guha (ed.), Suballern Studies Vl: Writings on South Astan History and Society (Delhi, 1989), pp. 186-94. ~ Ramakanta Chakrabany, Vatsbnavtsm tn Bengal (Calcutta, 1985), pp. 76-8 and passim. 31

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Vaishnavism in different phases and in various forms has contributed to the generation of a self-consciousness among the common people, the non-elite of Bengal. They could develop self-confidence at times of calamity through the collective singing of devotional songs or kirtans. Congregational singing of devotional songs had a long tradition in Bengal, as Hitesranjan Sanyal's work on the history of Bengali Kirtans tells us. 35 Sanyal deals not only with their philosophical content but also shows the social significance of this collective ritual in the everyday life of the common people. The practice existed even before Sri Chaitanya popularised it in the sixteenth century, though in the post-Chaitanya period it became much more open and widely practised. M people high and low gathered in assemblies, sang and danced together, all social distinctions were forgotten. The Kirtan, in other words, had a great levelling effect and was not liked by the orthodox custodians of social hierarchy. It also fostered among participants a sense of cooperation and camraderie, and thus gave them confidence and courage to face difficult times collectively. Pre-colonial Bengali society was never so rigidly structured or hopelessly immobile, as was textualised by some of the conservative medieval smrlNkaras, whom the British Orientalists studied so diligently. The literary evidence of the Mangalakavya, pertaining to the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries, would also bear this out. This literary evidence clearly shows that medieval Bengali society was segmented and hierarchised, but never strictly segregated. For example, the Chandalas, the proverbial outcasts of traditional India, are described in the Cband,mangala as the rightful dwellers of the city; they were not treated as antebasi or those who lived outside or at the edges of human habitation, as enjoined by Manu. 36 The other aspect of pre-colonial Bengali " Hitesranjan Sanyal, Bang/a Klrtaner /Nbas (History of Bengali Kirtan) (Calcutta, 1989). l6 See for example, Mukundaram, Cbandlmanga/, edited by Sukumar Sen (New Delhi, 1975), pp. 77-81; Vljaya Gupta, Manasamansa/, edited by Basanta Kumar Bhattacharya (Calcutta, n.d.), pp. 4, 59-61; Bharatchandra, Annadamanga/, in Brojendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das (ed.), Bbara1cbandra Grantbaball (Calcutta, 3rd edn., 1369 es), pp. 170.1.

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DIFl'EREN'l1ATION AND TRANSIENCE

society which Niharranjan Ray studied was the establishment of linkages between caste and class as early as the Gupta period, i.e., between the fourth and the sixth centuries AD. As the settled agricultural economy expanded, people involved in social production or providing menial labour began to lose status to those providing intellectual labour, viz., the priests (Brahmans), clerks (Kayasthas) and physicians (Baidyas). 37 This secular aspect of caste formation was further analysed in Soc1al Mobtltty tn Bengal by Hitesranjan Sanyal, which appeared in 1981. In the introduction Sanyal showed how as a result of occupational specialisation, and not just ritual differentiation, subcastes were emerging in pre-colonial Bengal through a constant process of fusion and fission. This was a society which permitted occupational mobility in keeping with the changes in the opportunity structure. Cultivation of waste land, technological innovations, and commercial success resulted in social mobility that could be incorporated into the structure of the society. Although such subcastes 'were knit together in a system of cooperation and interdependence', Sanyal argued, the high ritual rank of the upper castes 'was related to the material power and prosperity they represented' " Sanyal's second argument about the correlation between ritual rank and material power negates, however, his first argument about 'co-operation and interdependence'. If we take his first argument and look at the situation from below, 'co-operation and interdependence' would appear as acts of subordination and compulsion, not volition, and therefore products of specific relations of power. This brings us to the aspect of power. Long before the much acclaimed 'Hollow Crown' thesis was offered by Nicholas Dirks about the power of the pre-colonial kings, Ronald Inden had touched upon this subject in relation to the medieval Hindu chiefdoms in Bengal. In a 1967 article, he had showed, on the basis of the evidence of the Mangalakavya, that the tenitorial chiefs or Rajas of Bengal and below them the zarnindars, whose power was seldom restrained by interference "Niham.njail Ray, BanlJallr /Nbas, pp. 324-5. it Hitesranjan Sanyal, Soctal Mobtllty In Bengal (Calcuna, 1981), pp. 18-

19, 26.

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from the central state, ruled over the samajas or the hierarchy of castes living within their territories. Each caste had its own council whk.h settled caste and family disputes. The Raja was the headman of his own caste council, as well as the head of all the councils in his chiefdom. He provided protection for his subjects, maintained law and order, arranged for the colonisation of new lands, patronised the goods and services of the artisan and service castes, settled caste and other disputes, and thus enforced the appropriate codes of social and moral behaviour.'9 Such codes of conduct or jattdharma, as they were called, were prescribed for each group according to their rank, as Inden argued in his subsequent book. 40 Every individual had to perform them in real life, any departure causing a fall from the ascribed rank. The Brahman, by virtue of his monopoly over scriptural knowiedge, was regarded as the guardian of moral health of the society. But his fiat meant nothing unless backed by the power of the Raja. It was on this 'Raja-pundit nexus' that the power structure of caste society actually depended in pre-colonial Bengal.41 The system continued into the early colonial period, when gradually it was replaced by its more modern variant, a new institution called daJ (social factions), which S.N. Mukherjee's research brought our attention to.42 The dais, with their networks sttetching from metropolitan Calcutta far into the interior of the province, performed the same functions of social control as the older samajas, with their reach now being regional rather than local or territorial. Advised by knowledgeable pundits, the powerful dalapat1s, many of whom were the wealthy zamindars or the new rich of Calcutta, exerted an informal but substantive control over the realms of caste rules and customary laws, the colonial ~Ronald

Inden, 'The Hindu Chiefdom in Middle Bengali Literature', in Edward C. Dimack Jr. (ed.), Bengal: Literature and History (East Lansing, Michigan, 1967) . .., Ronald Inden, Marriage and Rank tn Bengalt Culture (New Deihl, 1976). " For more details on this aspect, see S. Bandyopadhyay, 'Caste, Class and Culture in Colonial·India', Indian History Congress, Sym~ia Papers 1 (Delhi, 1992). • 2 S.N. Mukhetjee, Calcutta: Mytbs and History (Calcutta, 1971).

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courts seldom trying to arrogate this authority. As the colonial state tolerated such indigenous focuses of power, they continued till about the end of the nineteenth century. And then, only gradually, with the development of a capitalist economy, such networks of relationships started breaking down. 'Yet this process of disintegration,' as John McGuire has argued, 'was long and complex.•e The Dumontian theory of 'encompassing the contrary' hardly stands in the face of such findings on pre-colonial and early colonial Bengal. But this does not mean that the religious and cultural aspects were not important-indeed this was a social situation where the sacred and the profane were so intimately intertwined that it was difficult to differentiate one from the other. The dominant power of the religious ideology of caste can be noticed in its obvious influence on tribal communities on the periphery of settled varna society. As mentioned earlier, a constant interaction between the two cultures transformed both. While the varna system became less rigid, the tribes also became 'Hinduised'a process which anthropologist Nirmal Kumar Bose has described as the 'Hindu method of tribal absorption'."' But this process too had an aspect of power. In a number of cases, the tribal leaders, after acquisition of land rights and appropriation of political power through state formation, committed themselves to the process of 'Hinduisation' in order to legitimise their new authority and improve their status in caste society. They patronised Brahmans and the latter provided religious sanction for their elevated social status. The ideal examples of this process of acculturation in the early colonial period are the Koch/Rajbansis of North Bengal, studied by Shinkichi Taniguchi and others,45 and the Bhumij-Kshatriyas of Purulia and the adjacent areas of Singbhum e John McGuire, 7be Malnng ofa Colonial Mtnd: A Quantttaltve Study of the Bbadralok In Calcutta, 1857-1885 (Canberra, 1983), p. 35. " Nirmal Kumar Bose, 'The Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption', Science and Culture, Vol. 8, 1941, pp. 188-98. 45 S. Taniguchi, 'The Rajbanshl Community and the Changing Structure of Land Tenure in the Koch Bihar Princely State', in S. Taniguchi, et al. ' (eds.), Econcmlc Changes and Social Transformatlcn In Modern and Contemporary South Asta (Tokyo, 1994).

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district, investigated by Surajit Sinha. 46 However, we find that such transformation was never complete or universal, and residues of tribal culture continued to exist in religious customs and social behaviour. The changes of the colonial period, or more precisely the impact of colonial rule on the structure of Bengali caste society, have been the subject of a more intense debate among historians. Studies on colonial society began with Nirmal Kumar Bose's Htndu SamajerGaran published in 1949.47 Bose thought that the impact was fundamental in one sense: while the pre-colonial caste society was non-competitive and based on cooperative economic relations, colonial rule brought in competition and conflict. To what extent pre-colonial society was non-competitive or nondiscordant is a problematic that we have discussed, and it certainly needs more probing. But colonial rule apparently created more opportunities for diffusion of wealth and power across caste lines. Land became a marketable commodity; education and public employment were thrown open to talent; and commercial opportunities were opened when European Companies sought Indian collaborators. In other words, colonial rule created more opportunities for social mobility-a theme which was further developed by Hitesranjan Sanyal.48 He too started from the premise, as noticed earlier, of a non-competitive pre-colonial society, but developed the theme of social mobility through intensive case studies of specific caste groups, such as the trading Tilis, the pastoral Gops and the agricultural Mahishyas. Following the Srinivas model of 'Sanskritisation', he showed how up and pushing families of these castes patronised Brahmans, constructed temples, and adopted other ritual symbols in order to legitimise their new wealth and status. Since then, individual case studies on socially mobile castes and work on the general impact of colonial rule on Bengali caste society have proliferated, with 41 S.

Sinhll, 'The Media and Nature of Hindu-Bhumlj Interactions', journal of tbe As1al1c Soc~ty. Utters and Science, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, 1957; 'BhumljKshatriya Social Movement in South Manbhum', Bullet1n oftbe Deparmumt ofAnlbropology, Vol. VIII, No. 2, July 1959. 47 Hindu Samajer Garan is available in English translation: 1be srructure ofHindu Soc~ty. translated by Andre Betellle (New Delhi, 1975). 41 H. Sanyal, Soc1al Mobility In lJen&al.

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contributions from a wide range of scholars, with varied ideological orientations.~ While Ninnal Kumar Bose talked about changes in the material context of caste during the colonial period, he also emphasised that these changes were of a very limited nature. Access to higher professions or greater opportunities of life was restrieted to the upper stratum, the three higher castes of Bengal-the Brahman, Kayastha and Baidya. In other words, social mobility generated by colonial rule, although it was not totally fietional, was never-· theless very restrieted.~ This important position of Niimal Bose was later corroborated by another seminal study on the economic structure of rural Bengal during the British period, by sociologist Ramkrishna Mukherjee. He shovied that the caste system continued into the colonial period not only because the early colonial administrators patronised Brahmanism for their own political benefits. The system survived because It could dovetail into the new economic structure that emerged under British rule. In his threefold classification of colonial rural society, the precolonial 'usurper castes' who previously lived on taxes and tribute, moved into the new class of wealthy 'landholders and supervisory farmers'; the former 'producing castes' fitted into the new class

49

'A! may mention here Tanlguchi's work referred to earlier; also,

Jyotirmoyee Sarma, Caste Dynamics among the Bengali Hindus (Calcutta, 1980); Amitabha Mukhopadhyay,jatlbhe~tba 0 Unlsb Sataker Bangall Samaj (Caste system and the nineteenth century Bengali society) (Calcutta, 1981); Narendranath Bhattacharya, Bbamttyajattvarna Pratba Ondian castevama system) (Calcutta, 1987); Swaraj Basu, 'The Rajbansis of North Bengal: A Srudy of a Caste Movement, 1910.1947', Ph.D. thesis, Calcutta University, 1993; Sibsankar Mukherjee, 'The social role of a caste association', 1be Indian Economic and Social History ReW!w, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1994, pp. 89100; Smriti Kumar Sarkar, 'Caste, Occupation and Social Mobility: A Study of the Kansans of Colonial Bengal', and Ratan Lal Chakraborty, 'A Caste Movement in Mymensingh', [a study of the Bhuimalis), both articles in S. Bandyopadhyay, et al. (eds.), Bengal: Communities, Development and States (New Delhi, 1994); and also my own book referred to earlier, caste, Protest and Identity tn Colonial India; 1be Namasudras of Bengal, 18721947. '° 1n this regard, see particularly Bose's 'Some Aspects of Caste in Bengal', in Milton Singer (ed.), Traditional India: Structure and Change (Philadelphia, 1959).

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of 'self-working artisans, peasants and ttaders' and the previous 'serving castes' could find place only at the bottom, in the class of 'sharecroppers and agricultural labourers•.si One problem with Mukherjee's theory Is that it does not take into account the differential Impacts of colonial rule on the members of the same caste. But its major significance is that it indicates the limited nature of change in the material context of caste during the British period. This finding receives further substantiation in other researches based on the census reports of the early twentieth century (1901-31). The census occupation data may be taken as indicators of certain broad trends; but not certainly as an exact representation of reallty.s2 Such words of caution notwithstanding, the data for Bengal show overwhelmingly that social mobility of this period was very limited and rarely was there a movement from the bottom up. Sizeable sections of the population could still be found in their hereditary caste occupations, Implying a differential Impact of development. Therefore, If there was restrained mobility, It was certainly individual and not corporate, and as a result, class lines cut across caste boundaries.s' SOCIAL MOBILITY AND PROTEST

Social mobility in various degrees and forms was present in Bengal social life since pre-colonial times, as Hltesranjan Sanyal has shown. Indeed, he has argued that the caste system could survive for such a long time because of this inner dynamism and ability to accommodate upward social mobility and thereby absorb tensions from below.s< Colonial rule, by opening up English 51

Ramkrishna Mukherjee, 7be Dynamics of a Rum/ Society: A Study of tbe Economic Structure m Bengal VU/ase (Berlin, 1957), pp. 80-102 and

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" Fo r more discussio n on the hazards of using census data for such , purposes, see Frank F. Conlon, 'The census of India as a Source for the Historical Study of Religion and Caste', in N. Gerald Barrier (ed.), 1be Census mBritish India; New Perspectives (New Delhi, 1981). ,~ See for details, S. Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Poltttcs and tbe Raj, pp. 95-

130. 14

Hitesranjan Sanyal, Soctal Moblltty m Bengal, pp. 27, 33-64.

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education and creating some new opportunities in public employment and prof~ions, made the proc~ more widespread and perhaps relatively easy. What now became alm~t ubiquitous, was a desire to move up the social ladder and to have that mobility legitimated through a recognition in the decennial census reports. The colonial state encouraged such tendencies through its policy of 'protective discrimination'. Apart from questionable altruistic motives, it had a clear political agenda too. A growingly unpopular colonial rule could easily be legitimised through the support of the lower castes, ss at a time when nationalism was in the grips of a powerful bhadralok, belonging primarily, but not exclusively, to the three upper ca.stes.S6 Exclusive caste associations, In place of the earlier multi-caste dais, therefore began to proliferate during this period, with the specific purposes of organising selfimprovement, as also sharing power within the ambit of the new colonial institutions. As devolution of power started gradually from 1909, for many of these organisations of the 'depressed classes', as they were now known 1n official parlance, separate caste representation became a non-negotiable minimum demand. 57 But what really were the motivations behind these organised caste movements of the early twentieth century? Was it aspiration for higher status and power sharing in institutional politics? Or " For detailed discussion on caste and the protective discrimination policies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see S. Bandyopadhyay, Coste, PoltNcs and the Raj, pp. 52-84. "Ultirnately,J.H. Broomfield's theory ofbhadi;ilok domination of Bengali nationalism has come to stay. Various later works, written fom a variety of ideological vantage points, have all demonstrated that throughout the twentieth century, nationalist politics in Bengal was dominated by the bhadralok who belonged mainly, though not exclusively, to Brahman, Kayastha and Baidya castes. See, J.H. Broomfield, EIUe Conjltct tn a Plum/ Soctety: Twentieth Certtury Bengal (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968); Leonard A. Gordon, Bengal: 1be Nationalist Movement, 1876-1940 (New York, London, 1974); Sumit Sarkar, Swadesbt Movement tn Bengal 1903-1908 (New Delhi, 19n); Raja! K. Ray, Soctal Conjltct and Poltltcal Unrest tn Bengal, 1875-1927 (Delhi, 1984); Joya Chatterji, Bengdl Dtvlded: Htndu communaltsm and parttlton, 1932-47 (Gambridge, 1995). j ' For a comprehensive survey of organised 'depressed classes' politics until 1937, see S. Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Po/mes and the Raf, pp. 142-84.

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was it protest against the inequities and, more particularly, the ideologies of caste system? Opinion on the depressed classes movements that took place across the subcontinent is divided on this issue. One group of historians thinks that it was the social and political aspirations of the socially mobile groups which resulted in such movements. They used caste identity as political capital to gain advantage in the newly-emerging institutional political structure of colonial India. Caste as a result got ethnicised. 58 Others, however, feel that these were protests against the ideology of hierarchy and monopoly of power that caste system sanctioned. And therefore, these were means to subvert the status quo, or 'anti-systemic movements' that sought to transform the structure of Indian society." Bengal has had her share of this historical debate. Most general studies on caste movements in Bengal followed the usual social mobility model, 60 that originated from Srinivas's theory of 'Sanskritisation' and 'Westernisation'. Limited social mobility, it is argued, led to the organisation of caste associations which sought to legitimise their new position by publishing

sa See, for example, F.G. Bailey, Caste and Economic Front#e1" (Delhi, 1958), p.vii; R.L. Hardgrave Jr., 1be Nadars of Tamllnad (Bombay, 1969), p. 263; E. lelllot, 'Leaming the Use of Political Means: The Mahars .of Maharashtra', in R. Kothari (ed.), Caste lnlndianPolfltcs(New Delhi, 1973), p. 39; D. Washbrook, 'The Development of Caste Organisation in South India, 1880 to 1925', in CJ. Baker and D.A. Washbrook, South India: Polfltcal InstflUllons and Polfltca/ Cbanse, 1880-1940 (Delhi, 1975), pp. 176-7). st See, for example, K. Gough, 'Indian Nationalism and Ethnic Freedom', in David Bidney (ed.), 1be Concept ofFreedom tn .Anthropology ('fhe Hague, 1963), pp. 174-5; H.Jha, 'Lower Caste Peasants and Upper Caste Zamindars in Bihar (1921-1925): An Analysis of Sanskritisation and Contradiction between the two Groups', 1be Indian Economic and Soctaf. History Review, Vol. XIV, No. 4, 1977, p. 56; G. Pandey, 'Rallying Round the Cow: Sectarian Strife in the Bhojpuri Region, c. 1888-1917', in R. Guh2 (ed.), Subaltern Studies II: Writings on South .Asian History and Society (Delhi, 1983), pp. 71-4; Gail Omvedt, Dallts and tbe Democratic Revolution (New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London, 1994), p. 14. 60 This is true for most of the works mentioned earlier, by S. Taniguchi, Swaraj Basu, Smriti Kumar Sarkar, Ratanlal Chakraba.rty, including my first book, Caste, Poltttcs and tbe Raj.

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journals which preached refinement of social behaviour and adoption of purer ritual symbols, like the wearing of sacred thread, or prohibition of widow remarriage, introduction of dowry and child marriage and finally claiming census recognition of their higher ritual status. The effects of such Sanskritising efforts were greater restrictions on women, as they came to represent the 'honour' of the community that needed to be protected; the unfreedom of women thus became more widely prevalent across the social strata in late colonial Bengal, frustrating the reformist attempts of the Bengali liberals. Simultaneously with this, attempts at Westernisation were reflected in the demands for reservation in education, job and legislature and finally, in opposition to nationalism In support of a benevolent British Raj that supposedly overturned the rule of Manu. There were of course variations In individual situations, the Ranbansls, for example, having a prehistory of state formation, or the prosperous Kansarls being threatened by the coming of new cheaper mass-produced colonial products. These groups, therefore, had different motivations to organise for social action.61 But such variations notwithstanding, their politics in general remained alienated from the 'integrationist' politics of the Indian National Congress. And they ended by seeking only positional improvement for themselves within the existing caste structure and thus endorsing the ideology of hierarchy enshrined in that system. What this familiar discourse tends to ignore, however, is the element of protest involved in all such behaviour. Sanskritisation, for example, not only implied emulation of upper castes, it also meant appropriation of certain exclusive symbols of power and divesting them of their symbolic significance. When the lower castes started wearing sacred threads, the most authentic symbol of social authority, the Bengali bhadralok began to ridicule it as sikt paysar suto or a thread worth a quarter of a dime.62 On the 61

S. Taniguchi, 'The Rajbanshi Community . . .'; Smriti Kumar Sarkar, 'Caste, Occupation and Social Mobility .. .'. " S. Bandyopadhyay, 'Development, Defferentiation and Caste: The Namasudra Movement in Bengal, 1872-1947', in S. Bandyopadhyay, A. Dasgupta and W. van Schendel(~.). 1Jen8al: CommunltUls, Development and States (New Delhi, 1994), p. 98.

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other hand, it was not merely self-interest which motivated the leaders of the 'depressed classes' to Westernise or seek concessions from the colonial state; they also constructed an 'ideology' that was based on their own perception of history. While for the nationalists the colonial period represented a break with a glorious past, for the 'depressed classes' leaders the present was an improvement over a darker past, when caste rules governed the state and society. The Bengali word 'jatt' in this charged political environment began to acquire different meanings; while the nationalists privileged it to mean the 'nation', the depressed classes stuck to its traditional meaning of 'caste'.63 We can hardly understand the significance of this social process if we ignore these alternative cultural usages of language that indicated both alienation and protest. An important deviation from this familiar model however, came from Partha Chatterjee who took his gaze away from the educated leaders of the depressed classes or the landed magnates of the middle peasant castes, and focused on the consciousness of the people at the grassroots level. Using the ground level data on the Balahadi sect among the Hadis of Nadia district, studied by Sudhir Chakrabarti,64 he has sought to 'disinter' Dumont by unravelling the story of the Hadis' religious insubordination. Dumont's claim that the ideological force of dharma always binds individual castes to the system and that this ideal actualises in the immediate social realities of castes, can be questioned, he suggests, by showing that 'this process of actualization necessarily contains a contradiction'. Here the contradiction is represented by the philosophy of the Balahadi sect, where the teacher among the Hadis defies the dominance of dharma by preaching a novel theory of creation, by constructing a new cosmology and by imagining an inverted hierarchy of castes, where the HacliS, an archetypal untouchable caste of Bengal, are placed at the top and the Brahmans pushed to the bottom. However, Chatterjee also acknowledges the triviality or marginality of such insubordination, which ultimately failed to affect or alter the system.65 Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Poltt1cs and tbe Raj, pp. 155-6, 163-4. 64 Sudhir Chakraborti, Balabadt samprrutay ar tadergan (Calcutta, 1986). " Partha Chatterjee, 'Caste and Subaltern Consciousness', pp. 180-1 and 63

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This acknowledgment comes clearly in his subsequent book, where in the history of 'interaction between the dominant and the subordinate', in this case the 'nation and its outcasts', he identifies the 'practical defeat' of a 'resolute spirit of negativity'. 66 Without minimising the importance of protest or the unfortunate implications of its defeat, we may, however, also talk about the limitations of protest. Caste-orientated notions of status and the associated conditions of labour were enforced as much by persuasion and consent as by coercion. 67 In other words, the mental worlds of the subjugated may well be hegemonised by the ideological structures of the dominant. In the case of the Balahadis, they could only imagine an inversion of the social hierarchy, but not its dissolution. And, as Ratan Lal Chakraborty has shown, their counterparts in east Bengal, the Bhuirnalis of Mymensingh district, were during the same period following the familiar model of social mobility, within artd not outside the ideological structure of caste.68 This brings us to the question of the ideological hegemony of caste, which was constantly reproduced and reinforced by the power elites of Hindu society, who were dominant not just in a religious sense, but in a temporal sense too Respecting the normative strictures of caste became mandatory for all Hindus, high and low. While peripheral changes in behaviour or positional improvements in status were tolerated, any challenge to the fundamentals were resisted with vengeance. The basic ideological structure was maintained by creating a fear of iosing caste, which meant exclusion from the familiar world of social relations. This made any kind of social reform, that might remotely threaten the fundamentals of this status hierarchy, virtually impossible. Vidyasagar's mission of introducing widow remarriage thus remained a legal fiction, failing to get many widows actually remarried. For marriage rules were fundamental to the maintenance of the bodily purity of castes, and thus of the 66

Panha Chatterjee, 1be Nation and Its Fragments: Colontal and PostColontal Histories (Princeton, 1993), p. 197. 67 Peter Robb, 'Introduction', in P. Robb (ed.), Daltt Movements and tbe Meanl'llls ofJ,abour In India (Deihl, 1993), p. 65. 61 Ratan Lal Chakraborty, 'A Caste Movement in Mymensingh'.

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exclusionary ethics of caste system. To frustrate such modernist reforms, the pre-colonial Raja-Pundit nexus operated in different ways but with similar intent The nanower focus of social authority that protected orthodoxy still continued to function, despite the smothering presence of the broader power structure of the colonial State.69 Waves of Westernisation could not open the floodgates of reform, because one effective way of reinforcing the disciplines of caste was through the discourse of 'adbikari-bbeda', which Sumit Sarkar has discussed recently. It was a discourse which recognised the individuality of each caste, having separate rituals and appropriate status, with all such units located in a 'hierarchically differentiated structure'. The discourse, which emerged in the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, but became more conservative and dominant in the nineteenth, could accommodate catholicity, but also maintain compartmentalisation and social boundaries to the advantage of the power elites of the indigenous society. Thus despite limited reform and mobility, the unity of the homogenised Hindu society and its caste-based social structure could be maintained. Here we come close to Dumont's 'encompassing the contrary' But this classificatory scheme needs to be viewed, Sarkar insists, as 'projects of specific groups for acting on social reality'. Social differentiation is not without implications for power; it is maintained to 'the obvious advantage of established power relations of caste and gender'.70 DIFFERENTIATION AND TRANSIENCE

This brings us to the nature of caste identity and here Sarkar has made another important statement that needs to be explored further. 'Caste identity, after all', he states, 'is not a natural, given, unchanging, or hermeticaJ!y sealed entity-any more than class.'71 ~

A more detailed discussion of this phenomenon may be found in S. Bandyopadhyay, 'Caste, Widow Remarriage and the Reform of Popular Culture in Colonial Bengal', in Bharati Ray (ed.), From 7be Seams o/Htstory: Essays on Indian Women (New Delhi, 1995). 70 Surnit Sarkar, Wrll1ng Social History (Delhi, 1997), pp. 368-9 and passim. 71 Ibid., p. 390.

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Here two issues are import.ant: a caste was not a homogeneous group with a given identity, nor were its relations with other castes and with the Hindu society in general ever static. These two factors of differentiation and transience need to be taken into consideration while looking at any caste movement or its relationship with other identities and agitations. It is in the recognition of these two features and in the interrogation of the essentialism of caste that we may say a new trend in caste studies is emerging. Contrary to common assumptions, castes in colonial India were often very differentiated and caste movements resulted usually from convergence of various streams of consciousness, ambition for social climbing as well as protest, reflecting the plurality of the group. All these various sections within a 'caste' had, however, a common aspiration, viz., to rework the relations of power in society and polity. In their differing perceptions, they hoped to achieve this through divergent means, which ranged from constitutional agitation to direct action, sometimes even violent. Such a convergence of differing mentalities led to the formation and articulation of a unified caste identity at a given point in history. But this did not preclude the possibility of divergence or fissuring of the community at a subsequent stage. Caste identity co-existed with other competing religious, class and national identities. As Nicholas Dirks states: 'Caste was just one category among many others, one way of organizing and representing identity.'72 At a particular historical conjuncture any one of them might take precedence ovei: others as a focal point for political mobilisation; but this did not mean that other identities were completely displaced or erased and would not be articulated at another juncture. It is the transient nature of identity and complex trajectories of caste movements, rather than their assumed homogeneity and unilinear progress, which need to be focused on. For Bengal, the realities of differentiation and transience were recognised in the unpublished thesis on the Rajbansis by Swaraj Basu;7} my own recent study of the Namasudras has also tried to Dirks, 'Castes of Mind'' p. 60. n Swaraj Basu, 'The Rajbansis of North Bengal: A Study of a Caste Movement, 1910-1947'; it is unfortunate that this important thesis has not been published yet. TZ

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develop this model. The Namasudras constituted the second largest Hindu caste in colonial Bengal and the largest group among the Hindu agriculturists in Its eastern districts. I thus restate here some of my main conclusions in brief. These loosely organised people, who lived in varying material conditions and enjoyed different ranks in different parts of the province, constructed through a protest movement in the late nineteenth century, a single caste identity and demanded recognition of their new status. More or less consistently they remained alienated from nationalist politics till about the end of the 1930s; they opposed Gandhian nationalism and suspected Gandhi's reformist remedy for untouchability. But then, around the time of the transfer of power and Partition, their movement gradually disintegrated and merged into the other dominant political streams in the country, represented by such organisations as the Congress, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Kisan Sabhas. 7• Indeed, all other Scheduled Caste movements in Bengal experienced the same fissiparous tendencies towards the end of the colonial era: while the educated and more prosperous leaders preferred to join the Congress, the peasants either got involved in the Hindu Mahasabha campaign for the partition of the province and the creation of a greater Hindu homeland, or alternatively, joined the Tebhaga movement under communist leadership. 7s " S. Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity In Colonial India: 7be

Namasudras ofBengal, 1872-1947. " For a general discussion on the Scheduled Casie movements in the 194-0s, see, S. Bandyopadhyay, 'From alienation to integra1ion: Changes in the politics of caste in Bengal, 1937-47', 7be Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, 1994, pp. 349-91. The pre-Partition Hindu mobilisation of the Scheduled Castes has been discussed in Joya Chanerji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communaltsm and Partition 1932-1947 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 191-203. A small section of the depressed classes opposed the Hindu Mahasabha plan for Partition; see for details, Masayukl Usuda, 'Pushed towards the Partition: Jogendranath Manda! and the Constrained Namasudra Movement', in H. Kotani (ed.), Caste System, Untoucbabtllty and tb11 Depressed (New Delhi, 1997). The Scheduled Caste participation in the Tebhaga movement has been discussed in Adrienne Cooper, SbarecroJ1'1ng and Sbarecro~· Struggle In Bengal 1930-1950 (Calcutta, 1988), pp. 113-

65, 255-69.

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In this situation, therefore, apparently conflicting identities woven around caste, class, religion or nation were locked in a complex: cobweb of interrelationships. Any theory of essenNal 'otherness' of dalit identity76 would not really help us understand this paradigm. This is not to suggest that the putative corporate status of caste was unreal or that dalits did not face discrimination in Bengal. All the existing studies indicate the contrary. Indeed, beyond the details of articulate protest movements, we know very little about the day-to-day ontological realities of the 'dalitbahujan' experience in Bengal, particularly during those socalled tranquil moments marked by the absence of overt conflict. This is in fact a vast area awaiting future research going beyond archival sources, literary evidence and caste association journals, and moving into the realm of anthropology. It must explore the life experiences at the grassroots level and study the significance of the agency of the masses in interrogating the relations of power in orthodox Hindu society, their 'everyday forms of resistance' to domination and exploitation.n However, this resistance notwithstanding, the existing historical evidence also suggests that the putative identity of caste has never been totally combative. Accommodation and co-existenceif not integration-were neither uncommon nor unnatural; but this happened at different levels and in different ways. Caste identity often got fractured along class lines, and thus became disorientated and transfigured in its political articulation, which implied that it was historical and contextual, rather than timeless. If conflict was real, collaboration and co-operation at different planes were true as well; the two sets of relationships were probably braided together very closely in the day-to-day social existence of the Bengali Hindus. The Namasudras' concern for the cow as a symbol of Hindu honour in East Pakistan in the 76

See for example, Kancha llaih, 'Productive Labour, Consciousness and History: The Dalitbahujan Alternative', In S. Amin and D. Chakrabarty (eds.), Suballem Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi, 1996). 17 This is what James C. Scott would call the weapons of the weak with a hidden transcript for resistance. See his weapons of lbe WeaAr: Evllryday Forms ofPeasant Resfstance (New Haven, 1985).

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1950s78 anci the Scheduled Caste support for the left parties in the present day West Bengal, indicate the continuation of these trends in our own times. In the latter case, Partha Chatterjee has argued that despite this support, the state and those who wanted to concrol state power, may still appear as 'external entities' in peasant consciousness.79 However, so far as empirical research is concerned, what the peasants actually thought about the state is still a relatively hazy zone and a matter of academic conjecture. One may perhaps also argue in a different way: peasants forget neither their class interests, nor their caste identity and may not be totally ignorant of the broader structures of power, particularly in a Panchayatl Raj when they can use it to their own advantage. The peasants' articulation of their identity, their responses to the political environment, are contextual, not universal, and theirs ls a mental world where, as it appears from what is still very insufficient empirical information, the secular and the sacred are both present and intertwined. ln a particular historical context, dalits may identify themselves with Hindu honour and its sacred insignia; in another, they may fight the protagonists of Hindu orthodoxy. A caste movement may get fractured along class lines and follow different trajectories of political action; yet this fissure may not threaten the putative status of that caste in other areas of social existence. Similarly, the articulation of fragmenting identities such as caste need not disprove the existence of broader configurations such as the nation. This is not to preach an eclectic view which assumes that caste, religion, nation and class are all of equal value or Importance as categories for expressing identity The purpose of the present historiographical exercise is not to debate over the relative importance of and relationship between such categories. It merely seeks to highlight the necessity of interrogating the essentialism of caste, viewed both from above as well as from below. It suggests that community boundaries, as they figure in the political space of contestable power, are imagined within certain historical contexts which privilege one " Beth Roy, Some Trouble wttb C~: Malrtn,g Sense of Social Conj/tel (New Delhi, 1994). 19 Partha Chatterjee, 'Caste and Politics In West Bengal', In his Tbe Presenl Htstory of West Ben.gal (Delhi, 1997), p. 86.

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or the other of those categories without displacing the rest, and therefore, with a shift in that context, such boundaries can also be de-imagined and re-imagined. As Andre Beteille puts it: 'It is not enough to know that boundaries exist between groups, one must also examine the situations under which some boundaries are ignored and others become significant..., Future studies on caste, power and politics in Bengal, instead of following stereotyped models of homogeneity and linearity, need to focus on such complex interplay between identities and their contexts, the changing meanings of boundaries and their markers, as well as the subtle interactions between the ideologies of protest and ambitions for power.

'" Andre Beteille, S«Uty and Po/mes tn India: .Essays tn CompartUtve Pf1sp1ettw (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1991), p. S6.

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Histories of Betrayal: Patriarchy, Class and Nation Samita Sen

In the last few decades, a corpus of research on women and gender issues has grown in India, more especially so on Bengal.

'Women's History' now forms a distinct field within the historiography of Bengal. Much of this literature has concentrated on the immediate past of the colonial experience. The colonial period has been seen as a watershed in gender relations. In this period, the processes of modernity were set in motion, both through colonial and indigenous initiative. ModeriUty came hand in hand with capitalism which, under the aegis of the colonial state, transformed the agricultural, commercial and manufacturing sectors of the economy. On the one hand, the use and organisation of land and labour came under new 'market' compulsions; on the other, new sites of production- factories, mines and plantations---came into being. Moreover, the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of anti-colonial nationalism and in the early twentieth century the contours of the nation-state evolved. These were the two significant political legacies on which independent Indian state was founded. Together, these social, economic and political trends were to define and structure gender relations in contemporary India. A general acknowledgment of the Importance of understanding how the Indian woman's situation was embedded in these contexts came With a new, self-consciously feminist, women's movement that began to gather strength in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In common with many other parts of the world, this movement witnessed an invasion of academia. Beginning first with lively and innovative research from within mainstream disciplines, there

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are now increasing gender inputs in university curricula, particularly at the post-graduate level. The institution of several women's studies centres across the country has provided greater impetus for both teaching and research. It is only very recently that we have seen the publication ·of full-length monographs on women's history and now even text-books are being published. Geraldine Forbes's Women tn Indta surveys a substantial portion of the research on Bengal conducted in the last three decades.1 Dagmar Engel's Beyond Purdah also aims at a comprehensive examination of gender relations in colonial Bengal in some key social areas like education, sexuality, mothering and employment2 Needless to say, the relationship between the women's movement and the growing scholarship in women's history while being close was (and is) not always direct. With more urgency than ever before, however, scholars sought to trace the 'origin' of women's oppression, explain their present situation, and contextualise their current dilenunas. While historians charted their own new courses in writing about women's pasts and historicising gender relations, for the women's movement history itself became a prime resource. In both cases, the recovery of the past became a crucial part of the current struggle. In common with feminists elsewhere, Indian feminists (some of whom were scholars placed in academic institutions) were faced with a past that spoke copiously on public institutions, political activity, social and economic structures, entirely of men and by men. Worse, these stories subsumed all other stories-those of women--disregarding separate concerns, distinctive interests and dissonant voices. The writing of 'Her-story' was thus a crucial agenda of the movement. Many feminist scholars (who were not historians by training) found it necessary and useful to address women's issues in historical context. In history, as in myth and tradition, there are empowering images of women. And mainstream history, especially nationalist history-writing, had not been entirely silent about these. Women's contributions, sacrifices and heroic endeavours served as a I Geraldine Forbes, Women tn Modern Indta (Cambridge, 1996). 2 Dagmar Engels, Beyond Purdah? Womni tn IJen&al, 1849-1905

Delhi, 1996).

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powerful testimony to the strength of nationalism and to the oppressions of the colonial rulers. No school-level text-book on the freedom sttuggle is considered complete without mention of the spectacular feats of women terrorists like Bina Das or Pritilata Waddedar, the remarkable contribution of Basanti Debi to the civil disobedience movement or the heroic martyrdom of Matangini Hazra. And these are only a few examples.3 In the nationalist telling, the struggle for freedom from colonial rule was the struggle of all Indians. The emphasis on the participation of diff~nt groups, peasants, workers and women, served to highlight the breadth of the movement for freedom. Equally, freedom, it was argued, brought rewards for these groups in the shape, mainly, of universal suffrage. For instance, the alliance between the women's movement and the nationalist movement, many argued, had been of mutual benefit. The moral framework of the nationalist movement allowed women to break through patriarchal barriers into the public world of political activityonto the streets, the floors of assemblies and councils. The nationalist movement gained strength from women's participation and in the end women won a guarantee of equal rights in the new Republic's constitution.' The notion of harmonious alliance against colonial power was first challenged by Marxist scholars who embarked on an analysis of the class composition and character of the nationalist movement. They argued that within the umbrella of anti-colonial

an

Bipan Chandra, Amales Tripathi and Barun De, Freedom struggle (New Delhi, 1972); NemaiSadhan ~. 7belndtanNatlcna/Movement:AnOutltne (Calcutta, 1974); and Bipan Chandra, Modem India (New Delhi, 1972); Gautam, Prasanta and Manju Chanopadhyay, Bbamtbarsber Jttbas, 2 vols. (Calcutta, 1974) . •Joanna Liddle and Rama Joshi, Daughters of Independence: Gender, Caste and Class In India (London and New Delhi, 1986) . On the role of women in the national movement see Kamala Dasgupta, Swadhtnata Sansmme Ba"IJlar Nari (Bengali Women in the Independence Movement) (Calcutta, n.d.); and Bharati Ray, 'Calcutta Women in the Swadeshi Movement', in Pradlp Sinha (ed.), Galcutta. Tbe UrlxJn E:xpertence (Calcutta, 1987); and Tue Freedom Movement and Feminist Consciousnes.s in Bengal, 1905-1929' in Bharati Ray (ed.), From tbe Seams of Htstcry: Essa)-$ on Indian Women (New Delhi, 1995), pp. 174-218. J

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struggle, nationalist (primarily Congres.s) leadership aimed at laying the basis of a bourgeois state in the yet-to-be-independent India. As a result, peasants' and workers' struggles were misdirected, contained and restricted so that the dominant relations of propeny remained entrenched. Without denying the importance of nationalism in the overarching framework of anti-imperial struggle, scholars began to investigate the class tensions within the nationalist movements A similar critique became the starting point for feminist historians. Mainstream nationalist historiography offered these scholars three dear points of entry. First was the Bengal renaissance and the social reform movement in the nineteenth centuty (represented as the beginnings of 'modem' India through an amalgam of the ideas of European enlightenment and Bengali elite initiative). This period also marked the emergence of 'new' women who were significant beneficiaries of colonial modernity and of the benevolence of elite Indian male reformers. Feminist historians, quite understandably, have been considerably concerned with a formulation that casts women as passive subjects of male reformism and the notion that the initiatives of the colonial state or the disinterested benevolence of elite Indian men set women's steps towards progress and development. 6 There is now a considerable body of writing which examines the contradictions of reformism and · the 'new patriarchy' formulated In this period through an alliance of the colonial state and elite Indian men-the reformers and their opponents. The liberal rhetoric adopted in this period also conferred unintended benefits to women, and many of these can only be understood by exploring women's own agency. This liberal Ideology was, however, abandoned with the emergence of nationalism in the late nineteenth century. Many scholars have seen the 'nationalist tum' as socially conservative and detrimental to women's progress. ~These

trends are well summed up in Sumit Sarkar, Modern Indta 18851947 (New Deihl, 1983). •v.c. J~hi (ed.), Rammobun and tbe Process ofModernlst.Ufon tn Indta (Deihl, 1975); A.F. Salauddin Ahmed, Soctal Ideas and Social Cbatl8e tn Ben{Jal, 1818-35 (Calcutta, 1965); and B.R. Nanda (ed.), Indian Women: From Purdah to Modernity (Deihl, 1978).

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Partha Chatterjee's thesis of the 'Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question' challenges such a notion. He has examined the gendered construction of colonial and nationalist discourses which, he argues, elaborated overlapping binaries coeval with the division of the private and public spheres. The nation, he argues, was located in the inner domain of the spirit which became the site of early nationalist resistance. Since the inner domain was symbolised by women, a 'new patriarchy' drew the contours of this (primarily culrural) resistance against colonialism with ideas about womanhood as its chief vehicle. 7 This thesis in which 'gender' but not women is the primary focus, has been highly influential In rethinking Indian national.ism. However, Chattetjee's judgement that nationalism 'radicalises' the gendered binaries follows from an acceptance of the rhetoric of nationalism on its own terms-that is to say, an explicit privileging of the politics of anti-imperialism over that of gender. These questions of nationalism and the issue of women's participation in the national movement provides the second major entry point for women's history. Like Marxist scholars, women's historians are now tracing a history of betrayal.8 With the waning of the euphoria of freedom, the vote and constitutional rights, feminists are beginning to question the nationalist leadership's attitude to gender issues, its failure to confront patriarchal institutions and its role in perpetuating male dominance. It has been on the question of institutions and the quotidian mechanisms of patriarchal dominance that mainstream historiography has been most silent about women. While volumes have been written about the detrimental effects of colonial intervention in the economy, the legal-judicial system, and local governance, all these were assumed to be gender neutral. A great deal of attention has been 7

Pa.rtha Chatterjee, "The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question' in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (ed.), Recasttng Women. Essays tn Colontal History (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 233-53. •Gail Minault, 'The Extended family as Metaphor and the Expansion of Women's Realm', in G. Minault (ed.), The Extended FamUy: Women and PolU1ca/ParNctpalkm tn/ndtaandPaktstan(Delhi, 1981); Por:bes, Women tn Modern lndta; and Ninnala Banerjee, 'Whatever Happened to the Dream of Modernity?' in F.conomtc and Po/Utca/ Weekly, 29 April 1998.

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given to the new social stratifications which transformed Bengal (and Indian society) resulting from colonial policies of land settlement, revenue systems, commercialisation, tariff discrimination and such like. No attention was paid to the possible impact these policies may have had on patriarchal arrangements, especially on the composition of the family or household system and gender relations within and outside it. 9 These issues provide the third entry point for feminist scholarship. Al present very preliminary work has been undertaken in this field but It Is of growing concern to scholars and activists, especially since questions of economic development (and the wide-ranging debates around it current at the moment) demand a more longterm examination of women's relationship to economic and social resources, land, labour and capital. The three sections of this paper will discuss, in brief, each of these three themes of women's history in and on Bengal.

THE Vo1Cl! OP PYGMAUON's WOMEN: R.eFORM AND EDUCATION

The social reform movement, from the move to abolish sati (1829) to the age of consent controversy (1891), has dominated the historiography of nineteenth-century Bengal. Until the Marxist intervention of the 1970s when the elite character ot the movement was emphasised, the period was represented in Bengal's history as the quintessential moment when liberalism (and modernity) successfully confronted orthodoxy (and tradition).10 The reformers were benevolent men influenced by liberal and enlightened philosophies of the West; their (usually unsuccessful) opponents were obscurantist men upholding outmoded customs; the beneficiaries (some reluctant) were (elite) women who were taken across the threshold of domestic confinement to enter the public

'A notable exception is Sugata Bose, Peosanl /Abour and Colonial Capital: Rum/ IJerasal stnu 1770 (Cambridge, 1993). 10 Sumlt Sarkar, 'Complexities of Young Bengal', Mn«eentb Century Studies, October 1973; Asok Sen, JswarCbandra ~rand blsFJustve Mtles«m8S (Calcutta, 1977).

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world through education and (in a few cases) employment. 11 Ghulam Murshid's was one of the first influential accounts of women's induction into modernity. The process, he argues, was reversed in the late nineteenth century when 'extremist' nationalism upheld obscurantist .tradition. 12 The encounter between tradition and modernity was the paradigm within which he sought to locate women's experiences. The most significant intervention into this paradigm was by Iata Mani, who argued that the question of social reform was one of tradition and modernity-tradition being inextricably bound to textual prescription of the shashtras. She takes the issue further to challenge the pos.sibility of writing 'women's history' from the reform debates, since women were neither the subjects nor objects of reform but merely the 'site' on which the debates were conducted. The 'condition of women' question was not, she argues, about women at a11.1.1 Her writings on the sati debate acquire special contemporary relevance with Roop Kanwar's sati at Deorala in 1987. A contributor to this debate, Ashis Nandy, had earlier written about sati as a colonial phenomenon, arguing that colonial policies gave a fillip to the practice by marking it as high-caste and thus encouraging its adoption as a means of caste mobility. 1 ~ In fact other than this early piece and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay's examination of widow remarriage in the context of caste movements, very little research has been undertaken to 11

The scene in Saty.1jit Ray's film Gbare Batre (based on a novel by Rabindranath Tagore of the same title) in which Bimala and Nikhilesh traverse a long corridor separating the 'andar' (inner apartments) from the portion of the house open to 'public' dwells on this Cl'OS.5ing of the threshold with telling visual effect. For a case study of prof~ional employment of women see Geraldine Forbes, 'Medical Careers and Health Care for Indian Women: panems of control', Women~ Htsrory Review, Vol. 3, 4, 1994. 12 Ghulam Murshid, Reluctant Debutante: Response ofBengali Women to Modemlsat1on, 1849-1905 (Rajshahi, 1952). u Lata Mani, 'Contentious Tradition: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India' in Sangari and Vaid, Recasttng Women, pp. 88-126; 'The production o f an official disco wse on Sati in Early Nineteenth Century Bengal', Economtc and Poltltcal Weekly, 26 April 1986, pp. 32-40. "AshJs Nandy, 'Sati: A Nineteenth Century Tale of Women, Violence and Protest', in Joshi (ed.) , Rammobun Roy, pp. 168-94.

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contextualise the reform· debates in wider social processes. 15 Another exception is Lucy Carroll's analysis of the legal and social implications of the Widow Remarriage Act. 16 Meredith Borthwick was the ftrst to focus on women in particular. She traced the emergence of a class of elite women analogous to the bhadralok, the bhadramahila. Her's was a social history of elite Bengali women with a rich empirical base from which she drew out the processes of gender and class (she does not actually deploy these categories) which constituted the urban elite of Calcutta. The bhadramahila has since been the staple of women's history. 17 As the one group of women who gained access to education, they could write about their own experiences. ln a signiftcant outpouring of articles in journals, autobiographies and novels, these were women who spoke for themselves even while the dominant male reformist voices sought to speak on their behalf. These have enabled a signiftcant discussion of women's own agency in the reform era. Historians have endeavoured to 'recover' from these voices how women negotiated and contested the changes in their lives and situations. Malavika Karlekar's Votces from Wtthtn was an early effort in this genre, tracing elite (especially Brahmo) women's responses to new education opportunities.18 Also, there has been some effort to collect and reprint women's writings and analyse some of these, especially their autobiographies. 19 The constitution of the 'New Woman' in the nineteenth century

1'

Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, 'Caste, Widow Remarriage and the Refonn of Popular Culture in Colonial Bengal', in Shanti Ray (ed.), From tbe Seams ofHtstory, pp. 8-36. 16 Lucy Carroll, 'Law, Custom and Statutory Social Refonn: the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act of 1856', in]. Krishnamurty (ed.), Women tn Colontal Indta, Essays on Survtval, Wom and tbe State (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 1-26. 17 Meredith Borthwick, 7be Cbangtng Role of Women tn Bengal, 18491905 (Princeton, 1984). '" Malavika Karlekar, Votces from Wttbln: Early Personal Narmttves of Bengali Women (New Delhi, 1991). 19 An excellent example is Tanika Sarkar, 'A Book of Her Own, A Ufe of Her Own: Autobiography of a Nineteenth Century ~n·, Ht.story Worlisbop journal, Autumn, 1993, pp. 35-65.

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has drawn historians to examine a variety of discourses within which modernity was being produced. Tanika Sarkar's emphasis on the role of marriage and new notions of domesticity and conjugality has been very influential. 20 On similar lines, but drawing more on gender and class perspectives, are Himani Banerjee's essays on education and dress codes.11 It needs.to be said, however, that preoccupation with women's agency, their 'own voices' and the historian's dependence on written sources has kept the spotlight on the literate 'middle classes at the cost of other groups of women. Sumanto Banerjee's attempt to collect and analyse 'popular' material as a source for women's experiences is a notable exception. His 1be Parlour and the Street has drawn attention to the gender implications of the middle class bhadralok culture that sought to distance itself from the more amorphous urban popular culture of the early nineteenth century. 22 Investigations into the social reform debates have indicated the centrality of gender in colonial discourse. The 'feminisation of the orient' was complemented by the representation of the western ruling race as 'masculine'. As such the British asserted their 'natural' authority to rule and protect weaker sections of Indian society like 'women•.23 The response of the indigenous elite men was to carve out a 'domestic' domain of family, religion and caste over which to assert their authority. Such an arrangement, it has been argued by Rosalind O'Hanlon, was put in place '°Tanika Sarkar, 'Hindu Conjugality and Nationalism: in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal', in Jashodhara Bagchi (ed.), Jndton Women: Myth and R£altty (Hyderabad, 1995). pp. 98-116; and 'Reflections on Birati Rape Cases: Gender Ideology in Bengal', Economic and Po/Utcal WeekQI, 2 February 1991, pp. 215-18. 21 Himani Bannerji, 'Fashioning a Self: Education porposals for and by Women in Popular Magazines in Colonial Bengal', Economic and Poltttcal Week{>i, 26 October 1991, ws 50-62; and 'Attired in Virtue: The Discourse on Shame (laija) and Qothlng of the Bhadrarnahila in Colonial Bengal', in Ray (ed.), From tbe Seams ofHfst-Ory, pp. 67-lo6. 22 Surnanto Banerjee, 7beParlourandtbeSt111ets.· EJUeandPopularCulture tn Nineteenth Century Calcutta (Calcutta, 1989). 23 Mrinalini Sinha, Co/onto/ Masculinity: 7be 'Manly Englishman' and tbe 'Fjfemtnate Bengalt' tn tbe I.ate Ntneteentb Century (Manchester, 1995).

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by an agreement between colonial rulers and their collaborators who were indigenous elite men.:w It was also a legacy from the colonial consttuction of the 'public'. A systematic contestation between coloniser and colonised for control of this public domain came with the rise of nationalism. The 'self-image of frailty' that afflicted the Bengali babu led them to produce multiple icons in order to 'reclaim their history, regain their manhood, propagate nationalism and spawn a homogenized modem Indian identity'. l5 This nationalism reversed the logic of reformism. The colonial state was not to be allowed to undertake legislation which would impact on the 'domestic' domain, and this of course constituted a resbiction on Its self-appointed 'public' role.36 The state's attempts at passing the Age of Consent Bill came at the cusp of reformism and early nationalism and sparked off a controversy that was to set new terms on the debates about women.17 THE NATION AS MOTHER-AND DAUGHTERS' DILEMMAS

When Mill wrote in his 'History of India' in 1817 that the condition of women in a society is an index of its place in civilisation, he wrote 'women' into the project of modem history-writing in lndia.28 ln a sweep, 'Women', 'History' and 'Nation' became essential " Rosalind O 'Hanlon, 'Issues of Widowhood: Gender and Resistance in Colonial Western India', In Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash (eds.), ContesNng Power. Resistance and Everyday Social Relattcms In South Asta (Oxford, 1991). ~ Quote from Chirosree Basu, 'Another look at pros and icons', 7be Tekgrapb, l9 March 1999, a review of a recent book by Indira Chowdhury, 7be Fmll Hero and Virile Htstr>ry: Gender and tbe Polutcs of Cu/lure In ColontaJ Bengal (Delhi, 1998). The book also discusses the alternative icon of manliness in asceticism as represented by Swami Vivekananda. 26 Samita Sen, 'Motherhood and Mothercraft: Gender and Nationalism In Bengal' Gerifkrand History, Vol. 5: 2, 1993, pp. 231-43. 17 Mrinalini Sinha, 'Colo nial Policy and the Ideology of Moral Imperialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Bengal' in Michael S. Kinunel (ed.), Changing Meri; New DlrectWns In Research on Men and MascullnUy (California, 1987), pp. 217-31. "James Mill, 7be Htstr>ry o/BrlNsb India, with notes by H .H . Wilson (5th edn., London, 1840).

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and inseparable elements in a connected discourse of dvilisation.19 Thus 'women' figured in the earliest nationalist history-writings, especially popular histories and historical novels. On the one hand, the greatness of ancient Hindu civilisation was proved by foregrounding the freedom and achievement of women like Maitreyce, Gargi and Lilavati, who became household names. On the other hand, the Muslim invasion was held responsible for the fall from this state of grace and for the introduction of purdah which led to women's confinement and degradation. This was not just an endeavour to write the history of the nation but an attempt to write the nation into history.'° The contentious 'women's question' was addressed not merely by a repeated reassertion of the value of tradition but by a redefinition of the content of 'tradition'-by elevating women's traditional role and status. Critiquing this enormously influential strand in mainstream historiography, Uma Chakravarti raises the question: if all women in ancient India were devis (goddesses), 'Whatever happened to the Vedic Dasi'? She points out how in fact nationalist compulsions led to particular historical representations of gender relations. ' 1 What was at Issue was 'Indianness'--tlle social and cultural Identity on which the political identity of the nation was to be constructed. Partha Chatterjee has argued that 'national' identity was invested in the domestic domain which was to be the repository of the 'spirit' (or 'tradition') of the nation. Thus the cultural values of the nation remained protected from the contaminating influence of western polity and culture. While such a public/domestic redefinition became the source of a 'New' 2' Dipesh Chakrabarty,

'The Difference-Deferral of a Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Domesticity in British India', in David Arnold and David Hardiman (eds.), Suballem Studies VIII, Essays In Honour ofRanaftt Guba (New Delhi, 1994). lOSamJta Sen, 'Honour and Resistance: Gender, Community and Class in Bengal, 1920-40', in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Abhijit Dasgupta and Willem van Schendel (eds.), Ben{JaL· Communities, Development and States (New Delhi, 1994). ,, Uma ChakravaJty, 'Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientali.sm, Nationalism and a Script for the Past', In Sangart and Vaid (eds.), R«:asl1"1J ~.pp.

27-87.

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patriarchy, the political context of nationalism also gave it a radical tum. The troublesome 'women's question' of the reform era was thus 'resolved'.32 Tanika Sarkar shows that this 'resolution' was effected by transforming women from an index of social malady (as in reformism) to a symbol of national greatness. This transformation pivoted round the mythical image of an empowered woman. The 'modem' or 'emancipated' woman was designated as corrupt and Impure, and accused of collusion with the colonial rulers. Against her was counterposed the figure of the satt-laksbmt, the ethnicised image of the pure Hindu woman embodying the virtues of chastity, nurture, and prosperity. She became the symbol of the health of the community and, by extension, of the nation-the chaste married wife/mother, empowered by spiritual strength, became the iconic representation of the nation. From serving as metaphors of actual social evil, women's subordination became a 'willed' subjugation signalling social and national superiority. This iconic stature involved gieat costs for women, since it rendered irrelevant any criticism of, or inquiry into, their actual social condition. 'Tradition' severed from social reality found fulfllment in aesthetic iconography of the heroic goddess-mother." Jasodhara Bagchi points out that this iconography drew on the cult of the mother goddess which pervaded the texture of quotidian social interaction in Bengal. At the same time, the deified woman, the mother, attained her greatest heights as the Motherland.-"' The nationalist valorisation of traditional womanhood, the emotive power of the ethnicised and empowered image of the mother/ woman created by the Bengali middle class has cast a long and smothering shadow. Women continue to bear the weight of 'tradition' and the mark of national identity while Issues of their social, economic and political entitlements remain secondary. Yet, nationalism is also of close political relevance to the women's '2 Chatterjee,

'Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question'. "Sarkar, 'Reflections on Blrati Rape Cises'; also see Sen, 'Motherhood and Motherer.aft'. "Jasodhara Bagchl, 'Representing Nationalism: I~logy of Mothemood in Colonial Bengal', Economic and Po/U1cal WeeMly, 20-7 October 1990, 'C'S

65-71.

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movement It is from this political platform, and on the basis of cultural 'difference', that third world women mount their challenge to the universalising pretensions of western feminism dominated by elite white women. The need to project a distinct cultural identity, or an 'Indian' feminism, led the movement to draw on the past-present continuum as encapsulated in a rich and varied indigenous mythology. There were symbols and images of empowerment in representations of female power as in shaktl and other images of mother goddesses. Many of these had already been harnessed, reconstrued and popularised by early nationalists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the subversive potential of these images acquired new resonances in the women's movement, their deployment was not entirely unproblematic. These images carried with them the baggage of the nationalist construction of the chaste, pure and virtuous wife-mother-nation. And they tended to reinforce values of both old (pre-colonial) and new (colonial and post-colonial) patriarchies. These discomforts have led scholars to a close investigation of the way in which women were constructed in the nationalist discourse, as discussed above. However, several other questions have been raised that have considerably expanded the horizon of women's history. The nationalist construction of womanhood was founded on an ethnicised Hindu image. Joya Chanerji confirms Gyan Pandey's proposition that the use of religion and religious imagery in the nationalist discourse does not necessarily make it the 'other' of communalism. Nationalism deployed religious images to mobilise popular sentiment against colonial rule. In Chatterji's own showing, however, the overwhelming domination of Hindu images also resulted in normalising Hindu (sometimes 'communal') values as Bengali 'culture'." To draw cultural distinctiveness from nationalism is an exercise fraught with ambiguities and ambivalences. Tanika Sarkar, investigating the gender dimensions of this problem, has shown how the cornerstone of the ethnlcised oppositional identity Is the figure "Joya Chattetjl, IJenial DlllUled: Hindu Communallsm and part111on, 1932-1947 (Cambridge, 1995); and Gyanendra Pandey, 7be ConstrucHon o/Communallsm In Colonial Nortb India (New Delhi, 1990).

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of the woman.36 And this figure is ubiquitous, easily assimilated as 'culture' while its political overtones (in the field of patriarchy or communalism) remain obscured. And even left politics in Bengal has been implicated in these practices.37 Sarkar's research on the gender implications of Hindu fundamentalism furthers this area of Investigation." The communalisation of Indian politics has deeply divided the women's movement, especially on the question of personal law. The demand for a uniform civil code was raised by women's organisations in the 1930s. Nehru's half-hearted efforts in this direction was defeated by Hindu hard-liners leading to a watered down Hindu Civil Code. The issue of uniformalising the civil code was raised periodically and became a major demand in the 1980s. The implications for minorities was fully realised only after the Shah Bano case (1985) and the passing of the Muslim Women's (Protection of Rights in Divorce) Act in 1986.39 While legislation was acknowledged to be an important field of struggle of (and for) women, law had not been investigated as a terrain in which gender relations are prescribed, challenged and reworked. It remained a neglected area of social history. The controversy over personal laws opened up new fields of study. Flavia Agnes' research focuses on the interventions of the colonial state in furthering women's disabilities by transferring disputes from the arena of the locality and communlty, from the dispensation of custom which were closer to the realities of women of different regions,. communities and classes to the state and its centralised legal-juridical system, to law frozen In statute16 Tanika Sarkar,

'The Woman as Communal Subject: Rashtrasevika Samiti and Ram Janmabhoomi Movement', Economic and Pollucal Weekly, 31 August 1991, pp. 2057~2. 37 Slbaji Bandyopadhyay, '1be Contemporary Bengali Popular Fiction: Textual Strategies', in Bagchl (ed.), Myrh and Reality, pp. 133-44. 18 Tanika Sarkar, 'Heroic Women, Mother Goddesses: Family and Organisation in Hindutva Politics', in Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia (eds.), Women and the Hindu Right: A Collectton o/F.ssays (New Deihl, 1995). "Zakia Pathak and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, 'Shahbano', In Judith Butler and Joan W. Scou (eds.), FemlnUls 1bl0rlzf tb• Pollttca/ (New York, 1992), pp. 280-96.

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books, and to prescriptions that were not sensitive to difference or pluralism. 40 Agnes' research is complemented (though widely diverging in conclusion) by Kumkum Sangari's thesis of 'multiple patriarchies' explaining why 'difference' (or pluralism) within Indian society need not be understocxi in terms of better or worse regimes for women. Sangari too examines the conflict of custom and law in colonial society, and the interventions of the state, to argue that the state and other social institutions like caste {and/ or community) underwrite different patriarchal arrangements which have 'erratic and quasi-functional' relationships. The solution is not in subordinating women to 'community', religious or otherwise, because these are already fundamentally patriarchal but to assert the potential of women being a political community able to make claims, directly, on the state. 41 FROM MARGIN TO CENI'RE-STAGE: WOMEN AND WORK

The issue of differences among women is not restricted to caste, community or political affiliation, but, most importantly, also includes class. Surprisingly, despite the dominance of Marxist historiography in Bengal at the time women's history began its tentative forays, there has been no vigorous 'class versus gender' debate among Bengal's historians, certainly not of the proportions to which the inconclusive debate rose in Europe. Feminist historians have criticised the Marxist tendency to subsume gender in the rubric of class and to defer its importance. But many women's historians are also Marxist. And 'other' Marxists have rarely challenged or engaged in debate with women's history. Indeed, both Marxist and feminist historiography have tended to 40

Flavia Agnes, 'Hindu Men, Monogamy and Uniform Civil Code', Economic and Polutcal Weekly, 16 December 1995, pp. 3238-43; and 'The Islamic Right of Mehr-Context and Relevance' (unpublished). " Kumkum Sangari, 'Politics of Diversity: Religious Communities and Multiple Patrialchies', Economic and Poltt1cal Weekly, 23 and 30 December 1995, pp. 3287-310 and 3381-9; also see Kalpana Bardhan, 'Social Classes and Gender In India: The Structure of Differences in the Condition of Women', in Alice W. Clark (ed.), Gender and Poltt1cal Economy: Explorattons ofSouth Astan Systems (New Delhi, 1993), pp. 146-78.

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co-exist within a broad left-liberal framework. The Subaltern school, apart from their considerable contributions towards the deployment of gender as a discursive category, has contributed also to drawing gender Into the left agenda. The Marxist criticism that women's history tended to be pre-occupied with the experiences and activities of women of the urban elite, the bhadramahila was addressed, quite early in the career of women's history, by the subaltern formulation that (even elite) women constituted a subaltern group in the context of elite male domination.~ Such a formulation does not, however, meet the Marxist criticism. If mainstream history is relatively silent about women, the silence is deafening In the case of poor women. This issue is of critical Importance, since the elite preoccupations of women's history help to bolster dismissal of feminism as an 'elite' project promoted by western-educated urban middle class women out of touch with both 'popular culture' and the hard realities of poor women's lives. Of course, Marxist history-writing (especially upto the 1980s) is equally culpable in drawing a cloak of silence over peasant and working-class women.~3 In recent years there has been more interest in poor women's political activity. Historians from a wide spectrum of political persuasions have been investigating peasant and labouringwomen's participation in mainstream nationalist and class politics. Women's role in the Tebhaga movement in Bengal in the 1940s has been explored by many authors. That the peasant women who played key roles in the Tebhaga struggle posed a scathing "The first intervention appeared in Subaltern Studies IV. Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak, 'Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography', in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies IV(Delhi, 1985). The next two volumes contained writings on gender issues: Spivak, 'A Llterary Representation Of the Subaltern: Mahasweta Devi's "Stanadayini"', in R. Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies V (Delhi, 1987); and Julie Stephens, 'Feminist Fictions: A Critique of the Category 'Non-western Woman' in Feminlst Writings on India', in R. Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies VT (Delhi, 1989). 0 Exceptions from this trend were Renu Chakrabarty, Communists In Indian Women's Movement, 1940-50 (New Delhi, 1980); Kanak Mukhopadhyay, 'Bharater Nari Andaloner Ohara' fT'I

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Index

Abyssinians 50 Afghanistan 40 Africa 167 aftabis 57 Age of Consent Bill 26, 146, 156,

Asiatic Society of Pakistan 173 Assam 120, 309 atboryas 57 atrap 27, 189, 191 , 226 Aziz, K.K. 174

264, 268 Agnes, Flavia 272 Agra 40 Ahmad, Aziz 174, 196 Ahmad, Imtiaz 197 Ahmed, Rafiuddin 169, 181, 193, 194, 199, 203, 205-6, 208, 213, 214

ajlaf see atrap Ali, Maulana Mohamed 285 Ali, S. Wajed 175, 224 Ali, Syed Ameer 195, 216 Allahabad 40 Ameer Chand 57, 6o Anderson, Benedict 291 Andrews, Charles Freer 145 Anisuzzaman 180 anti-Holwell monument movement of 1940 293 Arabs 50 araJdars 108 Arcot rupee 61 arbatiyas 57 Armenian merchants 42, 44, 45, 48, 50, 51 Arthasastra 94 asbra/27, 189-96 passim, 213, 215, 219, 224, 225, 226 Ashraf, Kunwar Muhammad 191 Asian Development Bank 112

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Bagchi, A.K. 18, 130 Bagchl, Jasodhara 270 Bahl, Vinay 120 Balley, F.G. 233 baladiya ~rls 56 Balahadi sect 250, 251 Balasore 48 Bandyopadhyay, Gitasree 34 Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar 28-9, 253-4, 265 Bandyopadhyaya, Manik 115, 116 Banetjee,Himani 267 Banerjee, Nirmala 130-1, 276, 2n Banerjee, Sumanta 161-2, 267, 279-80 Bangla Academy 173 Bangladesh 123, 169, 170, 173, 182, 183, 215, 224, 225,see also East Pakistan banians 39, 63, 86 Bank of Bengal 18 Bank of Bombay 18 Barasat 23, 69 Barman, Advaita Malla 115, 116 Barrackpore 109 Basak, Sobharam 46, 51 Basanti Debi 261 Baske, Dhirendranath 80, 81

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INDEX

318

Basu, Nirban 128 Basu, Swaraj 253 baJta 62 Baul 201 Bayly, C.A. 18, 141, 293 Bayly, Susan 202 Benaras 57, 62 Bengal Act II of 1889 (Private Fisheries Protection Act) 101 Bengal Famine of 1943 305-6, 310 Bengal Pact of 1923-4 293 Bengal Presidency Muhammedan Association 217 Bengal Renaissance 25-6, 135-63 passim, 223, 262 Bengal Rent Act X of 1859 72 Bengal Vaishnavism 239-40 beparl 108 Beteille, Andre 257 betbbegarl 86 Beverley, H. 191 Bhadra, Gautam 23, n-8 Bharti, Agehananda 150 Bhattacharya, K.S. 141 Bhuimalis 251 bbuinbarl system 85, 86 Bhumij revolt 81 Bihar 123, 124, 309 Birbhum 61 Birsa Munda 80-3 passim; see also Birsaite movement Birsaite movement 81, 83; see also Birsa Munda Board of Revenue 99, 105 Borthwick, Meredith 266 Bose, Nirmal Kumar 243, 244, 245 Bose, Rajnarain 138, 142, 143, 147 Bose, Sarat Chandra 293, 303, 306, 307, 308

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Bose, Subhas Chandra 31, 34, 295, 302, 308 Bose, Sugata21, 23, 30, 31, 32, 34. 78-9, 287, 293 Bourdillon, J .A. 191 Brahmo Samaj 139, 140, 144, 147 British India Association 101 British Overseas Development Agency 112 Broomfield, John H. 179, 212, 213 Buchanan-Hamilton, Francis 98-9, 105, 237 Burdwan 59, 120, 123 Burhanpur 40 Buxar 59 Cabinet Mission 309 Calcutta 44, 45, 46, 50, 107, 108, 120, 123, 128, 130, 133, 142, 148, 212, 242, 266, 307, 308 Carroll, Lucy 266 Cashin, David 193-4 caste, as a category 13, 28, 23157 passim; consciousness 28, 29; identity 28; see also identity, history of Central Asia 49, 57 Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute 109 Central Provinces 124 Chakrabarti, Sudhir 250 Chakrabarti, Uma 269 Chakrabany, Bidyut 307 Chakrabany, Dipesh 1.21-32 passim, 155, 284 Chakrabany, Ramakanta 239 Chakrabany, Shubhra 61 Chakraborty, Ratan Lal 251 Chandravarkar, Rajnarayan 125 Chartier, Roger 15

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319

INDEX Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra 135, 145, 155, 158 Chatterjee, lndrani 278 Chatterjee, Kumkum 49, 55, 56, 57, 60,62 Chatterjee, Partha 21, 32, 75-6, 91, 155, 156, 161, 162, 239, 250-1, 256, 263, 269-70, 287-94 passim Chatterjee, Ratnabali 279 Chattetji, Joya 31-2, 33, 193, 271, 288, 289, 290 Chattopadhyay, Manju 275 Chaudhuri, Benoy Bhushan 20, 71, 72, 82-5 passim Chaudhuri, K.N. 46 Chaudhury, Sushi! 49-55 passim Child, Sir Josiah 54 China 68, 90

Chinese 50 Chittagong 59, 214 Chotanagpur 67, 81, 85, 87, 120, 124 Choudhry, Najma Jasmine 180 Chowdhury, Indira 162-3 Civil Disobedience Movement

298 class struggle 13, 275 class, as a category 13, 25; educated middle 25-6, 31-2, 292; industrial middle 25; jotedar-haoladar 22, 73; peasant 21, 23, 24, 65-79 passim, 90-2, 98, 106, 108, 275; urban middle 70, 73, 291; zamindari 23, 65, 69, 71, 72, 73, 81, 86, 96-101 passim, 105, 106, 109, 241 , 242 Cohn, Bernard 231 Collet, Sophia Dobson 140 'colonial sociology' 231, 233 Comintem 73 Communal Award 301, 302

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communalism 30, 271, 272, 307; see also history writing Congress Party see Indian National Congress Contagious Diseases Act 279 Cooper, Adrienne 23 Coromandel coast 41 Cox, Anthony 127, 128 Cripps Mission 306 Custer, Peter 123 Dacca 41, 100, 108, 176, 314 dadan 46, 52 dadnt system 50, 52 Damin-i-Kob 80 Dani, Ahmad Hasan 176 Das Gupta, Ranajit 120, 123, 125, 126, 130 Das Gupta, Sanjukta 22, 23, 24 Das Pact 303 Das, Amal 128 Das, Bina 261 Das, C.R. 217, 293, 303 Das, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan 31, 34, 286, 295 Das, Suranjan 289-90 Das, Tarak Chandra 103 Dasgupta, Ashin 49 Dasgupta, Sangeeta 86 Dasgupta, Swapan 88, 89 Dana, Aksaykumar 142, 161 Dana, Kali Kinkar 80 De Haan, Atjan 25, 32 De, Barun 136, 154, 157 De, K.C. 102 Deb,Radhakantl56 Deep Chand 57 Delhi 41, 43, 50, 314 Deorala 265 Devalle, Susana 66 dikus 80, 82, 84 Dinajpur district 68, 77, 105

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INDEX

320 Dirks, Nicholas 235, 241, 253 Duars 120 dubasbes 39 Dudhu Miyan 212 Duff, Alexander 141, 144 Dukhmat Didi 275 Dumont, Louis 231 , 232, 233, 243, 250, 252 Dutt, Michael Madhusudan 138

East Indian Company, Dutch 46-8; English 16, 17, 39, 43-63 passtm, 178; French 42 Ea.st Pakistan 169-74 passtm, 195, 255; see also Bangladesh Ea.stem Europe 167 Eaton, Richard Maxwell 196, 201 Eddy, Sherwood 145 Ely 61 Engel, Dagmar 260, 277, 279 Ershad, General Hussayn Muhammad 170, 171 ethnicity 187, 215-16 Fanidi uprisings 69, 178, 204, 207, 212 Farquhar, J.N. 161 Faruqi, Ziaul Hasan 174-5 Fay, Brian 14 Fazl, AbuJ 175 Fernandes, Leela 130, 131 fisheries 24-5; and bilsa 95, 107;

and the post-colonial situation 109-12; and the role of the colonial state 96-104 passtm Floud Commission 103 Food and Agriculture Organisation (PAO) 110

Forbes, Geraldine 260 Forward Bloc 307 Furber, Holden 43

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Gait, E.A. 191

Gallagher, ) .A. 301 Gandhi, M.K. 32, 34, 88, 89, 148, 156, 285, 291, 294; and his rejection by Bengal 34, 254 Gargi 269 Geertz, Clifford 145 Georgians 50 Ghose, Benoy 151, 152, 153 Ghosh, Aurobindo 145, 284, 294 Ghosh, Parimal 130 Gilchrist, R.N. 124

so/as 56

soldan 57 somastM 48, 52, 60 Goptepurrah 61 Gordon, Leorwd 33 Gough, Kathleen 66, 68 Government of India Act oi 1935 103, 298, 300, 302 Gramsci, AntonJo 74, 152 Great Calcutta Killing of 1946

286, 289, 310 srlbasta beparts 56 Guba, Rabajit 22, 66, 70-6 passim, 109, 146, 155, 156, 157 Gujarat 41, 42 Gujaratis 45, 48, 50 Gupta, Brijen 46 Gupta, K.G. 102 Hadls 250 Haji Shariatullah 69, 212 Hamid, Abdul 174 HanaflS 209 Haque, Enamul 179 Hardiman, David 90-1

Hardy, Peter 196 Harun-or-Rashid 304

Hashim, Abu! 293, 309, 310 Hashmi, Taj 304

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INDEX Haskell, Thomas 15 Hastings, Warren 19 Hatcher, Brian 26 Hazaribagh 85 Hazra, Matangini 261 Hill, S.C. 46, 49 Hindu Civil Code 272 Hindu fundamentalism 272 Hindu Sabha 89, 254, 303, 306 history writing, and communalism 13, 284-91 passtm; current themes for 13; and empiricism 14, 15; and humanism 13; as an important cognitive enterprise 14; in India 14-16; and liberalism 13; and Marxism 13, 26, 68-74 passtm, 89-90, 91, 120, 123, 125, 130, 132, 151, 154, 261, 273, 274, 286; see also 'secular' statist approach; and a nationalist interpretation 8990, 262, 269; and objectivity 13, 15; as a political project 14; and positivism 14; and postmodernism 13, 14; and the rejection of postmodern relativism 15; and the 'secular' statist approach 30, 284, 285, 286, 288; see also Marxism; and the Subaltern discourse 16, 22, 23, 30, 74, 75-6, 77, 78, 90. 91, 92, 129, 130, 136, 155, 161, 163, 274, 284, 287, 290. 291 history, deconstruction of 13; fictional 13; 'objective' 13; 'tOtal' 16 Hobsbawm, E.J . 84, 298 Hora, Sunder Lal 94-5, 103, 104 Hosen, Abu! 175 Hosen, Qazi Motahar 175

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321

Hugli 41, 44, 45, 50, 51, 53, 61,

109 humanism see history writing Hunter, William 207, 237 Huq, Fazlul 293, 303-9 passtm Huq, Khondkar Sirajul 180 Husain, Abid 174 Hutton, J.H. 237 identity formation 26, 27-8, 167229 passtm identity, history of 231-57 passtm Ikram, S. Muhammad 174 Inden, Ronald 241, 242 Indian National Congress 29-33 passtm, 88, 89, 249, 254, 262, 293, 298-303 passtm, 307-15

passtm Indigo rebellion 70-1 Indonesian archipelago 48 tnqt/ab 17, 63 Islam, and the revivalist movements 203-11; and its syncretistic tradition 27, 180-2, 188-202 passtm, 218, 224 Islam, Mustafa Nurul 180, 181, 191, 228 Islam, Serajul 20, 21 Islamic Academy 173 'Islamisation' 168, 169, 170, 206, 225; and the relationship with syncretism 200-2, 218 Ispahan 42 Jalal, Ayesha 288, 305, 309 jalllar rights 97-101 passtm, 105, 106, 109 Jardine, Skinner and Company 106 fatto MaJsyaftbt Samlty (National Fishermen's Association) 112 Jenkins, J .T. 102

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322

INDEX

Jews 50 Jha, J.C. 81 Jinnah, M.A. 173, 304, 305, 30913 pas.nm Jitu Santai 89; see also Santai rebeHion Jones, Ken 161 jotedar thesis 21-2 jotedars 73, 213, 214, 215; see also class Kabir, Humayun 175 Kabiraj, Narahari 69, 70 Kadir, Abdul 175 Kanwar, Roop 265 Karim, Abdul 176-7, 178 Karim, Najlnul 176, 191 Karim, Rezaul 175 Karim, Sardar Fazlul 180 Karlekar, Malavika 266 Kautilya 94 Kaviraj, Sudipto 155 Kawai, Akinobu 21 Khan, Abdul Majed 178, 179 Khan, Ayub 173, 196 Khan, Liaquat All 173 Khan, Muinuddin Ahmed 69, 178, 203, 205, 213 Khan, Murshid Quli 40, 41, 44, 50, 176 Khan; Reza 60 Khatun, Latifa 175-6 Kherwar movement 84-5; see also Santai rebellion kbtcborifarosb 57 Khilafat movement 217, 285, 291 Kisan Sabha 29, 73, 254 Kling, Blair 19, 70 Kol rebellion 80, 81, 83 Kopf, David 141, 148, 149-50, 162 ltotbtwals 57

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Krishak Praja Party 293, 304 Kuhn, Thomas 137 ltunjm 108 labour, and gender 130-2; history and culture 129-39; and migration 123-5; organisation and the role of the outsider 127-9; recruitment and control of 125-7 Lahiri, A.C. 104 Lahore 42 Lamb, George 105 Lata Mani 265

lalbtals 60 Latif, Nawab Abdul 179, 216 Leach, Edmund 232 Leonard, G.S. 144 Levy, Reuben 191 liberalism see history writing Lilavati 269 Little, J.H. 42 Lucknow Pact 217 Lyall, Alfred 231 Lynch, Owen 235 MacDonald, Ramsay 301 MacDougall, John 84 Madan, T.N. 232 mabajans 57 Maitreyee 269 Malabar 41 Malabarians 50 Malda 61 , 106 Mallick, Azizur Rahman 178, 1978, 205 Manbhum district 85, 120, 123 Manik Chand 43 Maniruzzaman, Mohammad 180 Mannan, Qazi Abdul 180 Manu 240, 249 Marshall, P.J. 42-5 passim, 49

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INDEX

Marwar42 Marwaris 19 Marxism see history writing Mascarenhas, Anthony 195 Mass Contact Campaign 303 McGuire, John 243 McPherson, Kenneth 212 Medinipur district 112 Meer Ashraf 60 Meer Afzal 6o Meherpore 100 Mia, Ahmad 176 Midnapore 59, 307 Midnapur Zamindari Company 88 Mill, James 268 Mintz, S. 116 Mir Jafar 59 Mir Qasim 59, 61 Mitra, Kishorichand 141 Mohapatra, Prabhu 85, 86, 120 Molla, M.K.U. 176 Monghyr rupee 61 Mookerjee, Syama Prasad 3o6, 307 Moore, Barrington 67-8 Moors 50 Mughal Admiralty of Surat 54 Mughal empire 54, 143; decline of 49-53 passim, 57 Mujeeb, Muhammad 175, 196 Mukherjee, Mukul 276 Mukherjee, Ram Krishna 245, 246 Mukherjee, S.N. 15, 242 Mukhopadhyay, Bhudev 158 Millier, Max 140, 143 Murshid, Ghulam 265 Murshid, Tazeen 290 Muslim League 217, 303, 304-5, 3()1), 311; Bengal Provincial 304, 309; Pakistan 174 Muslim Women's (Protection of

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323

Rights in Divorce) Act 1986 272 Mymensingh district 68, 77, 100, 251 Nadia district 61 Nakazato, Nariaki 22, 24 Narnasudras 253, 254, 255 Nandi, C. 113 Nandy, Ashis 265, 293, 294 Nandy, Somendra Chandra 19 nation 31, 259-81 passim; as a category 13, 27, 294 National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER)

109 nationalism 13, 26-34 passim, 261, 262, 263, 268, 270, 271; anti-colonial 259; ethnic 187; extremist 265; historiography of 283-96 passim; supraterritorial 219, 220, 221; territorial Bengali 217 Naxalite upsurge 91 Nazimuddin 304 Nehru Report of 1928 285 Nepal 124 New Fisheries Management Policy 112 ntkari 108 Nizami, Khaliq Ahmad 174 nokrant tenancy 126 Non-cooperation movement 88, 217, 285, 291 Noon, Malik Feroze Khan 195 Nyayaratha, Ramgati 143 O'Hanlon, Rosalind 130, 267-8 O 'Malley, L.S.S. 237 Om Prakash 40, 46-8 Omvedt, Gail 236 Oraons 83, 84, 86, 87; see also

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

324

INDEX

Tana Bhagat movement Ottoman empire, decline of 49 Pabna district 68, 109 Pabna uprising of 1873 71, 72-3 Paglapanthis 77 patltars 48 pajra 108 Pakistan Historical Society 173 Pal, Bipin Chandra 31, 162, 295 Palit, Chinabrata 70 Palamau 85 Panandikar, S.G . 103 Panda, China 22 Pandey, Gyan 271 Pandit, Ramc:handra 60, 61 Panitlon of Bengal 31-3, 109,

168, 169-70, 171-3, 203, 312, 313 Patna 42, 51, 56-62passlm peasant movements 24, 66-79 passim, 90-2 passim Permanent Settlement of 1793 65, 86, 96, 103, 105, 299 Persia 40 Persian Gulf 41, 48 Persians 50

Plrzada, Syed Sharifuddin 174 Plassey 17, 39-45 passim, 49, 50, 53, 55, 5~63 passim Poddar, Arabinda 141 Poona Pact 301, 302 postmodemism s.- hl5tory writing

potedars 61 Prabhabati Devi 275 Pramanlk, S.K. 113 Progressive Indian Writers' Association 116 Purulia district 243 putbl literature 16, 176, 177, 208,

210

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'Quit India' Campaign 307 Qureishi, Ishtiaq Husain 174 Rahman, Pazlur 175 Rahman, General Zia-ur 170 Rahman, Sayid-ur 180 Rajbansis 243, 253 Ramanujan, A.K. 136 Ranchi 85 Rangpur district 68 Rashid, A. 175 Ray, Nlharranjan 238, 241 Ray, Rajat Kanta 17, 21, 34. 45,

49, 54. 55, 59. 157, 158, 213

286



Ray, Ratnalekha 20, 21 Raychaudhuri,B. 113 Raychaudhuri, Tapan 20-1, 158 Red Sea 41 Regulating Act of 1773 60 Risley, H.H. 237, 238 Rizvi, S.A.A. 175 Robinson, Francis 196 . Roy, Asim 27, lS0-1, 186-7, 191-3, 1~9.

201

Roy, Kiran Sankar 293 Roy, Ramrnohun 136-41 passim,

144, 147, 148, 152, 156, 201 Roy, Suprakash ~9. 70, 91 Safavid empire, decline of 49 Sahlins, M. 116 Sahu, Hiranand 42 Sakina Begum 275 Sangari, Kumkum 273 'Sanskritisatlon' 232, 248, 249 Santai rebellion 79-84 passim ; s. also Jitu Santai, Sardar and Kherwar movements Santhal regions 68 Santoshkumari Devi 275

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JNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INDEX

Sanyal, Hitesranjan 240, 241, 244, 246 Sardar movement 84, 85, 86; see also Santai rebellion Sarkar, Jagadish Narayan 204, 205, 207 Sarkar, Sumit 15, 23, 91, 135, 136 Sarkar, Susobhan 147-51 passtm, 155, 157, 162 Sarkar, Tanika 88, 89, 267, 270, 271-2 Sati 264, 265 Sauda-1-Kbas 44 Sayeed, Khalid Bin 174 School of Oriental and African Studies 173 'Secularisation' 32 Secularism 33; see al.so history writing and the 'secular' statist approach Sen, Asok 136, 153, 154, 157 Sen, K.C. 139-40, 147 Sen, Samita 29-30, 125, 130, 131,

2n Sen, Shila 304 Sen, Sudipta 17, 18 Sen, Sunil 73 Sengupta, Kalyan Kumar 72, 73 Seth, Jagat 42, 43, 46, 50, 51, 6o Seth, Lakshmi Kanta 46 Seth, Gopinath 46 Shah Sano case 272 Shah, Khem Chand 48 Shastri, Shibnath 140, 16o, 162 Sherring, M.A. 237 Shrimp aquaculture industry 112 sbuddbt campaigns 307 stcca rupee 61, 62 Simeon, Dilip 120 Simmons, Colin 120 Singbhum district 243-4 Singh, K.S. 66, 67, 81, 82, 87-8

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325

Sinha, N.K. 20, 39-43 passtm, 58, 61 Sinha, Pradip 212 Sinha, S.P. 81 Sinha, Surajit 244 Sirajuddaulah, Nawab 55 Slater, Thomas Ebenezer 144 social reform movement 264-8 Society of Trade 6o sonat 61; Murshidabad 61 South East Asia 41, 47, 48, 167 Southwell, T. 103 Sri Ramakrishna 140, 146 Srinivasan, M.N. 248 Status of Women Committee (1971) 276 Stokes, Eric 231 Subramanian, Lakshmi 17 Suhrawardy, Husain Shahid 293, 304, 309, 310 Sultan, Saiyad 199, 201 Sumatra 41 Surat 44, 50 Swadeshi movement 284 Swami Dayanand 140 Swami Vivekanand 145, 147, 158 'Syama-Huq' Progressive Coalition Ministry 3o6 Ta'ayuni movement .208 Tagore, Debendranath 139, 147 Tagore, Dwarkanath 19 Tagore, Rabindranath 31, 136-43 passim, 146, 156, 157, 294, 295 tabbazarees 57 Talbot, Ian 33 Tana Bhagat movement 83, 86-7; see also Oraons Taniguchi, Shinkichi 243 Tarafdar, Momtazur Rahman 177, 197

Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

INDEX

326

Tariqa-l-Muhammadiya movement 178-9 Taylor, James 207 Tebhaga movement 73, 254, 274-5 tbtkadarl 86 Tho mpson, E.P. 133 Ti.mberg, Thomas A 19 Titu Mir 69, 77, 212 tribal movements 79-92 pa.mm tribe, as a category 66- 7; · validity ' of the concept of 66 Tripathi, Amales 18 Turks 50 Umicband 50 Uniform Civil Code 272 United Benp1 Plan of 1947 304,

310 United Provinces 124; -. also Uttar Pradesh 'United States of South Asia' 311 Uttar Pradesh 123; . , also United Provinces

Vldyavagls, Ramchandra 161 Waddedar, Prltilata 261 Wlldud, Qazi Abdul 175, 194, 195, 209, 223-4 wahabi movement 178-9, 204, 207, 209 Wlljld, Kboja 51, 57, 6o W'.i..shbrook, 0.A. 18, 130 Weber, Max 231 West Asia 48, 63 West Pakistan 174

'Westernization' 232, 248, 249, 252 White, Hayden 13 Widow Remaniage Act 266

Willcock, Willlam 103 Wilson, H.H. 144 Wise, James. 208, 237 Wolf, I!. 116 World Bank 111 Yasin, Mohammad 174

Zagorin, Perez 14 van Schendel, Willem 24, 77 Vaziery Rupee 61

Vidyasagar, Isvarcbandra 138, 1516 passtm, 159, 16o, 161, 251

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Zakaria, Rafiq 175 zamindarl system 126, 299, 300, 308; abolition of the 110, 306; see also class ·

Origiral frcn1

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN